PC Winston could move fast when he had to. The phone had just got to the little man’s ear, when Winston’s long arm took hold of his hand. “Excuse me, sir,” he said urgently, “could I have a look at your phone please?”
Looking up at him, the Asian seemed absolutely petrified. “Of course,” he said nervously, smiling weakly as he let go of the phone. Then he suddenly turned and took off down Broad Street towards the commercial centre of the town.
Clutching the phone, PC Winston ran after him, shouting, “Stop him!”
As Rashid ran towards the corner of the Magdalen Street churchyard, he was suddenly thrown against the outer wall of Balliol, then pinned there by the firm hands of another uniformed policeman. Got him! thought Winston, his sense of relief slightly soured when he saw it was PC Jacobs, the young smart-arse, who had made the arrest.
57
Where was he? Why hadn’t Rashid rung? Bashir disobeyed the Englishman’s instructions and dialled Rashid’s mobile, only to find it was switched off. Damn! He checked his watch—the procession would be reaching Broad Street at any moment. What had the Englishman said? “If there’s any hiccup in communications, just go. Whatever happens, you must not be late. Late means too late.”
He would wait another thirty seconds, he decided, staring at his digital watch. Next to him Khaled suddenly stirred, and pointed through the windscreen. Looking out towards the end of the street, where the lush green lawns of University Parks were visible in the background, Bashir saw them.
One was in uniform, two were in plain clothes, walking briskly in and out of the street, checking each parked car, then moving on quickly. They were coming this way.
Please ring, please ring, Rashid, Bashir exclaimed, in what was almost a prayer. He saw one of the plain-clothes men point towards his end of the street, and then Bashir realised that he was pointing at him. The uniformed policeman looked up and broke into a sprint, grabbing his helmet with one hand while he shouted into a radio held by the other. The two plain-clothes men were behind him, and all three ran at full speed down the middle of the road.
He couldn’t wait any longer. He turned the ignition and the van coughed into life. Revving the engine, he pulled out sharply, intending to accelerate towards Parks Road, where he would turn onto the half-mile street that would lead them to their target. Seeing him start up the van, the man in uniform veered off onto the pavement, and one of the plain-clothes policemen drew a gun from inside his coat, and crouched behind the rear of a parked car.
Then Bashir saw a large van—the kind used to ferry policemen back and forth from football matches—stop directly across the far end of the side street, blocking his exit. He braked sharply just in time to swerve into a small road that circled behind the back of Keble College. Racing along behind the modern extensions at the back of the College, he negotiated the ninety-degree left turn with a small screech of his tyres. But he cursed out loud when he saw another police van pulling up to block off this side road as well. There was nothing for it: Bashir floored the accelerator, driving straight towards the police vehicle, then just short of it he threw the steering wheel abruptly right. His front tyre hit the high corner of the pavement and the van shot into the air, missing a passing girl by inches. She screamed, the noise filling the air like a siren, slowly dying away as the van landed with a heavy thump on Parks Road.
Bashir regained control and accelerated down the tree-lined street towards the Encaenia procession. It must have reached the Broad, he told himself. Mustn’t be late, mustn’t be late. The road was free of traffic but he forced himself to slow down as the speedometer reached sixty-five. He was worried he wouldn’t make the turn. He touched the brakes lightly once, then twice, and got ready. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Khaled grip the free end of the rope tightly.
The traffic light ahead was turning amber but he ignored it, praying no one would shoot out from Broad Street. Instead, ahead on his left, a student emerged from Holywell Street, riding a bicycle. As if in a film, a policeman came from nowhere and threw himself at the student, knocking him and his bicycle to the ground.
Before Bashir could fully take this in, he was in the junction, turning sharply right. He scraped inside the far pavement, just in front of the lower steps of the Clarendon Building, and struggled to aim the van towards the procession that should be heading straight towards him. He was going to drive along the pavement and then Khaled would pull the rope. The explosion would kill anyone within a hundred yards. That was what the Englishman had said. A hundred yards.
But the Broad was absolutely empty. There was no one on the pavement or on the street. No procession, no pedestrians, not even a student on a bicycle. It was like a ghost town.
Bashir began to panic as he felt a heavy thump against his front left tyre. What had he hit? Then almost simultaneously he felt the heavy whoomph of another tyre blowing. Suddenly he lost control of the steering.
The van skewed sharply left, in a curving skid propelling him directly towards the wall in front of the Sheldonian. Bashir knew in a flash that Khaled didn’t need to pull the rope. The impact alone would trigger the detonators, he thought.
58
Liz crouched with Charles Wetherby behind one of the police cars, taking cover as soon as she saw the first tyre shot out by the marks-men. She waited for an explosion, and covered her ears with her hands. Beside her, Wetherby spontaneously threw a protective arm around her shoulders.
There was a harsh, grating sound of metal hitting an immoveable object, and a muffled thump which seemed half sound, half vibration.
And then there was silence. Liz began to raise her head but Wetherby pushed her down again. “Wait,” he said. “Just in case.” But there was no explosion, and as the pressure from his arm eased, Liz peered cautiously over the bonnet of the police car.
The van had hit the retaining wall and been thrown upwards, where it lay against the tall iron railings, pointing towards the sky, its front tyres spinning in the air.
Matheson moved out from the protection of the cars and began shouting orders. A fire engine appeared from Debenhams behind them. Avoiding the forbidding bollards at that end of the Broad, it trundled heavily up along the pavement by the shops, squeezing slowly through the narrow gap before accelerating, siren now blaring, towards the van.
As it arrived, armed policemen emerged from the crannies and doorways where they had sheltered, and moved towards the crashed vehicle. A Special Branch officer in plain clothes got to the van first, reached up and tugged at the driver’s door, fruitlessly. He’s brave, thought Liz, since there was a petrol tank that could still detonate.
She came out from behind the car and began to walk with Wetherby cautiously towards the van. Dave Armstrong joined them, breathless and looking stunned. “What was that about?” he asked. Neither Liz nor Wetherby responded.
As they moved down the Broad, firemen were shooting powerful jets of foam over the van.
Liz said, “I don’t understand why Tom made the phone call.”
“Well he didn’t warn us about the van,” said Dave sharply.
Wetherby shrugged. “Perhaps he felt he didn’t need to.”
Liz looked at him inquiringly, just as Matheson intercepted them. “There were two men in the van. They’re both dead,” he announced.
“Killed by the crash?” asked Wetherby.
Matheson nodded. “They had a fertiliser bomb in the back of the van, but it didn’t go off. It’s too early to say for sure, but it looks as if the detonators didn’t work.”
“I’m not sure they were meant to,” said Wetherby slowly.
Liz looked at him again; Wetherby’s expression seemed entirely enigmatic. “You think they knew there wasn’t going to be an explosion?” she asked.
“No, but I think Tom did,” said Wetherby. “You said yourself that you couldn’t understand why he’d want to kill so many innocent people. He wanted the van to get through, but he knew it wasn’t going to blow up.”
�
��Why would he do that?” asked Liz. “What would the point be?”
Wetherby shrugged. “I suppose to demonstrate it could be done. To show us up as dangerously incompetent.” He pointed up the street, where Liz could see a television crew advancing. “That may be a local crew,” said Wetherby, “but you can be confident their footage is going to make the national news this evening. None of us is going to look good after that kind of exposure.”
“So that’s what he wanted?” asked Liz. “To destroy the Service’s reputation?”
“Something like that.”
“Hang on,” interrupted Dave. “He didn’t care if the two blokes died, did he?” he asked impatiently, gesturing towards the crashed van.
“Of course he didn’t,” said Wetherby. He gave a mirthless laugh. “I’m not defending Tom. I’m just saying I think his objective was more subtle than we gave him credit for. And thank God.” He looked around the Broad, full of policemen standing by while the firemen continued to cover the van with foam. “Think how many people could have been killed. If Tom hadn’t phoned, this place would have been full of people…”
They were standing in the middle of the Broad, only yards from the van. Liz looked around, still amazed that there had been no explosion, and no casualties other than the driver and his passenger. Then along the high railings above the wall which the van had hit, she saw that two stone pedestals were empty—their “Roman Emperor” heads had gone. It was surreal.
Wetherby pointed at some smashed fragments littering the Broad. He said wryly, “Somehow I don’t think those are the only heads that are going to roll.”
59
The policeman was moving everyone away from the windows, though Tom knew it wasn’t necessary. They were led to the vast downstairs room of the bookshop and made to stay there for almost half an hour. He kept a careful eye on his watch, and after eight minutes smiled involuntarily as the countdown finally ended. Three years, he told himself, I planned this for three years—and now at last the moment’s come.
He felt absolutely jubilant. He knew that upstairs on the street the police would be reeling with confusion as they discovered the crashed van contained fertiliser that had not exploded: the detonators he had given Bashir were useless—they wouldn’t light a cigarette, thought Tom, much less set off a bomb.
The local reaction, as news spread like wildfire about this near-disaster, would be relief, though Tom was certain Oxford would never know another public Encaenia procession. But further away, at Thames House, the reaction would be altogether different. In Thames House, he reckoned, the inhabitants would be having a collective heart attack.
For they would have no idea where he was, and no lead to finding him. They would be worried sick that he would strike again—and they were right to worry. Oxford was just the beginning, and he could see no reason why he could not stay one step ahead of his former colleagues for a long time to come. He looked at his watch. In three hours he’d be in his hotel room on the outskirts of Bristol. In little more than twenty-four, his plane would be preparing to land at JFK.
In the short term as well, he had given MI5 plenty to cope with. Their embarrassment at this close call would rapidly give way to anxious post-mortems, internal inquiries, a media storm, questions in the House, the blame game, the indisputable damage to the reputation of the intelligence services. “Why had they failed to stop the bombers?” “What if the detonators had worked?” And that was before they’d even begun to grapple with the knowledge that for almost fifteen years, they’d had a mole in their midst. A mole they couldn’t catch.
Now a policeman let them out at last, and they all trooped up the staircase that led directly out onto the Broad. Tom lagged a little behind, for safety’s sake, and was very glad he did. Twenty feet short of the exit, he looked out at the street from the top stair and saw the familiar figure of Liz Carlyle standing in the middle of the road, talking to Charles Wetherby.
At first, he didn’t believe his eyes. How had they got on to him here? How had they known his target? It didn’t make any sense; he had been so careful.
Could they have turned one of the bombers? No, for only Bashir had known the exact target—Khaled had been content not to know, and Rashid was too weak ever to be trusted either by him or Bashir. Bashir would never betray a cause he was so willing to die for. And if any of them talked now—he assumed they would have been captured minutes before—they would know nothing that would let either the police or Tom’s former colleagues find him.
Who then could have given him away? Had O’Phelan talked before Tom had got to him in Belfast? It seemed inconceivable—why would the lecturer have rung Tom and warned him that Liz had been to see him, asking nosy questions?
There seemed no obvious answer to what had gone wrong, but he had no time to think it through. Turning back, away from the door, he moved back into the building. One of the Blackwell’s assistants touched his arm—she had been like a Border collie, herding them up the stairs from behind—and he flashed the charming smile he’d learned to use like a weapon. “I left something behind,” he explained.
She’d smiled back, and let him go. Patience, he told himself. Don’t panic. But you’ve got to get out of here fast. This was just stage one, after all. He mustn’t be stopped now.
60
The marksman in the Sheldonian’s cupola was still there. Turning round, Liz noticed another sniper, holding his carbine, on the roof of Blackwell’s music shop at the corner.
Something about the scene was bothering her. She looked at Charles, and suddenly a thought came from nowhere. “I think Tom is here,” she suddenly said. “He’ll want to see all this.”
Wetherby was startled. “Really?” he said doubtfully. Then he seemed to think about it. “Maybe you’re right. As far as he knows, we’re still in London, wondering where the devil he’s gone.”
Matheson came back to them again. “We’ve got about thirty people still in Blackwell’s, downstairs in the Norrington Room. We put them there for their own safety. I’m about to let them out, unless you have any objection.”
“No, that’s fine,” said Wetherby, and Matheson was on his way to the bookshop when Liz called after him. “Excuse me,” she said. “Could we just check everyone as they leave?”
He looked at her, surprised, then turned to Wetherby, who nodded approval and said, “If you bring them all out through the same door, we could have a quick look.”
They walked over, and stood at the Trinity College end of the shop front, where at the back of a small ground-floor room a steep staircase led down to the cavernous Norrington Room. Matheson and a tall policeman stood with them outside as the customers—most looking impassive, a few irate—emerged.
There was no one they recognised.
“I need to find out what they’ve done with the suspect they arrested,” declared Wetherby. He turned back to Dave and Liz as he set off. “Have a final look inside to be extra sure.”
“Can you keep someone here in the front?” Liz asked Matheson.
“All right,” he said reluctantly, clearly thinking he had better uses for his men.
And Dave was shaking his head. “I know great minds think alike,” he said, gesturing first at the retreating figure of Wetherby, then pointing his finger at Liz. “But if Tom had been anywhere near here, he’d be long gone by now. And if he was in the bookshop, wouldn’t he have just gone out the back door?”
“No.” It was a Northern voice, and belonged to a stocky man in a check jacket. “I’m from Blackwell’s,” he said. “When the police said they wanted everyone downstairs, I locked the staff exits at the back. It was more to keep anyone from wandering in than to keep anyone from leaving. But it would have done that too.”
“Come on,” said Liz to Dave. “Nothing to lose by looking.” He shrugged, and they went together through the shop’s main entrance. They stood for a moment on the ground floor, looking at the tables stacked with newly published books. “It’s much bigger than it looks
from outside,” said Dave without enthusiasm.
“Let’s split up,” said Liz. “You start downstairs. I’ll go to the top floor and work down. We can meet in the middle.”
“Okay,” said Dave. “Watch yourself,” he added, but by then Liz had started up the staircase.
The first floor was eerily empty. The café was deserted, though its tables still held coffee cups and half-eaten pastries—clearly people had been moved out at speed. She looked down towards the other book-lined end of the first floor, also deserted. The effect was slightly spooky—Liz felt as if she were in a museum after closing time. Noises filtered through from the street, dimly audible, but here inside there was only a heavy silence—except for the sound of her footsteps, which clattered on the wooden stairs.
She moved on to the second floor and kept climbing—she would cover these lower floors on her way down. Reaching the top floor, she found a swing door on her left and a sign for the toilets. Liz went through cautiously, then opened the door to the ladies’ room. Both cubicles had their doors wide open; there was no one in the room.
Slightly hesitantly, she went into the men’s room. The single stall was empty, but the window was open at the bottom. Ducking down, she peered out. The vast front quadrangle of Trinity loomed in the distance. Sticking her head out, she saw directly below her a small, inner courtyard. From the window to the paving stones was a straight drop of almost fifty feet. Tom wouldn’t have survived that, thought Liz.
As she came out again into the main corridor, Liz heard a noise—a long low gliding sound, as if something were being dragged along. Was it downstairs? She stood still, listening hard, but didn’t hear it again.
Suspicious, she walked cautiously around the corner into a long light room full of second-hand books. There was a faint aroma of old leather and dust. At the end of the room a door was marked STAFF ONLY, and Liz was walking towards it when she saw the window in the corner. It was wide open.
Secret Asset Page 27