Simon Kernick - Ultimatum

No, there are no noble causes. If you fight for something you believe in, innocent people will always get hurt, and even if you achieve whatever goal it is you’ve set yourself, it’ll always end up being a hollow victory, because everything comes at a price.

Cecil walked back to the car, giving the drunks a sideways look that temporarily silenced all of them, and got back inside.

‘There’s someone who wants to meet you.’

And that was when I knew I was in.

10.26

The man was parked in a deserted stretch of woodland bordering a golf course just inside the M25 when he got off the phone to Cecil. He had an iPad on his lap and was watching Sky News as they continued their frenetic coverage of the coffee shop bomb attack. So far, actual hard news was scarce; they were relying on eyewitness reports and continued footage of the scene from the Sky News Copter. The fire in the cafe was now out, but the street was still full of emergency vehicles. According to the rolling newsreel on the bottom of the screen six people had so far been confirmed dead, with more than thirty wounded, but the death toll was expected to rise. There were also unconfirmed reports that a previously unknown terror group had claimed responsibility, that the bomber himself had fled the cafe before the explosion, and that he’d been arrested.

This last rumour concerned him. They’d used Akhtar Mohammed so that the attack could be blamed on Islamic fundamentalists. If it was revealed that he’d been blackmailed into delivering the bomb, then their plan fell to pieces. Worse still, Mohammed would be able to identify Martha Crossman as the intended target.

There was nothing he could do about this now, though, so he sat patiently, staring at the iPad’s screen, waiting for the signal to go to the next stage.

Sure enough, a little over five minutes later it finally came as the anchorwoman interrupted her interview with the Sky security correspondent to announce further breaking news. Viewers had been calling the newsroom to report that large numbers of armed police had surrounded a block of flats in Bayswater, barely a couple of miles from where the coffee shop bomb had exploded, and were in the process of evacuating the surrounding area. A minute after that the security correspondent announced live on air that he’d received confirmation from a source at New Scotland Yard that an ongoing armed operation was underway.

This was the amazing thing about modern life, thought the man. The speed with which news travelled was almost instantaneous. There were plenty of positives in this. It meant citizens were generally kept well informed. It made it difficult for dictatorships to hide their guilty secrets. Unfortunately, it also allowed the bad guys to monitor the progress of the security forces highly effectively.

The screen had switched back to the Sky News Copter which was now circling above the block of flats where he’d shot dead Mika and booby-trapped her body over two hours earlier. Dozens of black-clad police were moving like ants round the front of the building as they formed a cordon around it and evacuated residents from the surrounding flats. Clearly they’d traced the mobile phone he’d used to make the call claiming responsibility for the cafe bomb, as he’d anticipated. Of course, they wouldn’t be reckless and go storming in, even though he could see that a number of them were CO19, with their trademark Heckler and Kochs. First they’d need to secure the area, finish the evacuation of any civilian within a hundred yards, then make a risk assessment, before even thinking of trying to get into the flat where the dead woman lay with the bomb and the phone on top of her. The whole thing would take hours. The man smiled. He knew this would happen, which was why there was a second bomb in the boot of one of the cars in the parking area directly in front of the building. The device contained twenty kilos of PETN explosives in two large bags, surrounded by a further twenty kilos of assorted shrapnel — and, like the bomb on Mika, it was timed to go off in two minutes exactly.

So far no one seemed to be taking any notice of the parked cars, although the senior officers on the scene would get round to checking them fairly soon. They’d probably already blocked the mobile phone signal in the immediate area to prevent any booby-trap bombs being set off remotely. Secondary devices were a known hallmark of Islamic terrorists. At the moment, though, the situation on the ground was still in its early semi-chaotic stages.

The man looked at his watch. One minute to detonation.

He took a cheap mobile phone from the outer pocket of his jacket and speed-dialled the single number stored on it. ‘This is the Islamic Command,’ he announced into the voice disguiser as the man on the Evening Standard news desk picked up. ‘Two more bombs are about to explode. There will be no further attacks if our demands are met.’ He ended the call and switched off the phone, throwing it out of the window into some bushes.

The Sky News Copter was still filming the scene when there was a huge flash of light, accompanied by a very loud bang, from among the parked cars, followed moments later by a second blast from inside one of the flats. The camera shook and the helicopter banked, temporarily losing its view of the scene as the programme suddenly went to split screen, showing a visibly shaken anchorwoman with her hand on her mouth as it became clear to her that she’d just witnessed a second bomb attack.

The man shut the iPad case, and pulled away from the kerb.

It was time to meet their new recruit.

10.40

HMP Westmoor was a very big, very bland-looking modern prison set slap bang in the middle of glorious rolling Hertfordshire countryside. It was, Tina thought, like some kind of immense fortified municipal library, and it had been an act of architectural barbarism to put it in such a beautiful place.

As she walked towards the reception area, it struck her that she could very easily have ended up in a place like this. It was only a little over a year since she’d killed a man with a single blow to the head. The fact that the man in question, twenty-one-year-old Liam Roy Shetland, had been one of the terrorists involved in the Stanhope siege and was about to murder two kidnapped children was still not perceived as sufficient justification for what she’d done.

Although she and Shetland had been fighting, and Tina had sustained a number of injuries herself, he’d had his back to her when she’d hit him with a piece of piping, and for weeks afterwards charges had been hanging over her head. She’d been lucky. Public and political pressure had helped her, as had the fact that Shetland was going for a gun at the time. Tina was a hero in some people’s eyes, the kind of tough, no-nonsense cop that the UK was sorely lacking these days. ‘Dirty Harriet’ the Daily Mail had called her, which was far more preferable than ‘The Black Widow’ moniker that had haunted her ever since one of her colleagues had been killed on a job they were both working on. Politicians, sniffing an opportunity as always, had also got involved, singing her praises (but with plenty of caveats, of course), several of them pushing for her reinstatement in the force, which was how she’d finally ended up in Westminster CID.

Westmoor was a maximum-security prison, housing only Category A offenders, and those awaiting trial for the most serious crimes. It was built in a wheel shape, with the six spokes representing separate wings, each of which could be sealed off from the others, and a separate prison-within-a-prison section in the centre where only those guilty of, or charged with, the most serious crimes were held, and it was here that Fox was currently residing.