by Max Kinnings
“No, you have my word.”
“And that’s meant to count for something, is it?”
“Right at this moment, it’s all that I’ve got.”
Conor sighed. “Okay, well, let’s give it a shot. It’s not like I’ve got anything else to do today.”
1:33 PM
Morden Tube Station parking lot
Thinking about the children made him feel suffocated. The thought of them roasting to death in the boot of a car was sickening, abhorrent. When he was a little boy, maybe five or six, his sister had locked him in a closet for what felt like hours but was probably no more than about twenty minutes. He never forgot it. The heat, the darkness, that sense of terror that he would never escape, never breathe fresh air again, never be free. He had shouted and screamed for the first few minutes of his incarceration but after that he had become silent, traumatized. If the train driver’s kids behaved in the same way then he would never find them.
He walked along slowly, hands by his sides listening all the while, waiting to hear sounds from the cars. Children’s voices, knocking, tapping. They would be thirsty after their ordeal. He would buy them cold drinks, he would pay, he was thirsty himself. His treat. They would be frightened. They would want to know what had happened to their parents. They would need comforting.
Up one row of cars and down the next. Up another row and around the corner. They were here somewhere. If the police had found them already then there would have been some evidence of that. But there were no police other than a couple of community policewomen he had seen by the tube, who were just standing there looking bored, watching the world go by.
Could the children have passed out already from the heat? Were they too traumatized to even make their presence known? Those poor children; Tommy Denning had so much to answer for.
Alistair walked between the rows of cars, listening, straining to hear anything, any movement that might betray the children’s whereabouts. As he began yet another circuit of the parking lot, he became nervous that perhaps his continuing presence might alert the authorities. Varick had told him that London was under constant scrutiny via CCTV cameras. So Alistair decided to leave the parking lot and go to the corner shop he had been to earlier to buy another bottle of water. There was a small portable television on a shelf behind the counter. On the screen was a blurry image of Tommy Denning standing in a tube carriage. There he was, broadcasting to the world. The news anchor explained that due to a wireless Internet connection that had been installed in the tunnel to allow negotiation with the hijackers, people on the train were able to send e-mails and photographs; some could even make calls. But it was the image of Tommy staring into the camera that the TV channels kept returning to, like an itchy wound they couldn’t help but scratch.
Time was ebbing away. If Alistair didn’t find the children soon, they would be dead. He took a swig of water as he left the shop to carry on searching. It was while he was walking past a row of cars he had already passed a couple of times before that he heard faint crying and muffled knocking. He needed to establish exactly which car it was. Another couple of passes and it was obviously the dark blue Vauxhall. The car wasn’t even locked. He pressed the button on the boot, the lid flipped up and there they were, hot and frightened but otherwise unharmed. They blinked in the harsh sunlight as they climbed out and stood looking at him. The little girl was crying and the boy took her hand as he turned to look at Alistair and said, “Where are my mummy and daddy?”
“They’ll be back soon,” he said. “They just had to take a trip. They asked me to look after you until they get back.”
“What’s your name?” asked the little girl between sobs.
“I’m Alistair, I’m your friend.”
“I’m thirsty, Alistair,” said the boy.
“Let’s go and get a nice cold drink then.”
Slamming the lid of the boot, he ushered the children in front of him. He didn’t hear the cars pull up at the entrance to the parking lot; he didn’t hear the footsteps. He was thinking about the children, he was thinking about the cold drink he would buy them and how he had saved their lives.
As soon as he heard a voice through a bullhorn, he knew the ensuing words would be directed at him.
“You, in the jeans and the gray T-shirt. Stay where you are.” There was no one else in jeans and a gray T-shirt; there was no one in the parking lot besides him and the children. He turned around and there they were. They weren’t the usual ones; this was all to do with Tommy Denning. They were crouched down behind a row of cars on the other side of the lot. They had guns; he couldn’t see them but he knew they were there. It wasn’t as if he’d done anything wrong. All he had done was rescue two children who otherwise might have died. But no one would ever see it that way. He was involved. He was implicated. They would look on their computers and they would see who he was.
“Alistair? What’s going on?” asked the little boy, but he didn’t get to answer before the bullhorn cut through the hot air once again.
“Sophie! Ben! Walk toward us, keep walking toward this voice.”
“You’d better do as he says,” said Alistair. The little girl was crying again. She was so young, so innocent, she didn’t deserve this.
“Don’t worry, Sophie,” he said, “everything will be all right. Go on now, you’ll be fine. Just go over there toward those cars.” And she did, she started walking. So did her brother. Alistair was all alone now. He hadn’t done anything wrong. But that didn’t matter. Not any more.
They wouldn’t understand, they never did. They would make it their business to misunderstand. They would twist his words, make it appear that he was trying to hurt the children. They would make out he was in league with Tommy Denning when, in fact, he was doing everything in his power to save two innocent children from Tommy’s madness. They would want to know why he hadn’t gone to the police in the first place. In his desire to help the children, they would see subversive desires at work. They would probably suggest that he was in the process of abducting them. He would never be able to make them understand. They would create their own phony confusion. Throughout his life he had spent so many hours in police stations, so many hours in cells, he couldn’t face any more.
He knew what he had to do. It was playacting. When he was a little boy, he had been in all the school plays. Overacted terribly. But it didn’t matter. Just as it didn’t matter now. He started to shout as he ran, screamed, heading straight for the kids, putting his hand in his pocket as though he might be pulling a gun. Today of all days, it would be enough. They couldn’t allow him to hurt those children.
The voice through the bullhorn was shouting at him but he couldn’t hear the exact words above his screams. It took longer than he thought it would. He was almost upon Sophie as the first bullet hit him. It hit him low down, in the stomach. It might not be enough so he carried on running, hurling himself forward and the second one hit the mark. Middle of the chest. He wasn’t going to hospital. He would be all right; he was flying straight into the arms of Jesus.
1:49 PM
Coopers Lane, Somers Town
“He’s walking across the road and approaching some railway arches. He’s knocking on a door set into the timber facade.”
Ed sat in the back of the car with the professor while Calvert commentated on Conor Joyce’s movements.
“The door’s being opened by a white male in his forties, thick set, about five nine. They’re talking to one another. Joyce has gone inside and the door’s been closed.”
Ed slid down on the upholstery. Conor Joyce’s involvement was providing him with a whole new set of problems. While he had proved easier to persuade than Ed had feared, it was his seemingly compliant attitude that worried him. It didn’t take much psychological intuition to realize that Conor had an ulterior motive and it wasn’t difficult to conceive of what that motive might be. Ed knew all about frustration and how it could brew and fester. On that day over thirteen years ago Ed and Conor had
both lost something dear to them. Wounds like those didn’t heal. Now Ed had given Conor a shot at revenge and he had to accept that Conor might very well take it.
The air conditioning struggled to combat the hot air baking the car. He tried to empty his mind, knowing that even if he could do it for only a few seconds it would help. Ed’s use of meditation had no spiritual angle to it, nothing more ritualistic than trying to cleanse his mind for a few minutes each day. It helped him think clearly. It was difficult to do knowing what he knew of the passengers on the train but he needed to try and get a perspective on what he was about to attempt. He knew that if he asked Calvert and Moorcroft their opinion, they would construct their answers based on their perceived professional obligations. Although they were very different, one a dedicated streetwise cop and the other a lifelong academic, they both had a strong sense of duty. But in this instance, it was misguided. Ed felt certain of it. What the situation needed was someone who didn’t care about his career or his place in society, someone who sometimes found himself dangerously uninterested in his own personal safety.
“What’s he doing in there?” asked Calvert.
“He’s collecting something,” replied Ed and just as Calvert was about to ask him—as he knew he would—exactly what it was that he was collecting, Ed asked him, “You got any children, Nick?”
It was two boys if Ed remembered correctly. Calvert had mentioned them one time during a coffee break at a counterterrorism seminar at which they had both been speaking. The voice of the big fearsome-looking Special Branch officer softened as the connections were made and he thought of his children.
“Jack and Felix. Jack’s eight and Felix is five.”
“Where are they today?”
“They’re both at school. Ed, we need to get going—”
“I never had kids. It just never seemed to happen. Shame really. My younger brother’s got three. They’re beautiful.” Ed could hear Calvert turn to look at him as he spoke about his brother’s children and how, in the absence of children of his own, he had tried to be the best uncle to them that he could possibly be. He reminisced about Christmas the year before and how his brother’s youngest, Jasmine, had staged her own song-and-dance routine—anything to avoid the subject of what they were doing there outside a railway arch in King’s Cross. But he was interrupted when Calvert said, “He’s on his way back. He’s carrying an old cardboard box. Oh shit, he’s putting it in the trunk.” Ed listened as Conor slammed the trunk and climbed into the passenger seat. His story having served its purpose and, with Conor Joyce and his provisions now on board, Ed remained silent while Calvert started the engine, swung the car around and set off.
1:50 PM
Northern Line Train 037, first carriage
“If there is a God, you’ll burn in hell for this.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying, George.”
“Stop talking to me like I’m your friend. Stop calling me George. You can kill me, but you can’t befriend me.”
“You’ve got spirit, I’ll give you that.”
The water was now over George’s waist, higher on Tommy, who continued to fire his pistol down the carriage every few minutes as though compelled to do so by the distant sounds of desperation from the passengers.
“Why don’t you just kill yourself?” asked George. “Why do we have to die with you? Just put the gun in your mouth and pull the trigger. It’ll be over in a second.”
“I wish you people would stop wishing me dead,” said Tommy. “All my life people have been trying to keep me alive. In Afghanistan, blokes were getting shot at all the time. Me? Not once. But now everyone wants me to die. Am I not going to be dead soon enough?”
“Don’t be a prick,” said George. “Don’t delude yourself. You’re a murdering psychopathic scumbag. That’s why people want you dead. You’re no prophet. You’re about as much of a prophet as that David Koresh or Jim Jones.”
“Bless you, you’re doing what you think is best.”
George pulled against the chain that bound his leg to the pole even though it sent shooting barbs of pain up his shin. The pain was a distraction from his agonizing frustration.
“Maggie?” George shouted into the darkness.
“Yes, George, I’m here.” She sounded distant, further away than the twenty feet or so that he knew it to be.
“You’ve got to get as many people together as you can, and you’ve got to come down here, and if there are enough of you and you’re determined enough, you’ll be able to overpower him and kill him.”
“Yes please, Maggie,” shouted Denning. “Bring them here. Once I’ve shot poor George here, I’ll shoot them too.”
“Do it, Maggie,” said George. “Do it for Sophie and Ben.”
George could just make out Denning watching him, shaking his head slightly, like a father might, disappointed at the behavior of a child.
“You know she won’t do that. She’s terrified. You’re all she’s got to cling to, and besides they’re going to start coming for me soon anyway.”
He left the statement hanging there; George didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of asking him to qualify it but curiosity got the better of him.
“They?”
“The passengers. Back in the old days, it was possible to do something like this and they’d stay put, wait, hope that you were sincere when you told them that they would be all right so long as they did as you said. But United Airlines Flight 93 changed all that. They’re going to come for me and I’ve got to be ready.”
Denning reached into the duffel bag that he had slung around his neck so as to keep it above the water. His arm glistened in the light from the torch, varnished with blood from the wound in his face that he had been pressing his hand against. As he retracted his arm from the duffel, he was holding a semiautomatic rifle.
“I’m ready for them,” he said. “I’m prepared for all eventualities. But what about you? All this shouting to your wife that she should bring some bigger boys to beat me up, well, it makes me think that perhaps you want to die.”
“I’m going to die soon anyway, isn’t that right?”
“You’re going to die and you’re going to be resurrected to eternal life. But maybe you don’t want to wait.”
George watched as Denning pointed the gun at him.
“If you’d rather, I can baptize you now and send you on your way. Would you like that? After all, you suffer from claustrophobia, right? Those two or three minutes in the water while your lungs give out, that might not be a very pleasurable experience. Particularly if you go into it with the wrong frame of mind. So, as a special concession to you and because I like you, I’m going to give you the option. If you’d rather go here and now then tell me.”
What had George got to live for? Just another few minutes of horror knowing that he was going to die and being powerless to stop it, tortured with the knowledge that he might have been able to do something if only he had tried harder, made different choices. And then at the end of it, drowning—something that had terrified him all his life.
Why not go now? If he was a coward—and he felt like one—then why not die like one? Why not just make things easier for himself for once in his miserable life?
“Just say the word, George. I know you’re thinking about it.”
“No, he’s not!” shouted Maggie from the next carriage.
“Don’t listen to her, she’ll try and dissuade you.”
“George! If we have to die then we have to die together.”
“See? I told you. Ignore her. I’m prepared to do you a favor.”
“George.” It was a tone of voice he had heard Maggie use a thousand times. It said, “Don’t you dare.”
“What do you say, one little squeeze of the trigger and all that pain goes away, just like a sweet little pill, only quicker?”
“Go fuck yourself.”
Denning lowered the gun, chuckling as he did so.
“What’s so funny?”<
br />
“You are, George. You really crack me up. I wasn’t going to shoot you. Even if you’d pleaded with me. How many times do I have to tell you? You’re coming with me.”
1:55 PM
Northern Line Train 037, fifth carriage
Hugh Taylor, consumer affairs columnist, his sports jacket now long discarded, waded through the water toward the doors between the fourth and fifth carriages. His way was lit by the screens of phones, tablets, and laptops. For the first time in hours there was a sense of hope among the passengers at the rear of the train. They knew there was going to be an attempt to retake the train by a group of men. Hugh was one of those men. He was more than one of those men, he was their leader.
He didn’t know where it came from. For all his life he had felt excluded, left out, a watcher, a spectator, a nerd, a joke, and now here he was captaining the team. It felt surreal although the fear itself was real enough. He was afraid, not so much that he would die—he had resigned himself to the fact that he probably would—but afraid that he would revert back to the man he had been for the sum total of his forty-seven years. He enjoyed this new version of himself. Hugh Mark 2. This was the man that he wanted to be, even if it was only for the last few moments of his life. He believed in destiny, perhaps this was his.
Recruitment choices had not been difficult. He took every person who volunteered. There weren’t many but there was no question of shaming people into making the journey with him; he could hardly sit in judgment over others with regard to their potential bravery or cowardice. It wasn’t that long since his last panic attack and, although he was no psychologist and didn’t hold with all that analytical self-help bullshit, he knew with an unwavering certainty that his panic attacks were born of fear and more than a little cowardice. But the need to take a stand had forced him into action. It didn’t feel like bravery. It didn’t really feel like much of anything. It was just the right thing to do. The water was up to his middle. The schoolgirls had to stand on the seats. They were frightened. Everyone was frightened. The expressions on the children’s faces, lit by the glow from electronic equipment, were what drove him on. He couldn’t just stand by and let the children die.