The Gomorrah Gambit Read online

  And with that, she walks out.

  Five

  It’s as though Kabir’s mind took a video of the moment and can’t stop showing it. His personal YouTube channel, playing on loop: the collapse of his cousin’s face into something else, the body falling, and then falling again, and then falling again into the dirt. Waking and sleeping, Kabir imagines a sniper’s eye picking him out through its scope, tracking his head in close-up as one finger hovers over the trigger. An itch travels between his forehead and the nape of his neck, the presentiment of a bullet. His cousin’s face flips from life to death, and round they go again. His boss gave him some pills to help him sleep, which make things a little better, although he sometimes struggles to rise for dawn prayers.

  They had done everything together, up until that point. From Britain to Syria via Turkey, pretending they were just package holidaymakers until a bus, then taxis, then local handlers brought them into border territory and across. Recruitment was everything they had hoped, as well as some things they hadn’t thought to fear: the soul-sapping exhaustion of boot camp, the pedantry of doctrines whose defiance meant death, the fear etched into everyday life. In the face of this, they made each other brave, relished the privileges of power and hatched plans involving marriage permits and fair-skinned virgins.

  Then one of them lived and one of them died, and everything was different.

  Yet his cousin’s death was also the making of him. With no camera to hand, Kabir had had the presence of mind to capture everything on his iPhone—and the people in charge like that kind of thinking. It looked authentic, gritty, personal. It made the BBC news. Martyrdom plus going viral is almost as good as living. Sometimes it’s better, if it brings more recruits in the battle for hearts and minds.

  Back in England, Kabir had vaguely considered becoming an audio-visual support tech, and had done lights and sounds for friends’ club nights. Out here, he is now a confirmed and startlingly well-paid member of a mobile media unit, whose job description bears little resemblance to the classic jihadi role. With Raqqa secure, he traverses the Islamic Republic’s local environs, looking for human interest and struggling to meet his Key Performance Indicators.

  Each day, the autonomous production unit within which Kabir is a junior producer—the Islamic Republic is remarkably pedantic about job titles—is expected to generate between thirty and fifty pieces of content, ranging from films to social media updates to pamphlets to podcasts. Glorious deaths and gory executions are all very well, but it’s not enough to wave guns and denounce apostasy. The whole point is that the state is Remaining and Expanding, albeit funded in substantial part by kidnappings, lootings, slavery, drug deals and extortion.

  Kabir is unworried by such economic necessities. The young Muslims whose minds he is reaching for appreciate military triumphs and training montages but, he has learned, there’s also a considerable audience for footage of infrastructure repairs, entrepreneurial initiatives, moments of pious domestic bliss, and passionate guilt-tripping in the service of saving Sunnis from slaughter. Anything and everything that suggests an empire risen from the ashes of Western hypocrisy.

  What most impresses Kabir is the sophistication of the ecosystem he’s feeding into (his vocabulary is laced with words like this now: media ecosystems, cyber jihad, platform agnosticism). His small team’s content will be repackaged by an ever-shifting swarm of loyal supporters across the world, distributed where its effects are likely to be the greatest—a cocktail of clear, strong emotion mixed to order, like the words that brought him here. Your life can have meaning, your faith can bring glory. Who needs Hollywood? He has cash in his pocket, the fear and respect of Raqqa’s conquered citizens, and a cushy requisitioned apartment near the market—in the company of several cooperative comrades willing to translate his shopping lists.

  Some things take getting used to, but Kabir takes comfort from the fact that the city is only gradually coming to terms with its new status. Public piety is on the rise, with scores of citizens kneeling spontaneously in the streets when the call to prayer sounds out. Women are increasingly seen only in the company of men. They use the loudspeakers in the streets for announcing executions, and it has taken him a while to perfect his facial response: something between enthusiasm and battle-hardened indifference, accompanied by a resolute silence. Public speech is strictly monitored, and swearing is forbidden. The last Brit to mutter holy fucking shit while watching an apostate’s head being ineptly hacked from its body was lucky to get away with twenty lashes.

  Other forbidden things include, in no particular order: unauthorized gatherings; listening to recorded music; teaching or learning anything aligned with the Western worldview; shaving; and breeding pigeons. Kabir has never liked pigeons, and his beard provides luxuriant proof of his manhood, but the paranoia that attends listening to Pharrell Williams in his flat is starting to get old. At some point, he assumes, things will get easier—and his rise through the ranks of the chosen will bring its rewards. At some point, his talent will be fully recognized. If he’s lucky, that point may be tomorrow.

  Tomorrow, Kabir will be helping to shoot an action movie unfolding in real life: the latest installment of the mega-hit Clanging of the Swords series. He’ll be embedded with fighters for the first time since his cousin’s death, this time as part of a full film crew, closely overseen by the Al-Itisam Establishment for Media Production. It’s his chance to get noticed by the great and the good of high-production-values propaganda—the people who came up with Windows on the Land of Epic Battles—and he’s determined to wow them, even if it means setting aside the subtleties he usually prefers.

  If Kabir doesn’t make a good impression, they might decide he’s better off sitting at a desk uploading interminable religious speeches—which is why he’s currently alternating between press-ups and squats on his living room’s tiled floor. After two sets of ten, the burning in his chest and thighs becomes unbearable, so instead he practices picking up and putting down his heavy new Sony camera. This lasts for twelve repetitions, by which time his shoulders and arms are trembling and his grip keeps sliding off the handle. It has been a while since Kabir’s initial training and, even then, his pre-jihadi special interest in media made it possible to avoid the tormenting extremes Hamid thrived upon. Sports were never his thing at school.

  Heavy with sweat, Kabir eases onto his sofa and starts flicking through a selection of officially sanctioned social media accounts: always good for inspirational distraction. There’s very little to do in the evenings, now Hamid is gone, beyond attempting not to commit transgressions punishable by dismemberment. His eyes flicker around the room. All of the apartment’s books, magazines, newspapers, pictures and wooden chairs were incinerated in the shared courtyard at the back, before his arrival, but the walls boast several cross-shaped patches of unfaded paint, leading him to suspect its occupants were Christians. With an effort of considerable will, Kabir manages not to visualize any of the things that may have happened to them.

  He’ll be right there tomorrow, beside the warriors every step of the way. He can’t hesitate, stumble or fall under the sentence of a sniper’s eye. He shivers. A few more moments of recuperation, a few more pills to hurry the night away, and then nothing will be able to stop him.

  Six

  Azi is staring at his trainers. It’s 9:55 a.m. and the station is crowded with commuters and tourists. Trying to track even a fraction of these striding strangers makes his head spin. He has a backpack and a hoodie, he has been loitering for fifteen excruciating minutes beside the spot arranged with Sigma/Munira, and he gives it a maximum of another ten before a security guard starts loitering near him in turn. Hands shoved in pockets, his mind racing through possible scenarios, he fails to notice the young woman with the quiet tread until she’s beside him.

  “AZ?” she says cautiously, like someone meeting a man from a dating app for the first time. “You’re here. You actually came.”

  “Yeah, I came.” He smiles at
her. He can’t remember the last time he smiled spontaneously at someone, but she’s got one of those faces. And she looks so apprehensive, so young. Suddenly, he’s no longer the victim. He’s the one with the power—and he needs to reassure her. “Don’t worry, I’m not about to kidnap you and harvest your organs. I promise.”

  Shit. Where did that come from? But she returns his smile.

  “Good to know. Awesome. Thank you so much for coming, I’m so grateful. I’m Munira. Hi.” Azi blinks, trying to compose his expression into something confidence-inspiring. This is way too much like a date. He’s got to get better at this, fast, before he accidentally invites the woman he’s meant to be entrapping to lunch and a matinee.

  It doesn’t help that she is much prettier than he is comfortable with.

  “I’m Azi. Hi. Let’s walk and talk, keep your eyes down as much as possible.”

  They set off across the concourse, matching the pace of a large group of tourists. The tourists are slow, earning them the undying hate of a succession of commuters, but Azi figures it’s a bad idea for them to look like they’re in a hurry. Munira is watching him closely.

  “I’d always wondered how you pronounce it. Not A-Z. Azzi. And what’s your real name? Or do you not want to tell me?”

  “Er, it’s Azi. AZ, Azi? Kind of a double bluff?” Why do things that seem clever as hell on the internet always sound so stupid when you have to explain them in real life?

  “That is unbelievably bold. Call me Munira, please. Sigma is for the forums.”

  “Oh sure, of course. Munira. Suits you.” She looks up at him, eyebrows raised, before looking back down.

  “You’re not what I expected,” she says. “Not at all. I thought you’d be, you know?”

  “A crusty white guy working the grunge Assange look?”

  “Or maybe a bit Snowden, with the glasses and the jumpers. Anyway. I’m just glad you’re here. So glad.”

  And then she bursts into tears in the middle of Victoria Station.

  Azi has no idea what to do with a stranger’s tears, let alone the tears trickling down the cheeks of a mysterious woman he’s just met.

  Apart from the tears, Munira looks exactly like the photograph she attached to their second exchange of messages: the one he conducted under the firm tutelage of Anna’s colleague. She is slim, modestly dressed in jeans, a jumper and the red headscarf she suggested for unambiguous identification. A bulky bag is slung across one shoulder, but she hefts it with ease. She is weeping, yet coiled with nervous energy, her feelings flashing across her face. Is she acting? Is he acting? He has certainly got a great deal of rehearsed persuasion to impart.

  Uneasily, Azi hovers his arm an inch behind her back, maintaining their motion. She seems to swallow her tears back, brushing them away. He decides to ignore the crying. Dial the Britishness up to eleven.

  “Hey. Look. Munira, let me cut to the chase.”

  She smiles again and it reaches her eyes, now slightly red. Like him, it seems, her instinct is to dig herself out of panic with words.

  “Cut to the chase? I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone say that in real life before.”

  “Get to the point, then. Cut me some slack, I’ve actually never done this before. I looked at your research, closely, and what you’ve found ties in with some things I’ve seen. Some really bad things.” He lowers his voice even more. “Gomorrah, trafficking routes, the far right and the Islamic Republic, everything in between. It’s big.”

  Azi pauses to glance around at his surroundings. Are they being watched? Of course they’re being watched. He presses on.

  “You know that already—and I don’t know what you’ve been through. But I’m here to tell you that it’s not something we can face alone. We need reinforcements, and protection, and we’re not going to find any answers until we get both.”

  “Wait. Slow down, please. Are you saying that you believe me?”

  “Yep, and then some. Munira, whoever is after you…neither of us is safe now. Not any more. I’m sorry.”

  She stops walking and turns to look at him, her eyes narrowed in suspicion. He takes a deep breath, edging towards his gamble.

  “They almost got me. Yesterday, within hours of your first contact. I’ve got the clothes on my back and a bag of kit. I almost didn’t come…I’m sorry. I wanted to warn you, but I have to go, and soon.”

  This is the moment. Azi has embarked upon his key untruth. He has a black rucksack on his back, and it’s true that this contains everything he was allowed to pack. He’s pretty sure he looks every bit as desperate and homeless as his story suggests—because he is, helpfully, both of these things.

  It is twelve hours since Anna’s visit. Immediately after she left, a middle-aged man appeared at the shed door. Brisk and unruffled, he looked like he had popped by to fix the central heating, armed only with a box of tools, an air of fatherly competence and the capacity to snap Azi’s body like a twig if he even contemplated resistance.

  First, Azi was instructed to undelete Sigma’s messages, claim he’d had a change of heart and suggest a meeting. It was horribly easy to play the role, and she was horribly grateful. She told him her name, she provided her photo, she said it was no problem to get to London in time—then mentioned that two of her cousins had been recruited by the Islamic Republic, and that she was in possession of information its agents were desperate to obtain. Something about the access details for Gomorrah, carried only in the software between her ears. Sick with guilt, Azi sent reassurances.

  With this out of the way, the man got Azi’s signature on the bundle of papers Anna had left—about the only format secure enough for their purposes—and then, after requesting a cup of tea with three sugars, began drilling Azi through what was to come. Azi was permitted a shower and, after somehow falling asleep at 1 a.m., was woken six hours later, made to rehearse relentlessly over more cups of strong tea, then instructed to pack before being turfed out of his own home. His instructions would be issued via a nondescript new phone that he must keep about his person at all times. His own devices were all forfeit.

  Now, while trying to hold Munira’s gaze, Azi is conscious of the two things that matter most in any manipulation: urgency and constraint. Hence the story of his own crisis. By creating urgency and eliminating other options, you create opportunity—a context within which someone’s only choice is to do what you want, even if they believe the decision is up to them.

  “How did they find you?” Munira whispers, bringing him back to the crowded concourse. The air smells like disinfectant and coffee.

  He almost breathes a sigh of relief, then catches himself and turns it into one of exhaustion. “They didn’t, not quite. It’s obviously no coincidence that they came right after you made contact. They were monitoring AZ’s activity somehow—they’ve probably been doing it for a while. If they’d found me at home, I can’t imagine what would have happened. But I had everything on remote, spoofing my location: empty shed, dummy machines. They trashed the place, two of them. I saw it, before they took out my cameras. But it was me they were after, and that means they’re close to finding you too. Very close.”

  “Oh my God. Our communications, the last messages we sent. Please tell me they were secure. They’re not watching us right now, are they?”

  She looks into his face and now he sees terror in her eyes. He swallows a fresh mouthful of guilt. This is just a job. No different to lying online. He lies for a living: this is just an upgrade.

  “God, no, honestly. Fully secure. All they saw was Sigma getting in touch with AZ. Whatever trace they ran took them to the wrong place: metadata only. This time.”

  “I’m so sorry, Azi. If I’d known, if I had thought, I never would have dragged you into this. I can’t believe they could touch you. It’s because I asked around. About finding you. I thought you were the best—that you were a ghost! If they can get to you, if they’re that good, I mean, we’re done. We’re as good as dead.”

  They ha
ve been half-whispering, their words evaporating into a sea of footsteps, greetings, apologies, exclamations and loudly answered mobile phones.

  Azi looks at Munira and starts to move with more purpose, indicating with a nod that she should follow. They reach some escalators and ride up, into the fluorescent bowels of a shopping arcade. Windowless and busy, its strapline promises everything you could ever need in one central location, presumably because fast food, greeting cards and high street fashion can slake any heart’s desires.

  Azi buys half a dozen miniature cupcakes from the first stall they pass, seduced by the heaped display. He needs something to do with his hands besides twisting and untwisting the straps of his rucksack. And, as all hackers and coders know, sugar is your friend—bad for the body, great for the brain.

  He eats two cupcakes before he remembers to offer one to Munira. She’s watching him with a compassion in her eyes that makes him want to confess. Can he trace a secret message in the pink icing and hand it over? Run! But there’s not even space for three letters, let alone punctuation. The fact that he’s thinking these things suggests he is in no state to be improvising. Stick to the plan.

  “Look,” he says. “I don’t know what you thought I could do—what we could do together—but I need to get out of here. I’m sorry that all I’ve got is bad news. I know we don’t know each other, not really, but…I’m glad we met. I wish I could have done more.”

  “What am I supposed to do now? I’m running out of places to go. Fuck.” She’s walking quickly now, towards the exit. Azi has very little time left for this to work.

  “Do you have friends you can trust? People they can’t have been watching?” This is his biggest gamble. The idea needs to come from her, not you.

  “Not here. Not right now. Azi, wait. If you’ve got some plan that gets you out of the country, surely, maybe…you can take me? It wouldn’t be for long, and I’ve got cash. I can pay my way.”