by Ali Vali
If only Bel knew who the damn bomber was.
She had completed a scan within her immediate area, and under the proviso of wanting to look at an eastbound map, she moved ten feet toward the front of the train. Liverpool Street station was approaching so she didn’t have much time.
Click. No bulky coats or clothing.
Click. No one had their hands in their bag.
The train began to slow.
Click. No one looked nervous or sweaty or was chanting or staring into space.
The train stopped.
She was doing all she could with the little information she had received.
The noise level rose as commuters left the train and more arrived. “I need more,” she said efficiently into her microphone. “What the hell am I looking for here?”
“No description yet, Bel.”
She felt blind.
“Moorgate, not this train but the next from Liverpool. That’s your train,” said Charlie.
“Copy that.” Sean’s voice raised an octave and Bel knew hers probably had too. Action was imminent, it was only natural. Sean had been told not to take the train that was at his platform now, but to wait for her train. The knowledge that backup was on the way eased her stress levels, if only slightly.
“The cleaner is female. All officers take note, the cleaner is female.” Charlie spoke loudly and slowly.
Female? It certainly wasn’t impossible, and in the current climate, it was becoming increasingly popular, but a female suicide bomber threw her. Statistically it should have been a male, and she was disappointed her predisposed image had been that of a male, roughly between the ages of twenty and thirty-five and of Middle Eastern origin.
“Description, do we have a description?” Bel jumped from the train and moved down the platform only to leap on another carriage. She was now on the carriage Esther had been on, but she was nowhere to be seen.
The relief that filled Bel was fleeting yet satisfying. Either way, Esther had gotten off this train and was hopefully well on her way to another, or better still, she was exiting the underground system completely.
Knowledge of the gender of the bomber was a good start. She could immediately discount half the people on the train.
Suddenly a woman of Asian origin caught her eye. She could have been from Pakistan or India, but Bel had no real way of telling. She was pleasant looking, with fine facial features, and she was staring into space. What caught Bel’s attention first was her clothing; she wore a large camel-coloured jacket, and although she was visible only on one side, Bel could tell her hand was in her bag. The size of her body seemed out of proportion to her head, and her lips were moving though she wasn’t talking to anyone.
Bel’s heart pounded so hard deep within her chest, she swore Control could have heard it.
“I need a description,” Bel whispered impatiently.
“Stand by, Bel.”
Communication between Control and the other officers filled her ear again, and she did her best to shut it out. She took in her surroundings and subconsciously felt for her weapon. It was loaded, she knew it was loaded. It felt heavy.
Chapter Five
Jason from Liverpool was on the train.
As far as Bel could tell, he was a good operator, and the times she’d encountered him, he’d been helpful, sincere, and switched on. She was glad she was no longer alone.
“Bel, your position, please?” asked Charlie.
“Carriage three.”
“Jason?”
“Carriage seven, Control.”
Before Bel called in the woman, she ran through her characteristics once more as she positioned herself closer: jacket, hands, staring, and muttering. Four traits out of seven for a female. Those remaining undetermined were an unusual walk due to the weight of the explosives, sweating, and the possibility of drug inducement. Four out of seven.
She was possibly only metres away from someone intent on blowing the train, and themselves, into next week.
Bel edged closer.
In her ear she heard Charlie coordinating other officers, but she remained focused on the partly obscured woman who was possibly a suicide bomber.
“Control, this is 570—” She began calling it in.
Her message was overridden. “All officers note: the cleaner is a white female wearing a black jacket.”
“What? Can you repeat that, Control?”
Charlie repeated her previous message, and Bel stared at the woman on the train. They were approaching Moorgate station. The suspected bomber didn’t move. You’ve got this wrong, Charlie.
Protocol told her she should regroup and concentrate on locating the suspect described by Control, but Bel couldn’t take her eyes off the seated woman. What were the chances of two bombers on the train?
“Control, this is 5709. Could there be a decoy?”
The train was slowing and the woman hadn’t moved; she continued to stare at an unknown object. Regardless of whether or not you’re disembarking at a station, most people look about themselves when a train comes to a halt. Was an explosion at the station a possibility?
“Bel, the intelligence is a lone cleaner, female, white, black jacket. Confirm you have an alternative target?”
Bel’s ass was on the line. “Confirm. Third carriage, left-hand side, seat seven. Asian female, brown coat, hands in black leather-look bag.”
“Stand by, Bel.”
The train came to a halt and the woman didn’t move. It occurred to Bel she might be about to die. Fleetingly she thought she should just shoot the woman, save them all. But what if she wasn’t a bomber? Bel suppressed a sudden urge to run away. She lost sight of the woman as hordes of people moved on and off the train.
“Officer 5709, step off the train.”
Bel was right, she was a bomber.
“Sean, this is your train.”
“Copy that,” said Sean.
As ordered, Bel immediately pushed through people and leapt onto the platform, sucking in stale, warm underground air. Her suspect was the bomber, and she was being ordered off the train to save her life.
Fuck!
She immediately knew her summation was flawed.
She stood with her hands in her hair, watching the train disappear into the tunnel. She’d made a terrible mistake.
Her earpiece hissed quietly and it sounded different. A male voice startled her. “Bel, this is Scott.” Scott was one of Charlie’s counterparts. They were on a different channel now. “Your suspect was sitting with a child. She was sharing earphones with a small boy, and she removed her hands from her bag to feed the child sweets of some description.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck! Bel stumbled back against the tiled wall at the station for support. She knew a suicide bomber would hardly take her child with her to blow up a train. She hadn’t seen him; the woman’s large body had obscured her vision, a body she was sure was oversized and packed with explosives.
“You’re off your game today, Bel. I’m calling you back in. Get a coffee and some fresh air and return to base.”
“But surely you need as many officers on this as possible. I’m right here!” Desperation gripped her.
“Not today, Bel. See you soon.”
“Scott, I mean, sir, please. I can do this.”
“Base, 5709. Now.”
“Yes, sir.”
When Bel was eleven, she watched her dad push their boat from the jetty as she ran from the rented beach house trying to catch him in time. She had been excited for weeks at the prospect of fishing with her dad, but that morning she’d been so engrossed with the cartoons on the television she’d ignored warning after warning to hurry up. She had glanced at the clock on the old VCR and thought she had plenty of time, but the clock had been wrong, and when her mum came to tell her that her father had left already, she’d initially thought he was mean for not waiting for her. It wasn’t until then that she realised the clock on the VCR was twenty minutes slow. Tears streamed down her face as she ra
n after her dad, but by the time she arrived he’d pushed the boat away from the jetty and was heading down the estuary. He didn’t hear her screaming for him, and he didn’t turn to see her on her knees, crying on the worn wood. She hated that feeling, and she’d never been late for anything since.
As the train pulled from the station, it was like watching her dad sail away all over again. She was left behind and there was nothing she could do.
She couldn’t stop the moisture developing in her eyes and wasn’t sure she could control it, so she put her head down and headed to the nearest bathroom. Already she was going over in her mind what went wrong. She would take her time returning to base; she had to have in her mind a clear analysis of the entire situation before she even considered entering a debrief. Her superiors would want her to identify the problem and come up with a solution. Nothing in MI5 was ever handed to you on a platter.
Not many things motivated Bel more than failure. In fact, the desire to avoid failure drove her to achieve such high standards. In golf, you gave yourself five steps to berate your last poor shot, the one that landed in the water or the bunker. Then it was best to move on or else the next shot would be affected. She gave herself five minutes to get a grip.
The bathroom smelled of cheap perfume and cheap bleach. Her tears never came, just an annoyance that she’d cracked under the pressure of her first real suicide-bomber threat and that she’d fallen victim to a severe case of tunnel vision. All she could do was learn from the experience and perform better next time. She hoped there would be a next time—not necessarily a suicide bomber, she wouldn’t wish that on anyone—but a chance to prove her worth on the team. The repercussions from this incident could be severe. Other members of the task force had no reason to doubt her abilities, until now. The coming weeks were imperative to regain her colleagues’ trust. She had to show them she could hold her own and cover their backs at the same time. Right now, she had let herself and her entire team down.
Her earpiece was eerily silent, and she hated not knowing what was going on—especially when she knew everything was going on. It was probably switched off—she assumed by Scott—but she left it dangling from her ear regardless. She wasn’t in the mood for idle chitchat with strangers, and it always worked as a deterrent. Annoyed to be excluded from the chase, she switched off her microphone; it was the only way she knew how to feel alone in a heaving underground-train network with surveillance cameras covering every inch.
Reluctant to return to the real world, she pushed through waiting teenagers intent on blocking the toilet door and held her head high as she made her way toward the escalators in a bid to reach fresh air aboveground before continuing her journey in the belly of London. She wondered about the fate of those entering the station.
Headquarters was in Southwark, and from Moorgate, Bel intended to take the Northern line southward to London Bridge station and then the Jubilee line to Southwark station. From there, headquarters was only a short walk.
Terrorist intelligence-gathering was an unpredictable beast at the best of times, and MI5, not unlike other government security agencies around the world, set parameters and guidelines when dealing with sensitive information. Risk assessments were complicated and certainly not foolproof. They involved analysing economic damage, property damage, and of course, casualties. Bel knew that because the underground system hadn’t yet been evacuated, it was likely the terror threat was not linked to any of the well-known extremist groups active in the United Kingdom and the rest of the world. She also knew that the information they had received was yet to be verified to an acceptable level or else they would know if the threat was imminent and who exactly was making it.
The London underground system was vast and could bring London to a standstill if it was obstructed in any substantial way. Consequently, systems were in place to minimise hoax threats. Before Bel had commenced in Hotstream, she’d imagined one phone call with a bomb threat would shut down the entire system. This obviously wasn’t the case, although the police often received bomb threats—mostly from disgruntled commuters and the occasional mentally ill person—but they were swiftly contained without the need for evacuation or any real disruption of services.
Most people had little cause to notice, but there were small things in place to assist underground security. Of particular note was the obvious lack of rubbish bins in many of the underground stations. Extra bins had been installed for the 2012 Olympic Games, but when they were broken or damaged, they weren’t replaced. If there was a bin in a station, it was strategically placed, was filmed at all times, and consisted of a clear plastic bag suspended over a hoop. The London underground was a difficult place to leave a bomb, and it was specifically designed that way.
This current threat must be genuine, but it was obviously unclear by whom the threat was made. Bel never liked to guess how high-level anti-terrorism undercover officers gathered their information. They were often a law unto themselves, and after having met a few, she knew she didn’t have the balls for the level of undercover work that ran to the deepest lowlife places on earth, full of dangerous people with even more dangerous ideals.
Bel stopped to watch a busker performing a great impression of Neil Diamond when something familiar caught her eye. Esther walked right by her.
“Hey, Esther.” Esther continued without noticing. Bel jogged after her, weaving through a handful of strangers. “Esther!”
Esther turned, wearing an unreadable expression. “Oh, hi, Bel.”
“Didn’t you hear me calling you?”
“Must have been a million miles away.” Her smile was brief and appeared forced. “You’re not at work today?”
Bel registered that Esther’s voice was higher in pitch than normal, as if she was nervous. She had no time to dwell on that observation because she had to think quickly. “Just on my way to a job. Got a bit of time, though.” This wasn’t exactly a lie. She was on her way back to base and certainly wasn’t in any hurry.
She was delighted to see Esther, but their meeting left her feeling uneasy, guilty, really. She couldn’t hug her because any bodily contact would reveal she had a weapon in a holster beneath her jacket, and how would she explain that? Unless she was guarding a foreign diplomat, she’d hardly be armed—it wasn’t America. Then there was the feeling that Esther wasn’t as pleased to see her as she’d have hoped. Esther seemed distracted, even keen to just move on and return to her day. Bel felt deflated.
Luckily Esther didn’t seem to notice that they hadn’t hugged in greeting, and the awkward moment passed.
“So where’s your job?” Esther visibly inhaled deeply and smiled directly at Bel, her shoulders dropping slightly. “Minding anyone important today?”
Shit! Never mind Esther’s odd behaviour, she really should have thought this through more—lying wasn’t second nature to her and she wasn’t all that good at it. When she undertook undercover work in the past, she’d found that being herself was a dead giveaway. What ultimately worked was to invent a completely different person, a character for her to play, and it was only then she could be convincing.
She’d not thought through talking to Esther in advance, and now she was left wanting. It just wasn’t her day.
“Not today.” She wanted to avoid telling a direct lie. Not to Esther. It felt so wrong.
Esther raised her eyebrow, waiting.
Bel looked around and saw a poster of a touring band on the wall. They were playing at the London O2 Arena that evening. “I’m just providing numbers for the afternoon shift for them.” She cocked her head toward the poster and shrugged. Esther barely registered the famous band and simply nodded. “It’s just while their A-team rest up for the evening and it’s only rehearsals.” Liar, liar. Bel was failing miserably.
She really wanted to be able to tell Esther about her disastrous morning. Being a member of the Hotstream task force was a prestigious posting, but there was nothing prestigious about having no one to talk to about your job, especia
lly when, by not even eight o’clock, you were having the worst day possible.
“Who on earth would hassle them at rehearsal?” asked Esther.
“What?”
Esther pointed to the poster. “Do they really need minders during rehearsal?”
Bel had no idea. Did they? Think, you idiot. “The O2 is a big complex, and loads of people work there. It’s just precautionary. That’s why the real minders take the afternoon off.” It was possible her story sounded plausible, but it was equally possible that it sounded like the load of old shite it was. Bel shrugged. “Beats me, but I get paid, so I’m not complaining.”
“What’s the going rate for a minder like you these days?” Esther shifted weight from one foot to the other.
Was she nervous?
Since when had Esther shown the slightest hint of interest in her work? She had no idea what a pretend bodyguard earned. She racked her brain before, thankfully, a Hollywood movie entered her head. She halved the amount quoted in the movie and, before she spoke, halved it again—this was far from Hollywood.
“Three hundred.”
Esther thought about this.
Bel waited. Maybe three hundred was too low.
“Not bad for an afternoon’s work, I don’t suppose,” said Esther.
“Yeah, well, that’s what I think.”
“Sounds a bit boring, though.”
Bel couldn’t agree more, especially after the morning she’d had. But then, most days came and went with little or no action. Today had been remarkable and unique, and she’d fucked it up.
“Easy money.”
“Well, not exactly. Easy money is drug dealing or being an assassin or something like that,” said Esther.
“I guess I was off school the day Mr. Hughes suggested we consider illegal activity for a career.” It certainly hadn’t been Bel’s first thought for easy money.
“You’ve seen those shows, though, right? You know, the ones where good people do stupid things for a good cause?”
Of course Bel had seen those shows; she hated them. Right was right and wrong was wrong. Producing methamphetamine and selling it to build a stash of cash for your family to live comfortably on after you died from terminal cancer was still illegal and morally corrupt. If there was one thing Bel knew, it was right from wrong.