by Tom Field
“Stop, please, I’m begging you.”
“I haven’t even started yet,” McDermott said calmly.
“I don’t know his name,” Walker said in a quiet tone, “But I have his cell number.”
McDermott looked at Ward and Ward made a rotating motion with his hands that indicated to McDermott to get the number.
“Tell me the number,” McDermott demanded.
“I don’t know it in my head but I can get it.”
“Where is it?”
“Back at the office,” Walker replied.
“You know what, I don’t have time for this, I’m going to take the hood off and look you in the eyes and then I am going to kill you,” McDermott said.
“Wait!” Walker shouted, “I don’t want to see you. I’ve just remembered it’s in my wallet in my back pocket,” he quickly added.
McDermott nodded to Paul and Fuller and they stood up, walked over to Walker, took an arm each, and leant him forward, lifting the chair off the ground as they did so. McDermott walked around the back of the chair and leant behind Walkers back and pulled his wallet out of his pocket. He threw the wallet to Ward, who caught it and started thumbing through it, while Walker was returned to the position he had been in ten seconds ago, waiting for the next blow to come.
“Next question,” McDermott said, “Do you know where the next bomb is going to go off?”
“No I don’t, I swear, I don’t,” Walker said urgently.
McDermott looked at Ward, and Ward raised three fingers instructing McDermott to ask the third and last question.
“One more question to go. You seem to be doing OK so far so don’t mess it up now,” he said.
Walker stayed completely quiet but continued moving his head from side to side and shrinking it into his neck, hoping to be prepared for the next blow that would come his way.
“The two guys who have been questioning you, the two idiots you sent to Hubert Street,” McDermott said, and looked at Ward, who promptly mouthed the word ‘Idiots?’ to him, “Where can I find them?” he asked.
The question, as anticipated, clearly threw Walker, a fact confirmed by the way his whimpering stopped, and McDermott could sense the frown under the hood.
Ward threw Walker’s wallet back to McDermott who caught it in one hand.
“I don’t understand,” Walker replied.
“It’s a really simple question. I want them both dead and the fact you only had one of them killed means I have to take out the other guy,” McDermott said aggressively.
“I don’t understand,” Walker said, “One of them is dead? I just passed over the address,” he added.
“I want you to arrange a meeting with whichever one is left,” McDermott said, “And in your wallet is now a piece of paper with a number on it, you will ring and tell me when and where, and the rest is up to me. Then I will disappear and as far as you are concerned, I never existed.” McDermott added, as he bent forward and put the wallet into Walkers shirt pocket, “Is that clear?” he asked.
“Yes. I promise,” Walker replied excitedly.
McDermott looked at Ward.
Ward made a cutting motion to the front of his neck to indicate that the interrogation had ended. McDermott frowned his surprise and said,
“You’ve been a lot of help. Now we will take you back to your office and you will forget this ever happened. Is that clear?”
“Yes please. I swear I won’t say a word. I swear on my children’s lives,” Walker replied.
McDermott nodded to Paul and Fuller and they immediately stepped forward and cut the cable ties around Walkers ankles and wrists, and then walked him towards the car, opened the back door and bundled him in. Fuller climbed in after Walker and Paul climbed into the driver’s seat. He started the engine and using an identical remote control to his father, raised the high-speed roller shutter doors and drove out.
McDermott looked at Ward.
“Why didn’t you push to get the names of who was behind it?” he asked, “He was broken, he would have told us anything.”
“He would have told us only what he knows, and that is only three things that I already know anyway,” Ward replied, “Plus, I don’t want him to think we suspect too much. I want him to think we are chasing shadows.”
“So, we can catch them unaware when they think we are somewhere else?” McDermott asked.
“No,” Ward replied, “So when the people who are behind it torture him, he will not be able to tell them one single thing about what we know.”
“Always one step ahead,” McDermott said, “So, the number you have, you going to call it?”
“Better than that, I will get Nicole-Louise and Tackler to tell me every word sent or received to this cell,” he replied, “Can you take me to their place now, we have a long day ahead.”
Thirty minutes later, Paul and Fuller pulled up outside the USBC News headquarters.
“I’m going to take your hood off. You do not turn around and look at us. Then you open the car door, step out and go back to work without looking back. If you look back once I will kill you,” Fuller said to Walker.
“I promise I won’t,” he replied.
And true to his word, as Paul stopped at the kerbside, Walker opened the door and stepped out without looking back. He heard the car pull away and started the climb up the steps into the sanctuary of his workplace. He walked through the doors and into the reception area, and for a few seconds he felt relief and happiness wash all over him. Until his personal protection detail walked towards him in a very intimidating manner and said,
“Get upstairs now you little weasel, we have got a lot to talk about.”
TWENTY EIGHT
Ward and McDermott walked into Nicole-Louise’s and Tacklers, and saw Lawson sitting next to Nicole-Louise and greeted them both with a smile,
“McDermott,” she said and nodded.
“Nicole-Louise,” McDermott replied.
“Where are you with your search?” Ward asked Lawson.
“I have to say, she is unbelievable,” Lawson replied, “She has found things that were right in front of me, but I couldn’t even see them. Amazing,” he added and smiled at her.
It was a reply that had Tackler looking towards Lawson and making a grunting noise in complete contempt of him in the process.
Nicole-Louise rolled her eyes,
“Or it could just be that the female race is far superior?” she said.
“It could be,” Lawson replied, “But we are cuter.”
She glared at him and Ward took this as his cue to speak.
“So tell me where you have got with Walker?”
“We’ve made progress,” she replied, “But we still have stuff to search for.”
“He’s an interesting one, that’s for sure,” Tackler interrupted.
“Explain what you mean?” Ward asked.
“Well when you said you were leaving it to us to find what MI6 didn’t want to, or weren’t capable enough of finding,” he said as he gave Lawson another contemptuous look, “I started to think that if he was involved then the money would never have been found so easily.”
Ward looked at him and smiled.
Forget the damage to his ego where he felt threatened by the stunningly handsome and masculine Mike Lawson, when it came to digging and seeing what no one else could see, the two of them were quite simply, in a league of their own.
“So then what did you do?”
“I looked at his family and their past expenditure.”
“And you found?”
“I found nothing at all. Well nothing out of the ordinary. He makes around three hundred thousand dollars a year; he has two boys, both in private school, and lives in a house worth about a million bucks, so everything is how it should be.”
“But you found something else?”
“Yes I did,” he replied, “But I am waiting for confirmation,” he said looking at his watch.
Ward instinctively looked at his wat
ch too. It was nearly midday.
“How long do you have to wait?”
“By 4pm I will know,” Tackler replied, “But I will keep looking until then. Also, something doesn’t add up about the money trail. I can see how it got into his account and where it came from, but as of yet, I don’t know where it originated from.”
“Tackler will piece it together Ryan, he’s the smartest man in the room,” Nicole-Louise said, clearly aware that the jealousy he was feeling was now uncomfortable for him rather than amusing to her.
Ward looked at Lawson,
“How did you get on with Beglin?” he asked.
“I’m meeting her at two in Central Park. We thought we would take one of those horse drawn carriage rides,” he replied.
“Great,” interrupted Tackler, “More Tourists!”
“You know exactly what we need to know from her?” Ward asked him.
Lawson nodded confirmation.
“Can I ask something?” Tackler said, looking at Ward.
“Shoot?”
“The footage of the bombs in London and Paris I gave you?”
“What about it?”
“Am I missing something because I can’t see whatever or whoever it is that you see, and I have now looked at it at least twenty times, so has he,” Tackler said pointing to Lawson. The whole room went quiet.
Lawson, McDermott, Nicole-Louise and Tackler all knew that Ward had complete conviction that the answer to preventing the bomb from ever going off was evident from the first time he saw the news footage from Paris. The London bombing only served to confirm beyond doubt in his mind that he was right.
“What do you mean?” Ward replied.
Tackler looked awkward.
“Well, you know,” he said.
“What if I’m wrong?” Ward asked, “What if I’m having you all run around in circles chasing shadows, and while we are doing that hundreds of innocent people are going to get killed?”
“Well kinda,” Tackler replied.
Ward looked around the room. All four of them were waiting for an answer.
He thought how they were all as much a part of this as he was, and how Gilligan had lost his life in fighting to prevent the bomb from going off. They had all supported him and done whatever he had asked without question. Maybe it was time to explain.
“Well?” Lawson asked.
The four of them seemed to be holding their breath, waiting for the revelation that would make everything fall into a nice, neat sequence of events.
“I’m not wrong,” he said, “Now, we have something more pressing.”
They all looked at each other more in annoyance than disbelief.
“Gilligan is dead. The first thing we have to do is avenge him,” Ward said suddenly.
“Agreed,” McDermott said at the same time as Nicole-Louise and Tackler nodded.
“We have a phone number of the source who contacted Walker and set up the meeting and I want to know who he is, where he is and what was said,” he declared as he passed Nicole-Louise the paper with the number that they had taken from Walker’s wallet, “Then we have to know who the bomb makers are, where they are and how the bomb is being hidden and transported.”
“And you want all of this done today?” Lawson asked, thinking back to Ward’s claim that this would end today.
“It has to be,” he replied and added no further comment.
“What have we got to go on with the bomb makers?” Nicole-Louise asked.
“Two women, both amputee’s, both Iraqi nationals possibly,” Ward replied.
“Specifically what body parts are missing?” she asked.
“One lost a leg, the other an arm.”
Nicole-Louise smiled,
“I’ll have that within the hour. Address and everything,” she said.
“You will find them that quick?”
“Yep. Medical records will give me all I need.”
“OK. Tackler will confirm Walker is the bad guy by 4pm today, and in the meantime he will get us the location of the source. Lawson is going to get the information we need from Beglin, and Nicole-Louise is going to get us the two bomb makers and make sure that Tackler finds the source of the money within the hour,” Ward said, “Everyone clear?”
The three of them nodded.
“What about us?” McDermott asked.
“We are going to go back to the warehouse and get ready to move on the information that Nicole-Louise and Tackler give us,” he replied, “We are going to get ready for war.”
Asif Fulken was a worried man. He had a 300 pound bomb built into an exact replica of a UPS van with copied licence plates that were registered to a warehouse in Newark, and he knew the target was now the Chrysler building. But he didn’t like waiting for calls from the voice. He was pleased with the quality of work that the two bomb makers had provided, and he was also pleased with the van that the last remaining FFW cell had provided and fitted. But the fact there was only one cell left worried him.
He was now completely alone.
He was aware that all of the other people from Al Holami to Qasim had not only been found, but killed, and he was sure that it was the man he had seen talking into his cell phone when he was on Greenwich Avenue who had done it.
He could not get his face out of his head.
He was sure he recognised him but he did not know where from. The harder Fulken thought about where he could know him from, the more worried he became.
This was an unusual feeling for him, but he decided to use that nervous feeling to become more focused and stay ahead of the people chasing him.
As soon as he knew that the Chrysler building was the target he had instructed the leader of the last cell to find him a lock up about a mile away on Lexington Avenue.
They had provided an empty shop that had garages at the back that were big enough to conceal the van. It had been transported overnight after the cell had moved everything from their bomb making facility in Hubert Street, and he was now sitting in the empty apartment above the shop, looking at his cell phone, almost willing it to ring. His target was only a mile away, he could almost touch it.
Even less than a mile away, over on Park Avenue, at the exact moment he was concentrating on his cell phone, trying to induce it to ring; Nicole-Louise leant back in her chair and said to Tackler, “I’ve found them.”
At the exact same moment in McDermott’s garage on Harlem Drive, Ward watched the last of the equipment being loaded into the two Range Rovers. McDermott was more than thorough, he had concluded in the last fifteen minutes.
He was obsessive.
The team were equipped with everything from handguns to sniper rifles to machine guns; flares to grenades and switchblades to swords. They literally were ready for a war.
His phone rang. Centrepoint’s name appeared on the screen.
“Yes?” Ward answered
“What are you all getting ready for?” he asked.
He knew that the Optician would be outside somewhere, and that Centrepoint had probably had him moving as soon as they had left Nicole-Louise’s and Tacklers.
“To talk to the people who made the bomb,” he replied.
“Try and take some of them alive,” he said, “It’s not an easy task cleaning up all of your mess throughout New York. Our people are having to crash all sorts of social media reports of shooting and gun fights, and I’ve had the headache of coming up with a cover story as to why half of New York’s immigrant community have disappeared.”
“That’s because people like Fulken are hell bent on destruction against us and we think it’s a good idea to let them live here. This mess is our doing so it is down to us to clean it up,” he replied.
“I want the bomb makers alive,” Centrepoint demanded.
Ward was silent.
“I mean it,” he said, “I want them alive,” he repeated, “They are much more valuable to us alive.”
Ward knew he was right but still didn’t say anything.
> “How far away from finishing this are you?”
He looked at his watch. He did a quick calculation of the forthcoming events in his head and said,
“Three am tomorrow morning is my best guess,” he replied.
“You have all you need?”
“Yes.”
“I have to insist on one thing. When you have found the bomb and it has been made safe, you tell me immediately. OK?”
“OK,” Ward replied and hung up the phone.
He imagined the problems that the last few days would have caused The Old Man. Missing people, dead bodies, politicians no doubt asking questions, and he didn’t envy him one bit. He promised himself that the first thing he would do after he killed Asif Fulken was to call him.
His phone rang. It was Nicole-Louise.
“Who is the smartest person in the world?” she asked.
He could hear her laugh as she asked the question.
“You are Nicole-Louise,” he replied.
“Correct answer,” she said, “I have found them.”
“Already?”
“Well, I would like to say that I hacked into the national database for amputee’s and using my incredible analytical skills, narrowed it down to two people, you know, like they do in the movies” she said.
“But?”
“The movies lie. That would have taken me at least three days.”
He accepted that Nicole-Louise had a habit of building things up but tolerated it because she always delivered.
He played along; “So how did you do it?”
“I hacked into the cameras on the corner of Hubert to the point in time where you said they vacated the building,” she replied, before pausing for effect, “And I saw four men, the guys you said were posing as cops loading containers into two vans, and both the women,” she added.
“Then?” he enquired in an urgent tone, trying to add to the drama.
“Then they all got in the vans.”
He knew the obvious question to ask but decided to ask the opposite.
“And they disappeared?”
“To everyone else, yes. But I then hacked into the traffic system and followed the vans until they reached their destination.”