Tim Stevens - Delivering Caliban

He’d seen Nina’s eyes widen perceptibly as she’d listened.

‘There’s a bomb in the Loomis Building, Park Avenue,’ he said, once the 911 dispatcher had put him through to the police. ‘I’m going to set it off within the next hour. It’s going to bring down the entire building. I suggest you take the necessary steps to avoid substantial loss of life.’

And that was the extent of it. The sirens stared up within ten minutes. He’d — briefly — wondered if he’d be treated as a hoaxer. Perhaps before that day in the autumn of 2001 he would have been.

*

‘I don’t understand,’ she said.

He sat opposite her on another uncomfortable chair, leaned forward.

She raised her head. Her eyes were calm but questioning.

‘You’re letting them get all those people out.’

‘Because they don’t all deserve to die. Some of them do, but it’s impossible to separate them out. So they have to live, to avoid killing innocents.’

Pope regarded himself as honest, at least with himself. such honesty made him acknowledge inwardly that his explanation was only partially satisfactory. Yes, large-scale loss of life would be tragic, and unjustified, morally. But there was another reason he wanted everybody cleared out of the building. Almost everybody.

It meant he’d have uninterrupted time to talk to Z.

After the call to the police, after he’d shut the switchboard woman off in mid-question, he’d dialled again. It was answered even more quickly than the 911 call.

‘Yes.’

‘Are you in the building?’

‘Yes. I’m in the elevator.’ Giordano — Z — sounded out of breath. ‘Heading up to the boardroom annex now. Where — ’

‘They’re going to start evacuating the building very soon,’ said Pope. ‘Under no circumstances allow yourself to be removed. You understand why, don’t you?’

‘Yes. I understand.’

‘Hide if you have to. But be unobtrusive. And be there at ten o’clock.’

Pope rang off.

He walked over to the drapes and peered through the crack, in case Giordano was already there, in the specified room. But there was no movement at the glass.

The clatter of helicopters had started up, and in the distant sky Pope saw them converging like bees.

*

He’d laid the groundwork over the last ten years. The practical details of the plan had been set up in the last four months.

Once Pope had obtained the names and whereabouts of the four of them — Jablonsky, Taylor, Grosvenor and of course Giordano himself — it had been a matter of working out a schedule, one that would allow him to follow a path that would take out the first three as economically and yet as visibly as possible while keeping up enough momentum to prevent Giordano from stopping him. That path had begun in Amsterdam, almost been scuppered by Purkiss before leading to New York, and then via Charlottesville back to Manhattan.

Pope realised quickly, once he tracked Giordano down and discovered his senior position at Langley, that he’d never reach the man directly. His home was similarly next to impossible to find: its location was such a cleverly concealed secret that Pope had marvelled when his repeated attempts had failed to find it. So, Giordano would have to be got at by another route. Pope based his strategy on a gamble: he believed, from his repeated analysis of his father’s diary notes, that Giordano had strong feelings for the daughter he’d abandoned, and that she would provide a point of access.

What Pope hadn’t bargained on — and it was a mistake, he admitted to himself — was that Giordano would have Nina under constant surveillance. That detail had, like Purkiss’s intervention in Amsterdam, nearly derailed the plan. Pope’s first visit to the United States in January had established Ramirez’s whereabouts, her working patterns, but it had failed to appreciate the fact that she had watchers constantly. Pope considered himself lucky that the watchers hadn’t spotted him at that early stage.

He’d used the January trip to obtain — with moderate difficulty — Giordano’s cell phone number. He had done this through that most ancient of the spy’s tactics, namely the honey trap. One of Giordano’s aides, an up-and-coming junior staffer named Naomi Johnson, had proved hard to pin down but less difficult to win over. He hadn’t discussed politics or work or anything with her; had simply obtained her own cell phone by sleight of hand at an opportune moment and found the required number listed as RAG, Giordano’s initials.

Pope’s second visit to the US, the April trip, had been concerned with the practicalities of the final stage in his operation. He’d obtained a staff member’s ID pass to the Holtzmann Solar offices in the Loomis building and had committed to memory the details before returning it to the unsuspecting staffer. Those details he later used back in his SIS base in Amsterdam to produce a forged pass. Also while in the US on the second trip, he’d rented the apartment across from the Loomis building. The floor plan of the Holtzmann Solar headquarters wasn’t that hard to come by, and he’d identified the room directly across from his apartment, namely the Board Room Annex.

A journey upstate had obtained for Pope the light truck, and some shopping around had procured the necessary materials for the bomb: a urea nitrate main charge with nitroglycerine as a booster explosive and several tanks of bottled hydrogen to enhance the effect of the blast. The entire bomb weighed just under a tonne. He’d left the truck in the public car lot near Gramercy Park and made sure he’d paid enough to last until his return this time.

And here he was, in the end phase. He was at the vantage point he’d decided on, with the woman, Giordano’s daughter, at his side, waiting for Giordano to make an appearance in the adjacent building.

He’d made it. Somewhere, Pope believed, his father had taken note.

9.45 am

The gridlock had shut down on the streets as suddenly as a trap springing shut.

Berg punched buttons on the radio, trying to get a clearer signal. Eventually one broke through.

…Credible threat of a bomb in the Loomis Building. Evacuation of the building and the surrounding blocks underway. All units to regard as a priority.

‘Car bomb,’ said Purkiss. ‘The light truck Pope rented. It’ll be in the basement.’

‘Yeah,’ said Berg. ‘Jesus.’ She picked up her phone, dialled, spoke rapidly and concisely, then rang off. ‘At least now they know what to look for.’

Through the windscreen Purkiss watched people stepping out on to the streets, gazing off in the direction the police vehicles appeared to be heading, disregarding the traffic which wasn’t moving anyway.

‘Out,’ said Purkiss.

Berg hesitated, then climbed out to join Purkiss and Kendrick. The road was blocked as far ahead as they could see. The crowds on the streets and the pavements were catching the mood already, becoming a herd united in rising wonder and panic.

‘Lead the way,’ said Purkiss.

They moved rapidly, weaving their way through the throng, the three of them abreast. Berg said, ‘I’m trying to figure this… Pope’s in the building? Going to take it down, him and the Ramirez woman included?’

‘Possibly,’ said Purkiss.

‘You’re not convinced?’

‘I don’t know.’ They were, Purkiss guessed, a few blocks from their destination. Uniformed police were corralling the crowds away and deploying tape and barriers across the streets. ‘There’s a loose end. And that loose end’s Giordano.’

‘How so?’

‘Pope wants revenge on Giordano and he’s going to kill his daughter to achieve that. I think we can assume that’s correct. But is he really going to stop there? Is Giordano’s daughter’s death really punishment enough? Look at the vengeance Pope’s exacting on Holtzmann Solar. Bringing their entire headquarters down, literally. It doesn’t make sense that he’d allow Giordano to escape relatively unscathed.’