Ethereum

by N C Mander

  All around her, chaos was unfolding. Terrified members of the public swarmed up the hill to get away from the horror below.

  The man with the rifle had thrown down his weapon and was shouting in Arabic as he ran back toward the van. He rummaged in his pocket. He retrieved an old-fashioned mobile phone and held it above his head. Kat saw a red dot appear on his chest, there was a popping sound. A moment later, he was slumped over. The mobile phone skittered across the ground.

  A dozen men, led by James Woods, hurried over to the van, holding blast shields ahead of them.

  Kat turned her attention back to Nick and his assailant. There was an angry gash in Nick’s neck and another gaping wound, from which blood was pouring, in his leg.

  But the man with the knife was no longer assaulting him. He had dropped his weapon and was hurrying away from Nick, his eyes fixed on something on the ground. Kat followed his gaze. He was making a beeline for the mobile phone.

  He grabbed it and, with shaking hands, fumbled with it.

  ‘No!’ screamed Kat, starting to run toward the man. He looked up at her, a triumphant gleam in his eyes. He lifted his finger in an exaggerated gesture bringing it down slowly toward the keypad.

  There was a loud bang. Another gunshot.

  The crowds on the hill screamed. Some crouched down, their hands over their heads. Others continued to push as the throng surged up the hill, attempting to escape the carnage below. The terrorist fell to the ground, grasping his stomach. A large wound had opened up in his abdomen, and blood poured from his mouth.

  Kat seized the mobile phone, which landed an arm’s length from where she stood. She looked up to see where the shot had come from. Barely five metres behind where the man lay dying stood Edison. His Glock 26 at his side.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  1611, Sunday 9th July, The All England Club, Wimbledon, London

  Edison had spotted the van just as it plunged through one of the access gates at the edge of the All England Club. His working hypothesis had been that the men would don explosive vests and make their way on foot into the crowds, but to his horror, he watched as the van accelerated through the flimsy barrier that separated the deliveries bay from the rest of the grounds. Edison looked on as it raced toward the hill where thousands of people were watching the men’s final unfold.

  He was frozen to the spot only for an instant and then, acting on instinct alone, ran. He was followed by the security guard, yelling wildly. The van made quick progress, and all too soon, Edison was many hundreds of metres behind it. He observed two figures jump from the cab. He saw, in the distance, the people on the terrace move, like a wave, away from the carnage. As a round of gunshots was let off from an automatic weapon, the noise level rose exponentially. He willed himself on, his lungs about to explode from the exertion.

  Edison halted his approach fifty metres from where the van had been immobilised. He surveyed the arena, forcing himself to think clearly and calmly, before taking another step. He saw the bomb squad making a dash for the van. To his right, a policeman lay stricken, having succumbed to the onslaught of one of the terrorists and his knife. He spotted Kat making a dash toward them, and his heart flipped in his chest. He panned round and saw another man fumbling with a mobile phone. From somewhere, a shot was fired, and the man fell to his knees. The phone he’d been struggling with spilled from his grasp onto the floor.

  The knife-wielding assailant realised that their success was now solely in his hands and abandoned his weapon, rushing for the phone. Edison didn’t take his eyes off the carnage as he pulled out his gun. He scanned the scene again, walking forward. He lined up his shot. Where had Kat gone? Through the dust and the debris that was falling from the wall, he spotted her. She was running toward the man holding the detonator. Don’t get any closer, he begged her under his breath.

  The man was raising his hand and bringing it down in an exaggerated gesture toward the mobile phone.

  Edison pulled the trigger. The man fell forward, onto his knees, the phone slipping from his grasp just before he crumpled into a heap on the ground. Edison’s eyes met Kat’s. Relief flooded her face momentarily before she snapped back into action. She turned her back on Edison and hurried over to Nick. The policeman was pale, and his eyelids were fluttering as he drifted in and out of consciousness.

  A small army of flak-jacketed policemen descended. ‘I need a paramedic now,’ Kat commanded of one of them as she tore off her jacket and stuffed it into the wound on Nick’s neck. ‘Nick, this is Kat, I need you to listen to me,’ she said urgently to the man lying at her feet. ‘We’re getting the paramedics now.’ She kept on talking to him until another police officer arrived to relieve her.

  Edison retreated into the shadows and watched as James Woods’ team created a clearance area around the van. Carefully, one of the officers opened the doors. The space at the back was empty but for a small, boarded crate. Very slowly, the crate was shuffled forward and inspected. The specially trained officer, cautiously wielding a pair of wire cutters, removed the detonator, and there was a collective sigh of relief when he raised his thumb.

  Up on the terrace, distraught members of the public were being corralled and calmed by the police. There were a few injuries sustained in the crush to escape, and a handful of paramedics moved among the shell-shocked crowd.

  Kat caught up with Jake Ducker who was speaking into his radio. ‘Your team did well,’ she said.

  ‘Let’s hope those three,’ he replied, nodding toward the bodies, which had been hastily covered with blankets, ‘were the only casualties. We just couldn’t get a safe shot away on the guy who was attacking Nick.’

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ she replied as the stricken Nick Walsh was wheeled past them toward a waiting ambulance.

  ‘Do you know who our rogue gunman is?’ Jake asked.

  ‘He’s one of ours.’ Kat didn’t feel like now was the time to get into the detail of Edison’s involvement in the case.

  He nodded, satisfied with the answer. ‘Colchester’s on his way,’ he informed her. There was a collection of television crews and cameras assembling along the line of the cordon that had been hastily erected around the scene. Jake added, ‘He’ll need to do his piece to camera.’

  Kat nodded and walked away. Mo was arguing with the junior police officer who had been put in charge of the cordon’s security. She walked over and confirmed that he should be admitted.

  ‘Are you ok?’ Mo looked at Kat’s bloodstained t-shirt and dust-caked hair.

  ‘I’m fine. Edison’s over there. He saved the day.’ They walked over to where he was waiting.

  ‘Where’s the gun?’ Kat asked.

  Edison held it up.

  ‘How the hell are we going to explain away the shooting of a suspect by an unregistered weapon?’

  ‘It’s registered,’ Edison said. ‘Just not to me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I got Tanya to register it in your name when I started working as an agent.’ Edison remembered the request he’d made to the head of counter-terrorism on his doorstep as they’d bartered over his single demand for being recruited as an MI5 agent.

  Kat’s jaw dropped. It took a moment for her to find a riposte. Her phone rang, and she ripped her incredulous gaze from Edison’s to answer it. ‘Hello, Tanya … Everybody from our section is fine … Yes, the police will be managing the fallout … Ok, we’ll see you back at Thames House.’ She hung up. ‘She wants us back on the Grid. I’ll go and let … uh, someone, I don’t know who’s taken charge now Nick’s been invalided …’

  ‘I have,’ Colchester’s voice behind them interrupted her. The two intelligence officers and Edison turned to see the uniformed superintendent bearing down on them. ‘That was a close-run thing. But we got there.’ He smiled, an expression that was ill-fitting on his features. ‘I know you,’ he pointed at Kat, ‘and you,’ pointing at Mo, ‘but you,’ gesturing at Edison, ‘are new to me.’ He paused, ‘Or are you?’ He studied Ed
ison more closely. ‘You look familiar. A friend of Charlie Harrington-Smith’s I think.’

  ‘Yes, Scott Edison. We have met before.’ Edison didn’t offer the police officer his hand.

  ‘Indeed. Anyway, must be getting on. The press is overdue a statement. I am sure we will all debrief in due course.’ He swept away in the direction of the waiting journalists.

  ‘Pompous twat,’ Mo muttered. And they all laughed.

  ‘Why don’t you get back to Thames House. I need to check in on a few things.’

  ‘Can you let me know if you get any news on Nick?’ Mo pleaded.

  ‘Of course,’ Kat promised, touching Mo’s arm, sensitive to the young man’s emotional state. He’d spent the last two weeks with the police officer. They were a similar age and had got to know one another well. Also, although the whole team were still reeling from the loss of Natalie, Kat feared, too, that it was the junior officer who would feel it most keenly. Jock and Colin were hardened campaigners and knew the sacrifices of the job too well. Mo was naïve, borne of inexperience. He was vulnerable right now, and Kat felt responsible for him. Edison and Kat watched as he made his way back to the car, his head bowed, avoiding the gaze of the dozens of television cameras trained on the carnage that lay in the shadow of the stadium.

  An army of police officers was hurrying around with sheets and shrouding, in an attempt to cover up the distressing sight of bodies. Kat turned to Edison but was distracted by a kafuffle. Over his shoulder, she saw two police officers restraining a member of the public who was making a fuss at the cordon. Kat thought she recognised the figure who was gesticulating wildly in their direction. Edison followed Kat’s gaze and immediately recognised the man who was imploring the policemen to allow him past the barrier.

  ‘Tony,’ Edison said.

  ‘Tony?’ Kat sounded like the information didn’t stack up, as if the mousey analyst and Edison’s reclusive flatmate couldn’t possibly be on the scene of a major terrorist incident.

  Kat and Edison hurried over to where Tony was still begging the policemen to allow him over the barrier. He turned to them as they approached. ‘They wouldn’t allow me to come see you,’ Tony whined.

  Kat ducked under the police tape and offered an apologetic look to the two police officers who both looked relieved as Edison put an arm around Tony’s shoulders and led him away.

  ‘Where are the kids?’ he asked.

  Tony waved vaguely up the hill where a knot of people stood. Many were straining to get a better look at the police operation. Others were cowering, clutching one another, tears streaming down their faces. A handful of uniformed policemen were doing their best to calm the distressed whilst shepherding the more curious members of the public back away from where their colleagues were securing the scene below. Close to one of the policemen sat a young boy and a teenage girl. The little boy, with a floppy haircut and pointy, rat-like features, was unmistakably Tony’s son. His sister, a head taller, was pretty and blonde. Edison didn’t know his flatmate’s ex but assumed the girl must have inherited her looks from her mother. The two children were sitting quietly on the grass, bewildered at the pandemonium that was unfolding around them.

  Edison steered Tony up the hill. He looked wild-eyed and was muttering to himself about the horror of it all. He berated himself for bringing his family into this storm. Guilt knotted in the pit of Edison’s stomach.

  ‘He’s in shock,’ Kat said to Edison under her breath. Edison nodded.

  ‘I should take him home.’

  ‘No, we need to debrief. That’s the priority,’ Kat protested. ‘We’ll have to bring them to Thames House.’

  They reached the children. The boy squinted up at them, shading his eyes from the bright light. ‘Can we go home now, Dad?’ he asked.

  ‘Well behaved kids you’ve got there,’ one of the policemen commented.

  ‘Thank you, officer,’ Kat replied when Tony ignored him, he wasn’t taking his eyes off the van and the shrouded bodies. ‘Are we ok to take them home?’

  ‘Please provide my colleague with names and a contact number, but yes, it’s ok to go.’ The policeman eyed Tony, ‘Does he need medical assistance? Looks like shock.’

  ‘We’ll look after him,’ Edison said.

  The small party shuffled toward the exit, showing Kat’s ID to a dozen different police officers before they were allowed to escape.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  1846, Sunday 9th July, Thames House, Westminster, London

  The imposing facade of Thames House appeared as the taxi Kat had requisitioned for their journey sped across Lambeth Bridge. It had been slow progress through the police road cordons as they departed Wimbledon, and Kat had to regularly show her identification to the nervous but well-meaning police officers that blocked their route. In the back of the cab, Tony’s son, Jason, was sandwiched between his father and Kat on the back seat. Edison and Danni, Tony’s daughter, were perched on the fold-down seats, travelling backwards. They didn’t speak as they sped through the empty streets of London.

  The atmosphere was familiar to Edison, who had worked through all the major terrorist attacks in the capital of the past fifteen years. He had been a junior officer at the time of the July seventh bombings and remembered, after the chaos of the bombing scenes, the eerie quiet of the streets only a few blocks away as Londoners retreated to the safety of their offices and homes to watch the events unfold on their televisions. The subdued atmosphere never lasted long. London would be buzzing again within hours. Edison liked to pretend that such was the confidence the general public had in the security services and the police forces. Actually, it was the unrelenting pace of city living and its residents’ collective stoicism that drove them, unerring, back to work, onto the transport system and to their next gig or sporting event.

  ‘We have no intelligence to suggest that there will be any follow-up attacks,’ Colchester had told the waiting reporters as part of his statement. ‘The threat level will remain at critical until we gather a full picture of today’s events.’ That soundbite was being played regularly on the radio that the cab driver was listening to.

  As they approached Thames House, Edison’s thoughts turned to where they were going to debrief this time. He thought it unlikely that the Gosforth Arms would be considered a suitable location. Was there a safe house somewhere in Pimlico, he wondered, digging about in his memory. He had a recollection of a dingy bedsit where he’d housed an asset for a period back in 2008.

  The taxi pulled up at the front of the building. Mo and Colin hurried out. Colin settled the bill with the driver. Tony, still looking dazed, took Jason’s hand and helped the nine-year-old out of the taxi. Standing on the pavement alone, Danni was pale and appeared much younger than her fourteen years. Her shoulders were hunched, and she played nervously with a strand of hair, positioning herself a few metres away from the others as they exited the taxi.

  Kat nudged Mo and muttered, ‘Could you take Tony and the kids in, please? Find someone to keep an eye on them. They’re all in a bad way.’

  He nodded and moved toward Danni, offering her a reassuring smile, ‘You look like you could do with a cup of tea.’ Danni shot a suspicious glance at him then looked at her father. ‘I think your dad could do with one too,’ Mo continued. ‘Come on, Tony.’ Tony and his family followed him, zombie-like, into the building.

  Colin, Kat and Edison were left on the pavement. The taxi driver, having been handsomely tipped for his service, had raced off. Edison looked up at the entrance to Thames House. ‘Come on then,’ Kat said and started up the steps. Edison hesitated, and she looked back at him.

  ‘Edison,’ she said, ‘do you really think that you can solve this whole thing, shoot a terrorist and still not be allowed on the Grid? Tanya’s sorted your clearance. Come on. I want to debrief as soon as possible so we can sort out tying all this up.’ She marched up the steps and into the cavernous hallway.

  Edison followed, his heart beating hard in his chest. This
was a strange homecoming. He nodded at the familiar face in the security box. ‘Hello Edison,’ said the uniformed security guard, reaching down to open the access gates.

  ‘Hello, Craig.’ The greeting rolled off Edison’s tongue as if there had been no break in his saying the same thing every day. ‘How is your mother?’

  ‘Oh, she’s not getting any younger, and she’ll be mighty unimpressed that there wasn’t more tennis today.’

  It was a macabre joke but one that reminded Edison of the camaraderie that working at MI5 engendered. No one outside those walls would have understood why that joke was necessary. Only those charged with protecting the nation on a day-to-day basis, often at great personal risk, understood the need to see the lighter side in events such as those that had happened that day.

  ‘Your pass is upstairs,’ Kat explained. She had been exchanging a flurry of messages with the team on the fifth floor as they’d travelled across London. As they walked through the building, Kat quizzed Colin. ‘Any ID on our bombers yet?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Colin replied.

  ‘Any sign of Yousuf?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Christoph?’

  Colin shrugged and shook his head.

  They were ascending in the lift. Edison was subdued, drinking in his surroundings, half wondering at what point he would be evicted again from this inner sanctum of the intelligence world. The lift doors opened, and they were met by a wall of noise. The entire section had been assembled, and the floor was a hive of activity. Intelligence officers and analysts were investigating every possible angle on the day’s events. Edison let the hubbub wash over him.