The Asset: Act II (An Isabella Rose Thriller Book 2) Page 19

  The sun fell beneath the line of the neighbouring buildings. The Isha prayer was at dusk, and it couldn’t be more than an hour away now. Isabella still did not know what she was going to do, but she decided that she had to do something. If she stayed here, she was condemning Aqil. The alternative was to go to the square and observe. It might be that there was nothing she could do; that would be a pity, but at least she would know that, and abandoning him would not be quite so callous.

  Isabella wore the abaya over her clothes. The previous owner must have been a slight woman, because the robe was about the right size to fit her. It was made of heavy material, pulling down on her shoulders, and was cut to be very loose, just like the one that she had abandoned; that was fortunate because it meant that she was able to wear the bandolier with the ammunition and the grenades without the bulk being too obvious. She pulled the niqab over her head; it was double-veiled, in the Saudi style, and reduced her field of vision to no more than a narrow slit. That was not ideal, but the anonymity that it would confer was worth the compromise. She pulled on the gloves, and when she was done, there was not an inch of flesh that remained visible.

  She turned and looked down at the AK-47. There was no way that she could bring the rifle, but it was difficult to leave it behind. She consoled herself with the knowledge that there were only ten rounds left in the magazine, that she still had the Glock and that it should be possible to find a replacement if an automatic was necessary.

  She hiked up the abaya and shoved the pistol into the waistband of her jeans.

  And then, with a tight little knot of fear in her gut, she left the safety of her hideaway and descended the stairs to the darkening street below.

  PART THREE

  The Syrian Desert

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Pope had been in the city for two days. He had found a blitzed neighbourhood that looked as if it might offer him a refuge and a base from which he could range out and scout more widely. The buildings had been flattened, most likely by barrel bombs, but he was able to find a narrow passageway between the wrecks of two buildings where he had been able to hide the armoured Ranger. The buildings were in no fit state to be habitable, but one of them offered him a room on the first floor that he decided would be satisfactory for his purposes. The rest of the building was empty, and there was no reason for anyone to visit it. It was eleven by the time he decided that the room was the best that he would be able to find. He had blocked the door with his backpack, called Bloom to update him and then slept.

  He woke early the next day, left the Ranger behind and scouted the city on foot. He wanted to get an idea of his surroundings and the strength of the jihadi deployment there. The soldiers did not strike him as particularly experienced or efficient, but they were numerous enough for him to conclude that they had enough men to hold it against a determined assault. That aside, it had been a disappointing day. He had returned to his hiding place that night with no new information on Isabella’s location. He called Bloom again and received the same confirmation: as far as British interests were concerned, Salim and Isabella were still in the city. They were being held in a prison, and efforts were being made to locate it.

  He had risen early again this morning and had gone out once more to continue his search. He had walked for eight hours, stopping occasionally in groups where he was able to eavesdrop on conversations, but once again he had found nothing. There was one topic of conversation that he overheard on more than one occasion: a sandstorm was blowing in from the desert and was due to hit the city in the evening.

  He kept walking, but with nothing to show for his efforts. It was late afternoon when Pope approached a building that he assumed must have served as some sort of municipal facility before the city fell to the Islamic State. It was a three-storey building with a stencilled inscription on the pediment that confirmed, in Arabic, that it had been the town hall.

  There was a line of metal railings that separated the building from the street, and a series of notices had been attached to them. A group of people were gathered before the notices, and Pope drifted toward them. It was evidently a place where local declarations were displayed. Pope edged into the crowd until he was close enough to read the notices. Some of them announced new regulations: the clothes that women should wear, the length of a man’s beard, a new diktat that forbade the use of the Internet. There was nothing useful. Pope was nudged to the right as a local man pressed forward, and he waited and watched as an official affixed a new notice to the railings. It had a series of grainy pictures beneath a single headline.

  Pope’s mouth fell open. The pictures were of Salim and Khalil al-Khawari and a young man whom he did not recognise. The headline read that they were to be executed in the town square that night after evening prayers.

  Pope turned and shouldered his way through the crowd until he was clear.

  What was going on? There was too much about the affair that he did not understand. The al-Khawaris had been headed to the Lebanon, not Syria. They had been brought here against their will. And now they were to be executed? None of it made any sense. And what about Isabella? Where was she? Was she alive?

  Pope needed information. The town square was at the end of the road. He didn’t know what he would find there, nor whether there would be anything that he could do, but he needed to know more.

  He turned and retraced his steps back to the block where he had been hiding. He collected his backpack from the room and went down to the Ranger. He stowed his kit in the back, started the engine and drove back in the direction of the city centre. He passed a mosque, and the speakers that had been hung on the minaret crackled into life.

  Pope heard the muezzin’s call to prayer. Dusk was falling quickly.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  The storm blew in off the desert, heralded by a brisk breeze that promised to strengthen. Pope parked the Ranger in a side street. There were other similar vehicles there; it did not stand out. There was a satchel in the back of the vehicle. He undid his backpack and took out the claymore mine. He hid the backpack in the back of the Ranger, put the satchel over his shoulder and set out.

  The town square was formed by four rows of buildings that made a rectangle, with roads converging on it. The buildings were home to cafés and restaurants, and some had been decked out with banners and billboards that proclaimed the glory of the caliphate. Familiar black and white flags had been fixed to long wooden posts that had been fastened to the walls of the buildings, the pennants snapping in the sand-laden breeze. The centre of the square had been taken up by a raised platform. Three wooden constructions had been arranged there, propped up at an angle so that they were just high enough for Pope to see what they were.

  They were crosses.

  The storm was picking up in intensity, but the crowd was still large and growing as more and more people—mostly men—gathered at its edges. The atmosphere was frenzied. There was no alcohol here, at least not licitly, but there was an edge to the cheers and chants that sounded almost drunken.

  Bloodlust.

  Pope was glad of the sand that was sent whipping around the square by the wind. Most of the men had arranged their keffiyehs so that their faces were covered, and as he arranged his own scarf so that it covered everything save a narrow slit for his eyes, he did not feel as out of place as he might have otherwise. He walked farther into the square as a procession of cars, their horns sounding, turned on to the road from which he had entered and slowly nudged their way through the crowd to the middle of the square.

  The light came from braziers that had been lit at the edges of the square and two spotlights that were aimed down from the top floors of two adjacent buildings. The farther away from the central area he stayed, the easier it was to stay within the pools of darkness. Pope was grateful for the dusk and for the wind. The fighters were identified by the uniforms that they were wearing: front-line soldiers in their green camouflage, black robes for the commanders, and black sweatshirts and baggy t
rousers for those in the security office detail.

  Vehicles had been parked around the edge of the square. There were four-by-fours, technicals with the flatbed-mounted machine guns and American Humvees. Pope made for one of the Humvees. It was in poor shape, with one flank crumpled inward as evidence of an explosion, and tracks of indentations where small-calibre rounds had dented the armour. It was parked a couple of feet away from the wall of a dilapidated building that was being used, Pope saw, as a café. The vehicle had produced a narrow passage between itself and the wall, and Pope paused before it for a moment so that he could take the satchel off his shoulder.

  There were men atop the Humvee, half a dozen of them in fighting dress, all of them staring at the spectacle in the centre of the square. Pope turned and followed their gazes and watched as the executioners appeared out of the cars that had pulled into the square. Pope had seen footage of men like them in ISIS propaganda, as had everyone else. There were three of them tonight, each dressed in sandy-coloured desert robes, with their faces covered in similarly coloured swaths of material.

  The men went to one of the cars and opened the doors. Three figures were hauled out. They were hooded, with their hands tied behind their backs. They didn’t struggle. Perhaps the hoods spared them the knowledge of what was about to happen, or perhaps they were resigned to their fates. It was moot: there wouldn’t have been any point in struggling. They were at the centre of a baying, hungry crowd. Even if they had been able to free themselves, there would have been nowhere for them to go.

  Pope watched as the men were lined up, one in front of each cross. One executioner stood behind each man and, on cue, they removed the hoods.

  Pope recognised two of them immediately.

  Salim al-Khawari.

  Khalil al-Khawari.

  The third was a young man, no older than twenty. Pope did not recognise him.

  All three of them bore the signs of recent beatings. Salim’s face, usually so haughty, was disfigured by contusions that closed his right eye and plugs of dried blood in his nostrils. His son’s face bore similar marks, and as he opened his mouth to gasp for air, Pope saw that he was missing one of his front teeth. The third man did not look up, but Pope could see that his ear was swollen and that there was a track of dried blood on his right temple.

  The crowd was staring at the three men. No one was watching Pope as he stepped between the Humvee and the wall. He moved quickly, opening the satchel and taking out the claymore. He activated the detonator and pushed the mine beneath the vehicle, as close to the fuel tank as he could, and then he went back out into the square. He had the remote control in his pocket, and he reached down and felt for the thumb-shaped depression that he would need to press in order to detonate the mine.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Isabella had found her way to the central square. The truck with the amplifier had headed in that direction, and as she drew nearer, a crowd started to form. It was mostly composed of men, but there were a few veiled women, too. She knew that she shouldn’t be out without a chaperone, so she crossed the road so that she could follow a group of locals with two women within their number. No one noticed her, and as the road became more crowded, she was able to leave them behind and make her own way again.

  The crowd emptied into the main square. She looked around at the buildings, at the spectators hanging out of the second-floor windows. The spotlights that had been installed on the roofs of two of the buildings swept over the crowd before settling on the platform where three crosses had been erected.

  A car bulled its way through the crowd, the driver sounding the horn to clear a path. It parked next to the platform. Isabella watched as two hooded men were dragged out of the car. They were dragged up the steps of the platform and passed unceremoniously into the custody of the executioners. They were turned to face the crowd and their hoods were yanked away. Salim and Khalil al-Khawari blinked out into the baying mob before both of them looked to the ground. All of Salim’s bluster was gone now; the enforced trip into Syria and now the very obvious fate that awaited him had transformed him from the supercilious, haughty titan of business that she had met in Geneva to a fretful, panicked, bloodied man who dared not raise his eyes from the ground. Khalil, by contrast, seemed to have found a reservoir of strength. It was only evident by comparison to his father, but he was putting up more of a struggle until one of his jailers backhanded him around the side of the face.

  A third figure was removed from the car. He was slight, slimmer than Khalil, and he didn’t resist as he was led up the stairs. Isabella knew that it was Aqil. He, too, was turned to face the crowd, and the hood was removed. He blinked into the glare of the spotlights; she could see the terror in his eyes, even from here.

  Isabella reached into the robe and felt for the Glock. Her fingers settled around the grip, but she left it there. What was she going to do? How could she possibly help Aqil? She was alone, lost within the crowd, and the fact that she had a pistol was an irrelevance. She could shoot a few of them, maybe even reach Aqil and get him down from the platform, but what would they do then? How could she get them away? It was impossible.

  She looked up. Aqil was looking out from the platform, squinting into the spotlight that glared down on him.

  She was distracted, and by the time she saw the two women, it was too late. They had been hidden in the crowd, rendered anonymous by their veils, yet as the crowd parted for them, she saw that they were distinctive because of the fact that they were armed with AK-47s.

  They were from the al-Khansaa brigade.

  They had seen Isabella and were making their way toward her with purpose. The crowd eddied around her and she tried to put people between her and them, but they were not so easily dissuaded from their pursuit. One of them called out, her harsh Arabic freighted with what Isabella took to be a European accent: “Stop!”

  The crowd was thick ahead of her, and it would be difficult for her to pass through it, especially if the women made more of a fuss. Worse than that, if she tried to run, she would have to bypass the clutch of armed insurgents who had gathered to watch the executions. She was caught between the women behind and the men ahead.

  She couldn’t run.

  The two women reached her. Both women wore the same loose abayas that Isabella was wearing. They were both short, around the same height as she was, and the rifles looked oversized in their gloved hands.

  One of them stepped ahead of the other. “Where is your chaperone?” she said.

  “He is here. In the crowd.”

  “He should be with you.”

  “I know,” Isabella said. “I’m sorry. I lost him.”

  She knew that although her Arabic was acceptable, her accent was as bad as her interrogator’s. It would betray that it was not her native tongue.

  “What is your name?”

  “Aqsa,” she said, using the name of the hairdresser in Marrakech that she had visited the last time she had had her hair cut.

  “We need to talk to you. We need you to take off your niqab. I need to see your face. You will come with us.”

  “I can’t leave,” she protested. “My husband.”

  “He will answer to the Hisbah for abandoning you.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Your accent—where are you from?”

  The woman reached out and grasped Isabella’s left shoulder.

  Isabella knew that she was beyond the point where she might be able to talk her way out of the mess she was in. She brought up her left hand in a circular motion, the sudden impact shucking the woman’s hand from her shoulder. The woman reached out to snag the niqab. Isabella raised her right leg and thrust out her foot, catching the woman in the groin. The woman dropped to her knees, but she did not relinquish her grip on the niqab. It was torn away as she fell.

  Isabella felt the rush of hot air and the sting of sand on her face.

  She turned and started to run.

  “Help!” the woman cried out.


  Isabella reached for the Glock and pulled it out. The crowd had thickened and she had to shoulder her way through clutches of people who were arranged around the square. There were groups of insurgents, marked out by their uniforms. She barged into them and saw that there was an open space just ahead. If she could get there, maybe she could lose them in the streets and alleys.

  She felt strong arms wrap around her torso. She struggled, but her arms were pinned to her sides. She was lifted from her feet and pulled down to the dirt, the arms still clasped around her body. She crashed down, the impact loosening her grip on the pistol. She dropped it, and as dirt and grit from the cobbles scraped across her face, she saw it six feet away from her. She struggled, but the arms encircling her were too strong and she couldn’t wriggle free.

  “Enough,” came a shout into her ear. “Lie still.”

  Isabella was on her side, with the man who was restraining her lying behind her and clasping her to his chest. She brought up her knees and then jabbed her feet at his legs, trying to scrape down his shin. She found at least partial contact, and the man cursed in pain.

  Her captor grunted with the effort as he squeezed her tighter.

  Isabella fixed her eyes on the pistol, bucking and kicking in an attempt to break free so that she could collect it. She was looking right at it when she saw a man’s feet approach it. The man was wearing Nikes, and she saw his legs and torso as he crouched down to collect it from the ground. He stood, stepped right up to where she was being held and pressed the muzzle of the pistol against her forehead.

  “Stop struggling,” he said, “or I will shoot you now.”

  She did as she was told.

  “Get her up.”

  Isabella didn’t resist as the man who had tackled her got to his feet and hauled her upright. She raised her chin and looked up, right into the face of Abu.