The Becket Approval

by Falconer, Duncan

  She went to the only other couch and stretched out on it.

  Bethan continued reading her phone. When she next looked up they were both sleeping soundly. The two analysts were quietly tapping away at their consuls.

  Bethan got to her feet, stifled a yawn and left the ops room.

  Five minutes later she was driving along the river embankment in the rain. The roads were practically empty.

  The two analysts turned off their computers, collected their coats and went to the door. The last one to leave looked at Gunnymede and Neve asleep, switched off the lights and left, closing the door.

  Bethan glanced at the river as she drove along it. Something was on her mind and she pulled over. She climbed out and went to the parapet to look down onto the river. The vast body of black water was high and moving slowly. She stared at it in thought.

  Neve opened her eyes and sat up, remembering where she was. She lowered her feet to the floor and looked around the room, rubbing her tired eyes. She checked her watch.

  She got to her feet and faced the door. She didn’t move other than to look over at Gunnymede sleeping soundly.

  Bethan walked along the embankment, pausing every now and then to look at the river.

  Neve walked over to Gunnymede and looked down on him. He looked peaceful. She started to turn away when he took her hand. She stopped and looked at him. He looked serious as he stared at her.

  Bethan took a last look at the water before walking back to her car. She climbed in, started the engine, pulled a U-turn and drove back in the direction she’d come.

  Gunnymede sat up and placed his hands on Neve’s hips. She put her hands on top of his to stop him. He squeezed her, his hands moving back slightly, his fingers touching her bottom. She gritted her teeth as she squeezed his hands. He didn’t remove them. She grabbed a hold of his hair with both hands and held him strongly. He didn’t take his gaze from her eyes. She could’ve wrenched herself free but she didn’t. She looked into his eyes. Her jaw grew less tense. Her grip on his hair slowly loosened. He got to his feet and wrapped his arms around her. She struggled without making a sound as he held her firmly. His hand went to her face. She tried to turn away but it was a weak effort. He moved her head to face him and kissed her on the lips. She didn’t struggle. Her mouth slowly opened and her breathing quickened.

  She put her arms around him as they kissed deeply. He pulled off his jacket and yanked hers of her shoulders. She helped undress him while he undressed her. They grew feverish for each other. Rapacious.

  She stepped out of her trousers as did he. He pulled away her panties, lifted her onto the worktop and they began to make passionate love. As she wrapped her legs around him the door opened and the light came on. Gunnymede and Neve froze, entwined, and looked towards the door to see Bethan standing there, looking at them.

  Bethan took a second to take a hold of herself. She managed to make no outward signs of her shock. She let the door close and crossed the room to the coffee machine, placed a cup in the holder and selected a latte.

  Gunnymede and Neve fumbled to get dressed.

  ‘Drowning,’ Bethan said.

  ‘What?’ Neve asked as she fastened her bra.

  ‘Drowning,’ Bethan repeated. ‘He’s going to drown them.’

  ‘How do you drown thousands of people?’ Neve asked.

  ‘It helps if they’re below ground level,’ Bethan said.

  ‘River level,’ Gunnymede added, catching on as he pulled up his trousers.

  ‘The London underground,’ Bethan said. ‘How many people in the underground during a busy work day?’

  ‘Thousands, easily,’ Neve said.

  ‘Saleem said he could do it any time,’ Gunnymede remembered.

  ‘The underground’s empty when it’s closed,’ Neve said, tucking in her shirt.

  ‘But any time could also mean any time of convenience,’ Bethan said.

  ‘Any day,’ Gunnymede said, pulling on his shoes.

  ‘Any time of day,’ Bethan added. ‘But how do you get the Thames into the underground?’

  ‘Make a hole,’ Gunnymede said. ‘In the embankment.’

  ‘You couldn’t do it without explosives,’ Neve said. ‘Could you?’

  Gunnymede went to the worktop computer and pulled up a map of the London Underground system. He searched along the river looking for underground tunnels. ‘Blackfriars. Victoria embankment. It’s the closest the underground gets to the river.’

  ‘How close?’

  ‘I don’t know. There’s an underground operations room at Charing Cross,’ Gunnymede said taking a step towards the door and pausing to see if the others were coming. ‘We should go check it out.’

  ‘Would anyone like a coffee?’ Bethan asked.

  Gunnymede and Neve glanced at each other, both still very much off balance.

  ‘I’ll have one,’ Neve said. ‘White, no sugar.’

  ‘Me too,’ Gunnymede said.

  ‘Help yourself,’ Bethan said, heading for the door. ‘I’ll see you in the car park.’ Bethan paused as she opened the door and looked at Gunnymede.

  He held her gaze, his eyes filled with schoolboy guilt.

  ‘Your flies undone,’ she said and let the door close behind her.

  Gunnymede did up his fly as he glanced at Neve who couldn’t hold his gaze.

  Bethan walked to the elevator and pushed the call button. Her eyes began to water. The elevator doors opened. She wiped a tear and stepped inside.

  Gunnymede, Neve and Bethan were escorted to the control room of Charing Cross underground station and introduced to the two men running it early that morning, Bob and Tyrone. The room was surrounded by half a dozen monitors of various sizes attached to wall brackets above a worktop tailored to fit inside the angular walls. The top sections were glass providing a view of the main station access to the ticket machines, barriers and escalators that led down to the trains.

  They stepped inside, closing the door behind them and with it shutting out the noise from a floor washing machine making its rounds.

  ‘How can we help?’ Tyrone asked with a welcoming smile.

  Gunnymede looked to Neve who invited him to take the lead. ‘I’ll get straight to the point. Our department deals with anti-terrorism and today we’re looking at theoretical attacks on the underground system.’

  ‘This sort of thing’s not new to us,’ Tyrone said. ‘We often work with the police on their terrorist exercises.’

  ‘We had one two weeks ago in fact,’ Bob remembered. ‘Do you work much with the met police?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Gunnymede said, anxious to get on with it.

  ‘This a bombing, shooting or stabbing?’ Bob asked.

  ‘We had a nerve gas exercise two years ago,’ Tyrone reminded Bob.

  ‘Oh, yes. Based on that Japanese attack,’ Bob said.

  ‘None of those,’ Gunnymede said. ‘My first question. Where does the train line run closest to the river bank?’

  Bob and Tyrone looked at each other with questioning frowns and returned their gazes to Gunnymede. ‘What do you mean exactly?’ Bob asked.

  ‘The TFL accurate tube map shows the circle and district line running along the Victoria Embankment to Blackfriars. It’s the closest point a train tunnel gets to the river that I can see.’

  ‘I see what you mean,’ Tyrone said, reaching for a long map roll which he unrolled on the table. ‘That’s right. The closest point that any underground rail tunnel gets to the river is here, near the Blackfriars underpass.’

  Gunnymede, Neve and Bethan closed on the map. ‘How close does the tunnel get to the riverbank wall?’ Neve asked.

  Bob exhaled through pursed lips as he considered the question. ‘About ten metres I’d say.’

  ‘Ten?’ Gunnymede asked. ‘How accurate is that?’

  Tyrone took a ruler and placed it on the map, measuring the gap between the wall and the tunnel. ‘You’ve got about a metre of stone wall and then about nine metres of earth.
Another metre of tunnel wall. Ten or eleven metres.’

  Gunnymede, Bethan and Neve looked at each other.

  ‘How do you get through ten metres of that?’ Bethan asked.

  ‘Without explosives,’ Neve added.

  Bob and Tyrone glanced at each other, a little confused. ‘I don’t follow,’ Tyrone said.

  ‘We’re looking at ways a terrorist might breach the riverbank and flood the tunnels,’ Gunnymede said. ‘I’d like to explore the possibilities a boat could ram a hole through the embankment.’

  ‘You’d need a bloody big boat to do that,’ Bob said.

  ‘How big?’ Neve asked.

  ‘Christ. Two thousand tons going at twenty knots maybe,’ he said. ‘Maybe more.’

  ‘Never make the turn though,’ Tyrone said.

  ‘It’d take up the width of the river standing still,’ Bob said with a chuckle.

  ‘I don’t know too much about boats,’ Tyrone added. ‘But I know something about heavy objects going at speed and ramming into things, such as trains hitting barriers. Half a dozen carriages would run at two hundred and fifty tons. At thirty miles an hour it would only make a dent in a ten metre thick wall of soil. A boat at ten or twelve knots, not a chance. Anyway, the biggest boat you’re going to get coming up the Thames might be a hundred tons. Two at the most. And it wouldn’t be able to make the turn at top speed to line up to the embankment anyway. The river’s only two hundred and fifty metres wide at that point.’

  Gunnymede sat back in thought.

  ‘How much explosive would you need?’ Neve asked.

  ‘Don’t know anything about explosives,’ Tyrone said.

  ‘Ten thousand pounds of ampho might do it,’ Gunnymede said.

  ‘As far as the non-explosives theory goes this looks like a non-starter then,’ Bethan said.

  ‘It would seem so,’ Gunnymede said, taking a last look at the map before leaving. Something caught his attention and he took a closer look. ‘What’s that? The circle. There’s another one here and here.’

  Tyrone examined the map.

  Bob joined him. ‘Those are bore holes,’ Bob said.

  ‘Bore holes?’ Gunnymede asked.

  ‘Water wells,’ Bob explained. ‘That’s how Londoners got their water before the days of piping it in.’

  ‘They stopped using them by the early nineteen hundreds when water mains were put in,’ Tyrone added.

  ‘This one is between the underground tunnel and the embankment,’ Gunnymede said.

  The others took a closer look.

  ‘That’s right,’ Bob said.

  ‘What’s the diameter of the bore hole?’ Gunnymede asked.

  ‘A couple of metres at least,’ Bob said. ‘Maybe four.’

  ‘And what’s the gap between the bore hole and the embankment?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ Tyrone said. ‘Couple of metres I suppose.’

  ‘Would flooding the bore hole impact the train tunnel?’ Gunnymede asked.

  ‘Sure. If the bore hole was open to the river the tunnel would get flooded too,’ Tyrone said.

  ‘Would a two hundred ton vessel going 15 knots bash through a metre or two of embankment?’ Gunnymede asked.

  ‘The boat would have to hit the embankment smack on the bore hole,’ Bob said.

  ‘But if it did?’ Gunnymede asked. ‘In theory.’

  Bob and Tyrone looked at each other. They nodded in agreement. ‘I expect so,’ Tyrone said.

  ‘Certainly possible,’ Bob said. ‘And then we’d close the gates,’ he added.

  ‘The flood gates,’ Bethan said.

  ‘That’s right,’ Tyrone said. ‘We can seal off the tunnels.’

  ‘How long would that take?’ Neve asked.

  ‘About ten minutes,’ Tyrone explained.

  ‘Would that be enough time?’ Gunnymede asked.

  ‘That would depend on how much water was coming in,’ Bob said.

  ‘A high tide would be quite serious,’ Tyrone explained.

  ‘Spring tide even worse,’ Bob added.

  ‘Add to that an easterly wind,’ Tyrone said. ‘And we’d be in a pickle.’

  ‘How often does that happen?’ Gunnymede asked.

  ‘You’ve got one today,’ Bob said. ‘They’re talking about closing the Thames barrier.’

  Gunnymede, Neve and Bethan looked at each other.

  Bob and Tyrone both smiled, feeling they’d been more than helpful.

  Chapter 29

  Saleem arrived at the Port Authority building as the sun broke the horizon and made his way along the gangways to the Polo Harrow. He was greeted by each fighter he passed as he climbed on board and made his way to the bow.

  The forward deck and aggregate storage was littered with empty concrete bags. A hose hung over the side with water pouring from it. One of the men was poking into the boatswain’s storage hatch with a long pole. Saleem joined him and looked down into the hatch. The wooden framework was complete and the triangular space it created behind the nose of the vessel was filled with the quick-setting concrete. The bows had in effect been turned into a battering ram. Saleem took the pole and poked it into the concrete for himself.

  ‘It will be solid soon,’ the fighter assured Saleem.

  Saleem looked over the side to see the water was a couple of metres below the freeboard. ‘We need to get going,’ he said, making his way towards the stern.

  He entered the superstructure and climbed the narrow steps. The engines were gunned as he entered the wheelhouse where one of his men had control of the vessel. Saleem paused on entering to look down at the body of the engineer lying in a pool of blood in a corner.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Saleem ordered, joining his colleague. He looked through the bridge windows at the wide open river, the Thames Barrier clearly visible up ahead.

  The fighter went to the side door that opened out onto a short wing and shouted orders. The lines were cast and the boat drifted from the pontoon. Two fighters remained on board as the rest watched the boat leave.

  ‘Allahu akbar!’ They shouted several times in unison.

  ‘When does the barrier close?’ Saleem asked.

  ‘We have time,’ the pilot said as he throttled the engine to pull power.

  Water lapped over the bows with each wave it struck.

  ‘Isn’t the front a bit low?’ Saleem asked.

  ‘It will be fine,’ the pilot assured him. ‘We could do with more water in the storage compartments to balance it better. But it will be fine.’

  Red crosses on each pier of the Thames barrier began to flash, warning the gates were closing. The two fighters joined Saleem and the pilot as the boat sailed between two of the piers. Saleem stepped out of the side door to look back at the barrier. Several dams had already been raised into position. The two remaining gates that were still open would soon be closed.

  Saleem looked ahead. The river was clear with only a handful of boats moving on it. He went back into the bridge.

  ‘We will cover the fourteen kilometres in plenty of time, boss,’ the pilot assured him.

  ‘We need to hit the bank a good half hour before high tide.’

  ‘We will, in sha Allah. We don’t want the tunnels to run out of water,’ the pilot said with a smile that the fighters shared.

  Saleem stared ahead. He was so close to immortality he could taste it.

  An MoD car pulled to a stop on the Victoria embankment and Gunnymede and Bethan climbed out.

  Gunnymede looked about to get his bearings as Bethan crossed the pavement to the parapet. He joined her, pausing to reflect on her as she looked down onto the water.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Nothing to be sorry about,’ she said, trying to ignore him. ‘Where’s this bore hole?’

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ he insisted. ‘Truly. You’re the last person in the world I’d want to hurt.’

  ‘Well you did. But that doesn’t matter. I have no claim on you. This is hardly the time.’


  He reluctantly turned his attention to a metal bench on a raised section of pavement. ‘Beneath the bench,’ he said, walking over to it. ‘They said it pretty much sits directly on top of the bore hole.’

  He faced the river and stepped to the parapet.

  She joined him to look down onto the water. ‘I don’t remember seeing it this high before,’ she said.

  ‘Eleven times a year on average. And there’s another hour to go,’ he said, stepping back to look around.

  ‘You’ve got paint on your jacket,’ she said.

  He looked at the front of his jacket to see a large red smudge and realised he had some on his hands too. It was on the parapet.

  He leaned over the parapet to see red paint had been coarsely brushed in a circle on the water side of it. Gunnymede assessed the position of the red blotch. ‘It’s directly in line with the bench,’ he said. ‘It’s a marker.’

  She leaned over the parapet to look for herself. ‘It’s happening today!’

  He scanned the river. There were a handful of boats in transit, none of them big enough to be a threat.

  He took a hold of Bethan’s shoulders while looking her square in the eyes. ‘You have to get to Blackfriars station and get them to shut it down! I’ll tell Neve. You have to close the station and get everyone up from the tunnels. Go!’

  Bethan hurried to the car.

  Gunnymede pulled out his phone and hit a number.

  Neve was in Charing Cross Station reading a newspaper when she answered her phone.

  ‘It’s happening today!’ he shouted. ‘There’s an aiming point on the parapet right in front of the bore hole.’ He went to the parapet to search the near side bank in both directions and saw a jetty a hundred metres away with couple of men loading canoes onto the back of a rubber inflatable. ‘I’m heading onto the river. Bethan’s gone to close down Blackfriars station. We need help!’

  He pocketed the phone as he ran along the embankment, clambered over a set of steps, down the other side onto a landing and towards the boat where the two young men were loading canoes.