“I’m off in a couple of days, mate,” said Anton. “Unless Marwan himself comes down and tells us different.”
“I hope it’s him and not Mr. Kazan,” said Hamza, as the rush of air began again, and the conversation was halted for the time being. Alone with his thoughts, Hamza was again combating a tinge of claustrophobia. He kept telling himself that there was another way out, the old spiral stair to the surface. It was at about the midpoint of the station, about two hundred feet away. But, he thought to himself, it was still clearly marked. The “Way Out” sign was done in the cream with maroon trimmed station tiles.
As the noise subsided a little, Hamza said, “How far down do you think we are?”
“Probably not more than fifty feet,” said Anton. “Why? Getting all nervous again, are we?”
“No,” Hamza said, lamely. “Just thinking about . . . oh, fire?”
The rushing sound started up again. It was a peak hour for the Piccadilly line. He comforted himself with the knowledge that it would become less frequent, and stop at midnight. At least their sleep wouldn’t be interrupted. Hamza had never felt lonelier in his life. What was even more disagreeable, he hadn’t thought it was possible to miss Pamela so much. Could he possibly get her down here?
Highgate
18:30 hours
Zizzi, it turned out, was just behind the Gatehouse. That was convenient. Alice was on her cell phone as soon as we got inside the place, and while she was distracted, Jane asked, “Who is she, really? A watchdog, or do Vicky and I need security?”
“She wants some information,” I said. “Security is already being taken care of.”
“What? Taken care of? How?”
“When we leave,” I said, “remind me to point out the two cops who’ve been with you all day.”
“What? Nobody said anything to us . . . I’m not sure I like being watched, Dad.”
“They aren’t watching you,” I said. I know Jane pretty well. “They’re watching for nasty people who might be watching you.”
She gave me that one, mainly, I think, because she was just a little more frightened than offended. But it was probably pretty close.
“Did she arrange for it?” asked Jane, indicating Alice who was still on her cell phone a few feet away.
“I don’t know. Maybe. I’d say that it was her, or her boss.”
“Jeez, Dad, she’s not any older than Carson,” whispered Jane.
“True,” I said. “But I think she really knows her stuff.”
We got our menus, and I took the chance to glance around the place. Nice, very clean, very modern, with a quiet atmosphere. It was the sort of place I could really enjoy. And it had a skylight. That just about made my day.
We all ordered Calzone, of various sorts. I figured that, at home, it’d require me to walk an extra two miles or so to burn off the calories. Since here in London I was already walking five times as much as I usually did, my calculations said I was ahead of the game, so I could pretty much eat what I wanted. That’s my kind of math.
“What’s it worth if I don’t tell Mom?”
“Any DVD you want for Christmas. But it’s gotta hold for all the rest of the time I’m here.”
Jane thought a second. “Okay . . . how about Lord of the Rings 2.”
“Done.”
“The director’s cut, Dad. The extra scenes, and the background stuff and the interviews. Widescreen.”
What the hell. I figured I’d get to borrow it, anyway.
The Calzone was fantastic. As we ordered coffee, Alice said, “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve asked someone to join us for dessert.”
Given that that meant we were going to have dessert, I was overjoyed. “Fine with me.”
“A word as to why,” she said, “before she arrives. It’s Sarah Mitchell, I’m afraid.”
“What?” Jane’s blood pressure was starting to go up again.
“Just allow me,” said Alice. “I’ve not told her who I am. As far as she knows I’m your solicitor, who has advised you to talk with her. What I told her was that I’m representing your interests, but I’m convinced she drew the proper wrong conclusion.” She was very intense. “I’m not able to go into all the details, but I want to know everything she knows about this Professor Northwood, and just how she found all that out.”
There was silence.
“Good. Now, just be yourselves,” she said, and very quietly reached over and took Jane’s table knife. “Just to be on the safe side,” she said, sweetly. “That’s the good girl.” She handed them back right away, but it broke the tension.
“Why do you have to know this?” asked Vicky.
“If you’d read the article from my point of view,” said Alice, “you’d see that she has come upon information . . .” She was interrupted by the appearance of Sarah Mitchell in the entryway. Alice stood. “Over here,” she said, waiving. “Over here.” Although she’d done nothing I could see, her demeanor had changed from extremely self-assured to just slightly over-demonstrative driven by uncertainty. In other words, a young attorney who was just a little wet behind the ears. I was very impressed.
It was pretty obvious that Sarah Mitchell wasn’t. The first thing she said after saying a greeting to all of us that somehow managed to exclude Alice, was: “I hope this is important. I do have another interview yet tonight.”
“I’m sure we won’t keep you long,” said Alice.
“I’m afraid my editor got to the headlines of that article,” said Sarah Mitchell, indicating the rolled up edition that Jane had on the table beside her. “He does that.”
“Sure,” said Jane. The way she said it, I nearly reached over and took her silverware myself, although I suspected she’d be able to make do with her bare hands if it came to that.
“I just need to know a few things, so I may advise these people properly,” interjected Alice.
“You don’t get that from me, ducks,” said Mitchell. She looked at Alice closely. “Are you certain you’ve been admitted to practice yet? You seem somewhat younger that I’d have thought.”
“Why, thank you so much,” said Alice. “Now, then, so long as we’re all here, I think you should know that they wish to cooperate fully with you, in getting to the bottom of this matter.”
That surprised Mitchell. She wasn’t alone.
Alice continued in that vein, explaining that we were having some difficulty with the authorities sharing data with us, and that we had information that we, as a consequence, were not sharing with them.
The hook, so to speak, was in.
“Well, you’ll have to give me some idea . . .” said Sarah Mitchell. “I’d need something rather special. . . .”
Something special enough to let her break somebody else’s confidence. I got that, so I thought I’d serve up a good one. “Okay. There was a terrorism incident back in Nation County, oh, about a year ago. All we want to know is whether or not these are the same people, or affiliated with them or . . . well you know.” I shrugged.
“Really? What kind of incident? I need something of interest over here.”
Jane got back into it at that point. “Dad was just about killed, and another officer was shot,” said Jane. “A chemical thing at a meat plant, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said.
“We can’t divulge everything,” said Carson. “But I can have the proper form faxed over, and if you’ll sign, we can show you the stuff that isn’t covered by National Security.”
My respect for Carson went up again. He sounded like a US Attorney.
“Chemicals?”
I leaned forward. “Ricin,” I said.
Her eyes widened. “Truly? That’s fascinating, but it hardly gets us over here to my readership.”
“It will, trust me. All I need,” I said, “is some names associated with this Northwood dude. I have some access, and I can run ’em by the names I already have.” I gave her a knowing look. “The Feds had to let us have the names of all the dead. And
those that got killed in Nation County, especially. We already had the connections with particular groups identified. We can do some group stuff, too.”
“You sure about that?” asked Carson. He was looking directly at me.
“Yep. FARC especially, but the al-Qaeda connection was made right in front of us, so . . . yeah.” If you talk among yourselves in the presence of an interested party, you add a huge layer of ‘authenticity’ to a deception.
“Truly? With a connection to over here?” Sarah Mitchell was leaning well foreword, elbows on the table.
I looked back at her, and included her that way. “Oh, yes. But, you know, this organization you say he hangs around with? This . . .” I reached back, took out my notebook, and read the name aloud. “This . . . London Reform Movement for the Freedom of Khaled al Fawwaz and Ibrahim Eidarous and Lions of the Front for Jihad in Britain . . .”
“Yes?”
“That’s just way too clumsy to be real. You can’t even do a decent acronym . . . listen . . . LRMFKFIELFJB. A name on everyone’s lips. You got any idea who they really are?”
“Not a clue,” said Sarah Mitchell.
“That’s valuable,” I said. “And in exchange for that you want something from us?”
“What he means,” said Alice, “is that . . .”
“I know what he wants. He is a cop. I did connect them. It was easy.”
“Really?” asked Jane.
“All I did,” interrupted Sarah Mitchell, “was go to his website. I’d already been to the website of London Reform Movement for the Freedom of Khaled al Fawwaz and Ibrahim Eidarous and Lions of the Front for Jihad in Britain.” She ran through the name smoothly, having committed it to memory. Unlike me. She leaned back. “I sent an email to the website, and he fucking answered it from his university computer address. He’s the bloody chairman.”
“No shit?” came from Jane. She beat me by a tenth of a second.
“Oh, indeed,” said Sarah Mitchell. “You’d think the coppers could find out something that simple, right?”
I glanced at Alice, and she winked. Apparently they had.
“I’d sure think so,” I said.
“Well, don’t count on it. I haven’t identified this Imad fellow just yet,” said Sarah Mitchell. “He’s second in command or something. Imad is probably a code name, just like your Robert Northwood goes by the code name of Marwan. You might want to run that one by your files.”
I wrote that one down. “Good . . .”
“There’s a female member,” said Sarah Mitchell. “Secretary. She rejoices in the code name of Ayat, but I believe her true name could be Hanadi.”
Alice’s eyes widened just a bit. Whether she hadn’t known, or hadn’t thought that Sarah Mitchell was able to get that far, I didn’t know.
“Now, before I give you any more,” said our intrepid reporter, “why don’t you give me something worthwhile from those files you have. Like a name?”
“Skripkin,” I said. “Yevgenny Skripkin. Lived in Lambeth. Was a member of The People’s Freedom and Reform Movement.”
Her brow furrowed. “I remember that. . . . I do, I remember that!”
Alice looked positively aghast. I decided not to do any more names tonight.
“He’s one,” I said. “Enough for tonight?”
“This is a London connection. A bona-fide London connection. You cosmopolitan devil, you,” said Sarah Mitchell. A look of considerable satisfaction came over her face. “Absolutely no one will have this. . . .”
“That’s true,” I said. Skripkin, really, was an idiot who hung around with a variety of people, and who had absolutely no intrinsic value himself. Well, as far as I knew, anyway.
“What do you say you work on the connection that Professor Northwood has with the tube system?” she said. “My sources tell me that he does.”
As far as I knew, her source on that one was probably his website. When you hand out BS at the rate we were doing, you get to recognize it pretty fast, too.
“That’s not much of a connection,” said Jane, suddenly. “He even offers to take little tours on Saturdays. If he likes you. Claims he’s writing this book about it. The tubes. A history, he says. The three of us went with him to an old tube station once . . . just a second. . . .” And she took out her copy of London A to Zed. She leafed through it for a second. “It’s near Piccadilly.”
“It was probably their first date, you know?” said Vicky.
Jane looked up. “Yeah. I think it was. Emma wanted a little company. He really didn’t expect us, I think.” She smiled to herself, not looking up. “But Emma was the one he asked. She asked us to come along.” She looked at her guide again. “It’s right near Buckingham Palace . . .”
“A tour to Hyde Park Corner Tube Station?” Sarah Mitchell looked skeptical.
“No, no. Near there. It’s abandoned. There are lots of them . . .” said Jane, without looking up from the guide. “Down Street. It’s Down Street.”
“Never heard of it,” said Sarah Mitchell.
“Well, it’s there,” said Jane. “Old, red building. Little shop in half of it.” She pointed at the place, and showed the map to the reporter. “Right here. . . .”
“Well, let me check with my editor, then. I should see him tomorrow. When do you think you might have those files? I need to see at least part of them, to verify that they’re real.”
“I sure hope tomorrow or the next day,” I said. “Depends on how they’re sent.”
“Let me know as soon as you have them. We’ll talk more, then.”
As soon as she’d left, Alice let out a long sigh. “Well, that was a cock up on my part. I’d expected to be the one who did most of the talking.”
“We did all right, though, didn’t we?” I thought we had.
“Oh, you were all brilliant,” said Alice. “Please, please don’t promise any more names.”
“Skripkin’s a nobody,” I said.
“I assume you’re right,” she said. “But let’s vet the names before we share them, could we?”
“Sure.” I wasn’t worried. In fact, it had been sort of enjoyable to play with Sarah Mitchell’s head that way, not to mention Alice’s, and I found my mood elevated higher than it had been since we’d arrived in London.
“And, Jane,” said Alice, “with anyone else but us, could you not remember the name of the old tube station? Vague is the key, now.”
“Sure.”
“But I think it went rather well,” she said. “I believe she’d been misdirected.”
“Oh, boy,” said Jane. “You know, I’m really encouraged. Really. I think we really have a chance of finding Emma. I really do.”
My mood fell abruptly. I’d almost forgotten that Emma was dead.
We all went back to the girls’ flat after supper. The girls invited Alice, who declined. I think both Jane and Vicky were ready to like her.
We discussed some non-Emma things, like movies and books and television programs for a while. Nobody else remembered The Prisoner, and only Jane had ever seen an episode of The Avengers, so I listened a lot.
Eventually, the conversation got back around to Emma and the hostage business.
“Does anybody have an idea where she might be being held?” asked Jane.
I couldn’t very say ‘the morgue,’ so I just shrugged. “It’s impossible to tell from the tape,” I said. “But I think it’s a fair assumption that it was done in the UK. Logistically, you know? It would just be the simplest thing to do. I don’t think there’s any way that they could reliably smuggle somebody out of the country. Not fast, anyway.”
“I don’t know,” said Vicky. “I saw this thing on TV once, a rich guy smuggled this girl on his plane . . . said she was sick.”
“TV,” I said. “They do that.”
“Besides,” said Jane, “why take her out of the country?”
“Why not?” said Carson.
We narrowed it down, eventually, to what I’d said at first. Simples
t way.
“So,” said Jane, “since that’s at least a possibility, and since Professor Northwood hangs around abandoned tube stations . . . why don’t we check there? They could be holding her there, couldn’t they?”
I shook my head. “If I remember that tape, it looked an awful lot like she was in a room . . .”
“A set,” said Jane. “Any theater major could do it.”
What could I say to that? “Okay . . .” would have to do.
“Terrorists tend to do things in the least complicated way they can,” said Carson. “Like your dad says. Cheaper, easier, and less chance of a mistake. They don’t like unnecessary complexity.”
“I suppose you’re right,” said Jane. I knew her well enough to know she wasn’t anywhere near done with that train of thought.
“We don’t have class tomorrow afternoon,” said Vicky. “I don’t know about you,” she said, addressing Jane, “but I could cut my morning class, no problem. I feel the same way you do. There could be a connection. We really should check it out.”
“You two,” I said to Vicky, “are entirely too much alike.”
“Well, Dad? You guys want to go, too?” Just the way it was said, I knew Jane was going.
“Why don’t we just call the cops and ask them to do it?” I was being as reasonable as I could, I thought. All it earned me was dirty looks from Vicky and Jane.
“Look, okay, let me call ’em tomorrow, and just see what they say? And if they show no interest at all, then I’ll ask if we can go there. Okay?”
They really needed to do something. I knew that. I personally didn’t think it would do a bit of good to go rummaging around in some musty old tube station. I also thought that, if it could be arranged, it would be good for the girls to do that. Accompanied, of course. But any way you cut it, I knew they weren’t going to find Emma and her kidnappers down there. They’d be about as safe as they could get.
Chapter 16
Thursday, November 13, 2003
Hanadi’s flat, Brewery Square
21:54 Greenwich Mean Time
Hanadi was faced with a dilemma. She was extremely reluctant to call Marwan, since she had been told he’d actually ordered the death of the hostage. She feared for Hamza and Anton, for one thing. If Marwan had changed so much, what else had happened? For another, she certainly did not want to have the police discover she had been the one to call him to tell him that Emma was dead. That would be tantamount to signing her life away into prison, and for absolutely no purpose. Calling the police would have been the very best action she could take, without a doubt. Unfortunately for her, that also meant that she would have to inform on Marwan, Imad, and the rest. She was not about to do that. If she were to discover that she had been deliberately lied to by Marwan and Imad, then, perhaps, she would do so. But not now.
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