The Marching Season (2 page)

She passed through the turnstiles and took the long escalator down to the platform. A moment later she felt a breath of wind and heard the rush of the approaching train. Miraculously, there were a few empty seats. She left the bag next to the door and sat down. By the time the train reached Earl’s Court, the carriage had filled with passengers, and Dame had lost sight of the bag. The train surfaced and sped through London’s western suburbs. Tired commuters trickled from the train onto the windswept platforms of Boston Manor, Osterley, and Hounslow East.

As the train approached the first stop at Heathrow—the platform serving Terminal Four—Dame looked at the passengers seated around her. A pair of young English businessmen who stank of prosperity, a knot of sullen German tourists, a foursome of Americans loudly debating whether London’s production of
Miss Saigon
was superior to Broadway’s. Dame looked away.

The plan was simple. She had been instructed to get off at Terminal Four and leave the bag behind. Before stepping from the train she would press the button on a small transmitter hidden in her coat pocket. The transmitter, disguised as a keyless remote for a Japanese luxury car, would arm the detonator. If the train continued on schedule, the bomb would explode a few seconds after it reached the platform serving terminals One, Two, and Three. The resulting damage would inconvenience travelers for months and cost hundreds of millions of pounds to repair.

The train slowed as it approached the stop for Terminal Four. The woman stood and moved to the doors as the black of the tunnel gave way to the severe light of the platform. When the doors opened she pressed the button on the transmitter, arming the bomb. She stepped onto the platform, and the doors closed behind her. She began walking quickly toward the way out. It was then that she heard pounding on the window of the train. She turned and saw one of the young English businessmen beating his fist against the glass. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but she could read his lips.
Your bag!
he was shouting.
You left your bag!

Dame made no movement. The expression on the Englishman’s face abruptly turned from mild concern to complete terror as he realized the woman had left the bag intentionally. He lunged toward the doors and tried to pry them open with his hands. Even if the man had managed to arouse attention and stop the train, nothing could be done in one minute and fifteen seconds to prevent the bomb from exploding.

Dame watched as the train slipped forward. She was turning away when, a few seconds later, the tunnel shook with an enormous blast. The train lifted from the tracks, and a wave of searing air rushed over her. Dame instinctively raised her hands to her face. Above her, the ceiling began to crumble. The concussion of the blast lifted her from her feet. She saw it all terribly clearly for an instant—the fire, the crumbling cement, the human beings, like her, caught in the fiery maelstrom of the explosion.

It ended very quickly. She was not certain how she came to rest; she had lost all sense of up and down, rather like a diver too long beneath the surface. All she knew was that she was entombed in debris, and she could not breathe or feel any part of her body. She tried to speak but could utter no sound. Her mouth began filling with her own blood.

Her thoughts remained clear. She wondered how the bomb makers could have made such a mistake, and then, in the final moments before her death, she wondered whether it was really a mistake at all.

CHAPTER 2

LONDON

Within one hour of the attacks, the London and Dublin governments launched one of the largest criminal investigations in the history of the British Isles. The British inquiry was coordinated directly from Downing Street, where Prime Minister Tony Blair met continuously with his key ministers and the heads of Britain’s police and security services. Shortly before nine o’clock that night, the prime minister stepped from the doorway at No. 10, into the driving rain, and stood before the reporters and cameras waiting to beam his remarks around the world. An aide tried to hold an umbrella over the prime minister’s head, but he quietly nudged him away, and after a moment his hair and the shoulders of his suit jacket were soaked. He expressed his despair at the appalling loss of life—sixty-four dead at Heathrow, twenty-eight dead in Dublin, two more in Belfast—and vowed that his government would not rest until the killers were brought to justice.

In Belfast, the leaders of all the major political parties—Catholic and Protestant, Republican and Loyalist—expressed outrage. Publicly, the politicians refused to speculate on the affiliation of the terrorists until more facts became known. Privately each side pointed fingers at the other. Everyone appealed for calm, but by midnight Catholic youths were rioting along the Falls Road, and a British army patrol came under fire on the Protestant Shankill Road.

By the early hours of the following day, investigators had made enormous progress. In London, forensic and explosive specialists concluded that the bomb had been placed in the sixth carriage of the Heathrow-bound train. The explosive material was fifty to one hundred pounds of Semtex. Shreds of material that were found around the blast zone led investigators to conclude that the bomb was probably contained in a black nylon suitcase, very likely a rolling model. At dawn, officers fanned out along the Piccadilly Line—from Heathrow in the west to Cock-fosters in the northeast—and questioned morning commuters at every stop. Police received some three hundred reports of passengers carrying suitcases on a late-afternoon train, one hundred of a rolling variety.

As luck would have it, a Dutch tourist named Jacco Krajicek came forward shortly before noon and said he had helped a woman with a large rolling black nylon suitcase at the Knightsbridge Underground station in the late afternoon. He provided a thorough description of her appearance and her clothing, but it was two other details that piqued the interest of investigators. The woman had operated the automatic ticket machine with the speed and confidence of a Londoner who commutes on the Underground every day, yet apparently she hadn’t realized there were steps at the entrance of the Knightsbridge stop; why would she have tried to take the heavy suitcase, otherwise? She spoke with an American accent, Krajicek said, but the accent was a fake. The detective inspector who took Krajicek’s call asked how he reached such a conclusion. Krajicek said he was a speech therapist and linguist who spoke several languages fluently.

With Krajicek’s assistance, detectives produced a photo-kit sketch of the woman from the Underground. The sketch was sent to the Special Branch of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the headquarters of MI5 and MI6. Officers pored over their files and photographs of all known members of paramilitary groups, Republican and Loyalist. When no match was discovered, the photo-kit image was put into broader circulation. Police theorized that after the bombing the woman probably boarded a departing flight at Heathrow and fled the country. The photo kit was shown to ticket agents, baggage handlers, and airport security officers. Every airline that had a flight leaving Heathrow that night was given a copy. Every inch of videotape shot from every surveillance camera in the airport was viewed and viewed again. The photo kit was given to friendly intelligence services in Western Europe, along with Israel’s Mossad.

At 7 P.M., the search for the woman was brought to an abrupt halt by the discovery of another body in the rubble of the train platform. The features of the face were surprisingly intact and roughly matched the photo kit provided by Krajicek. The Dutchman was brought to Heathrow to view the body. He nodded grimly and looked away. She was the woman he had helped in the Knightsbridge Underground stop.

A similar series of events played out across the Irish Sea in Dublin. No fewer than a dozen witnesses reported seeing a bearded man with a limp carrying a large heavy briefcase into the library just before the bombing. The doorman at the Shelbourne Hotel provided a detailed description of the suspect to a pair of Garda detectives two hours after the blast.

The library attendant who had given the bearded man a pass for the reading room survived the blast with only minor cuts and bruises. He helped police pick out the suspect on a videotape shot by the library’s surveillance cameras. The Garda released a photo-kit sketch and a fuzzy image made from the videotape. Copies were faxed to London. That evening, however, rescue workers once again pulled a body from the rubble that appeared to match the description of the suspect. When a pathologist removed the clothing from the corpse he discovered a heavy brace on the right knee. Detectives ordered the knee X-rayed. The pathologist discovered no injury to the knee—either bone, cartilage, or ligaments—that would require the support of such a heavy brace. “I suspect the man was wearing the brace in order to
produce
a limp rather than support a damaged knee,” the pathologist said, staring down at the corpse’s leg. “And I’m also afraid that your only suspect in this case is officially quite dead.”

To the north, in Ulster, case officers from the Special Branch of the Royal Ulster Constabulary began calling on their sources and informants, from the bars and backstreets of West Belfast to the lime-colored farms around Portadown and Armagh. None turned up anything promising. An army surveillance camera had captured Eamonn Dillon’s murder, and the security camera over the door of the Celtic Bar had recorded the killer’s escape. Neither vantage point produced a usable image of the gunman’s face. The RUC appealed for calls to the Confidential Line—a special telephone hot line where informers can provide tips to police anonymously—but none of the 450 calls produced meaningful leads. Twelve claims of responsibility were reviewed and dismissed as hoaxes. Units devoted to technical intelligence gathering—video surveillance and electronic eavesdropping—hastily reviewed recent tapes and intercepts, searching for missed signs of an imminent attack. Their review turned up nothing.

Initially, there was a good deal of dispute about the possible perpetrators of the attacks. Was it one group or two? Was it coordinated or simply coincidence? Was it the work of an existing paramilitary group or a new one? Republican or Loyalist? The assassination of Eamonn Dillon and the bombing of the National Library in Dublin suggested the terrorists were Loyalist Protestants. The bombing of the Underground suggested the terrorists were Republicans, since Loyalist paramilitaries infrequently engaged British forces and had never bombed the British mainland. Known members of the Irish Republican Army and the Protestant Ulster Volunteer Force were quietly brought in for questioning. All denied any knowledge or involvement.

At 8 P.M., the ministers and security officials gathered in the Cabinet Room at Downing Street for a briefing with the prime minister. All reluctantly admitted they had no credible evidence pointing to any group or individual. In short, they were baffled.

At 8:45 P.M. that all changed.

The telephone chirped softly in the busy newsroom of BBC television. The
Nine O’Clock News,
its main nightly newscast, was on the air in fifteen minutes. The executive producer planned to devote the first half of the program to the terrorist attacks. Reporters were standing by live in Belfast, Dublin, Heathrow, and Downing Street. Because of the chaotic atmosphere in the newsroom, the telephone rang ten times before a junior production assistant named Ginger answered it.

“I’m calling to claim responsibility for the execution of Eamonn Dillon in Belfast and the bombings at Heathrow Airport and in Dublin.” Ginger took note of the voice: male; no emotion; Irish accent, West Belfast by the sound of it. “Are you prepared to take my statement?”

“We’re a little busy here, sweetheart,” Ginger said. “I really don’t have time for this right now. Nice talking to you—”

“If you hang up this telephone you’ll be making the biggest mistake of your career,” the caller said. “Now, do you want to take my statement, or would you like me to telephone ITN instead?”

“Fine,” Ginger said, twirling a red lock of hair around the gnawed tip of her forefinger.

“You have a pen?”

Ginger kept three pens on strings around her neck. “Of course.”

“The execution of the IRA terrorist Eamonn Dillon, the bombing of the National Library in Dublin, and the bombing of the Underground at Heathrow Airport were carried out under the orders of the military council of the Ulster Freedom Brigade. The Ulster Freedom Brigade is a new Protestant paramilitary organization and is not a pseudonym for an existing organization such as the Ulster Volunteer Force or the Ulster Defense Association.”

“Hold on, let me catch up,” Ginger said calmly, scribbling furiously. The man she had nearly dismissed as a crank sounded very much like the real thing. “All right, I’ve got it. Keep going.”

“The Ulster Freedom Brigade is dedicated to the preservation of the Protestant way of life in Northern Ireland and the preservation of British rule in the province. We will not stand idly by while the British government betrays its historical commitment to the Protestant people of Northern Ireland, nor will we ever permit Ulster to be annexed by the South. The Ulster Freedom Brigade will continue its campaign of armed resistance until the so-called Good Friday peace agreement is dead and buried. All those who support this betrayal of Northern Ireland’s Protestant community should regard this statement as fair warning.” The man paused, then said, “Did you get all that?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Good,” he said, and the line went dead.

Alan Ramsey, the executive producer, was sitting at his desk, a phone pressed to each ear and a pile of scripts in front of him. Ginger marched across the newsroom and stood by his desk, waving her hand to get his attention. He looked up and said, “I have Belfast on one line and Dublin on the other. This better be fucking important.”

“It is.”

“Hold on a minute,” he shouted into the mouthpieces of both receivers. He looked up at Ginger. “Talk.”

“A man just telephoned to claim responsibility for the bombings.”

“Probably a crank.”

“I don’t think so. It sounded like the real thing.”

“Have you ever
heard
the real thing?”

“No, but—”

“Then how can you be certain?”

“There was something about him,” Ginger said. “I don’t know how to put this, Alan, but he really scared the shit out of me.”

Ramsey held out his hand, and she gave him the statement. He glanced at her scrawly shorthand, frowned, and handed it back to her. “Christ, decipher this, would you?”

She read back the statement.

Ramsey said, “Did he have an accent?”

She nodded.

“Irish?”

“Northern Irish,” she said. “West Belfast, I’d say.”

“How could you tell?”

“Because I was born in Belfast. We lived there until I was ten. Once you get that accent in your head it’s very hard to forget.”

He looked at the large digital clock on the wall: ten minutes to air.

“How long will it take you to type that thing up?”

“About fifteen seconds.”

“You have exactly ten.”

“Right,” she said, sitting down in front of a computer.

Ramsey withdrew an electronic organizer from his coat pocket and punched in the last name of a friend from Cambridge who worked for MI5. He picked up the telephone, dialed, and drummed his fingers on the desk while he waited.

“Hello, Graham, it’s Alan Ramsey. Listen, we received a rather interesting telephone call a few moments ago, and I was wondering if I could impose on our friendship.”

Ginger dropped a printout of the statement on the desk. Ramsey read it over the telephone. Then he took notes furiously for thirty seconds.

“Right, thanks much,” he said. “Anytime I can return the favor, don’t hesitate to call.”

Ramsey slammed down the phone and stood up at his desk.

“All right, listen up, everyone!” he shouted, and the newsroom fell silent. “We have what appears to be a genuine claim of responsibility for the attacks in Belfast, Dublin, and Heathrow: a new group called the Ulster Freedom Brigade. We’re leading the newscast with it. Get on the phone and get me every expert on Irish terrorism you can lay your hands on, especially
Protestant
terrorism. We have five minutes, ladies and gentlemen. If the bastard has a pulse, put him on the air.”