Terror Illusion

by James R Conway

By the time Jonathan woke up in his bedroom at the St. Katharines apartment next morning, the apartment was quiet. Jonathan looked at the clock on the bedside table: 09:45. He threw on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt and walked out to the kitchen. On the counter was a note from Mac:

  Good morning, Jonathan! We thought you would benefit from a lie-in this morning after your adventures last night. We are all over at Roger’s office this morning, working out what our next steps will be. Come over anytime you are ready.

  Jonathan prepared a fresh pot of coffee and while it was brewing, he quickly got shaved and showered and dressed in fresh jeans and a clean shirt. He prepared himself a couple of slices of buttered toast for breakfast and within half an hour he was putting on his overcoat and on his way out of the apartment.

  He followed the same route that he and Karen had taken yesterday and he caught the tube to Westminster then he walked to the Horseferry Road building where Roger’s office was located. He took the lift to the third floor and walked down the corridor to Roger’s office. He used his new key card to open the door and went in.

  Mary was sitting in the outer office. The door to the inner office was closed.

  “Good morning, Jonathan,” said Mary. “Go on through, they’re all in there waiting for you.”

  Jonathan opened the door to the inner office. Roger, Karen and Mac were sitting at the conference table.

  “Hello, Jonathan,” said Mac. “Grab yourself a cup of coffee from Mary and come and join us.”

  Jonathan turned to go back to the outer office to get his coffee but before he could take a step, he was greeted by Mary, who was carrying a steaming mug of coffee on a tray. “I’ll bring it over to the table,” she said.

  Jonathan sat down at the spare seat between Karen and Mac. Mary placed the coffee in front of him and she withdrew to the outer office.

  “Using our face recognition technology, we’ve finally tracked down Sean Donnelly to a house in Willesden,” said Mac. “It took a lot of processing time. We did a search of CCTV pictures for the last month and we found a cluster of hits around Willesden. Then we narrowed down to his street and we have a pretty good idea what house number he is in. We don’t have a camera actually looking at the house but there’s one at the end of the street. There’s a car parked in the street outside the house, which we think, is his and we have got the registration for that.

  “Is the car registered to him?” Jonathan asked.

  “No, it’s registered in another name but at the same address,” said Mac. “He probably registered it in a false name. It’s very easy to do that.”

  “So what is our next move?” said Karen.

  “It’s my suspicion,” said Mac, “that Sean is going to build a bomb and explode it somewhere near a railway line or bridge. I think the intention is to cause infrastructure damage but not to kill people. That means he will probably hit track or signalling or possibly tunnels. I think, of all the targets, tunnels provide the best return on investment for him. A damaged tunnel would take months to repair.”

  “Do we have any idea when he might move on this?” said Jonathan.

  “West told Mendellson that it would probably be within two weeks,” said Mac, “so I would say we have at least a week before we have to start worrying. But we still have no time to waste. We should keep a round-the-clock watch on Sean and his car and track him if he moves.”

  “Agreed,” said Roger. “Karen and I can take turns keeping watch. Mac, when he moves you can use my car to follow him. I don’t think we should involve the police until we have more definite information on what he’s up to. Jonathan, you’ll probably want to go with Mac. Are we all agreed on that?”

  The other three around the table nodded in agreement. Karen got up from the conference table, walked over to the control centre and sat down in the swivelling chair. “Still no activity,” she said. She swivelled round to face the others. “Why don’t you guys organize some coffee and sandwiches for lunch? I’ll keep watch here.”

  Roger, Mac and Jonathan trooped out of the office while Karen remained at the control centre desk. She was thinking about the problem of how to get close enough to Sean Donnelly to allow Jonathan to get a memory stream. She slowly scrolled through each of the forty eight CCTV cameras in the Willesden area and then a thought struck her. One of the cameras showed the entrance to a pub just round the corner from the street where Donnelly lived. The pub was called The Skipton Arms. Could this be Donnelly’s local pub? It was certainly the nearest, probably no more than five minutes walk from his house. She did an AFRS scan for Donnelly’s face on this CCTV camera and sure enough, she got twelve hits over the last two weeks. Donnelly was a man of habit. Almost every night he went into the pub at eight o’clock and left again to go home at ten o’clock. If Jonathan could be in the pub at the same time as Donnelly, perhaps he could get close enough to Donnelly to do a memory trace.

  Karen was lost in her thoughts as the boys returned with sandwiches and coffee. She excitedly told them what she had discovered while they were out as Roger handed her a package of sandwiches. They all sat around the conference table.

  “Good work, Karen,” said Mac. “I think the plan should be for you and Jonathan to go in as a couple having a drink and spy out the land for the first night. Why don’t you go out there tonight? Don’t attempt a memory trace, Jonathan, just look around and find out what goes on in that pub.”

  “Do you think West will have had enough time to meet up with Donnelly yet?” said Roger.

  “Probably not,” said Mac, “but tonight’s a dummy run. He may have had a meeting by tomorrow night. I’ll organize a car to run you around this evening, Jonathan. Are you going back to your flat, Karen?”

  “No, I’ve got to go into the office for a while and then I’ll probably go back to the St. Katharines apartment if that’s all right. The car can pick up Jonathan and me from there. Probably about seven thirty?”

  “Consider it done, Karen,” said Mac. “All right with you, Jonathan?”

  “Fine with me.”

  “I think we’ve done enough for this afternoon,” said Mac. “We’ll leave you in peace to do some real work, Roger. I have a meeting this afternoon so I have to get away. It looks like you’ve got a quiet afternoon in store, Jonathan.”

  Chapter 28