Chapter Seven

THE CORRIDORS RAN for miles. On either side, twenty-feet-high motorized storage racks stood like monoliths – enter a reference number, a name or any other data on a control panel, and the racks moved silently to reveal the relevant archive boxes. It was like standing inside a computer hard drive.

There were eighteen identical floors, all filled with paper archives: the raw data of decade after decade of surveillance, betrayal and suspicion. Hidden far beneath the Mabahith’s regional headquarters, linked together by a central atrium, the complex was overrun by men searching the storage racks and hauling out archive boxes. The director had been as good as his word and had pulled in every agent and analyst he could find.

I had made my way down from the conference room and taken a seat beside several of the senior agents at a command post suspended out over the atrium. I watched as teams of men on every floor unbundled yellowing paper files and searched through mountains of data looking for any reference – any mention at all – of a man whose father had been executed in Saudi Arabia all those years ago.

Three hours of watching them plough through files in Arabic, three hours in a windowless vault with guys who didn’t touch alcohol but smoked thirty a day, three hours of counting every minute, and I was as close to desperate as I ever wanted to be. Naturally, when one of my neighbours said that the first squad was heading out to interview people who might be able to contribute something to the lost narrative, I grabbed my jacket to join them.

The three agents were hard guys, the youngest of them in his twenties, a man whose IQ was so low I figured they had to water him twice a day. We gathered up eight more of their colleagues on the way and rolled in a convoy of four black SUVs with so much makhfee on the windows it was like travelling in permanent midnight. I’m certain, though, it fulfilled its real purpose admirably: no ordinary civilian who saw them passing could have failed to be afraid.

For mile after mile we criss-crossed the sprawling city – four and a half million souls marooned in the middle of the desert, seemingly half of them employed by Aramco, the world’s largest oil company – and interviewed people about a family which had long since vanished. We sat in the majlis – the formal sitting rooms – of poor houses way out in the suburbs and questioned men whose hands were trembling, we saw dark-eyed kids watching from shadowy doorways and glimpsed veiled women in floor-length burqas hurrying away at our approach. We visited an elderly man called Sa’id bin Abdullah bin Mabrouk al-Bishi – he was the state executioner who had beheaded al-Nassouri’s father – in the hope that in his last moments the condemned man had said something about the career and future he had wanted for his son. After that we drove to a modest villa close enough to the water to smell the salt and, for some reason I couldn’t quite explain, I took a photo of it on my cellphone. It was al-Nassouri’s childhood home and we questioned the man who had moved in after the family had fled in case he had heard something in the following years.

Nobody knew anything.

Finally, we took a break, pulling into a roadside shack for coffee. We were sitting outside, listening to the idiot in his twenties go on about some chick he had met in Morocco, when a cellphone rang and I was asked to return immediately.

The team was gathered in an open-plan research area on one side of the atrium, the air filled with cigarette smoke. The director stood at a table, an archive box in front of him, plenty more of them piled on the floor. Spilling out of them were field reports, interviews with informers and records of hearsay and gossip.

The director said that they had accessed a box containing what had been thought to be worthless material concerning a number of conservative mosques in Bahrain.

‘There was one slim file which proved to be of interest, ’ he said. ‘It dealt with a small mosque on the outskirts of Manama, the capital. ’ He looked at me to make sure I realized the significance of what he had said.

‘Zakaria al-Nassouri’s mosque? ’ I asked, trying to keep my voice neutral, battling a surge of hope.

He nodded. ‘The file contained the usual empty analysis and a few incomplete logs of membership, but buried among it was this …’ He held up a three-page document in Arabic.

‘About five years ago a low-level field agent interviewed a Saudi aid worker who had delivered food and medicine to the refugees in the Gaza Strip. While he was unloading trucks at a dilapidated hospital, he heard about a man who had been brought in earlier in the evening after an Israeli rocket attack.

‘When his work was done he went up to see the wounded man to find out if there was anything he could do to help. The man, with shrapnel wounds near his spine, was going in and out of delirium, and the aid worker ended up sitting with him through the night. ’

The director paused, looking at the document, checking his facts. ‘It appeared the wounded man was a doctor and, at one stage, semi-delirious, he mentioned he used to be a member of the mosque in Manama. That was how the report ended up in this particular file.

‘Everybody assumed he was a Bahraini. But he couldn’t have been because, much later on, again in his delirium, he said his father had been publicly beheaded—’

I sat forward so quickly I was lucky not to fall off the chair. ‘Bahrain doesn’t do that, ’ I said.

‘Exactly – only one country does. ’

‘Saudi, ’ I replied.

‘Yes. It appears the man had been travelling in a car with his Palestinian wife and child when it was rocketed – whether the vehicle was targeted or if it was collateral damage, nobody knows.

‘The woman died, but not immediately. In his rambling account, he said that he was holding her and she made him promise – promise before God – that he would protect their child. The little boy had survived with minor injuries—’

‘Praise be unto Allah, ’ the whole room said in Arabic.

‘But the mother knew, ’ the director continued, ‘that for him the tragedy was doubly great. Not only had he lost her but he also suffered—’

‘From Down’s syndrome, ’ I said with sudden certainty.

‘How did you know? ’

‘It’s definitely him – al-Nassouri, ’ I said, getting to my feet, having to work off the flood of nervous energy. ‘It’s his son – I know the boy. Where did the hospital send the child – to an orphanage? ’

‘That’s right. ’

‘Run by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade – I’ve seen the receipts. ’ At last I understood why Leyla Cumali hadn’t sent the money to Unicef.

‘What else? ’ I asked, probably more harshly than manners dictated, but we were on a roll and nobody noticed.

‘The dead woman’s name was Amina Ebadi – at least that was one name she used: many of the Palestinian activists use aliases or noms de guerre. We’ve done a search on her, but can’t find anything. ’

‘Yes, but what about him – what about the doctor? ’ I asked, my voice crackling with intensity. ‘Did the aid worker get the name he was using? ’

‘That was a strange thing – the doctor was in terrible shape but, when the aid worker returned the following night, he’d discharged himself. Probably scared about what he might have said when he was rambling—’

‘His name, Director? Did he get a name? ’

‘No. ’

I stared at him. ‘There’s nothing?! Nothing more? ’

He nodded. ‘We’ve been through everything. The original report wasn’t followed up. It didn’t seem to have any significance—’

‘Until now, ’ I said bitterly. I tilted my head back and tried to breathe. The news seemed to have sucked the air – and the energy – out of the room. The agents and the director kept watching me, but I tried to think.

I knew more about Zakaria al-Nassouri than any covert agent had a right to. I knew he was born and raised in Jeddah, that he had stood in anguish in the square where his father was beheaded and that his mother had taken him to live in exile in Bahrain. I knew the name of the mosque he had joined in Manama and that his fellow worshippers had arranged for him to go to Afghanistan and fight the Soviets. At the end of the war he had bought a death certificate, somehow acquired a new passport and vanished into the trackless Arab world. He had studied medicine, graduated as a doctor, met a woman who sometimes used the name Amina Ebadi and married her. Together they had worked on the undocumented and lawless frontier – the refugee camps of Gaza: a hell on earth if ever there was one. I now knew that the married couple were travelling with their young child when they were hit by an Israeli rocket, killing the mother and injuring the doctor. The little boy was taken to an orphanage and the doctor must have asked his sister Leyla to reach out and save him. Full of hatred, without family responsibilities, using his knowledge as a doctor, enabled by the vast haemorrhaging of information on the Internet, he had set about synthesizing smallpox. He had returned to Afghanistan to test it, and we heard him on the phone, worried about his beloved child, the only link he had left to his dead wife.

And after that? After that, the music stopped and there was nothing. Who was he now? What name was he using? And – more importantly – where was he? ‘A way in, ’ I said softly. ‘Somehow you push forward and find a way back in. ’

Nobody knew if I was talking to myself or offering a suggestion to everyone. I probably didn’t know either.

‘That’s all we have on the man, ’ the director said, sweeping his hand across the floors of motorized files. ‘There’s no name, no identity and no trace. Not here, anyway. ’

He was right, and the silence hung in space. Through the haze of smoke, I looked at the men. There was no way back in for any of us, hope was gone, and I knew …

We had lost him.

I forced myself not to show my despair and stood a little straighter. Bill had always told me there was no excuse for bad manners, and I owed the Saudi men something.

‘You’ve done more than anybody could have asked, ’ I said. ‘It was a thankless task, but you did it with talent and good grace and I thank you wholeheartedly. ’

It was probably the first time they had heard genuine praise instead of empty flattery, and I could see on their faces the pride it brought them.

‘Jazak Allahu Khayran, ’ I said finally, butchering the pronunciation but using one of the only Arabic phrases I recalled from my earlier visit. It was the traditional way of offering thanks: ‘May God reward you with blessings. ’

‘Waiyyaki, ’ they all said, smiling kindly at my effort and offering the time-honoured response: ‘And with you. ’

It was the signal everybody needed, and they got to their feet and started packing everything up. I remained where I was, standing alone, desperately trying to find another way forward, a route, a path. A miracle.

I journeyed through the catalogue of my professional memory, I let my mind wander down every unconventional alley, but I came up empty.

I had identified the Saracen, but I didn’t know him; I had located him, but I couldn’t find him; he was somebody, and he was nobody. That was the truth, and nothing in the world was going to change it.

I looked at my watch.