Stephen Leather - The Bombmaker

'I'd like a list,' said Hetherington. 'What about possible American targets?'

'There are no US government buildings within the security cordon. But there are plenty of American financial institutions.'

'Is there anything we can do there to increase security?'

Patsy nodded thoughtfully. 'I'll draw up a list,' she said.

'And we're still not issuing a formal warning to the Americans?'

'We've no reason to think that the target's American. And they do have a tendency to overreact.'

Hetherington chuckled dryly. 'Yes, I suppose they do. But if you get so much as an inkling that this venture is aimed at the Americans, I have to know tout de suite.'

Another affectation. Hetherington liked to throw the odd French phrase into his conversations, especially when he was under pressure.

'Are you sure that GCHQ won't inform the Americans? Echelon being under the NSA's wing, as it were.'

'We're using our own dictionary and GCHQ's K Division is handling the traffic. We should be able to keep the NSA at arm's length. For a while, at least.'

'Right,' said Hetherington, leaning forward again. 'The JIC meets tomorrow. I'm going to need a full report before last thing tonight.'

'It'll be on your desk by five,' promised Patsy.

She knew there was no point in asking her boss to hold off informing the Joint Intelligence Committee. The committee met every week in the Cabinet Office, and in theory the entire British intelligence community was answerable to it – MI5, MI6, GCHQ and the Defence Intelligence Service. The chairman reported directly to the Cabinet Secretary and therefore to the Prime Minister. The fact that GCHQ had already been asked for assistance effectively forced Hetherington's hand. He'd have to notify JIC of the bomb threat at the first available opportunity in case the committee heard it first from GCHQ.

'I think it's time to call Hereford,' said Patsy. 'When we are ready to move we're going to have to move fast. They have a Special Projects Team on stand-by at the Regent's Park barracks, but I was thinking of requesting another sixteen-man troop from Counter Revolutionary Warfare Wing. We can have them on stand-by here.'

Hetherington nodded thoughtfully. 'Agreed. What about DII?'

'I'd rather keep Met involvement to a minimum,' said Patsy. 'CRW has sniper specialists, too. And if the troopers go in, I think they'd prefer to have their own snipers backing them up.'

'Do we inform C13?' C13 was Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch.

'Again, I think not. I really would prefer to keep it in-house until the last possible moment. Once we do have a location, C13 and the Yard's Technical Support Branch could be useful, but until then I think they'll just get in the way.'

Hetherington put his spectacles on again and peered over the top of them. 'If anything goes wrong and the Met were kept out of it, the Commissioner's going to do everything he can to distance himself,' he warned. 'There could be a lot of mud flying around, and it'll be heading in our direction. It won't be the SAS that gets the blame. It'll be you. And me.'

'I appreciate that, Jason. But the more they're involved, the greater the chance that something will go wrong. Horses for courses.'

Hetherington pursed his lips and nodded slowly. 'Very well,' he said. 'I'll try to get JIC approval for that. Spread the responsibility, as it were.'

He picked up the file he'd been reading and Patsy stood up. As she reached the door, Hetherington called her name and she turned expectantly. 'I don't want to be a nag,' he said, 'but has someone been smoking in here?'

'A visitor,' she said. 'Sorry.'

'Be so good as to ask them to keep it outside, would you? It's hard enough trying to give up without having temptation waved under my nose.' He pushed his spectacles further up his nose and smiled apologetically.

– «»-«»-«»Andy made sure that her industrial respirator was snug against her face, then slid her plastic goggles down over her eyes. Green-eyes did the same, but as she was placing it over her ski mask she had trouble fitting the respirator. 'Why do we need these?' She asked.

'The aluminium,' said Andy. 'You've got to keep it out of your eyes and lungs.' They were standing next to a line of three desks, on which were containers of the dried ammonium nitrate, aluminium powder, soap powder, sawdust and cans of diesel oil.

Andy showed Green-eyes how to measure out the correct amounts of the different ingredients into a large Tupperware container, leaving about a third empty.

'What's the point of the aluminium powder? I mean, I can see that the oil helps it to burn, but what's the aluminium for?'

Andy explained as she mixed the ingredients with a wooden stirrer. 'That's not what the oil's for. The oil's to help the aluminium to stick to the ammonium nitrate. The better it's mixed, the more sensitive it is to the booster charge. It's the aluminium that makes it such a good explosive. When it oxidises in the initial explosion, it gives off huge amounts of heat. Aluminium burns like crazy. Remember those pictures of the aluminium ships that went up in the Falklands?'

Green-eyes nodded.

'That heat helps lengthen the detonation pulse, makes it much more powerful. You can use charcoal, but aluminium powder's better. Magnesium's even more effective but it's not as readily available.'

'And the sawdust and soap?'

'The soap enhances the detonation. So does the sawdust. They lower the detonation velocity, and keep the density down. The greater the density, the harder it is to get it to explode.'

They carried their Tupperware containers over to the tumble-driers and put one container in each drier.

'Ten minutes on the lowest setting should do it,' said Andy. 'It's just a way of mixing it efficiently.'

'How long will it take to do all four thousand pounds?'

Andy did a quick calculation in her head. Each load was about fifteen pounds, so with two driers they'd be able to mix just under two hundred pounds an hour.

'About twenty-four hours,' she said. 'But we can mix some by hand, too. It's just that the tumble-driers are more efficient.'

Green-eyes went over to a desk where Andy had been building the wiring circuit. 'This is ready?' she asked.

'I've tested it a dozen times with bulbs,' said Andy. 'I won't put the detonators in until the last minute.'

'Detonators? Plural?'

'It's always safer to use more than one. Sometimes they fail. In Belfast they used three. The last thing they wanted was for an unexploded device to fall into the hands of the army. Our signature would be all over it.'

'What do you mean, signature?'

'The style. The technique. Even the explosive mixture, the ratio of ingredients and the way they've been mixed. Every bombmaker has his or her own way of putting a device together, as distinctive as a fingerprint, or a signature.'

Andy looked across at Green-eyes, trying to gauge the woman's reaction. The ski mask made it impossible. Did she know about a bombmaker's signature? Did the person she was working for? There was no way of knowing without asking directly, and Andy didn't expect to be given a truthful answer. If they were forcing her to build the bomb so that it looked as if it were the work of the IRA, then they'd hardly be likely to admit it to her. Because the only way the deception would work was if Andy wasn't alive to contradict the evidence. If they truly wanted to make it look as if the IRA had carried out a major bomb outrage in the City of London, Andy would have to die.

Green-eyes straightened up. 'Show me again how we set the clock,' she said.

Andy went through the procedure, using flashlight bulbs where the detonators would be. The lights winked on as the tumble-driers finished their cycle.

Half an hour later they had fifty pounds of the explosive mixture in Tupperware containers on the desk in front of them. Green-eyes reached for a box of medical gloves and put on a pair. 'Did you wear gloves when you prepared the explosive?' she asked.