Witley Tea Rooms, Slough
Mustafa Aqmal was a tall, lanky man with dark, oily skin matched by dark, oily hair. His nose, by proportion to the rest of his face, was enormous and beak-like, and both its size and awkward shape were emphasized by sunken cheeks and seemingly non-existent ears. He kept his black hair smartly combed, and the natural oils of his scalp gave it an almost polished sheen. He wore an olive-green suit without a tie, and the boniness of his frame was visible through the fabric.
In his general demeanour he appeared to most people in the Western world as a fairly standard example of what an Arab in Western attire was expected to look like: generally like a westerner in the same garb, but not quite fitting into either the clothes or the surroundings. It was a look he cultivated carefully, for fulfilling a stereotype helped to make one invisible, which was almost always Aqmal’s goal. Only when one stopped to look closely did one begin to sense something more to his image. His slender fingers danced with a certain, deliberate grace; his lanky limbs moved with precision. He never seemed to look directly at anyone or anything, yet the surety of his gestures bespoke a man who was familiar with every detail of his surroundings at all times. In the rare moments when one did make eye contact with him, Mustafa Aqmal’s brown eyes seemed hollow – but it was not the hollow of emptiness. The hollow of his eyes was like a vacuum, forcibly depriving everything around them of light.
Marcianus had always hated those eyes. Since he and Aqmal had first met three years before, they had always filled him with a distinct unease – a feeling to which Marcianus, from his own position of power, was not accustomed. What was worse, Aqmal seemed to know that he had this effect upon Marcianus.
Marcianus walked towards him now. The corner table of the Witley Tea Rooms off Bath Road in Slough was secluded, and the establishment itself largely quiet – though not empty enough to make their meeting memorable to the staff or other patrons. Marcianus watched as the spindly figure of Aqmal sat strangely in the booth seat, sipping from a water glass. He approached and sat opposite him.
‘Assalamu alaykum,’ he said as he sat. His Arabic was raw, but his greeting passable. The other man could take it or leave it.
‘Wa alaykum assalam,’ Aqmal answered calmly. He moved his gaze from the window to Marcianus, and the two men’s eyes met. Marcianus squirmed despite himself. Aqmal’s features seemed to flash the tiniest of satisfied self-adulations.
‘I was not expecting we would meet again,’ he said, keeping his gaze on Marcianus. ‘Your call came as a . . . surprise.’ A sip from his water glass. A long pause.
‘Neither was I,’ Marcianus answered. ‘Everything I mentioned on the phone is new, since we last spoke properly. It’s my luck you happened to be in the country.’
Marcianus struggled to keep this rhetoric friendly. He despised the language of ‘luck’, every ounce of his will desiring to say what he really meant: Your being in the country is a fortuitous confirmation of my divine plan. But he knew that it was with more comfortable, approachable words that he would gradually exert his familiar grip of control.
Mustafa Aqmal nodded a slow, acquiescent nod, his face betraying no emotion.
‘I hope it does not mean that my previous work for you has been for nothing.’ As Aqmal spoke, he wove his long, thin fingers in front of him. He kept his eyes slightly downcast as the words came, speaking into the tabletop, carrying on his conversation with Marcianus as if with a phantom – as if the man were not sat mere feet from him. It was an unnerving tactic, and Marcianus recognized the subtle manoeuvrings of a man whose position, in his circles, was as influential and revered as his own.
‘We allied ourselves with your project,’ Aqmal continued, ‘because you promised us a strike on the beast. An attack on the Western infidel. It would be most unfortunate if that promise were not to be fulfilled.’
Marcianus answered dismissively. ‘That’s not an issue. Your strike will still come, and it will be fierce. But we need to eliminate this little . . . hiccup . . . before we can proceed.’
He worded his comments carefully. It was essential that Aqmal remain on board. The Arab man’s aims, which the American government openly and rightly called terrorism, did not interest Marcianus in the slightest. The man was simply out to enact his rage: to strike out at the oppressors and the impious. Make them bleed and suffer for their wrongs. ‘A weakened foe falls more easily,’ he had said when they first met.
Marcianus had brought him on board because that image was required, with all its associations. Apart from that, Aqmal had proved himself helpful more than once. He could be so again.
That is, assuming the whole arrangement wasn’t derailed.
‘The woman has intercepted part of our plans,’ Marcianus said. ‘She’s a risk. We need to eliminate that risk so we can proceed.’
Aqmal nodded. ‘If that is all that is involved, it will not be difficult.’
‘She has made travel plans. She intends to fly to Egypt in two hours, and we’ve got to stop her.’
Aqmal took a long breath, considering. ‘It will be far easier to do in Egypt than here in Britain. If their flight is in only two hours, by now they’ll be in the airport. Too much security to act there, unless you want to draw attention to yourself.’
‘No. We must remain as invisible as we can.’
‘Who is she travelling with?’
‘Wess is with two others. Her husband, Michael Torrance, is booked on the seat next to her.’ Marcianus paused. Torrance had already represented an obstacle, a wall against their interests, though one whose importance had been superseded by recent events. Or so Marcianus had thought, until he had discovered that Torrance was married to Emily Wess.
‘The next seat over has been booked on the same reservation, under the name Chris Taylor,’ Marcianus concluded.
‘Who is that?’
‘He is an FBI agent stationed at the American Embassy in London. A former Navy officer.’
Aqmal’s lips curled back, and he looked up squarely at Marcianus. ‘The FBI? I thought you’d kept the American government out of this.’
‘He’s a friend of the husband,’ Marcianus answered. ‘His involvement only reinforces the need to put an end to this, and to them.’ He leaned across the table, bringing his head as close as possible to Aqmal, and spoke in an urgent whisper. ‘Will you offer your assistance once more? I’ll give you one of my men, more if you need them.’
‘Yes, and no.’ Aqmal all but gnarled his answer. ‘I will help, if it will further my cause through yours. Though the matter must be dealt with quickly – I have other obligations. Twenty-four hours, no more.’
‘Fine.’
‘But,’ Aqmal added, ‘I will not travel with one of your men.’
‘You want to seize them yourself?’
‘No. I do not wish to go alone, but neither do I wish to be accompanied by one of your . . . lackeys. You have requested the last-minute aid of the leader of my organization. Me. I expect the assistance of the leader of yours.’ He let his gaze linger, unblinking, on Marcianus’s face.
Marcianus said nothing. He had hoped not to be further sidetracked from his essential work, but if personally accompanying the Arab was the only way to get him to assist them again, he had little choice but to comply. He nodded his assent silently.
‘Then our next stop is Egypt,’ Aqmal said, smiling sinisterly back at him. ‘We’ll wait for them when they land. Then, at the first opportune moment, we’ll take care of your little hiccup, once and for all.’