False Friends (48 page)

‘They’ve been informed,’ said the commander.

Button looked up at the screen showing the overhead view from the helicopter. Spider was running towards the main entrance.

Heads turned as Shepherd ran through the crowds. He scanned the faces, his trick memory comparing them with the photographs he’d seen at Thames House. He slowed to a jog as he reached the entrance. The glass doors were wide open as shoppers poured in. He walked into the mal and checked his watch. There were three minutes to go before six o’clock. That meant that the terrorists were almost certainly already in place. He looked around, breathing slowly and evenly.

Two security guards were standing to his left. They were Asians, wearing black suits and with their identification cards in clear plastic cases strapped to their arms. One was in his forties, dark-skinned and wearing tinted glasses. The other was younger, with lighter skin, and carrying something in his hands. Shepherd moved to the side to get a better look. The man was holding a length of chain and a padlock. The older man looked at his watch. There was a black Timberland backpack at his feet. The two men were standing with their backs to the wal , watching the shoppers walking into the mal . Two middle-aged Chinese women went over and asked them for directions and the younger security guard pointed up to the first floor.

Shepherd walked over, his hand slipping inside his jacket. ‘How’s it going, guys?’ he asked.

‘Can we help you, sir?’ asked the older guard.

Shepherd stood facing them, using his body to conceal the Glock as he pul ed it out. ‘I need the two of you to stand facing each other right now,’

said Shepherd. ‘If you don’t I’l shoot you.’ The younger guard opened his mouth to speak but Shepherd jabbed the gun in his stomach. ‘Don’t say anything. Just do it. I don’t have time to fuck around.’ The men turned to face each other. Shepherd patted them down but didn’t find a gun. He kicked the backpack to the side. It was heavy. He took the chain and padlock with his left hand and gestured with the gun. ‘Put your arms round each other, like you were hugging.’ The men hesitated and Shepherd jabbed the younger guard again with the barrel of the gun. ‘Do it or I swear I’l shoot you both.’

The two men put their arms round each other. Shepherd kept hold of one end of the chain and let the rest fal to the floor. He draped it over the neck of the younger guard, then, using his left hand, he wrapped the chain round their waists and round their necks; final y he pushed it between them and pul ed it hard to tighten it. He fastened the chain with the padlock and pushed the men to the floor. The guards said nothing as they glared defiantly up at Shepherd. He holstered his Glock, picked up the backpack and began to run to the entrance at the far end of the mal . Several shoppers saw what was going on but hurried by, not wanting to get involved. London was a city where passers-by who intervened in violent situations tended to end up in hospital. Or worse.

The mal was so crowded that Shepherd couldn’t manage more than a jog and he was constantly having to change direction. People he banged into cursed and shouted at him but he was so focused on checking faces that what they said barely registered. He was looking for two things: faces from the Thames House surveil ance photographs and Asians with backpacks.

He took a quick look at his watch. A minute and a half to go. He barged between a group of teenagers. One of them lashed out with his foot and caught Shepherd’s calf but Shepherd barely felt it. He slowed to a walk, scanning faces. Walking in through the glass doors were two Asians in Puffa jackets, both carrying backpacks. Shepherd’s hand went to his gun. One of the Asians said something and the other laughed. They were too relaxed to be a threat, Shepherd realised. One of them went over to a display of store guides; he took one and unfolded it. The two men looked around, trying to get their bearings. Shepherd took a deep breath, knowing that he had come close to shooting two innocent shoppers.

He moved closer to the doors. A police ARV arrived and it screeched to a halt. The doors opened and three armed officers got out, al holding MP5s. A tal Asian man in a long raincoat walking from the train station whirled round to look at the police car. He had a backpack and he took it off and began to fumble inside it. He turned so that his back was to the approaching policemen. Shepherd caught a glimpse of a pistol. He pul ed out his Glock and fired twice, catching the man in the centre of his chest.

The armed police al jumped as if they’d been stung and then crouched low as they covered the area with their MP5s. Shepherd threw down the backpack that he’d taken from the security guards and turned and ran from the doors He didn’t have time to explain to the police that he was on their side. People were screaming al around him and some were running out into the street.

He slotted the Glock back in its holster as he ran towards the escalators that led to the lower ground floor. He stopped and looked down over the balcony. No one on the lower ground floor had reacted to the screaming or to the shooting.

He couldn’t see the doors that led to the outside, but he heard shouts of ‘Armed police’ at the entrance behind him. He hurried on.

As he rode down the escalator he looked left and right, scanning faces, checking for bags. He was almost at the bottom when he saw an Asian man with a backpack facing a shop window and looking at his watch. As the man turned round Shepherd recognised him. He was one of the men from Leeds who had arrived at St Pancras on the tube. The man started to walk away from the shop and Shepherd ran up behind him. He pul ed out his Glock and slammed it against the side of the man’s head and he slumped to the ground without a sound. Two middle-aged women screamed and backed away from Shepherd as he holstered his gun. Shepherd looked down at the unconscious man. He’d be out for a while, certainly until the police had arrived in force.

Most of the shoppers in the vicinity seemed unconcerned about what had happened and continued to walk by, looking down at the prone figure but not stopping to help. Even the two screaming women soon fel silent and hurried away.

Shepherd did a ful three-sixty turn but didn’t see anyone else that he recognised so he jogged over to the entrance that led to the tube station. He stopped when he saw that an Asian man in a green anorak with the hood up was walking purposeful y towards the entrance. Shepherd had seen the man’s face before, in Thames House. It was the Egyptian, Riffat Pasha. Pasha was carrying a backpack in his right hand as he looked at his watch. He looked scared, as if he might be having second thoughts about what he was about to do.

Shepherd ran towards him, pul ing out his Glock. Pasha saw him, saw the gun, and then began to grope inside his backpack. Shepherd stopped, steadied himself and took aim. As Pasha’s hand appeared from the backpack holding a gun, Shepherd fired twice, both shots to the chest. Pasha fel backwards and hit the ground hard. Shoppers screamed in terror and began running out of the mal .

‘He’s got a gun!’ screamed a woman with close-cropped hair and a nose ring.

Shepherd looked at her in amazement. ‘I think they know that,’ he said.

The woman pointed at Shepherd. ‘He’s got a gun!’ she screamed again at the top of her voice. She backed away, then turned and ran towards the entrance.

Blood was pooling around Pasha. His legs shuddered and then went stil .

‘Armed police! Drop your weapon!’

The shout came from above him. Shepherd looked up. Two cops on the floor above were aiming their MP5s at him. A third armed officer was on the escalator, keeping his weapon trained on Shepherd as he moved smoothly down to the lower ground floor.

‘Armed police! Armed police!’ More shouts, this time from the entrance to his left. Two more armed officers.

Shepherd bent down and placed the Glock on the floor, then straightened up and put his hands behind his neck. He slowly knelt down and waited as the armed police ran towards him. ‘Please don’t shoot me,’ he muttered to himself. ‘I real y don’t like being shot.’

Khalid beamed and looked across at Abu al Khayr. ‘It is after six o’clock, brother,’ he said. ‘It has started.’

The two men were alone in the sitting room of a terraced house in Tower Hamlets, home to an Afghan refugee and his family. The man was a diehard Taliban soldier but had claimed to have been a government official who had been forced out of his vil age under threat of death. In fact al-Qaeda had funded his travel from Afghanistan to the UK and had guided him through the asylum process. Along with him had come his wife and four children. Al had been in the country for three years and his council-funded home was often used as a safe house and as a place to store weapons and materials. A false wal behind the water tank in the attic had concealed more than a dozen of the handguns that were being used in the attack on the shopping mal .

The man had taken his wife and children to see a movie and was under instructions not to return before nine that evening. But there were two other men in the house; both worshipped at a mosque in west London and were trusted associates of Khalid’s.

Khalid was sitting on a sofa with a floral pattern and Abu al Khayr was settled in a matching armchair. On a pine coffee table between them were eight cheap Nokia phones lined up in a row. On the wal above the fireplace was an LCD television tuned to Sky News. Khalid knew from experience that the station was almost always the first to cover a breaking news story.

‘How long before we know?’ asked Abu al Khayr.

On the television a blonde woman with unnatural y smooth skin and hair that looked like a blonde plastic helmet was talking earnestly about a car crash on a motorway in the north of England.

‘The first reports should be out within minutes,’ said Khalid. ‘Someone wil cal the station because they pay for tip-offs. They wil check with the police and then they wil announce it. But it wil take another half an hour or so before they have pictures.’ He rubbed his beard. ‘But as we speak the kaffirs are being kil ed in their hundreds. It is a glorious day, brother, a day that wil live for eternity.’

‘It is a pity that we could not be there to witness it,’ said Abu al Khayr. ‘It would be quite something to see.’

‘There wil be CCTV footage of everything and the media wil show it,’ said Khalid. ‘The whole world wil bear witness to our triumph.’

‘Al ahu akbar,’ said Abu al Khayr.

‘Al ahu akbar,’ echoed Khalid.

They heard a dul thud from the hal way.

‘What was that?’ asked Abu al Khayr.

Khalid pul ed a face. He stood up and as he did so he saw a movement through the lace curtains at the window that overlooked the street. Three men, al dressed in black, their faces concealed. He turned to say something to Abu al Khayr but at that instant something smashed through the window and rol ed across the carpet. It was a smal metal cylinder and Khalid immediately recognised it for what it was. He closed his eyes and clamped his hands over his ears. The flash-bang was deafening even with his ears covered and he staggered back.

The door to the sitting room was kicked open and a black figure burst into the room, cradling an MP5. The gun kicked twice and Abu al Khayr slumped back with two holes in his chest pumping blood.

Two more soldiers moved into the room and fanned left and right, bent low as their guns swept the room.

Khalid’s ears were stil ringing from the explosion but he raised his hands high. ‘I am a British citizen!’ he shouted. ‘I demand to see a lawyer!’

‘That’s not going to happen,’ said the soldier.

‘I have my rights!’ shouted Khalid. ‘I am a citizen and I am unarmed. I do not have a weapon.’

The soldier used his left hand to pul out a Zastava M88 pistol from the holster on his hip. He tossed it at Khalid and it bounced off the man’s chest and clattered to the floor. Khalid stared at it in horror.

‘You do now,’ said the soldier. He brought his left hand up to support the MP5 and pul ed the trigger twice. The first shot hit Khalid in the chest, just above the heart, and the blood hadn’t even begun to flow from the wound before the second shot hit him in the face. Khalid fel backwards and hit the coffee table hard before rol ing off it and ending up on the carpet. Mobile phones were scattered around his body.

Major Al an Gannon pul ed down the mask that had been covering his face and he clicked on his radio. ‘Tel her ladyship that we have neutralised the situation, Terry,’ he said into his radio mic. ‘No survivors.’ He clicked off the mic. ‘What the lady wants, the lady gets,’ muttered the Major. He stepped over Khalid’s body, picked up the M88 in his gloved hand and pressed it into Khalid’s lifeless palm.

The doctor finished examining Malik’s mangled foot and replaced the dressing.

‘Wil I be able to play the piano again, Doc?’ asked Malik. The doctor smiled but didn’t reply.

‘Wel , it’s good to see that you haven’t lost your sense of humour,’ said Button.

The doctor took a final look at Malik’s chart and then left. They were in a private room in Cromwel Hospital in South Kensington. Malik had been booked in under an assumed name.

‘What happens now?’ asked Malik.

‘You stay here until you’re wel enough to leave,’ said Button. ‘Then it’s up to you.’

‘I suppose it could have been a lot worse,’ said Malik. He nodded at Shepherd. ‘If John hadn’t turned up.’ He shuddered at the thought of what would have happened if the torturing had continued.

‘Yeah, wel , maybe next time you’l be more careful,’ said Chaudhry. ‘I mean, the fact that a pretty girl seemed interested in you real y should have tipped you off that you were being set up.’

‘Yeah, wel , twenty-twenty hindsight is a wonderful thing. Who was she anyway?’ Malik asked Button. ‘She isn’t a student, right?’

‘Her name is Alena Kraishan. She was born in Palestine but has spent time in Iraq and the Gulf states under other names.’

‘Is she in al-Qaeda?’

‘She works for pretty much any Islamic terrorist group that pays her,’ said Button.

‘How old is she?’ asked Malik.

‘Thirty-one,’ said Button.