The Saudi sipped his white wine. He liked Australian wine, especially the whites: it was unpretentious, like the Australian people.
A blonde woman in a beige hijab walked by, a flowing blue coat over her shirt and jeans. A convert after marriage, the Saudi was sure. An Australian, maybe. She was talking into a mobile phone, and laughing. The Saudi hoped there wouldn’t be any Muslims in the vicinity when the bomb went off, but if there were, so be it. There were always casualties in a war, and the jihad was no exception. Hundreds of Muslims had died when the World Trade Center collapsed, but what had happened on that September morning had been a clarion call to the whole Muslim world.
The Saudi put down his fork, emptied his glass and paid his bill. His waitress was a cheerful girl with a bright smile, her dark brown hair held back from her face with a large blue plastic clip. The Saudi wished her a good day as he left the restaurant, and wondered whether she would be among the dead.
He strolled along the wooden boardwalk and watched the ferries ploughing through the water and behind them a flotilla of sailing boats, toys for the city’s rich. It was a hot day and he walked slowly, seeking out shade where he could. The heat meant that the martyrs couldn’t use vests packed with explosives so the bombs would be packed into rucksacks. There were plenty of backpackers around and no one was paying them any attention. He turned right in to George Street and walked up the sloping road through the weekend stalls of Rooks Market. Under tented canopies stallholders were selling things only tourists would want to buy: painted boomerangs, home-made fudge, soft toys, framed photographs of Sydney landmarks, bowls made from local wood.
It was another perfect target, thought the Saudi, with lots of wealthy tourists for the Western media to mourn. He paused by the Mercantile Hotel. The first bomb would go off there, detonated by a martyr sitting at one of the tables outside the Molly Malone bar. Nuts and bolts would be packed round the explosives to turn into deadly shrapnel that would rip through the stalls and the shoppers. Those who survived would run down the road towards the harbour. The second bomb would go off just a minute later, at the La Mela Cafe opposite the Old Sydney Holiday Inn, and catch them as they fled.
The Saudi looked at his watch. There was a concert at the Sydney Opera House later that night and he was looking forward to it. He always enjoyed Mozart. He had acquired his taste for classical music from his father, although the older man preferred Schubert and Brahms. The Saudi’s father had taken him to concerts and the opera since he was seven. He remembered two things in particular of his childhood: his father’s lectures on classical music, and his hatred of the West. The war to end all wars, his father had said, would be the battle between Islam and Christianity. And Islam would prevail. He had rubbed the back of his son’s neck and told him that, one day, he would have a part to play in it. The Saudi’s father had worked for the Saudi Royal Family, which had brought him his wealth and their British passports. He had insisted that a British education was the best in the world, even though it had meant that his son spent most of his childhood away from his family. The Saudi’s father had beamed with pride when he had left Eton with a clutch of A levels, and on the day he’d graduated from the London School of Economics he’d presented him with a gleaming red Ferrari.
The Saudi had been with his father on 11 September 2001 in the family’s compound in Riyadh, and they had watched the destruction of the World Trade Center on CNN. It was the start of the war, the Saudi’s father had said, and it was time for the son to play his part. Introductions were made, oaths were sworn, and the Saudi had started on his path to jihad.
The Saudi would have liked to have taken his father to the concert that night, but he was old now and rarely left Riyadh. Besides, he refused to wear anything but traditional Arab garb and he would have attracted too much attention.
He walked through the stalls, listening to the different languages being spoken by the tourists: Chinese, French, German, British, a veritable smorgasbord of victims. He stopped by a stall selling didgeridoos. A middle-aged white man wearing a black and white bandana tied round his head was showing an American family how to play the Aboriginal instrument. A little blonde girl was jumping up and down, clapping her hands excitedly. ‘Can we buy it, Daddy?’ she pleaded. ‘Can we?’
The Saudi took no pleasure in killing children – he took no pleasure in killing anyone, but there was no alternative. The Israelis had killed thousands of innocent Palestinians. The Americans had killed tens of thousands of men, women and children in Iraq with bombs and bullets. The Saudi saw no difference between what the Israelis and the Americans did and the actions of the shahid. Death was death, whether it was carried out by soldiers or martyrs.
The jihad was continuing in Iraq, with Allied soldiers dying almost every day. But it was only when civilian contractors were kidnapped and beheaded that the world took notice and governments acted. The death of a civilian was worth the death of a hundred paid soldiers. It was simple economics.
The father handed over the money for the didgeridoo and picked up his daughter. She squealed, threw her arms round his neck and kissed his cheek. The Saudi walked away towards the harbour. He had never married and had no children. What he was doing was too important to jeopardise with a family. Families were a weakness for soldiers of the jihad.
Superintendent Hargrove arrived at the hospital with two of his agents playing ordinary detectives. They flashed their warrant cards at the uniformed officer and told him they would be taking Corke to Newcastle police station and that they would be accompanied by his solicitor. Hargrove said nothing, playing the part of a solicitor who was about to break bad news to his client.
The men with him were wearing dark raincoats over shabby suits and the world-weary look of policemen who had been in the job long enough not to be surprised by anything. Shepherd knew one of them – Jimmy ‘Razor’ Sharpe, a twenty-year veteran of the Strathclyde Police. As soon as the uniform had left the room Sharpe winked and unlocked Shepherd’s chain. ‘Always the hero, Spider,’ he said, in a heavy Glaswegian accent.
‘Why is it they always call on you when I need a taxi service?’ said Shepherd, slipping his legs over the side of the bed.
Sharpe grinned and nodded at his companion. ‘Spider, this is DC Paul Joyce. Joycie, this is DC Dan Shepherd, Spider to his friends. Spider is ex-SAS so we use him whenever we need someone to jump out of a plane or a burning building or throw themselves into the North Sea in the middle of the night. Personally, I think he does it just to make the rest of us look bad.’
Joyce handed Shepherd a kitbag, containing the clothes he had been wearing when he had been dragged out of the water: a blue denim shirt, cheap jeans, boxer shorts and socks. They had been cleaned and pressed. His work boots had been stuffed with newspapers and dried out.
‘I brought you a denim jacket and a pullover,’ said the superintendent. ‘I gather it’s what the best-dressed human trafficker’s wearing this season.’