by Tom Marcus
‘Hammy? Yeah,’ Emily replies with an ashamed look on her face.
Hamza, Stone Fist. ‘When’s your due date?’ Alex says, smiling, trying to keep her onside.
‘Not sure exactly, I’m only ten weeks.’ Tears start to well up in her eyes. I need to play along with Alex’s sensitive side here; I walk the short distance from the living room to the kitchen and get a glass of water for Emily before sitting back down on the sofa.
‘Thank you,’ she mumbles.
‘It’s no problem at all. Emily, we need to find Hamza as soon as possible. I know you’ve gone through this with our colleagues but if there’s anything at all that you can remember, an address, a favourite place he would go, friends he stays with sometimes, anything. Specifically in the London area.’
I’m leaning forward to show how keen I am to get an answer and to try and break down the barrier that some Special Branch officers might put up. She’s about to be a single mother, living in a rented house. There are a lot of people living in these situations that don’t like or want the hassle of talking to the police.
Her mouth opens like she’s about to say something, something she hasn’t shared with anyone yet, but she instantly retreats. Alex notices it too. ‘It’s OK, you’re safe.’
‘You don’t know him. Hammy and his brother are connected to a lot of people. Gangs, if I say anything he can get to me, even if he’s in prison.’
‘It’s OK, you’ll be protected. I promise you.’ A lie Alex knows she can’t back up, we can’t offer her any protection.
‘The only way Hammy is going to cause me trouble is if I ask him for money to help with the baby or if I talk to the police. And I ain’t doing either. I don’t know anything about what he’s doing now. It was a one-night stand and I’ve been paying for it ever since. I didn’t even know at the time that he was just out of prison.’
I feel sorry for her, I do. It was probably a very drunk night, two people having fun. It happens all over the world, every single day. We’ve all done it, but when your one-night stand turns out to be a terrorist hell bent on a massacre, and the father to your unborn child, that’s got to be a complete nightmare. As much as I feel bad for her, we need to push a bit harder. I was following Alex’s lead on this but I could get the call from the DG at any minute saying our time’s up. Push too hard and Emily could shut down completely, take too long and we could pay the ultimate price.
‘Emily, if you help us we can assure you he will be put in a category A maximum security prison. He won’t be able to hurt you.’ Shaking her head with a dismissive smile, Emily clearly thinks Stone Fist is connected enough to make her life hell even from there. She’s thinking about the baby. She needs convincing.
There is no way in hell I’m about to hurt this woman to get her to cooperate. I don’t have it in me, and I know the thought isn’t crossing Alex’s mind either. I can picture in my head without turning the news on what’s happening with the hostage situation. Philip Day will still be strapped to a chair and the news crews will be constantly filming the police outside, specialist vehicles turning up and leaving, commenting on every single movement.
She’s not going to help us. Alex looks at me, thinking something over, then turns back to Emily. ‘What if we could guarantee your safety, one hundred per cent?’
‘How? You know how many people he knows, drug dealers, people who own guns. All over the place. Not even you police can touch him.’
‘I know that. I know nearly everything about him, apart from one thing; if there’s another address in the London area he mentioned at all. Think back to that night you met him, was he bragging about his life at any point? Anyone in his family? Friends? If there’s anywhere he mentioned that you haven’t mentioned so far, think!’
I can see Emily’s eyes searching for something, trying to think of a piece of information she hasn’t shared with anyone yet. Finally she gives us a thread to pull on. ‘Before we came back to mine, he was saying he’ll take me to a boat his friend has in London. One of those canal long-type boats.’
Alex leans in. ‘Where?’
‘I’ve got to look after my baby, I’ve said too much. He’ll find out. You can’t protect me.’
Alex turns to me, holding her hands up in a ‘what now?’ gesture.
She’s given it her best shot with the ‘good cop’ routine. I guess now it’s the bad cop’s turn. I move forward with a determined look on my face and Alex puts a hand out to stop me. She thinks I’m going to use force. ‘It’s OK,’ I say, reassuring Alex. It’s true; I’m about to do something desperate, and I have done some horrific things lately, but I’m not going to lay a finger on a pregnant woman.
‘Emily, listen. The people you spoke to before were Special Branch. We’re not Special Branch. We’re not any kind of police.’
She looks scared, like a kitten backed into a corner by a pitbull, frantically looking for a way out. ‘Then who are you? What . . .’
I smile in the hope it calms her. ‘We’re the ones who stop really bad people. The worst types.’
She looks confused. ‘I don’t know . . . what are you saying?’
I take a step closer. ‘What I’m saying, Emily, is that people like us, our job isn’t to arrest the likes of Hamza and his brother. It isn’t to send them to prison. Our job is to find them. And kill them. And if you tell us where we can find them, that’s what we’re going to do. I promise you.’ There is genuine fear in Emily’s eyes. I can’t work out if she’s frightened of us or the brothers.
Alex steps in to try and ease her anxiety. ‘Think of us like pest control.’ Emily’s gaze flicks over to Alex and the vaguest of smiles creeps out.
I seize the opportunity to push a bit harder. ‘Tell us where they are and you’ll be safe. You can have your baby in peace. If we can find Hamza and his brother, you won’t see them, the police or us ever again. You can be free of all this.’
She looks at me, trembling, and I feel her eyes boring into my soul. She’s trying to see if I’m telling the truth. I look back at her, and I know she can see I mean every word.
A subtle nod; she is choosing her unborn baby’s life and giving us Hamza’s death. Ultimately, it’s an easy choice to make for any mother.
‘He kept saying it was black, shiny like a piano.’
Now she has opened up, Alex is leading again. ‘Where is this boat? We need a location.’
‘Millwall Dock, near the O2 Arena. He said we could stay in the boat after going to a concert there.’
It’s our only lead, but we have to run with it. I get out my phone and walk into the kitchen to ring Alan as Alex continues to reassure Emily it will all be OK. It’s a risk talking to Alan on the phone. I’m fairly sure Leyton-Hughes trusts Alan, but he doesn’t trust me, and I have to assume he’s listening to all my calls. I use some veiled speech in the hope Alan knows what I’m getting at.
‘Hello.’
‘Hi, Alan, mate, that boat I was telling you about, the one to rent out. It’s available now if you want? Gorgeous, long canal boat, black and right near the O2 Arena at Millwall Dock.’
A brief pause, no more than a second, before Alan continues the act. ‘Great, thanks Logan! I’ll check some dates and see if I can get two days off. I’ll ring you back in a bit and you can pass me onto the owner?’
‘Definitely, only thing is it sometimes takes a while to get hold of him because he’s always stoned.’ I give a little chuckle. ‘It’s hit and miss whether he’s there or not, but I’ll see you later, bud, for those drinks.’
Hanging up and walking back to the living room, I know Alan has understood all the references, even the fact I’ve told him it’s Stone Fist that’s the link in the text messages. Alex stands up. ‘We should go, Emily. Thank you for everything and I’m so sorry to put you through this stress.’
Standing up and wiping the tears from her eyes, Emily follows us to the front door. ‘If you’re not normal police, then . . .?’
I open the door for Alex a
nd let her out first. ‘Thanks again, Emily, good luck with everything.’ No need to answer anything we don’t want to. It was a dubious call whether to tell Emily we are going to kill Stone Fist. We killed Khalid to make sure we stayed completely invisible, but killing the brothers would be something different. Emily had made one small mistake but has the chance to create something brilliant out of it all, and if we manage to get to Stone Fist and his older brother and kill them, then Emily will be free to raise her child in safety without looking over her shoulder.
Back on the road, we’re starting to hit rush hour, but we need to get across London to the docks. As Alex accelerates hard, we talk about this being the most difficult part of it all. Locations. Terrorists are never next door, you always have to go to them. This had been even more taxing in Blindeye, because there’s so few of us. There’s another reason why we’ve been darting about all over the place; because Jeremy is running operations on his own, with his own agenda. If the DG or his counterparts in MI6 and GCHQ were directing us, maybe we’d have been on longer-term jobs. Hopefully we’ll get the opportunity to find out.
Alex’s skilful driving means me make great ground. As we pass signs for Camden Town and make towards Bethnal Green, my phone starts vibrating with a call. I answer, immediately putting it on loud speaker so Alex can listen in. ‘Hello?’
‘Logan, it’s me. Have you found anything yet?’ The director general, Alex recognizes his voice too. ‘Potentially. Stone Fist got a woman pregnant after a one-night stand. She’s not connected to this but when they first met he told her about a boat his friend has in Millwall Dock, near the O2. Alex and I are lightning towards that now.’ Lightning, the term used to describe travelling to a location as fast as possible.
‘OK, any technical to back that up?’
‘Alan, our tech guy, is working on that now. He can’t be sure yet, but the Wi-Fi data usage out of the Middleton Road address shows that before any data is being uploaded, it’s being downloaded first.’
Truth be told, MI5 and GCHQ would be able to do this much quicker, but on such a fast-moving operation, and with everything indicating the Foreign Secretary is at Middleton Road with the brothers, then it’s likely the data patterns wouldn’t be checked. When the stakes are so high, the officers in charge are sometimes a bit reluctant to divert assets to triple-check everything.
‘Logan, you have two hours. That’s all the time I could buy you. If you don’t have anything by then, they are going to breach the house regardless.’
Fucking hell, that gives us virtually no time at all to locate the boat once we get there, never mind hatch a plan to rescue the Foreign Secretary Philip Day. ‘Understood.’
The line goes dead.
Alex and I exchange glances as she keeps navigating the traffic at high speed. We need to get down there and sort this situation out, then we need to prepare for a fight of our own.
My phone rings again as we take the junction for Millwall Dock. ‘Hello?’
‘Channel sixty-seven.’ Call ended.
‘It’s Alan, want’s us on channel sixty-seven.’
Alex keeps her eyes on the road as she replies. ‘Sixty-seven is one of the peer-to-peer channels; only two radios can be on that channel at the same time. That’s why he’s asked you to use it – no chance of Leyton-Hughes listening in.’
Flicking the channel selector round, to sixty-seven, I transmit to Alan. ‘Go, we’re on.’
‘OK, I haven’t found the exact source of the transmission yet; it’s being bounced around everywhere and because GCHQ and MI5 are removing the feeds constantly it makes my job harder. But, through various extremely illegal techniques I won’t bore you with, I’ve narrowed it down to being highly likely at one of the internet exchange points on the Isle of Dogs, also home to Millwall Dock.’
‘Brilliant, mate, thank you. The DG called us, he bought us some more time, but not much. Just under two hours now.’
‘They’re breaching in daylight? Fucking hell, there’s a PR statement for you. Right, I’ll keep digging, Jeremy is going to want to call a briefing at some point so I’ll cover for you both. If he rings either of you I’m going to tell him you’ve had a break-in at your aunt’s house in Shoreditch, Alex. Logan is helping clear up the mess because you’re very shaken. Speak later. Good luck guys.’
‘Fucking hell, Alex, we need to get these two.’ Alex’s driving ability was second to none. Being a biker definitely helps her assess gaps and other drivers quickly, to avoid getting boxed in by traffic. ‘Mate, ordinarily I’d say split up and cover more ground. But if we find them and have to act I’ll need you.’ There’s no telling what the brothers will do if we find them. The plan will be to locate the boat, see if they are on it and try and get some armed police into the area quickly. But we need to identify them first. No one will react without us getting eyes on them, not when so much is at stake, both strategically and politically.
‘Check the glovebox,’ Alex says mysteriously. ‘Should be a couple of lock knives in there.’
‘Nice.’ Two spring-loaded lock knives, five inches in length. ‘These will do.’ We arrive at the docks and park the car up in a resident’s reserved spot; we get out and take in our surroundings. The place is huge, but there can’t be many black canal boats here.
As we walk alongside the water we still can’t be sure the brothers are acting alone; they could have counter-surveillance dotted around here. We still need to live our cover. I hold my arm out and Alex links hers around it. We walk along, arm in arm, looking very much the loving couple out for a morning stroll on a slightly cloudy London morning.
The smiles on our faces might look real, and it’s true I’ve had worse covers than linking arms with a beautiful woman, but we’re focused. We don’t have long; we have to rule this out one way or the other. There’s a massed rank of boats, but none of them is ours.
‘We’ll have to try on the next side.’ Picking up the pace without looking in too much of a hurry, we walk round to the other side of the marina. Boats of all shapes and sizes sit on the still water. ‘Logan, dark shape over there, before the yacht. See it?’
‘Yeah, I see it.’ We move closer, still roughly seventy-five metres from it, the dark craft still obscured by higher boats at this range, as my phone rings again.
‘Hello.’
‘Logan, anything?’ It’s the DG.
I move the phone around to my other ear and angle it towards Alex’s head so she can listen in, our heads locked together as we continue to walk towards this dark boat.
‘Alan has said the source of the video feed of Philip Day is almost certainly coming from this area, where the boat is. We have a possible for the boat now and are checking.’
‘Logan, I’ve just finished the COBRA meeting. The PM wants this wrapped up and has authorized a breach by the SF team. They’re ready to go. You have thirty minutes. Nothing else I can do. I’ll text you my number. If you find them, ring me!’
Thirty minutes. There isn’t time to keep living our cover. We break our arm link and start running towards this dark boat. Getting closer, I can see it’s definitely much lower than the others and looks heavily strapped to the mooring, ready for some sort of repairs or refurbishment.
‘It’s the only black canal boat here, mate.’ Alex is right, there’s nothing else even remotely similar. Slowing to a walk, we study the boat. All the windows are covered up; normal enough for a restoration, especially if tools and equipment are being left unattended at any point. Moorings around here will cost a fortune, so covering up any work inside makes sense too, keeps the area looking smart. Clearly Stone Fist has friends in affluent places, maybe another drug dealer? For now, I don’t care who pays to keep this boat here, all I care about is getting Iron Sword and Stone Fist.
‘Looks dead, right?’ Alex agrees, but we need to know for sure. I put my hand into my coat pocket and grip the knife as I step down onto the mooring, thumb ready to press the button and shoot the blade forward out of its casing
. Alex stays slightly back, out of view to anyone opening the small boat doors. Stepping on, I give a friendly ‘Hello’ and notice how steady the boat is; rock solid, no movement at all.
Nothing, no response. I give the door a knock and try another greeting, ‘Hello, anyone home?’ I try the handle: locked. Listen. I can hear the clanking of the surrounding boats as the rock on their moorings, but nothing from inside. Fuck, this isn’t it. Twenty-five minutes, we need to find this black boat. It must be on the far side, the one place we haven’t checked yet.
As I turn towards the edge of the boat to step back onto the mooring, we both hear a thud and a mumbled shout, like someone yelling through a gag. I look over at Alex, she knows this is it. We’ve found the Foreign Secretary.
21
I resist the urge to kick in the door; I have to contact the director general. Trying not to react to the gagged whimpers or screams we’ve just heard, we start to walk off. If we pile in now, we could die without telling the DG there’s a strong possibility we’ve found Foreign Secretary Philip Day. The brothers win, and those about to breach the house fall into a huge trap.
Alex and I have got to be quick now. I open the blank text message the DG has just sent me and ring the number as I step back onto the walkway alongside the boats. It only takes one ring for the DG to answer.
‘Yes, what do you have?’
With my back to the boat, I whisper just loud enough for him to hear me. ‘Found the boat, blacked out. Locked. Definite sounds of a struggle inside, though. We need backup.’
‘Logan, get in there now. According to the audio, they’ve just started to beat him, which matches what you’ve just heard. They are going to kill him any minute now. Leave this call open – put your phone in your pocket or something. I need to listen in as I sort this side out. I can’t call off Special Forces until you know for sure. The PM isn’t about to stand by and let Day be murdered on British soil.’