Ultimatum Page 19

  He was talking to the control room at New Scotland Yard, where responsibility for the operation to retrieve the Stinger safely had now been handed.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ said Commander Thomas Ingrams, Bolt’s boss and the head of CTC, who was at the other end. ‘The GPS unit is still in place, and armed response vehicles are on the scene. They’re currently being held back on Druid Street, and the armed surveillance team are en route. We’ve been on to the owner of the lock-ups and he rented out number five six weeks ago to a man identifying himself as Vincent Cain. Over.’

  ‘That’s our man. Did he get a description? Over.’

  ‘No. It was all done over the phone. The owner’s coming down to you with the keys to number five. What’s your exact location? Over.’

  Bolt gave him the details, before asking if they’d located the other GPS unit.

  ‘Affirmative,’ answered Ingrams, an edge to his voice. ‘It’s in an Audi A5 parked in Westminster, less than half a mile from the Houses of Parliament. We’re currently throwing a secure cordon round the whole area, but there’s no sign of the occupants, and according to the officers at the scene, no sign of a box in the back of the car either.’

  ‘That means the device must be in the lock-up here. Over.’

  ‘That seems the most likely scenario. We need to get it out as soon as possible.’ There was an edge to Commander Ingrams’s voice. ‘As soon as you have the keys, I want you to go in with the armed back-up, do a brief risk assessment to make sure the immediate area’s clear. It’s unlikely the unit’s going to be booby-trapped, but if you see anything suspicious pull back and let us know. Then we’ll have to consider evacuating the buildings nearby and blowing the door. Over.’

  ‘Understood,’ said Bolt, and signed off.

  ‘You’re going to be the golden boy if this all works out,’ Tina told him.

  He shook his head. ‘No, I’m not. I should have had more control over my informant and kept him on a tighter rein. God knows what happened at that meeting, but I didn’t like the way he sounded.’

  ‘Is he likely to have done something bad?’

  Bolt thought about it for a moment. ‘You know, deep down I believe he’s a good man, but he’s got a pretty chequered record. He’s an ex-squaddie, an ex-cop, and an ex-con. In that order.’

  Tina chuckled. ‘He sounds like an interesting guy.’

  Bolt turned and smiled at her. ‘You’d probably like him. But I’ve got a feeling he’s in a lot of trouble.’

  Realizing there was no point in holding things back from her now that Jones’s work was effectively over, he told her about how they’d used him to get close to Fox in prison, before using him for a second time on the outside to get close to Cecil Boorman. ‘I think because everyone was so keen to get the people behind the Stanhope attacks, no one was too worried about how we went about doing it. But I feel like we’ve left Jones on his own for far too long, and I’m the one responsible.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘In a pub near where he lives, waiting for CTC to bring him in. I wanted him to avoid going home while Cecil and Cain are still out there. Just in case.’

  As Bolt spoke, headlights appeared in the rearview mirror and a big people carrier pulled up behind them. ‘I think this might be the owner of the lock-ups.’ He got out of the car and went over to the people carrier’s driver’s-side window, where a harassed-looking middle-aged man badly in need of a shave was fiddling with a set of keys.

  He asked Bolt what was going on.

  ‘I can’t comment right now, sir,’ said Bolt. ‘I just need the keys to number five.’

  ‘Is it a body?’ The guy looked excited now, but Bolt gave him a withering look and turned away.

  ‘Are we ready to go?’ asked Tina, when he was back in the car. She sounded excited too, but for different reasons. Tina loved the action. And if truth were told, he loved it too.

  He handed her the key. ‘Ready when you are.’

  He put in a quick call to the control room to give them a status update, then drove towards the turning to the lock-ups’ entrance, slowing up to wait for the two armed response vehicles that were providing cover to pull into position behind him. As soon as they were in place, he swung the wheel hard and drove into the narrow lane where half a dozen single-storey lock-up garages lined both sides.

  A security light came on, bathing the area in an orange glow as they pulled up halfway along, giving the two ARVs space to come in behind. One of the garage doors up ahead was open, with a light coming from inside, and a man poked his head out, and poked it straight back in again.

  For a second, Bolt thought that the man might be in number five and that they’d disturbed him picking up the Stinger, but then he realized that they’d stopped right next to five, and that its door was firmly shut.

  They exited the car and walked over as a crowded commuter train rumbled along the overhead track fifty yards away, heading out towards the suburbs. Conscious of Commander Ingrams’s warning that the door could be booby-trapped, Bolt examined the frame, in case anything was out of place.

  ‘What do you think?’ said Tina. She had the key in her hand. Armed cops were standing behind her, their weapons at the ready.

  Bolt knew the people they were dealing with had access to explosives and sophisticated bomb-making resources. They’d set a booby-trapped bomb for the security forces earlier in the day. If he made the wrong call, whoever opened the door would be killed instantly.

  A strange thought occurred to him then. Would it really be so bad if he died? It would all be over in an instant. One big bang and that would be it: the end of everything. The worry, the pressure, and, if he was honest, the unrelenting loneliness of his life. It was almost ten years since his wife Mikaela had died in a car crash. He’d been the one driving the car, and he still had her photo by his bed. Jesus, he missed her, just as much as if it had happened yesterday, and in that moment he knew that whatever happened, he’d be haunted by her ghost for the rest of his life.

  He turned to Tina. ‘Let’s make sure we clear the area, then I’ll open it.’

  Tina frowned. ‘Are you sure? I don’t want you dying on me, Mike Bolt.’ It was as if she’d read his mind.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said a voice behind them, and Bolt turned round to see the man whose head they’d just seen emerge from the open lock-up. He was in his sixties, and wearing overalls, and he was looking with a mixture of concern and interest at the armed cops. ‘Are you interested in that garage?’ He motioned towards number five.

  ‘Yes,’ said Bolt, showing his warrant card.

  ‘It’s just, someone was in there about ten minutes ago. A man I haven’t seen before. He was getting something out, I think. I saw him load a holdall into his boot.’

  ‘Can you describe him?’

  The man thought about it for a moment. ‘I didn’t get much of a look at him, I’m afraid. He was quite a big bloke, though, and he was driving a big black four-wheel-drive. I think it might have been a Shogun.’

  Taking the key from Tina, Bolt told everyone to move well back. He was pretty certain that the man wouldn’t have had time to booby-trap the place, but even so, he still held his breath as he unlocked the door.

  The door opened and he stepped inside and switched on the light, feeling a palpable sense of relief.

  A large wooden crate, just like the one Jones had described, was on the floor in the middle of the room. The lid was off and, as Bolt approached it, he knew it was going to be empty.

  And it was.

  They were too late. The missile was in circulation and, with less than an hour to go before the terrorists’ ultimatum, they had no idea where it was, who had it, or what its target was going to be.

  Forty-six

  19.12

  VOORHESS HAD SERIOUSLY considered killing the old man who’d seen him earlier at the lock-up garages.

  He’d almost done it too, when the man had given him a shock by poking his head out of the gara
ge slightly further up, just as he’d been putting the Stinger in the back of his Shogun. It wouldn’t have been difficult. There was no one else around, and there was no way the old man would have been expecting it. Voorhess might have been a big man but he had the kind of friendly face and open, natural smile that set people immediately at ease. He was also obsessive about no one seeing his face when he was on a job. It was the sole reason he’d insisted on collecting the missile from a quiet, neutral location. So that the client never saw him. The irony of then being spotted by someone else was not lost on him.

  Even so, he’d made the snap decision to leave the old man alive on the basis that it was highly unlikely he’d ever connect him to the day’s terrorist attacks. Instead, he’d given the man a friendly wave and a grin, keeping his body language as natural as possible, before getting in the driver’s seat and pulling out of there.

  Now, as he reversed the Shogun into Mr Butt’s ground-floor garage, careful not to run over his girlfriend’s body, Voorhess was pleased that he’d spared the old man. He didn’t like unnecessary killing, especially when it was at such close quarters, as it had been with Mr Butt’s girlfriend earlier. The old man had looked a cheerful fellow, and it amused Voorhess to think that he would never know quite how close he’d come to death.

  But for Mr Butt himself, it was unfortunately going to be a different story.

  Forty-seven

  19.15

  ‘GET IN THERE,’ grunted the screw, manhandling Fox into the cell.

  ‘They tried to kill me again,’ said Fox, as the screw went to shut the cell door. ‘You saw them. I’m not safe in this place.’

  ‘You’re a lot safer than we are right now,’ replied the screw. He was one of the young ones, an ex-squaddie who’d told Fox when they’d first met a couple of months earlier that he was a disgrace to the armed forces and his regiment. The screw looked scared and confused now, though. This was clearly his first riot. He gave Fox another shove and slammed the door shut.

  The decor was better in here, thought Fox, as the key turned in the lock. They’d had a refurbishment on this wing recently, and the walls had been painted a soothing cream. The bed was new too, but he didn’t sit on it, even though he was tired from his recent exertions.

  The whole prison was in lockdown now, with Fox’s wing completely sealed off with the prisoners inside. It was, he thought, amazing how easy it had been for the inmates to seize control. Hopelessly outnumbered, the screws had been thrown into panic, and in their haste to ensure the disturbance didn’t spread to the other wings they’d neglected to search him properly. Which was a mistake on their parts.

  Fox took the mobile phone from his pocket. He’d bought it from another inmate two days previously. There were always plenty of mobiles inside prisons, smuggled in during visits when physical contact was permissible, or by the guards themselves who sold them on for profit. Fox had always considered the British penal system far too liberal, but it was certainly working in his favour now.

  He sent a text to a number he’d memorized. It was only three words long, and it said simply: SWITCH IT ON. When he’d got confirmation that it had sent, he deleted the message and turned off the phone, removing the sim card and flushing it down the toilet, before shoving the handset under the mattress on the bed.

  He leaned back against the wall. Now it was just a matter of waiting.

  Forty-eight

  19.28

  ‘THEY’RE CLEARING ALL the airspace above Greater London,’ said Bolt, coming off the radio to Scotland Yard. ‘Apparently it’s a huge inconvenience.’

  Tina lit a cigarette and took a much-needed drag as she walked over to where he was standing at the entrance to the lock-ups. ‘It’s a lot better than having a plane shot down.’

  ‘The problem is, we’ve only got the word of one informant that this missile even exists, and the transport system’s in enough of a mess as it is after what happened earlier.’

  ‘We know that the guy who collected the weapon came here at around seven o’clock, and that he was driving a black four-wheel-drive, probably a Shogun,’ said Tina, who’d just been talking to the old man who’d seen him. ‘If we can get some footage from any CCTV cameras around here, we can get the registration and track the suspect that way.’

  ‘I’ve just been on to Control to get them to check all the available footage. Did the witness get any of the number plate?’

  Tina shook her head. ‘Nothing. He said the guy wasn’t acting suspiciously so there was no reason for him to check it. We’re lucky he can almost certainly ID the model.’

  ‘I’ll make sure they know the time we’re looking at. It’ll narrow it down a bit.’

  He went back to the car to radio in again, and Tina took another drag on the cigarette. The night was cold and clear and above her head she saw the lights of an approaching plane, less than a thousand feet up. Someone might be aiming the Stinger at it right now, preparing to fire. As she watched, the plane banked sharply and made a sweeping U-turn until it was heading east and away from the centre of the city, and she gave a sigh of relief. It was good to be back at the sharp end of the fight against crime but, as always, it felt like a losing battle. You put down one person, two more appeared to take his place. The key, though, was to keep fighting. That had always been Tina’s philosophy. Never give up. And, even though there’d been times when she’d come close, she never had.

  ‘I think we might have a break,’ said Bolt, hurrying back over. ‘Control says a black Mitsubishi Shogun passed through the camera at the entrance to Crucifix Lane heading south at six fifty-eight. That’s about three minutes’ drive from here so the timings fit perfectly. They’ve got the Shogun’s registration number so they’re pulling out all the stops to track its route.’

  ‘That’s got to be our man, Mike, and he’s got to be the one who’s going to be using the missile as well.’

  Tina stubbed her cigarette out underfoot and looked at her watch. It had just turned 7.30. Less than half an hour to the terrorists’ deadline.

  She took a deep breath. She hated waiting around, especially when time was so short. She just wanted to get out there, chase down the Shogun and its driver. Nicking the bastard before he had a chance to fire his missile. But just because they’d got his registration didn’t mean they were going to get him.

  Knowing she wouldn’t be able to smoke in Bolt’s car, Tina decided to live dangerously and light another cigarette. The pressure was beginning to get to her. It had been a long and intense day, yet they’d made real progress. Now, with the sky cleared of planes, they’d taken away the terrorists’ targets, and although she knew that would only put off an attack rather than stop one altogether, it was still something.

  An armed cop in one of the two ARVs parked a few feet away gave her a disapproving look as she dragged hard on the cigarette, savouring the dirty taste, and she gave him a far harder look back, pleased to see him drop his gaze.

  She smiled to herself as she turned away, pacing the row of lock-ups, shivering against the cold.

  And that was when she saw it. Over in the distance.

  Her heart lurched in shock as the grim and terrifying possibility occurred to her.

  The terrorists might not be after a plane at all.

  Forty-nine

  19.31

  VOORHESS STOOD AMID the lush foliage of Mr Butt’s roof garden staring up at the dark sky. Although it was a clear night, he could see only two stars, the light pollution obscuring the rest. It made him think once again of home, where even close to Cape Town the stars would swarm like bright dust across the night sky.

  There was a biting chill in the air, and he was pleased that, if everything worked out, he would be leaving this country first thing the following morning. He didn’t like crowds, and he didn’t like bad weather, and the UK could be relied upon for both. He was staying in a hotel in Heathrow tonight, then after flying to Bangkok he was off on a well-deserved week’s holiday down south on the isolated island
of Ko Pida near the Malaysian border, away from all the backpackers and the boorish Russians, before returning to Cape Town via Singapore – a million dollars richer.

  The money was being paid into an account in the name of a consultancy company based in Bermuda. From there it would go via Panama to the Cayman Islands before being transferred in small increments back into South Africa as and when he needed it. It was a complicated procedure, and it cost him a great deal of money to set up the shell companies and keep the accounts active, but Voorhess knew it was worth the investment. With this new money his retirement fund would stand at almost two million dollars. Not enough to quit work just yet, but five more years of earning and careful spending and he’d be able to realize his dream of opening a small guesthouse on the shores of the Western Cape, hopefully with a handsome young boyfriend in tow.

  As he stared skywards, he frowned. When he’d first come out here a couple of hours earlier, the sky had been criss-crossed with vapour trails and the lights of planes coming in and out of Heathrow ten miles to the west of him. Now it was empty. Was it a coincidence or had someone somewhere found out about the Stinger? He couldn’t see how they could have done, but then he knew very little about the client who’d hired him to fire it. Usually, this was an advantage. The less he had to deal with his clients the better. But the problem was, he had to trust the fact that they were reliable and efficient. He told himself not to become too paranoid. It might simply be that the planes had been moved as a precaution after the bombs earlier in the day.