The Persona Protocol

2


Identity Crisis


Puzzlement grew on Khattak’s face as he stared at Adam. He had expected to see somebody else, and at any moment would expose the supposed arms dealer as an impostor—

‘Ah-ha, Muhammad Khattak!’ said Adam with a broad smile. ‘I did not expect to see you here. I thought you were fighting in Kurram?’

Khattak was baffled. He looked between the American and Syed. ‘But – who are . . .’

Adam’s grin widened. ‘Oh, come on, Muhammad. I know it has been a few years since we met in Drosh, but even with the plastic surgery I don’t look that different, do I?’

‘Plastic surgery?’ snapped Syed. He put the rocket back in the case, one hand moving towards the AK-47. ‘Muhammad, what is going on?’

Khattak’s confusion faded, replaced by worry – and anger. ‘I don’t . . . This – this is not Toradze!’

The room exploded into commotion. Two men rushed to the window, checking the street below, while Umar hurried to cover the door to the landing.

Every other man aimed his weapon at the interloper.

‘Adam!’ said Holly Jo urgently. ‘Baxter’s team can reach you in less than two minutes. If you need backup, tell us.’

Adam remained silent. Syed picked up his AK, flicking off the safety with a loud click. He gave the agent a cold stare. ‘Tell me. Who are you?’

‘I am Giorgi Toradze,’ Adam replied, tempering defiance with exasperation at being doubted. He looked back at Khattak. ‘Muhammad, it is me. Really! I had plastic surgery because my face was becoming a little too well-known. Look, see?’ He brought his hand up, pointing at his neck behind the right side of his jaw.

Khattak moved for a closer look, Syed also leaning forward to see. Below Adam’s ear, down the line of his jawbone, was a thin scar. It was a remnant of the earwig’s implantation, but the terrorists couldn’t possibly suspect that – he hoped.

‘It was expensive,’ Adam went on, ‘but it kept me out of prison. I had a nose job, my teeth straightened. I even lost weight! But – you really don’t recognise me? Azim, I can’t believe you don’t know me from my eyes!’

The Pakistani was startled by Adam’s use of the nickname. He looked more closely at the other man’s face. The real Toradze had quite distinctive eyes of an intense blue; the contact lenses were a good simulation.

Doubt appeared in Khattak’s own eyes . . .

‘It really is me, Muhammad,’ Adam pressed on. ‘I will prove it. Ask me anything about when we met.’

Khattak frowned. ‘If you are a spy, you would have interrogated Toradze to find out what he knew about me.’

Adam laughed. The boy is as stupid as when I met him! ‘Azim, when I met you four years ago, you had only just become a man! How long had you been with Yusef’s group? A few months? Do not take this badly, but you were not important enough for a spy to know about! The reason I remember you is because . . . you made me laugh.’

Khattak’s doubt increased. ‘How? How did I make you laugh?’

Toradze’s memory came to Adam’s mind as easily as if it were his own. Despite the guns pointing at him, he smiled. ‘When I arrived and met Yusef, you were standing behind him, holding a Kalashnikov. You looked so proud of it – you were a warrior, with your first weapon! But when he turned round to go into the next room, you stepped back, bumped against the door frame . . .’ The smile widened. ‘And your gun’s magazine fell out and hit your foot.’

Khattak actually appeared embarrassed, before uncertainty returned. ‘What else? Where did we meet?’

‘A house on the edge of Drosh. There was only one little window in the back room, and all you could see outside was a chicken coop. The whole place stank of birdshit!’

Syed asked a question in Pashto, Khattak nodding as he answered. ‘He asked if that was right,’ said Holly Jo.

The leader pursed his lips, then lowered the AK – though he didn’t put it down. ‘It seems you are telling the truth,’ he said to Adam.

‘I have changed my face, but not who I am. And Muhammad knows that Giorgi Toradze always delivers what he promises, hey? It is how I stay in business – and how I stay alive.’

The Kalashnikov was finally returned to the desktop, the other weapons lowering. Adam concealed his relief behind Toradze’s more casual acceptance of the situation: of course they believe me. I am Giorgi Toradze! However, Khattak still seemed troubled. A potential problem?

For now, Adam’s main concern was the mission. There was still something he needed to do – beyond simply getting out of the building alive.

‘If you are happy when you test these,’ he said, gesturing at the case, ‘then will you agree to my price? Two thousand dollars for each warhead.’

‘It is still a lot of money,’ said Syed.

‘Yes, I know. But my contact in the factory is taking risks to obtain them for me – he demands to be well paid.’

‘And you demand your profit too.’

‘Of course! I am a businessman, after all.’

‘Then you know the importance of haggling. One thousand dollars each.’

Adam shook his head. ‘I would make a loss at that price. My contact is not the only person I have to pay. They have to be transported, there are officials to bribe . . .’

‘One thousand two hundred.’

‘I am also taking risks. No, two thousand is a good price.’

Syed struggled to hide the anger in his voice. ‘One thousand five hundred.’

‘Ah-ha! Now we are getting somewhere.’ Adam patted one of the rockets. ‘Malik, my friend, you are a hard man – but also a fair man. I think we can make a deal that suits us both. Say for . . . eighteen hundred?’

‘One thousand six hundred.’

‘Seven hundred. My final offer.’ There was sudden steel in Adam’s voice, his expression hardening.

The terrorist leader drew in a slow breath. ‘Very well. One thousand seven hundred dollars.’

‘Excellent!’ Adam clapped his hands together – and as he did, he pushed one of the rings on his left hand around so that its setting pointed outwards from his palm, a small dark square on the gold. ‘We are both happy – it is good business, hey? Now, we shake on it.’ He held out his right hand to Syed again.

Syed hesitated, then took it. Adam gripped hard as he shook, preventing the Pakistani from pulling away, and placed his left hand firmly on Syed’s sleeve. ‘A good deal, a very good deal,’ the American agent said with enthusiasm. ‘You won’t regret this.’

‘I had better not,’ Syed replied quietly, the threat unmistakable. Adam finally released his hand. ‘I will contact you again in . . . one week? After we have tested these.’ He closed the case.

‘I will be waiting for your call.’ Adam raised his left hand to rub an imaginary speck from the corner of his eye, surreptitiously checking the ring. The little grey square was gone. ‘Until then, have fun, hey?’

Syed regarded him with disdain. ‘One week,’ he repeated, before issuing a Pashto command. The other members of his group prepared to move out. Adam was about to do the same when Syed raised a hand. ‘And Giorgi?’

‘Yes?’ A sudden adrenalin surge. Was this a betrayal?

The leader indicated the case. ‘The combination?’

‘Ah, how did I forget?’ Relieved, he showed Syed the tumblers. ‘It is easy to remember. One, two, three . . . five.’

‘Five?’ said Syed dubiously.

‘Who would think to try that? Four ones, four nines, then one-two-three-four – everyone tries those, but after that they are lost. Nobody has ever got into my luggage with that combination!’

‘Perhaps they did, and you did not know.’

‘Oh, I would know. Trust me.’ He gave Syed a conspiratorial smirk. ‘But now, it is time to get my other luggage from the hotel and go to the airport. There is a lot to do. I will talk to you in one week. Until then, nakhvamdis!’

Adam followed Marwat and Umar out and down the stairs, the other members of the cell coming after him. Syed had delegated the task of carrying the case to another man. Was there still some way to prevent the terrorists from using the improved warheads?

He forced himself to dismiss the idea. Syed was the mission’s sole objective. As much as he wanted to somehow sabotage the rockets, that wasn’t why he was here.

Umar opened the door to the street, warily checking outside before stepping through. He and Marwat didn’t go far, waiting by the neighbouring shopfront. ‘We see you,’ said Holly Jo with relief as Adam emerged after them. ‘Baxter’s in the van, fifty metres to your left.’

He glanced in that direction. It was still raining, but only lightly. The street was much busier than before. On the far side was an anonymous blue Mercedes van, dirty and dented. He ignored it and headed right. ‘The tracer’s on Syed,’ he whispered.

‘Testing . . . okay, we have it.’

‘Good work,’ said Tony. ‘You had us worried when that other guy showed up.’

‘Well bluffed. Remind me never to play poker against you,’ added Albion.

On the pretext of checking for traffic as he crossed the street, Adam looked back. All the terrorists had now left the building, splitting up. Standard practice for such a cell; dispersing individually made it harder for observers to track everybody.

Except . . . not everyone was going their own way. Khattak was the last to leave, and he had called back Umar and Marwat.

The gazes of all three followed Adam.

‘I think I’m going to have company,’ he said. A few seconds later, he was proved right as the trio started after him. ‘Khattak and two other guys.’

‘We can’t give you eyes,’ Holly Jo warned. ‘The UAV’s tracking Syed.’ The terrorist leader had disappeared down a narrow alley.

‘You need to lose them,’ Tony warned. ‘You can’t lead them to the rendezvous.’

‘I’ll do what I can,’ Adam replied. ‘Just make sure you get Syed.’

‘We’ll bag him. See you soon.’

The Mercedes grumbled past as Adam reached a junction. He rounded the corner on to a side street.

A surreptitious glance back as he turned. The three men were still moving purposefully after him.

Tony stared at a high-resolution satellite photograph of Peshawar on the screen. The tiny tracer Adam had stuck to Syed’s sleeve while shaking his hand now revealed its position as a red diamond; the van was a green circle. Directing the latter to intercept the former should be a simple task.

In theory.

He knew from experience, however, that no satellite overview could beat personal knowledge. ‘Imran,’ he said into his headset, ‘he’s going east. Do you know that part of town?’

‘I know the whole town.’ The van’s driver was Imran Lak, a Peshawar native – and also a CIA asset. ‘I’ll catch him.’

‘He’s just come out of the alley,’ reported Kyle. The view from the drone’s camera slowly but constantly shifted as he followed the terrorist from above. ‘Crossing the street . . . now going north.’

The green circle had only just turned east. A tag floated above the symbol, showing the distance in metres between the two subjects. It was gradually increasing. ‘He’s getting away from you,’ said Tony into the mike. A statement of fact, not reproach – yet. ‘Turn north as soon as you can. We can’t lose this guy.’

Lak looked ahead, trying to see past the overloaded truck in front of the van. There were alleys between the buildings, but none was wide enough for the Mercedes. The nearest road he could take was at least two hundred metres away.

He sounded an impatient blast on the horn, pulling out to overtake but finding a couple of cars coming the other way. Frustrated, he swung back behind the truck.

‘You’re losing him,’ said an American voice behind him. ‘Come on, get this thing moving!’

Lak flicked a look over his shoulder. The darkened rear cabin was lit by the pale glow of laptop screens, four burly men huddled over them. ‘I can’t drive through walls,’ he complained.

John Baxter was in no mood for excuses. ‘If we miss this guy, we might as well have spent the day playing with our dicks,’ he said, Alabama accent strong. ‘Catch up with him!’

Lak frowned, but said nothing. The cars passed. He pulled out again, dropping down through the gears and accelerating past the truck.

‘He’s turning again,’ Kyle warned. ‘Heading east.’

The street Syed had entered was crowded, pedestrians milling about as vehicles slowly bullied their way through the throng. ‘What’s this?’ Tony asked. ‘Kyle, show me the street ahead. Careful, though – don’t lose sight of him. And switch on the auto-tracking.’

‘He’s still got the tracer on him.’

‘Yeah, but it might get brushed off if he bumps into someone, and we’d end up following the wrong guy.’

Kyle entered commands. A pulsating blue outline appeared around the red diamond. The computer had locked on to Syed’s figure, identifying it by colour and shape; as long as the terrorist leader was partially visible to the drone, even in a crowd, the system would track him – and predict his movements and reacquire him if contact were briefly lost.

The camera tilted upwards to show the busy street ahead. In front of the shops, numerous small stalls were strewn along the sides of the long road, seeds sown in a furrow. ‘Imran, he’s at an outdoor market,’ said Tony. ‘He probably thinks he can lose any tails in the crowd.’

‘I know the place,’ came the reply. ‘There’s a street where we can cut across and get ahead of him.’

Kyle angled the camera back down to regard Syed from directly overhead. Even at the UAV’s altitude, it was easy to see the terrorist turning his head every few metres to check if anybody was following him. ‘You’re lookin’ the wrong way, assfag,’ Kyle said with a smirk. Holly Jo made a faint tsk sound.

‘Let’s keep the language professional,’ chided Tony. Everything that happened in the operations centre was being recorded. ‘John, is your team ready?’

‘Soon as you give the word,’ Baxter answered.

‘Okay.’ The distance between the green circle and the red diamond on the overview was rapidly shrinking. ‘Get ready.’

Lak swerved around a three-wheeled autorickshaw, giving its driver a blast on the horn before looking ahead. The road the Mercedes was now on ran parallel to the market street. ‘How far away is he?’

Baxter’s laptop displayed the same overhead view of the city as Tony’s. ‘Three hundred metres,’ he reported. ‘Two fifty.’

Lak accelerated, spray gushing from the van’s wheels as it jolted through puddles. He spotted the side road. They would emerge on the market street in front of Syed, but not by much. ‘The turn’s coming up,’ he called to the men in the back.

‘He’s eighty metres ahead,’ said Baxter. ‘Fifty, twenty . . . okay, we just passed him.’

‘Hold on!’ Lak braked sharply, the Mercedes squealing in complaint as he made the turn. The side street was short, but busy, a few stalls that had overflowed from the main thoroughfare at its far end. He sounded the horn again. Disgruntled shoppers cleared a path.

‘Jesus, he’s less than twenty metres away,’ Baxter muttered. If Syed decided to take the side road, they would have a tough job turning back around to follow.

But he was on the other side of the street, still moving through the market. ‘Here he comes,’ said the Alabaman. ‘Go right, go right!’ Lak turned again, forcing a taxi to an irate stop as he pulled out across its path and brought the van on to the crowded street. ‘Okay, we’re in front of him.’

Lak surveyed the street. Although there was strictly speaking only room for one lane of traffic in each direction, in places there were three or even four rows of vehicles as autorickshaws and scooters forced themselves into any available gap. ‘Which side of the road is he on?’

‘The left.’

‘Okay. Ready with the distraction?’

Baxter looked to one of his team, a beefy, mustachioed man named Perez, who nodded in reply. The laptop now showed that Syed was twenty-five metres behind the slowly moving van. ‘Ready, get ready . . .’ The gap opened up slightly. ‘Okay, go!’

Lak brought the van to a sudden halt, a scooter’s horn providing a shrill rebuke from behind. Perez slid open the side door and hopped out. He rounded the back of the Mercedes and jogged across the street, one hand raised to ward off an autorickshaw coming in the other direction. The van set off again.

Even though his target was now less than fifteen metres away, Perez didn’t turn his head, keeping his gaze ahead as if transfixed by the stacks of cheap plastic goods on one of the stalls. His hand slipped into a pocket, finding a roll of cigarette-sized metal cylinders.

He went to the stall’s side, pretending to examine a set of brightly coloured bowls as he took out the roll. The stallholder was haggling with a woman, not looking at him. A flick of his hand, and the cylinders were tossed into a doorway. The woman’s eyes twitched round at the faint clatter as they landed, but Perez had already moved on.

Syed was now level with him on the other side of the street. The American kept pace. The terrorist leader was about fifty metres from the van, which had stopped again beside a telephone pole. Perez crossed diagonally back across the hectic thoroughfare, slotting in behind his target. His hand went into his other jacket pocket. ‘Just give the word,’ he muttered into his Bluetooth headset.

Kyle zoomed in. None of the people in the operations centre needed the coloured symbols to pick out the players any more, watching unblinkingly as Syed drew closer to the van.

‘Stand by,’ Tony told Perez. Ten metres, the distance shrinking by the second.

Baxter and his two other men, Spence and Ware, stood inside the van, poised at the rear doors. The windows were covered with a tinted film to prevent onlookers from seeing in; the view outside was darkened, but still clear enough to reveal Syed approaching.

‘Set?’ Baxter asked. Both men nodded. One slowly pushed down the door handle, releasing the catch.

Baxter hefted the stubby stun baton in his right hand, thumb poised on its trigger.

‘Ready . . .’ said Tony.

Five metres. Four—

‘Go!’

Perez thumbed the button on the radio-control unit in his pocket.

The detonators he had thrown into the doorway exploded one after another, cracking like gunfire. The woman screamed, the stallholder leaping away in fright and knocking his merchandise to the ground.

People spun in shock and fear at the noise. Terrorists, the army, criminals – any of them could send stray bullets into the crowd. Where was the shooter?

For a moment, all eyes were looking in the same direction.

Including Syed’s.

He was two metres from the van when the device went off, whirling to find the source of the – gunfire? No, the sound wasn’t right. Just fireworks—

It took his mind only a fraction of a second to reach that conclusion, but by then it was too late.

The van’s rear doors swept open. The first two men jumped out to flank him. Baxter, a step behind, pressed the stun baton against the back of his neck. A harsh buzz – and over a million volts flooded through Syed’s body.

The cell leader slumped as if his bones had liquefied, eyes rolled up into his head. Ware and Spence caught him, swinging his nerveless body around and hauling it into the van. Baxter was already back inside; Perez followed, slamming the doors behind him.

Lak set the Mercedes moving as the last detonator fired. The entire procedure had taken a fraction under seven seconds. A few people on the street were left vaguely aware that something had happened behind the van – but in the confusion, all attention on the sound of shots, nobody could remember what the man who had been there just moments before even looked like.

The van turned down a side street and sped away.