Chapter 17 #2
‘Hi, Dan, great to see you today and thanks a lot for lunch. The next one’s on me.
I’ve been doing a bit of digging to see if I could unearth anything more than the obvious on any of the TXA people, and I thought I’d found nothing.
But then a chance conversation with one of the consular staff here threw up a little snippet that might be significant. ’
I set down my empty glass, pulled out my notebook – I never go anywhere without it – and listened attentively. What he had to say was fascinating.
‘There’s a Penelope Green among the names you gave me.
I just happened to mention her name to one of my older colleagues, and he told me that he was at the British embassy in Amman, Jordan, at the time when the head of the consular section was none other than her father, Lawrence Green, now British Consul General in Toronto, Canada.
His wife and two daughters, Penelope and Violet, lived in Amman for a total of twelve years until Lawrence Green was transferred to Canada.
Nothing unusual there. Diplomatic staff do tend to get moved around quite a bit, but what was interesting was that Lawrence Green’s transfer was unexpected and very sudden, and the word around the embassy was that the hasty move had been to avert a scandal.
I called in a couple of favours and spoke to a few people in the know, and it turns out that the scandal involved the elder daughter, Penelope, at that time age just turned eighteen. ’
‘What sort of scandal? Did they tell you?’
‘It appears that young Penelope had decided to fall madly in love. What might be of interest is that the object of her affections was none other than a wanted jihadi of Iraqi origin, named Ibrahim Hassan. The tip-off came from the CIA, who had been monitoring Hassan for some months, and the powers-that-be must have decided that the best course of action was for the budding relationship to be knocked on the head. Hence the family’s sudden move to Canada. ’
My mind was racing. The mysterious Shabah character who had contacted Angel with an order for weapons had been Iraqi – or at least believed to be Iraqi – so could it be…?
Billy was way ahead of me. ‘I’ve been sitting here trying to put two and two together without making five, and I’m just wondering whether maybe, just maybe, Ibrahim Hassan and Shabah might turn out to be one and the same.
’ There was a note of excitement in his voice now.
‘I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but it’s a possibility. ’
‘What about Hassan? You mentioned that the CIA had been keeping an eye on him. Where is he now?’
‘Nobody knows.’ The excitement in his voice had been replaced with something more subdued.
‘They lost him.’ He must have heard my grunt of annoyance because he went on to clarify.
‘From what I’ve heard, it wasn’t their fault.
Hassan was tracked to a terrorist training camp in the wilds of eastern Iraq that was carpet bombed by the US Air Force shortly after he got there.
The destruction was almost total, and numerous jihadis were killed, among them Ibrahim Hassan – or so it’s been thought up till now. ’
I added the obvious conclusion. ‘So, are you saying that Shabah might be the reincarnation of Hassan?’
‘Exactly. And if he is, we at least have a physical description of him from the CIA, even though he’s bound to be travelling on a false passport now.’ The excitement was back in his voice. ‘This could be big, Dan, very big.’
‘But the only link at the moment is Penelope Green. Do your people know if she remained in contact with him? Was she under any kind of surveillance after she and the family were moved away from Jordan?’
‘None at all. The belief was that this had just been a teenage romance, and splitting the two of them up would end the matter – and that would appear to be what happened. From the little I can find of her background since then, there’s no indication that she had any further contact with him, but it strikes me as quite a coincidence that she pops up in the same place and at the same time as a terrorist who might or might not be a big cog in the jihadi machine. ’
I sat there and thought about it for a few seconds.
I spotted Tommaso standing by the fly curtain, glanced at Shaun and held up two fingers, nodding towards our empty beer glasses.
Tommaso disappeared back into the bar without hesitation.
As for Penelope Green and her teenage crush, I found myself wondering whether Billy might really be onto something, or whether it was wishful thinking.
I did a bit more thinking of my own – out loud.
‘Penelope told me that she was fluent in Arabic because she used to live in Jordan. She gave me that information quite spontaneously, so if she had been involved in some sort of plot with Hassan, I’m surprised she would have divulged that.
Then there’s the fact that she contacted me to ask if I would get involved in the investigation.
Surely, if she was one of the perpetrators, that’s the last thing she would do.
The other thing I can’t get my head around is what interest there might have been in it for her, or indeed for Hassan, to murder Tristan Angel or Donald Hicks.
After all, Angel was the guy who was going to provide them with enough weapons to start a small war.
Kill him after getting the weapons, quite possibly, but why kill him before? ’
‘That’s what I’ve been asking myself and I don’t have an answer.
Listen, Dan, I can’t put this in a report to London yet; there’s just too much conjecture.
I’d be very grateful if you could have a quiet word with your friend, Inspector Pisano, about it, and ask him to bring up the name Ibrahim Hassan in conversation with her and see how she reacts.
Go ahead and tell him everything I’ve told you, but ask him, for God’s sake, not to go spreading it about.
It may turn out to be perfectly innocent and lead nowhere, and the last thing I want is to raise expectations, only to then dash them again.
My superiors wouldn’t like that one bit.
If she reacts positively, give me a call, and I’ll come straight back up and interview her myself. ’
I promised him I would pass the message on straight away and thanked him warmly for his efforts. I told him I felt sure that Virgilio would sit down first thing in the morning and have an in-depth conversation with Penelope about this, and I hoped very much that I would be included in it.
As the call ended, our beers arrived and I took a big mouthful before turning to Shaun.
Although there was still the very faint possibility that he might have had some involvement in the first murder, I couldn’t see how anything he had heard me say – obviously, he hadn’t been able to hear Billy’s side of the conversation – could help him, but I thought I had better warn him off all the same.
‘Shaun, I need to ask you to forget anything you may have heard me say over the last couple of minutes. It may come to nothing, but it might help solve the murder in the duomo.’
He picked up his glass and gave me a blank look. ‘Sorry, I didn’t hear a thing. Maybe I should get my hearing checked.’ He shot me a little grin. ‘Good luck.’