with their virulent anti-Jewish sermons and praise for suicide bombers.
But those who worried the security services more were the ones who kept a deliberately low profile while maintaining links to more sinister figures abroad, the ones who flew below the radar. It was they who prepared the ‘specials’, the sleepers who laid in wait. They were the ones to watch. Sidi Al Barani was one of them.
Active monitoring of his movements had been stepped up after he was seen meeting with a young Iraqi, one of the rare few who came to Britain after the war that toppled Saddam but subsequently returned home. A young Iraqi reliably understood to be a courier for the shadowy figure who gloried in the cover name of Saladin, a man high on the West’s wanted list, believed to consider even Osama bin Laden a spent force.
Signals had rippled up and down the intelligence community like an electric current when Al Barani had set off in his trademark black Mercedes and sunglasses for Heathrow only hours earlier. Itwas unlikely – given his status – that he was intending to leave the country, there being few others that would have welcomed him. The possibility, therefore, had to be that he was meeting someone else. And someone Al Barani wanted to meet was someone British intelligence wanted to get to know too.
His appearance at Terminal 3 posing as a chauffeur waiting for a M. Joliet from Tangier had caused mild amusement, but also a thorough scrutiny of all known databases for anyone whose real or cover name was Joliet with a record of travel to Morocco. The discovery of a middle-aged Marseille businessman of that name with a business importing merguez sausages was received for a few minutes with some excitement but quickly dismissed, especially when the young female agent deployed on the spot reported that despite the placard, Al Barani had not met M. Joliet nor anyone else; he had not even waited for the arrival of the flight from Tangier.
In fact, according to the MI5 agent who had been watching Al Barani at Heathrow, it appeared their target was engaged on a surveillance operation of his own. The object of his interest she reported was an arriving passenger, a pretty, dark-haired woman of Mediterranean appearance met by a Caucasian male in his mid-thirties. Neither had employed routine counter-surveillance techniques.
On the recorded images from the airport cameras Delahaye could make out his own agent at the coffee shop in the background paying no obvious attention to anyone or anything except prattling aimlessly into her mobile. A few metres in front of her was the unmistakable figure of Al Barani holding his placard for the spurious M. Joliet. And in front of him stood a good-looking, tousle-haired man with a furrowed brow and an apprehensive expression staring directly at Sebastian Delahaye, or rather at the terminal’s arrivals board above which the camera was situated.
So that was ‘Professor’ Marcus Frey. Delahaye let the name roll over his tongue as he often did when he first learned the identity of whichever of the grains of sand on the digital beach had been chosen by fate to come to his attention. The name had been provided by the head waiter in the Brick Lane curry house where the killing had taken place. He had been an ‘occasional regular’, someone the late owner – ‘Mister Ali’ they all called him – had made a fuss over. The waiter said he was a professor from Oxford University, an important man. No, he did not know what his connection was to the gunmen. But he thought for certain it had been ‘the professor’ they were after, and not Mister Ali.
It had not taken Delahaye long to ascertain that the man was telling the truth. There was indeed a Marcus Frey who held a position at Oxford. He was not actually a full professor but a Fellow of All Souls, a South African who had written a controversial book about the Middle East, which might or might not have been relevant. Until now he had made no
But those who worried the security services more were the ones who kept a deliberately low profile while maintaining links to more sinister figures abroad, the ones who flew below the radar. It was they who prepared the ‘specials’, the sleepers who laid in wait. They were the ones to watch. Sidi Al Barani was one of them.
Active monitoring of his movements had been stepped up after he was seen meeting with a young Iraqi, one of the rare few who came to Britain after the war that toppled Saddam but subsequently returned home. A young Iraqi reliably understood to be a courier for the shadowy figure who gloried in the cover name of Saladin, a man high on the West’s wanted list, believed to consider even Osama bin Laden a spent force.
Signals had rippled up and down the intelligence community like an electric current when Al Barani had set off in his trademark black Mercedes and sunglasses for Heathrow only hours earlier. Itwas unlikely – given his status – that he was intending to leave the country, there being few others that would have welcomed him. The possibility, therefore, had to be that he was meeting someone else. And someone Al Barani wanted to meet was someone British intelligence wanted to get to know too.
His appearance at Terminal 3 posing as a chauffeur waiting for a M. Joliet from Tangier had caused mild amusement, but also a thorough scrutiny of all known databases for anyone whose real or cover name was Joliet with a record of travel to Morocco. The discovery of a middle-aged Marseille businessman of that name with a business importing merguez sausages was received for a few minutes with some excitement but quickly dismissed, especially when the young female agent deployed on the spot reported that despite the placard, Al Barani had not met M. Joliet nor anyone else; he had not even waited for the arrival of the flight from Tangier.
In fact, according to the MI5 agent who had been watching Al Barani at Heathrow, it appeared their target was engaged on a surveillance operation of his own. The object of his interest she reported was an arriving passenger, a pretty, dark-haired woman of Mediterranean appearance met by a Caucasian male in his mid-thirties. Neither had employed routine counter-surveillance techniques.
On the recorded images from the airport cameras Delahaye could make out his own agent at the coffee shop in the background paying no obvious attention to anyone or anything except prattling aimlessly into her mobile. A few metres in front of her was the unmistakable figure of Al Barani holding his placard for the spurious M. Joliet. And in front of him stood a good-looking, tousle-haired man with a furrowed brow and an apprehensive expression staring directly at Sebastian Delahaye, or rather at the terminal’s arrivals board above which the camera was situated.
So that was ‘Professor’ Marcus Frey. Delahaye let the name roll over his tongue as he often did when he first learned the identity of whichever of the grains of sand on the digital beach had been chosen by fate to come to his attention. The name had been provided by the head waiter in the Brick Lane curry house where the killing had taken place. He had been an ‘occasional regular’, someone the late owner – ‘Mister Ali’ they all called him – had made a fuss over. The waiter said he was a professor from Oxford University, an important man. No, he did not know what his connection was to the gunmen. But he thought for certain it had been ‘the professor’ they were after, and not Mister Ali.
It had not taken Delahaye long to ascertain that the man was telling the truth. There was indeed a Marcus Frey who held a position at Oxford. He was not actually a full professor but a Fellow of All Souls, a South African who had written a controversial book about the Middle East, which might or might not have been relevant. Until now he had made no
Similar Books
