They took the escalators down to the ground floor. Khalid took Abu al Khayr through the crowds to a set of glass doors that led to the bridge leading across the railway lines to Stratford Regional Station and the town centre. It was the way they had come into the mall. ‘This is the exit to the station,’ he said. ‘There are five doors, a single at each side and three double doors between them. Do you see the handles?’
Each door had a long vertical chrome pole as a handle. Abu al Khayr nodded.
‘All we need is a chain and a padlock,’ said Khalid. ‘It will take a matter of seconds and all of the doors will be locked shut. Once done no one can get out, and no one can get in.’
‘The glass is reinforced?’
‘It is. It will resist a sledgehammer.’
‘And how many exits are there in total?’
‘On the ground floor there are six. All have the same type of doors and all can be chained shut within seconds.’
There was a constant stream of shoppers entering and leaving the mall. ‘Won’t people try to stop them locking the doors?’ asked Abu al Khayr.
‘This entrance is the busiest,’ said Khalid. ‘We will have a brother wearing a security uniform.’ He grinned. ‘We already have two brothers on the security staff and hope to have more within the next few days. The owners are very keen to demonstrate their commitment to diversity.’
‘They make it so easy,’ said Abu al Khayr.
‘Always,’ said Khalid. ‘They see it as a strength but it is their biggest weakness. And one that we shall take full advantage of.’
They began walking through the mall. It was packed with shoppers and they were constantly being bumped into or having to step aside to avoid strollers and wheelchairs.
‘How many people are here?’ asked Abu al Khayr.
‘On a busy day, more than forty thousand. On a quiet day, maybe half that.’
‘That’s a lot of people,’ said Abu al Khayr. ‘As big as a football stadium.’
‘Exactly,’ said Khalid. ‘And think how many passengers there are on a plane. A few hundred. Here we have tens of thousands of people and not a single check on who comes and goes.’ Three Asian youths in baggy jeans and baseball caps pushed by them, swearing and laughing. ‘Do you think anyone has searched them for a knife?’ asked Khalid. ‘Or a gun?’ He shook his head. ‘There are no checks at all. Not one.’
They reached the halfway point of the mall. Shops branched off to the left and at the end were four double doors that led to more shops outside the main mall. Khalid put his mouth close to Abu al Khayr’s ear. ‘One man could lock the doors and start shooting. In the panic they would have only one way to run.’ He looked up and gestured at the levels above them. From where they were standing they could see shoppers on the first and second floors and beyond them the glass ceiling and the clouds high in the sky. ‘Just look around you. Look at the crowds. Think of them panicking and falling over each other, like stampeding cattle. And from above come the bullets of our brothers.’
Abu al Khayr nodded enthusiastically. Khalid started walking again and Abu al Khayr hurried after him. They walked towards the John Lewis store.
‘This is the most complicated area,’ said Khalid. ‘Ahead there are two double doors that lead to John Lewis. To the left are six doors leading to the outdoor shops, and to the right are six doors leading to Stratford International Station.’ Abu al Khayr looked around. There were shoppers walking in all directions and it was as crowded as a Moroccan souk. ‘You notice how the ground floor of John Lewis is on the other side of the doors?’ said Khalid. ‘Once the mall doors are locked our brothers will be able to exit through the store. They can enter on the first floor, use the internal stairs and leave at ground-floor level. They can do the same at Marks & Spencer at the other end.’
‘I understand,’ said Abu al Khayr. ‘They can mingle with the shoppers and escape.’
Khalid heard Arabic voices behind him and he looked over his shoulder. An old man with a long straggly grey beard was admonishing two young boys who could have been his great-grandchildren. Next to him was a woman in a full burka sitting in a wheelchair. All that could be seen were her eyes but from them alone it was clear she was as old as the man. An Arab man in a baggy grey suit was pushing the wheelchair, probably the woman’s son. The man caught Khalid’s glance and he smiled and nodded. Khalid smiled back. He and Abu al Khayr walked away from the Arab family and headed down an escalator to the lower ground level.
There was another exit midway down the mall, at the end of a line of shops leading off a bustling food court. There were three double doors which could be locked with a single padlocked chain.
The final two exits were at the far end of the mall – two double doors leading to the car park and five leading outside to the tube station.
The two men walked outside and sat down on a bench from where they could watch the shoppers pouring into the mall.
‘We will need a minimum of fourteen brothers,’ said Khalid. ‘That will give us one at each entrance. If they simultaneously lock all the doors then no one can get in, or out. But the more brothers we can get the better. I would prefer twenty.’
‘Do we have that many?’
Khalid nodded. ‘We can bring brothers in from Europe. I have spoken to mosques in France and Germany and they have brothers ready and willing to help.’
Abu al Khayr grinned. ‘So we can do it?’
‘We can and we will,’ said Khalid. He took a printed guide to the mall from his shirt pocket and unfolded it. On one side was a floor plan showing the four levels. ‘Getting access could not be easier,’ he said. ‘The brothers can arrive by tube, by train and by car. I suggest all the weapons are brought in by car. There are two car parks, A and B.’ He tapped them on the map. ‘Access to car park B, the bigger of the two, is from the lower ground floor only, here and here. Car park A connects to the mall on the lower ground floor, the ground and the first floor. Brothers arriving from the train and tube can collect their weapons and equipment from the car parks on the lower ground floor, then take up their positions. I think two vehicles, parked close to the entrances to the malls. Then we should have a vehicle in each of the three lower levels of car park A, again as close to the mall entrances as possible. That’s five vehicles and we need two brothers in each, a driver and an organiser. The brothers with the guns must stay hidden in the back. If we can use sisters in the front, that would be better. Just a husband and wife doing their shopping together.’
‘There are sisters we can use, but not many are trained in the use of weapons,’ said Abu al Khayr.
‘No need,’ said Khalid. ‘They only have to be in the vans. In fact they can drive away before the shooting starts.’
‘And the police? What happens when the police arrive?’
Khalid grinned. ‘We will launch the attack at six o’clock,’ he said. ‘Most of the police work during the day. It will take them time to call in reinforcements. The first armed response unit will take at least ten minutes and what can one car do? They will see that the doors are locked and they will have to wait for superior officers to arrive. And in the evening that will take time.’
‘They won’t enter the mall?’
‘Not with the doors locked, and not when they realise there are armed men inside. They are constrained by health and safety rules. All they will do is keep the area clear until they are able to assess the situation. By the time they’ve done that it will all be over.’
‘What about the SAS?’
Khalid shrugged. ‘They are based in Hereford and even if they leave immediately and fly to London in helicopters they will be too late. This won’t be like Mumbai, where the brothers had to move from room to room looking for targets. We will have all the targets here that we need. The only limiting factor will be the amount of ammunition that our brothers can carry.’
‘And how many casualties do you anticipate?’ asked Abu al Khayr.
‘In the first ten minutes I would
expect there to be at least a thousand dead and many more injured. If we can continue for half an hour, the total could reach four thousand.’
‘It defies belief,’ said Abu al Khayr.
Khalid chuckled softly. ‘You can believe it, brother,’ he said. ‘Hundreds will die in the first few seconds because no one will have time to react. Then there will be panic but there will be no way out. Most will hide in shops but they will be trapped there. The mall is so crowded that every bullet will find a target. Our brothers can continue to shoot until their ammunition is expended.’
‘And then? What happens then?’
‘Then they leave. This will not be a suicide mission, brother. If carried out properly we will kill thousands and our brothers will escape to kill again.’
Abu al Khayr nodded as he studied the map. ‘Yes,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘I can see how it will work.’
‘Inshallah,’ said Khalid. God willing.
Shepherd headed down the road to Hampstead tube station. A vendor was giving away copies of a glossy magazine at the entrance to the station and Shepherd took the opportunity to stop and have a quick look around. He waited on the northbound platform until two trains had gone through, then he walked across to the southbound platform and caught a train to Charing Cross. To the casual observer he was simply sitting and reading his magazine on the train, but in fact he was taking careful note of everyone who got on or off.
When he did get off the train he walked slowly down the platform and was one of the last passengers to step on to the escalator. He walked through the station as if he was going to buy a ticket but then changed direction abruptly and headed instead for the taxi rank. He took a black cab to Thames House, confident that no one had followed him.
Charlotte Button was waiting for him in a meeting room on the third floor. Several dozen photographs taken from CCTV footage at St Pancras station were pinned to a board that took up most of one of the walls. ‘How did it go?’ she asked him as he sat down at the long highly polished table in the centre of the room.
‘He’s a bit squirrelly, but that’s to be expected,’ said Shepherd.
‘Not too squirrelly, I hope.’
‘He’ll be fine. But I was wondering if it would help for the two of them to have a chat with Caroline Stockmann.’ Stockmann was an MI5 psychologist who was responsible for Shepherd’s six-monthly psychological evaluations.
Button turned her back on the photographs and folded her arms. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘It’s no biggie, it’s just that the pressure is mounting and Caroline is always good at getting to the heart of any problems I might have.’
‘Caroline evaluates you twice a year to check that you’re up to undercover work,’ said Button. ‘If it ever gets to the point that you’re showing signs of being overstressed then we can move you into another area of work. That’s not an option for Chaudhry and Malik. This isn’t their job; it’s their lives. Even if they are under pressure there’s not much we can do other than offer as much support as we can. It’s not as if we can pull them out and put in someone else, is it? We’ve got to work with what we’ve got.’
‘I agree. I just thought it might help them, that’s all.’
‘Do you think I should talk to them?’
‘I’m not sure that’ll help,’ said Shepherd. ‘To be honest, relaxation techniques are what they need. Yoga or meditation. They’re fairly tightly wound at the moment.’
‘Which is good,’ said Button. ‘Considering what they’ve been through and what they’re now involved in, they should be stressed. If they suddenly start looking as if they haven’t got a care in the world then their al-Qaeda handlers are going to think that something’s wrong.’ She sat down opposite him and linked her fingers. ‘We’re on the home stretch, Spider. St Pancras was a dry run and the real thing is likely to be in days rather than weeks.’
Shepherd nodded. She was right. There would be no point in doing a full rehearsal and then putting everything on the back burner.
Button pointed at the photographs. ‘From our point of view the St Pancras rehearsal was a gift from above, it really was. We’ve identified eighty-seven possibles from the CCTV footage, based on ethnic status, age and possession of a backpack.’
‘Ethnic profiling?’ said Shepherd.
‘We’ve no choice,’ said Button. ‘There were thousands of people at the station and most of them had luggage of one form or another. Now we know that Chaudhry and Malik were given backpacks by Khalid it’s a fair enough assumption that anyone else involved also had a backpack. What we’ve done is trawl through the CCTV footage looking for Asians with backpacks. We’ve done male and female even though previous attacks in the UK have always involved men. If we’d widened it to include all ethnic groups there would have been thousands and we don’t have time for that.’
‘And you think they had eighty-odd people there?’
‘Of course not. What we’ve got to do now is compare them with our watch list and disregard those who are just innocent travellers.’
‘What about the passengers who arrived from France? Can’t you check with the Border Agency?’
‘Unfortunately it’s not as simple as that. Passports are checked in France before passengers board but they’re not checked at this end. And they’re not photographed. But we have CCTV footage of passengers disembarking at St Pancras so we can check that footage against the footage inside the station. We’re using a facial recognition system at the moment but it’s not great so we might end up doing it manually.’
She stood up and walked back to the photograph display. Seven photographs had been put to the right-hand side, separate from the rest. The top two were of Chaudhry and Malik.
‘We’ve already identified four from our watch list,’ said Button. ‘They all came up from the tube station at different times and from different trains.’ She tapped a photograph directly below Malik’s. ‘This one was one of the leaders of Muslims Against Crusades and we have some very nice footage of him burning poppies on Remembrance Day in 2009.’ She tapped a second photograph, and a third. ‘These two are from Leeds. Bangladeshi origin but born in the UK. They were both students there up until three years ago. For a while they were full-blown fundamentalists wearing skullcaps and dishdashas to lectures and growing their beards long, then they went off the radar. We know they visited Pakistan last year for six months, and as you can see from the CCTV photographs they are now clean-shaven and wearing western clothing, which is as big a red flag as you’ll ever get. They’ve obviously been told to alter their appearance to blend in.’
She pointed at one of the two remaining photographs. ‘This one wasn’t on our watch list but we got a match from the Police National Computer. His father and elder brother set fire to his younger sister five years ago. Third-degree burns over most of her body and she’ll never walk again. The father and brother were sent down for ten years. He was also charged but the CPS didn’t think there was a good enough case to make against him.’
‘Honour killing?’
‘Not much honour in it, but yes, they wanted her dead because she was going out with a Sikh boy. She was seventeen. She survived only because a neighbour saw what was going on and dialled 999. Although when the ambulance arrived the entire family turned on the paramedics and said that it was Allah’s will that she died. Anyway, this guy is from Bradford and had no legitimate reason to be at St Pancras that we know of; plus, he was in Pakistan last year, supposedly to attend a wedding but we’ve checked flight manifests and he was out of the country for three months.’
‘Must have been one hell of a wedding.’
Button ran a finger along the last photograph. ‘This one’s a little unusual in that he’s Egyptian and not Pakistani. Riffat Pasha. At least that was the name he used when he claimed political asylum a few years back. He popped back up on the radar when he started posting on a Fundamentalist website, one of those “kill all infidels and we’ll go to Heaven” rant sites. He�
�s working in a hotel in Mayfair as a kitchen porter.’
‘Why hasn’t he been deported?’
‘Because there’s a whole industry geared up to keeping him here. He’s had a child with a Portuguese woman so if we did try to throw him out of the country his human rights would kick in. Besides, he hasn’t actually done anything yet, other than post inflammatory statements.’
‘Are you thinking his hotel could be the target?’
‘It would make sense. We’re getting someone to take a look at their staff list to see if anyone else there is on our watch list.’ She sat down again. ‘Once we’ve identified all the members of the cell we can put them under surveillance.’
‘What about nipping it in the bud and pulling them in now? The rehearsal has to be evidence of conspiracy, hasn’t it?’
‘We’ve gone in too soon before and it always ends in tears,’ said Button. ‘The cases collapse and the suspects get public sympathy and compensation. We need to catch them in the act, or at least with weapons or explosives.’
‘I wish I had your confidence,’ said Shepherd.
‘Spider, we’ll have them under constant surveillance and as soon as it looks like they’re ready to go we’ll move in. We’ll have all the phone taps we need and we’ll be monitoring emails; we’re also looking to get trackers fixed to the vehicles. We’ve identified four vans dropping off Asians with backpacks, the one Chaudhry and Malik were in and three others. We’re running checks on the vans now, but they were all sold within the last two weeks so we’re not holding out much hope that we’ll be able to trace the new owners. However, we’ll put an all-points alert out on them so fingers crossed we’ll spot the vans somewhere.’
‘Unless they trash the vans and get new ones for the operation.’
‘There’s no need for them to do that,’ said Button. ‘So far as they’re concerned the rehearsal went perfectly. I understand your concerns, but we need to let this run a while longer.’
False Friends (The 9th Spider Shepherd Thriller) Page 29