Hangman

by Daniel Cole

  “I’m tired, Lucas. What’s your point?”

  “I have an admission to make,” announced Keaton without turning around. “I did some research into the Oslo and Utøya attacks.”

  “Why would you do that?” asked Green. “I don’t understand why you’d—”

  “The news stories mainly,” Keaton continued, speaking over him as he dominated the conversation. “‘Seventy-seven dead,’ ‘multiple casualties,’ ‘several victims.’ Want to know how many acknowledged Abby by name?”

  Green didn’t reply.

  “None. Not one that I found even bothered to report that your fiancée had been taken from you.”

  Green started to weep as Keaton walked back over to sit beside him:

  “All those people out there got to carry on with their lives, while ours crumbled . . . and they couldn’t even be bothered to learn their names!” shouted Keaton passionately, tears pouring down his cheeks. “None of them has suffered as we have . . . None of them.”

  Keaton paused a moment to read Green’s expression.

  “I’m not much to look at, Alexei. I know that. I’m successful, but people don’t listen when I speak . . . not really. And all the preparation and manipulation in the world isn’t going to get them to do what I need them to do. I need them to surrender themselves to me . . . to our cause, entirely.”

  “Puppets?” asked Green, glancing up, recalling their previous conversation on the futility of holding an inanimate object accountable for its actions.

  “Puppets.” Keaton nodded encouragingly. “I need someone who can inspire them, someone for them to look up to, someone to lead them . . . I need you.”

  “What are you saying?” asked Green.

  Keaton placed a hand on his shoulder:

  “I’m saying, what if there was a way to make things right? A way to make these self-obsessed masses understand what happened to us. A way to ensure that every fucking person on this planet knows the names of my family, knows the face of your beautiful Abby and exactly what she meant to you.”

  There was a long pause as Green absorbed what Keaton was saying to him.

  Slowly, he placed his hand on top of his and turned to face him:

  “I’d say tell me more.”

  Chapter 38

  Tuesday, 22 December 2015

  4:14 P.M.

  Baxter received an urgent radio call requesting that she return to the command unit/Bob’s break room. She was handed the phone on her arrival.

  “Baxter,” she answered.

  “It’s Vanita. Just a courtesy call to bring you up to speed. About an hour ago, the Central Forensic Imaging Team pulled an image from the Sky Garden footage, which they have since matched to surveillance from New York.”

  “Why am I only just hearing about this now?” asked Baxter.

  “Because nothing beyond the boundaries of that station concerns you right now. Both MI5 and SO15 have all the details. As I said, just a courtesy call. So I sent Blake—”

  “What did you send Blake for?” Baxter interrupted as Rouche entered the room. “Hang on. I’m putting you on speaker.”

  “I sent Blake to the address,” Vanita continued, “and he’s confirmed it: Lucas Theodor Keaton, forty-eight. I’m sending details over to you now. Prepare to be underwhelmed . . . Ladies and gentlemen, meet our Azazel.”

  They crowded around the computer as one of the technical officers brought up the email. Keaton’s forgettable face stared out from the screen, his sensibly styled hair receding from his temples at the rate one would expect of a man of his age.

  “That’s him?” asked Baxter.

  “That’s him. His company facilitated the hidden messages and supplied the mobile phones. Numerous flights to and from JFK this past year, building in frequency. He last flew back Tuesday night,” Vanita added, significantly.

  The other phone went off. Rouche hastily answered it and commenced a whispered conversation.

  “On Blake’s recommendation, the security services are prioritizing targets with religious connotations. Seems this Keaton might have some sort of spiritual agenda, which would certainly explain the New York church,” Vanita told her.

  “OK,” Baxter replied distractedly.

  “I’ll let you get back to work,” said Vanita, hanging up.

  Rouche tore a map from the wall and urgently traced his finger across the paper.

  “What is it?” asked Baxter.

  “Three of our missing Puppets have just flagged up within a quarter mile of each other.”

  “So they’ve dispatched armed units, right?”

  “They have,” answered Rouche, tapping his finger on a location almost dead center of the three sightings. “They’re heading to Baker Street Station. I’m going.”

  “No,” said Baxter. “They can handle it. I need you here with me.”

  “I can get ahead of them.”

  “We need to stick together!”

  “Baxter,” he sighed, a rumbling underfoot as another train slowed along the northbound platform. “Just trust me on this. That’s where I need to be. It’s three stops away. I’ll be back in time.” He picked up his coat.

  Baxter grabbed hold of a sleeve.

  “You’re not going!” she told him.

  “I don’t work for you,” he reminded her, letting go of the coat.

  “Rouche!” she yelled after him, following him up the stairs toward the other platform.

  He jumped into a carriage just as the doors slid shut, Baxter only moments behind.

  “Rouche!” she shouted again as the train started moving off. On the other side of the glass, he waved apologetically. She threw his coat to the floor in frustration. “Rouche! Shit!”

  Baxter had instructed the technical officers to disseminate Keaton’s details and photograph to the teams, while she read up on his tragic history and the accompanying documents from Blake. An uncropped version of the family photo had been included, the smiling faces blissfully unaware of the misery to come.

  “He’s Rouche,” she mumbled to herself, shaking her head, or rather, he was what Rouche could have become.

  The two men’s stories were disarmingly similar, even down to the religious proclivity, and yet where Keaton had allowed his hate and sorrow to consume him, Rouche had poured all of that negative energy into helping people.

  She smiled; maybe something more than coincidence had led him back there after all.

  Rouche stepped out onto the platform at Baker Street. Photographs of the three suspects had been sent to him en route. He had his phone at the ready to refer to as he followed the black-and-yellow “Way Out” signs above ground.

  “Baxter, are you still reading me?”

  “I am.”

  She didn’t sound happy with him.

  “I’ve just arrived at Baker Street, heading up to intercept the targets at the main entrance. I’ll deal with CFIT directly but will keep you updated.”

  “Great.”

  He jogged up the left side of the escalator, swiped through a ticket barrier, and allowed the current of commuters to wash him out onto the pavement.

  The mouth of the station was a chaotic free-for-all, with a Big Issue seller, Wham!-singing busker, and sorry-looking homeless man with an even sorrier-looking dog all vying for space in the busy entranceway.

  Rouche made it across to the wall bordering the congested road and changed the channel on his radio, his earpiece picking up the tail end of a transmission to the FBI unit.

  “Rouche here. I’m in position at the entrance. Did I miss anything?”

  “Suspect Brookes has been apprehended,” a female voice informed him.

  “Nine to go,” he whispered to himself.

  He scrolled through the photos on his phone to see which of the faces he could now forget. He looked up at the endless parade of people approaching from either direction, their features obscured beneath hats, hoods, and umbrellas, as the woman continued:

  “Armed units still one minu
te out. Remaining suspects arriving at your location imminently.”

  Rouche scanned the faces as they passed through sporadic patches of light. And then he recognized one of them.

  “Obs on the fatter one,” he announced.

  “Richard Oldham,” his earpiece corrected him.

  Rouche wrapped his fingers around the handle of his weapon:

  “Moving in to intercept.”

  He paused for a split second, waiting for a gap in the human traffic, when he spotted a second familiar face coming from the opposite direction.

  “Shit! Obs on the other one now as well,” said Rouche. He glanced between the two men on an apparent collision course. “How far out’s my backup?”

  “Forty-five seconds.”

  “If I move on one of them, I lose the other,” he said, now barely having to turn his head to keep sight of them both.

  “Forty seconds.”

  It was clear that the two men had never met. They came within a couple of meters of each other without so much as a second look before shuffling through the station’s entrance.

  “I’m following them in,” he informed CFIT as he pushed through the herd walking dirty slush over the yellowed floor, struggling to keep the two men in sight as they veered left.

  “Heading down to the Bakerloo line towards Piccadilly,” Rouche updated them. He quickened his pace as he descended the escalator. “Train’s coming!”

  The people around him had heard it too. The sound of hurried footsteps surrounded him as the doors of the train slid open, releasing scores of people against the current. He shoved his way through them just as the doors were closing but was relieved to find both men still stood on the platform.

  “Targets not on train,” he mumbled as people began filling every conceivable space along the platform. “Be advised: one suspect is carrying a large rucksack.”

  He was curious as to why both men had deliberately delayed their journey. Just then he noticed a disheveled woman sitting on one of the benches, who had also made no effort to board the train.

  “Tell my backup to hold out of sight,” said Rouche, attracting a strange look from the Japanese tourist standing next to him. “Have you got a visual on a female, forties, blue jacket, black jeans, sat far end of the platform?”

  “Wait one,” replied the CFIT officer in his ear.

  As he waited, the woman picked up her plastic carrier bag and got up to stand at the edge of the platform. He glanced behind him to see that both suspects were displaying similar intentions of boarding the next train.

  “They’re about to get on a train. Tell the team to move in.”

  No sooner had Rouche said it than a swarm of armed officers had surrounded the two men and pinned them to the ground. When he looked back at the blue-jacketed woman, she was walking away toward the very end of the platform.

  The train came clattering in as one member of the team gently unzipped the heavy rucksack that their suspect had been carrying.

  Rouche was straining to see over the crowds.

  He checked his watch: 4:54 P.M.

  He needed to get back to Baxter.

  Unable to reach the rear of the train in time, he stepped up into the wall of people congregated in the nearest set of double doors, which juddered and reopened twice before eventually closing behind him. Ignoring their very British tuts and eye rolls, he pushed through the crowd to the less populated belly of the carriage.

  “What was in the bag?” he asked the CFIT officer in his ear.

  After a brief pause, she replied: “Explosives of some sort . . . It’s been made safe . . . Disposal unit’s two minutes out.”

  He momentarily switched channel on his radio:

  “Baxter, I’m on my way back to you.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Seven to go . . . and we’ve just obtained one of four,” he told her carefully, unable to say any more in the packed carriage.

  “Might be two of four in a minute,” she replied. “Apparently the MI5 guys came tearing out of here a few moments ago. Just get back here.”

  He switched his radio once more to catch the end of a transmission: “. . . a suspect.” There was a pause. “Agent Rouche, did you copy last?”

  “Negative. Repeat, please.”

  “Confirmed: the woman in the blue jacket is another suspect.”

  “Received,” replied Rouche, weaving through the wall of commuters.

  He reached the end of the carriage and peered through to the next, hoping to spot the woman, but was unable to see a thing beyond the people pressed up against the other door.

  “The next station is . . . Regent’s Park. Exit here for . . .” an automated voice announced.

  Everyone leaned in unison as the train decelerated. Dense crowds rolled past the windows as they came to an abrupt stop.

  Rouche stumbled out onto the platform and fought through the throngs of people to climb aboard the rearmost carriage.

  “Excuse me. ’Scuse me . . . Sorry,” he muttered as he squeezed between them.

  He glanced up at the Tube map as he moved through the train; just one station stood between them and Piccadilly Circus.

  He checked his watch again: 4:57 P.M.

  “Sorry . . . Excuse me.” He was halfway through the carriage when he spotted the familiar blue jacket. The scruffy woman was sat with her hands placed protectively over the carrier bag in her lap. “Obs on target.”

  “Where are you, Rouche?” Baxter whispered under her breath as she watched a constant stream of people pour onto the already flooded platform.

  The orange numbers on the display above counted up the seconds toward 5 P.M.

  “Team 3: radio check,” she barked confidently into the radio, despite her heart galloping in her chest.

  “Reading you loud and clear. Over.”

  There was a bang from somewhere within the crowd.

  “Team 3 on me!” Baxter ordered as she hurried toward the disturbance.

  A flustered businessman was holding a split bag as he attempted to collect up his Christmas shopping before any more fragile items could get stamped into the ground.

  She sighed in relief, her nerves already shot to pieces:

  “False alarm. Stand down.”

  On her way back to her post, she received an update from one of her constables: an explosive device, matching those used in Times Square, had been recovered from a homeless shelter in Clapham, the bag’s owner having been one of those arrested overnight.

  Two of four.

  Rouche was just five paces from the seated woman when his ear filled with distortion and the CFIT officer’s voice returned.

  “Agent Rouche, be advised: one additional suspect believed to have boarded your train at the last station. Backup en route.”

  “Send details,” Rouche replied, before shoving his way through to the woman in the blue jacket.

  He dragged her out of her seat and pushed her face-first onto the floor, restraining her arms behind her back. Some of the appalled passengers attempted to intervene.

  “It’s OK! It’s OK! I’m CIA,” Rouche told them, producing his identification. “And you’re under arrest,” he shouted down at the squirming woman.

  The Good Samaritans retreated back to their seats, sharing their fellow passengers’ thinking that it was probably best to move as far away as was possible in the packed space.

  Rouche had managed to handcuff one of the struggling woman’s hands by the time the train pulled into Oxford Circus. Keeping one eye on his prisoner, he scanned the crowds scrolling past for any sign of his backup. Dozens of people alighted, but they were instantly replaced with more, filling the carriage in front and behind him.

  He snapped the second handcuff closed and patted the woman down before dragging the plastic carrier bag out from beneath her. Keeping one hand pressed against her back, he reached in and removed the tarnished meat cleaver from inside. He was about to place it on the floor beside him when he realized how many children were a
mong the frightened faces watching him.

  “It’s OK. I’m with the CIA,” he repeated for the sake of the newcomers. He deliberated for a moment and then gestured to the muscular man who had just taken a seat behind him. “Can I borrow you?”

  “Me?” the man asked uncertainly. He scratched at his beard as if he were still getting accustomed to it and then got to his feet.

  Rouche placed his service weapon on the floor while he rewrapped the meat cleaver in the bag and held it out to him: “I need you to hold this for me,” Rouche told him.

  His helper looked uneasy.

  “Just hold on to it and make sure you don’t touch what’s inside.”

  The bearded man tentatively took it from him and sat down, holding the green plastic bag in his lap just as the woman had done.

  As the doors slid closed once more, Rouche spotted two armed officers running out onto the platform too late.

  The train started to pull away.

  “Agent Rouche! Agent Rouche!” the voice called in his earpiece, louder than before . . . panicking.

  “I’ve just secured the woman. I’m about to start looking for—”

  “Agent Rouche! Three more suspects just boarded your train! Repeat: three additional suspects.”

  “Copy that,” said Rouche slowly, looking up at the carriage full of faces. “I need you to get a message to DCI Baxter immediately: the train is the target, not the station.”

  He felt his phone buzzing frantically in his jacket pocket as they sent through the details.

  “The train is the target,” he repeated, reaching for his weapon.

  Unbeknown to Rouche, a clean-shaven image of the muscular man had just downloaded onto his phone.

  Unbeknown to Rouche, the man had gotten to his feet to stand over him.

  Unbeknown to Rouche, it was the tarnished meat cleaver that cut the first powerful blow through him.

  Chapter 39

  Tuesday, 22 December 2015

  5 P.M.

  “Get these people out!” Baxter yelled over the prerecorded emergency announcement.

  She had reacted immediately to Rouche’s relayed message; however, the sheer numbers bottlenecking up the stairway had brought the evacuation to a complete standstill as the orange display continued counting above their heads: 17:00:34.