As they started up the engine, they could hear the woman sobbing.
‘Better get away from here,’ said the gunman. ‘She’s screaming the place down and the neighbours might hear.’
The other man took the jewel cases out of his pockets and put them in a rucksack on the floor of the boat.
The burglars had been at a boat show in Earl’s Court when the flood struck. As well as the small motorboat they’d got the yellow coats, some binoculars — and the flare pistol, which was proving extremely useful. Since then, they had visited so many people that afternoon, all of them rescuing their valuables from their safes; all of them sitting ducks for burglars.
The gunman was now focusing the binoculars down the street. ‘I think our next stop should be that big house at the end of the road,’ he said. ‘I can see a lady waiting for us with a leather briefcase …’
Chapter Fifteen
Bel was not at Charing Cross, waiting for Ben.
She wanted to be, but she was still stuck in Westminster — though at the present moment she wasn’t quite sure where in Westminster.
The room was small — about five metres square. It contained a desk, a telephone and several chairs. It reminded Bel of a dentist’s waiting room, except she had never been in a waiting room that had blank concrete walls and no windows. The only thing to look at was the two sets of doors.
One set led to a stairwell. That’s where they had come in. The other doors were massive and thick, with steel bars and rivets. They reminded Bel of the blast doors she had seen in the Tube.
One minute she had been in a meeting room in the Cabinet Office, waiting for the Prime Minister of Canada to arrive and talking to Clive Brooks and Sidney Cadogan, his boss from the Department of the Environment.
The next minute some alarms had gone off and a plainclothes policeman had come in and asked them to follow him.
He had ushered them into a corridor full of security men — plainclothes policemen with handguns bulging under their jackets. They were searching the offices and evacuating any members of staff they found.
Bel and the others were escorted to a door with a sign on it saying ‘NO ADMITTANCE’. The Foreign Secretary, Madeleine Harwood, was already waiting there. She was a plump woman in a tweed suit, but not the trendy kind; it was the kind worn by fierce headmistresses. The ‘NO ADMITTANCE’ door was unlocked and they were told to go through.
Bel thought it must be a bomb scare. She followed a policeman and Sidney Cadogan down a narrow flight of concrete stairs that went down and down and down. Madeleine Harwood puffed behind, complaining that she was getting dizzy.
The policeman was waiting for them beside another open door, this time leading to another set of stairs. The journey down continued. Finally they had ended up in this room.
Sidney Cadogan looked the most at home. He sat in one of the plastic chairs, one suited leg crossed over the other to reveal socks in fine grey wool and a black polished shoe. The sole was biscuit-coloured leather and embossed with the name Church’s. It looked so clean that Bel thought he must levitate everywhere, or at least only walk on carpets.
Madeleine Harwood sat beside Sidney, trying to appear as cool, but not quite managing. She kept smoothing down the skirt of her tweed suit and looking nervously at the big door. Clive Brooks sat opposite, running his hand through his thinning badger hair.
Bel didn’t know how any of them could sit still. She wanted to pace but there wasn’t any room. She rolled the sleeves of her purple suit up to her elbows, her classic gesture of impatience, and stood near the blast door with the policeman, studying it.
‘So where are we?’ she asked. ‘Buckingham Palace’s secret bunker?’
Sidney Cadogan answered. ‘Ten floors beneath the Cabinet Office.’
‘What’s happened?’ Madeleine Harwood asked the policeman. ‘Is it a bomb threat? A fire drill?’
‘I think it’s a flood.’
That surprised them all. Bel frowned. ‘A flood? How bad?’
‘I believe Downing Street is under water. But they’ll probably have more details when we get inside.’
‘Inside where?’ said Bel.
A green light came on over the blast doors. Slowly they opened. Beyond was a corridor with a row of lights along the ceiling.
‘Follow me, please,’ said the policeman.
They followed him into a cylindrical tunnel. It was lined with rings of concrete bolted together.
‘Are we in the Tube?’ said Bel.
‘No,’ said Sidney Cadogan. His tone said, Don’t ask any more questions.
‘Well, where are we?’ said Bel, irritated. ‘It’s a bit late to be secretive now, Sidney. I’m already here.’
They came to three signs. One pointed right, to Horse Guards Parade. The middle one pointed straight ahead to 10 Downing Street, which was blocked off with another set of blast doors.
Madeleine Harwood looked at the signs with sudden recognition. ‘This is Q-Whitehall.’
‘That’s right,’ said Clive Brooks. ‘Haven’t you been down here yet?’
‘You know I only took up office last month,’ she told him. ‘No one’s had time to give me the tour yet.’
Sidney glared at her as though she had betrayed some great secret. ‘Be careful what you say, Madeleine,’ he said.
Bel thought he was being an idiot. ‘Sidney, I hate to disillusion you, but kids talk about Q-Whitehall on the Internet. It’s no big secret. You ought to get out more.’
The policeman took them down the left-hand branch, signed ‘Ministry of Defence’.
‘If they’re discussing Q-Whitehall,’ said Sidney, ‘that’s because we allow them to.’
Bel would never normally have let such a pompous remark go unpunished, but she was wrestling with some far more unpleasant thoughts. It had suddenly struck her. When the policeman had said Downing Street was flooded, she’d assumed it was just that small area — a water main burst or something. Now she realized that was dumb. They wouldn’t have come down into this complex if it had just been a minor utilities problem. This had to be a major flood.
She tapped the policeman on the shoulder. ‘How widespread is the flooding?’
‘It’s pretty bad, ma’am.’
‘Is it on the south bank as well?’
‘I don’t know, ma’am.’ They came to another set of blast doors. The policeman opened a flap in the wall and keyed in a pass code. He waited for a green light, then keyed in another combination. The doors began to vibrate and swung slowly open. They heard voices. Quite a lot of voices.
Like the worries chattering in Bel’s mind. She’d been talking about London flooding on News Focus the other day. Without the Thames Barrier a lot of central London would be underwater, she’d said. They were her own words, coming back to haunt her. She wondered about Ben. Was he safe? The ArBonCo Centre was a tall building. If Ben just stayed there with Cally, he would be all right — Cally would have looked after him; she wouldn’t let anything happen to him, she thought.
‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ said Clive Brooks. He obviously mistook Bel’s silence for amazement.
‘All the people from the MoD building must already be down here,’ said Sidney. ‘I hope they haven’t got the best bunks.’
They were directed to a table like a reception desk, and a man in a security armband looked up at them.
‘Another party from the Cabinet Office,’ said the policeman.
The man behind the desk passed a clipboard to Sidney. ‘We need you all to sign in so we can keep track of who’s down here. Once you’ve checked in, please keep together.’
Sidney handed the clipboard to Madeleine. ‘Ladies first.’