Stephen Leather - The Bombmaker

Andy shook her head. 'No. You need the sensitivity when you're doing the electrical work, and you have to be able to squeeze the explosive into the form you want it. It'd be like trying to make pastry with gloves on.'

Green-eyes nodded and put the box to one side. Earlier in the day she had gone out to buy a Samsonite hard-shell suitcase, and she lifted it on to another desk and opened it.

Andy pulled the lid off one of the containers. The mixture was the consistency of bread dough, grey in colour, and it still smelled strongly of fertiliser. She poured the mixture into the suitcase, using a wooden spatula to scrape it out of the corners of the container. She poured in two batches of the mixture, almost twenty pounds in all.

'You're going to take this away now?' Andy asked. 'Because if you're not, we should hold off until you're ready. You want to have it live for as little time as possible before detonation.'

Green-eyes looked at her wristwatch. 'As soon as it's ready, we're off.'

Andy nodded. 'Okay. But remember what I said about the Faraday effect. Stay away from electrical equipment. Radios. Mobile phones. Anything that gives off electrical radiation.' She gestured at the line of ovens and the two tumble-driers. 'We should unplug those before we make the circuit live. And I meant what I said about mobile phones. Have you ever held one near a radio? You can hear the buzz they give off every so often. It's the phone keeping in touch with the nearest transmitter. That buzz, under the right circumstances, can set the detonator off. Same with two-way radios.'

'But it's safe, right?'

Andy grimaced. 'It's a bomb. When all's said and done, it's a bomb.' She patted the suitcase. 'When this goes off, it'll kill anyone within a three-hundred-foot range. It could blow the front off a building. So safe isn't really an appropriate description, is it?'

Green-eyes took a step back, as if she had realised the destructive power of the device for the first time.

Andy smiled despite herself. 'You'd have to get a darn sight farther away than that,' she said. 'Besides, if it did go off and you were this close, you wouldn't feel a thing.' She wasn't sure if mobile phones would have any effect on the circuit – they'd been few and far between in Northern Ireland when she was building bombs for the IRA. But she wanted to make sure that Green-eyes left the phone in the briefcase and didn't take it with her when she went out.

When she'd emptied two of the containers into the suitcase, she flattened the mixture with her hands, then hollowed out a space about a foot square. The Semtex was on another desk, and Andy carried over one of the blocks and carefully unwrapped it. Green-eyes watched over her shoulder as she put it in the space she'd made in the fertiliser/aluminium mixture. She pressed it down with the flat of her hands, then lifted up the electric circuit and placed it on to the Semtex. She pushed the two Mark 4 detonators into the Semtex at an angle so that they were almost completely buried, just half an inch sticking out. She pressed the batteries slightly, so that they were stuck in the Semtex, then carefully moved the digital clock and the wires leading to it, resting them in the lid of the suitcase. She opened the remaining two Tupperware containers and scraped the rest of the fertiliser/aluminium mixture into the case. Again she used her hands to press the mixture down, kneading it to force out any trapped air. She put two empty garbage bags on top of the mixture, then laid the clock on top of them. She put another half-dozen empty bags on top of the clock to protect it when the lid was closed.

'That's it,' she said. 'All you have to do is set the clock.'

'It's live?'

'It's live but it won't go off until the timer's set.'

Green-eyes nodded slowly, staring at the suitcase. Andy closed the lid and snapped the catches shut.

'Keep it this way up. If you try to carry it by the handle, everything'll move inside.'

'It's going to look strange, carrying it like that, isn't it?'

Andy shrugged. 'That's not really my problem, is it? It has to be that way if you're going to carry it in the boot of a car.'

Green-eyes took off her gloves. 'Right, I'm going to get changed. As soon as we've taken the case out of here, you start preparing the rest of the stuff. We'll need it for tomorrow.'

'Tomorrow? You're going to do it tomorrow?'

'Just get the mixture ready,' said Green-eyes, walking towards the offices. 'All of it.'

Andy watched her go. Tomorrow? Twenty-four hours? She shivered. She had to do something to stop them. But what? What could she do that would prevent them blowing up the building, without endangering Katie?

A few minutes later, Green-eyes came out of the office. She'd changed out of her overalls and into a blue suit with a short skirt and high heels. It made the ski mask she was wearing all the more sinister. The Runner was with her. He'd also taken his overalls off and was wearing a denim jacket and jeans. Green-eyes showed him the suitcase. 'Make sure you don't tilt it,' she said.

He lifted it off the table, then put it down. 'No problem,' he said.

Green-eyes looked at her watch again. She nodded at the Wrestler. 'We'll be back this evening. Keep an eye on her.'

'Will do,' said the Wrestler, putting on a pair of gloves. He strapped his shoulder holster over his overalls, took out his gun and checked the action, ejecting the clip and slotting it back in.

Green-eyes nodded at the Runner. He lifted the suitcase with a grunt and headed towards the reception area. Green-eyes followed him.

'How much are they paying you to do this?' Andy asked the Wrestler.

He sneered at her from beneath his ski mask. 'More than enough,' he said. He slotted his gun back into its holster.

'For killing people?'

'There are plenty of people in the world,' he said, measuring aluminium powder into a Tupperware container. 'It can stand to lose a few.'

'You don't mean that,' she said.

'I read something once,' he said. 'It was on some charity handout. It said that every day something like forty thousand children die from hunger or preventable illnesses. That's children. Children who never harmed anyone. Hell, they don't get to live long enough to hurt anybody. Forty thousand a day, almost fifteen million a year.'

'That doesn't make any sense at all,' she said.

'Oh, it does, it's just that you don't understand.'

'You're doing this to help starving children?'

'No, I'm doing it for a quarter of a million pounds. But the world being as sick as it is, don't expect me to give a fuck if a few people get killed. Now get on with what you're doing. You talk too much.'

– «»-«»-«»Jason Hetherington walked into the main briefing room, followed by a man in his twenties with short blond hair that looked as if it hadn't seen a comb for a while. The man had inquisitive eyes that flicked from side to side as he entered the room, taking everything in. He was wearing a brown leather jacket over a pale green sweatshirt, blue Wrangler jeans and Nike training shoes, and looked like a small-time drug dealer on the make.

'Ah, there she is,' murmured Hetherington as he spotted Patsy Ellis crouched over a computer terminal. 'Patsy, someone here I'd like you to meet.'

Patsy looked up from the computer and frowned at the new arrival. He looked totally out of place in the roomful of enthusiastic young agents, even more so because he was standing next to Hetherington and his Savile Row suit, made-to-measure starched shirt and club tie. It wasn't just the man's attire that made him stand out – his posture was so relaxed as to be bordering on insolence.

'Captain Payne,' said Hetherington. 'Special Projects Team. He and his men have just arrived from Hereford.'

Payne stuck out his hand. 'Stuart,' he said.