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Authors: Hector Macdonald
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front door, so I went through the garden and looped round the block. Left George pontificating on the line. There was no one around except the guy in the van. He was watching our house so intently he didn’t see me approach. And with the engine running, he didn’t hear me. Another three seconds, I’d have been knocking on his window. But that was when it . . .’
Gently, Wraye helped him: ‘When it went off.’
‘When it went off,’ he echoed monotonically. His hands had become fists, crushed against his thighs. The rigid muscles in his neck were shivering.
‘Go on,’ she said.
‘He never saw me. The moment it detonated I hit the ground, like it was Chad or Pakistan. I didn’t understand it was my house. My wife. Not right away. A second maybe. Two seconds. Before I realized. By then the van was driving off, the bomber right there, hurtling past me, never seeing that he’d missed his target.’ Arkell’s voice cracked. ‘That pavement. I was lying on that pavement, watching the flames, the smoke, everything gone, knowing Emily was dead and . . .’ He swallowed to loosen his constricted throat. ‘And knowing you must have ordered it.’
He looked up at last, and she saw that from nowhere he had produced a thin rope and that it was looped around both his fists, a noose ready for her neck. ‘Did you?’ he asked. ‘Was it you?’
Madeleine Wraye kept her unwavering gaze on him while she reached for the tumbler and took her first sip of wine. ‘Simon, who was Saeed?’
08
AL MAHWIT GOVERNORATE, YEMEN – nine years earlier
The emergency posting followed directly from the endless catastrophe that was Iraq. With those elusive weapons of mass destruction to find, an insurgency to crush and, later, terrifying sectarian violence to contain, it was inevitable that Baghdad would fill with CIA and SIS spooks. They had to come from somewhere. So it was that Arabic-speaking staff were pulled from stations all over the region. And in their place, officers with no experience of Middle Eastern politics, culture or language were drafted in to mind their assets and keep alive the hunt for Usama bin Laden.
Simon Arkell was in the Transdniestrian region of Moldova, on the trail of a Latvian arms dealer with pretensions to nuclear grandeur, when he was recalled to London and reassigned to Sana’a. His cover was British Council. As Martin Bayley, he brushed up on his classics, attended the drab little British Club with rare enthusiasm, and diligently sought out members of the Yemeni artistic community for tiny cups of sweet, strong coffee and earnest chats about the decline of Western morals. The Yemeni culture took some getting used to – niqab-shrouded women and AK-47-toting men who chewed qat all afternoon, their cheeks bulging like hamsters with the macerated drug. But Arkell was quick to acclimatize, and soon he was quietly making contact with his predecessor’s assets: a cleric in Hadramawt, a shipping agent in Aden, two civil servants in Sana’a and a Hamdan tribal elder in Al Mahwit governorate named Ali Al-Gadhi. It was this last who introduced him to Saeed Bin Abdullah Al-Khaneen.
Al-Gadhi lived in a small mountain-top town, four hours’ drive from Sana’a. His towering square house, a crumbling relic of grander times, was intricately decorated with geometric white patterns and built precipitously on the very edge of a cliff. Wild fig trees clung with trunk-thick roots to the sheer black rock face below, and eagles drifted in the currents above the flat roof. For miles around there was nothing but abandoned terraces cut, during a more productive agricultural age, into the parched mountainsides.
Arkell and his translator were welcomed at the courtyard gate by Al-Gadhi’s three wives. They ushered him out of his desert boots, up ancient stone steps and into the majlis. Nine men sat on mats against the walls, their legs covered in blankets against the mountain cold, their cheeks bulging with qat.
Gently, Wraye helped him: ‘When it went off.’
‘When it went off,’ he echoed monotonically. His hands had become fists, crushed against his thighs. The rigid muscles in his neck were shivering.
‘Go on,’ she said.
‘He never saw me. The moment it detonated I hit the ground, like it was Chad or Pakistan. I didn’t understand it was my house. My wife. Not right away. A second maybe. Two seconds. Before I realized. By then the van was driving off, the bomber right there, hurtling past me, never seeing that he’d missed his target.’ Arkell’s voice cracked. ‘That pavement. I was lying on that pavement, watching the flames, the smoke, everything gone, knowing Emily was dead and . . .’ He swallowed to loosen his constricted throat. ‘And knowing you must have ordered it.’
He looked up at last, and she saw that from nowhere he had produced a thin rope and that it was looped around both his fists, a noose ready for her neck. ‘Did you?’ he asked. ‘Was it you?’
Madeleine Wraye kept her unwavering gaze on him while she reached for the tumbler and took her first sip of wine. ‘Simon, who was Saeed?’
08
AL MAHWIT GOVERNORATE, YEMEN – nine years earlier
The emergency posting followed directly from the endless catastrophe that was Iraq. With those elusive weapons of mass destruction to find, an insurgency to crush and, later, terrifying sectarian violence to contain, it was inevitable that Baghdad would fill with CIA and SIS spooks. They had to come from somewhere. So it was that Arabic-speaking staff were pulled from stations all over the region. And in their place, officers with no experience of Middle Eastern politics, culture or language were drafted in to mind their assets and keep alive the hunt for Usama bin Laden.
Simon Arkell was in the Transdniestrian region of Moldova, on the trail of a Latvian arms dealer with pretensions to nuclear grandeur, when he was recalled to London and reassigned to Sana’a. His cover was British Council. As Martin Bayley, he brushed up on his classics, attended the drab little British Club with rare enthusiasm, and diligently sought out members of the Yemeni artistic community for tiny cups of sweet, strong coffee and earnest chats about the decline of Western morals. The Yemeni culture took some getting used to – niqab-shrouded women and AK-47-toting men who chewed qat all afternoon, their cheeks bulging like hamsters with the macerated drug. But Arkell was quick to acclimatize, and soon he was quietly making contact with his predecessor’s assets: a cleric in Hadramawt, a shipping agent in Aden, two civil servants in Sana’a and a Hamdan tribal elder in Al Mahwit governorate named Ali Al-Gadhi. It was this last who introduced him to Saeed Bin Abdullah Al-Khaneen.
Al-Gadhi lived in a small mountain-top town, four hours’ drive from Sana’a. His towering square house, a crumbling relic of grander times, was intricately decorated with geometric white patterns and built precipitously on the very edge of a cliff. Wild fig trees clung with trunk-thick roots to the sheer black rock face below, and eagles drifted in the currents above the flat roof. For miles around there was nothing but abandoned terraces cut, during a more productive agricultural age, into the parched mountainsides.
Arkell and his translator were welcomed at the courtyard gate by Al-Gadhi’s three wives. They ushered him out of his desert boots, up ancient stone steps and into the majlis. Nine men sat on mats against the walls, their legs covered in blankets against the mountain cold, their cheeks bulging with qat.
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