‘I’ll do it,’ said Shepherd. ‘You’ve done more than enough.’
Sharpe gave Shepherd the number and ended the call. Shepherd walked outside and called the number. A woman answered. ‘Good evening,’ she said, then remained silent.
‘I was told to call this number for information on an Ahmad Khan,’ said Shepherd.
‘I’ll need your name, position and ID number,’ said the woman. She sounded young and had a Home Counties accent. Shepherd gave her the information. The woman repeated it back to him. ‘And you are enquiring about who?’
‘Ahmad Khan. Now using the name Farzad Sajadi.’
‘Please stay on this number, someone will call you back shortly,’ said the woman, and the line went dead. Shepherd paced up and down. After a few minutes his mobile rang. The caller was withholding the number. This time it was a man, middle aged and with a Welsh accent. ‘Mr Shepherd?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you confirm your ID number please.’
Shepherd repeated the number.
‘You were asking about Farzad Sajadi aka Ahmad Khan?’
‘I need to know what he’s doing with a British passport and why he’s here under two names,’ said Shepherd.
‘I’m afraid there’s a limit to what I can tell you, Mr Shepherd.’
‘It’s important,’ said Shepherd. He was about to say that it was a matter of life and death but realised how clichéd that would sound.
‘I assume it is or you wouldn’t be contacting us,’ said the man. ‘The problem is that I have only a minimum amount of information on my terminal. Most of the information is protected and can only be accessed at a higher level. To protect the principal.’
‘He is under witness protection, then?’
‘That much I can certainly tell you,’ said the man. ‘He came from Afghanistan in 2003 and we prepared the new identity for him. And for his daughter, too.’
‘They have full citizenship? Their passports are genuine?’
‘Of course,’ said the man. ‘All his paperwork, and the paperwork of his daughter, is in order.’
‘Does it say why?’
‘Why?’ repeated the man. ‘I don’t think I follow.’
‘He was a Taliban fighter in Afghanistan. How does a man like that get a British passport?’
‘I don’t have that information in front of me,’ said the man. ‘What I can tell you is that there are two contact numbers on the file. One is for our own Defence Intelligence and Security Centre and the other is for the Defense Intelligence Agency.’
‘The DIA? The Americans?’
‘That’s correct. It’s a number in Washington, DC.’
‘Can you think of any reason why the DIA would be involved with the relocation of a Taliban fighter to the UK?’
‘A Taliban fighter, no. But the relocation of Afghanis with new identities has been going on for years. Usually with translators or Afghan army officers who have been directly threatened. Some politicians have also been relocated.’
‘With new identities?’
‘If their lives have been threatened, yes. It doesn’t happen often but when it does it’s because the person concerned has done this country a great service.’
‘A service?’
‘Risked their lives to save British citizens, for instance.’
‘You think that’s what has happened in Khan’s case?’
‘I’ve no way of knowing,’ said the man. ‘All I have is the information on the screen in front of me. If you want more information you will have to either contact the two agencies I mentioned, or make an official request. But I can tell you from experience that such information is rarely released. Everything is geared towards maintaining the anonymity and safety of the principals.’
Shepherd realised he wasn’t going to get anything else from the man so he thanked him and ended the call.
He tried Harper’s phone and it went through to voicemail. So did Shortt’s. Shepherd cursed. They were almost certainly on their way to the New Forest, with Khan bound and gagged in the back of the van. He looked at his watch and cursed again.
He hurried back to the control room, knelt down by the side of Podolski’s body, rolled her over and went through her pockets. He pulled out her keys and ran to her bike. The crash helmet was sitting on one of the bike’s mirrors. Shepherd pulled it on. It was a tight fit but wearable. He inserted the key, started the engine and twisted the throttle. The engine roared and he headed for the exit.
Harper gave the mobile to Shortt. They were driving through a wooded area and according to the milometer they were close to where they needed to turn off. ‘Switch it on and check out the map,’ he said. ‘It’ll show where we need to turn off.’
Shortt switched on the phone. ‘What about calling Spider?’ he asked.
‘Waste of time,’ said Harper. ‘This’ll be over within half an hour. Khan will be dead and buried and we’ll be on our way back to London.’
Shortt scrolled through the phone’s menu and opened the map application. The map showed the position of the van as a small arrow, and there was a flashing dot to the left of the road some way ahead. ‘I’ve got it,’ he said.
‘Let me know when we need to turn off,’ said Harper, checking his rear-view mirror.
The speedometer flickered at about ninety and Shepherd bent low over the motorbike’s tank to lower his wind resistance. He’d been caught by two speed cameras as he sped west but that didn’t worry him, he was more concerned about being pursued by traffic cops, but so far he’d been lucky. He was moving faster than the van, he was sure of that, because Harper had Khan in the back so he wouldn’t be doing more than the speed limit. There was a chance, just a chance, that he’d get to them before they had an opportunity to pull the trigger. Shepherd didn’t need the GPS to tell him where the grave was, his photographic memory was more than up to the job. The question was whether or not he’d be able to get there in time.
There was a line of cars ahead of him waiting to overtake a sluggish coach. Shepherd gunned the engine and pulled out into the opposite lane, flashing past the cars and coach, the wind ripping at his clothes, now almost dry after his soaking in the pool.
A car coming in his direction flashed its lights at him in disapproval but Shepherd wasn’t concerned about what other drivers thought about his speed. All he cared about was getting to the New Forest before Harper put a bullet in Khan’s head.
Ahmad Khan could barely breathe. The duct tape across his mouth was enough to suffocate him but the sack they’d pulled over his head meant that every breath was an effort. He tried to stay calm and to breathe slowly and evenly because he knew that panic would only increase his oxygen consumption. He began to lose track of time and started counting slowly, marking the minutes with his fingers, but the lack of oxygen made it difficult to concentrate and he began to drift in and out of consciousness. At some point the van began to shake and vibrate and he realised that they had driven off the road and were crossing rough ground. They slowed and the lurching intensified and then they stopped.
He heard the rear doors being opened and a gruff voice. ‘Get him out.’
Hands seized his legs and dragged him across the floor of the van, then more hands grabbed his shoulders. He heard feet tramping across vegetation as they carried him, face down. Then he felt a lurch and he flipped over and he was falling. For a second he imagined that he had been thrown over the side of a cliff but then he hit the ground, hard enough to force the air from his lungs. He rolled on to his back. The sack was pulled roughly from his head and he blinked his eyes. They were outside and he was surrounded by trees. He lay there, staring up at the branches above his head, the duct tape across his mouth pulsing in and out in time with his breathing.