The Gomorrah Gambit Read online

  Her voice whispers against his chest, for his ears only. “You know those stories when someone makes a bargain with the devil—when they say his name three times, and he comes? It’s like that. There’s a username for messages, on Signal. Gomorrah. So simple! You send a secure message, you offer the right evidence. Then they send a one-time link, just for you. Fully customized. Whatever your heart desires.”

  Azi is filled by the sudden urge to confess—to blurt out the truths and questions rattling inside his head. Instead, he reaches towards a different honesty.

  “I…I remember after my mum died. There was this maze of bureaucracy, so much to do. A lot of people I didn’t know were kind. Everyone was kind to me. They were determined to keep me, the university. And I hated them for it. A guy like me, a story like mine—they fell over themselves to help. Money to support me, time out if I needed, extra tuition to help me catch up. Grief and gratitude, that’s all I was supposed to feel. It was like they owned me…but there’s nothing worse than being owned.”

  A pause. He was trying to say something true. Now that the words have left his mouth, however, he can’t help thinking that there are many things worse than being owned—and that Munira is running from people who want to do several of them to her. After a moment, no longer whispering, she lifts her face and speaks.

  “Did Odi help you?”

  Azi has to swallow the urge to laugh. “Yeah. I needed a friend. And the best friend I had, the only other friend I had, let me down. So there was just good old Odi.”

  Munira squeezes him, hard. Then she takes his hand and starts walking again, a lightness in her step. “It’s okay, Azi. I honestly think it’s going to be okay. We are going to get this done. Us and good old Odi, whatever the fuck he’s up to right now.”

  They walk in silence for another minute. As if on cue, an update buzzes onto Azi’s phone. He pulls it out, glances at it, then stares. It’s not what he expected. Nothing like it.

  We have a situation. I am sending someone for you, right now. Stay calm and comply. Less than a minute.

  Azi walks a few more paces and turns to Munira, something poised on his lips; a sentence, a warning, a kiss. He’s not quite sure which, because before he can act, someone blocks their way. A casually dressed man of similar build to Odi, his hands held out in not-quite greeting. The man speaks, just loudly enough to be heard.

  “Azi. Munira. Your ride will be here momentarily.”

  His voice is warm, with a faint Atlantic twang. Before they can process what is happening, a red Prius pulls up beside them. They’re almost at the roundabout, and cars behind honk merrily as they swerve to overtake. The man continues.

  “It’s okay, Odi arranged this. Munira, get into the car.”

  With a gesture that looks like invitation but involves the application of knee-buckling pressure to Munira’s back, he sweeps her into the front seat and closes the door. It’s less than thirty seconds since he appeared. Azi blinks in astonishment, starts to move, but it’s too late. The man slides into the rear seat and closes the door in a single motion.

  Then, with a faint whirr, the car is gone.

  Azi takes a few steps, gets out his NADIR phone, waits. After an agonizing few minutes, a second message appears.

  Munira is being taken to a secure location. You will return to the flat. We will explain later. For now, do as you are told.

  Then the screen turns blank. Azi has no plans, no ideas, no information. He doesn’t know anything. He can’t face the flat. So he walks, and then he runs, past the roundabout, scanning roads, cursing the endless trees. He walks and runs some more, without direction. The park ends, replaced by a broad bridge and a traffic-filled tree-lined avenue. He keeps walking, putting distance between himself and the place where Munira was taken, fear and guilt and something else he cannot name beating against the back of his skull—dead memories, trying to drown him.

  Eventually, the long summer day starts to end. Azi has crossed rivers, parks, wide roads, passed buildings like stacked concrete Lego blocks. He is exhausted, yet not exhausted enough.

  Then there is a buzz in his pocket. NADIR jolts into life, a single message onscreen.

  If you want to see her alive again: tell no one, come alone, now.

  There is an address. Azi has money in his pocket so he hails a taxi, gives the details, then sits back and breathes deeply until he can hear something other than his own pulse.

  Once again, his choices have been outsourced.

  Fifteen

  Zealots in the Islamic Republic take many forms, but, in Kabir’s experience, Dr. Tal is one of a kind. For a start, there’s his habit of dropping to the ground and doing sets of fifty press-ups in the middle of a conversation, invariably followed by careful inspection of the triceps bulging down the back of each arm. The baggy garb and directionless gun-waving that most warriors adopt for photographs isn’t for him. No, Dr. Tal is an Instagram male, attuned to the most flattering angle for every pose—and to the most body-hugging fit of robes or surgical scrubs, as the moment requires. His charm, when he chooses to unleash it, is as potent as his musky cologne.

  They met a week ago, when Kabir made the mistake of showing some kindness towards one of the city’s stray dogs—a beleaguered and diminishing band of creatures. Kabir dropped a scrap of meat in front of an especially melancholy three-legged Labrador, bending to place it near the dog’s gasping tongue, and when he stood up, found Dr. Tal gesturing to him from across the street.

  They got talking. Dr. Tal was British, intelligent, and was clearly permitted a great deal of latitude thanks to his medical training (trauma surgeon) and ironclad self-confidence. Dr. Tal also loved animals, or at least felt a compassion towards them absent from his attitude towards humans. He could take or leave people, but animal suffering bothered him. It was one of just two things he appeared to care about beyond his own brilliance, the other being the unbelievably amateurish state of medical logistics in Raqqa.

  Having brought his world-class training, contempt for lesser mortals and exquisitely symmetrical cheekbones to the Islamic Republic, Dr. Tal was in a more or less permanent state of rage at its inadequacy to appreciate his talents. By the end of their conversation, it had become clear that he regarded Kabir as his newest friend, ally and handily expendable factotum.

  Since then, things have gone from bad to worse. Because Dr. Tal is literally unable to take no for an answer—it’s as if he cannot even hear the word being spoken—he has now been introduced to Muhammed the German and decided that Muhammed and Kabir should together serve as a kind of honor guard to his ambitions.

  The two men nominally remain attached to their media unit, and Kabir remains nominally confined to desk duty, but it took Dr. Tal just five minutes of charismatic insistence to have them reallocated to the sacred task of recording his every photogenic exploit. These include both life-saving surgeries and life-ending masterclasses in methodical torture, each conducted with the same fascinated abstraction, as if he were performing a tricky piece of music from memory.

  None of this, thankfully, will matter for much longer if Muhammed the German’s plan comes off. Kabir and Muhammed share enough English—and have exchanged enough meaningful meditations upon the unholy, reprehensible, unthinkable evil of deserters—to establish that they both favor scarpering back across the Turkish border as soon as humanly possible. To this end, the recruitment of Muhammed’s imaginary sister is developing well, with fabricated Facebook messages circulating successfully up the chain of command. Unburdened by reality, she has turned out to have a degree in chemical engineering, speaks four languages, and hates Western decadence with a deep and abiding passion.

  As Kabir and Muhammed have also discerned, however, even the most liberal Western politician will be unlikely to welcome fighters from the Islamic Republic with open arms unless they come bearing a prize. Intelligence is the obvious route: the names of senior operatives, the locations of training camps and urban headquarters, vital elements of
infrastructure and bureaucracy which they could obtain from the pre-propaganda flowing across their desks. Yet Kabir has something more special in mind: a compilation of the recruiters, fixers and middlemen most instrumental in bringing bodies to and fro across the border, together with the lucrative trafficking routes that sustain those parts of their economy not based on oil, tax or antiquities.

  This, surely, will be worth some Western gratitude—even money, if they play their cards right. Kabir’s access to computer systems makes it possible. He’ll just need to be very, very careful—and turn Dr. Tal’s impositions to their advantage.

  The fact that Dr. Tal has been a massive recruiting hit makes this tricky. For a start, it has raised Kabir and Muhammed’s visibility; and that’s before Kabir considers the fact that Dr. Tal would happily slice them into chunks and feed them to stray cats if he suspected their intentions. Even worse, he and Muhammed now spend much of the time competing for their master’s affections.

  This morning, after Muhammed picked up Dr. Tal’s shopping and Kabir tidied his villa, they presented him with the rough cuts of their latest masterpiece: a video of Dr. Tal performing surgery on a six-year-old girl injured in an air strike. Kabir is out of favor today, making Muhammed the sole addressee of the verdict.

  “Brother, I admire what you have achieved. The first and last sections will work, the middle can be cut. She is a beautiful thing. I assume we have footage of her returning home, embracing her family. Ah, septicemia? What a waste. But we have enough. Jazakallah khair, brother.”

  Kabir clenches his jaw, silently, then unclenches it somewhat less silently as his rotten tooth flares. Dr. Tal hasn’t even looked at him since he entered the room, and Kabir thinks he knows why. Muhammed’s contact with his fictional sister recently reached the doctor’s attention and, on the basis of her profile picture and attainments, Dr. Tal has decided that she might be the only potential recruit in the entire Islamic Republic adequate to his exacting standards. Kabir’s kindness to canines is yesterday’s news.

  On the plus side, the icy insanity of Dr. Tal’s patronage offers some hope when coupled to imaginary sisters. Given the doctor’s clout, and his hunger to meet this vision of feminine fanaticism, obtaining permission and transport for a trip to the Turkish border will not be difficult. Having discussed the matter in ferocious whispers under cover of toilet visits—about the only time Kabir and Muhammed can be sure of privacy—they have determined that this is a chance they must take.

  Kabir shuffles out of Dr. Tal’s gratuitously expansive living room, reviewing their prospects. He almost has his hands on some data that looks interesting (or at least that looks like he isn’t meant to be able to get his hands on it), the Americans seem poised to deliver on the promise of death raining down from the heavens, and Dr. Tal is positively frisky at the prospect of a world-class conquest. All the signs are good. Or, to be more precise, all the signs are awful if they remain.

  Just before he reaches the door, Dr. Tal’s voice catches him, amplified by the floor and walls’ exquisitely patterned tiles.

  “Brother Kabir, you forgot my Red Bull. And the dog food.”

  And, of course, there’s vengeance to be considered.

  Sixteen

  The taxi drops Azi on a quiet, dark street. The screen is dazzling when he pulls the phone out of his pocket to read a new message. Enter through the gate. Follow the drive. There’s only one gate, made of wrought metal, in front of a derelict expanse. With the sense that he’s issuing his body instructions from a great distance, Azi slips through.

  As his eyes become used to the darkness, Azi makes out two brick-built domestic buildings and, behind them, a large industrial-looking warehouse, also brick-built. Wild shrubs and weeds are thicketed everywhere except for the remains of a driveway. Azi walks along the broken concrete, his mind a mess of fractal memories: Munira, her body against his, the endless trees, the noise of tires, the suddenness of her absence. The cool air feels good against his skin.

  Ahead, beside the blocked-up outline of a large opening in the warehouse, a battered metal door is ajar. Azi looks for further commands onscreen, but there’s nothing. Apart from his own breath and footsteps, he hasn’t heard a sound since he left the taxi. Holding up the phone’s faint screen-light, dislocated from the dark world, he walks in.

  The corridor he enters is strange enough to end any sense of reverie. Its walls, floor and ceiling are perfectly smooth concrete, tapering to invisibility. It’s as stark and pristine as the exterior is decrepit, and Azi has the sensation that he is standing still while the building glides past him. A muffled impact sounds in the distance, followed by echoes and faint scrabbling.

  Azi freezes. Somewhere nearby a heavy door slams open and shuts, a white blaze dazzles and fades, then a pair of arms is pressing him against one wall, slamming his face against concrete and his wrists behind his back. The phone clatters to the floor. A voice sounds in his ear.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  It takes Azi a few seconds to recognize it as Odi. Or rather, as the person he has been calling Odi—but who is clearly something different at this point in time. Odi is breathing raggedly, his hands trembling as they grind Azi’s wrists together. There’s a stink like hot metal in the air.

  “You lot told me to come!” Azi shouts, the wall cold and damp against his face. He can feel his neck muscles screaming.

  Odi loosens his grip. “Turn around, slowly.” More muffled noises are coming from closer than Azi is comfortable with. Odi’s voice is a ferocious whisper. “Why are you here? Who told you the location?”

  Azi is somehow terrified and outraged at the same time. “Look, mate, it was a message on the app, your app. It told me to come here, alone, if I ever wanted to see her again. After you took her! I assumed—” He breaks off. What did he assume? That someone was playing games, or that something had gone very wrong. Or both. With an effort, he pushes down the panic that has started to clot in his throat.

  “We didn’t send that message. We are under attack. You must leave, right now, and go straight to the flat. Where you will wait for me to come, in person.”

  Odi is afraid, Azi realizes. The metallic smell is coming from him, layered over sweat. With a grunt, Odi releases him and staggers back, then pushes against one wall until a seemingly solid slab of concrete gives way. Before he enters, he meets Azi’s gaze.

  “I’m not your enemy, Azi. We are not your enemies. Go.”

  Then he is gone, and Azi is in darkness.

  He should run. Yet he can’t. Whatever this is, it has something to do with her—and something to do with events beyond any anticipation.

  Azi checks himself over. He’s wearing his backpack, regular clothes and running shoes. Thanking God for his taste in nondescript black and gray sweatshirts, he pulls up his hood and wipes the sweat from his upper lip with the back of his sleeve. This is it: the moment he decides. He’s just a guy from East Croydon; just another ghost in the machine. But he knows what opportunity looks like—and what it means to have made a promise. He can’t go back to the apartment and hide.

  Before he can change his mind, astonished by his own resolve, Azi makes his way to the part of the wall Odi disappeared through.

  “All your base are belong to us,” he mutters, pushing hard.

  It doesn’t make him feel as cool as he hoped.

  Once the door has cracked open an inch, Azi forces himself to wait and listen. Clearly, unarmed and untrained civilians are not going to be challenging Jack Bauer anytime soon, but he’s played enough Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell to know the value of stealth.

  The sounds he heard earlier remain muffled—detonations mixed with banging—and neither Odi nor aggressive strangers rush out to confront him. He waits for a few more minutes, forces his body into an approximation of readiness, then opens the door wider and slips through.

  Beyond is a huge room with stark concrete floors and strip lighting. It’s almost empty, save for a few p
ieces of office furniture on one side. Around the desks, jagged shadows radiate from an expensive mess of computer equipment that seems to have been hurled onto the floor. At the far end is another door like the one he is peering through. Whatever is happening, it lies beyond.

  Azi sprints across the echoing floor. Power and network cables run through hefty slots in the concrete. The equipment is stripped-down, serious gear; a couple of small server racks and workstations, laptops, tablets, smashed-up banks of identical monitors; physical firewalls and surge protectors; scattered boxes of portable tricks ranging from USB keyloggers to Wi-Fi Pineapples.

  Crouching behind a desk that has flipped onto its side he begins rifling through the smaller items, sorting and inspecting them. What he needs is the kind of thing Anna stopped him stealing in the coffee shop: a phone, tablet, some device he can make his own. The desk is the same IKEA model he has at home in his shed, and it feels bizarrely familiar to be hunkered alongside it sifting gadgets and cables. At least, it feels familiar right up to the point at which two black-clad figures burst through the far door and start shooting at him.

  Having never been shot at before, Azi’s first reaction is to run. Suppressing this stupidity, he ducks and makes himself as small as possible against the top of the desk. He’s surrounded by a technological arsenal worth thousands of dollars, capable of infiltrating government facilities at thousands of miles, yet the only object of any use right now is 140 by 65cm of veneered MALM plywood—and possibly the bent leg of a FLINTAN desk chair, if he can swing it with enough force. In other words, he’s dead as soon as they start taking serious aim.

  The seconds slow as Azi watches a bullet bounce off the concrete near his left leg. Then another one thuds forcefully into the table beside him, blasting a fist-sized chunk into sawdust. He tries to pull himself together, but there’s not much to grasp. Blood is hammering in his throat and ears, and all he can hear apart from gunshots is his own soon-to-be-silenced heartbeat. It seems cruelly apt that cheap office furniture will mark his final resting place.