James Patterson - Alex Cross 10 - London Bridges

by London Bridges

  They pretended to be his dearest, closest friends as he entered the room, shaking his hand, patting his broad back and shoulders, muttering easy lies about how good it was to see him. The very few who know what I look like. The inner circle, the ones I trust more than anyone else.

  Lunch had been served before he arrived, and then the entire household staff had been removed from the house. He had parked in back, then come in through the kitchen. No one had seen him except the men in this room, nine of them.

  He stood before them and lit up a cigar. To victory.

  "They have asked for an extension of the deadline. Can you believe it?" the Wolf said between satisfying puffs.

  The Russian men around the table began to laugh. They shared the Wolf's disdain for the current governments and leaders around the world. Politicians were weak by nature and the few strong ones who snuck into office somehow were soon weakened by the process of government. It had always been that way.

  "Drop the hammer!" one of the men shouted.

  The Wolf smiled. "You know, I should. But they have a point-if we act now, we lose, too. Let me get them on the line. They're expecting an answer. This is interesting, no? We negotiate with the United States, Britain, and Germany. As if we were a world power."

  The Wolf raised his index finger as the call went through. "They're expecting to hear from me...."

  "You're all on the line?" he spoke into the phone.

  They were.

  "No small talk, the time for that has passed. Here is my decision. You have another two days, till seven o'clock, eastern standard time, but...

  "The price has just doubled!"

  He disconnected. Then he looked around at his people.

  "What? You approve, or what? Do you know how much money I just made for you?"

  They all began to clap, then cheer.

  The Wolf stayed with them for the remainder of the afternoon. He endured their false compliments, their requests thinly disguised as suggestions. But then he had other business in New York City, so he left them to enjoy the house by the sea, and whatever.

  "The ladies will arrive soon," he promised. "Models and beauty queens from New York. They say the most beautiful pussy in the world. Have fun." On my money, my sweat, my brilliance.

  He was back in the Lotus then, heading toward the Long Island Expressway. He was squeezing the black rubber ball, but finally he set it down. He took out his cell phone again. Pressed a few numbers. A code was transmitted. A circuit closed. A primer fired.

  Even from that far away, he heard the beach house explode. He didn't need them anymore; he didn't need anyone.

  Zamochit! The bombs had broken every bone in all of their worthless, useless bodies.

  Payback, revenge.

  It was a beautiful thing.

  Chapter 61

  We received word in London that the deadline had been extended forty-eight hours, and the relief, though temporary, was still extraordinary for all of us. Within the hour, we got word of a bombing on Long Island-several Red Mafiya bosses reported dead. What did it mean? Had the Wolf struck again? At his own people?

  There was nothing useful for me to do after the long round of meetings at Scotland Yard. About ten at night, I met with a friend from Interpol at a London restaurant, the Cinnamon Club, which was on the site of what had once been the Old Westminster Library on Great Smith Street.

  I was past being exhausted and, in fact, had gotten my second wind. Besides, I always looked forward to spending time with Sandy Greenberg, who was probably the smartest police officer I had ever worked with. Maybe she had a new idea about the Wolf. Or the Weasel. At any rate, no one knew the European underworld better than she did.

  Sandy is Sondra to all but her closest friends, and I am fortunate enough to be one of them. She's tall, attractive, chic, a little gawky, witty, and very funny. She gave me a big hug and kisses on both cheeks.

  "Is this the only way I get to see you, Alex? Some kind of terrifying international emergency? Where's the love?"

  "You could always come to Washington to see me," I said as we pulled apart. "You look absolutely great, by the way."

  "I do, don't I?" said Sandy. "Come, we have a table in the back. I've missed you terribly. God, it's good to see you. You look wonderful yourself, even with all of this going on. How do you do it?"

  The dinner was a fusion of Indian and European that couldn't be found in the States, at least not anywhere around Washington. Sandy and I talked for well over an hour about the case. But over coffee we lightened up and let things get a little more personal. I noticed a gold signet ring and a trinity band she wore on her pinkie finger.

  "Beautiful," I told her.

  "From Katherine," she said, and smiled. Sandy and Katherine Grant had been living together for about ten years and were one of the happiest couples I had ever met. Lessons to be learned, but who can ever figure it all out? Not me. I couldn't even master my own life.

  "I see you're still not married," she said.

  "You noticed."

  Sandy smirked. "Detective, you know. Investigator par excellence. So tell me everything, Alex."

  "Not a lot to tell," I said, and found my choice of words interesting. "I'm seeing someone I like a lot -"

  Sandy interrupted. "Oh, hell, you like everyone a lot. That's the way you are, Alex. You even liked Kyle Craig. Found some good in the creepy, psychopathic bastard."

  "You could be right, generally speaking. But I'm over Kyle. And I don't like anything about Colonel Geoffrey Shafer. Or the Russian who calls himself the Wolf."

  "I am right, dear boy. So who is this incredible woman you like a lot and whose heart you'll break, or she'll break yours-one or the other, I'm certain of it already. Why do you keep torturing yourself?"

  I grinned, couldn't help it. "Another detective-well, actually, her title is inspector. She lives in San Francisco."

  "How convenient. That's brilliant, Alex. What is it, two thousand miles from Washington? So you have a date, what, every other month?"

  I laughed again. "I see your tongue is as sharp as ever."

  "Practice, practice. So you still haven't found the right woman. Pity. A real shame. I have a couple of friends. Well, hell, let's not even go there. Let me ask you a personal question, though. Do you think you're truly over Maria?"

  The thing about Sandy, as an investigator, is that she has thoughts that others don't; she explores areas that are often ignored. My wife, Maria, had been murdered over ten years ago in a drive-by shooting. I'd never been able to solve it-and maybe I wasn't over Maria. Maybe, just maybe, I couldn't find closure until I solved her murder. The case was still open. That thought had been tugging at me for years and still caused some pain whenever it entered my head.

  "I am totally smitten with Jamilla Hughes," I said. "That's all I know for now. We enjoy each other. Why is that a bad thing?"

  Sandy smiled. "I heard you the first time, Alex. You like her a lot. But you haven't told me that you're madly in love, and you're not the kind of person who settles for smitten. Right? Of course I'm right. I'm always right."

  "I love you," I said.

  Sandy laughed. "Well, then, it's settled. You're staying at my place tonight."

  "All right. Fine," I agreed.

  We both laughed, but half an hour later Sandy dropped me at my hotel off Victoria Street.

  "You think of anything?" I said as I climbed out of the taxi.

  "I'm on it," said Sandy, and I knew she was as good as her word, and I needed all the help I could possibly get in Europe.

  Chapter 62

  Henry Seymour lived not too far from the Weasel's hideout on Edgware Road in the area between Marble Arch and Paddington that is sometimes known as Little Lebanon. Colonel Shafer walked to the former SAS member's flat that morning, and as he trudged along, he wondered what had happened to the city, his city, and to his bloody country as well. What a dismal scene.

  The streets were filled with Middle Eastern coffee shops and re
staurants and grocers. The aromas of ethnic cuisines were thick in the air that morning by eight-tabbouleh, lentil soup, b'steeya. In front of a paper store two elderly men smoked tobacco through a water-filtered hookah. Bloody hell! What the fuck has happened to my country?

  Henry Seymour's apartment was located above a men's clothing shop, and the Weasel went straightaway to the third floor. He knocked once and Seymour opened up for him.

  As soon as he saw Henry, though, Shafer was concerned. The man had lost thirty or forty pounds since he'd seen him last, and that was only a few months ago. His full head of curly black hair was almost gone, replaced by a few scraggly tufts of gray and white frizz.

  Indeed, it was a struggle for Shafer to connect this man with his former army mate, one of the best demolition experts he'd ever seen. The two had fought side by side in Desert Storm and then again as mercenaries in Sierra Leone. In Desert Storm, Shafer and Seymour had been part of the Twenty-second SAS Regiment mobility troop. Mobility's primary mission was to go behind enemy lines and cause havoc. Nobody was better at it than Shafer and Henry.

  Poor Henry didn't look capable of causing too much havoc now, but looks could be deceiving. Hopefully, anyway.

  "So, are you ready for a job, an important mission?" Shafer asked.

  Henry Seymour smiled, and he was missing a couple of front teeth. "Suicide, I hope," he said.

  "As a matter of fact," said the Weasel, "that's rather a nice idea."

  He sat down across from Henry and gave him his piece, and his old friend actually applauded once he'd heard the plan.

  "I've always wanted to blow up London," he said. "I'm just the man for the job."

  "I know," said the Weasel.

  Chapter 63

  Dr. Stanley S. Bergen of Scotland Yard addressed several hundred of us in a conference room that was filled to the rafters with police and other government officials. Dr. Bergen was a little over five feet and had to be close to two hundred pounds, and at least sixty years of age. But he was still a commanding presence.

  He spoke without notes, and not once during his talk did any of us look away. We were definitely operating on borrowed time, and everyone in the room knew it all too well.

  "We are at a critical point where we have to implement our contingency plans for London," Dr. Bergen said. "Responsibility is under the London Resilience Forum. I have every confidence in them. You should, too.

  "All right, this is how we will respond in London. If we have any warning that a disaster is coming, it will be required that all broadcasters turn over their airtime to us. Text-messaging alerts to mobile phones and pagers will also be available. Other less-effective methods include loud-hailers, mobile public address, et cetera.

  "Suffice it to say that the people will know if we know ahead of time that an attack is coming. The Met's police commissioner or the home secretary will go on TV with the message.

  "If there is a bomb or a chemical attack, the police and fire services will set up immediately in the area. Once it is clear exactly what has happened, the affected area will be isolated as best we can. The fire brigade and police will then define three zones at the scene- hot, warm, and cold.

  "Those in the hot zone-if they are alive-will be kept there until they are decontaminated, if that is possible.

  "Fire and ambulance services will be set up in the warm zone. So will decontamination shower units.

  "The cold zone will be used for investigation, command-and-control vehicles, and also for loading ambulances."

  Dr. Bergen stopped talking and looked out at us. His face was set in a worried look but also revealed the compassion he was feeling for his city and its people. "Some of you may have noticed that I have not actually made mention of the word 'evacuation.' This is because the evacuation of London is not a possibility, not unless we begin now, and the repugnant and villainous Wolf has promised to strike immediately, should we do so."

  Maps and other emergency materials were then distributed around the room. It seemed to me that the mood was as low as it could possibly go.

  As I sat there looking at the paperwork, Martin Lodge came up to me. "We got a call from the Wolf," he said in a whisper. "You'll appreciate this. He says he likes our plan very much. And he agrees, it's hopeless to try and evacuate London -"

  Suddenly there was a terrible explosion in the building.

  Chapter 64

  When I finally made it downstairs to the site of the bombing, I was stunned by the unbelievable scene of chaos and confusion. The world-famous Scotland Yard sign in front had been completely blown away. There was rubble and a smoking hole where the Broadway road entrance had been. The remains of a black van were embedded in the sidewalk outside.

  A decision had already been made not to abandon the building, to hold our ground. I thought that was smart, or at least courageous. A couple of dozen men and women were already viewing a videotape in semidarkness when I arrived at the crisis center. One of them was Martin Lodge.

  I took a seat in back and began to watch. I looked down, and my hands were trembling.

  The film segment showed Broadway that morning, the usual armed policemen on duty outside the huge, imposing building. A black van appeared, driven at reckless speed the wrong way down Caxton Street opposite the main entrance to Scotland Yard. It roared straight across Broadway and crashed into the barrier erected at the entrance. Almost instantly there was a fiery explosion. It was silent on the film. The whole building was illuminated.

  I heard someone speak from near the front of the room. Martin Lodge had taken the floor. "Our enemy is truly a terrorist, and obviously single-minded. He wants us to know that we are vulnerable. I think we've got the message by now, don't you? It's interesting that no one was killed this morning, other than the driver of the vehicle. Maybe the Wolf has a heart after all."

  A voice came from the back of the room. "He doesn't have a heart. He just has a plan." The voice, which I almost didn't recognize, was my own.

  Chapter 65

  I worked at Scotland Yard for the rest of the day and slept on a cot there that night.

  I awoke at three in the morning and went right back to work. The second deadline would run out at midnight. No one could begin to imagine what would happen then.

  At seven that morning I was in cramped quarters, inside an unmarked police van headed to an estate in Feltham, out near Heathrow Airport. I rode with Martin Lodge and three of his detectives from the Met. We had recently been granted special permission to carry guns on this assignment. That was better.

  Lodge explained the situation during the ride. "Our men, along with Special Branch, are all over Heathrow and the surrounding areas. We're working with the airport police, too. One of our people spotted a suspect with a missile launcher on the rooftop of a private home. We have surveillance there now. We don't want to go in, for obvious reasons, made only too clear yesterday. He's bound to be watching the neighborhood. I wouldn't doubt it for a minute."

  One of the other detectives asked, "Do we have an idea who it is inside the house, sir? Have we sussed out anything at all?"

  "The house is rented. It belongs to a property developer. Pakistani, if that means anything. We don't know who the tenants are yet. The house is a few hundred yards from the runways at Heathrow. Need I say more?"

  I looked over at Lodge, who had his arms wrapped tightly around his chest. "Very nasty stuff," he said. "Understatement of the year, right, Alex?"

  "I've had that feeling for a while. Ever since I first encountered the Wolf. He enjoys hurting people."

  "You have no idea who he is, Alex? What makes him this way?"

  "He seems to change his identity on a regular basis. He... or she? We got close a couple of times. Maybe we'll get lucky now."

  "It better happen soon."

  We arrived at our destination in Feltham a few minutes later. Lodge and I met up with SO19, British Specialist Operations, who would execute the raid. Police surveillance had video monitors set up inside seve
ral nearby buildings. Tape was being shot from half a dozen different cameras.

  "Like watching a movie. Nothing we can do to influence the action," Lodge said after we'd studied the videos for a few minutes. What an impossible mess. We weren't supposed to be there. We'd been warned against it. But how could we go away?

  Lodge had a list of all the flights scheduled into Heathrow that morning. In the next hour or so, more than thirty flights would be arriving. The next few were from Eindhoven, three from Edinburgh, two from Aberdeen, then a British Airways flight from New York. Serious discussions were being held about halting all flights into both Heathrow and Gatwick, but no decision had yet been made. The jet from New York was due in nineteen minutes.