As they turned sharply right around a bend, there was a faint but distinct scraping noise from the engine compartment in front of them, then a slight thud.
“Hear that?” Johnson asked. “Didn’t sound too good.”
“I heard something, but it was faint.” Fiona said. She listened carefully for several seconds, but there were no further noises.
She relaxed and asked, “So have you read all of Kudrow’s notebook now? What did you make of it?”
Johnson didn’t answer immediately. He again checked his mirror. The silver Ford Focus had overtaken the police car and was now behind him.
“Pretty awful actually. Graphic, gory in places, and the camp they were in was shocking. Brave guys. I find it hard to know how to view the Kudrows, given all that. Victims back then, definitely. But we need to get to the bottom of these gold transactions,” he said eventually.
He ran through the contents of the memoir as they drove. “You can read it yourself when we get back,” he said.
Johnson braked hard as a white van cut out in front of him from a pharmacy entrance. He checked the mirror again. The silver car had also braked and was hanging back behind him, despite an obvious opportunity to pass.
He continued, “There’s still a lot of unanswered questions. I need to talk to Jacob, the old guy, somehow. I’m thinking how to go about doing that.”
Fiona nodded.
“And don’t worry about this meeting. I’m not intending to make us martyrs for the cause. I just need to know. I think we’ll check out the site from a distance before we make any move. I’ve got binoculars. Any sign of something odd, we’re out of there, okay?”
He accelerated hard to pass a truck, then cut back into the inside lane, passed a van, and moved sharply back into the outside lane again.
As the car changed direction, there was another scraping noise, louder this time, and the same thud he’d heard before from the engine compartment. “There it goes again,” Johnson said. “Don’t like the sound of that. There’s something loose, sliding around.”
He glanced in his mirror and unconsciously patted the Walther, which he had placed in a holster under his left armpit, beneath his jacket.
“I heard it that time, didn’t sound too good. Is everything all right? You keep checking the mirror,” Fiona said.
“There’s a silver car, a Ford, just behind us. It’s tracking everything I do,” he said. “I’ve done a few sharp maneuvers, and it’s still right there. It left the parking garage behind us.”
“You think so?” Fiona asked.
Johnson was pleased to see she had enough presence of mind not to turn around and look.
“Yes,” Johnson said. “Some asshole is following us, definitely.”
He put his foot down hard and slammed the BMW down into third gear, and the engine whined at a high pitch as he accelerated into a gap between an ambulance and a school minibus.
The Focus followed.
Diego was feeling increasingly anxious.
“I can’t keep up with the American,” he said. “This traffic’s ridiculous. Trucks cutting in and out and blocking me. We should have had two cars for this job. Trying to tail an ex-CIA guy with one is just asking for trouble.”
Diego accelerated through a gap as a large truck changed lanes, braked to avoid a black taxi, and then put his foot down again to get through a set of traffic lights before they changed to red.
“There he is. I can see him again. I’m going to get a little closer. I don’t want to lose him, otherwise we’re done,” Diego said.
He eased back on the accelerator once he had closed the gap between him and the BMW to around forty meters.
Alejandro held tightly to the black remote-control trigger box on his lap. “Just be careful, Diego. If he spots us following, we’ve had it. I was gonna blow him up as soon as we were out of that parking garage, but with all those police around, I didn’t want to risk it.”
Alejandro bit his fingernails. “I think he’s already spotted us, the way he’s driving. I’m thinking as soon as we get to a clear section of road where there’s no shops, we should blow him. Can’t do it here though. It’s too busy. We can’t risk getting stuck and not being able to get away. Let’s get farther out of the center. Hopefully the traffic will ease off a bit.”
Out in front, Johnson’s BMW overtook two large blue delivery vans, but then before Diego could follow, one of the vans pulled out alongside the other, blocking the road. The Argentinian moved into the van’s slipstream, his car bumper dangerously close to the rear of the van, then he honked his horn hard.
No response. The two vans continued side by side. Diego slammed his hand down on the dashboard in front of him. “Come on, move, move, move.”
Eventually the second van pulled into the inside lane to let him pass. Diego downshifted into third gear, pushed his foot on the accelerator, and powered past, honking as he went. He quickly took his speed up to more than seventy miles per hour, in a zone with a forty mph limit.
After a minute, he could see the black BMW ahead of him.
Alejandro’s knuckles had gone white where he was holding tightly to the armrest. “Slow it down, Diego. We’re gonna get stopped by the police. You’re way over the limit.”
But Diego shook his head. “Just shut it. We can’t lose him. Ignacio will kill us.”
Diego had regained ground to within around fifty meters of the BMW when a large truck in front of him in the outside lane and a taxi in the inside lane both braked to a halt as the traffic lights at the crossroads ahead turned red. He was blocked.
Johnson’s BMW shot through the crossroads a couple of seconds before the lights changed.
Even before the lights turned green again, Diego knew he was in trouble.
The driver of the truck in front had started easing forward and was indicating to turn left at the crossroads. Diego could see it would mean a slow maneuver across two lanes, thus holding up the rest of the traffic.
Diego muttered, “Bastardo, no es posible.” He swore again, then banged his fists down on the top of the steering wheel.
The taxi remained stationary so the truck could turn in front of it. After what seemed to Diego like an eternity, the truck completed its turn, and his path was finally clear.
He rammed down the accelerator, and with a squeal of tires, the Focus took off. A few seconds later, the car shot past Limehouse station on the right.
It was Alejandro who spotted the BMW first.
“He’s up ahead, turning left. He’s trying to run. Quick, go, before this next set of lights changes.”
But it was too late.
The traffic lights in front turned red. Diego slammed on the brakes, and the Focus slid to a halt with a screech, just inches from plowing into the back of a taxi.
Alejandro’s voice rose. “We’re gonna lose him. He’s turned left and out of sight. Go around this taxi and through the lights.”
“I can’t. They’re red. There’s no way through there. You’ll have to blow him now. Otherwise he’s gone. Quick, press it.”
“What, now?”
“Si, amigo . . . now. Go on, press it . . . yes.”
Alejandro pushed the red button on the trigger unit.
Diego could see little of what was going on farther ahead, his view blocked by the taxi and other cars and trucks beyond the junction.
But he certainly didn’t miss hearing the boom that echoed and rumbled down the road as the six-kilogram FMK-3 antitank mine detonated under the BMW’s hood.
“Madre . . . it’s blown,” Alejandro said.
The traffic lights changed to green, and Diego, almost hypnotically, let the clutch out and followed the taxi slowly past a Tesco store toward the junction where he had seen Johnson’s BMW turn left.
A large cloud of black smoke rose from just around the corner, mushrooming outward.
Diego could now see that a red and white railway bridge, which passed over the junction between the main road and the sid
e road, had partially collapsed.
Large chunks of brickwork and debris lay in the middle of the road, some of it on top of a white van, which was partly crushed, and a steel girder was bent at an angle, also on top of the van. A logo on the back of the van read Dave’s Flowers.
Through the wreckage of the bridge, a few yards along the side road, the tangled and bent remains of the black BMW were just visible, its doors blown off.
People ran out of houses and shops, some toward the explosion, others away from it. A small group of young schoolchildren on the opposite side of the road cried and screamed, and Diego could see that the windows and door of a house next to the junction were blown inward. A set of traffic lights next to the bridge had been reduced to a scrambled mess of metal.
A few seconds later, there was another loud bang, and flames erupted from the back of the wrecked BMW. The schoolchildren screamed even more loudly and ran back along the pavement.
Alejandro yelled, “We gotta get out of here, Diego. Move . . . now.”
Diego felt stunned. He glanced in the mirror to find his ashen face gazing back at him. Then he obediently did a U-turn in the middle of the road and headed back the way they had come.
A minute later, three police cars pounded past them in the other direction, sirens blaring. Diego looked in his mirror and saw them fly past the Tesco store and screech to a halt near the collapsed road bridge.
“I’ll let Ignacio know it’s job done. Johnson’s a goner. And the journalist.” Alejandro’s voice sounded unusually shaky as he typed a text message into his phone.
Chapter Thirty-One
Monday, November 28, 2011
London
“London 2012 is going to be a critical security challenge for both police and security agencies this coming year,” Jayne told the meeting of three SIS officers and two technical experts from GCHQ.
It was her second major briefing of the morning, both on the subject of security preparations for the following year’s Olympic Games.
She passed around two documents that outlined MI6’s strategy. Taking a sip of her cappuccino, she continued. “As you may know, the Games have been the main focus of our planning for a long time. We’ve recruited more intelligence officers, and we’ve moved people from other areas on to countering the risk of a terror attack.”
She held up the first document. “If you look at this, you’ll see there are basically three potential threats. First, Al-Qaeda and its affiliates planning an attack with a resulting mass-casualty scenario. Second, Irish Republican dissident terrorist groups, either through an attack or a hoax, and third, clashes between rival groups or ethnic groups.”
Jayne surveyed the others in the room, then continued. “At the same time, we’re having to deal with other issues pre-Games, like accreditation. We’re going to have 540,000 applications for accreditation from people working at the venues. We’ll need to check them all to try and identify anyone who may be a threat to national security.”
She outlined how the SIS had reduced its work on other lower-priority areas in order to focus on potential threats and had been “clearing the decks” so that could happen.
She went on, “The problem is that the home secretary’s made it very clear to our director general that the other work can’t be ignored. It’s a difficult one. Our resources are limited.”
There was a knock, and an administrative assistant put her head around the door.
“Jayne, the boss wants a quick word in his office, please. It’s very urgent. I’m sorry.”
Jayne apologized to the others, went out the door, and walked to the office of Mark Nicklin-Donovan, chief of the U.K. Controllerate, her boss. His door was open, and he lifted his head as Jayne knocked.
“Ah, Jayne, just a quick one, for information. There’s been what police think could possibly have been a terrorist explosion over in East London, on the A13. A car bomb. There’s a black BMW blown up and school kids possibly injured. A disused rail bridge over the A13 has been brought down, so the road’s blocked, and a van driver’s been killed. Police don’t know who the car driver was; it’s such a mess they’re struggling to find body parts. They’re also trying to identify the vehicle and the owner. But given your meetings this morning, you need to know. There may be questions. You can carry on, and I’ll send through any updates as I get them. Okay?”
He looked back down at the papers on his desk and carried on reading.
“Okay, thanks for letting me know, Mark.”
Jayne walked slowly out of the office and over to an alcove where there were drinks and snack machines. She took a plastic cup and filled it with water from a cooler.
A black BMW, in East London? That sounded ominous. Wasn’t Joe’s rented car a black BMW 3 Series? And he was heading that way to the O2 this morning . . .
Rather than go back to her meeting, Jayne diverted to her office, picked up the desk phone, and punched in a number.
Straight to voice mail. This is Joe Johnson, please leave a message after the tone, and I’ll give you a call back. Thanks.
Jayne hesitated, and her finger hovered over the call-end button. Then she changed her mind.
“Joe, it’s Jayne here,” she said. “I gather there’s been a car bomb explosion in East London. I’m assuming you’re not involved and you’re okay. If you get this message, I’ll be back in my flat at four this afternoon. I’m finishing early after all these late nights. So I’ll see you after that. Bye.”
Jayne arrived back at her flat having still heard nothing from Joe since leaving the voice mail on his phone several hours earlier. He also hadn’t responded to two text messages.
She walked in, dumped her bags on the table, and sighed. Police had not yet provided her office with the names of those injured in the bomb blast, which meant she would have to make her own inquiries.
Jayne glanced toward the window, then jumped slightly. Through the window blind, the silhouettes of two figures were clearly visible on the balcony. One was fiddling with the handle of the door to her living room.
A jolt of adrenaline shot through her. Her first thought was that she had burglars. Then it crossed her mind that the Argentinians were back, trying to get to Joe.
Jayne grabbed a wooden baseball bat that she kept in her kitchen and took three steps toward the door, holding the bat in readiness. Then the door handle was pushed down, and the door opened a fraction.
“You can stop right there. Come out and show yourself,” she shouted.
A figure emerged from behind the door.
“Joe! What the hell!” Jayne exhaled in relief.
Johnson was wearing a coat and a wool hat, smoking a cigarette. With him was a striking woman with long dark hair.
“I was about to call the police in,” Jayne said. “You nearly gave me a heart attack out there. I heard about that blast in East London. So it had nothing to do with you—or did it? Did you get my messages? You never replied.”
Johnson grimaced. “Sorry. It’s a bit of a long story.” He turned and stubbed out his cigarette on the patio, then came back indoors.
“I do apologize. I’ve been so sidetracked, I didn’t get to reply to you,” Johnson said. “By the way, this is Fiona.”
Fiona nodded and stepped forward, rather awkwardly offering her hand. “Nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you,” she said.
“You too. Have a seat. You’d both better tell me what the hell’s been going on.” Jayne put the baseball bat down and sat on one of the wooden chairs surrounding the dining table, folded her arms, and planted them on the table in front of her. She faced first Johnson, then Fiona.
Johnson coughed, then took out a handkerchief and blew his nose. “Well, what happened was this . . . ” He quickly summed up the car journey to the point where he had become certain they were being followed by the Ford Focus and they had noticed the odd scraping noises coming from the engine compartment.
“My brain went into overdrive at that point. I mean, I realized t
he silver car had followed us from the parking garage. I was driving like a madman, and he was taking a hell of a lot of risks to keep up with me, so it was obvious what he was doing. And then remember the threats I’ve had and the dead body in the workshop.”
He continued, “To cap it all off you’d told me about that Argentinian who was pulled in for having antitank mines in his car boot. I knew at that stage we had to get out of the car. I just had a gut feeling.”
Fiona took up the story. “Yeah, he was saying, ‘We’ve gotta ditch the car, it’s dangerous. There’s something not right here.’ So he swings this sharp left into a side road, screeches to a halt, and screams at me to get out and get behind a wall at the side of the road. So I did that, hiding behind this big thick stone wall in the driveway of a house. Next thing I know, he’s joined me. He shoves me to the ground and tells me to flatten myself, and he’s got his gun out and is covering the entrance to the driveway. We’re on the ground right up against the wall next to some bushes.”
She took a breath. “About five seconds later there’s this massive bang, and the windows of the house behind us get blown in. It’s carnage. The top part of the stone wall behind us has collapsed, there’s bits of car flying through the air, and the bridge has fallen down. Unbelievable.”
“Bloody hell,” Jayne said. “Remote trigger. Probably when you drove down the side road and they lost sight of you?”
“I think that’s probably right,” Johnson said. “My thought was if they were really chasing us, they’d follow us, and I could take them out with the handgun if they came into the driveway. We didn’t get into that situation, obviously. Anyway, we were damned lucky. That stone wall saved us. It was a big bomb. Another few seconds, and we’d have been crow’s meat.”
“Lucky? Sounds like you made some bloody good calls,” Jayne said.
Johnson blew his nose again. “Gut feeling.”
Fiona nodded. “Gut feeling that saved my bacon.”
The Last Nazi (A Joe Johnson Thriller, Book 1) Page 22