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‘Take the shot.’
‘He’s in Canada, sir.’
‘Take the shot, sergeant.’
Peter Bearpaw took a slow, calm breath, held it inside, and squeezed. The range was a still-air 2,100 yards on his range-meter, well over a mile.
Izmat Khan was pushing quarters into the slot. He was not looking up. The glass front of the booth disintegrated into pinpricks of perspex and the bullet took away the occiput from the rest of his head.
The operator was as patient as she could be. The man down in the logging camp had inserted only two quarters, then left the handset hanging and apparently left the booth. Finally she had no choice but to hang up on him and cancel the call.
Because of the sensitivity of the cross-border shot, no official report was ever made.
Captain Linnett reported to his commanding officer who told Marek Gumienny in Washington. Nothing more was heard.
The body was found in the thaw when the lumberjacks returned. The hanging phone was disconnected. The coroner could do little but record an open verdict. The man wore US clothing but in the border country that was not odd. He had no ID; no one recognized him locally.
Unofficially most people around the coroner’s office presumed the man had been the victim of a tragic stray shot from a deer hunter, another death from careless shooting or ricochet. He was buried in an unmarked grave.
Because no one south of the border wanted to make waves, it was never thought to ask what number the fugitive had asked for. Even to make the enquiry would give away the source of the shot. So it was not made.
In fact the number he wanted was that of a small apartment off-campus near Aston University in Birmingham. It was the home of Dr Ali Aziz al-Khattab, and the phone was on intercept by Britain’s MI5. All they were waiting for was enough evidence to justify a raid and arrest. They would get it a month later. But that morning the Afghan was trying to call the only man west of Suez who knew the name of the ghost ship.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
After two weeks enthusiasm for the hunt for a seemingly non-existent ghost ship was starting to fade and the mood came from Washington.
How much time, trouble and treasure could be expended on a vague scrawl on a boarding card stuffed into a divebag on an island no one had ever heard of? Marek Gumienny had flown to London to confer with Steve Hill when the SIS expert in maritime terrorism, Sam Seymour, called up from the Ipswich HQ of Lloyd’s Register and made matters worse. He had changed his mind. Hill ordered him to London to explain.
‘With hindsight,’ said Seymour, ‘the option of Al-Qaeda seeking to use a huge blocking ship to c
lose down a vital sea highway to wreck global trade was always the likeliest option. But it was never the only one.’
‘What makes you think it was the wrong path to go?’ asked Marek Gumienny.
‘Because, sir, every single vessel in the world big enough to achieve that has been checked out. They are all safe. That leaves options two and three which are almost interchangeable but with different targets. I think we should now look at three: mass murder in a seashore city. Bin Laden’s public switch to economic targets could have been a hoax, or he has changed his mind.’
‘OK, Sam, convince me. Steve and I both have political masters demanding results or our heads. What kind of ship if not a blocking vessel?’
‘For threat number three we do not look at the ship so much as the cargo. It need not be large so long as it is absolutely deadly. Lloyd’s have a hazardous cargo division – obviously, it changes the premium.’
‘Ammunition ship?’ asked Hill. ‘Another Halifax wipe-out?’
‘According to the boffins, military ordnance simply does not explode like that any more. The modern stuff needs huge provocation to go off inside the hull. You’d get worse from an exploding firework factory, but it would not begin to deserve the word “spectacular” as in Nine/Eleven. The Bhopal chemical leak was far worse and that was dioxin, a deadly weedkiller.’
‘So, a tanker-truck driving dioxin into Park Avenue and completing the job with Semtex,’ suggested Hill.
‘But these chemicals are closely guarded inside their manufacturing and storage base,’ objected Gumienny. ‘How do they get the cargo with no one noticing?’
‘And we were specifically told a ship would be the carrier,’ said Seymour. ‘Any hijacking of such a cargo would create immediate retaliation.’
‘Except in some parts of the Third World that are virtually lawless,’ said Gumienny.
‘But these ultra-lethal toxins are not made in such places any more, not even for labour-cost savings, sir.’
‘So, we are back to a ship?’ said Hill. ‘Another exploding oil tanker?’
‘Crude oil does not explode,’ Seymour pointed out. ‘When the Torrey Canyon was ripped open southwest of the English coast it took phosphorus bombs to persuade the oil to ignite and burn off. A vented oil tanker will only cause eco-damage, not mass murder. But a quite small gas tanker could do it. Liquid gas, massively concentrated for transportation.’
