As the financial representative of the men hiding in the Afghan mountains, Mr. Kazan’s approval of the plan was required, and he had approved with great enthusiasm. Nadeem and Mr. Kazan were in some ways a fortunate mix; in other ways, they were not. Nadeem was an adaptable thinker, and his operational experience had left him able to improvise in the face of a changing situation. He was also possessed of a fierce emotional intensity, coupled with a religious fanaticism that was necessary to inspire suicide bombers. In this mode, he was susceptible to precipitate action which was not necessarily the best course. If he had been the subject of a briefing given at MI5 or the FBI, his primary motivation would have been considered religious.
Mr. Kazan was a set piece man. He would form an image in his mind of the way a plan was to unfold, and any deviation from that pre-conceived image would cause him some alarm. He was also of a practical, patient outlook that had been responsible for his success as a double agent. In an MI5 or FBI briefing that considered Nadeem’s motivation religious, Mr. Kazan’s primary motivation would have been considered political.
The proposed attack, or strike as Nadeem referred to it, had originally been planned for the Queen’s birthday in 2004. In an attempt to take advantage of an unexpected opportunity, the plan had been quickly changed in mid-October to coincide with the US presidential visit in November. It was now set for the 21st of November, 2003. On that day, the majority of the Royal Family, or at least those who counted to Nadeem, would be in residence, having gathered for the occasions involving the presidential visit. On the 21st, President Bush was to leave London, and travel to Sedgefield, in the north of England, to meet with Prime Minster Blair. According to Nadeem, on that day the withdrawal of the US Secret Service from the area of Buckingham Palace and the transfer of many British Security Service personnel to the north, coupled with the inevitable fatigue and relaxation that would follow the general stand down of the enormous number of additional British security personnel assigned the presidential visit, would create the perfect opportunity to execute the plan.
Some of the explosives from the restaurant basement, safely disguised and concealed in their cheese boxes, had been in the Palace kitchen area for more than a month. Smeared with a thick layer of goat’s cheese, they had easily passed the inspection that included a bomb dog.
Special pockets had been completed for the three intruders, sewn into their working clothes, which would enable each of them to carry upwards of ten kilograms of Semtex on their person.
More of the explosive was to be loaded into a small truck which made daily deliveries of fresh fruit to the mini-mart that occupied one half the old entrance to the Down Street station. The explosives were to be transferred from the sub-basement of the restaurant, up the emergency stair, and out the emergency exit that could only be opened from the inside.
Once loaded, the truck would proceed to the north wall of the garden of Buckingham Palace, and be detonated. Although this would very likely not endanger the Royal Family in any way, it assuredly would have the effect of over-stretching the security personnel assigned to the Palace itself.
In accordance with the standard drill, the Royals themselves would be taken to a secure area within the Palace. Concentrated in that fashion, they would be easy targets for the three bogus employees. The first was to self-detonate in the closest possible proximity to the first security obstacle he encountered. The second, who was to be ten seconds behind him, was to clear the way for the third, who was to rush into the presence of the Royals and blow himself, and them, to pieces. If the security was as thin as they hoped, there was a strong possibility that the second suicide bomber would be the one to reach the Royal Family; in that case, the third man was to wait to see if there were any survivors.
All three bombers were to detonate their explosives if detained. Regardless of any damage to the Royal Family, the fact of three explosions within the Palace was certain to make a point.
This was why Emma Schiller was to be kept alive until the 21st. Her diversion needed to be credible up until the last moment. That was why the final tape would demand a meeting with the US President. The very mention of his name would ensure a larger portion of British Security would be traveling to the north of England on or before the 21st, in order to increase protection. But to do this, it was critical that she be demonstrably alive on that day.
Chapter 13
Thursday, November 13, 2003
05:48 Greenwich Mean Time
I’d had a bad night’s sleep. Carson had had an even tougher one, because at least once I had sort of come around to a familiar sound. I remembered sitting up in bed, the room infused with a flickering glow, and finding Carson sitting at the desk playing Spider Solitaire on his laptop. I let it go, and got back to sleep eventually.
I have no idea what woke me at 05:48, for God’s sake. I just sat up, and there I was. It was one of those awakenings when you know that, tired or not, you aren’t going to be able to go back to sleep.
I looked into the next bed, and saw that Carson was out like a light. I was as quiet as I could be in the bathroom, but the shower must have done the trick. When I came out, he was sitting in his skivvies, looking out the window with the TV on.
“Nice day,” he said. “Just like yesterday. Not supposed to rain. About fifty-five degrees or so.”
“Good. Shower’s all yours.”
“What are we gonna tell the girls?”
“About Stevenage? Not much,” I said. “If we start a story, we’ll just get into deep trouble. Just keep on acting like we want to find her, I guess.”
“Yeah.” He stood. “The water for the instant’s still pretty hot.”
He seemed really down. “Something getting to you?”
“Just about everything,” he said. “You seem to be doing okay.”
“I don’t dwell on it,” I said. “I mean, it isn’t like the case is over, or anything. The killer is out there. Or killers. I think we should do what we can to get information from the girls, stuff they might not have thought was important. We can do that.”
“Sure.” He didn’t sound convinced.
While he was in the shower, I took a few minutes to plug my laptop in, and then begin to write my notes for yesterday. I wanted to make sure I had everything down I could get before talking to a bunch of people. I’ve found that the more you talk about recent developments, the more you begin to edit and focus on certain facts. Then it’s easy for what you begin to see as peripheral data to get shoved deep into the background. Do the notes first, and you can talk about them all you want without having the contents of a conversation bias your reporting.
When I finished with my notes, the first email I sent was to my favorite dispatcher, [email protected]. This is what I said:
SALLY, WE’RE GOING TO NEED LOTS OF DATA ON THE CASE WHERE WE WERE IN THE BARN WITH GEORGE AND HESTER. WE NEED THE FILE. THE TAPE SHOWING EMMA TELLS US THAT THERE ARE VERY LIKELY TERRORISTS INVOLVED. I DON’T THINK THEY’RE THE SAME BUNCH, BUT I WANT TO MAKE SURE. I ESPECIALLY NEED NAMES AND CODE NAMES FOR THE ONES WE KNOW. IF WE HAVE TO ASK A FAVOR OF GEORGE, SEND ME HIS PHONE NUMBER AND I’LL DO IT.
TELL LAMAR I’M SENDING HIM AN EMAIL. BE SURE HE CHECKS.
FOOD IS GOOD. WEATHER IS NOT RAINY.
CARL
The second one was to Sue, at [email protected]; and at [email protected], just to make sure she got it either at home or at work.
HI. ALL IS AS WELL AS CAN BE EXPECTED. THE BRITS ARE DOING A FINE JOB. ASSUME YOU HAVE SEEN THE TAPE. I THINK THERE WILL BE ANOTHER ONE. I WOULD STRONGLY SUGGEST THAT YOU NOT WATCH, AS VICTIMS TEND TO GET WORSE LOOKING AS TIME PASSES.
JANE IS DOING WELL. SHE’S REALLY WORRIED, THOUGH. I THINK SHE’LL BE FINE, BUT IT MIGHT TAKE A WHILE. VICKY SEEMS OKAY TOO.
I DON’T HAVE MUCH HOPE FOR A REALLY GOOD OUTCOME HERE. I HATE TO SAY THAT.
CAN’T WAIT TO COME HOME. MISS YOU.
LOVE
CARL
Th
e third went to [email protected]. That would be Lamar. Our network kept anyone from reading his email but him, with a password. So, if he remembered to check and if he remembered his password, he’d get my message. If not, Sally would tell him to check after she got mine. Anyway, I wrote to Lamar:
LAMAR,
NEW SCOTLAND YARD IS DOING A GOOD JOB OVER HERE. SEE IF YOU CAN CONTACT GEORGE POLLARD AT FBI, AND SEE IF DCI CAN PUT ME IN CONTACT WITH HESTER GORSE. GET WHAT INFORMATION YOU CAN FROM THEM REGARDING THAT LITTLE THING WE HAD IN THE BARN.
THINGS HERE DON’T LOOK ALL THAT GOOD FOR EMMA, SO TRY TO PREPARE FOLKS BACK THERE FOR THE WORST. THERE IS A CHANCE THERE WILL BE ANOTHER TAPE RELEASED. I ASKED SALLY TO GET THAT TERRORISM CASE FILE OVER HERE ASAP. I KNOW IT COSTS, BUT IT’S REALLY, REALLY IMPORTANT TO DO A FED EX NEXT DAY THING. REGULAR AIRMAIL WILL TAKE TOO LONG, AND THIS IS URGENT. REALLY URGENT.
GONNA NEED A VACATION WHEN THIS IS DONE.
CARL.
I needed the names from that file, the aliases, and physical descriptions. I was about as certain as I could be that this wasn’t connected with anything we’d had, but you always have to check.
So much for correspondence. It was, according to my calculations, about one in the afternoon in Iowa. Either that or one in the morning, but I was just too tired to play with the math. I logged all three emails in my calendar, and sat back and looked out the window, just like Carson had done. The instant coffee, in those little foil tubes, is pretty good. I found that if you put both the caffeinated and the decaffeinated portions together, you got a fairly strong tasting cup of coffee. I was just finishing my cup when Carson emerged.
“You call the girls yet?”
“No. I’ll give it at least another half hour.”
I heard a familiar clopping sound as I turned back to the window. There was a large group of horsemen coming down High Street in a long column of twos. They turned, and headed into the park area. The riders had military uniforms on, sort of a drab green, and some of them had yellow reflective vests on. It finally dawned on me that it was Horse Guards. It had to be. Taking their horses for exercise. I thought that was pretty cool, and thought to grab my camera just after they were out of sight.
It was about 6:45 when I called Jane and Vicky. They were just up, and getting ready to come in our way for class. I told them Carson and I would do our thing with the London police, and that we’d try to keep busy. We were to meet them at about 4:30 up in Highgate for supper.
Carson and I went downstairs and ate breakfast in the hotel. Just as I was leaning back, pleasantly full, sipping a good cup of coffee, and wondering if I’d be able to go back upstairs and catch an hour’s sleep or so, this woman came in to the dining room, looked around, and homed in on us like she was radar guided.
“Pardon me, but you’re Americans, aren’t you?” Her voice told me she sure wasn’t. Very English.
She was in the American tourist uniform of blue jeans and tennis shoes just like we were, so I’m not exactly sure how she knew it was us. Later, I got the impression we’d been fingered by the concierge, but I never did find out.
“Yes, we are,” I said.
“My name is Sarah Mitchell. Would you be here regarding the missing American girl?”
Nothing like getting right to the point, I thought, so I said, “Yeah. And you need to know that for . . . what reason?”
“I’m a correspondent for the National Sun Express,” she said. She seemed to think we were familiar with that paper, and I didn’t discourage her.
“Okay . . . and . . .”
“I’d like to interview you.”
“We don’t have a thing to say,” I said.
“Why don’t we just talk a moment,” she said, sitting at the table. “I may have some information you should have.”
I was curious. I was also my normal urbane self. “Uh . . . well, you want like . . . some coffee or something?” I was pretty budget conscious, too. I didn’t want to offer breakfast.
She took the coffee offer. While she got out her PDA, I looked her over pretty closely. I guessed she was in her mid-thirties, or thereabouts. Pretty. Very close cropped brown hair. Long neck, long fingers. Nice sweater, medium brown. Although we were seated, I’d guessed her height at about five ten or so, when she walked over to the table.
“I understand you’re a police officer in the US?”
I wondered who she’d been talking to. I had enough experience with the press in the US to know that denying that would only cause problems. Besides, she’d already said that she ‘understood.’
“Yep.”
“Bring your shootin’ iron?”
I looked pointedly at her chest. “Are those real?”
I thought she might leave then, but instead she smiled brightly. “Point taken. Neither of us will dignify those questions with an answer, then.”
“Okay. But, for the record, no I didn’t. And we call them service weapons, when we refer to them. Not ‘shootin’ irons.’ Do you have some sort of identification, or credential?”
I glanced at Carson, and he was still looking at her chest. He glanced at me, and shook his head very slightly.
She reached in her back pocket, and produced what looked like a credential, along with a business card. She gave me the card.
“How about yourself?”
I pulled out my badge case, and opened it. “All I got. . . .”
“Oh, that’s a pretty one,” she said, leaning a little toward Carson. “And are you an American cop, too, then?”
“I’m an attorney,” he said.
“My,” she said. “I don’t suppose an attorney has a fancy star, does he? Well, then. Could I have your full names?”
“You said you had information you thought we should know,” I said. “Let’s go there first.”
She sat back a little. “You knew that . . . Emma . . . was seeing a young man up in Highgate?”
“Yes.” She looked a little disappointed at that.
“You work quickly,” she said. “Then you also knew she was seeing one of her professors?”
“Sort of.” In fact, I had not known that. Interesting.
“Do you know that he’s an activist in a pro-Islamist cause?”
That ensured my cooperation. “No idea,” I said.
“Well,” she said, satisfied, “he is that. Does petitions and marches and things to get some terrorist blokes released from Belmarsh. Interesting, no? He has at least the same focus as the group that nabbed Emma. I can give you more, but I’ll need an interview in exchange.”
“Why don’t you go to the police with this?”
“They and I have . . . oh, let’s just call it an adversarial relationship.” She smiled. “Besides, I’m sure that the boys and girls in Special Branch are way ahead of me.”
I thought I could understand why. As she had been talking to me, there had been a man at a table across the dining room, trying his best to be subtle about working a small camera he kept pointed in our direction.
I nodded toward him. “He with you?”
She turned, as if there had been more than one. “Him? Yes,” she said, turning back. “That’s Bobby. We’ve been doing stories together off and on for years.”
“Back home,” I said, “the press usually asks before they take . . . candid shots.”
“That’s quaint,” she said. “You’re from the heartland, aren’t you?”
“Yep.”
“I’m sure it’s a very nice place, but it’s likely not what you’d call cosmopolitan, is it? The press here are somewhat different.”
“Got it. Anyway, thanks for the information. Got any more good stuff?”
“Not until after I get an interview.” She smiled.
Although I was certain her demeanor was just part of her job, I smiled back. She was an unexpected bright spot on a very bleak day.
“What do you want to know?”
She leaned forward. “Let’s start off with why you’re here. . . .”
This time, wisely, I left out the politics with Lamar. I just said that he was concerned, and wanted to have someone over here to be of any assistance to the Metropolitan Police. She bought that right away, and I decided to leave the political part of the explanation out from then on. It sure made it a lot easier.
“Now,” she said, “intrepid investigative reporter that I am, I noticed that your last name is the same as one of Emma Schiller’s roommates. What’s that connection?”
“Jane Houseman’s his daughter.” Carson picks the damnedest times to contribute.
“Really? How remarkable. I mean, I’m sure it’s a coincidence, after all?” She had kind of a twinkle in her eye when she said that.
“It just happened that way,” I said. “It’s a rural county, small population. We bump into relatives all the time.” That sounded a little lame, even to me. Even though it was true.
She transitioned smoothly to Carson. “And you? Do you think your partner here needs legal council? Or that, maybe, one of the girls might?”
“No,” he said. “I’m just concerned for the same reason that Carl’s boss is.” That was true, but without knowing the local politics of the thing, it sounded pretty lame, too.
We gave her a fairly good interview. We made absolutely no mention about Emma’s death, or even the fact that we’d been talking to any authorities except the courtesy call from New Scotland Yard. I made sure to mention that we were very impressed with their efforts. We also went into the number of people in Nation County that were greatly concerned about Emma, and made it very clear that we had not known anything about her being held hostage until after we arrived in the UK.
The whole business ate up a good hour. About halfway through, I motioned to her photographer, and he joined us at our table. He seemed sincere, but not terribly interested in the case itself. We paid for his tea.
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