Ultimatum Read online

  ‘Only the core members of the team know the guy exists. I shouldn’t even be discussing him with you.’

  ‘Come on, Mike. I’ve helped you today. I know we had a lucky escape, but don’t shut me out. We make a good team. You know that.’

  She was right and, even after what had happened earlier with Brozi, it still felt good to Bolt to be working with Tina again.

  He gave her a brief rundown of what Jones had been doing, without divulging his ID or any details that might help her put a name to him. ‘I gave him two GPS units this morning and I got Nikki to switch them on three quarters of an hour ago. Last time I spoke to her they were both still together.’

  ‘So why don’t we get surveillance units on to them?’

  ‘On what grounds? I don’t know who the units are with, and I won’t know until I get hold of the informant, but he’s not answering his phone. I called HQ and the commander told me to hold back until we know more. There’s not much else we can do.’

  He took a gulp of freezing cold coffee and pulled a face.

  ‘Want another one?’ asked Tina, pointing to his cup.

  ‘Please,’ he said, aching for something stronger.

  As she left the room, Bolt stared back through the mirror to where Brozi was answering ‘No comment’ to yet another question. It was at times like this, he thought, that even something as extreme as torture would be justified. It wouldn’t take long. A man like Brozi would break in minutes. Bolt had seen his kind before, full of bravado when faced with police officers forced to abide by stringent rules, but a coward at heart. It upset him that he could even countenance a thought like this, but he was exhausted and frustrated.

  His mobile rang, and he checked the caller ID. It was a landline he didn’t recognize, but he picked up anyway, more in hope than expectation.

  Jones’s voice came on the line, tense and breathless. ‘There’s a Stinger missile in circulation. Cain’s got it.’

  Bolt took an instinctive breath. The shock was immense but he knew he had to stay calm. ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘I don’t know. He left us about twenty minutes ago, but I left a GPS in the front of his car, and another on the box with the Stinger in it. So you should be able to track it.’

  ‘How come you waited so long to call?’

  ‘It would take too long to explain now.’

  ‘Christ … Whereabouts are you?’

  ‘In a pub in Stoke Newington, not far from home.’

  ‘Do you have any idea how he’s planning to use it?’

  ‘No, but I can give you the make and registration of the car Cain’s driving, in case the GPS batteries run out.’

  Bolt pulled a notebook and pen from his back pocket. There were a hundred other questions he wanted to ask Jones but there was no time for any of them. He needed to get off the phone and find that missile.

  ‘OK. Stay where you are. I’ll call you back as soon as I can.’

  ‘I need protection, Mike. If Cain finds out I talked to you, I’m a dead man.’

  ‘Don’t worry, there’s no way we’re going to be going public with this. By the time things start to happen, I’ll have pulled you out and sorted protection. I’ve got to go.’

  He ended the call, and immediately called Nikki Donohoe back at the office. She picked up on the second ring.

  ‘Where are the GPS units right now?’ he asked her.

  There was a short pause while she checked. ‘They’ve split up. One’s just passed through the Elephant and Castle roundabout and is heading north on St George’s Road towards Lambeth and Westminster Bridge.’

  ‘Jesus. Towards Parliament?’

  ‘In that direction, yes.’

  ‘What about the other?’

  ‘It’s in Bermondsey. On a place called Gowland Street, just off Tower Bridge Road. And it appears to be stationary. It looks from Google Earth like there’s a set of lock-up garages running parallel to the street, and it’s in one of them. I’m just checking but I don’t think the area’s covered by CCTV.’

  Bolt’s heart was racing. Finally they were in the game, but the problem was, he had no idea which of the two GPS units was with the Stinger.

  ‘Get on to HQ straight away, Nikki, and tell them the exact locations of the two units. One of them, and I don’t know which one it is, is stuck to a box containing a Stinger missile. We need to scramble arrest teams and ARV units. I don’t care what it takes. We’ve got to get hold of this thing and take it out of circulation. I’ll call the commander.’

  ‘I’m on it,’ she said with the calm tone he’d learned to expect from her.

  ‘What’s up?’ asked Tina, coming back into the room with the coffees.

  ‘Leave the coffee, we’re out of here,’ said Bolt, checking the location of Gowland Street on his phone. ‘I’ll tell you about it in the car.’

  Forty-two

  18.45

  THE CENTRAL ATRIUM of HMP Westmoor’s Central Wing was busy with prisoners enjoying the chance to socialize for an hour after supper before they were locked in their cells for the night, as Devereaux approached the table-tennis table, head down, flanked by two other lifers.

  One of the lifers bumped shoulders with another prisoner, and as he turned round to remonstrate, the lifer slammed him bodily into the table-tennis table, knocking it on to its side. One of the other prisoners who’d been playing yelled something and Devereaux went for him, throwing a punch that sent him sprawling into another group of prisoners sitting at a table playing cards. They were up on their feet in an instant, charging into the fray as the aggression that always simmered beneath the surface in closed male environments suddenly erupted.

  That was all it took. A single nudge, and within seconds more than a dozen prisoners were involved in a messy, swirling brawl, while three dozen more either tried to get out of the way or closed in to watch.

  Such was the speed with which everything happened that the two closest prison officers were caught completely by surprise. For a few seconds they simply stared at the scene erupting in front of them. Then they blew their whistles in unison and moved to break things up.

  Two things stopped them before they’d reached the mêlée. First, Devereaux – a man who scared the shit out of all but the hardest of the screws at the best of times – yanked one of the legs free from the table-tennis table and screamed an unintelligible but bloodcurdling battle cry. Then, waving the table leg above his head, he ran at the screws, a look of such intense fury beneath the skull tattoo that it looked as if his eyes were going to pop out of his head.

  Second, Wahid Khan, a convicted drug dealer and gangland torturer with anger management issues, emerged from his cell on the first floor carrying a flaming mattress which, with a roar, he sent hurtling into the safety netting below. Afterwards he would state that he was simply caught up in the moment, but the fact that he’d managed to set fire to his bedding within seconds of the violence starting meant his claim was treated with scepticism during the subsequent investigation.

  Most of the screws, unused to such a general challenge to their authority but recognizing the volatility of the situation, ran for their lives, an act that immediately sent the prisoners into a euphoric frenzy as they saw how easy it was to take charge. The TV was smashed, as was the table-tennis table, and chairs that had been screwed to the floor to prevent them being used in just such a disturbance were ripped from their fittings and flung at the two screws who were still in their midst, and who’d been joined by two more from the other end of the wing. But only four strong, they were hopelessly outnumbered by the prisoners and they too retreated rapidly, shouting into their radios, as the alarm sounded across the prison.

  Fox saw all this from the door of his cell twenty yards down from Khan’s. The noise was incredible, as was the sense of animal excitement in the air. He watched as Khan stood on the walkway beating his chest and screaming abuse at the guards, the other prisoners, and the whole world in general. He was a big man, overweight, with a gut tha
t hung over his waist like a jutting upper lip, but when he turned and ran at Fox, he moved with real pace.

  ‘Nazi bastard!’ he screamed, his voice unnaturally high as it echoed across the landing.

  Which was when Fox saw the sharpened spoon he was clutching in his hand, its tip glinting in the strip lights.

  As the four guards raced to the main door so they could seal off the wing, Fox raced away from Khan, hurtling down the metal steps two and three at a time, yelling at the guards for help.

  One looked his way and slowed down, but only momentarily.

  Fox could hear Khan coming down the steps behind him, yelling obscenities, his voice breathless and angry. But Fox had kept himself fit during his time inside, and his current injuries didn’t stop him from running fast. Even so, as he hit the ground floor and sprinted towards the guards, his face was a mask of pure fear.

  Two more guards had appeared on the other side of the main door and were in the process of unlocking it. Fox knew that the policy in prison riots was to seal off the wing where the disturbance was occurring to prevent its spread to other areas of the prison, while reinforcements were brought in to bring it under control.

  ‘Help me, for Christ’s sake!’ shouted Fox, joining the four guards at the door.

  Twenty yards behind them, the main bulk of the prisoners were advancing steadily like an unruly football crowd, several of them unleashing missiles in the direction of the door but making no effort to charge it, while from the side Khan was continuing to advance on Fox, the improvised knife in his hand now visible to all the guards.

  ‘Hurry the fuck up!’ screamed the most senior of them as the door was finally opened and they raced through. Fox went with them, and no one tried to stop him. They were all too keen to save their own skins.

  It was only when the door had been thrown closed safely behind them that one of the guards grabbed Fox’s arm and slammed him against the wall, demanding to know where he thought he was going.

  But by that point it didn’t matter.

  The first stage of the op had been 100 per cent successful.

  Forty-three

  18.58

  CAIN PARKED THE car at a meter in the shadows of Westminster Abbey. He was right in the heart of the establishment here, barely a stone’s throw from the Houses of Parliament where, right now, politicians of every shade were debating the attacks that he’d helped mastermind today. And doubtless spouting the usual load of hot air. It was a pity, he thought, that the Stinger couldn’t be used against them, but he no longer had the missile. It had safely been dropped off at a lock-up garage, where it should already have been collected by the mercenary they’d hired, the mysterious but reliable South African Voorhess, who’d be firing it in about an hour’s time, when the deadline they’d given the government ran out.

  The air was turning cold as Cain started off down the quiet night street on foot, pulling his cap down and his collars up to make sure that any cameras only got a very limited shot of him. He didn’t feed the meter as he wouldn’t be using the car again. It had been bought in cash at auction three months earlier and there was no way of tracing it back either to him or Cecil. As always, he’d planned everything down to a tee. The only fly in the ointment so far was his weapons contact, Jetmir Brozi, whose arrest had turned the arms deal in the scrapyard into a bloodbath and come close to getting them all killed. Brozi knew very little about Cain but, if he decided to talk, he could still provide information that might lead them in his direction.

  But right now Cain wasn’t unduly worried about what might happen to him, and the reason for this was simple enough.

  He was dying.

  The doctors had diagnosed terminal lung cancer three weeks earlier. If he sought treatment, he had as long as a year. If he didn’t, he had half that, possibly less. So far, the symptoms – a persistent cough, and severe abdominal pains – were sporadic at best, but lately he’d noticed them getting worse. For a long time he’d never feared death, even in the midst of battle, but the events today at the scrapyard had made him realize how much he’d miss life when it was finally snatched away from him.

  This made it even more important for him to bring his work to a conclusion. His aim was to bring down the government. Once this had been achieved, his hope was that the country’s native population would rise up and turn on the immigrants flooding the country and the intellectual elite who supported them. This had been his goal ever since he’d joined the shadowy group of individuals who called themselves The Brotherhood more than three years ago. Most of their footsoldiers had been killed during the Stanhope siege, which was why their numbers were now so small, but this no longer mattered. After today, the campaign of violence would give way to a new strategy as Garth Crossman, their leader and the man who bankrolled their activities, rode the wave of revulsion over today’s attacks, and the loss of his own wife in them, to enter politics for the first time at the head of a new political party promising radical change.

  Cain smiled to himself. Crossman cut an impressive figure. He came across like a nice guy. He could really change things, given the chance, and by the time people realized what he was really like, it would be far too late.

  Only two people knew Crossman’s real identity. One was Cain himself. The other was William Garrett, codenamed Fox.

  And he’d be dealt with soon enough.

  A marked police patrol car turned into the street fifty yards ahead of Cain, moving slowly, as if its occupants were looking for something.

  Cain ducked down behind a parked van and watched as the police car drove past him down the street, coming to a halt in the middle of the road next to the Audi estate he’d been driving only a couple of minutes before. It then moved on about ten yards, but pulled into an empty parking bay, with its engine still running. At the same time, a second police car drove in from the opposite end, slowing up as it drew level with the first one.

  Knowing this was no coincidence, Cain jogged in a low crouch, using the parked cars as cover, before ducking into a narrow back alley and breaking into a sprint.

  They’d been betrayed.

  And it could only have been by one man.

  Forty-four

  19.07

  I’D SPOKEN TO Bolt twice in the last half hour, after each call nodding a thanks to the landlord.

  The conversations had been brief, and slightly surreal. He’d asked me a lot of questions about the Stinger, and I’d had to answer him while standing at the corner of a bar talking on a pub phone, shouting occasionally to make myself heard above the din of booze-fuelled conversation coming from all around. Hardly secure, but then desperate times call for desperate measures. Thankfully, Bolt had been more interested in minor details than in how we’d come to be in possession of it. What did the box the Stinger was being carried in look like? How big was it? Where in Cain’s car had I planted the GPS unit? That type of thing.

  He’d finished the last call by telling me he’d send officers from CTC to collect me from the pub as soon as some were available. But I was getting restless. The bar was busy with a mixture of after-work groups and wrinkled locals, and the two TVs on opposite walls were both on Sky News, which was endlessly regurgitating the same material about the bomb attacks earlier. The confirmed death toll from the earlier bombs was now twenty, including five police officers, and it made me wonder what the hell Cain and Cecil were hoping to achieve. They’d killed a whole load of innocent people, and ripped apart the lives of hundreds of others. Just as they’d done in the Stanhope siege. And all for what? A few hours of constant network coverage.

  What struck me looking round was that I could see that only a handful of the pub’s clientele were even watching the TVs. Most were engaged in conversation. People were laughing, exchanging gossip. Getting on with their lives. Already the bombs were old news. But this was just the way it was in the era of the internet and twenty-four-hour news. Attention spans had shortened dramatically. Even the terrorists’ threat of a third attack was no
longer appearing to have the desired effect – on these people, at least.

  I knew better. They should be afraid. A Stinger missile would take the slaughter to a whole new level, and unless Bolt and his people acted fast, there could be a massacre on the scale of Lockerbie within hours.

  I thought about phoning Gina to warn her, but what the hell would I say? That there was a missile in circulation capable of bringing down a plane, and that she should grab Maddie and leave the city as soon as possible? It would be pointless. In the end they were better off where they were. And what if Gina asked me how I knew about it? I could hardly tell her the truth. That while working undercover for the people who’d sacked me and helped put me in prison, I’d helped acquire it for the terrorists, one of whom was an old colleague of mine, while simultaneously committing cold-blooded murder.

  As I snaked my way slowly through the pub’s customers towards the exit, I realized I was shaking. I hated myself for my part in all this, but self-preservation was also kicking in. I needed to think, to settle down in my own home, down a beer, and work out the story I was going to tell Bolt’s colleagues. One that was somehow going to avoid mention of a gang of dead Albanians.

  I’d been in worse situations before, I told myself as I walked back out on to the street, breathing in the cold air. But at that moment I couldn’t honestly remember when.

  Forty-five

  19.09

  ‘OK, WE’RE HERE,’ Bolt said into the radio as he and Tina pulled into Gowland Street, a narrow road flanked on both sides by new-build townhouses, which ran parallel to the lane of lock-up garages from where the stationary GPS unit was sending its signal. They were only a couple of hundred yards south of the river here and very close to the overhead railway lines heading into nearby London Bridge Station. The street was deserted as Bolt drove the Islington pool car he’d signed out earlier, a battered Ford Focus, past the turning to the lock-up garages, before parking further down. ‘We’ve got a visual on the entrance to the lock-ups,’ he continued, as he flicked on the car’s hazard lights and looked in the rearview mirror, suddenly feeling very alone, even with Tina beside him. ‘There doesn’t appear to be much activity at the moment. What do you want us to do? Over.’