by Colin Forbes
'It's a thought,' Tweed agreed. 'The trouble is we have another witness with damning evidence. Billy Hogarth.' He turned to Hogarth. 'Would you describe to us what you saw on the night Paula Grey was attacked and imprisoned?'
'I saw it clearly.'
Billy was a less confident speaker than Margesson. He hesitated. Tweed made no effort to prod him to continue.
'A friend who visited Israel gave me a pair of night glasses,' Billy went on. 'Being on my own I often used them to scan the village. I was doing so on the night you are talking about. I didn't know what to do, so I did nothing.'
'After you have witnessed what?' Tweed prompted.
'I saw Miss Grey call at Drew Franklin's house after dark. Drew came to the door. I had the impression their conversation was short.'
'Gerald,' Tweed said suddenly. 'Enjoy the Bahamas?'
'Beautiful. . .' Warner stopped suddenly, his expression panicky.
'Meet Gerald Hanover, financier and master planner for al-Qa'eda. Please go on,' Tweed urged Billy Hogarth.
'She was leaving Drew's house,' Billy explained. 'I think she had decided to return to her car parked in Mrs Gobble's shed.'
Billy paused, as though recalling something which had scared him. Taking a deep breath he continued.
'As she started to walk off, the front door of this house opened. A huge man wearing a black turban appeared, crept up behind her, hit her on the back of her head. He carried her unconscious body back inside this house.'
'He's potty,' Warner burst out. 'Pecksniff chose some strange people to occupy rented houses. And you've lost your mind, Tweed. Gerald Hanover indeed. Who the hell is he?'
'You are. Master planner and financier of al-Qa'eda. We have witnesses in the Bahamas who identified you from photos airmailed there,' he fibbed. 'Better still, we have the evidence of Billy Hogarth about Paula's kidnapping. Billy, you are sure it was this house Paula was carried into?'
'Quite sure,' Billy replied emphatically. 'Garda is set apart from Drew's house. So the brute walked a short distance to get here, carrying Miss Grey's limp body to this house. Saw it clearly.'
'He's simple-minded,' Warner raved. 'A fairy-tale.'
'There is one way to prove it,' Buchanan said in a stern voice. 'You may have heard two cars pull up outside. Police cars with trained searchers and forensic experts. Miss Grey gave us a detailed description of the cellar where she was held before, showing great courage, she escaped. We will soon find that cellar if it is under our feet.'
'No, you won't!' Warner had jumped up behind his desk. 'You cannot search this property which is owned by a Minister of the Crown.'
'But we can,' Buchanan informed him. 'I have warrants in my pocket to search every property in this village. Including this one.'
He walked forward, dropped a long folded document on Warner's desk. Then he retreated to his original position at the back of the room. Warner opened the document, read it very swiftly. He looked up with a self-important smile.
'This is signed by a judge everyone knows is senile.'
'It is still a valid search warrant.'
'What the devil do you expect to find?' snapped Warner.
'Possibly the horrible cellar where Miss Grey was held. We are also interested in discovering the bodies of five people who have disappeared. Including that of your wife.'
'Then I have something here which will make you change your mind.'
He unlocked a drawer, ferreted among a collection of files. He then stood up. In his right hand he held a .455 Colt automatic. He aimed it at Paula's chest. Newman withdrew his hand, empty, from inside his jacket where his Smith & Wesson was holstered.
'You will all leave this house immediately,' Warner ordered. 'All except Miss Paula Grey.'
'No, we won't,' an icy voice spoke.
Eva Brand was walking forward towards the desk, a Beretta automatic gripped in her right hand, steady as a rock, Paula observed. Eva paused within ten feet of the Minister.
The tone of her voice, her expression, were almost frightening.
'Attempt to shoot Paula,' she continued, 'and I'll put a bullet into that evil head of yours.'
54
A stand-off., Newman thought. Two guns, each aimed point-blank at a different target. Dangerous. Eva's 6.35mm Beretta. It was a light weapon, but fired at close range it would crush Warner's skull, kill him.
'Eva,' Warner said with the hint of a tremble. 'Why?'
As he spoke he was careful to keep his Colt aimed at Paula, a clever move to freeze everyone else in the room. With her left hand Eva reached inside her jacket, took out a newspaper cutting, dropped it on his desk. Tweed recognized it as the strange, much delayed obituary notice Newman had extracted from the Daily Nation.
'What is this?' Warner asked, his voice weaker.
He made no attempt to look down. He was too concerned with keeping Paula under his gun.
'An obituary of a man who died two years ago in Yemen,' Eva told him. 'Captain Charles Hobart. Remember him? Don't say you don't. I'll pull the trigger.'
'Vaguely.' He hastened to amplify. 'It's coming back to me. A ... casualty. A ... Special Forces . . . officer.'
'Yemen,' Eva repeated in the same disturbing monotone. 'A mission to kill an al-Qa'eda unit in the desert. One man volunteered to wipe it out. He could have done. Except he was betrayed. You were there when it happened. You'd just been appointed Minister of Security. You out-ranked the unit's commander. You secretly sent a message warning al-Qa'eda he was coming. Alone. So they killed him. An ambush. Killed my father . . .'
'Hobart. . . you are . . . Eva Brand.'
'No, I am Eva Hobart. Before leaving Medfords to get a job close to you I changed my name by deed poll. The Director of Medfords, a friend, agreed to keep quiet. I know you were the mastermind controlling the attack on London. I can prove it.'
'Im . . . poss . . . ible.'
Again Eva used her left hand to reach inside her jacket. She produced a folded sheet of paper, dropped it on his desk. Once more Warner dare not look down. Had to keep his eye on Paula, his Colt still aimed at her chest.
'That,' Eva told him, 'is the first coded message which I told you I had never received. So another was sent to you. It's in Arabic, but not from the Embassy - instead from an address in Cairo. I decoded it, then told you it had never arrived. Want to know what it says? Top Secret.'
'You had no right. . .'
'Shut your treacherous trap. It reads, "Happy to hear attack on London is imminent. That it will be greater than September 11."'
'There must ... be a ... mistake.'
'No mistake. It was addressed to you. "For your eyes only."'
'You decoded it... wrongly.'
'Victor, I was very fond of my father. He meant everything to me. When I flew with Drew to Cairo I talked to Sergeant Langford, retired now, but a key NCO with the unit in Yemen. He overheard you talking in Arabic in a tent on a phone - Langford is fluent in Arabic. He heard you say that one man only, a Captain Hobart, was coming to eliminate them the next day. Langford decided he couldn't report it because who would believe him? He's now flying to London to report to Drew, under oath, what he heard. Drew will publish. You are going down.'
'You bitch
'Superintendent Buchanan, could you come alongside me? But don't attempt to grab my pistol. I can fire instantly.' She used her left hand to extract something from a pocket. 'Mr Tweed, I would sooner you came to me.'
Tweed approached slowly, stood beside her while Warner kept his Colt aimed at Paula. She asked Tweed to hold out his hand, dropped a small key into it. Tweed went back to where he had been standing.
'Victor Warner is a master planner,' Eva went on. 'I will give him that. He also was the planner behind September 11. That key opens a secret drawer in the side of his desk. I managed to open it while Warner was in Cabinet. Medford training. In that drawer you will find a mass of material -a big airline timetable, American, listing all major flights. All those long distance, carrying a
huge petrol load, are marked in blue. In red are marked the flights used from Boston and Newark on September 11. Al-Qa'eda trained the killers. Warner planned the routes . . .'
'I should kill you,' screamed Warner.
'You want a bullet in the head now?'
Warner, still aiming the Colt at Paula, began backing away from his desk. He soon reached the panelled wall. He used his left elbow to press against it. A section slid back like a secret door. Beyond was a tunnel. As he dived into it, Eva fired. The bullet hit the panelling.
'Missed,' Newman said to himself.
Eva, like a panther stalking its prey, slipped over to the door, disappeared into the tunnel. Paula ran forward, was thrust aside by Tweed, then by Newman. The tunnel, wide and tall, the floor stone-paved, sloped down. Warner was running when Eva fired again.
'Missed,' Newman repeated to himself.
At the end of the tunnel was an opening, daylight. Pressing the hidden button on the panelling in the study opened doors at both ends. Warner's tall figure was leaping down the tunnel, Eva not far behind. She fired again. 'Missed,' Newman repeated.
It was Paula who caught on to what was happening. She caught up with Newman, spoke in a quiet voice.
'She's missing deliberately, driving him into something.'
Warner reached the opening, was diving through it, when Eva fired again. The bullet hit the top of the opening. Newman grunted. The fourth shot. Three more bullets left in her Beretta. Both Tweed and Newman had guns in their hands but dare not use them for fear of hitting Eva. Suddenly they emerged into the open. It was misty at this level. Eva fired her fifth shot. It landed close enough to chip the edge of Warner's right shoe.
He panicked, tearing down the slope into the mist, followed by the others. Eva stopped, fired carefully. The bullet chipped the edge of Warner's other shoe. The mist thinned so they saw what happened.
Warner suddenly realized he had reached the brink of the lime pit. Too late. He lost his balance. He screamed as he plunged into the pit. His pursuers stood stock still, frozen by the sight. Warner managed to heave the upper part of his body upwards, smeared with lime. He waved his arms desperately, screamed again. His body was sucked down into the pit. With only his head above the whiteness, he opened his mouth to scream again. He swallowed lime. The scream came out as 'Goo . . . ch!' Then the head went under and where he had gone down the surface of the lime swirled for a few seconds, then settled.
Epilogue
It was three weeks later.
Tweed was holding a meeting in his office. Present were Paula, Beaurain and Newman. February was going out in a blaze of sunlight, a clear blue sky. In front of him Tweed had a sheaf of several reports. Airsight had provided several photos of Carpford. Paula's comment on their belated arrival was caustic.
'These reports are from Professor Saafeld, the pathologist,' Tweed began. 'As you know, Buchanan dropped the idea of searching for the missing bodies under the quarry, accepted my suggestion that it was the lime pit which should be cleared. This he achieved quickly, with the help of experts and specialist equipment. It can't have been pleasant.'
'Did he find everyone?' Paula asked quietly.
'He did. Six corpses. Some of them, to quote Saafeld, "little more than skeletons". But the brilliant Saafeld, with help from Paula, has identified them all. The first one, not surprisingly, was Victor Warner's - in good condition. He even had that pince-nez jammed on to his nose.'
'A bit late, I've realized that photo of someone in Arab dress taken at the Finsbury Park mosque is Victor Warner,' Paula remarked. 'Any trace of Linda Warner?' she enquired anxiously.
'Yes. Almost decomposed. He identified her by the two rings on the finger of her left hand - by the descriptions I gave him. Jasper Buller was in a bad state but amazingly enough his leather wallet, crammed with identification, was preserved.'
'And Mrs Gobble?' Paula asked. 'That dear old lady?'
'She was the second victim, so I was out of sequence. What remained of her corpse was identified by a string of blue beads she wore. Still attached to what, I fear, was little more than a skeleton. Again Paula helped Saafeld, since she'd described the blue beads she'd seen on Mrs Gobble when she visited her shop. Then there was Pecksniff, the crooked lawyer. Paula's description of him helped, plus the fact that his large watch-chain was still hanging loose from what was left of him. The last corpse to be hurled in was Martin Hogarth's after he committed suicide. Easily identified.'
'What a gruesome business,' Paula commented.
'Well,' said Tweed, reviewing the case, 'I did suspect Victor Warner early on. I knew his wife, Linda, and she was both intelligent and patriotic, and had her wits about her. I tried to think of who she would stop for in her car on that isolated road. For no one, knowing her. Then it struck me the only person she would have stopped for was her husband, parked in a car coming the other way, blocking the road. But that was only a theory - not evidence. Then Victor Warner began throwing road blocks in my way on several occasions.'
'Jules,' said Paula. 'Decoy.'
'I must admit,' agreed Beaurain, 'that the Minister seemed to hinder rather than help Tweed's investigation.'
'Victor Warner was a fanatic,' Tweed said grimly. 'Converted to Muslim Fundamentalism, he was ruthless, without pity. He murdered continually to close any loopholes which might give away his plan. I can only guess, but I'm sure that was why he murdered his wife. Linda discovered what he was up to and was going to expose him. His solution? Kill her. And the method of disposing of the bodies was diabolical.'
'The trolley on a rail line inside the tunnel I escaped on,' said Paula.
'Exactly. The victims were first shot by a bullet in the back of the head. Saafeld discovered the fracture it made on several corpses. He even found a bullet lodged inside Jasper Buller's brain. The body was then placed on the trolley, accompanied by one of his thugs who used the brake. Once it reached the end of the tunnel it was not far to carry the corpse and hurl it into the lime pit.'
'Which is what would have happened to me had I not escaped,' Paula said quietly. 'And strange how it was Eva Brand who detonated the climax. She had her justified revenge. So ironic that Warner perished in the same way as his victims.' She checked her watch. 'If you'll excuse me, I'm having lunch with Eva, so I'd better go . . .'
'The government was crazy to try and hush this up,' Newman remarked. 'A spin operation which left them dizzy. What crushed them was the discovery of the bodies in the lime pit.'
'Plus,' Tweed added, 'the fact that Palfry committed suicide while being held, pending trial, in Belmarsh Prison. He must have been easy for Warner to manipulate. Then there was the secret drawer in Warner's desk Eva gave me the key to. I spent a whole night going through the material at my flat.'
'What did you find?' asked Beaurain.
'The plan to destroy the six bridges over the Thames. Different suggestions as to the base to be used, ending up with choosing Dick's wharf. But there was more. Complete detailed plans for how to carry out the September 11 atrocity in New York. Warner planned that. Significant that he flew to New York, then to Boston, just before and after the frightful attack on the World Trade Center. After photocopying everything myself, I sent all the originals to the States, to Cord Dillon, recently appointed from Deputy Director to Director of the CIA.' He paused. 'In addition the details of a second new attack planned on certain targets in the States. Also sent to Dillon.'
'With the PM's permission, I imagine?'
'Exactly. Now the rumours are growing that the government is about to fall. Strictly between us, the PM said he'd be glad to go.'
'I did hear,' Newman said tentatively, 'that Eva Brand might be joining us.'
'I'm seriously considering it. She has the experience, the brains, the character.'
'Won't that possibly put Paula in a hostile mood? With your having Eva also by your side?'
'If I decide to take her on she'll spend time down the Crescent in Communications.'
'But
,' Newman persisted, 'she'll be coming round here a lot.'
'So I'm considering it,' Tweed replied.
'Don't fool me.' Newman chuckled. 'You've already made up your damned mind.'