Shepherd took the envelope. ‘What happens to the money I get?’
‘You keep it,’ said Button, and grinned at the surprise on his face. ‘Joke,’ she said. ‘Take it home with you and I’ll arrange to have it collected.’
‘So that’s it?’ he said. ‘I’m now employed by SOCA?’
‘Welcome aboard,’ she said.
‘I thought there’d be more to it. Paperwork and stuff.’
‘That’ll be on its way. Your next pay cheque will be from the Met, but after that you’ll be on SOCA’s payroll.’ She smiled. ‘With a pretty hefty increase.’
‘Thanks for that,’ he said.
‘Someone from Human Resources will talk to you about pensions, holidays and all that stuff. Any prob lems, let me know, but I’m sure there won’t be.’
‘Logistics? Vehicles and equipment?’
‘I’ll introduce you to our people as and when we need them. But you know Amar Singh from NCIS?’
‘He’s been working on the currency case.’
‘He’s on our tech team.’
‘That’s good to hear.’
‘I’ll get him to call you later to arrange the wire.’
‘And what about the other undercover operatives?’
‘The same applies. As and when you work with other team members, you’ll be introduced. But there’ll be no office parties or group hugs. There might be times when you come up against other members of the team without knowing it.’
‘That could be dangerous.’
‘On the contrary, it could be a life-saver. The fewer people who know what you do, the fewer people there are who can betray you.’
‘What about Jimmy Sharpe?’
Button nodded. ‘He’s in. First-class operator. You can use him today as back-up.’
‘Paul Joyce?’
‘Decided he’d prefer to remain with the Met. I wanted him on board – it was his call.’
Shepherd wanted to run a number of other names by her, but there would be time for that later. ‘What about cases? Do you have some lined up?’
Button smiled thinly. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘My bosses have given me a list of targets. High-profile villains they regard as priorities. But one step at a time, Spider. We’re hitting the ground running but we’re not rushing into anything. The Uddin brothers and their passports are your priority.’
‘It’s a small deal, financially. Ten grand a passport.’
‘But a huge deal politically,’ said Button. She stood up and went to the whiteboard. ‘Look at this.’
Shepherd joined her and stared at the photographs. There were forty in all; most were in colour but a handful were black and white. All but two were men. A few weren’t even photographs but artists’ impressions.
‘Let me tell you a story,’ said Button. ‘It goes back to 1992 when the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina held a referendum on independence. The result was a call for independence and separation from Serbia, and the result was civil war, with Bosnian Serbs murdering thousands of Bosnian Muslims. Ethnic-cleansing on a massive scale, just a few hours’ flight from London. Muslim fighters from all over the world, America, Russia and Europe, piled into the former Yugoslavia to help. Now jump ahead a few years. The UN peacekeepers are in, the civil war is over. Money is pouring into Bosnia to pay for reconstruction. Millions of dollars. A big chunk comes from Saudi Arabia. Muslims helping Muslims. Nothing wrong with that. King Fahd puts in $100 million from his own pocket. The Saudi government pours in $450 million, restores water supplies, rebuilds schools and mosques, and takes care of seven thousand orphans. A whole raft of Saudi-funded aid agencies and charities moves in. And that’s where the trouble starts. Move ahead to 2001. The Americans invade Afghanistan a few weeks after the attacks on the World Trade Center. In 2003, they invade Iraq. Elements of the Muslim world see America as the enemy and want revenge. The jihad begins in earnest. Muslim terrorists carry out atrocities around the world. Terror has a new face – Arab men with beards and baggy trousers. The world goes on high alert. Every Arab who gets on to a plane is watched. Every Arab family is regarded with suspicion. Arabs and Asians get stopped more often by the police. Their passports are looked at more closely. It gets harder and harder for Arabs to travel, to apply for visas, to book into hotels, to hire cars. And that’s when we come back to Bosnia.’
She walked over to a window and looked down at the street below.
‘London is a target. As are most European cities. Our landmarks, our stations, our football stadiums. Al-Qaeda wants to kill, maim and destroy our way of life. And for that they need troops. Warriors prepared to die for the cause.’
‘Suicide-bombers?’
‘Right. But men and women who can blend, who can move through Western countries without attracting attention, who won’t get picked up by racial profiling. Al-Qaeda targeted two groups as fulfilling these criteria. The first are the Invisibles, second or third generation Muslims born in the West, of Asian or Middle Eastern heritage, but with full British citizenship. We think there are up to ten thousand Invisibles in the UK sympathetic to the al-Qaeda cause, and we know up to three thousand have been through some form of al-Qaeda training overseas. And they started looking for non-Arab Muslims, and Bosnia was the perfect hunting ground. Several of the charities there became recruiting centres for the jihad. The Americans discovered a stack of terrorist-related material at the offices of one of Saudi Arabia’s leading aid agencies, including instructions for using crop-duster aircraft to spray poisons from the air, US State Department identification badges, photographs and maps showing the location of government buildings. Half a dozen charities in Sarajevo have been shut down in the last few years because of suspicious finances. Money that was supposed to be used for the reconstruction of Bosnia has been channelled into terrorist networks. Millions upon millions of dollars.’
Button pointed at the photographs on the whiteboard. ‘Those are just some of the men and women we suspect have been recruited to the al-Qaeda cause out of Bosnia. And what makes them so dangerous is that none is an Arab. They can fly under our radar, assuming that their paperwork is in order.’
‘And you think they could be using the Uddin brothers for passports?’
‘We need to know who their contact is, and who he has supplied passports to,’ said Button. ‘It could just be that they’re helping economic migrants get into the country by the back door. Or something more sinister may be going on. That’s what we need to know. And we need to know quickly.’
Shepherd nodded at the photographs. ‘And these are all terrorists active in the UK?’
‘They’re all Muslims, and they were all in Bosnia at some point. And they’re all missing now – or, at least, unaccounted for. The Americans are looking for them. So are we.’
‘Isn’t there any facial-recognition system at the Passport Agency office same as there is for fingerprints? Cross-check these photographs with photographs submitted for passports?’
‘It’s been worked on, but there’s no system in place yet. Once we have biometric passports, that will change. But it doesn’t help us now. We need to find out who the Uddin brothers have supplied with passports and if any are on this board.’
‘And how am I supposed to do that?’
‘I’m not suggesting you can,’ she said. ‘But see how much the Uddin brothers know. See if they’ll tell you how many passports they’ve arranged over the years for what sort of customers. Anything you can get will help.’
‘When do they get busted?’
‘It’s still being discussed,’ said Button. ‘It depends how extensive the passport operation is, and how closely linked the passport guy is to the brothers. What we’ve got to decide is whether we pull in the passport guy as soon as we identify him, or let him run and watch him. My former colleagues in Five have been informed, and they’re pushing to leave him in place.’
‘So that we can see who else he’s supplying with passports?’