by Chris Ryan
‘Been busy?’ Spud asked from between gritted teeth.
‘Spotted an opportunity,’ Danny said. ‘Grabbed it.’
‘Feel like telling me what happened?’
Danny sniffed. ‘Put it this way,’ he said. ‘If that Abu Ra’id cunt wants to blow up London again, he’ll need to find another bomber.’
Her name wasn’t really Nicki, of course. The lustrous curly hair was false and she would never normally wear so much lipstick or eyeliner that it made her look like a Western whore. And it went without saying that she did not find her gullible victim remotely attractive. Quite the opposite. He made her flesh creep with his strange features and lecherous glances. But as Abu Ra’id had said: in war, sacrifices have to be made. In Pakistan and Afghanistan, and across the Muslim world, the British and American monsters had targeted the weak and the helpless. So why shouldn’t they use the weak and helpless in their retaliations?
She looked up ahead. Police officers at the corner of Lower Regent Street and Piccadilly Circus. Four of them, in high-visibility jackets. After Paddington, the sight of an Arabic woman, a Down’s syndrome man and a suitcase would surely arouse suspicion.
‘Let’s cross here,’ she suggested.
He looked a bit confused, but of course he agreed.
Hand in hand, they crossed the road and stepped into Norris Street, a quieter back street just south of Piccadilly Circus.
‘I like the arcade machines,’ she said once they were away from the busy main streets. ‘Shall we go and play them?’ And then, when he looked suddenly worried: ‘My treat!’
He grinned at her. They turned a corner. Another main road was up ahead and she saw two more police officers, a man and a woman, walking towards them. Her pulse raced. She had hoped she wouldn’t have to do this, but now there was no choice. She stopped, pinned him against the wall and pressed her lips to his. She felt his tongue, wet and warm, twitching in her mouth. An unpleasant bulge in his trousers.
The police officers passed. She pulled away and saw his foolishly grinning face.
‘That was nice,’ she said.
Two minutes later, still hand in hand, they entered the Trocadero. It was very crowded, even at this hour. They walked past outlets selling brightly coloured sweeties, royal-family plates and tacky models of red London buses. They stood close to each other on the escalator as it carried them down into the basement. Here, the air was filled with the pinging and beeping and roaring of the arcades. Kids stood shooting light guns at imaginary foes. Others sat in arcade cars, speeding round imaginary racetracks. She pointed at an empty car and tugged at his sleeve. ‘Let’s go on that,’ she said.
Dragging the suitcase behind him, he followed her to the car.
‘You go first,’ she said.
Obediently, he propped the suitcase up next to the car and climbed inside. She fed a pound coin into the machine and watched his pitifully malcoordinated attempt at playing the game, which was over in 45 seconds.
Dude, you caused a pile-up, said the machine in a robotic voice.
‘You’re really good,’ she cooed, and she inserted another pound coin. She was aware of a couple of kids loitering nearby, coiled up with suppressed laughter at his strange looks and ineptitude on the arcade.
‘Thank you,’ he said. And then, after a moment’s thought, he blurted out the word: ‘Darling.’
She cringed, and smiled.
When his second go was over, she whispered in his ear, allowing her lips to brush lightly against him. ‘I need to get some more change.’ That look of panic again. She whispered in his ear: ‘We’ll spend a bit more time here, then go back to your place.’
And, of course, he nodded.
‘Will you look after my overnight bag?’ she asked.
He nodded again. Disgusted, she wondered if he might actually start drooling.
‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ she said. ‘Darling.’
She walked towards the escalator. Only when she was at the top did she look back down. The lairy kids had surrounded his car. They were pointing at him and laughing, no doubt as much at his strange looks as at his hopelessness on the arcade. More fool them. She turned her back on them and hurried out of the Trocadero, past the buses and tea towels and sweets, and out into the street. The sky was very dark. Thunder was in the air. She crossed the road and pulled a mobile phone from her coat. She walked briskly as she pressed speed dial number one.
There was no point listening for the ringtone, because she knew there wouldn’t be one. There would just be the explosion, and she braced herself for that.
She was at least thirty metres from the Trocadero’s entrance when it came, but it nearly knocked her from her feet nonetheless. The ground seemed to shake, and the boom seemed to reverberate against the high walls of Shaftesbury Avenue. She fell against another pedestrian – a woman in a blue raincoat, whose expression changed in an instant from annoyance to terror.
As the boom subsided, there was a moment of almost-silence. As though London was holding its breath.
And then a thunderclap cracked overhead. Like an echo of the explosion. Huge droplets of rain spattered on to the pavement. She hurried south, a faceless figure in the faceless crowds, as the desperate screams from the direction of the Trocadero reached her ears.
Nine
‘You should have told me what you were doing, mucker. That’s all I’m saying.’
Spud wasn’t the type to lose his rag, but he was close to it now. For some reason, Danny didn’t care. He was tense. Maybe an argument would do him good.
‘I was thinking on my feet. That’s all I’m saying.’
Spud glared at him from the passenger seat and Danny suddenly felt bad about himself. His mate was right. It was one of the first things they’d learned – never do something by yourself, if you don’t have to.
Chastened, he said: ‘Okay. Point taken.’ And to cover the uncomfortable pause that followed: ‘Fucking traffic. What the hell’s going on?’ They were nose to tail down Fulham Palace Road. It was pissing down and the other drivers were getting lairy. Danny switched on the car radio, wondering if it was too early for there to be any news of his morning’s work.
There was news all right. Just not what they expected. They listened in horror as fragments of information filtered through the breathless reports of harried journalists. Massive explosion . . . scenes of devastation in the West End . . . scores feared dead . . .
The two SAS men sat in sickened silence. If Danny had felt any satisfaction at nailing Sarim Galaid, it was fast disappearing.
‘The Hammerstone lot will be feeling the heat,’ Danny said. ‘We need to get back to the safe house, see if they’ve tried to contact us.’
It took an hour. They were tempted to use their siren, but in the end made the call not to. They’d just have been one of many, and in any case Danny didn’t much feel like drawing attention to himself. By the time they reached Battersea Park, he was ready to explode with tension, and he sensed Spud felt the same. As they pulled up outside the safe house, his mate retrieved his Glock from the glove department. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s check the dead-letter box.’
‘Wait.’ Danny pointed through the windscreen.
At the end of the street was a main road running at right angles. Rammed with traffic, just like everywhere else. On the opposite side, no more than thirty metres from the safe house, was a large billboard advertising The Lion King, which sure as hell wouldn’t be running tonight. And standing underneath the billboard, looking quite out of place in this shitty part of town, with his heavy black overcoat and patrician features, was a man they both knew.
‘Piers Chamberlain,’ Spud muttered suspiciously. ‘I thought those fuckers didn’t want anything to do with us.’
‘They don’t,’ Danny breathed. Not as a foursome. But individually, perhaps?
The two men debussed. Danny clicked the key fob and the vehicle beeped itself shut. He didn’t think Chamberlain had seen them yet, but he
knew that putting himself in their line of vision was an invitation for them to make contact. Chamberlain might be a rupert, but he was a Regiment rupert who knew damn well he couldn’t expect to go unnoticed by two active SAS operatives. Danny and Spud walked side by side to the end of the street. He clocked them in a few seconds, nodded, and then started walking along the opposite side of the main road. Fifty metres further along, he stepped into a greasy spoon. A good place for a covert RV. Cheap cafes like that never had CCTV, and it was usual to have different clientele of all types each day. They wouldn’t look out of place.
Danny and Spud stopped.
‘Do we join him?’ Spud asked.
Danny nodded. ‘We join him.’
‘Then he’s buying the fucking sarnies.’
They crossed the road. The front window of the greasy spoon was misted up from the inside, but Danny could make out the dark shadow of a big man sitting by the window and instinctively knew it was Chamberlain. With the sound of three different police sirens fading in the background, the two SAS men stepped inside.
It was warm in here, the atmosphere a fug of tea and fried food. Tatty posters of exotic beaches on the wall, torn at the edges. About half the tables were occupied. In one corner, above the serving bar, there was a TV tuned in to BBC News 24. Shaky camera work rolled on the developing scenes in Piccadilly. Danny saw a flash of red as a wounded body was stretchered from the remains of the Trocadero. All the punters inside the cafe – perhaps fifteen of them – were transfixed. One guy had a copy of the Sun in front of him. He absentmindedly licked a forefinger and turned the page of his newspaper. But he was staring at the screen, not the paper. A constant babble of reportage filled the air: Many feared dead . . . extent of the damage not known . . . police appealing to the public to avoid all non-urgent travel to central London . . .
At a table by himself, along the left-hand wall, sat an elderly guy, a workman by the look of his paint-spattered overalls. He had dark skin and Arabic features: his beard was white, his face deeply lined and his bald head covered in liver spots. He looked kindly, but also distinctly uncomfortable as he waited for his breakfast. Some of the other punters cast him the occasional hostile glance.
Danny’s eyes picked out Chamberlain. He was sitting in the corner to the right of the door, his back against the wall and a mug of tea in front of him, the tea bag still floating in the cup. He looked up, but because of his squint it wasn’t immediately obvious if he was looking directly at them or not.
‘Sit down, lads,’ he said quietly, so his voice was drowned by the TV for everyone except Danny and Spud. ‘I’ve ordered the full English for you both. Sounds like you’ve had a busy night.’
Wordlessly, they sat opposite him, Danny by the window.
‘You know what I can’t abide?’ Chamberlain said. ‘Go to Glasgow, they’ll place a portion of haggis on the plate and call it the full Scottish. Dublin, you’ll have a slice of white pudding and it’s a full Irish. Load of bloody nonsense if you ask me.’ Only now did he glance up at the TV. ‘You’ve heard the latest?’
They nodded.
‘Mark my words, lads. If this carries on, we’ll have an extremist with a bomb on every street corner. The royal protection boys have already moved the senior royals from the palace and Clarence House. Her Majesty is spitting blood – this is far worse than the glory days of the Provos. Medals all round for the person who stops these little shits, I shouldn’t wonder.’ He gave them both a meaningful look.
‘I’d have thought Her Majesty would be pissing rainbows,’ Spud said coolly.
A flicker of irritation crossed Chamberlain’s face, but he quickly mastered it. ‘Don’t quite follow you, old man,’ he said.
‘Didn’t that pretty boy who was banging her granddaughter get a lump of shrapnel in his skull at Paddington? Nice neat solution to a nasty messy problem.’
Typical Spud. Zero tact. But it didn’t seem to bother Chamberlain. He looked up at the approaching waitress – a sour-faced woman in her sixties with an egg-spattered apron, carrying two immense plates of food. He indicated that she should set them down in front of Danny and Spud. Only when the food was in front of him did Danny realise how hungry he was. Sarim Galaid’s butchered body was just a memory. It hadn’t affected Danny’s appetite.
Chamberlain watched them eat for a couple of minutes before speaking again. ‘I suppose you’re wondering why I’m here,’ he said finally. Danny didn’t feel inclined to give him the satisfaction of admitting that was true. Clearly Spud felt the same. They continued to wolf down their food. Chamberlain looked round the cafe, obviously checking that nobody was paying them any attention. When he spoke again, it was in a quieter voice.
‘That Hammerstone lot,’ he said. ‘All very well for them to give out edicts from on high. Don’t think they quite realise how difficult it is to make these little . . . events . . . look like accidents. Can’t have all your targets blowing themselves up while they’re taking a leak, eh? Thought you might appreciate a bit of input. Three heads better than two, and all that.’
Danny scraped the remnants of food from round his plate, finished it off, then pushed the plate forward.
‘I’m all ears,’ he said.
‘The Province was my hunting ground, back in the day,’ Chamberlain said. ‘Had to be bloody careful, of course. The Micks were all hot under the collar about internment at the time. Not sure they’d have been quite so vocal if they’d seen some of the animals in Long Kesh, but there you have it.’
Spud belched and pushed his empty plate away. Danny kept quiet. Northern Ireland was a sensitive subject for him. He certainly didn’t want to discuss his own family’s involvement in the Province with the arsehole across the table.
‘Handful of Provos we couldn’t bang up, of course.’ He traced two imaginary speech marks in the air. ‘“Lack of evidence”. Or they’d have caused more trouble inside than out. Not unlike this bloody ridiculous situation with Abu Ra’id. Had to see to it that they “met with an accident”.’ Speech marks again. ‘Happy to share the fruits of my labours.’
‘Like I say,’ Danny answered, ‘I’m all ears.’
Chamberlain put his cup of tea to his mouth and drained it in one gulp. ‘Shark’s eye,’ he said. ‘Worked every time.’
Danny inclined his head. What Chamberlain said made sense. The shark’s eye was very simple, but very effective: a black tube, not much more than a foot in length. Fire it at night-time and it would give a directional burst of dazzling light that would blind anyone. Fire it towards the driver of a moving vehicle and, nine times out of ten, it would cause the driver to lose control. Net result: road kill, and very little in the way of evidence.
‘I’ve done a bit of homework on your second target,’ Chamberlain continued. ‘They’ll have sent you his details already, I shouldn’t wonder, but the DVLC have a motorbike registered to his name. Shark’s eye would be ideal, I’d have thought.’
‘Sounds familiar,’ said Spud. ‘All we need now is a tunnel under the Seine and a pack of paparazzi chasing after him, we can do the full Diana.’
A poker face from Chamberlain. ‘I rather thought,’ he said, ‘that the gentlemen of Twenty-two were immune to that sort of gossip.’
‘The gentlemen maybe,’ Spud drawled. ‘But not me. What about that Regiment fella who said he saw one of your lot in Paris the night before the hit?’
By ‘your lot’, Spud meant the Firm, and Danny was well aware of the rumour. It was no secret that a small team from the RWW – the Regiment’s precursor to E squadron – had investigated the possibility of conducting a hit on Milosevic back in the early nineties. The method was to be exactly what Chamberlain was suggesting to them now: a shark’s-eye attack on the war criminal’s convoy as it negotiated a particularly treacherous mountain pass. The RWW team had rejected it as a possibility for exactly the reasons that Danny knew the Diana conspiracy was a load of hokum: too many variables. A shark’s-eye hit was fine for a Provo shithead who was headi
ng for an early grave anyway, but for a high-profile target like Milosevic, against whom you’d only get one chance, it was just too blunt a tool.
But the rumour was that the night before Diana’s death, an MI6 agent had been spotted in Paris with one of the RWW guys on the Milosevic ‘hit team’. Enough of a coincidence to get tongues wagging, and wild theories spreading.
‘I can absolutely assure you,’ Chamberlain told Spud mildly, his lips barely moving and his voice little more than a whisper, ‘that an attempt on the life of a prominent public figure such as Princess Diana would require a far greater level of premeditation than was evident during the events of the Place de l’Alma.’
‘Sounds like you’ve given it a lot of thought,’ said Spud.
Chamberlain’s lips went thin. ‘Practically none,’ he said. ‘Although I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling queasy at the thought of a rag . . .’ He checked himself. ‘. . . a Middle Eastern playboy becoming stepfather to our future monarch.’
‘Doesn’t bother me, pal. They’re all German anyway, far as I can tell.’
For the first time, Chamberlain looked as though he was on the point of losing his cool. He drew a deep breath, and scratched the eyebrow above the eye that had a squint. Danny found himself recalling Buckingham’s words of the day before. Keeps the company of some peculiar types . . . Not saying they’re right-wing, but they do rather make our friends in UKIP look like card-carrying Marxists . . . they’ve been lobbying government to set up a transfer of power to the army in the event of Islamic extremism getting out of control . . .
Behind him, Danny heard a sudden scraping of chairs. He looked round. A couple of burly punters had stood up and were moving towards the old Middle Eastern guy sitting by himself. The TV continued to babble in the background, but suddenly nobody was watching it. The atmospherics in the cafe had changed. The workman looked up. His friendly, lined face instantly acquired a hunted expression.
