The Angel by Mark Dawson Read Free Book Online Page A

complete.
    She opened her right fist and trailed the fingertips of her left hand across the silver locket.
    She was disappointed. She realised that at a dim and distant level, she had been entertaining the prospect that Pope was going to offer her something to do. Something, perhaps, that her mother might have done before her.
    She allowed herself a laugh.
    That was foolishness. She was fifteen years old. What use could Control possibly have for her?
    She unclipped the clasp of the chain, put it around her neck and fastened it again. She slid the locket between her T-shirt and skin and let the warmed silver drop down to her chest.
    The blare of the tugboat’s horn brought her around again. There was no point in dawdling. She wasn’t interested in sightseeing . She reached into her pocket for her phone and called up the map of the Underground. She needed to get to Heathrow. She could take the Jubil ee Line at Westminster, change onto the Bakerloo Line at Baker Street and then get the Heathrow Express from Paddington . It would take her an hour to get across the city.
    No, she thought. There is nothing for me here. No reason to stay.
    Time to leave. She would be back in Marrakech by evening.

    Ibrahim drove the Mercedes Sprinter carefully. He had driven the route two times before in order to familiarise himself with it, and that familiarity bred confidence. It was twenty miles, and in the heavy morning traffic, he knew it would take between an hour and an hour and a half. That was fine. The itinerary had been designed with that in mind, and it would be flexible enough to be adapted, should that be necessary.
    Everything was proceeding as he had planned. Allah was smiling upon them.
    Relaxing was out of the question, but as he idled before a red light on the North Circular, he did allow himself a moment to think about the events that had led to this day.
    Ibrahim had fought the peshmerga in the ultimately futile battle of Kobani, and Abdul had been involved with the foreign hostages in Aleppo and Raqqa. Ibrahim did not have to try very hard to remember what it was like to be pinned down in a defensive position as imperialist jets screamed overhead, dropping their laser-guided bombs and demolishing vehicles and emplacements. He had seen brothers whom he had fought alongside torn to pieces by the bombs. And he had met others, older than he was, who had done battle with the fascists in Afghanistan and Iraq, and others who had fought the Jews in Palestine. He had heard stories of what the enemy had done during the conflicts. He had seen videos of the atrocities at Abu Ghraib, read about the torture at the CIA’s black sites and fulminated over the continued injustices at Guantánamo.
    The caliph had decreed that retaliation was in order. Ibrahim was honoured to have been chosen to put the plan into effect.
    He was a British citizen, born and bred. There were ten of them who had been selected from the ranks of the British fighters who had offered themselves into the service of the Islamic State. Some of them, like himself and Abdul, had seen plenty of fighting in the two or three years that they had been in the Middle East. Others were less experienced, but no less dedicated to the cause.
    The government had made it clear that nationals who travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight for the caliphate would be treated as terrorists if they were to return.
    Terrorists!
    The hypocrisy turned his stomach.
    Nevertheless, they could not risk the likelihood that they would be arrested if they returned by air. Mohammed had crafted a detailed and thorough plan that would make that unnecessary and mean that they could travel without fear of detection. They had travelled by sea on a series of cargo ships, trawlers and pleasure craft, transferring from one to the next in the middle of the ocean, far from prying eyes. Muammar Gaddafi had used similar methods to supply the IRA with weapons in the 1970s, and it was just as effective today as it had