James Patterson - Private London

Harlan Shapiro had barely said three words to me since our first meeting earlier that morning.

Sam and Del Rio had driven us to the Finchley Road Tube station and we had been sitting on the seat as we’d been told, for some twenty-five minutes. It was five minutes to two. I had looked at my watch seconds earlier. But I checked it again, anyway. Hard to be perfectly calm when a bomb is thundering up the Metropolitan Line on its way for a date with you.

We had been put between a rock and a very hard place. If Hannah was indeed on the train then theoretically we could have placed operatives at all stations on the Metropolitan Line between Finchly Road and the four terminuses it finished at: Uxbridge, Watford, Chesham and Amersham.

We had the manpower for that. But the Metropolitan Line intersected with other lines on the Underground at many stations and with the overland mainline services at Harrow-on-the-Hill. Meaning that the kidnappers could start their journey potentially from anywhere in London and still end up heading towards us on the eastbound train that was due in five minutes. Private had a lot of resources but we didn’t have enough for that, not in the time available to us.

We could have done what Sam wanted and informed the authorities. But that would have resulted in the entire Tube network being closed down and we would have had no way of protecting Hannah Shapiro.

I didn’t believe they would set the bomb off – if, indeed, it was live. But I could understand the logic of it. They had to make sure the merchandise we were using for the exchange was the genuine article. Hannah was their security. If they handed her over before they could check, they had no way of knowing whether the ransom paid was genuine.

This way they did. It would take time to disarm the explosives strapped around Hannah. Through my work with the RMP I knew a thing or two about bombs. None of it good. But in the RMP we didn’t disarm them, we simply marked and secured them for the experts to get in. And we didn’t stay too close when they did!

Sam and Del Rio were now waiting at Baker Street. We had received a further email saying that if everything was as it should be then Hannah and her father would disembark there. The journey from Finchley Road gave the kidnappers time for their expert to get his loupe out, I guess, and examine the stones. They would find them genuine. Not easy to get five million pounds’ worth of gems on a Sunday afternoon. But, like I said, Private has resources and reach.

Del Rio had also talked to Jack Morgan who had spoken to a high-ranking member of the Noccia family on the West Coast.

The word had come back that the Italian-American we had seen with Ronnie Allen, Sally Manzino, was a made man, and highly placed in the family’s operation. He had nothing to do with Hannah’s kidnapping and we could take that as cast-iron. Jack Morgan had some kind of deal with the Noccia family, I don’t know what. Apparently he had helped them out over some turf war of their own a year or two back so there was some kind of mutual back-scratching.

Either way, Manzino was out of the frame. This was looking like a totally home-grown operation.

I looked at my watch again. Three minutes to go. Harlan Shapiro turned to me. His eyes were sunken, haunted.

‘My daughter is very precious to me, Mister Carter,’ he said.

‘I know.’

‘I made a very grave error of judgement some years ago, and Hannah had to pay a terrible price.’

I nodded. He was right.

‘My wife, of course, paid the ultimate price. And if I could change events in time I would gladly have taken her place. Do you understand me?’

‘I do, sir,’ I said. And I did.

‘These animals who have taken my daughter. If anything goes wrong on this train journey… I want you to track them down and slaughter them.’

He looked at me, his eyes animated now. ‘Will you do that?’

‘You have my word: we won’t let this lie, Mister Shapiro. But these people are businessmen. They have a perverse logic to what they are doing. The logic means that they will keep you alive, Mister Shapiro. You and your daughter.’

‘They are terrorists, Mister Carter. I don’t believe logic is the driving force here.’

‘They are acting like terrorists but they’re not the same thing. If they detonate any explosive device on a London Underground train they will have the full and focused attention of the national police forces bearing down on them. Together with the Home Office, the anti-terrorism squad and your own Homeland Security department. They don’t want that. Believe me.’

He nodded. His eyes weak, unfocused. ‘I guess we have to believe that.’

The overhead monitor showed that the train would be arriving in one minute.

As I looked up at it a train clattered into the platform. Jubilee Line. False alarm.

It was very warm. One of those days you get in May which are like a glorious early summer and I was wearing polarised aviator sunglasses against the brightness of the sun.

Finchley Road is an open-air station. From there to all destinations west, the Tube is actually overground. It is at Finchley Road station heading east that the Metropolitan Line enters the tunnel network. The underground labyrinth connecting all parts of London. The Jubilee Line train left. Thirty seconds later the Metropolitan Line train came in.

It was crowded, particularly for a Sunday. But there was a big concert on later at the O2 Arena, the re-formed Take That were headlining and thousands of people were heading east for it.

Harlan Shapiro and I stood up as the train pulled to a stop, and headed to the door which opened opposite the seat we had been told to wait at.

Harlan Shapiro stepped aboard.

I scanned the carriages and what faces I could see I didn’t recognise. The doors closed and the train began to pull out.

I let the carriage go, then jogged alongside the train and leapt in between two of the carriages where there was a small gap for the guard to walk through.

The train picked up speed and as it went into the tunnel the lights dimmed and it became dark.

My feet flew from under me and I fell backwards towards the gap.

Luckily someone had opened the window on one of the doors.

I managed to grab its top edge before I was sucked under the train.

I pulled myself upright and opened the door. A group of middle-aged women looked at me, startled. I smiled apologetically and tried to make my way through.

It wasn’t easy. I wasn’t sure what I’d hoped to achieve by getting on the train but I couldn’t just do nothing. I’d made a promise first to Hannah Shapiro and now to her father, and I intended to keep it. I made my way about halfway down the carriage when the train stopped briefly, as it often did on this stretch of track. I walked on to the end of the carriage and it started up again.

I looked through the windows between the carriages but there was no sign of Hannah or her father. I opened the door again, apologising to the people who had to move out of the way. I considered flashing them my card but decided against it. Given the circumstances, it was probably best not to let people know who I was or who I was working for.

I worked my way down through the next carriage. It was just as packed as the others. Mainly women – a lot of them in their thirties or forties. Dressed a lot younger and giggling like schoolchildren on their way to their first concert.

What would happen if the kidnappers detonated the explosives didn’t bear thinking about.

I had been entirely rational in my reassurances to Harlan Shapiro. But logic was one thing and human emotion another, and emotion was a far stronger force than logic. As I was just about to find out.