Bombmaker

by Claire McFall

  I hit the floor, totally blind. The whole space seemed to shimmer at me, like staring at the sun through binoculars. There was a funny smell to the place and it was stifling hot. Walking forward, I reached out with my hands, trying to feel my way as I couldn’t see. My foot connected with something, sending it tumbling to the ground with a dull thunk before my scrambling fingers could grab hold. There was a low tinkle of breaking glass, then at once the light was halved.

  I sighed with relief. I could see. And I’d never seen anything like this.

  The cannabis plants grew higher than my head, sprouting up in rows under a system of silver vents pouring out hot air. The air was thrumming with the low grumble of a generator and a lamp – the partner of which I’d knocked over and shattered – shone artificial sunlight, while tinfoil on the walls multiplied the effect. Gathering my senses, I flipped off the working lamp, aware of the tiny broken window, which must have been filled with blacked-out glass to hide the brightness. I replaced the brilliant lamp with a tiny flashlight, clamping it between my teeth as I set to work constructing my little device in the middle of the room. There wasn’t much to it. I’d already linked all the connections and stripped the ends of the wires. All that was left to do was attach the bomb to the stuff that went boom. I shook my head as I eased the copper ends into the C4. I didn’t understand how putty could explode like it did. It looked completely harmless, like something from a children’s art class, only much, much more valuable. And dangerous.

  I set the timer to fifteen minutes – Samuel wanted it short enough so that we’d have time to get out of the area but still be close enough to know if it worked – if I really did know what I was doing – or so we could come back and hide the evidence if I messed up. Then I took a quick second to check it over. I didn’t want to have to face Alexander like Kieran and Patrick had. Everything seemed fine.

  Standing up, I shuffled my way to the rear of the building and struggled out of the minuscule opening, then I crept back the way I’d come, over the fence and into the road. It wasn’t until I saw Samuel’s car waiting for me, engine running, lights dimmed inconspicuously, that my pulse started racing and a sheen of sweat broke out on my forehead. I’d done it. I’d just planted a bomb. All it had to do now was go off.

  “Problems?” Samuel asked as I got in the car.

  I shook my head, not wanting to mention the lights. After all, I’d got away with it.

  “Good,” he smiled. “Alex likes clockwork.”

  We drove for two blocks, then pulled in at the side of the road to wait. I don’t know what I expected – maybe a huge fireball to erupt into the sky? – but it was nothing so spectacular. There was a flash, the tiniest vibration, and then the low cloud around the building in front of us glowed a dull orange. I stared forward. Was that it? Did it work?

  “Let’s go home,” Samuel murmured, smiling to himself as he drove away.

  From then on Samuel was always my driver. As the jobs got more complicated, more risky, he brought in others to smooth the way, like the hired thugs at the Home Office Intelligence building whose timely vandalism set up my escape route. I wasn’t afraid of Samuel like I was of Alexander, but I knew without a shadow of a doubt that we weren’t friends. To him, I was something of Alexander’s that he could borrow when he needed it, like a car.

  I was useful, I was reliable, and I stayed alive.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  There was no fallout from my excursion to Bethnal Green. Alexander had accepted Samuel’s word, I’d been punished for keeping secrets, and as far as Alexander was concerned that was the matter dealt with. He would be watching me, of course. Very closely. But then, he was always watching me.

  I found out two days later what the big job was involving the Davis mob – whoever they were. Alexander took me down to a tight, windowless room on the ground floor, where Samuel and Zane were pouring over a large sheet of paper pinned to a table. A moment later I realised it was a map. Either Zane or Samuel had inserted little coloured pins going from north to south in a jagged line and as we entered they were discussing each of the dots, pointing and running their fingers over tiny lines of red and blue.

  Samuel looked up, his hand still hovering over the map.

  “Rhys Davis has been in touch,” he said. “They’re looking at the section between Abergavenny and Knighton. It’s a big stretch of nothing bordering on the Brecon Beacons National Park. It’s a good move. That area should be much quieter. They’ll expect more trouble on the busier routes.”

  “We’re looking at two main points,” Zane chipped in. “Here,” he pointed to a large red pin, “at Monmouth where the A40 used to cut the border, or here,” he raised his fingers north a few inches, “at the A465. Rhys prefers Monmouth, but we’re pushing for the more northern point. If there’s any trouble, any complications, it would be easier to disappear from there.”

  Alexander nodded. “Take the northern. And tell Davis to set up a dummy attack at Monmouth, twenty minutes before. That might draw some of their security away from where we’ll be.”

  “Good idea,” Zane agreed sycophantically.

  Alexander just smiled. He knew that.

  “It’ll put them on the alert, though,” Samuel disagreed, his forehead furrowed in concentration. “They’ll bring in reinforcements, maybe a helicopter.”

  “Yes, but by the time they arrive at Monmouth, our main assault will have happened. When they realise their mistake and turn round, we’ll be long gone.”

  Samuel nodded. “Okay,” he relented. “But an issue we’re going to have is that when we head back, there’s only one road. We’ll have to go a long way down the A465 before we can pull off onto another route. We’ll be easy to trace.”

  “Then we’d better make it a fast car,” Alexander smirked, a gleam in his eye.

  Samuel made a face.

  “A fast car isn’t going to outrun a helicopter,” he complained. “We’re leaving ourselves too open.”

  “It’s a risk,” Alexander conceded, “but an acceptable one.”

  I stood silently through their exchange, keeping my face impassive, though I had to stifle a wry smile at Alexander’s final comment. That was easy for him to say; it would not be him in the line of fire, taking the risk.

  So they were planning an attack on the Wall, then. Now that I’d heard some of the place names they were considering, I realised it was the Welsh border that was their target. That made sense: both brothers were Welsh and their families and friends were still back in Cardiff, struggling to scratch a survival out of the civil chaos gripping the little country. It was less of a stretch to head east than to make the long trek to the northern wall and risk being cut off on the road back to London. But it was a dangerous job. I’d never seen the Welsh wall, but its Scottish counterpart was an astonishing structure to behold. Cutting a swathe across the landscape as far as the eye could see in either direction, it was over ten metres in height, topped with electrified wire and guarded at regular intervals by huge towers with state of the art cameras and armed soldiers. For hundreds of metres on either side the land had been stripped clear and booby-trapped with wire and mines. The thing made the Berlin Wall look like a garden fence.

  The brothers were getting ambitious; although I couldn’t help thinking, as I watched them plan and scheme, heads bent low over the map, that this new direction showed Samuel’s influence. Alexander only ever acted if there was something in it for him, and I failed to see how he would profit from this venture.

  “Who’s going to do the construct and drop?” Zane asked, eyes on Alexander.

  Samuel snapped his head up instantly, stared hard at his brother. “I want Lizzie,” he said. “She knows what she’s doing and I trust her. I don’t want to walk into the lion’s den with a stranger.”

  A little bubble of warmth bloomed in my stomach and I smiled at him tentatively. It went unnoticed, though. Samuel only had eyes for his brother. Alexander rubbed his jaw, scratching at the designer stubble dap
pling his lower face. He looked thoughtful.

  “You’re going to do a scout?” he asked.

  “Today. I’ve got a fresh plated car ready. Even if anyone from the GE clocks us, they’ll have no idea who we are.”

  Alexander nodded his approval. Then he turned to me, and both Zane and Samuel swivelled their gaze to my face as if they’d been waiting for his permission to acknowledge that I was in the room.

  “Get your things,” he murmured.

  I was back inside two minutes, my jacket in hand. I owned almost nothing else. In that short time Samuel had rolled up the map and was sliding a rubber band in place to hold the tube.

  “Let’s go,” he said, motioning to the front door with his head.

  “Samuel?” Alexander’s brother paused at the door, his hand on my shoulder. “Take someone with you. Take Cameron.”

  With Cameron’s company I was relegated to the backseat of the car. A Fiesta this time, much smaller than most of the cars in Alexander’s ever-changing fleet and a three door, so I had to scramble awkwardly into the tight space at the back. It was a long journey, taking the M4 east, then cutting up north at Swindon and following the A417 through Cirencester all the way to Gloucester. All the way Samuel and Cameron chatted quietly, the low drone of the radio drowning out their words. They didn’t turn to include me, so I contented myself with staring out of the window at the countryside. It reminded me of home, the real home from my early childhood on the outskirts of Glasgow. Only now the fields were not wild with grass and grazing sheep. They were farmed, the soil intensely filled and stripped and filled and stripped. Electric fences lined the largest, and CCTV cameras rested on poles, far more of a deterrent that the scarecrows of old. Food was scarcer now, and nothing was imported so the government took great pains to protect what it grew.

  At Gloucester we changed direction again, moving further east. The roads deteriorated and Samuel cursed as the car dipped and jolted over potholes and cracks. The Welsh border lingered just over the horizon, and its close proximity added a thrill to the air, cloaking the car in a tension that killed off conversation. There were more GE patrols here, hoping to catch rogue Celts who had somehow managed to penetrate the Wall’s defences, and it was rumoured that the residents in the villages close to the border were paid for every successful capture, and for collecting information.

  “Lizzie,” Samuel said softly.

  I jerked upright, leaning forward to rest my face between the two seats.

  “That’s the Wall. That’s our target.”

  “Oh my God,” I breathed.

  Either this wall was much more impressive than the one cutting Scotland off from England, or I had forgotten the true enormity of the structure. Ten metres had never looked so tall, poured concrete so thick, so completely impenetrable. Even from this distance, several miles away, staring down at the way the wall curved through a shallow valley, I could make out the complex web of security: interwoven lines of cameras; lights; surveillance towers; rolls of wire, crackling with electric charge. Just to get to the base meant crossing a minefield of barriers, traps and explosives. I doubted a field mouse could cross the space without being spotted and blown to smithereens.

  “That’s impossible,” I murmured.

  I was so awestruck I hadn’t even realised that Samuel had stopped the car, pulling discreetly in to the side. A pair of binoculars was nestled loosely in his huge hands.

  “It’s not impossible,” Cameron sniped. “People cross the border every day.”

  And how many of the ones who try, die? I thought. But I didn’t voice my concerns. If Cameron knew the answer, I didn’t think I wanted to hear it.

  “Lizzie, you need to pay attention. The next time you’re here it’ll be dark,” Samuel told me, his voice quiet and serious, the binoculars glued to his eyes. “It won’t look the same. You need to memorise the place, set points of reference in your head so you know exactly where you are. That central tower for instance.”

  I looked at the watchtower he was pointing to. It was circular with a panorama of windows at the top, almost like a lighthouse. Bizarre and out of place in the bleak, desolate dystopia before me.

  Trying to do as he said, I stared ahead, letting my eyes dart from building to building, logging windows, cameras, wires, hillocks, exactly where the old road ran into nowhere; but his words had unsettled me and it was like trying to hold water in my cupped hands. The details trickled away as soon as I moved on.

  “You’ll be here, though, won’t you?” I asked tremulously.

  Samuel didn’t even bother to respond, he just gave me a look. Of course he would be there. He always took me, and this was such a big job, one so central to his all-important cause, he would never miss it. Never.

  Still, the squirming in my stomach refused to go away.

  Cameron and Samuel sat there a long time, discussing the plan. Samuel pointed out the exact spot where I was to plant the bomb, the only detail I was able to cram into my head. It was easy: they wanted to blast a hole in the wall right where the A465 used to sweep into Wales. They wanted to reopen the border.

  “Samuel,” I whispered, hoarse after keeping my mouth shut and listening for so long, “how big will the bomb be?”

  I was trying – and failing – to imagine the amount of C4 needed to cut through such a solid object.

  “About the size of a briefcase,” he said.

  I bit my lip. More explosive by about half than I’d ever had my hands on before, but still…

  “Is that going to be enough?”

  “No,” Samuel smiled at my puzzled expression. “That thing’s six feet thick and the centre’s reinforced steel. But our package is only half of it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s why Alex has been communicating with Rhys Davis. He’s organising a second bomb at the exact same spot, on the other side of the wall. So Lizzie,” he paused, made sure he had my complete attention. “You have to be in place at precisely the right time. We’re coordinating it so both bombs go off at once. There can’t be any mistakes.

  “Clockwork,” I murmured.

  He nodded. “Clockwork.”

  We left not long after that. The same red Micra had driven past us three times and Samuel was beginning to get restless, checking his mirrors so often he looked like he had a twitch. Samuel swapped over and let Cameron drive for the return leg. Cameron pushed the Fiesta too hard, too fast, but even so he couldn’t get close to the speed limit displayed on the signs dotted along the road. They were an unattainable goal, a mockery, reminding drivers of a time when the roads had been smooth and flat. Now, in just a few short years, potholes rutted the surface, deceptively deep, and the edges of many routes had begun to crumble, narrowing the lanes until it was impossible for two cars to pass side by side on all but major carriageways. Even driving along at forty Cameron struggled to keep the car under control, to prevent tyres exploding and axles snapping, and I bounced about in the back seat until the sharp edge of the seat belt rubbed a raw weal on the soft skin where my shoulder met my neck.

  Even with Cameron’s overenthusiastic driving, it was pitch black by the time we wound our way back into Stepney, and I was dog tired. My head ached; Samuel had made me describe the scene and the plan to him over and over again until my brain felt like it was going to haemorrhage, and sitting still had drained me.

  Cameron dropped Samuel and me off to report back to Alexander. Or rather: for Samuel to report back and me to return to my keeper. My pulse began to thud as we ascended to the first floor the way it always did whenever I’d been away from him – what sort of mood would he be in? – and at first I didn’t notice that a musical beat was pounding through the house. As we reached the door, however, the whine of guitars and high-pitched singing cut through my jangled nerves, along with the rumble of male laughter. Slinking into the room in Samuel’s wake, I peered around his broad shoulders, intrigued and uncertain.

  Alexander’s office was a haze of smoke, bo
th cigarette and something stronger. The lights had been dimmed and men crowded the pool table, the television and the sofas. No one turned round as we entered; all eyes were fixed on the centre of the room, where I knew Alexander would be. Impatiently, Samuel pushed his way through, and I shuffled along behind, eyeing the strange faces warily. I recognised almost nobody, but it was clear from the hardened faces, expensive suits and gleaming gold that these men were some of Alexander’s underworld partners. The air was heady with the damp of smell sweat and alcohol, cloying under the cloud of smoke.

  We found Alexander lounging lazily in a huge stuffed armchair. On his knee was a blonde; legs bare and ample bosom on display. She was crowing with pleasure at having the attention of the most dangerous man in a room full of dangerous men. She stroked Alexander’s face and whispered and giggled in his ear. He responded by letting his hands rove over her indecently.

  I stared, not quite sure how I felt. That was my place; though at times – most of the time – I loathed it and loathed him. Seeing myself superseded was both a relief and a concern. If Alexander was done with me, would he dispose of me? Unconsciously I edged closer to Samuel, seeking protection. To him, at least, I was still useful.

  “Alex!” Samuel had to call his brother’s name three times before he had his attention.

  When he saw we were back, Alexander lifted a remote and, at the touch of a button, the pounding music died instantly.

  “All right, everybody out,” he said.

  Just moments earlier the quietly spoken phrase would have been impossible to hear, but on his command everyone began to filter from the room, immediately and without complaint. The blonde wriggled forward on Alexander’s knee, trying to extricate herself so that she, too, could leave, but Alexander’s arm tightened around her like a vice.

  “Not you,” he murmured. “You stay.”

  She beamed, and nestled further into his lap, fingers kneading his chest. I tried to keep the revulsion off my face as I studied her. How could she flaunt herself so flagrantly? How could she enjoy being so close to one who’d committed and commissioned so many wicked deeds that he was, in fact, more a monster than a man?