Peace on Earth. Gordon Stevens

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ lit and decorated; he realised how close it was to Christmas, how he had forgotten it was almost Christmas. The driver stopped the car outside a hamburger bar and they went in, not because they were hungry, simply to while away the waiting. It was crowded. Even at the table they did not relax, one always looking at the car, another at the door, looking at who might be looking at them, leaving, setting them up as they left. Outside the afternoon was already getting dark. He looked across the road at the shoppers, hearing the music in the background, the words of the carol.

       ‘They said there’d be snow at Christmas,

       They said there’d be peace on earth.’

      Today, the Special Branch had said. This evening. Definitely, they said their informant had told them, without fail. They rose and left the café.

      The man whom Abu Nabil had personally chosen to both begin and end his campaign of terror arrived at Heathrow fifteen minutes late at ten forty-five in the morning on Scandinavian Airlines SK501 from Copenhagen. Neither the timing nor the flight was a coincidence. SK501 was one of seven flights to arrive from Europe in a half-hour period; the immigration halls would therefore be crowded and congested. And passengers from Copenhagen attracted less attention from immigration and Special Branch than those from other European cities, such as Rome and Athens, with reputations for terrorist connections.

      Walid Haddad was twenty-eight years old, neatly though not expensively dressed in a dark blue business suit. The briefcase he carried contained, among a number of other items all related to his supposed profession of petroleum analyst, a diary with a list of business appointments in London over the next two days which had been easy to arrange but which, if they had been checked, would have provided him with justification for visiting Britain.

      He followed the line of passengers off the plane, through the walkways and connecting doors, and into the large impersonal hall lined, at the far end, by the immigration desks. Four queues, he saw immediately, knowing he would have no problem, looking anyway for his insurance. The queues were longer than he had anticipated, with three officials on duty at each desk. Normally two, he thought, wondering why the security was tighter than he had expected, and glanced again at the desks. One official checking passports, a second looking over his shoulder at the person at the desk, looking for the tell-tale signs, the third concentrating on the queue itself. He moved forward, wondering again about the increase in security and looking again for the insurance he needed.

      A flood of passengers from another flight began spilling into the hall. There was a moment of confusion as the new group mingled with those already in the hall, deciding which queue to join. He looked round, ignoring the mêlée, and saw the woman. She was young, in her mid-twenties, of Arab appearance, with olive skin and dark piercing eyes, taller than average with long black hair. She also had the one quality above all, the single characteristic he was looking for: that of arrogance. In the way her eyes flashed, the way she held herself. He knew the men at the desks were already looking at her.

      The woman was moving towards the third queue from the far side of the hall. He hurried after her, waited till she had almost joined the queue, then stepped in front of her, almost bumping into her. He turned and apologised, politely, not friendly. The queue moved forward. He knew again they had already seen her, already singled her out. The queue to his right was moving faster, already growing shorter. Stay behind me, he spoke silently to the woman, stay where you are, give me cover. The queue shuffled forward, he reached the desk, gave the official his passport, entry visa on page five.

      ‘Name?’ The voice was harsh. He knew the other two men at the desk were looking at the woman and gave the name in his false passport.

      ‘What are you doing in London?’

      ‘Business. I’m a petroleum analyst.’ He thought about the appointments he had arranged in case they questioned him, knew it was a formality, felt himself relax, did not let it show, controlling the degree of eye contact that would give the woman away even though she was entirely innocent. Abruptly the official stamped his passport, snapped it shut and handed it back to him. Forty-five minutes later he had retrieved his one suitcase, cleared customs, collected his hire car, and was driving down the M4 motorway into London. Behind him, he knew, the first tentacles of the security net were beginning to tighten round the woman, the first arrangements for a Special Branch surveillance, the first requests, formal or informal, for a telephone intercept wherever she was staying.

      By two thirty he had checked in at the Holiday Inn in Swiss Cottage, unpacked his suitcase and showered. The telephone in the room was direct dial. He checked the number he had been given in Damascus, and phoned the London office of the Palestine Liberation Organisation in Green Street.

      ‘Good afternoon,’ he spoke politely. ‘This is Mohsen Masri from An-Nahar.’ He named a prominent Middle Eastern publication. ‘Is it possible to speak with Mr Nabulsi?’

      The receptionist was equally polite. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Nabulsi is away at the moment, can anyone else help?’

      He thanked her, but said he needed to speak to the PLO representative personally and asked when she suggested he should phone again.

      ‘He flies in tomorrow and will be back in the office on Friday. Can I get him to contact you then?’

      ‘Don’t worry.’ Haddad kept his voice friendly and informal. ‘I’ll try him then.’

      ‘Make it early,’ she answered. ‘He’s busy after eleven.’

      He thanked her and put the phone down. Abu Nabil was right, he thought, Abu Nabil was always right.

      The traffic in London’s West End, where the offices of the PLO were situated, was congested, made worse by Christmas. It took Haddad twenty minutes to drive from the hotel to the office and another ten to find a parking space, even though it was on a yellow line. If a traffic warden came, he knew he would only have to move.

      The black Ford Granada was parked outside the building which housed, amongst other offices, that of the London office of Yasser Arafat’s faction of the Palestinian movement. It was interesting, he thought, that the chauffeur came to work even when the representative himself was away, even more interesting that he came in the Granada. On a car radio he heard the sound of a Christmas carol. He waited, lost in the crowd of shoppers, the afternoon losing its light and the Christmas lights already on, shining in the dusk.

      At five o’clock a man he supposed was the chauffeur left the building and unlocked the car. The man, he noted, checked neither around nor underneath the vehicle. Either, he imagined, because the car was visible from the front windows of the PLO office, or because the man assumed that because the representative was away, there was no security risk.

      It was interesting, thought Haddad, how often people made the wrong assumption.

      The traffic was heavy. He followed the car across Oxford Street, skirting behind Marylebone station and through the side streets to the west of Regent’s Park. At the intersection on the corner dominated by the cricket ground at Lord’s, he had checked on the street map, the chauffeur should drive straight on, towards the representative’s house in St John’s Wood and the security of the garage, electronically protected, at the side of the house. He knew what the man would do, that when the end came it would be so sudden and unexpected that the chauffeur would have no time to question when he had made his mistake. In front of him, the man turned right, away from St John’s Wood, towards Camden Town.

      Ten minutes later Haddad watched the chauffeur reverse the Granada into the garage below the mews flat where the man lived with his wife. In front of the entrance to the flat was a Ford Escort which he assumed was their own vehicle. He parked the hire СКАЧАТЬ