Stephen Leather - The Bombmaker

She paused, then tapped the photograph taken from the video of the van leaving the Covent Garden carpark. 'Now, this where it gets really interesting. We've identified the driver of the van. One Mark Graham Quinn. An IC1 male, twenty four-year-old career criminal who has so far avoided prison but has been arrested several times on armed robbery charges. He's always walked, usually because witnesses have a habit of retracting confessions before he's due to appear in court. His prints match those on one of the parking receipts at the multistorey carpark in Covent Garden, and our technical boys have a decent match between the video pictures and photographs on file with the Met. Quinn's our boy. His police file will be with us within the hour. We still don't know who the passenger is, but computer enhancement has shown a tattoo on his left forearm. A lion leaping over a cross of St George.'

There were murmurs of surprise from her audience, and she waited for them to die down before continuing. She folded her arms across her chest. 'So what we have is a career criminal working with what we can assume is a Protestant extremist. They've kidnapped a former IRA bombmaker.' She raised an eyebrow. 'Quite a mix, I'd say. Lisa, any news about the landscaping company?'

Lisa Davies shook her head. 'Peter's spoken to them and the van isn't theirs. The details on the registration form match and the livery is the same, but it's not their van. He's been over their books and says that they're totally legit. He's working through a list of former employees, but he doesn't hold out much hope. It looks as if they've just set up an imitation. On the van itself, no parking tickets or speeding tickets. We're still checking with the ferry companies, and we're running separate checks with individual police forces to see if it's been involved in any accidents.'

'Okay, keep on top of it. And everyone start putting feelers out on Quinn. Any sniff of him and let David Bingham know immediately. But tread carefully. And if anyone has any thoughts on who might be sporting a lion and flag of St George tattoo, let David and me know straight away.'

– «»-«»-«»Andy soldered the copper wire to the output from the chip in the digital alarm clock, moving her head to the side to avoid the solder fumes. Green-eyes picked up one of the detonators and began to untangle the two white wires that protruded from one end. 'I thought they'd be different colours,' she said.

Andy looked up from the clock. 'What, red and black, like in the movies?'

'I guess so, yeah.'

Andy smiled thinly. 'Doesn't make any difference which way it's connected into the circuit. So there's no need to have different colours.'

'So all that stuff about "shall I cut the black wire or the red wire" is crap?'

Andy bent over the clock again and added a touch more solder to the joint. 'I'll use different-coloured wires in the circuit, but that's purely for my benefit so that I don't make any stupid mistakes. But both wires leading to the detonator are white. Anyway, no bomb disposal man would bother cutting the wires to the detonator. There's no point -all he'd have to do is to pull the detonator out. Besides, they'd be too wary of collapsing circuits.'

'Collapsing circuits? What are they?'

'It's a live circuit with some sort of a relay in it. When the circuit is cut, the relay closes, which in turn activates another circuit, the one containing the detonator. So cutting the wire actually activates the bomb.' Green-eyes continued to unravel the wires. Andy saw what she was doing and gestured with her chin. 'Don't separate the wires,' she warned.

Green-eyes stopped what she was doing. 'What's the problem? It's not connected.'

'Yeah, but they can go off all the same if there's any electrical interference. You can get a spark jumping between the two wires and it'll go off. You'd lose a hand.'

Green-eyes winced and put the detonator back down on the table. 'It's called the Faraday effect,' said Andy, adjusting the timer and setting the alarm. 'You want this set for five minutes, you said?'

'That's right.'

'That's not long.'

'That's what he said. Five minutes.'

Andy checked the digital read-out. Three hundred seconds. She showed it to Green-eyes, then showed her which buttons to press to start the timer. She set the clock on the table and they watched it count off the seconds.

'It's the Faraday effect that's responsible for a lot of bombs going off prematurely. Anything that sends off radio frequencies can do it. Police radios, televisions being turned on and off, even household equipment like fridges and stereos.' Andy realised she was talking too quickly, but she wanted to keep Green-eyes distracted so she wouldn't realise that she'd slipped up. There was someone telling her what to do. Someone who'd told her to set the timer for five minutes.

'There was a volunteer killed a while back, in Aldwych, remember? The bomb he was carrying went off on a bus.'

Green-eyes nodded. 'I remember.'

'The papers said it was because a guy with stereo headphones sat next to him. Turned up the sound, and bang. Blew them all to bits. That's the Faraday effect.'

'Dangerous business,' said Green-eyes.

Andy wondered whether the woman was joking, but the ski mask made it impossible to tell. The Wrestler and the Runner walked into the main office area, chewing on Marks and Spencer sandwiches and laughing.

'It's okay so long as you know what you're doing,' said Andy. She realised that the soldering iron was still on, and she pulled the plug out from the wall. 'This bomb, the small one. It's just a test, right?'

'We want to make sure that the stuff will explode,' said Green-eyes.

'What, you think I'd try to trick you? You think I'd risk my daughter?'

'We just want to be sure, Andrea. A dry run. If you've done your job properly, you've nothing to worry about.'

'Where are you going to set it off?'

'Why?'

'I just wondered.'

'Wondered what? If we're going to kill someone with it?'

Andy nodded.

'We're not, Andrea. Like I said, it's a dry run.' She nodded at the circuit. The digital read-out was still ticking off the seconds. 'If someone was going to defuse this, all they'd have to do is pull the detonator out of the explosive, is that what you said?'

'Sure. If the detonator goes off, it's a relatively small bang. It'd blow your hand off, but not much more. It has to be in the high explosive to set off the bomb.'

'So they're easy to defuse?'

'In theory. But they've got to get to the fuse first. So you hide it inside the bomb. With booby traps around it. Motion detectors, mercury tilt switches, photoelectric cells. Fake circuits. That way, they can't look for the fuse. Not easily, anyway. Also, they won't know if it's on a timer or if it's going to be detonated by remote wire or radio. But an expert can always take a bomb apart. If he has enough time.'

They watched as the digital read-out counted down to zero. The flashlight bulb winked on. 'Bang!' whispered Green-eyes, her eyes burning with fanaticism.

– «»-«»-«»Liam Denham wandered into the briefing room. There were two dozen agents in the room, talking into phones or tapping on computer keyboards. He smiled to himself. It was the new face of intelligence work, a face he doubted he'd ever have been able to embrace even if he'd remained in the job. Intelligence-gathering had become an office job, a job done by suits, by graduates who drank Perrier and played squash every lunch-time. But to Denham, intelligence meant people. It meant persuading people to part with information and that involved face-to-face contact. It might mean meeting them in a pub and talking over a few drinks, it might mean getting a bit physical in a locked room, or handing over an envelope packed with cash, but whatever the means, it was all down to people.