Siege: A Thriller

by Simon Kernick

  “You know they wanted to kill you on film,” said Fox, reverting to his normal accent as he threw his rifle on the bed and pulled off his backpack. He leaned around behind Prior’s head and unstrapped the ball gag, letting it fall to the floor.

  “If you let me go, I’ll do everything I can to minimize your prison sentence.” Prior’s voice was deep and authoritative, his expression stern and unwavering. It was obvious that he was accustomed to giving orders and being obeyed.

  Fox ignored him. He was just another public-school establishment man used to getting his own way. Perhaps he thought that because Fox spoke with a local accent and was clearly English, he could be reasoned with. “They wanted to shoot you dead as a show of strength to the UK government. I stopped them.”

  “Thank you. You don’t sound very much like a member of the Pan-Arab Front, or whatever you people are calling yourselves. So, why are you involved?”

  Fox sat down on the bed, facing him. Even trussed up like a chicken, Michael Prior exuded a certain gravitas. With his silver hair and finely delineated features, he had the distinguished, well-fed look of confidence backed by old money. “I told the man who was holding the gun to your head that you were much more useful to them alive.”

  “You keep saying ‘them’ and ‘they.’ If you’re not a part of them, then who are you?”

  “That doesn’t really matter right now. What matters is that you have information that I need.”

  Prior’s eyes widened just a little. “I know a lot less than you think.”

  “Don’t try to bullshit me. We haven’t got time. I need a name. A name that only you and a handful of other people know.”

  Prior swallowed, and Fox could tell that he knew exactly whom he was referring to. “I thought this was a terrorist attack.”

  Fox stood up. “It is. Now, we can do this the hard way, or we can do it the easy way, but the result’s going to be the same. You’re going to give up that name, and if you do it quickly, then it’ll be a lot less painful.”

  “Please, if you have any decency or patriotism . . . ”

  He stopped talking as Fox produced a scalpel and a small container of liquid from the backpack.

  “Give me the name and as soon as I’ve verified it I’ll unstrap the bomb, untie you, and let you go. You’ll have to take your chances, but you’ll probably make it out alive.”

  “I can’t. Please. I’ll give you any information you want, but not that.”

  “Last chance,” said Fox. “Then I’ll have to replace the gag while I go to work on you.”

  He lifted the scalpel, and Michael Prior’s eyes grew wide with fear.

  38

  18:29

  The interior of the mobile incident room was long, narrow, and windowless, like the inside of a shipping container. A bank of TV screens—some blank, others showing rolling news footage of the Stanhope Hotel—lined one side, beneath which were a half dozen work stations.

  There were three other people in the room when Arley and Riz Mohammed walked in. Will Verran and Janine Sabbagh were both police technicians whom Arley had only just met. Janine was a petite blond-haired South African in her mid-thirties with very dark eyes and a friendly smile, while Will was a tall, lanky twenty-something with a boyish face and sandy hair that was thinning fast. Their responsibility was to keep open the channels of communication between Arley and all the other people and agencies involved in the operation.

  The third person was John Cheney. He’d removed his jacket and was down to his shirtsleeves as he stood talking on one of the phones. He gave them a nod as they walked in, sizing up Riz with watchful eyes. So far, Cheney and Arley hadn’t had much to do with each other, which suited her just fine. Even after all these years, she didn’t feel entirely comfortable around him, although she wasn’t exactly sure why.

  Arley saw the surprised look cross Riz’s face when he saw the three of them. It was clear he thought there’d be more people inside the police’s forward control room.

  “We’ve got officers in the incident room next door but most of our non-frontline resources are remaining off-site,” she explained as she introduced him to the others. “Mainly because it’s so difficult to get down here with the traffic, and”—she swept an arm around—“obviously there’s not a great deal of room. But we’re in touch with everyone we need to be, and we have video conferencing facilities set up. Right, Janine?”

  “We’ve got a video link to the Scotland Yard control room, which means they’ll be able to see and hear us in here,” said Janine, pressing a couple of buttons on her keyboard. “And we’re just establishing one to the chief commissioner’s office so he can listen in on the call.”

  Arley turned to Riz. She’d already briefed him on her call with Commissioner Phillips, and knew that time was short. “Don’t forget, you’ve got to insist on speaking to Prior. The code words he’ll use are written down there. Anything else you need before you make the call?”

  “The most important thing for me is to know who I’m dealing with,” said Riz, addressing the room. “If we can ID any of the hostage-takers, particularly those in charge, it’ll be a huge help.”

  “We’ve got MI5 and CTC checking the voice records from the calls to see if they match any known suspects,” said Arley, “and GCHQ is listening in on all the mobile phone conversations taking place inside the building. Any new developments we should know about?” she asked Cheney.

  “We haven’t had any matches yet,” he answered in that deep, gruff voice of his. “GCHQ also hasn’t been able to pick up any mobile phone conversations between the terrorists in the building, which suggests they’re not communicating by phone. They’re also checking for use of short-wave radios and the Internet, but apart from the uploading of the earlier video showing the director, there’s been nothing.”

  “And the people calling out from the hotel. What are they saying about the hostage-takers? Are they speaking English? If so, with local or foreign accents?”

  “The leader’s speaking with an Arab accent,” said Cheney, “and we’ve got phonetics experts trying to place it to a specific locality, but they haven’t come back to us yet. As for the rest of the hostage-takers, we’ve had surprisingly few reports, although we believe they’re a mixture of Middle Eastern and eastern European accents.”

  “OK,” said Will Verran, interrupting proceedings, “we’ve got live feed to the commissioner’s office.”

  One of the blank screens lit up, showing Derek Phillips sitting at his desk, watching them. “Are we ready to make the call?” he asked the assembled room, checking his watch. “We’re only two minutes off the hostage-taker’s deadline.”

  “We’re ready now, sir,” Arley answered, feeling a rush of excitement, before turning to Riz. “It’s all yours.” She pointed at a handset on the desk in front of him. “That’s the phone to use. It’s a secure landline. Press one and it’ll get you straight through to the phone the terrorist leader made his original call from.”

  “Remember,” said Phillips, “we have to insist on speaking to Michael Prior.”

  “I’ll do everything I can.”

  Riz squeezed his bulk into the seat, picked up the phone, and held it in his hand for a few moments, looking pensive but calm. Everyone in the room was watching him. Arley knew he was under a lot of pressure, but then they all were. She recalled his performance in Brixton and was confident she’d made the right decision in picking him for this, probably the biggest job of his life.

  Finally, he pressed 1 and put the phone to his ear.

  39

  The phone rang six times before it was picked up.

  “Who am I speaking to?” The voice at the other end of the phone sounded clear in the confines of the office.

  “My name’s Rizwan Mohammed. I work for the Metropolitan Police’s Kidnap Unit. Is this the commander of the Pan-Arab Army of God at the Stanhope Hotel?”

  “I said I wanted to speak to the chief commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.
The organ grinder, not one of the monkeys. Get him on the phone in the next five minutes or a hostage dies.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that. I’m the representative of the police and security forces. You’re going to have to talk to me.”

  “Then a hostage dies, and one will die every five minutes until he comes on the line.”

  “That’s not going to help you get what you want,” Riz said calmly, but the line had already gone dead.

  Arley looked up at the screen showing Phillips’s desk, and was surprised to see he was no longer sitting at it, and the audio feed was turned off.

  “Do you think he’ll carry out his threat?” Arley asked Riz.

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so, but in any case we can’t give in to him. Not at this stage. Otherwise he’ll be running rings around us. The hostage-taker always wants to establish control, and every negotiator knows that you can’t let him, however high the stakes are. We have to be the ones calling the shots.”

  Arley knew this, but like most police officers who’d got as far as she had, she was a political animal with big ambitions, and she was aware that her actions tonight would put her in the spotlight. “But if he starts killing hostages and it comes out that it was because we wouldn’t let him speak to Commissioner Phillips, it won’t look good.”

  She looked back at the screen. He still wasn’t at his desk.

  “And if we start letting him order us around this early in the negotiations then the chances are there’ll be more people dead later on.”

  There was silence as they both weighed up their options.

  “Let me try him again,” Riz said at last.

  Arley sighed, knowing that whatever happened tonight, the buck would end up stopping with her. “OK. It’s your call.”

  This time the phone was picked up straight away. “Yes?”

  “It’s Rizwan Mohammed again. Look, I know we can resolve this peacefully. Why don’t you tell me what you want?”

  “I want to talk to the man in charge.”

  “And I want you to know that if you talk to me, your message will be responded to at the highest level. Do you mind if I ask your name?”

  “You may call me Wolf.”

  “OK, Wolf. Are you the leader of the hostage-takers?”

  “I am,” he said, and Arley could hear the pride in his voice.

  “And what is it that you want?”

  There was a pause and what sounded like the rumpling of paper at the other end of the phone before Wolf started speaking again. He was clearly reading from a prepared text. “We want a commitment from the British government that British crusader forces will cease their hostilities against all Arab and Muslim lands, and remove their representatives from Arab and all Islamic soil within sixty days. We want a public statement from the Prime Minister promising that Britain will not use its influence in the United Nations Security Council to pursue Arab leaders for so-called crimes against humanity, and that it will henceforth keep out of Arab and Islamic affairs, and end its involvement in the so-called War on Terror.”

  There was another silence.

  “Those are very ambitious demands,” Riz said at last.

  “We are very ambitious people. And we also have a hotel full of prisoners, including a director of MI6. This puts us in a position of strength. Not you.”

  “Before we go forward, I need to speak to Michael Prior to ensure that he’s in good health.”

  “You and your government do not make demands of me. I make demands of you.”

  “And I will definitely do all I can to meet those demands. But I do need to speak to him now.”

  “We’ll consider it.”

  “It’s going to be extremely difficult to get my government to move on your demands if you don’t let me talk to him.”

  “I told you: we’ll consider it.”

  “Please do. It’ll be seen as a real gesture of goodwill by the British government.”

  Riz looked up at Arley. His expression said: What more can I do? On the screen, she saw that Phillips had returned to his desk and was now listening intently. He made no move to speak, so Arley mouthed the words “leave it” to Riz.

  “Also, we want the Internet kept on,” Wolf continued. “If you take away our access, a hostage will die every five minutes until you reinstate it. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes, but it’s not going to help our negotiations if you start killing people.”

  “Then do as I say and no one will get hurt. You have until midnight to meet all our demands. If they haven’t been met by then, we will execute your MI6 man and then one hostage every five minutes until they are. And for your information, we have rigged the building, including the areas where we’re holding the prisoners, with explosive devices, none of which needs to be detonated by mobile phone. If your forces make any attempt to storm the building in the meantime, we will detonate all the devices, and kill the hostages, and ourselves if necessary. We are warriors, and we are prepared to die.”

  Arley saw the way Riz tensed at these words. It was exactly what they’d all feared. She tried to catch his eye, but he was hunched over his phone. Instead, she caught the eye of John Cheney. He raised an eyebrow but otherwise seemed unfazed by the way the conversation was going.

  “We understand there are wounded people inside,” Riz said at last. “We’d like to send ambulance crews in to bring them out.”

  “There are no wounded people here.”

  “That’s not our understanding. We’d also like the release of all the children too. It will do your cause no good at all if any of them get killed. I’m sure you remember what happened in Beslan. All those children dying did untold damage to the Chechen cause.”

  “What do you know about the Chechen cause?”

  “Enough to know that the Chechen leadership acknowledged that Beslan was a failure. I’m sure the Pan-Arab Army of God doesn’t want that to happen.”

  “Don’t lecture me.”

  “I’m not,” said Riz, and Arley could tell he was struggling to keep his voice conciliatory yet firm. “But it will help your cause if you’re shown to be merciful.”

  “We will consider your request,” said Wolf impatiently. “And we have one final demand. Do not make contact unless you have good news. I’m well aware of the kinds of stalling tactics negotiators use, and we’re not going to tolerate them.”

  The line went dead.

  Arley took a deep breath as the tension slowly seeped out of the room, and put a supportive hand on Riz Mohammed’s shoulder. “You handled that well.”

  Riz sat back in his seat and stretched. “That wasn’t easy.”

  On the screen, Arley saw Commissioner Phillips talking to someone off camera. The audio feed was again turned off. Then he turned back and addressed the room. “I’ve just received word from the PM’s office that all mobile phone coverage and Internet access are to be switched off inside the Stanhope with immediate effect.”

  “What?” asked Riz, sounding startled. “They specifically demanded the Internet be kept on.”

  “I know they did,” said Phillips. “But these are the PM’s direct orders. He’s not prepared to let them make propaganda videos or communicate with the outside world from inside the hotel without us knowing about it. He’s currently hosting a meeting of COBRA, so it’s likely to be a group decision.” He addressed Riz directly. “You can tell them we’ll restore the Internet as soon as we speak to Prior.”

  Riz looked concerned. “It’s a very risky course of action we’re taking. Their commander is not talking like a desperate man. He’s talking like a man who’s holding lots of cards. He’s part of a well-organized team. The way they got into the building, the way they booby-trapped the place—it all means that they know exactly what they’re doing. And we already know they’re quite prepared to kill innocent people. My feeling is that if we push them, they’ll react violently.”

  Phillips’s sigh was loud in the room. “We have to make a stand and
face the consequences.”

  “We have another major problem as well,” said Arley. “We can’t actually meet any of their demands. The British government doesn’t negotiate with terrorists. And it would be political suicide to make a public statement effectively surrendering the UK’s foreign policy because we were being held to ransom.”

  Riz nodded. “I believe the hostage-takers know that.”

  Arley frowned. “So, why make the demands in the first place?”

  “Because they’ve planned this very carefully. First of all, by making demands, it extends the publicity they and their organization can get out of their operation. Also, it helps to shift the onus of blame onto the British government, because if we refuse to negotiate and turn down every demand flat, we’re going to end up catching a lot of the flak if things go wrong.”

  “For what it’s worth, I agree,” said John Cheney. “They’re expecting an assault, which is why they’ve split up the hostages, and set such a short deadline. It’s all designed to make things harder for us to retake the hotel without mass casualties.”

  “There must be a way of bringing this to a peaceful conclusion,” Arley objected.

  “Anyone can be negotiated with,” Riz replied. “The fact is he’s already backed down a little by speaking to me. The key is to keep pushing him. One thing I know about Islamic culture, being a Muslim myself, is the importance of family. I know it’s a long shot, but if we can ID him and get members of his family involved in the negotiations, then we might be able to sway him from the present course.”

  “We’re doing everything we can to ID him,” said Cheney. “But even if we do manage it, there’s a small something that we seem to have overlooked.”

  Arley turned his way. “What’s that, John?”

  Cheney moved away from the desk so that Commissioner Phillips could see him as he spoke. “The man we’re speaking to made some pretty major demands, and was obviously reading from something he’d prepared earlier, but at no point did he do what almost all hijackers and hostage-takers do when they’re trapped. He didn’t ask for safe passage out. Not for himself or any of his men.” He paused, and Arley felt the tension in the room cranking up again. “Which suggests to me that neither he, nor they, have any intention of leaving that place alive.”