Overnight Express

by Philip McCutchan

  “Goddam terrorists. Remember what Reagan did a few years back? Dropped bombs on the buggers.”

  “Yes.”

  A gleam came into the American’s eye: the third penetrating mind was coming to its conclusions with remarkable similarity to the first two minds, those of Frudge and Bragg. “Betcha something. Want to know what?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Betcha that little bugger’s on his way to Perth, to blow up Mrs Heffer, right?”

  “Yes.”

  The American gave a loud laugh and looked down at Sun Wun Foo with a somewhat contemptuous expression. Yes was about all she ever said. But what the hell; yes, yes from a woman was better than no, no, whichever way you looked at it. The laugh ended in a sudden bout of coughing; he was smoking a very strong cigar. He met the eye of the dark man, seated opposite. The man had heard what he had been saying, and there was a nasty look in the eye that stared at him without blinking. MacCantley buried his face in the shining black silk of Sun Wun Foo’s hair. She wriggled a little. She was real cute. Gee, he shoulda splashed out on a sleeper.

  *

  At 0407 the night express left Ferryhill signal box and a cement works on its right-hand side, a minute later passing a colliery at Tursdale Junction.

  The driver glanced round at one of the dark-skinned men. “Eight miles,” he said. “Six minutes into the station.”

  The dark man nodded. “You know what to do.”

  “Right.” A buzzer sounded, as it had sounded every minute since leaving King’s Cross. The driver depressed a pedal beneath his foot; the buzzer died. Safety procedure: without the foot’s pressure the express would have come to a halt. But it was about to do that anyway. Soon the train was starting to slow: in the guard’s van Mike Bragg was puzzled; Durham was just ahead and there was no scheduled stop at Durham. They passed through a shallow cutting, stone built. As they cleared this the lights of the city became visible below and the train slowed still more. The Yorkshire farmer woke up and looked down from his window, looked down on a familiar scene. He woke his wife and said, “Train’s stopping at Durham … we’d best make haste and get off.” He reached for his suitcase, an old-fashioned one of heavy leather, and as he did so the train stopped with something of a jolt and he all but fell. In the van Mike Bragg was trying to make contact with the cab via the intercom, but no-one was answering. He looked down on the city streets: the night express had stopped on the viaduct, just short of the station. Mike Bragg lost patience with the intercom and left his guard’s van behind the rear power unit to walk the length of the train and get some explanation. There was a curious silence, no engine sounds, just a handful of passengers looking down through the windows, looking down from a great height towards a roundabout with the cathedral rearing from its great rock above the River Wear, not far distant. Bright lights in the streets but little traffic at this hour. A solitary policeman looked up as if puzzled at the train having stopped on the viaduct high above, motionless on the slender brick columns that spanned the streets and buildings.

  Mike Bragg saw something sinister as he pushed through into the first carriage forward from the guard’s van: one of the men with the look of the Middle East had got to his feet and was moving back towards him. There was a dangerous look in the man’s eye; as he came nearer Mike Bragg saw the muzzle of an automatic staring him in the face and he reacted fast: he beat a retreat, pursued by a bullet. Back in his van he banged the door shut and locked it with shaking fingers. For a few moments he was irresolute. Then he saw what he had to do: he had to leave the train — the driver had no doubt been overpowered and there would be nothing he, Mike Bragg, could do about it other than pass the word. Alongside the silent express as it stood on the viaduct was a narrow walkway that gave access to the station. He could run along, hoping not to be seen from the train if he kept his body bent double. Or better still he could run back along the track the other way, when he would clear the viaduct in seconds and then make his way down somewhere south-west of the viaduct and the station and contact the police.

  His heart thudding, Mike Bragg opened the door of the van and got down onto the walkway. As he did so he caught a glimpse of a man, also on the walkway, farther along towards the station. He moved fast but not fast enough. There was the muted phut of a silenced gun and Mike Bragg’s body jerked violently and then slumped half across the parapet railing beside the walkway. The man who had fired ran up, lifted Mike Bragg’s legs, and toppled him over. He fell spread-eagled, down the long drop, to spatter bloodily in the street below.

  A moment later the intercom came to life aboard the train.

  *

  Two hundred and fifty-nine miles down south in London, Hedge was woken at 0447 by the buzzing of his closed line from the Foreign Office.

  He answered bad-temperedly, voice and mind thick with sleep. “What is it, for heaven’s sake, I — Oh.” He broke off: he’d been interrupted and had recognised the voice. The Permanent Under-Secretary himself. “Yes, Sir Edmund, what can I do for you?” He sat up straight.

  The voice clacked in his ear, urgently. The Head of Security was on leave, which Hedge knew perfectly well — his was the temporary buck. And there was an InterCity 125 stopped on the Durham viaduct, the 2335 out of King’s Cross for Edinburgh. A man was dead. There had been a contact within a matter of half an hour after the report had come through from Durham. A man’s voice, saying he represented the Friends of Hira.

  3

  Hedge reached his office at a little after five-thirty a.m., and he reached it flustered. The 2335 was carrying Shard, so his right-hand man was personally involved. Not only that — he was now to all intents and purposes unavailable. That left Hedge out on a limb of self-reliance. From Sir Edmund he had gleaned that there was a hijack in progress and there was a threat of the train being blown up but that so far there had been no actual demands from the unknown Friends of Hira. Sir Edmund had sounded in something of a panic and had rung off before Hedge could tell him he had a man aboard the train. Dressing, Hedge had reflected upon this aspect: he would have liked to have told the Permanent Under-Secretary that in his perspicacity he had foreshadowed trouble and thus had sent Shard to catch the train, but this wouldn’t wash since he should in that case have alerted someone higher up the scale in security than himself, i.e. Sir Edmund in the absence of his own boss, the Head of Security. Nevertheless, there might come a way of capitalising on Shard’s wholly fortuitous presence …

  Hedge found Detective Sergeant Kenwood on duty in the security section: Kenwood, reporting to Hedge on his arrival, had heard the news. He said, “I understand a man’s been killed already, sir?”

  “Yes, the guard. Very nasty.” Hedge’s pudgy cheeks wobbled.

  “Yes, sir.” Death always was, but Kenwood could read Hedge like a book: death, particularly such a public death as had taken place in Durham, concentrated the mind of the public and of authority, higher authority than Hedge, on the immediacy of the reaction by Whitehall, which currently came back to Hedge again, since the first contact had been made to the Foreign Office. Kenwood could foresee a good deal of flap on Hedge’s part. He gave a discreet cough and said, “These Friends of Hira, sir —”

  “Yes, yes. Anything at all on the files?”

  “Not that I’ve found yet, sir —”

  “Get onto it, Kenwood, no delay.”

  “Yes, sir. As a matter of fact I have found out something about them. Or I may have. In an encyclopaedia.” Kenwood paused. “It seems there’s a place, a sort of shrine, called the Cave of Hira. In Arabia … a message came from it way back in history, kind of reaffirming Mohammed — there’d been disaffection, I gather, or anyway a lot of pagans being persuaded towards Christianity, and this message kind of backed up Mohammed … Are you following, sir?”

  “No,” Hedge said snappishly. “I fail to see any connection between a train on the viaduct at Durham, and Mohammed.” Then he ticked over. “You’re saying there’s a religious connection, Kenwood?�
�

  “I don’t know about religious, sir. Middle Eastern, though: the Friends of Hira. Unlikely to be anybody else, I’d say — anyone other than Arabs.”

  “Or Pakistanis. They’re Mohammedans too.” Hedge was about to say something further when one of his telephones burred at him. Kenwood answered and passed the receiver to Hedge.

  “Home Office, sir.”

  Hedge listened impatiently to a gabble from the other end, into which after a while he cut. “That’s all very well. I’ve really no information at all, other than the fact of the train having stopped and the guard being killed — yes, yes, the contact was to the FO certainly, but I gather the call was very brief.” He listened again, frowning into space, then said, “Well, as a matter of fact I do have a theory. The Friends of Hira. Hira — a Mohammedan shrine of a sort. In my view it comes back as ever to the Middle East.” He caught Kenwood’s eye and looked away again quickly. “Yes, yes, yes. But it’s still basically a Home Office responsibility — trains are scarcely a Foreign Office commitment, are they? Internal law and order, that’s not our pigeon. And it doesn’t look as though it’s the PM they’re after.”

  Hedge rang off abruptly and sat back at full arm’s stretch from his desk, puffing out his cheeks. He seemed lost in thought but was interrupted by the telephone again and this time it was Hesseltine, Assistant Commissioner Crime at Scotland Yard, also wanting the facts. Hedge, who disliked Hesseltine more than most policemen, was short: he was not a mine of current information, as he had told the Home Office. He got in his own dig. “What about some action from the Yard, Hesseltine? What are you doing about it?”

  The ACC said, “Nothing as yet, Hedge.”

  “Nothing?”

  “What do you expect us to do — advise Durham police to rush the train? This is a hijack, Hedge. We play it cool, low key till we know more. You know how these things go. A man’s been killed already. We have to do all we can to prevent more killings. So for now we just wait. I’m asking you to let me know the moment you get any further information, any more contacts. They’ll come, don’t worry.”

  “I’m not —” The line rattled in Hedge’s ear and he flushed angrily. Such damned cheek! He took it out on Detective Sergeant Kenwood. “Don’t just stand there, Kenwood, go away and get busy. Find out all you can about these blasted Friends of Hira for a start. And I’ll want to see Mr Orwin the moment he reports,” Hedge added in reference to Shard’s Number Two.

  After Kenwood had left his office Hedge was plagued by more telephone calls, unprotected by Miss Fleece, his secretary, still presumably abed. In succession: the Permanent Under-Secretary, the Home Office again, then the Treasury, anxious about Sir Richard Cross, a prime hostage in any hijack. After that the Cabinet Office: the Prime Minister had been woken from sleep to be informed, up north in Perth. She had already been on the line, getting heated about the Foreign Office.

  “Why us?” Hedge asked, and was told there had been another contact, made this time direct to the Foreign Secretary who was in Perth with Mrs Heffer for the conference and this contact had confirmed the Middle Eastern link. Hedge sweated: the train, with all those lives aboard including Sir Richard Cross, was in the dirty, murdering hands of terrorists from the Eastern Mediterranean. So was Shard: what a nuisance! Shardless, Hedge sweated the more. Mrs Heffer, with all due respect, was a cantankerous woman and one difficult to fend off with excuses.

  *

  When the intercom had come to life aboard the train the passengers, the more wakeful of whom had been showing signs of impatience, quietened to listen. First of all a dark-complexioned voice directed their attention to the dark-complexioned men now stationed at the ends of each coach, guns at the ready. The voice went on to tell them that they were all hostages but would be well treated if they behaved themselves.

  “You will remain aboard the train. If anyone tries to get out he or she will be at once killed. The authorities in Durham and London will be told that if there is any police or military assault on the train, it will be blown up immediately. We, the Friends of Hira, are willing for the sacrifice of our lives. For now, that is all. We do not expect this situation to last for very long. We have the whip hand.” The intercom from the cab clicked off.

  And you probably do have the whip hand, Shard thought as he sat watchfully in his seat. Blow the train on the viaduct and you blew a lot of Durham with it, very likely, depending on how much explosive had been brought aboard, presumably in personal baggage. Unless this was all bluff; but Shard’s past experience of terrorists told him that they didn’t bluff. That was one of their strengths; they always did what they’d threatened to do; and it didn’t look as though they were after Mrs Heffer. Either Hedge’s intelligence had gone adrift or there was coincidence around — or, again, they might be going to demand the handing over of Mrs Heffer, but that was a fairly unlikely thought, an attempt doomed to failure from the start. As for himself, at least his identity would almost certainly be unknown to the terrorists who would not be expecting a professional opponent to be aboard. He had recognised none of the dark-skinned men he had seen aboard the train; with Hedge’s strictures in mind, he’d been watchful for that. He just hoped the back benches and Sir Richard Cross would keep as low a profile as he would himself. Or more precisely that Lady Cross would: Sir Richard was a reticent man, his wife was a flamboyant woman given to stressing her position as spouse of the man who held the nation’s purse-strings. She was an enthusiastic opener of bazaars and fêtes and believed that the mention of her name opened everything else unto her as well. She had failed to move with the times, and if she made an indiscreet move now they would all lose out. Terrorists wouldn’t suffer airs easily.

  In another coach Sickert J. MacCantley felt his bowels melt. Middle Eastern terrorists didn’t like US citizens and he’d already been indiscreet. By his side and holding his hand tight sat Sun Wun Foo, motionless and her skin shining with the sweat of fear, hoping she wouldn’t be noticed if she hid behind the gross bulk of Mr MacCantley, in whom also she sensed fear. He was gulping like a stranded whale and his stomach was wobbling. She wished she was back with the massage agency, servicing safe men in safe London hotels, or even back in Hong Kong, in the poverty-stricken squalor of her father’s hovel, her father who would not allow her to go on the game in Hong Kong where, as a young man, he had served as a locally enlisted steward in ships of the British Navy and knew the evil ways of sailors and British businessmen.

  Elsewhere along the train the Yorkshire farmer and his wife sat shaking and worrying about their son who before long would be wondering why they didn’t arrive in Wensleydale, any road until the hijack reached the BBC and the papers. So near and yet so far: if they could get out, they could reach West Witton by taxi, in not much more than an hour down the A1(M) to Leeming, thence turning off for Bedale and Leyburn. Mr Irons wondered if he could put it tactfully to the terrorists that they had a family christening to attend and would be no trouble to anybody if they were allowed down — after all, they were damn nearly into the station. Without saying anything to his wife, he got to his feet and stood swaying in the aisle.

  “Sit down, old man.” The local terrorist was on the ball, all right.

  “We’re nobbut an old couple —”

  “Sit down.” The gun was up and pointed. Mrs Irons pulled at her husband’s sleeve, and he sat down again. His wife was crying now: she said she didn’t want any harm to come to him, and in time they might be let go. She’d read about hijacks in aircraft: they often released the old and the sick — they could be quite human if treated right. And Fred wouldn’t want her or Dad to get hurt just because of him.

  In one of the sleeping compartments Jean Fison, a spinster from Norwood in Surrey who on embarking had been relieved to find the other berth unoccupied but now would have been glad of company, got dressed fumblingly and in fear that a man would burst in upon her with a gun. Like the Ironses she was worried in a family sense but very differently: she was answering a call to
a sick mother in Edinburgh, an SOS really, it had to be admitted, because the message had said her mother was not expected to last long. She wanted desperately to be there when the end came: there had been a quarrel that had sent Miss Fison south to a secretarial job three years ago; and they had to make up. Like Mr Irons, she wondered if the terrorists might have a soft spot in their hearts. She believed they looked after their old, not like here in Britain, no dustbins of human refuse delicately called rest homes for the elderly. They might be made to understand if she spoke nicely.

  She opened the door, about to move out into the corridor. She saw the attendant, Sam Frudge, looking green. He told her to get back inside. Obsequiousness was now a thing of the past.

  “But I want to —”

  “No-one’s allowed out. You leave your berth and it’s me what gets it. And I’m no bloody hero, all right?” He pushed her back in and as he banged the door shut she heard a key turn in the lock. She tried the door but there was no movement: she was sure that being locked in was against British Rail regulations and when sanity returned to the train she would lodge a complaint. That was something to hold on to, a resolute hope that an end must come to all this.