Baptism

by Max Kinnings

  “Does anyone have a weapon of any sort?” A penknife was passed forward. He had a sudden impulse to laugh. Someone trapped in this metal tube with him felt that a penknife was a suitable weapon against a psychotic hijacker with some sort of mobile cannon. But he took it and said thanks.

  “I got this.” It was a man’s voice with a heavy London accent. Its owner stepped forward. He was dressed in regulation street gear, white sneakers—now underwater—sweat-suit trousers and T-shirt. In his hand was a large hunting knife. No one took it from him.

  Hugh asked, “You know how to use it?”

  “Not really.”

  “Are you going to come with me?” There needed to be a group of them. They needed to play the numbers game. The hijacker could pick off a few of them but so long as enough of them ran at her, some would get through and they could kick, punch, strangle, stab—whatever it took to finish her off. All that stood between them and freedom was a slight woman with a big gun. Hugh looked down the carriage and could see her framed in the window in the adjoining doors. So, which way would his potential recruit go?

  “No, man. You take it, though.” As Hugh heard the words and he took the knife that was offered to him, all the lights went out. There were screams and shouts from further up the train but in the fifth carriage, people remained quiet. The darkness wasn’t complete, however, as light shone from media players, mobile phones and computers, as further voices both male and female volunteered to join the attempt to retake the train.

  “So what we need to do,” whispered Hugh in the half-light, “is make our way down either side of the tunnel and try and find a way into the carriage. Whatever it takes, we just need to get in there as quickly as we can and try and kill her.”

  1:03 PM

  Network Control center, St. James’s

  “Ed, we’re going to move you all down to the command center in Leicester Square,” said Laura. “We’ve got a dedicated negotiating cell on the back of an articulated truck within the perimeter. We can get the radio signal from the train patched through there.”

  “We’re not going to get to speak to Tommy Denning again.” Ed didn’t care how pessimistic he sounded. He didn’t need to think of the morale within the cell. It didn’t matter what anyone else thought, the negotiation with Tommy Denning was at an end. Of that he was certain. And if he was being brutally honest, he knew that there never had been a functional negotiation.

  “You may be right, Ed,” said Laura. “We may not get through to him again. But we need to keep the negotiating cell up and running just in case. I’ve taken this cell off-line while we all relocate to the command center. There’s another team of negotiators manning the radio link until we’re ready to get down there. Serina Boise is going to conduct a review of the situation then.”

  “Still no plan for special forces to go in?”

  “A strategy is being drawn up but there are issues with the water and the explosives on the train.”

  “Is Frank Moorcroft still here?” Ed asked the question knowing full well that he was still there; he could detect his musty aroma from across the room.

  “Yes, I’m still very much here, Ed,” said Moorcroft.

  “Where do you think we are with the water level at this stage?”

  “Again, incredibly difficult to gauge with any degree of accuracy but my calculations would suggest it’s up to people’s knees, possibly, maybe higher.”

  “GCHQ intelligence from all the communications into and out of the train confirm that,” said Laura.

  “So, Frank,” said Ed turning toward the old academic, “how long have we got until the carriage fills?”

  “It’s very difficult to be exact as there are so many variables—”

  “Imagine I’ve got a gun to your head.”

  “I’m a professor, not a hostage.” He sighed. “Very very approximately, I’d say we’ve got about an hour.”

  “Are they going to get special forces in by then, Laura?”

  Ed could detect something in Laura’s voice. As far as she was concerned, Ed had crossed the line between being a talented hostage negotiator whose often unconventional methods should be indulged due to his ability to talk down crazies, and become a loose cannon who might at some later stage need to be sidelined. “I can only go on what I’m getting from Commander Boise.” Laura’s use of Boise’s rank in terms of the situation meant that the shutters were beginning to come down. “Any intervention faces unique problems. They’re having to revise their plans as the situation progresses.”

  As much as Ed had respect for Laura’s abilities as a negotiating coordinator, she was part of the infrastructure now and as the seconds ticked by, Ed realized that if this situation was going to be resolved with the minimum loss of life—if the passengers on the train had any chance of survival—it wasn’t going to be the authorities who were going to bring about the resolution. But not all the options had been exhausted. There was still one person who might be able to cut through the bureaucracy and make a difference.

  Once Laura had told the members of the negotiating cell to reconvene at the command center as soon as possible where they would be required to remain on standby, Ed turned to the epicenter of Mark Hooper’s aftershave cloud and said, “I need to speak to Howard Berriman. Immediately.”

  1:05 PM

  Northern Line Train 037, first carriage

  It was as though George could watch and appraise his efforts to regain consciousness from some other realm. It felt as though the core of his being was still there, still alive, but it had withdrawn to the furthest reaches of his mind. Silence, pain, the side of his head felt as though it had a heart of its own beating beneath the torn skin, each beat performing a sharp almost unbearable stabbing pain. Someone was groaning. When he realised that it was him, he didn’t stop; somehow the process of emitting the sound helped him to deal with the pain. When he opened his eyes, someone was shining a torch into his face.

  “I’m sorry, George, I think I may have cracked your skull there. I didn’t want to shoot you. You’re important to me.”

  It was a voice that he recognized. It was an old friend. It had to be. What was he saying? Something about not wanting to shoot him? What was all that about? George was sitting down in a row of seats in a carriage. Why wasn’t he in the cab driving the train? The train was flooded with water. And where were the passengers? Why were the lights out? He couldn’t move his leg. Or, rather, he could but only so far. It didn’t hurt but it wouldn’t move. Looking down at it, he could see there was a chain and padlock securing his ankle to one of the yellow upright poles. What did it mean? As his eyes got used to the light, he could see the face of the man who was holding the torch. He had a hideous wound on his right cheek and his neck was bruised. George knew him from somewhere.

  “Are you with me? I really don’t want you to miss this. You probably thought that I’d shot you, like you’d never wake up. That’s probably what you thought when you passed out. Or maybe you thought nothing. Didn’t have time. I’m sorry about that. And I’m sorry about your kids too.”

  Kids?

  The download was complete and the program was running. It was all there, instantly, and George was out of his seat and diving straight at Denning once again, hands outstretched. As he did so, the chain snapped tight around his ankle and he fell, flailing around in the water.

  “Are you totally insane?” George remained on all fours in the water as he stared at Denning. For a moment, his ankle bettered his head wound in terms of pain. “You can’t lock children in the boot of a car when it’s a million fucking degrees. What kind of animal are you? You can’t kill people for no reason, murder people and say that you’re doing it for God.”

  “I’m not doing it for God, I’m doing it for us. I’m doing it for you as much as anybody. We all have so much to learn.”

  “What are we learning here?” George maintained eye contact and registered a minute victory when Denning looked away. “It’s all in your mind. It�
��s a delusion. There is no God.”

  “Not even you believe that, George.”

  “Yes I do. So do you, if you’re honest with yourself. You know there’s nothing there. Everyone knows there’s nothing there. Deep down, in those moments when you are alone in your head and you’re forced to put a bet on your own existence, you know. You know!”

  “I forgive you for your blasphemy.”

  “I don’t want your forgiveness. This isn’t blasphemy, this is truth.”

  “I forgive you.”

  “Let my wife go. Let her save our children.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  The water was cold and for the first time all day, George shivered. “Tommy, it’s not Christian to murder.”

  “Don’t tell me what is and isn’t Christian.”

  “But I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “It’s Christian to baptize . . .”

  “Please let my wife go free.”

  George pushed himself onto his haunches and sat back on the seat. Tommy watched him and George thought that he looked like a man who was genuinely sorry.

  “Let her go. If you let her go she’ll be able to release the children. That’s the Christian thing to do, Tommy.”

  Denning stood and watched him. Deep welts on his throat were visible from where George had tried to strangle him but it was clearly the missing parts of his face that bothered him the most and he continued to press his hand against the channel of excavated flesh as blood dribbled and spat from the wound.

  “I can see what you’re trying to do and I respect you for it but you’re wrong. This is about metaphor, it’s about symbolism. If I let her go, then what am I saying? I’m saying that I’m not committed to this, that this is not an act of love.”

  “Let her go, Tommy.”

  “It might seem hateful and vile to you but I’m doing this out of love. You must accept that and you must be baptized with love in your heart.”

  “They’re children, Tommy. Their names are Ben and Sophie. Ben’s five and Sophie’s two. Ben likes pirates, he has a little wooden pirate ship and it’s the center of his world. And Sophie, she’s obsessed with her dolls. She’s got four of them and she talks to them and has tea parties with them. Does God want you to kill them? Does he? Does God want you to kill children? Is that the role that he’s specially picked out for you?”

  “I know you think that you can test my faith. But you can’t. There are plenty of children on this train. If I was going to waver then I would have wavered already, wavered before I’d even made this journey. What you have to realize is that your children are part of this too. They’ve been chosen as well. Can’t you see? Two thousand years after Christ, another man has arrived to show the world the way to go. I am baptizing my flock; I’m washing away their sins. This was meant to happen. Just as it was meant to happen that a man called Simeon Fisher would come to betray me. I could have disposed of him before but, no, I brought him with me. Now he is dead. But he is as much a part of this great journey as you and I. Can’t you recognize me, George? You must have seen me in your dreams.”

  Tommy stared at him, smiling, and George felt a moment’s déjà vu. For a flash, it felt as though Denning was right, that he had always been there in some dark corner of his subconscious.

  “What about your parents, Tommy? What happened to them?”

  He had heard Ed Mallory, the negotiator, on the radio to Denning earlier and he had mentioned something about Denning’s childhood and his parents. It wasn’t much but it was something.

  “They abandoned me.”

  “How does that make you feel?”

  “Don’t bother. I’ve spent years talking to people who were only too keen to make me answer that question. The fact of the matter is God decided what should happen. It was all part of my journey. But this isn’t about my family or my upbringing.” He met George’s stare and held it. “This is all about sacrifice, George, all about sacrifice.”

  1:06 PM

  MI5 Headquarters, Thames House

  How could something that had felt so right suddenly feel so wrong? The ongoing COBRA conference calls were torture. He had never felt so guilty in his life. Hooper was toast for this. The little shit was putting Howard’s entire career in jeopardy. This thing needed wrapping up as quickly as possible one way or the other. It was meant to be a triumph for the service and him as its director general. The media would have been all over it like a cheap suit. It would have been a badge of honor for the security service under the leadership of its dynamic new director general. The home secretary and by extension the government as a whole could have basked in reflected glory and known who it was who had kept the country safe. The knighthood might have come earlier than expected.

  But then came Hooper’s news. A tube train parked up in a tunnel exactly as he had told him it would be. Right place, right time of day, right everything, except for one detail. It was one week early.

  Hooper told him it was impossible to say conclusively that it was the work of Tommy Denning because he had had no intel from Simeon Fisher—their man on the inside—and he wouldn’t be able to confirm anything until demands were issued. There was a small chance it was all a coincidence, a possibility that the train driver had suffered a heart attack or been otherwise incapacitated. Berriman had hoped to God that that’s what it was. Anything but Denning one week early.

  But he knew it was a false hope even while he clung to it and, sure enough, there was Denning on the bloody Internet feed spouting his madness. At least he hadn’t mentioned that the service had infiltrated his group. Maybe he didn’t know? But Berriman knew that that was probably a false hope too. Why go a week early unless he realized they were on to him?

  It wasn’t as though the media could paint it as a black op or anything like that, although given half a chance they would no doubt try. All that he and Hooper had—all that could be proved they had—was a little foreknowledge. They were monitoring Denning but they didn’t have any specific intelligence. They might just get away with that. He and Hooper had been careful. Nothing was in writing. And nothing existed to tie him to it apart from Hooper.

  As he reached into his desk drawer for another couple of Nurofen to try and combat the sciatic ache down the backs of his legs, his phone rang. It was Hooper.

  “Mark.”

  “I’ve got Ed Mallory for you. Wants to speak to you urgently.”

  “Okay, put him on.”

  Ed Mallory’s reputation as one of the best negotiators in the country had been built on his ability to construct psychological profiles of subjects through active listening. His blindness had given him increased sensitivity to speech patterns and verbal expression. Would he be able to tell that he was lying? Had he already done so during their previous conversations?

  “Hi, Ed.”

  “You need to know that our negotiation is effectively at an end. There’s no way that anyone’s going to be able to talk Tommy Denning out of that tunnel. The only hope we have of getting those passengers out now is a rapid intervention by special forces.”

  “Listen, Ed, I’ve spoken to Major Burroughs, the SAS squadron OC, and there’s no way he’s sending his men in under the current conditions. There’s been a direct and specific threat that the train will be blown up if there’s any attempt to storm it.”

  “If we can’t put together a rapid intervention at this time, we have to consider using explosives to drain water from the tunnel.”

  The only way that Howard was going to survive this was to keep his head down, play everything by the book and in the event that anyone started making accusations that he had prior knowledge then he would deny everything.

  “A controlled explosion is even less likely to happen, Ed.”

  “You’ve seen Tommy Denning on the Internet feed—he’s got no demands. All he wants is to die and take hundreds of people with him. Even if we could get through to the train, we’re not going to be able to talk him down. We need to blow a hole in that tunn
el wall. I have a professor here who thinks it can be done.”

  “I know, Ed. I’ve spoken to Serina Boise. But we’re never going to get clearance for that either.”

  “So what are we going to do? Are you telling me that we’re going to allow upward of three hundred and fifty people to die on this train? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “I’m not saying anything, Ed. We need to keep thinking of alternative resolutions. You’re asking me and I’m telling you that, at this moment in time, special forces with or without explosives are not a possibility.” Howard didn’t care whether Ed could detect the frustration in his voice. Maybe it would mask his deceit. “Look, Ed, I’ll do what I can, okay? Leave it with me. There’s another COBRA meeting scheduled for later. I’ll discuss this with everyone then.”

  “Okay, you do that. Oh, and one more thing: who’s Simeon Fisher?”

  The question punched him in the guts. But he couldn’t show it.

  “Simon Fisher?”

  “Simeon.”

  “Doesn’t ring any bells. Why?”

  “Denning mentioned him, said he was ‘one of ours’—whatever that means.”

  “No, never heard of him. Ed, we’ll speak later.”

  He finished the call before he could be drawn into further conversation. Taking Ed’s call had prevented him from having a drink of water to wash down the Nurofen and now he could feel the tablets moving slowly—and painfully—down his gullet. There was a cup of coffee on his desk that Yates, his assistant, had made him earlier and he had left to go cold. Picking up the cup, he took a big gulp but it didn’t manage to shift them. His day just kept getting worse.

  1:11 PM

  Network Control center, St. James’s

  Ed passed the phone back to Mark Hooper. As he did so, his fingers touched Hooper’s palm, which was moist. The smell of the young spook’s aftershave was fading as a faint smell of sweat began to break through it. And his hand was shaking.