Stephen Leather - The Bombmaker

By the end of the year his account in the Dutch Antilles would contain more than twelve million dollars. The money itself was of little practical concern to Egan. He lived modestly, owned no property or cars, and virtually all his outgoings were work-related. Money was simply a way of keeping score. The more he had, the better he was doing.

He put down his beer and went over to the fax machine. He used a cheap plastic lighter to set fire to the letter, then dropped it into a metal wastepaper bin at the side of the desk.

He looked at his Rolex. Everything was on schedule, everything was going to plan. The DIA had taught Egan well. All he had to do now was to work out the best way of killing Martin Hayes.

– «»-«»-«»Andy lay on her side, her head resting on a rolled-up pullover. There had been no sound from outside for more than hour, though a strip of light still seeped in under the office door. Her stomach growled, but she steadfastly refused to ask her captors for food. She'd gone to the bathroom, remembering to shout for permission first, and had come back with a paper cup of water.

She rolled over and stared at the door. It wasn't locked; nor was the metal door that led outside. All she had to do was walk out of the office, down the corridor, across the factory area and out of the main door. There was nothing stopping her, nothing physical anyway. What was the expression? Iron bars do not a prison make. Andy didn't know if it came from a poem or one of Shakespeare's plays, but it described her situation perfectly. She was powerless, totally, utterly powerless, because the moment she walked out the kidnappers would vanish and Katie, her dear, darling Katie, would be dead. If she did run away, and if she did go to the police, what could she tell them? What did she know about her captors or what they were doing?

She knew that one of them, the one built like a wrestler, was called Don. And she knew that the woman had a name that started with 'McC. Or 'McK'. The woman had an accent that suggested she was Irish but had spent a lot of time in Scotland. Or vice versa. That was it. The sum total of her knowledge. She knew that they wanted to build a big bomb, a huge bomb, but she didn't know where they planned to use it or why. If she did walk out and her captors had disappeared by the time she got back with the police, then there was no way that they would ever be able to track them down. Green-eyes, the Wrestler and the Runner always wore their ski masks and gloves – she was totally incapable of identifying them.

And even if she could get outside and get to the police, and if they managed to get back in time to arrest her captors, then what? They hadn't tied her up, they hadn't put a gun to her head. They'd used the threat of what might happen to Katie, but how on earth could she prove that? They were putting together the ingredients for a bomb, but Andy knew from experience that until the ingredients were actually combined, all the evidence was circumstantial. And if she did bring in the police, what incentive was there for Green-eyes and her companions to confess? If they admitted it, they'd face long prison sentences for kidnapping and terrorism. Their best option was to say nothing and to get rid of the evidence. And that meant she'd never see Katie again. No, there was no way she could walk away. No way could she rely on the police. If there was a way out of the nightmare she was trapped in, it was up to her to find it. Up to her and Martin.

She closed her eyes tight and tried to imagine herself in her husband's arms. She wished with all her heart that she was back with him, back in her house in Dublin, safe and warm, with Katie asleep in the next room. It was no good. The unyielding floor beneath her was a constant reminder of where she was, and what lay ahead.

Canning was stirring a pan of scrambled eggs when McEvoy banged open the kitchen door and stood in the doorway, scratching his stomach. 'What are ya cooking?' he asked.

'Eggs.'

'Eggs again? I fucking hate eggs.'

'They're not for you. They're for Katie.'

McEvoy walked across the fake marble linoleum to the cooker and stood behind Canning, so close that Canning could smell the man's stale breath. 'What's this with Katie? You'll be calling her Miss Hayes next. It's best to keep your distance, Mick. Don't let it get personal, yeah? Call her the kid. The girl. The bitch. Call her anything, but don't call her by her name. If the shit hits the fan, we might have to do her, and it's going to be a hell of a lot harder to do it if you've forged a relationship with her. Get it?'

'Got it.' Canning spooned the scrambled eggs on to a paper plate, then put the plate and a plastic fork on a tray. 'You've done this before, haven't you?'

'Not with a kid, no. But I've held guys before.'

'For ransom, like?'

'No. Not for ransom.'

'For what, then?'

McEvoy made himself a cup of instant coffee and spooned in three sugars. 'What is this, Twenty Questions?'

'Just want to know where I stand, that's all. Background.'

McEvoy folded his arms across his chest and leant against the fridge. 'Background it is you want, huh? Background? I used to work for a unit attached to the Civil Administration Team, how's that for background?'

Canning raised his eyebrows in surprise. He'd known that McEvoy was active in the IRA, but the Civil Administration Team was the organisation's internal security unit, composed of only the most trusted, and vicious, activists. When the IRA needed prisoners or traitors interrogated or tortured, it was the Civil Administration Team that was called in. And most of the men and women they interrogated ended up dead.

McEvoy saw the look of surprise. 'Yeah, the best of the best, the hardest of the hard.'

'Shit.'

'Yeah. If there was anyone they thought was bad, we'd go in and get them, hold them until we were sure we weren't being watched, then the heavy mob would move in. To do the business. They were hard bastards, Mick. You wouldn't want to meet them on a dark night. On any fucking night. You knew that if they were on the case, someone was gonna end up dead. That's what I mean about not getting involved. You don't use their names, you don't say please and thank you, you don't ask them how they are. Okay, you might smile and keep them chatting until you get them into the safe house, but then you tie them up and throw a blanket over their heads. You don't talk to them and you don't look at them. You treat them like meat because that's all they are. Meat. Dead meat.'

'And are you saying that's what Katie is? Dead meat?'

'She might be. She might not be.' He sipped his coffee. 'But why take the risk? Maybe her mother's going to do what Egan wants, maybe everything's going to go exactly the way Egan's planned, but if worst comes to worst, we've got to be prepared to do what's necessary.' He looked across at Canning with narrowed eyes. 'What we're being paid for.' He nodded at the tray. 'Her eggs are getting cold.'

– «»-«»-«»Lydia McCracken thanked the two shop assistants and gave them each five pounds. The two teenagers had trundled two tumble-driers and four electric ovens out of the discount warehouse and loaded them into the back of the blue Peugeot van, and they were both panting and sweating. They thanked her and walked away, grinning at the unexpected tip. Mark Quinn loaded four large coffee grinders and four electric woks into the van and slammed the door shut.

McCracken got into the passenger seat and told Quinn to drive back to the industrial estate. As he drove, she checked a computer print-out that she had attached to a metal clipboard. Most of the items on the list had now been purchased, and all the chemicals had already been delivered to the office in Cathay Tower. They were ready to go on to the next stage.