The Persona Protocol - By Andy McDermott Page 0,20

He wasn’t far from the market. He had gone through it to shake off anyone who might have been following him, but then . . . nothing. He frowned.

‘Are you okay?’ the man asked again. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘I’ll be all right.’ He squinted down the road, mentally trying to retrace his steps, but the memory would not come.

‘He might have hit you on the head,’ said the man. ‘Maybe you should see a doctor.’

‘I’m fine,’ Syed said irritably. He turned in the other direction and strode away. He was already dismissing the incident as bad luck, falling victim to an opportunistic thief, rather than anything sinister. If Pakistani or American intelligence agents had been behind the attack, he would be on his way to a torture cell by now.

The other onlookers dispersed, leaving the man alone. He watched until Syed was out of sight. The earpiece that had been in his pocket while he ‘helped’ the terrorist was returned to his ear. ‘Tony, it looks like Syed bought it,’ reported Lak. ‘He doesn’t remember what happened. Now,’ a sigh, ‘where are these bodies we need to clean up?’

7

The Schizoid Man

Pakistan had been left far behind as the private jet crossed over the Kazakhstani border into Russian airspace, heading north on a trans-polar route back to the United States.

Adam had been undergoing a debriefing – at times, almost an interrogation. Malik Syed was only a relatively small cog in the terrorist organisation, and as such his knowledge of its overall activities was limited, but even so there was urgency to the questioning. Part of this was due to the desire of the American agents to obtain the most vital information as quickly as possible. Lives, after all, could be at stake.

The other part was a matter of neurochemistry. The process that had transferred Syed’s memories into Adam’s mind was only temporary.

Tony was conducting the debriefing in a small cabin at the rear of the jet, Holly Jo recording everything. The field commander had a long list of questions: names of contacts, meeting places, phone numbers, email addresses, past operations, future targets. Adam’s answers often led to tangential but equally valuable queries, stretching out the process. They were almost four hours in, and barely halfway down the list.

And getting an answer was not always straightforward.

‘Who gave Numan Aaqib’s location to Syed?’ Tony asked. Five weeks earlier, the safe house where a double agent who had infiltrated an al-Qaeda cell was being debriefed had been attacked. The informer and four agents from Pakistani and US intelligence were all killed. The safe house was supposed to be top secret; there was almost certainly a mole within the Pakistani government.

‘I won’t—’ Adam began, defiant anger in his voice before he regained control. More calmly, he spoke again. ‘I don’t know the name of the mole, but Syed was given the address by . . .’ He stopped again, faint twitches of his facial muscles betraying the internal conflict as he forced out the information. ‘By Mohammed Qasid.’

Holly Jo typed the name into her laptop. A file appeared on its screen after a few seconds, the machine connected via satellite link to the US intelligence network’s enormous database. ‘Qasid,’ she read. ‘He’s . . . wow. He’s one of Muqaddim al-Rais’s lieutenants.’

‘Al-Rais?’ exclaimed Tony, surprised. ‘You mean Syed’s only two steps removed from the head of the organisation? No way we got that lucky on the first go.’ He looked back at Adam. ‘Did Syed ever meet al-Rais?’

The younger man shook his head. ‘No. And he only met Qasid once – he came with Syed’s usual contact.’

‘Sloppy security,’ Holly Jo commented. ‘A cell leader at Syed’s level shouldn’t ever have come into direct contact with somebody that high up the chain.’

‘Bad for them, good for us,’ said Tony. ‘Who did Syed normally deal with?’

‘A man called . . .’ Again, it took a moment for the name to emerge, the other persona within him not wanting to give up the secret. ‘Hanif Fathi.’

Another, much shorter file came up in response to Holly Jo’s request. ‘Not much on him, not even a photo. The Pakistanis might be able to give us more.’

A sour note entered Tony’s voice. ‘Assuming they haven’t been completely infiltrated by al-Qaeda sympathisers. Okay, go back to Qasid. Did he tell Syed anything else we can use? Names, future plans?’

Adam thought about it. ‘Nothing specific, they didn’t spend much time together, but . . . there was something. A code name. Qasid called it