There was a captain at the wheel, his first mate making coffee in the galley. There were only two real seamen onboard. There were also two real fishermen, who would handle the long lines and the nets when she took up her drifting role. But the other eight were Sayeret Matkal commandos.
The fish hold had been scoured and cleansed of the old stink to create accommodation for them: eight bunks along the walls and a common mess area on deck. The hatch covers were closed so that the air-conditioning in the cramped space, as the burning sun rose in the sky, could do its job.
As she cruised down the Red Sea between Saudi Arabia and Sudan, she changed her identity. She became the Omar al-Dhofari, out of the Omani port of Salalah. Her crew looked the part; all could pass for Gulf Arabs by appearance and mastery of the language.
In the narrows between Djibouti and Yemen, she skirted the Yemeni island of Perim and turned into the Gulf of Aden. From here on she was in pirate territory but virtually immune from danger. Somali pirates look for a prey with a commercial value and an owner prepared to pay the price of recovery. An Omani fishing boat did not fit that pattern.
The men onboard saw a frigate from the international naval flotilla that had made life extremely hard for the pirates, but she was not even challenged. The sun caught the glint of the lenses of the powerful binoculars that studied her, but that was all. Being Omani, she was of no interest to the pirate catchers either.
On the third day out, she rounded Cape Guardafui, the easternmost mainland point of Africa, and turned south, with only Somalia to starboard, heading on down to her operational station off the coast between Mogadishu and Kismayo. When she reached her station, she hove to. The nets were cast to continue the pretense, and a brief and harmless message was sent by e-mail to the imaginary girlfriend, Miriam, at the Office, to say she was ready and waiting.
The division chief Benny headed south also, but much faster. He flew El Al to Rome and changed planes there for Nairobi. Mossad has long had a particularly strong presence in Kenya, and Benny was met by the local head of station, in plainclothes and in a plain car. It had been a week since the Somali fisherman with the smelly kingfish had handed over his cargo to Opal, and Benny had to hope a motorcycle of some type had been acquired by then.
It was a Thursday, and that evening, close to midnight, the talk show The Night Owls was broadcast as usual. It was preceded by the weather report. This one mentioned that, despite a heat wave in most parts, there would be light rain over Ashkelon.
• • •
Full cooperation with the Tracker from the British was a foregone conclusion. The United Kingdom had sustained four murders by young fanatics seeking glory or paradise or both, inspired by the Preacher, and the authorities wanted him closed down as eagerly as the Americans d
id.
Tracker was lodged in one of the U.S. embassy’s safe houses, a small but well-appointed cottage down a cobbled mews in Mayfair. There was a brief meeting with the J-SOC chief of the defense staff at the embassy and with the CIA chief of station. Then he was taken to meet the Secret Intelligence Service at their HQ at Vauxhall Cross. Tracker had been in the green-and-sandstone pile by the Thames twice before, but the man he met was new to him.
Adrian Herbert was much the same age, mid-forties, so he had been at college when Boris Yeltsin terminated Soviet communism and the Soviet Union in 1991. He had been a fast-track entrant, after a degree in history at Lincoln College, Oxford, and a year at SOAS, the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. His specialty was Central Asia, and he spoke Urdu and Pashto, with some Arabic.
The boss of the SIS, often but wrongly called MI6, is always and only known as the Chief; he popped his head around the door to say hello and then left Adrian Herbert alone with his guests. Also present, as a courtesy, was a staffer from the Security Service, or MI5, at Thames House, five hundred yards down the river on its northern bank.
There was the almost ritual offering of coffee and biscuits, then Herbert glanced at his three American guests and murmured: “How do you think we can help?”
The two from the U.S. embassy left it to the Tracker. No one present was in ignorance of what the man from TOSA was charged with. Tracker saw no need to explain what he had done so far, how far he had got or what he intended to do next. Even between friends and allies, there is always need to know.
“The Preacher is not in Yemen, he’s in Somalia,” he said. “Exactly where he is lodged, I do not yet know. But we do know that his computer, and thus the source of his broadcasts, is in a warehouse-cum-bottling-plant in the port of Kismayo. I am pretty certain he is not there in person.”
“I believe Konrad Armitage told you we have no one in Kismayo,” said Herbert.
“It seems no one has,” the Tracker lied. “But that is not my quest here. We have established that someone is communicating with that warehouse and has received acknowledgment and thanks for his messages. The warehouse is owned by Masala Pickles, based in Karachi. You may have heard of it.”
Herbert nodded. He enjoyed Indian and Pakistani food and sometimes took his “assets” to curry restaurants on their visits to London. Masala mango chutney was well known.
“By an extraordinary coincidence, which we none of us believe in, Masala is wholly owned by Mr. Mustafa Dardari, who was a boyhood friend of the Preacher in Islamabad. I would like to have this man investigated.”
Herbert glanced at the man from MI5, who nodded.
“Should be possible,” the man murmured. “Does he live here?”
Tracker knew that although MI5 had representatives in the main foreign stations, their principal obligations were in the country. The SIS, although principally charged with foreign espionage and counterespionage against perceived enemies of Her Majesty abroad, also had the facility to mount an operation at home.
He also knew that, as with CIA and FBI in America, there had been periods when the rivalry between the internal and external secret services had led to animosity, but the common threat of Jihadist extremism, and its offspring terrorism, had for ten years led to a far greater degree of cooperation.
“He migrates,” said the Tracker. “He has a mansion in Karachi and a town house in London. Pelham Crescent. My information is that he is thirty-three, single, personable and a presence on the social map.”
“I may have met him,” said Herbert. “Private dinner, two years ago, hosted by a Pakistani diplomat. Very smooth, I seem to recall. And you want him watched?”
“I want him burgled,” said the Tracker. “I would like his pad bugged, sound and picture. But, most of all, I want his computer.”
Herbert glanced at Donald Firth, the man from 5.
“Joint op?” he suggested. Firth nodded.