by Paul Torday
‘Control,’ he called over the mike. ‘When we make the eyeball, what are our instructions?’
‘… ake … op …’
‘Did he tell us to make the stop?’ Arthur asked Martha.
‘I can’t bloody well drive in this mess and listen to the radio,’ complained the driver. ‘You tell me.’
Arthur tried again, but the words were no clearer.
‘What’s ‘‘make the stop’’ mean?’ I asked.
‘You don’t want to know,’ said Arthur, briefly. As soon as he said that, I knew exactly what it meant. Every unit has its own slang and this was theirs. They were asking about instructions to kill Adeena on sight.
Arthur started fiddling with the radio to find a better frequency.
A voice said: ‘Pick up in ten minutes at number forty-three, Nelson Crescent, to go to King’s Cross. Anyone?’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Arthur swore. ‘I thought this was supposed to be a secure radio network.’
‘These minicab outfits don’t care,’ said Martha. We were now weaving through thick traffic down Upper Regent Street. ‘It’s always the same when they shut down the Mall,’ he continued. ‘The whole of London grinds to a halt. What time are we due there?’
‘Five minutes ago,’ said Arthur. ‘Get a move on.’
‘You should tell Control to look out for a black Range Rover,’ I said suddenly. Multiple attacks, Nick had said.
Martha muttered something and then did a hair-raising crossing of Oxford Street between two buses that were coming at us from opposite directions. Arthur picked up the mike and started trying to talk to Control, to pass on my message.
‘Use a mobile,’ I suggested. ‘We did.’
‘We’re not supposed to once we’ve gone operational,’ said Arthur. ‘They’re not secure. But that’s exactly what I’ll have to do if I can’t get this heap of shit to work any better.’
We swerved down Regent Street towards Piccadilly. Arthur gave up on the radio and used his mobile. He got a connection at once, and tried to pass on my message. Someone at the other end was obviously more interested in telling Arthur what to do than in listening to him.
I heard him say: ‘I can’t make out what you’re saying. There’s a lot of noise in the background. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I understand. If you say so, sir.’
He hung up and turned to Martha.
‘They think there’s going to be an attack on the motor convoy. We’re stood down until the situation is clearer. We have to proceed to Lancaster House, make the eyeball, and then await further instructions. Can you believe it?’
It was now ten to four. For a frustrating ten minutes we fought our way through thick, almost static traffic around the streets of St James’s until we managed to turn into Pall Mall. Just after four o’clock we, and everyone else in that part of London, heard a huge explosion. I thought I felt a faint shudder travel through the car ahead of the bang. I saw car brake lights come on everywhere along Pall Mall. Pedestrians flinched, or ducked, or put their hands over their heads as they tried to work out what was happening.
Later we learned that a moment or two after four o’clock, a black Range Rover packed with explosives and driven by Amir had gone through the police barriers at Admiralty Arch. On the roof of the vehicle was an emergency flashing light, which Aseeb had bought on the Internet using a credit card in the name of Khan. The lights had caused just enough confusion for the vehicle to be able to force its way through the police cordon and make a headlong run at the approaching motor convoy.
‘That was a big bang,’ said Arthur.
‘Not from the direction of Lancaster House, though,’ said Martha.
They were right, as it turned out. The point of impact between the Range Rover and the convoy was just opposite the Duke of York Steps. The first car in the convoy, an escort vehicle containing three police officers, pulled sideways in front of the car carrying the president to block the approaching Range Rover, which detonated just before it hit the police car, obliterating the occupants. Not a trace of the three police officers remained, nor of Amir, and not much was left of either vehicle.
Fragments of metal were strewn across the Mall, beheading one bystander and wounding several others. The visit of the president of Afghanistan was not a big-ticket event, and the few people who had lined the pavements probably didn’t even know which country’s flag it was that was flying overhead, and had simply stopped to watch in case the convoy contained a member of the Royal Family. Two shards of metal went straight through the windscreen of the president’s car. A permanent under-secretary and the driver were killed instantly. The president and the foreign secretary, sitting in the rear seats, were miraculously unscathed although, deafened by the explosion, they could hear little or nothing of the prime minister’s sympathetic remarks when they finally arrived in Downing Street.
As our car raced into the courtyard outside Lancaster House I could see dozens of people coming down the steps. Police officers were trying to control the crowd until they had found out where the threat was. There were several wives in frocks and hats but I could not spot the person I was most anxious to see. I leapt out of the car before it had stopped moving.
‘Make the eyeball,’ Arthur told me, leaning out from the passenger seat. ‘Martha will follow you. I’ll try to get confirmation of our instructions.’
As I stared across the courtyard a honking sound overhead made me look up. In a darkening grey sky I could see skeins of geese and ducks circling, startled from their ponds and reed beds in St James’s Park by the sound of the explosion.
Behind me I heard Arthur shouting into his mobile.
‘What are our instructions, for Christ’s sake? I can’t hear what you’re saying!’
It wasn’t surprising. The courtyard was a melee. Two more police cars had arrived and there were officers everywhere, shouting at each other and yelling instructions. Radios crackled. Sirens were going off all over this part of London: ambulance, fire, police. A column of black smoke was drifting down the Mall, behind Lancaster House. Then at last I saw Adeena, standing in the middle of the crowd of soldiers and ex-soldiers. Her black-clad figure was so still among the moving crowd that it seemed as if she was lost in thought. She wore no scarf or veil: her blonde hair fell to her shoulders. She was half turned away from me so I couldn’t see her face. I started to push my way through the crowd towards her.
Martha followed me, muttering. ‘Which one is it? Is that her in the black gown?’
I didn’t reply. I was intent on speaking to Adeena. I needed to explain to her that whatever she was planning to do she must not go through with it. She needed to stay alive. As I pushed through the crowd one or two voices called my name:
‘Gaunt? Is that you, Gaunt?’
‘Do you know what’s going on, Richard?’
I bumped into a man, who staggered and nearly fell over. I saw from his movements that he had a prosthetic leg. He was wearing a dark suit with a campaign medal pinned to the lapel and he swore at me as he fought to regain his balance. Martha stopped to help the man, and fell behind me in the confusion.
‘Sorry,’ I said over my shoulder. I elbowed past another man, a colonel whose face I thought I recognised, but I ignored him too. Adeena was only a few yards away, standing erect and looking towards the house, where yet more people were emerging: senior officers, and a couple of suits who looked like politicians or civil servants. Even though her back was to me, I would have recognised her slender figure anywhere, even in that black gown.
Except she wasn’t slender any more: I thought that there was a thickening around her waist. I remembered a spindly boy coming around a corner in a street not far from the Green Zone in Baghdad. A spindly boy: thin-faced and narrow-shouldered, with spindly legs poking from the bottom of his gown. Around the middle he was as plump as a partridge. Just like Adeena. At that moment I finally knew beyond any doubt what was about to happen.
She was a suicide bomber. The realisation almost overwhelm
ed me and at the same time I was unsurprised, as if I’d always known it. But there was no time for thought. There never is, when you most need it. I opened my mouth to yell ‘Everybody down’ just as I had once before, but no one would have taken any notice. So many people were already shouting instructions, contradicting each other, that one more order would probably have made little difference. By now I was only two or three yards behind Adeena. I called out her name. I did not use her new name.
‘Nadine,’ I said. Somehow the frenzied activity and noise around us seemed to fade. She heard me, and turned around. Her eyes were wide and she was smiling at me, that smile she had that melted my heart. She mouthed a word. She may have spoken it aloud, but she did not need to. I knew what she had said.
‘Darling.’
Her left hand gripped the edge of her burka and now I saw her slip it inside the folds of cloth. I had already pulled out the pistol. Holding it with both hands I fired twice, straight at the centre of her forehead. She crumpled backwards without a sound.
I can’t remember much of what happened after that. I don’t want to remember. Martha grabbed me from behind as I knelt by Adeena’s body, and then Arthur arrived. Between them they half dragged, half walked me back to the car almost before anyone else had realised what was going on. Uniformed policemen crowded around the car and there was a brief conference, or perhaps it was an argument. Then I found myself slumped in the back of the car and it was reversing at speed out of the courtyard, before driving away, away from the black-clad body still lying on the tarmac.
I was in a lot of different places that evening. First we went to an underground crisis management centre, somewhere off Whitehall. Then we spent hours going from one office to another at New Scotland Yard. At last Arthur and Martha and two uniformed officers took me back downstairs and put me in another car and I ended up in the rooms above the parade of shops in Wandsworth.
All that long and weary evening, people kept pushing their faces into mine, asking questions I couldn’t understand. At first tears leaked down my cheeks, and I could not stop them, but I don’t remember making any sound. I felt trapped inside a bubble of silence. It wasn’t grief or anger. I was so numb that the events of that afternoon seemed like bright images seen through the wrong end of a telescope: remote and unreal. From time to time fragments of conversation penetrated my mind.
‘He’s in shock.’
‘Did anyone get a picture of him?’
‘Not that I know of – we got away clean, I think.’
Then, later on, a man with a pompous voice that was somehow familiar turned up. He didn’t bother talking to me but addressed the other people in the room.
‘We don’t want another trial. Make him disappear.’
None of this made any sense to me at the time. As the evening turned into night, I found the energy to speak at last. We were sitting in Nick Davies’s office with Bas. Arthur and Martha had disappeared and Nick was gazing at me while I drank neat whisky out of a paper cup.
‘Tell me,’ I said to Nick. I thought he looked even more tired than usual, but his expression was slightly less hostile.
‘Tell you what?’
‘About Adeena. She was wearing a suicide vest underneath the burka, wasn’t she? I thought she was about to detonate it.’
Nick and Bas stared at me.
‘That’s why I had to take the shot,’ I explained. ‘There was no time to ask questions.’
Bas looked away from me and stared at the floor. I repeated my question: ‘She was wearing a suicide vest, right?’
Still no one said a word.
Twenty-One
A suicide vest is often a simple garment. You can make them at home. People do just that. I had seen a few in Iraq, when we raided bomb factories. The vest is usually constructed from heavy-duty polythene, or canvas, with two flaps. There is a hole in the middle to put your head through. Sophisticated versions have tapes so you can tie the garment around you. Stitched around the vest are pockets of webbing or some other material, which are used to hold the sticks of explosive. In the deluxe versions these are also packed with ball bearings, to increase lethality. The explosives are joined by wire to a detonator, which is activated either by the bomber himself – or herself – or in some cases by a kind friend using a garage remote or a mobile telephone. That was what I thought Adeena had been wearing.
After a moment’s silence Nick replied.
‘Yes. She was wearing a bomb vest but it was not well made. It might not have gone off. If it had done, there would have been one hell of a bang.’
Something like compassion flitted across Nick’s features. Then he said, ‘If you hadn’t stopped her, she could have done enormous damage. You would have been killed, of course. And so would dozens of other people. It would have been a triumph for Aseeb if he had managed to pull off both attempts. He – or al-Qaeda – would have claimed the scalps of the president of Afghanistan, and a score of senior officers and campaign veterans.’
I remembered Adeena telling me: ‘I know exactly what I believe in, Richard. And that is more than you can say.’
Her belief had been strong and it had been quite clear. She was intent on martyrdom. For a while I hadn’t seen her for what she was. I didn’t understand her, because I didn’t believe in anything any more. Belief had been knocked out of me. I was just a man with too many bad memories. As for Adeena, whether it was me who shot her – or someone like me – or whether she had achieved her death herself, the result would have been the same. The message would have been delivered.
‘There’s no point in reproaching yourself, Richard,’ Nick added. ‘She was a very clever lady. She fooled us all: she and Aseeb. It was a classic piece of misdirection. She had us all worrying about her – was she a terrorist, wasn’t she? – and while we were busy doing that, Aseeb was getting on with Plan A. They both knew we would work out what she was intending to do, and would cancel Lancaster House and redirect the motor convoy down the Mall. The man in the Range Rover saw his chance and went for it. He came very close to killing everyone in that motorcade.’
Nick told me what they knew about Amir’s suicide run at the president.
‘He nearly succeeded,’ said Nick. ‘We picked up the threat when Cheltenham eavesdropped on a call which we think was the ‘‘Go’’ signal. Even then we didn’t know where the threat would come from, except that Nadine Lemprière was probably Plan B, and not the main event.’
Aseeb. I had a strong desire to see him again.
‘Was the call from Aseeb?’
‘We think so.’
‘Where is he?’
‘The odd thing is that the call was traced to Middlesbrough. We only received that information about half an hour ago.’
‘Middlesbrough? What the hell is he doing there?’
Nick paused, then said, ‘We’re not sure. Trying to go home, maybe? The UK Border Agency and the police all have descriptions of him so getting out of the country by plane or even road or rail will be a big risk for him. There are photo ID checks at most airports now. We nearly caught him at Heathrow a year ago. But Aseeb’s style is to do the unexpected.’
‘So why Middlesbrough?’ I repeated. ‘Why go north?’
Nick replied by asking a question of his own.
‘What do you know about Middlesbrough?’
‘Not much. It was once a big steel town …’ I thought for a moment and then realised what he was getting at. ‘Oh, I see. It’s a port.’
‘Yes, it’s a port and quite a busy one, too. The actual harbour is called Teesport. Oddly enough – we don’t know, but we think – Aseeb may have used it before. Because although it is still a large industrial port there are two interesting things about it as far as Aseeb is concerned. The first is that it was a soft entry point for illegal immigrants. The UK Border Agency has tightened up on that now, but it still goes on. The second thing is that it has a number of sailings to the Middle East: Port Sudan, Djibouti, Aden and so on. A ship might be sl
ow, but it’s the last thing he’d expect us to keep an eye on. And he’d be right, except that he doesn’t know we spotted this as a potential route in and out a year ago. If he can get as far as Aden on a ship, the rest of the journey home would be a piece of cake for someone with Aseeb’s connections.’
I stood up. I felt very weary and numb, but there was still work to be done.
‘Let’s go,’ I said.
‘Hang on,’ said Nick. ‘You’re not going anywhere.’
‘You need me,’ I pointed out. ‘I would recognise Aseeb in an instant if I saw him again. You don’t have that advantage: you only have a fairly old photograph to work from. You have to take me. You can’t afford to get it wrong.’
After a moment Nick nodded reluctantly.
‘OK. But don’t kill anyone. We want to catch Aseeb alive.’
‘Then let’s go,’ I said again. Nick shook his head.
‘There’s no hurry. Either we’re wrong about Middlesbrough and his intended method of departure, in which case he’s probably left the country already, or we’re right, in which case the next sailing he could possibly use leaves Teesport tomorrow night. There’s plenty of time. Let’s get some sleep. Bas will take you back to your flat and we’ll pick you up tomorrow morning.’
That night I didn’t sleep much. I lay on my bed fully clothed, grief bubbling inside me like acid. I tried to force it back down. Now was not the time to grieve. I thought a lot about Adeena that night, but in the end none of it made any sense.
I believe now that Adeena had taught herself to live more than one life. She was a terrorist or, as she would have put it, a martyr. That was one life. But the Nadine part of her, I am sure, pined for another existence: what she would have called a ‘bourgeois’ life. Terrorists sometimes destroy the things they most long to have themselves. She wanted a man, and a family, and a life without fear. It was a life she knew she could never have, but that didn’t stop her longing for it.