by Shah, R D
“Pull up here,” he said, pointing to the visitors’ entrance where dozens of people were sitting and lying as a number of police in hi-vis yellow jackets tried to get a handle on the chaos which was unfolding.
“Whereabouts, sir?”
“Where do you think, you twat?” he snapped, pointing to the smoke billowing from the visitors’ entrance.
As the driver endeavoured to manoeuvre through the onlookers, McCitrick could see people still staggering from entrance. Jesus he thought, it had gone off inside, possibly near the Commons itself.
“This’ll do.” As the car came to a halt he pushed open the passenger door and got out, turning briefly to his driver. “Get out and do some good,” was all he said before hurrying towards the smoke.
There were people everywhere covered in black and grey soot. Some sat nursing their wounds, others stood motionless staring back at the mayhem, wide-eyed and still in shock.
One woman was crouched down and gently shaking her baby, whose face was covered in the same grey soot, calling out for help. As a policeman approached McCitrick he pulled out a Home Office identification card and held it in front of him.
“That child needs help. First priority,” he said, pointing to the woman and her motionless baby.
The officer briefly inspected the ID and with a simple nod moved over to the distraught mother as McCitrick headed straight for the visitors’ entrance, barely taking note of the people taking photos on their mobile phones, a number even documenting their own tribulations, probably to be uploaded later to TikTok or Instagram. The scene was bloody and harrowing, but as McCitrick approached the still smoking entrance he saw something that stopped him in his tracks.
Home Secretary Jacob Ryan staggered from the doorway, his clothes singed black, a deep cut across his cheek dripping blood, holding the still body of a young girl, maybe ten years old, with blonde hair.
“Sir!” McCitrick rushed over to meet him as Ryan moved to a clear side of the gravel and placed the girl down on the ground. He then pulled off his suit jacket and began to administer CPR. McCitrick knelt down at his side and attempted to take over, but Ryan didn’t even register who he was and just pushed him away roughly. “Give her room!” he shouted and continued alternating between blowing air into her lungs while pinching her nose and then counting off the compressions to her chest.
Behind them a black-haired woman appeared from the crowd, her clothes and face covered in grey soot. “Lucy!” the woman cried out, dropping to her knees next to the girl, and although tears began to flow she stayed back while Ryan continued his CPR.
“C’mon, c’mon,” Ryan spat as he repeated the process like a man possessed and then, like that, the young girl’s body shuddered and she thrust upwards in a fit of coughing and clasped at her chest.
“That’s it, breathe slowly,” Ryan said, supporting her as she regained full consciousness. He leant back as the mother pushed in and held the girl in her arms.
Ryan stared at the two in relief, and then he rubbed the mother’s shoulder and stood back up to see a number of phones being pointed at him.
McCitrick tried to pull him away from the lenses, but Ryan jerked his arm away roughly.
The Home Secretary was still in shock.
“Sir, it’s me, McCitrick,” he said softly, and as he looked towards him there was a flicker of recognition in Ryan’s eyes.
“John. What happened?”
“You’ve been in a bomb attack, sir,” McCitrick answered, not sure how together, or untogether, Ryan was at that very moment.
“I know that,” he replied angrily, still getting his bearings. Then he gazed forward, suddenly becoming sombre. “They got all of them, John.”
“The cabinet? The bomb went off in the Commons itself?”
Ryan gave a weary nod. “I was metres from the door… and the carnage. Some are alive but… Jesus.”
It was impossible to tell who had been killed, that would come later, but as McCitrick turned to see firemen now rushing inside he focused on the moment and the way forward. Ryan was in no good state, but the man needed to know. “Ethan Munroe alerted us to the attack, but the timeframe was too small. We just didn’t have time to react fast enough.”
Ryan placed his hand on McCitrick’s shoulder to steady himself. “Last minute or not, he saved some lives today.”
“Yes, sir, he did. Just not enough. But there’s something else. He knows who carried it out.”
Ryan’s eyes instantly blazed with interest. “Who?”
McCitrick hesitated and then he said it, softly. “Daedalus, sir. It was Daedalus.”
Ryan looked dumbfounded. “What? They’d be committing suicide, sticking their head so far above the parapet.”
“You’d think so, but it was them. Or at the very least they were involved and knew about it.”
Ryan took a step backwards and glanced over at the scores of injured people littering the car park. His head swayed slowly from side to side and when he returned to face McCitrick he was seething.
“This game stops now, John. Do you understand me? No ifs, no buts, no quarter given. Bring everyone together. The whole of DS5.”
McCitrick knew what was being asked of him, but he felt duty bound to clarify the order.
“‘Everyone’, sir?”
Ryan’s chest heaved, his face reddening, and he didn’t so much growl his response as yell it. “EVERYONE!”
Chapter 15
Michael Hanks shifted uncomfortably in his first-class seat as he tapped away at his iPhone. His failure in allowing Icarus to escape after such a brazen operation to rescue him was something he’d not yet had to face up to with the Daedalus high command. Failures and setbacks were tolerated if justified, but to have the man in his custody only for him to slip through his fingers was frankly unforgivable. Flying back to the US was the right thing to do, and he was not about to compound his blunder by contacting them directly on an unsecured line. Especially considering the entire Western intelligence apparatus would be scouring communications chatter so soon after the attack on Parliament. Two fuck-ups like that in less than twenty-four hours and he would find himself on the end of a long rope. His team had spent hours combing the port city of Calais for that shit Icarus, with no success. What did he expect? The assassin was trained too well to be caught, and with safehouses and stashes all over the world he was probably halfway to God knows where by now.
Hanks knew the only way to redeem himself in the eyes of his seniors was to capture the psychopath, and even then he would still have Bauer to contend with for the mess he’d made.
Hans Bauer.
Hanks wasn’t sure who was more dangerous, Icarus or Bauer. Bauer could be brutal, even by his own standards, but he was competent, and if a job was given to him it always got done to the letter of the instruction. Hanks was now hoping that the instruction that had been given wasn’t to make him pay for such a foolish mistake. To have Bauer as a colleague was fortuitous, but as an enemy… well, that was a death sentence.
“Excuse me, sir, but you’ll have to turn off your phone during take-off.” A blonde-haired stewardess leant over him, smiling pleasantly as she pointed at the mobile in his hand “You can turn it back on when the seatbelt sign turns off.”
Hanks replied with a nod, but then realised she wasn’t leaving until he complied. With a final tap to send his message he held in the power button. Only once the screen went black did she stand back up, satisfied.
“I wasn’t sure I’d get a flight given the Parliament attack,” Hanks said, hiding the smug pride he felt at knowing more about it than the authorities, let alone some air stewardess.
“I believe we are one of the last flights to leave. I’m told all further flights are being grounded. You’ve got good timing, sir.”
Yes, Hanks thought, knowing how close the timing had been. Even with the search for Icarus he had made sure he was already boarding when the news began to pour in over the news channels.
“Jus
t terrible,” the stewardess went on, shaking her head solemnly, “but you can rest assured that this flight is safe and secure. We also have sky marshals on the plane for added security.”
“I feel safer already,” Hanks said as the stewardess smiled again. “You just never know who you’re sat next to these days.”
The stewardess patted him on the shoulder reassuringly and then headed down the cabin to help a young woman with her bag as Hanks settled back into his seat. He’d been coordinating tracking teams to find the tremendous thorn in his side that was Icarus, but as yet it had proved fruitless. Christ, the man was a ghost, and a dangerous killer. Hanks had no problem with torture or murder, hell, it was part of the trade, and he loved it, but not when it involved their own. Icarus might have been a psychotic cold-blooded killer, but he was their cold-blooded killer, and could the poor bastard really be blamed for turning on everyone given what had happened? Still, it was strange. He was so unlike the others.
Hanks settled into his seat. With some free time on his hands until he could turn his iPhone back on, he began to consider his story. Of course he would take the blame for the escape, but how it happened would go a long way to shifting some of the blame. Within seconds he had decided that Davies would be the fall guy. The man was dead, so what difference did it make? Hanks now set about concocting a reasonable tale. Perhaps Davies had made the mistake of loosening Icarus’s bindings during the act of his torture, or perhaps his carelessness had allowed the assassin to escape. Either way he had some time to formulate the story, one that would present him in the best light possible, before reaching the US.
He allowed the worries and fears he had to wash from his mind. The Parliament attack had been a success, and plans were moving forward. Even though Icarus possessed cunning and great expertise it would count for little as the whole weight of Daedalus was now free to bear down on him. Something told him that he would be seeing the assassin very soon, and when the moment came he would deal with it personally, and this time swiftly.
Hanks closed his eyes and rested as the behind him more stewardesses swanned around, speaking to the other passengers reassuringly. None of them seemed to notice the man sat in the back row of first class. He raised his hand and immediately a male attendant moved over to him.
“Can I help with anything, sir?” he asked, smiling amiably.
“How long will the flight take?”
“Flight time to Atlanta should be just under nine hours, sir. Are you connecting from there?”
“Not sure yet,” the man replied, smiling again. “I’m meeting an old friend.”
“Sounds nice. Catching up?”
“Yes.”
“Sounds like fun.” With a final smile the attendant headed back towards the cabin as the man pulled a dark set of sunglasses from the leather case next to him and slipped them on before staring at the crown of Hanks’s head, just visible over the top of his seat.
“Yes, it does. It really does.”
Chapter 16
Munroe crunched the last piece of ice in his mouth and placed the empty glass down on the bar counter before calling over to the barman and tapping its rim. “Another glass of ice, please.”
The white-shirted barman nodded and bent down, scooping another plastic shovel of ice cubes and lightly dumping them into Munroe’s glass.
“Would you like a drink with that?”
It was the second time the bartender had asked the question, and Munroe just smiled and shook his head. He had been here for over half an hour and the fact he was only ordering free ice really seemed to bother the young Frenchman. He probably thought his patron was just another cheapskate, and Munroe now called him back over. “Give me an orange juice then.”
The order received a polite smile and a within moments a slim-jim full of orange juice was pushed towards him on a single red napkin.
“Cheers,” Munroe said, passing over a five-euro note. “Keep the change.”
The barman pointed to the menu hanging above the bar’s drinks rack. “It’s six euros.”
“In that case, here’s a ten and I’ll take the change.”
The lost tip did little to dampen the barman’s demeanour and he opened the till and placed a few coins down on the bar counter as Munroe turned his attention back to the flat screen mounted on the wall opposite. The news channels were full of the terrorist attack on Parliament and it was only now, six hours later, that an accurate picture of what had happened was emerging.
After getting clear of Bordeaux, Munroe had headed to the city of Nantes and its international airport. Far enough away to be clear of any more Daedalus entanglements, and close enough to make a quick exit out of the country. But en route he’d received a call from McCitrick. The conversation had been a morbid one, to say the least. Though they didn’t yet know the full list of casualties, there was a high expectation that the Prime Minister and most of the cabinet had been killed in the blast. The news had hit Munroe like a blow to the face, and his initial reaction was to curse himself for not being able to report the threat sooner. But when he heard about the communications blackout preceding the attack it dampened some of the guilt he had felt. To pull off something like that was incredibly impressive, and he couldn’t help but slightly admire the operation. To get an explosive device into the Houses of Parliament and also cut communications, stopping a response, was unheard of given the levels of protection. At first glance the Houses of Parliament were easy access and open to the public, but the reality was far from it. Bomb blast windows, scanning tech, mail checks and numerous layers of security made it one of the most secure locations in the country.
But not today.
The situation was still being assessed by MI5 and the intelligence services at GCHQ, but given they already knew Daedalus was involved, the ‘who’ was taking ‘a back seat’, as McCitrick had put it. The DS5 head had rerouted Munroe to Brest Bretagne international airport, located just off the tip of France’s most north-westerly coastline, and told him only that they were sending him transport and to sit tight in the Concorde lounge. They would find him.
The change in destination had added an extra three hours on to his trip, and on arrival Munroe had done what anyone awaiting pickup would do. Find the nearest bar, dig in and watch the news.
“We’ve just received official confirmation that the Prime Minister was killed in today’s attack. He was taken to the Royal London Hospital where, despite resuscitation attempts, he was pronounced dead.” The BBC correspondent looked conflicted between the terrible news he was reporting and the thrill of such a huge story. “The Civil Contingencies Committee, COBRA, has convened an emergency session over the past five hours and as of now we can report the death toll at one hundred and forty. Of the twenty-three cabinet ministers, sixteen were among the dead, including the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Secretary of State and the Foreign Secretary, who succumbed to his injuries less than an hour ago.” His last sentence trailed off as the shock of what he was saying sank in, but he regained his composure moments later. “It is a truly dark day for the realm, and one that will be burnt into the minds of the British people and the United Kingdom for many years to come. Security at airports and other potential targets across the country is being tightened and we are awaiting a message from the government within the hour. Meanwhile, messages of support have been flooding in from world leaders across the globe…”
Munroe turned away from the TV and slid another ice cube into his mouth, crunching down on it as he instead watched the bustling passengers making their way back and forth. It was busy, and as he scanned the concourse someone caught his eye. A blonde woman in a grey turtleneck jumper with the sleeves rolled up was staring over at him. She immediately broke eye contact upon seeing him glancing at her, and moved off behind one of the round white support pillars and out of sight.
Munroe slowly swivelled off his bar stool and knelt down to retie his shoelace and surveyed the other passengers. Quickly he caught s
ight of a balding man in a green sleeveless aertex jumper and washed jeans, who was looking over at him from his magazine before his eyes darted back to the page.
He was being watched.
Munroe finished with his shoelace. He could see, using his peripheral vision, that the man hadn’t moved, which he took as an indication he hadn’t noticed him noticing them. He stood back up and popped one final ice cube in his mouth before nodding to the barman, who appeared relieved to see him go, and then he made his way nonchalantly out of the bar and up the concourse with all the other passengers. A few metres along he deliberately bumped into a man wearing an open shirt, white boat shoes and a pair of Mambo shorts. He turned around and apologised, just managing to catch a glimpse of the blonde woman and the bald guy again before he resumed his stroll up the concourse.
They were definitely following him, but Munroe continued to walk at a casual speed. Could they be McCitrick’s? Unlikely, because why not just approach him? He was waiting for someone, after all. Daedalus? But how could that be? He hadn’t been followed on the drive up, he was certain of that, and there was no way they could know he was here at the airport. Unless they were watching all the airports, which seemed a tough ask given the number of them in western France.
Munroe was already considering his next move when up ahead he saw a sign for the restrooms, and an image of Kessler sitting tied up on the toilet seat holding up his forearm smugly flickered through his mind.
Could he have been so careless?
Munroe’s body had received multiple knocks and bruises during his escape from the hotel back in Bordeaux, and he’d not questioned any of the aches and pains he was feeling, but with this sudden realisation he began to subtly rub at the most tender parts of his body. He slid his hand down to his thigh and glided his palm across the bruise on his right thigh.
Nothing.
He moved his attention to the ache in his left shoulder and neck, but still nothing. Finally he slipped his hand across his stomach before coming to a stop on his right side, just above the hip. Now he felt it. A puncture mark, and something very small beneath the skin.