Looking down on the dying man as the blood poured from a severed artery he saw a pen and notepad poking from his breast pocket and an idea immediately came to him as to how he might be able to contact the West. He tore a page from the pad, scribbled his name on it, wet his thumb in the man’s blood and pressed it on to the paper. As his men came back up the stairs, Abed stuffed the note into engineer’s wallet, pushed him under the lower rail and watched him fall to the bottom of the ship.
Abed was surprised how quickly the British had found him and was impressed by the subtlety of the contact. His handler was Lebanese, or so he said, and treated him like a son, giving him friendly advice and always begging him to take care of himself. Abed did not expect them to use him for any kind of assignment as soon as this, and so it came as a surprise when, the day before, he was told to come to Ramallah to meet with a British agent. It was not an inconvenience since he was already on his way to Palestine on personal matters with special permission from his sheiks. Not an inconvenience yet, but then he did not know what the British wanted him to do. He knew he was going to have to pay a price for his freedom and that would not come cheaply, or even soon. Perhaps never, he was realistic about that. But it was something he would look forward to anyway. At least he had a guarantee they would not exact retribution on him for the tanker, if the British were to be trusted, that is. They had not yet asked him to identify the others on that mission but they soon would. But saving his skin by sacrificing his associates did not sit well with him and he was not sure how he would handle that yet. He knew that at least one of them was already dead. Ibrahim. A few days after the tanker he left to join the fight in Iraq and was killed by the Peshmerga, the Kurdistan border guards, while crossing over from Iran to join the battle in Fallujah. Abed expected that he would be ordered into Iraq eventually. It was the nexus of the fight against the West. The world was the battlefield, but Iraq was the central battleground. If it fell to democracy, a wedge would have been driven right through the heart of the Middle East and Islam.Abed did not know what he would do when that order came. He was playing it day by day. Perhaps that was the place he could earn his freedom working for the British. But that could be weeks or months away and too far in the future for an Ansar Islam, a supporter of the Jihad.Tomorrow was far enough into the future for him to look.
Abed did not know how much control the British had over the Israelis. He told the British he would not work on behalf of Israel, but if the Israelis discovered who he was, what would happen to him then? The British might barter for his life as long as they had a use for him. It was a difficult and complex game and one that Abed knew he was not equipped to play, but he would do his best to learn quickly and find a value for himself that the British would appreciate. Hoping to be free one day was possibly naïve but if he could just stay alive, it might become a reality. He would eventually be too old or spent to be of any value and perhaps they might allow him to slip away into the mist. The odds were stacked against him but that was the way of his life for now. He was a double agent and that probably meant it halved his chances of survival. He was playing the most dangerous game there was, working between the East and the West.
The door opened and closed behind him and he turned to look at the white man standing in the room.
‘Salam alaykom,’ Stratton said.
Abed could not see him clearly in the shadows but he appeared to be somewhat scruffy: unshaven, tousled hair, his brown, leather jacket older and more worn than Abed’s.
‘Alaykom salam,’ Abed replied.
‘Ana issmi Stratton. Wa issm hadritak?’ Stratton said in halting Arabic.
‘My name is Abed,’ he replied. ‘Would you prefer to speak in English?’
Abed had learned English in school and although he had forgotten much of it by the time he left Gaza, his masters had encouraged him to take it up once again. English was the most common language of the enemy and if the fight was to be taken to his lands, the warriors had to be able to speak it. Several of those Abed worked with had been educated in England or America and for months he had spoken nothing else. This was the first time he had spoken it to an Englishman.
‘Sure. My Arabic’s a bit rusty anyhow,’ Stratton said.
‘What do you want of me?’ Abed asked, getting to the point.
Stratton did not have an answer to that question just yet. All they had told him about this man was that he had played a part in this operation. The only part Stratton could think of was the beginning.
‘Does the Orion Star mean anything to you?’ Stratton asked.
Abed heard the words as from a prosecutor, and for a moment he considered the possibility the British had set him up and that this man had come to execute him. Abed had accepted the probability of one day paying for his crime and was strangely prepared for it.
‘I led the mission,’ Abed said firmly but without any hint of pride.
Stratton walked across the room and joined Abed at the window as he pondered this information, searching for a use for Abed. One thing immediately struck him. Abed might have seen the engineer; Zhilev was virtually his twin. It was always difficult to identify a person from a photograph unless that person had some highly distinguishing features. Zhilev and his brother were large, powerful men, but someone who had seen them in the flesh, the way they moved, their features from angles other than that in the photograph, would have an advantage when it came to recognition. He was clutching at straws, but he could see no other use for Abed at the moment.
Stratton reached into his pocket and took out the photograph of Zhilev. ‘Do you recognise this man?’
Abed took the picture, studied it, then handed it back to Stratton.
‘He looks like the engineer on the tanker. Is that who it is?’
Stratton stared into Abed’s eyes, looking for something, and he was sure he had found it when Abed could not hold his gaze. A picture flashed into his head of the engineer, draped over the pipes, his neck cut to the bone and almost beheaded. A feeling of disgust grew in him but he could not bring himself to feel hate, which he should have done. It was more than just the guilt in Abed’s eyes that mellowed Stratton. Even though they had exchanged but a few words, Stratton could sense a strength in him. He stood confidently, but not defiantly, and he spoke softly without guarding his words, as if he had nothing to hide. It was an honesty that came only with youth.The Arab did not appear to be a cold-blooded, fanatical killer. But then again, Stratton asked himself, what did he know about these people? He fancied himself a good judge of character in the business of soldiering and terrorism. He had had enough experience. But he had also made mistakes in the past.