London Bridges: A Novel (15 page)

Indeed, it was a struggle for Shafer to connect this man with his former army mate, one of the best demolition experts he'd ever seen. The two had fought side by side in Desert Storm and then again as mercenaries in Sierra Leone. In Desert Storm, Shafer and Seymour had been part of the Twenty-second SAS Regiment mobility troop. Mobility's primary mission was to go behind enemy lines and cause havoc. Nobody was better at it than Shafer and Henry.

Poor Henry didn't look capable of causing too much havoc now, but looks could be deceiving. Hopefully, anyway.

“So, are you ready for a job, an important mission?” Shafer asked.

Henry Seymour smiled, and he was missing a couple of front teeth. “Suicide, I hope,” he said.

“As a matter of fact,” said the Weasel, “that's rather a nice idea.”

He sat down across from Henry and gave him his piece, and his old friend actually applauded once he'd heard the plan.

“I've always wanted to blow up London,” he said. “I'm just the man for the job.”

“I know,” said the Weasel.

Dr. Stanley S. Bergen of Scotland Yard addressed several hundred of us in a conference room that was filled to the rafters with police and other government officials. Dr. Bergen was a little over five feet and had to be close to two hundred pounds, and at least sixty years of age. But he was still a commanding presence.

He spoke without notes, and not once during his talk did any of us look away. We were definitely operating on borrowed time, and everyone in the room knew it all too well.

“We are at a critical point where we have to implement our contingency plans for London,” Dr. Bergen said. "Responsibility is under the London Resilience Forum. I have every confidence in them. You should, too.

"All right, this is how we will respond in London. If we have any warning that a disaster is coming, it will be required that all broadcasters turn over their airtime to us. Text-messaging alerts to mobile phones and pagers will also be available. Other less-effective methods include loud-hailers, mobile public address, et cetera.

"Suffice it to say that the people will know if we know ahead of time that an attack is coming. The Met's police commissioner or the home secretary will go on TV with the message.

"If there is a bomb or a chemical attack, the police and fire services will set up immediately in the area. Once it is clear exactly what has happened, the affected area will be isolated as best we can. The fire brigade and police will then define three zones at the scene— hot, warm, and cold.

"Those in the hot zone—if they are alive—will be kept there until they are decontaminated, if that is possible.

"Fire and ambulance services will be set up in the warm zone. So will decontamination shower units.

“The cold zone will be used for investigation, command-and-control vehicles, and also for loading ambulances.”

Dr. Bergen stopped talking and looked out at us. His face was set in a worried look but also revealed the compassion he was feeling for his city and its people. “Some of you may have noticed that I have not actually made mention of the word 'evacuation.' This is because the evacuation of London is not a possibility, not unless we begin now, and the repugnant and villainous Wolf has promised to strike immediately, should we do so.”

Maps and other emergency materials were then distributed around the room. It seemed to me that the mood was as low as it could possibly go.

As I sat there looking at the paperwork, Martin Lodge came up to me. “We got a call from the Wolf,” he said in a whisper. “You'll appreciate this. He says he likes our plan very much. And he agrees, it's hopeless to try and evacuate London —”

Suddenly there was a terrible explosion in the building.

When I finally made it downstairs to the site of the bombing, I was stunned by the unbelievable scene of chaos and confusion. The world-famous Scotland Yard sign in front had been completely blown away. There was rubble and a smoking hole where the Broadway road entrance had been. The remains of a black van were embedded in the sidewalk outside.

A decision had already been made not to abandon the building, to hold our ground. I thought that was smart, or at least courageous. A couple of dozen men and women were already viewing a videotape in semidarkness when I arrived at the crisis center. One of them was Martin Lodge.

I took a seat in back and began to watch. I looked down, and my hands were trembling.

The film segment showed Broadway that morning, the usual armed policemen on duty outside the huge, imposing building. A black van appeared, driven at reckless speed the wrong way down Caxton Street opposite the main entrance to Scotland Yard. It roared straight across Broadway and crashed into the barrier erected at the entrance. Almost instantly there was a fiery explosion. It was silent on the film. The whole building was illuminated.

I heard someone speak from near the front of the room. Martin Lodge had taken the floor. “Our enemy is truly a terrorist, and obviously single-minded. He wants us to know that we are vulnerable. I think we've got the message by now, don't you? It's interesting that no one was killed this morning, other than the driver of the vehicle. Maybe the Wolf has a heart after all.”

A voice came from the back of the room. “He doesn't have a heart. He just has a plan.” The voice, which I almost didn't recognize, was my own.

I worked at Scotland Yard for the rest of the day and slept on a cot there that night.

I awoke at three in the morning and went right back to work. The second deadline would run out at midnight. No one could begin to imagine what would happen then.

At seven that morning I was in cramped quarters, inside an unmarked police van headed to an estate in Feltham, out near Heathrow Airport. I rode with Martin Lodge and three of his detectives from the Met. We had recently been granted special permission to carry guns on this assignment. That was better.

Lodge explained the situation during the ride. “Our men, along with Special Branch, are all over Heathrow and the surrounding areas. We're working with the airport police, too. One of our people spotted a suspect with a missile launcher on the rooftop of a private home. We have surveillance there now. We don't want to go in, for obvious reasons, made only too clear yesterday. He's bound to be watching the neighborhood. I wouldn't doubt it for a minute.”

One of the other detectives asked, “Do we have an idea who it is inside the house, sir? Have we sussed out anything at all?”

“The house is rented. It belongs to a property developer. Pakistani, if that means anything. We don't know who the tenants are yet. The house is a few hundred yards from the runways at Heathrow. Need I say more?”

I looked over at Lodge, who had his arms wrapped tightly around his chest. “Very nasty stuff,” he said. “Understatement of the year, right, Alex?”

“I've had that feeling for a while. Ever since I first encountered the Wolf. He enjoys hurting people.”

“You have no idea who he is, Alex? What makes him this way?”

“He seems to change his identity on a regular basis. He . . . or she? We got close a couple of times. Maybe we'll get lucky now.”

“It better happen soon.”

We arrived at our destination in Feltham a few minutes later. Lodge and I met up with SO19, British Specialist Operations, who would execute the raid. Police surveillance had video monitors set up inside several nearby buildings. Tape was being shot from half a dozen different cameras.

“Like watching a movie. Nothing we can do to influence the action,” Lodge said after we'd studied the videos for a few minutes. What an impossible mess. We weren't supposed to be there. We'd been warned against it. But how could we go away?

Lodge had a list of all the flights scheduled into Heathrow that morning. In the next hour or so, more than thirty flights would be arriving. The next few were from Eindhoven, three from Edinburgh, two from Aberdeen, then a British Airways flight from New York. Serious discussions were being held about halting all flights into both Heathrow and Gatwick, but no decision had yet been made. The jet from New York was due in nineteen minutes.

One of the police pointed.

“There's someone on the roof! There! There he is!”

Two monitors showed the rooftop from opposite angles. A man in dark clothing had appeared. Then a second man, this one carrying a small surface-to-air missile launcher, came out of a hatchway.

“Fucking hell,” somebody hissed. Tempers were running very high now. Mine, too.

“Reroute all the flights now! We have no choice,” Lodge barked. “Do our snipers have these two bastards covered?”

Word came back that SO19 had the rooftop covered. Meanwhile, we watched the two men get into position. There could be little doubt now that they were there to bring down a plane. And we were watching the frightening scene, without being able to stop it.

“Arseholes!” Lodge swore at the monitors. “Not going to be anything for you bastards to shoot at. How do you like that?”

“They look Middle Eastern to me,” said one of the other detectives. “They certainly don't look Russian!”

“We don't have the go-ahead to shoot,” a man wearing headphones announced. “We're still on hold.”

“What the bloody hell is going on?” Lodge complained in a high-pitched voice. “We have to take them out. Come on!”

Suddenly there were gunshots! We could hear them on the video. The man with the launcher on his shoulder went down. He didn't get up, didn't move at all. Then the second suspect was hit. Two clean head shots.

“What the hell?” someone shouted in the van where we were watching. Then everyone was cursing and yelling.

“Who gave the order to shoot? What's going on here?” screamed Lodge.

Word finally came back, but nobody could believe it. Our snipers hadn't made the hit. Somebody else had shot the two men on the roof.

Madness.

It was total madness.

Everything was a wild ride like nothing anyone could imagine, like nothing anyone ever had imagined. The latest deadline was hours away and nobody in the rank and file knew what was happening. Maybe the prime minister knew something? The president? The chancellor of Germany?

Every passing hour just rubbed it in for us. Then it was the passing minutes that hurt. There was nothing we could do, except pray that the ransom would be paid. Soldiers in Iraq, I kept thinking to myself. That's what we are like. Observers of absurdity.

Back in London, at one point in the late afternoon I took a brief walk down near Westminster Abbey. There was so much powerful history on display in this part of the city. The streets weren't deserted, but traffic was very light around Parliament Square, with few tourists and pedestrians. The people of London didn't know what was happening, but whatever it was, it wasn't good.

I called my house in Washington several times. Nobody answered. Had Nana moved? Then I talked to the kids at their aunt Tia's in Maryland. No one knew where Nana Mama was. Another thing to worry about—just what I needed.

There really was nothing to do but wait; the waiting was frustrating and nerve-racking. Still, no one had a clue what was going on. And not just in London—in New York, Washington, and Frankfurt. No announcement had been made, but the rumor was that none of the ransoms would be paid. In the end, the governments weren't willing to negotiate, were they? They couldn't give in to terrorists, not without a fight. Was that what came next? The fight?

Once again the deadline passed, and I felt as if we were playing Russian roulette.

There were no attacks in London, New York, Washington, or Frankfurt that night. The Wolf didn't retaliate right away. He just let us stew.

I talked to the kids at my aunt's house and then, finally, to Nana. Nothing had happened in D.C. so far. Nana had gone for a walk in the neighborhood with Kayla, she told me. Everything was fine there. Walk in the park, right, Nana?

Finally, at 5:00A.M. in London most of us went home to get some needed rest, if we could sleep.

I dozed for a few hours, then the phone rang. Martin Lodge was on the line.

“What's happened?” I asked as I sat upright in my hotel bed. “What has he done?”

“Nothing's happened, Alex. Calm down. I'm downstairs in the hotel lobby. Nothing's happened. Maybe he was bluffing. Let's hope so. Get dressed and come for breakfast at my house. I want you to meet my family. My wife wants to meet you. You need a break, Alex. We all do.”

How could I say no? After all that we'd been through in the past few days? Half an hour later, I was in Martin's Volvo headed out to Battersea, just over the river from Westminster. Along the way, Martin tried to prepare me for breakfast, and for his family. We both wore our beepers, but neither of us wanted to talk about the Wolf or his threats. Not for an hour or so, anyway.

“The wife is Czech—Klára Cernohosska, born in Prague, but she's a real Brit now. Listens to Virgin and XFM, and all the talk shows on BBC Radio. She insisted on a Czech breakfast this morning, though. She's showing off for you. You'll love it. I hope so. No, I think you will, Alex.”

I thought so, too. Martin was actually smiling as he drove and talked about his family. “The eldest of my brood is Hana. Guess who chooses the names in our family? Hint: the kids are Hana, Daniela, and Jozef. What's in a name, though? Hana is obsessed with Trinny and Susannah on the TV show What Not to Wear. She's fourteen, Alex. The middle child, Dany, plays hockey at Battersea Park—and she's also crazy about ballet. Joe is mad about football, skateboarding and PlayStation. That just about covers it, don't you think? Did I mention that we're eating Czech for breakfast?”

A few minutes later we arrived in Battersea. The Lodge house was a Victorian redbrick with a slate roof and largish garden. Very neat and nice, proper, appropriate for the neighborhood. The garden was colorful and well tended and showed that somebody had his priorities in order.