Latent Hazard rkadika-1

by Piers Venmore-Rowland

  A drawn and tired looking PM spoke to those around him. ‘Thank you for all your unstinting efforts. We can be grateful that we have suffered no casualties and that the nuclear facilities are one hundred per cent intact. However, we still have one terrorist and one Kornet missile launcher unaccounted for. As we don’t know where he is or what his target is, I have spoken to the Permanent Secretary for Intelligence Security and Resilience and the director of Civil Contingencies.’

  He paused and looked across at his Defence Secretary. ‘COBRA will be in session as of 9 a.m. I have told them to have experts on CBRN – chemical biological radiological nuclear – in attendance. And to have all members of ACPO (TAM) – Association of Chief Police Officers (Terrorism and Allied Matters) – available via video-conference links. The Defence Secretary and I will be leaving shortly to brief COBRA.’

  The Prime Minister turned to the chief of the armed forces. ‘Sir Nigel, I shall leave this Ops Room in your command. Your remit is to take out the fourth terrorist and disable his missile launcher. And please keep all the fleeing terrorists under close observation.’

  The PM and the Defence Secretary shook the hands of everyone in the Ops Room and then left for Downing Street.

  The train journey down towards London was uneventful. Ted kept up his almost constant commentary which was broken only by short conversations with the manager or his assistant at the control centre. They discussed the terrorist attacks. The nuclear trains weren’t being stopped; just their schedules had received minor changes. This strategy had been approved by their bosses, who deemed that “Their cargo posed too difficult a target and was thus an insignificant risk,’ according to the control room manager.

  The controller was in a grumpy mood; he had been trying unsuccessfully to give up smoking and had failed. In his cigarette breaks, Ted chatted with his assistant, a newcomer who had only started working for the nuclear transport company the Monday before. Ted was beginning to wonder if the young lad was stupid. He was charming, but seemed to have little grasp of the importance of his job.

  Dick was pleased to find that the intercity train behind them was running late. This meant they could proceed to Shenfield before pulling in to let it pass. They were on the outskirts of London when the young assistant controller came on the radio. ‘My boss has nipped out to his car to get another packet of cigarettes and have a smoke.’

  Ted sensed unease in the young lad’s voice. ‘Are you alright?’ he enquired.

  ‘Yes, it’s just that I wish my boss would get back. I need to go for my morning constitutional – I think it was the vindaloo curry I had last night!’

  Ted looked across at Dick and muttered, ‘I suppose that means he’s desperate for the loo.’

  The freight train passed through Romford; it wouldn’t be long before they left the main line and started on the next leg of their journey.

  The desperate voice of the assistant came on the radio. ‘It’s no good, I can’t wait any longer. My boss should be back soon!’

  Dick raised his eyebrows and was going to speak, when Ted cut in. ‘I hope he’s quick!’ He thought back to when he had first driven the nuclear waste trains. The manpower involved in those early days dwarfed the lean efficient teams that had become the norm. Spare capacity was a thing of the past. Forty uneventful years of safe nuclear rail transport had not given rise to complacency, but rather a sense of the mundane had permeated the system and dulled the minds of many involved.

  The train was approaching Stratford station. Ted had radioed through to the Control Room. There had been no reply; the manager had not returned from his smoke and the young lad was presumably still otherwise engaged.

  As they arrived at Stratford station, the signal for the branch line turned red. Dick brought the train to a halt. As they waited, he noticed that the platforms were almost deserted. After a couple of minutes’ wait the light turned green and the train slowly trundled on to the branch line to start its way around suburban London.

  Dick smiled. It had been a good run down from Suffolk. He was looking forward to his extended journey up the west coast and wondered if Ted would, for the first time, be lost for words.

  In Manchester, Detective Inspector Rick Feldon was having a chat over breakfast with William Wesson. His fifteen years of interrogation experience told him that there was still at least one more nugget of information to be drawn from this despicable man. Wesson continued to ignore his questions – he was in denial and his defence was to shower verbal abuse on those around him. Rick was getting nowhere. ‘How about we see what’s going on in the world?’

  A small TV was brought into the interview room. The channels were filled with special news bulletins showing wall-to-wall pictures of the plumes of smoke resulting from the terrorist attacks. Wesson looked without any apparent interest at the pictures. The detective inspector asked him more questions without receiving any response. It was getting hopeless. He was going round and round in circles.

  Time was ebbing away. Rick had an idea. It was time for some creative thinking. He left the room and reappeared a few minutes later with a photograph of a middle-aged woman.

  Rick put the photo on the table in front of Wesson. ‘She’s about the same age as your mother, isn’t she?’

  There was no reply.

  ‘She worked as a cleaner at Heysham and was killed by flying shrapnel. A slow and painful death, I understand. Now her two teenage children have no close family to look after them,’ he lied again. ‘What would you and your younger sister have done if your mother had been killed when you were that young?’

  Rick pressed on. ‘How would you have felt if you and your sister had had no mother?’

  Wesson broke down in front of him. Howls and sobs came from the insufferable little man. Rick had no sympathy for him at all. He had one aim and that was to get from him the missing pieces of information. ‘Your mother rang. She wants to see you’

  Wesson raised his head.

  ‘Why couldn’t she have been the person killed by the shrapnel? She always stopped me from doing the things I wanted to and her tongue is as sharp as a carving knife. I don’t want to speak to her. In fact, I’d be happy if I never saw her again.’

  Rick took a deep breath on hearing the unexpected reply. ‘You valued all the properties which were used by the terrorists. We’re missing one more address. You can help us stop the next attack.’

  Wesson didn’t move.

  ‘How do you think your sister, who you’ve protected all these years, will survive as the sister of a murdering, terrorist collaborator? She won’t get any sympathy from her mother, will she? Think about it!’

  Rick watched the turmoil bubbling up inside the young man. ‘Now would be a good time to tell me the addresses we don’t know about.’

  Wesson did not raise his eyes. ‘All I know is that they have a building which is being refurbished. I do not even know its address, other than it’s in Stratford, East London…’

  ‘You must tell me more!’

  ‘I can’t! That’s as much as I know. You see, I accidentally overheard Talal and a director of his discussing this property…’

  ‘And?’

  ‘When Talal saw me – his eyes were like my father’s before he lashed out and hit me. He was livid and shouted at me – Never repeat what you’ve heard, if you value your sister’s life! Even if I knew the address, I wouldn’t tell you!’

  Rick thought for a moment, concluded that Wesson had nothing more to say, pulled out his mobile and phoned Kate’s direct line. After several rings the call was diverted to the switchboard. ‘DI Adams, please. It’s urgent – Very Urgent.’

  ‘I’ll see if I can locate her; she’s not answering her phone.’

  The seconds ticked by as if they were the last grains in an hourglass. The telephonist came back on the line. ‘She’s in a meeting.’

  ‘I need your help, please,’ said Rick calmly. ‘I have an urgent message for her. Please write this down: Urgent. Ring Me. Now! -R
ick Feldon. As a matter of life and death, please take this message to DI Adams, now!’

  ‘I’m not allowed to leave my desk unless I’ve got cover.’

  ‘Of course you’re not, technically, but we’re trying to stop the bastards who planned the Bishopsgate bomb from letting another one off. Understood?’

  ‘Yes, sir… I’ll go straightaway.’

  The phone went dead.

  In his chauffeur-driven car en route to Downing Street, the Prime Minister thought about the events of the night. Had he been right in not activating COBRA earlier? The Ops Room at Wood Street had served its purpose and had worked well, he mused. Yes, now was the right time to get COBRA up and running.

  He mused on the vast powers that the Civil Contingencies Act gave this committee. To all intents and purposes, when sitting, it became all powerful. In the first instance he chaired the committee, but if he was not available, it fell on the Home Secretary or his deputy to take his place.

  The PM’s thoughts turned to his Home Secretary, whom he had chosen in order to placate the wing of his party he found most difficult to deal with. As he leaned back on the soft leather car seat, he wondered whether the Home Secretary and his department spent too much time courting favourable headlines and news coverage. Increasingly, in the few months since taking power, he realised that he had become progressively more anxious as to his Home Secretary’s motivations. The press painted him as good party leadership material and liked his and his ministers’ charm offensive. Perhaps his party’s waferthin majority had prompted his spin offensive and he was jockeying for position in case the PM slipped up.

  The PM’s attention refocused on the previous week’s COBRA meeting, which had been convened to sort out the mess left by the Bishopsgate bombing and to foil any follow-up attacks. The minutes showed it had been a straightforward meeting. It had been chaired by the number two at the Home Office, a loyal supporter of the Home Secretary, with liaison officers from the MoD, the police, MI5, MI6 and the Metropolitan police. This meeting was going to be considerably more difficult. He personally would take the chair.

  Deep under Number 10, with the Home Secretary away, his number two had taken the chair. He had arrived at COBRA early, sensing it was his opportunity to take control. By 8.45 a.m. he had a quorum. Against the advice of the permanent secretary, he called the meeting to order and had COBRA up and running. He almost caught MI5 with their trousers down. They had the video link, relaying what was going on at COBRA to the Ops Room, working only seconds later.

  The minister chairing COBRA appeared very concerned about the impact of the adverse TV coverage and asked for suggestions on how the news stories and the TV pictures could be made to look less grim.

  The army at Hartlepool in particular were doing an impressive job. The zinc factory next to the nuclear power station was belching out acrid smoke. Elsewhere, in the words of one TV commentator at Cruden Bay, ‘The locals must think that they are on the edge of a war zone, what with all the explosions and the dense smoke.’ Aldermaston and Heysham also looked grim.

  The Home Office minister relished his time in the spotlight. He cleared his throat. ‘First, we must counter these awful pictures with something that will prevent us from looking feeble and, second, we should consider what the terrorists might do next and what we can do to stop them. The second part, I shall leave to the PM who will be joining us shortly.’

  The minister looked around the room ‘We need to deflect the TV coverage and show the public that we’re playing hard ball with the terrorists. I have a colleague working on this. Do I hear any other suggestions?’

  ‘Perhaps COBRA should start vetting everything going on air, as was the case in Iraq?’

  ‘Good idea. We should implement this now,’ he turned to his colleague, who had come up with the idea. ‘Derek, would you please look after this personally?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Derek stood up to leave when the door suddenly opened and the Prime Minister walked in with the Defence Secretary and his personal secretary at his side. The PM, as the screen at Wood Street showed, beckoned Derek to sit down, strode over and stood facing the minister.

  The room fell silent.

  ‘Minister, am I right in believing that last night you declined an invitation as the Home Secretary’s stand-in to meet with the commissioner of the City of London police force and three very high ranking officers of the State?’

  The minister looked most put out and went into bluster mode.

  ‘But I wasn’t told who would be there and I was extremely busy. I had a speech to make. I’d already issued a press release and I knew that there would be excellent press coverage. Anyway, I rearranged the meeting for this morning. So no harm was done!’

  The Prime Minister’s voice took on a steely tone.

  ‘Your judgement call was fundamentally flawed. Events have moved on. You should have been a safe pair of hands on which the commissioner could have relied. Instead you placed personal spin above the needs of your country.’

  ‘That’s quite untrue, Prime Minister; the press conference was for the good of the Government.’

  The PM beckoned to his personal secretary, who walked over to the minister and placed a typed letter in front of him.

  ‘For your signature,’ said the PM.

  The minister read the short letter and looked up at the PM, his eyes conveyed hostility. ‘Why should I resign at this of all times, when I’m needed here?’

  The PM looked at him as if he were a bad-tempered schoolboy. ‘That meeting you were too busy to attend last night is still going on. The stakes have been so high that we haven’t been able to trust anyone unless they’ve been within a secure intelligence-monitored environment. Suffice it to say that the two gentlemen missing from this meeting aren’t the only moles we’ve found in senior places.’

  ‘What do you mean…? But I am needed here.’ ‘

  Sign the letter or I will be forced to fire you.’

  The minister was livid and intent on letting everybody know it. He hesitated, signed the letter and was escorted out of the room by the PM’s personal secretary.

  The Prime Minister looked at the statue-like faces around him. ‘I think that we can now get back to business. Let me put you in the picture as to the events of the past thirty-six hours. However, lest you worry that things are being left to drift, let me assure you that a fully staffed Operations Room has been up and running since yesterday evening and is dealing with matters as we speak. The Defence Secretary and I spent the night there, and were there less than an hour ago.’

  The PM, with input from the Defence Secretary, gave a detailed description of the events of the past thirty-six hours and the strategy that had been put in place for dealing with the terrorists.

  A little earlier, back at Wood Street, at 9.39 a.m. Kate’s phone had rung. It was the main desk.

  ‘A junior minister from the Home Office is here to see a Mr Khan. I’m advised that you might know something about his whereabouts? He wants to see him, with two senior officers, in an interview room now!’

  ‘Leave this to me,’ said John. ‘I will tell him this is a very inconvenient time.’

  Kate looked at Rafi. They were now alone in the room. ‘How are you holding up?’ she enquired in a concerned manner.

  ‘OK, but I wish we could find the last terrorist. I’m on tenterhooks with this waiting for Rick Feldon or Roger Harewood to get back to us.’

  Kate’s phone rang. It was a very disgruntled John. ‘The junior minister is insisting that he sees Mr Khan. He says that he has a direct order from the Chair of COBRA, his boss. It seems he hauled himself and his press entourage over to Paddington Green police station only to be kept waiting and then to find Mr Khan wasn’t there. He was redirected to MI5 headquarters and they sent him here. He’s furious – says he’ll throw the book at us unless we let him see Rafi immediately. He refuses to understand that things are at a very delicate stage and won’t take no for an answer. He has to
ld me that he’ll use his powers under the Civil Contingencies Act to make us cooperate, or else.’

  ‘I have spoken to Beverley. Giles and David have gone to a meeting with the deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan Police to brief COBRA’s police liaison unit and can’t be disturbed. I can’t find Ewan. So it’s down to us. The minister keeps saying that he has to find out how much more Mr Khan can tell him about the Bishopsgate bombing and the recent attacks. Basically, I reckon all the self-obsessed cretin wants is a smokescreen: a story to tell the news teams outside in order to deflect all the bad publicity the Government is getting.’

  ‘Damn it! Why the hell now?’ blurted out Kate.

  ‘Because the man doesn’t live in the real world!’ Tiredness had reduced John’s ability to remain calm.

  ‘Sounds like the old saying: “They came to do good; they stayed to do well”,’ added Rafi.

  ‘Thank you, Rafi,’ said Kate in a frustrated tone.

  ‘Anyway,’ continued John, ‘I suppose we’ll have no option but to let him see Rafi.’

  ‘OK, but we keep the interview as short as possible,’ Kate replied.

  Over the phone she heard John shouting to the duty officer at the reception desk.

  ‘Oh no! Get those naming journalists away from here! Get the area outside the station cordoned off and keep the bloody press away – at least fifty bloody yards from the front door!’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ came the prompt reply.

  ‘Sod it! We need this like a hole in the head,’ said John irritably over the phone to Kate. ‘You and Rafi – meet me in the third floor interview room. I’ll bring the junior minister up.’

  ‘This had better not take long,’ remarked Kate to Rafi, who sensed her nervousness.

  In the stairwell she stopped him, put her hand on his head and roughed up his hair.

  ‘We can’t have you looking kempt.’ She pulled his rugby shirt out of the back of his tracksuit trousers and looked at him. ‘You’d better take your shoes off.’

  ‘Seriously? My socks stink!’

  ‘Don’t worry; it’s all part of the illusion.’ Kate looked him over. ‘Yep, you’ll do. You look awful, and yes, your socks reek!’ To his surprise, she leant forward and planted an affectionate kiss on his cheek. ‘No doubt you’ll be worth knowing after a wash and brush up!’