Spider Tariq
The corner of the large open plan office was filled with a large desk, more of a table, with three computer screens set at angles to face the operator who sat in a swivel chair on castors, one hand on a mouse and the other resting on a large machine drawing. He was intently staring at an extra-large screen which made the operator seem diminutive. The screen was flicking from a wide to expanded scene showing complicated drawings of a machine of some sorts as the mouse in the right hand was furiously moving over a worn pad and the finger clicking the button. So intent was Tariq Azzar concentrating on the screen that he didn’t notice his supervisor approaching and peering over his right shoulder.
“What’s this Tariq?” asked John Whitelaw as Tariq flinched and looked up over his shoulder. “This isn’t your area, is it?”
“Oh, you frightened me, John. I didn’t notice you here,” said Tariq as he flicked to a wide screen exposing the full drawing. “I’m having some trouble with finding a solution to the problem you set me. The answers that I have come up with, are rather cumbersome and I don’t think our client will appreciate it so I’ve looked further up line to see if anything can be tweaked?”
“Is this one of your easy solutions again Tariq? Putting the blame further up?”
“Well, it’s always worth looking at eliminating the whole process or system that’s causing the issues rather than just fixing the problem that’s been highlighted.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticising you, but I reckon the engineers have included these elements for some good reason but show me what you have come up with,” answered John as he pulled up a chair and stared at the screen as Tariq flicked through the screens at a slower pace so that John could follow the pattern as Tariq explained the problem and his solution.
“I would call that an elegant solution Tariq. I cannot see any problems so far but I will double check with the design engineers. Unfortunately, from your point of view you have done yourself out of a job. I will pay you off as per contract but I haven’t any follow up work just yet. You can pack up and I’ll be in touch with further projects for you in the next week or so. In the meantime, take some time off and don’t take anything else on. I don’t want to lose your talent just yet.”
Tariq tided up his desk, stacking the paperwork and dusting the surfaces with his sleeve. He was about to leave when a thought struck him and he sat down again and adjusted the smallest of the three screens and opened up the internet with swift actions from his mouse. A quick look around the office to check that all operatives were busy with their tasks he started frantic typing and setting up banners reading ‘STOP THE DESTRUCTION TO BASING COMMON NOW!!!’ Thirty minutes later he rose from his chair with a smug smile and went off to the kitchenette to get himself a cup of coffee. A quick look around the desk to see if he had left anything personal and he strolled away flicking open his mobile phone and scanning for a number.
“Hi Barry, I’ve got some time off. Fancy a trip to Pembroke and do some cliffs. The weather and tides are right for it.”
“Now there’s an offer I can’t refuse. Say I pick you up as usual outside the Madejski Stadium at two. We’ll get there in time to check out the cliffs and choose a few routes. Can you make it for two Tariq? Are you at home or the office?”
“I’m at the office but no probs. Can we stay the weekend or even longer? I’m a free agent at the moment until the next job materialises.”
“I’ll check with the gang. Some of them might want to join us for a few days. Most unfortunate they have to go to work to earn a crust all week. I will trawl them and meet you in the car park.”
“Bril, I’ll be there with my gear. I’m just opposite the bus station so I should be there on time. I’ll phone if I’m delayed, bye.” Tariq brightened visibly with the thought of a climbing trip with friends. In the last three years his life had changed for the better immeasurably. He picked up his coffee and wandered out of the office heading for the Hook train station to catch the first available to Basingstoke. They were frequent enough but he did let his mind wander to the thought of buying a car so that he could be more mobile. That would be too costly he reminded himself, rather disappointed again. A number thirteen bus slowed up across the road and Tariq made an immediate decision and ran across the road and jumped on. Although it was slower than the train, travelling through the villages, at least he was on his way home, to his shared flat, directly opposite the Basingstoke bus station.
As he sat on the bumpy bus he mused about his life and recent change of circumstances. He was from a small village in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. He was the eldest boy in the family and they had scrimped and saved to send him to university in Marrakech. He studied a compendium of subjects including tourism, computing, history, English and French. His aim or his family’s aim was for him to be a tourist guide where he would earn good money and help the family out. This was payback time and the job of tourist guide proved quite fruitful but there was a gnawing feeling that the streets of London or Paris were still strewn with gold. He had applied and got a student visa to London and set off to make his fortune. His initial jobs were working as a waiter during the day and barman at night, lodging with five other Moroccans in a single room. The money was good and the immediate benefit was that he improved his English sufficiently to encourage him to apply for jobs in the computer industry. There were plenty of jobs on offer in that field according to the papers and the listings on the internet.
Within six months he had a position as a programmer in south London, not far from his cramped digs. He scrimped and saved, sending most of his moneys earned to his family in Morocco. That is until a colleague, a girl got her claws into him and his free time to work in the bars was much reduced. Eleanor worked in the same office and she introduced him to the night life of London and also to other more strenuous nocturnal activities. One of which was climbing on the wall in the local sports centre. Tariq was a natural and soon got the nickname of ‘Spider Tariq’ which rather pleased him. His family complained that his monthly contributions were reducing so he scoured the papers for more profitable work.
An interesting position was offered in an office in Hook near Basingstoke, on the edge of Silicon Valley extending out of London on either side of the M4 motorway. He found digs in a shared flat in the middle of Basingstoke. He now had a room of his own in a two-bedroom apartment in a tower block which he shared with a couple who had taken over the lounge. Another programmer who had taken the larger bedroom and Tariq occupied the smallest bedroom, which was an absolute luxury for him, having spent all of his life sharing one room with a crowd of people. His share of the rent was relatively small and since his salary had risen sharply, he could continue sending a goodly stream of money back home. His only regret was his parting with Eleanor who was off trekking and climbing in the Karakorum Mountains of Pakistan with a group. Her parting gift was introducing Tariq to a climbing club in Reading nearby. This became his life and soul.
The job was interesting, working on engineering projects using Cad-Cam processes to produce working drawings for complex engineering projects. The only problem was the workflow was irregular and his manager offered him the position of work as a freelancer rather than a full-time employee. This concerned him at first, expecting to be without work for long periods of time, without essential remuneration. As it turned out he was busier than ever and his pay had increased substantially. In between jobs and at weekends he could pursue his passion, climbing. Apart from climbing walls, the Reading Club introduced him to the real thing on real rock rather than plastic digits fixed to board. Every weekend and spare time he would take the opportunity to satisfy his passion and on his bus journey home he was already visualising the equipment and clothing he would pack into his rucksack and feeling guilty that he was spending all this cash on his own enjoyment rather than sending it home to support his family although from irregular reports they were thriving. An uncle had set up a tourist shop in Arfoud and his father had bought another grove of date palms which would provide the family with a steady income apart from improvements to the family house.
Barry dropped Tariq off at the foot of his block in the centre of Basingstoke and with a wave carried on home to Reading. Tariq was dog tired and even in his elation he couldn’t be bothered to climb the stairs in his usual way and used the lift up to the seventh floor. Picking up his heavy pack he backed out of the lift and started down the short corridor. He didn’t get far.
“Tariq Azzar?” said an authoritative voice “Stand still and don’t move your arms!” continued the man as two armed policemen stepped out from an alcove and pointed their weapons at him. He felt his pack being lifted off his back and his arms were pinned behind his back and cuffed. He was spun round and faced the man in plain clothes who had issued the orders. Tariq had said nothing at this point, too astounded to speak. “You are under arrest and will be coming with us for interrogation,” said the man obviously in charge as Tariq, all bewildered was escorted back to the lift. It took two lift journeys to get him, his kit and all the armed policemen down to the garage basement where there was a van waiting for them. A policeman bodily loaded Tariq into the back of the van, undid one cuff, sat him down and clipped the cuff to the side rail.
“What’s this all about?” asked Tariq, getting his mind back into resemblance of sanity.
“Don’t ask and keep quiet!” answered or more rightly ordered the policeman as he sat down behind him with three other armed officers. Tariq kept quiet and thought. Was this to do with his work visa? He had renewed it recently and he was now on a two year ‘essential occupation’ visa issued by the British Embassy in London. His manager had helped him with arranging one and vouched for his integrity. There was no point in further questioning the policemen in the van. They didn’t look like they were going to help and the man in civilian clothes, their obvious leader, was not there. He settled back in his seat and tried to relax his weary body and started thinking until the penny finally dropped. He had been doing things on his computer before he left work which might have upset the authorities but he didn’t think it would be that serious to have a squad of armed policeman to arrest him. He wondered where they were taking him since he couldn’t see out of the darkened windows. He tried to make use of his internal compass but that wasn’t helping. His watch plus his mobile phone were in his rucksack so he couldn’t make out the time.
He decided he was being taken to Reading police station but he was far from sure. They arrived in a dimly lit underground garage and led him handcuffed to a cell. He sat on the cot with his back to the wall and pondered his fate. Shortly an orderly, not in police uniform, brought in what looked like grey pyjamas and ordered him to strip and put his clothes and footwear into a black plastic sack which he took away leaving Tariq to don the pyjamas. It wasn’t too warm in the cell and his feet started to get chilled so he curled up in the cot and shivered from cold and mainly from fear of the unknown.
Some time later Tariq was escorted by two guards to an office and sat on a chair in front of a large wooden desk. The two guards took up positions on either side of him as he faced two bored looking men in civilian suits looking at paperwork laid out on the desk in front of them. Tariq recognised his Moroccan passport which must have been taken from his flat plus his mobile phone and a pile of letters from his parents plus his second-hand laptop which he hardly used that he had bought for a tenner at a boot sale. The passport was lifted up and flicked through by one of the men. He knew that they had searched his room in the flat thoroughly since he had hidden it for safe keeping behind a loose skirting board behind his bed. His first passport he had kept on him all the time as important and essential personal identification as he had assumed until it had been stolen from him in a mugging. He was told by the Moroccan Embassy to keep it somewhere safe rather than carry it around with him and have it stolen again.
“Is this yours?” asked the taller of the two men holding the passport open at the page with his photograph on it.
“Yes, it is,” replied Tariq deciding to do the minimum of talking until he discovered the reason for his fate.
“It was issued by the Moroccan Embassy two years ago in London,” stated the second shorter man looking at him intently. “What happened with the first?”
“It was stolen from me in London. I reported it to the police.”
“Yes, we know. Why did you hide it?”
“They told me at the Embassy that I wouldn’t need it on me all the time in Britain and not to carry it around to be stolen. I hid it. I live in a flat with others that I don’t know so well.”
“Your friend Barry vouches for you that you were with friends on a climbing expedition in Pembrokeshire this weekend. Your old passport was used in London this weekend. Do you know who used it?”
“Of course I don’t!” answered Tariq indignantly. “A bag was put over my head and I was roughed up badly. They took everything, even my trainers and baseball cap.”
“The police report on the incident says they hadn’t noticed anyone following you or interested in you. Having had some time to think about it can you add to that story? Anything suspicious comes to mind?”
“No, as I told the police, I was working double shift at that time, a waiter in a Mexican place and barman at a club. I was hurrying home to get some rest and they took all my wages and tips for the week.”
“That’s why you didn’t send any money back home to your folks that week?”
“That’s right,” answered Tariq shifting uncomfortably. “How do you know?”
“We know everything about you,” said the taller man. “We know the total amount you sent to your folks and how much you earn, the lot. What we are interested in is who used your passport this Saturday and who was trying to impersonate you.”
“How do I know? I was mugged and didn’t see my attackers.”
“How do we know that is true?”
“Well, they beat me up badly. The police took me to A&E for treatment. I was off work for a few days and even had to borrow shoes to go to work until I got paid.”
“Right, we need to know all about your friends and acquaintances in London at that time, since you arrived in Britain.” They interrogated him for hours or days it seemed interspersed with an occasional comfort break. They only gave him drinks of water and no food. Tariq thought this was an interrogation ploy but little did they know that for one thing he ate very sparsely and at home in Morocco there were times when the family went for days without proper food. This was no hardship for Tariq to be denied food, probably more of a problem for his interrogators. They went over the same ground over and over again, asking the same questions in different ways and getting the same answers as far as he was concerned. However boring and exasperating it seemed to Tariq, his two interrogators appeared unconcerned and carried on regardless of this repetition. Finally, he was escorted to his cell where he found a pair of thick socks and slip-on slippers set out on his cot.
A guard came in and handed him a photocopy of a takeaway menu from an Asian restaurant. The names and addresses had been obliterated. Tariq smiled at the naivety of his capturers. They all assumed that a Moroccan would enjoy a Chinese takeaway. He didn’t even peruse the menu but handed it back and asked the warder for a Big Mac with double fries. The fat content was the most sustaining and he didn’t know when his next meal would come. The warder nodded his head and slammed the door behind him. The most annoying thing was that they wouldn’t tell him why he was being detained and the second most annoying that he hadn’t had a proper wash or shower for four days and he felt most uncomfortable in this state. All there was in this cell was a toilet and a steel sink with a soap dispenser. He stripped and tore off a piece of his pyjama leg and washed himself down using the rag as a flannel. At least there was hot water and soap. He climbed under the blanked and tried to sleep but it took a while for him to succumb. He was tired by the energetic weekend of sport and especially by being tense through his ordeal that day.
Tariq assumed it was the following day that he was woken up by a warder bringing him a tray of food and coffee. It was an All-English breakfast of pork sausage, bacon, bread fried in bacon fat, two eggs and a pile of baked beans. Tariq smiled inwardly. Was this another attempt to annoy him or was it just ignorance. He put it down to ignorance since it was less annoying. As a Muslim he had avoided any pig meat and here was a cacophony of pork on a plate. What the hell he thought. God would allow him to eat pork if he was starving and he had to admit in the past he had eaten pork products knowingly and actually had liked them. His body needed stoking up so he ate it all up and even wiped his plate clean with the slice of bread. Having finished his coffee, he felt better but only for a moment when he remembered reading a novel where the police starved their victim and then gave him food to loosen their mind and get more information out of them. A smack on the face got rid of the paranoia and even brought the first smile to his face.
The cell door opened and he was ushered out to the same hard chair, the same large desk and the same two interrogators. This time, Shorty as he had named him, passed a sheet of printer paper to him emblazoned with a slogan which he recognised, ‘‘STOP THE DESTRUCTION TO BASING COMMON NOW!!!’ it stated boldly.
“Now what can you tell me about this?” asked Shorty.
“It’s a campaign to stop them building an industrial estate on a piece of parkland on the outskirts of Basingstoke.”
“Yes, we know that but what’s it to you?”
“I run there on a regular basis and I’m just supporting the campaign?”
“How do you support it?”
“I’ve signed a petition and have volunteered to join a protest meeting on the Town Hall steps.”
“Is that all?” asked Large. “It seems you have taken matters further and recently as Thursday hacked into the Council’s computer. Tell us about it. And who supported you?”
“I did it off my own back. No one supported me or got involved. I had some spare time at work. Finished a project earlier and since I would miss the protest, I decided to add my mark to it.”
“Do you know that the protest was cancelled as a result of your work?”
“Oh dear, I didn’t realise the consequences. I thought I was helping not hindering.”
“Well don’t worry,” said Shorty with the first betrayal of a smile. “It hit the daily papers and TV news. What we are interested in, is how you managed to bypass some very secure fire walls and sophisticated security systems?”
“As you probably know I work in computers, so I looked it up on the dark web. I meant no harm. It was a harmless message that would come up every time anyone at the Council typed a full stop. It seemed an appropriate reminder and it was supposed to only last for fifty occasions on each PC.”
“We agree it was harmless and made the point but what intrigues us is why you didn’t cover your trail. You left your signature on the hack. Why?”
“I didn’t get to that part of the instructions. I was in a hurry to get back to my flat and pack.”
“Bit gormless of you, wasn’t it?”
“I suppose so but I didn’t do anything destructive.”
“How many times have you done similar things to get information from places where you weren’t supposed to, legally?”
“Never before, just this once,” answered Tariq but the questioning went on and on until Tariq felt drained and Shorty and Large seemed satisfied. They warned him not to try it again. He was led off via a series of corridors and lifts to another cell. This was plusher in that it had a bathroom and television. On the bed, laid out neatly were his clothes. All washed and ironed. Even the climbing kit he had worn on the last day. Tariq shrugged his shoulders at the irony of the situation and decided to have a long hot shower to relax his muscles and try and forget about his situation, not that he could forget so easily.
Whilst in the hot shower he went over in his mind and in detail, the occurrences of the last few days, especially the interrogation and his internment. He surmised that being moved to better accommodation meant that either he was being treated more leniently or that he was going to be detained for longer. A phone rang loudly and he decided he had better answer it, so he plodded out wet and naked, leaving marks on the carpet. The caller wanted to know what he wanted to eat and drink. To be cheeky and as awkward as he could, he asked for a lamb tagine with sweet couscous and a large beer. The phone call ended by the caller with no comment and Tariq went back to finish his shower wondering what his order would turn out like if anything.
Switching on the TV, Tariq scoured all the news channels, searching for some recent terrorist incident that might throw light on his predicament. Being a Muslim, he was aware of all the problems that might imply. He was even careful not to carry bags and satchels on public transport if he could avoid it and whenever he carried his climbing rucksack onto a bus, he noticed people changing seats or even suddenly getting off the bus. He felt this was a false arrest but his interrogators wouldn’t answer his questions and just ignored them and carried on.
A knock on the door shook him out of the comfort zone as the guard entered with a tray of food, as a second guard held the door open. The tray was placed on a small side table and the guard departed with a smile and uttered ‘Bon Appetite.’ Tariq could smell the mixture of Moroccan spices before he lifted the cloche off the plate. It looked like a meat tagine and Tariq grabbed a fork and shovelled a heap into his mouth as a taster. It was good, not as spicy as his mother made but the meat was of better quality. He noticed a bottle of beer at the side with a glass. Again, someone had thoughtfully prised the cap open so that he could pour himself a glass. He pulled up a chair and tucked in, realising that his retainers had allowed him a knife and fork and even a spoon. He lifted the second cloche and underneath he uncovered a classic English pudding, an apple crumble. An odd choice but he quietly thanked his guard and decided to be a bit more prudent in his choices in the future. No point in antagonising them with difficult demands he thought. With one eye on the food and one eye on the TV screen he polished off his dinner realising it was well past eleven o’clock at night as per the TV. He finished his beer and retired to a comfortable bed for the night.
After a hearty full English breakfast, he was again heralded into the interview room where Shorty and Large continued their incessant questioning until his head hurt. Suddenly Shorty stopped the questioning, looked at Large and got a perceptible nod.
“Thank you, Mr. Tariq Azzar. We have finished our questioning and are satisfied with the outcome. You are now going to be released with all your belongings. Don’t ask any questions because you won’t get any answers from us. You were detained because your old passport and identity was being used for something illegal. We are satisfied that you weren’t involved and you are being released. Go with the guard and he will arrange transport home. Another thing, we don’t want you ever to be involved in hacking again. We will neatly forget this last indiscretion.” With that both stood up and departed through the door at the rear without another word or glance. Tariq was left with the two guards who were in the process of ushering him out.
They took him directly to a lift and down to the garage floor where he was invited to step into the back of what looked like the same van, he arrived in. The door was slammed shut and the van immediately drove off up a ramp. On the seat in front were his rucksack, and his laptop in a plastic bag with his passport and letters from his parents. Only his mobile was missing. The van eventually stopped and the van door opened by a man in jeans and T-shirt. He handed Tariq his watch and mobile, bid him a good day and sped away. Tariq found himself in the garage basement of his block of flats feeling rather foolish. How was he going to explain all this to anyone who was going to ask, especially his flat mates and how were they going to react? Did his employers know of his arrest and would it affect his future work? He had lots of questions and no answers. He called the lift and shouldered his rucksack in resignation and held tightly onto the plastic bag as he awaited the doors to open.
