The Walking Dead

Ibrahim Hussein had been chosen, so the man he thought of as the Leader had told him, because he walked well. In front of him, inside the number four terminal of the King Khalid International Airport, lay an open expanse of shining floor, and he strode across it, not looking back to see if his last escort watched him go. He had been driven from the desert, then taken to a house in a slum quarter of the town of Qatif to sleep dreamlessly, then brought to the airport. In all of that time, and with each of the escorts, he had not been offered conversation, and he realized it was intended that he should not know who had handled and moved him. That morning he had been given a new pair of jeans, a yellow T-shirt, a leather jacket and trainers. He had a lightweight rucksack hooked over his arm, and on his head was an 'I Love NY' cap with a broad, extended peak to hide part of his face from the terminal's ceiling cameras. In the airport car park he had been passed an envelope containing a passport and a single sheet of scribbled writing that described a family history and justified the visa entry for the Netherlands on the passport's second page; he had been given time to read the sheet, then it had been taken from him and dumped in a rubbish bin. Already he marvelled at the care for detail that had been employed. At one moment, as the flight was called, his last escort had been at his side; at the next, the escort was no longer there. His target was the departure gate and, as was expected of him, he walked purposefully towards it. He heard the shout from far behind him. A name was called: not the name on the passport he held tight in his hand. The shout came again. He did not break his stride and as the departure gate yawed open automatically and swallowed him, the shout was repeated: 'Ibrahim? Is that Ibrahim Hussein? Are you Ibrahim—'

The gate dosed and shut out the sound of the shout.

* * *

Across continents and time differences another flight was called. The charter for Sun Tours would fly a cabin of Spanish tourists from Barcelona to the English airport at Stansted.

He could not fault the arrangements in place for him, or the cover supplied by his travel documents. He was not Muhammad Ajaq, or the Scorpion. He would make the final leg of his journey with a Spanish passport, and the light olive skin of his cheeks and hands — not European and not north African — would be explained in the passport he now carried by a father's origin in Valencia and a mother's in the Moroccan city of Tetouan. He obeyed orders given to him three months before, but with them had come a labyrinth of planning of which he had no criticism. At every travelling stage he had been met, treated with the courtesy and respect to which he thought himself entitled, and money had been provided. Rendezvous arrangements had been flawlessly in place. The previous day he had been driven by a man, who asked no questions and made no idle conversation, into the mountains to the north-west of Barcelona, and there he had met a cell of Basque fighters from the Euzkadi ta Askatasuna, two men and a woman. Near to the town-of Irurzun, overlooking it, in a shed where winter animal fodder was stored, he had been shown and then had purchased fifteen kilos of PTEN explosives in one-kilo sticks; he had paid twenty thousand American dollars, and four commercial quarrying detonators were added to the package.

He had thought the men good and strong, the woman pretty — there had been a moment when her hand had rested on his thigh as she made a point of emphasis, and excitement brimmed in him — and there had been trust. If he was captured and talked, they would be destroyed, and if they were taken and went down under interrogation, he would be broken. The woman had limped, and had said, matter-of-factly, she had been tortured long ago, which had clinched the trust for him. He had left them, the men wrapping him in bear grips, the woman kissing him full on the mouth, and carried away the fifteen kilos of explosives with the detonators, in waterproof paper sealed with masking tape.

With the parcel in the car's boot, the driver had negotiated narrow, winding roads and brought him to the port of Castro Urdiales. There, he had sat in a café and sipped coffee with a florid-faced Englishman, who had failure written at his mouth and defeat in his eyes. The price, without haggling, was agreed at twenty-five thousand American dollars, and the parcel had been slipped from its place on his knees under the table into the grasp of the Englishman, and the money was given over. From the near-empty café's window, he could see the grey skies over the harbour and the spray climbing over the outer groyne. The launch was pointed out to him — it nestled against a pontoon but shook in the swell.