James Patterson - London Bridges

"Fucking hell," somebody hissed. Tempers were running very high now. Mine, too.

"Reroute all the flights now! We have no choice," Lodge barked. "Do our snipers have these two bastards covered?"

Word came back that SO19 had the rooftop covered. Meanwhile, we watched the two men get into position. There could be little doubt now that they were there to bring down a plane. And we were watching the frightening scene, without being able to stop it.

"Arseholes!" Lodge swore at the monitors. "Not going to be anything for you bastards to shoot at. How do you like that?"

"They look Middle Eastern to me," said one of the other detectives. "They certainly don't look Russian!"

"We don't have the go-ahead to shoot," a man wearing headphones announced. "We're still on hold."

"What the bloody hell is going on?" Lodge complained in a high-pitched voice. "We have to take them out. Come on!"

Suddenly there were gunshots! We could hear them on the video. The man with the launcher on his shoulder went down. He didn't get up, didn't move at all. Then the second suspect was hit. Two clean head shots.

"What the hell?" someone shouted in the van where we were watching. Then everyone was cursing and yelling.

"Who gave the order to shoot? What's going on here?" screamed Lodge.

Word finally came back, but nobody could believe it. Our snipers hadn't made the hit. Somebody else had shot the two men on the roof.

Madness.

It was total madness.

Everything was a wild ride like nothing anyone could imagine, like nothing anyone ever had imagined. The latest deadline was hours away and nobody in the rank and file knew what was happening. Maybe the prime minister knew something? The president? The chancellor of Germany?

Every passing hour just rubbed it in for us. Then it was the passing minutes that hurt. There was nothing we could do, except pray that the ransom would be paid. Soldiers in Iraq, I kept thinking to myself. That's what we are like. Observers of absurdity.

Back in London, at one point in the late afternoon I took a brief walk down near Westminster Abbey. There was so much powerful history on display in this part of the city. The streets weren't deserted, but traffic was very light around Parliament Square, with few tourists and pedestrians. The people of London didn't know what was happening, but whatever it was, it wasn't good.

I called my house in Washington several times. Nobody answered. Had Nana moved? Then I talked to the kids at their aunt Tia's in Maryland. No one knew where Nana Mama was. Another thing to worry about-just what I needed.

There really was nothing to do but wait; the waiting was frustrating and nerve-racking. Still, no one had a clue what was going on. And not just in London -in New York, Washington, and Frankfurt. No announcement had been made, but the rumor was that none of the ransoms would be paid. In the end, the governments weren't willing to negotiate, were they? They couldn't give in to terrorists, not without a fight. Was that what came next? The fight?

Once again the deadline passed, and I felt as if we were playing Russian roulette.

There were no attacks in London, New York, Washington, or Frankfurt that night. The Wolf didn't retaliate right away. He just let us stew.

I talked to the kids at my aunt's house and then, finally, to Nana. Nothing had happened in D.C. so far. Nana had gone for a walk in the neighborhood with Kayla, she told me. Everything was fine there. Walk in the park, right, Nana?

Finally, at 5:00A.M. in London most of us went home to get some needed rest, if we could sleep.

I dozed for a few hours, then the phone rang. Martin Lodge was on the line.

"What's happened?" I asked as I sat upright in my hotel bed. "What has he done?"

"Nothing's happened, Alex. Calm down. I'm downstairs in the hotel lobby. Nothing's happened. Maybe he was bluffing. Let's hope so. Get dressed and come for breakfast at my house. I want you to meet my family. My wife wants to meet you. You need a break, Alex. We all do."

How could I say no? After all that we'd been through in the past few days? Half an hour later, I was in Martin's Volvo headed out to Battersea, just over the river from Westminster. Along the way, Martin tried to prepare me for breakfast, and for his family. We both wore our beepers, but neither of us wanted to talk about the Wolf or his threats. Not for an hour or so, anyway.

"The wife is Czech-Klára Cernohosska, born in Prague, but she's a real Brit now. Listens to Virgin and XFM, and all the talk shows on BBC Radio. She insisted on a Czech breakfast this morning, though. She's showing off for you. You'll love it. I hope so. No, I think you will, Alex."

I thought so, too. Martin was actually smiling as he drove and talked about his family. "The eldest of my brood is Hana. Guess who chooses the names in our family? Hint: the kids are Hana, Daniela, and Jozef. What's in a name, though? Hana is obsessed with Trinny and Susannah on the TV show What Not to Wear. She's fourteen, Alex. The middle child, Dany, plays hockey at Battersea Park -and she's also crazy about ballet. Joe is mad about football, skateboarding and PlayStation. That just about covers it, don't you think? Did I mention that we're eating Czech for breakfast?"

A few minutes later we arrived in Battersea. The Lodge house was a Victorian redbrick with a slate roof and largish garden. Very neat and nice, proper, appropriate for the neighborhood. The garden was colorful and well tended and showed that somebody had his priorities in order.

The whole family was waiting in the dining room, where the food was just being laid out. I was formally introduced to everyone, including a cat named Tigger, and I immediately felt pretty much at home, as well as missing my own family, feeling a sharp pang that stayed with me for a while.

Martin's wife, Klára, identified the food as it was laid out on the sideboard. "Alex, these are koláce, pastries with a cream cheese center. Rohlíky -rolls. Turka, which is Turkish-style coffee. Párek, two kinds of sausage, very good, a specialty of the house."

She looked at the eldest daughter, Hana, who was a neat blend of her mother and dad. Tall, slim, a pretty face but with Martin's hooked nose. "Hana?"

Hana grinned at me. "What kind of eggs would you like, sir? You can have vejce na mekko. Or míchaná vejce. Smazená vejce, if you like. Omeleta?"

I shrugged, then said, " Míchaná vejce."

"Excellent choice," said Klára. "Perfect pronunciation. Our guest is a born linguist."

"Good. Now what is it?" I asked. "The food I ordered?"

Hana giggled. "Just scrambled eggs. Perfect with the rohlíky and párek."

"Yes, the rolls and sausage," I said, and the girls clapped for my show-off performance.

It went that way for the next hour or so, most pleasantly, with Klára asking a lot of informal questions about my life in America while telling me about the American mystery novels she enjoyed, as well as the latest Booker Prize winner Vernon God Little, which she said "is very funny, and captures the craziness of your country much like Günter Grass did with Germany in The Tin Drum. You should read it, Alex."

"I live it," I told Klára.

It was only at the end of the meal that the kids admitted that the names for the breakfast foods were just about the only Czech words they knew. Then they began to clear away the food and started in on the dishes.

"Oh, and there's ty vejce jsou hnusný," said Jozef, or Joe, the eight-year-old.

"I'm almost afraid to ask-what does that mean?"

"Oh, that the eggs were gross," said Joe, who laughed with little-boy delight at his joke.

There was nothing to do once I left Martin and Klára's, except obsess and worry about the Wolf and where he might strike, if he was going to retaliate. Back at the hotel, I caught a few more hours of sleep, then I decided to walk and I felt that this might be a long walk. I needed it.