“Of course. It’s an injustice, an illegal war, an . . .”
“Put a sock in it,” I said.
“The truth is hard to hear.”
“Then wait until you hear about your friends,” I said. “But don’t waste your best excuse on me. Tell it to the courts. Maybe they’ll buy it.” I gave him what I thought was an insincere smile. “The Devil Bush made me kill her. I mean, it’s pretty weak, but it’s probably the best shot you’ve got.”
Alice came back into the room. “A woman has entered the building seems to be on her way to this floor.”
Northwood nodded. “As you said, Hanadi.” He stared at Alice. “She may well end up representing me. I contacted her and told her that I would be more comfortable with her here.”
“When did you do that?” Alice’s brow was furrowed.
“When I thought this was a sincere interview,” he said.
“What time was that?” asked Alice, knowing he wasn’t supposed to be able to get anybody on his phone.
“I don’t know . . . if you think it’s important . . . I tried to call her when I got home, her line was busy . . . I went downstairs to Mrs. McGonagall’s apartment to pick up my mail, we talked . . . and I called her from there. That would have been ten or so. You should know that, you’ve got my phone tapped. . . .” Then his face lit up. “I see. I see. You don’t have Mrs. McGonagall’s phone on your warrant, do you?”
Apparently London and Iowa had more in common than I would have thought.
“You will meet her at the door, and let her in,” said Alice. “You will not attempt to dissuade her from entering. You will not attempt to tell her anything before I’ve identified myself to her. Do you understand?”
“Of course,” he said. “You have my willing cooperation.” When he said that, he looked over at Sarah Mitchell, to make sure she had that.
I was wondering just when we’d be getting rid of Sarah Mitchell, anyway. She had to have enough of a story by now, and things were going to get to the level of naming names pretty soon. I was sure Alice didn’t want her to be around then.
“You and I,” said Alice to Northwood, “will answer the door. I’ll be over here. I can catch you before you go five paces. Carl, you and Ms. Mitchell stand in the kitchen, please. I want our guest in the room before she knows we’re here.”
We started to move the way we were told, although Sarah Mitchell was tending to hang back a little.
“After she is inside,” said Alice, “I’m afraid you’ll have to leave, Sarah. That’s official, by the way.”
“An order?” asked Sarah Mitchell.
“Indeed,” said Alice.
Robert Northwood was still standing on the edge of denial. “You’re really MI5?” He looked at Alice.
“Really, truly, and in every way, Mr. Northwood,” she said. “Now come and answer the door. Nothing tricky. There are officers behind the building, and others across and in the street. Your cooperation will be duly noted.”
“Yes,” he said.
Sarah Mitchell was scribbling everything down. “Brilliant, just brilliant,” she said, under her breath. It probably was something of an unanticipated scoop. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and speed dialed.
“Robbie?”
Whoever that was apparently answered.
“Get to the street, and get everything. There ought to be cops all over in a moment. I’m with MI5 up here. Yes, really. Get shots of the flat from the street. Hurry! Hurry!”
Alice hadn’t mentioned Sarah Mitchell not making phone calls, and I really didn’t see anything wrong with it. After all, we’d promised her a scoop of sorts, and it was turning out to be bigger than she could have dreamed.
There was a knock at the door, and Alice’s cell phone rang at the same instant.
“Who’s there?” asked Northwood, as if it were necessary. There was a soft response, and it sounded female, but I couldn’t make out what she said.
“Yes,” he said, and started to open the door.
At that point, Sarah Mitchell, I suppose to make sure she could be seen from the street in the photographs her partner was taking, began to move toward the windows. I don’t know if the woman at the door saw her move or not.
“Welcome, Hanadi,” said Robert Northwood. In the window, I saw a woman’s reflection. She was fairly small, was in a dark grey raincoat, with a light grey scarf wrapped like Muslim women do, over her head. I watched her reflection as she looked at him, and saw her lower her head.
The blast blew him straight out onto the street three floors below. I know it did. I saw him go. It was the damndest thing.
Chapter 26
Ashburnham Road, London
23:22 Greenwich Mean Time
I sort of got my senses back, and pushed myself up out of the broken glass and pottery on the kitchen floor. There was thick plaster dust hanging in the air, and it made it really hard to see. I was disoriented anyway, and there was an enormous ringing in my ears. The living room lights weren’t so much broken as they were gone. Most of the light was from the streetlight outside.
Half the wall where the door was mounted was just not there anymore. The door itself was stuck in the library wall, where it had apparently been blasted through the room. Alice was lying on the floor very near the entryway. She was on her left side, so she was facing me. She was covered with plaster dust, and some blood, and wasn’t moving at all.
Through the plaster fog, I made out Sarah Mitchell, who’d been on her way to the window, laying near the far wall, very near to where the windows had been. She wasn’t moving at all, either. There was no glass whatsoever remaining in the windows, nor any of the framing, and the cold, wet air was flowing in from the street.
I hadn’t heard a thing in the way of an explosion. I mean, I must have heard something, but it must have just overwhelmed my senses. I sure as hell couldn’t hear anything but a high-pitched ring now.
As far as I could tell the woman at the door had completely disappeared, but from the reddish and pink paste on the ceiling and what was left of the walls, I had a pretty good idea of where she’d gone. As I walked over debris toward Alice, I noticed in a sort of distant way that I could look right through where the wall had been, and see that the third floor landing had been pretty much destroyed, as well.
There was an acrid smell, and some hazy smoke mixed in with the plaster dust, but nothing seemed to be actually burning. I found that I didn’t really care if there was a fire or not. I was just numb.
I got over to Alice as fast as I could, and nearly fell on her. I had reached my hand out to steady myself as I approached, and the plaster had given way and my arm went into the wall space. When I got my balance back, and knelt down, she seemed to be breathing all right, but there was no response to my saying her name.
“Well, you dumb shit,” I said to myself, “she probably can’t hear, either.”
I reached down, and gently shook her shoulder. Her eyes flew open, but she didn’t move. Idiotically, I grinned and waived my hand at her.
I became aware of some movement at the door, or where the door had been, and saw Mark and two men I didn’t know trying to negotiate the ruined landing without falling through. They were only a few feet from me, but there was no way they were going to be able to cross that gap.
“Get an ambulance,” I said. I saw their lips move, but couldn’t hear a thing. “Alice . . . she needs an ambulance,” I said again.
Mark picked up on my hearing problem right away, and nodded vigorously as he mouthed “OK.”
While they dealt with whatever they had to do, I went over to where Sarah Mitchell was. She was moving, and was trying to sit up.
“Try not to move,” I said, loudly.
She looked up and said something.
“What?”
I watched her lips very closely. It looked like she said, “Don’t shout.”
I concluded her hearing hadn’t been as effected as mine.
I thought I’d s
it down, but what little furniture was left in the room was either all busted up or upside down. I settled for leaning up against the wall.
Mark caught my attention by waving his hands. Somehow, he’d made it into the room despite the wreck of the third floor landing. I looked back over that way, and saw Alice sitting up. He mouthed and exaggerated “Don’t move . . . I will check you . . .”
“How is she?” I asked.
Alice turned her head toward me, and looked bewildered. I suspected she couldn’t hear, either. As I watched, she gently lay back down, and put her hands to her head.
“I’m fine,” I said to Mark, trying not to shout in his face. “Just deaf.” I put my hands to my ears, pressed, and pulled them away. No blood. “Temporary, maybe,” I said. “Ringing. Can’t hear over it.” I think I must have been talking really loudly, as he stepped back and put his hands over his ears. “Sit down,” he mouthed, and started kicking debris out of the way. “Here . . .” He stood one of the overturned chairs back to an upright position, right over by Alice. It looked pretty solid.
I sat. Very slowly and very carefully. Everything seemed to work all right, and there wasn’t any pain. There was so much plaster dust, I couldn’t even tell what color most of the room was. That, and the yellowish light from the street that was flooding into the living room, gave it all an unreal, movie set look. The library, with the lights still on, looked like it was in another, untouched world.
Mark was over by Sarah Mitchell, who was still struggling to sit up. She had a dazed, kind of stupid look that I think we all probably had about that time. She seemed to be saying something, but it was kind of hard to tell because I couldn’t hear.
My gaze wandered a little, and I kind of stopped paying attention and started thinking of really weird things. I suddenly became very much aware of a burglary report I’d left on my desk back in Iowa. Unfinished. I could remember every detail of the pre-printed form, every box.
Then I started thinking of our local meat market. Weird. I sort of shook my head to clear it, and found myself looking at a hunk of meat. I focused, and it really was. The hips and one leg of somebody. I glanced hurriedly at Alice. She seemed intact. I remember saying, “Huh,” to myself.
I looked back down at Alice. She looked pretty small, lying on the floor like that. I could see her breathing, but she kept moving her hands over her face and head. At about that point, I realized that my face was starting to tingle like crazy. It felt sort of like your foot does when it goes to sleep when you sit for too long. It was a strange feeling.
I felt absolutely useless, but knew enough not to move around. Mark had a tough enough job, and I realized somewhere in the back of my mind that blast victims don’t always feel pain if they have severe internal damage. So I sat. I noticed that my sport coat, although pretty well intact, was absolutely light grey with all the dust. It was my only sport coat, and I figured it was probably ruined. Sue was gonna be pissed.
After that, things just got less and less important, and I don’t remember a whole lot.
Chapter 27
Friday, November 21, 2004
Ashburnam Road, London
00:57 Greenwich Mean Time
Blyth stood in the street, gazing up at the curtains blowing through the empty windows on the third floor. There was glass and other debris all over the street, and the body of an unidentified male was under a rubberized yellow blanket. He assumed, based upon what he’d been told, that it was Robert Northwood, but he’d had a look and there was no way to tell at this point. The face bore a great similarity to an eggplant that had been stepped upon by a rather large horse.
The Emergency Services were using a scissors platform lift to remove the survivors, and he watched as the last one was being lowered toward a waiting ambulance. He’d been told that it was Alice, that she appeared to be in fairly good condition but quite dazed, and that she was conscious. He’d seen Sarah Mitchell and Deputy Houseman lifted down and placed in ambulances, and had managed to talk briefly with the American. He’d seemed fine, although thoroughly covered with plaster dust, and quite unable to hear.
He’d asked Houseman what had happened, in an attempt to confirm what Mark had told him.
“Lady came to the door,” the American Deputy Sheriff had said, making an obvious effort to concentrate and speak in a normal tone of voice. “Smallish. Scarf on her head. I think it was her. Who blew up. If I’m too loud, it’s because I can’t hear much at all.”
That confirmed what Mark had indicated.
The scissors lift stopped about twenty feet in the air, while someone adjusted something. Then it continued its descent.
Alice, on a stretcher, was off-loaded, saw him, and managed a wave.
He walked quickly over to her. “You look a sight,” he said, speaking slowly.
She smiled. “I’m fine,” she said. “Really.” Her voice sounded weak to him. “Can’t hear much over the ringing. My face itches.”
“I’ll see you at the hospital.” He watched them load her in the ambulance, and then turned around and collared Henry Morris, who was in charge of the post-blast assessment team.
“As soon as humanly possible, Henry,” he said.
Henry Morris had been up to the scene, having crossed an aluminum plank that had been placed over the hole in the third floor landing. He’d returned via the same route, and had been waiting for the scissors lift to finish with the victims before commandeering it to take himself, his team, and their kit to the flat.
“Indeed. It looks quite a lot like a suicide bomber. Do you have a suspect, Adrian?”
“Female, possibly named Hanadi.”
“Any DNA samples available? We have what appears to be a human head stuck through the ceiling plaster, some fifteen feet into the room. And part of a hip girdle on the floor. Other, smaller pieces are bound to turn up. A DNA sample would be good.”
Blyth knew that suicide bombers, especially those wearing a harness of explosives around their body, had a tendency to have their heads shot straight into the air. Explosives acted three dimensionally, with as much force going inwards as out. The enormous, concentrated pressure of the blast waves from all sides meeting in the middle simply blew heads straight up. If the explosion was outside, they would be found a goodly distance from the scene. If inside, the ceiling usually stopped the head, although in less substantial structures, they had been known to be thrust into the spaces beneath the roof. Being intercepted by the ceiling certainly made them easier to locate, but it had the unfortunate side effect of making them much less recognizable.
“Special Branch are in the process of obtaining a warrant for her flat,” said Blyth. “Hopefully, there will be something there.”
“Good.” Morris looked at the yellow blanket in the street. “The bomber seems to have gone off just at the door frame of the flat, really. Possibly outside the door, in fact. Quite a chunk out of the walls. All things being equal, I’d tend to believe that the chap under the blanket was right at the door, himself.” He glanced up at the vacant window casings. “Assuming he’s in the neighborhood of seventy kilograms . . . umm. Any idea what sort of explosive, Adrian?”
“You might start with Semtex,” said Blyth. “Just a guess.”
“Right. Then, I’d say several kilograms of the stuff.” He looked wryly at Blyth. “Just a guess.”
“Is that in keeping with female suicide bombers?”
“It would have to be, now, wouldn’t it?” He smiled at Blyth. The two of them had known each other for many years. “Females tend to carry ten to fifteen kilos, really. Males tend to carry almost twice that. That’s trends, only, you understand.”
“Certainly. I’ve never quite understood why someone would do that.”
Morris nodded in agreement. “Suicide bombers are psychologically difficult to predict . . . they’re such a volatile lot.”
Blyth looked at him with considerable disdain. “No humor, please. Continue.”
“Yes. Shame, though, I do ha
ve more. Indeed. Well, then, according to my Israeli friends, those are typical weights. But forty kilograms would have taken out the facing wall, the roof, the rear wall, the flooring and . . . well, and generally made much more of a mess. Actually,” he said, “if this one had gotten all the way inside, and had the foresight to close the bloody door, Adrian, we wouldn’t be able to talk to any survivors.”
“Really?”
“Indeed. I had a chance to talk to your Alice up there. She’s quite dazed, but the paramedics can find no serious damage so far. Alice said that both she and the big American were partially shielded by the door as it was opened. Well,” he corrected himself, “she actually said that the bomber was not seen because she was behind the door. The American was to her left. It opened inward, and to the left. From the hinge. Solid core. And a good thing.”
“It’s something to remember,” said Blyth. “How close we come.”
“The other woman, the first one down? She seems to have been thrown about. The medics thought she was the worst injured.” He looked up at Blyth. “One of yours, too?”
“Not really,” said Blyth.
“Ah. Well, then. One of them?”
“Not really that, either,” said Blyth. “More of a neutral party.”
“And the apparent innocent member of the public on the landing below,” said Morris. “Quite a chunk of ceiling hit him.”
“Who?”
“The chap on the stair. Looks to have been just at the landing, when the device detonated. Never knew what was happening, I’d guess.”
“Do we know who he is?” asked Blyth.
“The constables are attending to that. He’s on his way to hospital.”
Guy’s and St. Thomas’s Hospital Complex
Central London
01:50
The doctor working on Sarah Mitchell ran beside her gurney toward surgery. He had ordered immediate X-rays as soon as the paramedic on her case told him she’d been in an explosion. Sarah Mitchell was talking, and seemed unusually calm. She complained of slight nausea, and a great lassitude. That was what worried him. She seemed to be shutting down as they talked.
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