The PM and the Defence Secretary shook the hands of everyone in the Ops Room and then left for Downing Street.
The train journey down towards London was uneventful. Ted kept up his almost constant commentary which was broken only by short conversations with the manager or his assistant at the control centre. They discussed the terrorist attacks. The nuclear trains weren’t being stopped; just their schedules had received minor changes. This strategy had been approved by their bosses, who deemed that “Their cargo posed too difficult a target and was thus an insignificant risk,’ according to the control room manager.
The controller was in a grumpy mood; he had been trying unsuccessfully to give up smoking and had failed. In his cigarette breaks, Ted chatted with his assistant, a newcomer who had only started working for the nuclear transport company the Monday before. Ted was beginning to wonder if the young lad was stupid. He was charming, but seemed to have little grasp of the importance of his job.
Dick was pleased to find that the intercity train behind them was running late. This meant they could proceed to Shenfield before pulling in to let it pass. They were on the outskirts of London when the young assistant controller came on the radio. ‘My boss has nipped out to his car to get another packet of cigarettes and have a smoke.’
Ted sensed unease in the young lad’s voice. ‘Are you alright?’ he enquired.
‘Yes, it’s just that I wish my boss would get back. I need to go for my morning constitutional – I think it was the vindaloo curry I had last night!’
Ted looked across at Dick and muttered, ‘I suppose that means he’s desperate for the loo.’
The freight train passed through Romford; it wouldn’t be long before they left the main line and started on the next leg of their journey.
The desperate voice of the assistant came on the radio. ‘It’s no good, I can’t wait any longer. My boss should be back soon!’
Dick raised his eyebrows and was going to speak, when Ted cut in. ‘I hope he’s quick!’ He thought back to when he had first driven the nuclear waste trains. The manpower involved in those early days dwarfed the lean efficient teams that had become the norm. Spare capacity was a thing of the past. Forty uneventful years of safe nuclear rail transport had not given rise to complacency, but rather a sense of the mundane had permeated the system and dulled the minds of many involved.
The train was approaching Stratford station. Ted had radioed through to the Control Room. There had been no reply; the manager had not returned from his smoke and the young lad was presumably still otherwise engaged.
As they arrived at Stratford station, the signal for the branch line turned red. Dick brought the train to a halt. As they waited, he noticed that the platforms were almost deserted. After a couple of minutes’ wait the light turned green and the train slowly trundled on to the branch line to start its way around suburban London.
Dick smiled. It had been a good run down from Suffolk. He was looking forward to his extended journey up the west coast and wondered if Ted would, for the first time, be lost for words.
In Manchester, Detective Inspector Rick Feldon was having a chat over breakfast with William Wesson. His fifteen years of interrogation experience told him that there was still at least one more nugget of information to be drawn from this despicable man. Wesson continued to ignore his questions – he was in denial and his defence was to shower verbal abuse on those around him. Rick was getting nowhere. ‘How about we see what’s going on in the world?’
A small TV was brought into the interview room. The channels were filled with special news bulletins showing wall-to-wall pictures of the plumes of smoke resulting from the terrorist attacks. Wesson looked without any apparent interest at the pictures. The detective inspector asked him more questions without receiving any response. It was getting hopeless. He was going round and round in circles.
Time was ebbing away. Rick had an idea. It was time for some creative thinking. He left the room and reappeared a few minutes later with a photograph of a middle-aged woman.
Rick put the photo on the table in front of Wesson. ‘She’s about the same age as your mother, isn’t she?’
There was no reply.
‘She worked as a cleaner at Heysham and was killed by flying shrapnel. A slow and painful death, I understand. Now her two teenage children have no close family to look after them,’ he lied again. ‘What would you and your younger sister have done if your mother had been killed when you were that young?’
Rick pressed on. ‘How would you have felt if you and your sister had had no mother?’
Wesson broke down in front of him. Howls and sobs came from the insufferable little man. Rick had no sympathy for him at all. He had one aim and that was to get from him the missing pieces of information. ‘Your mother rang. She wants to see you’
Wesson raised his head.
‘Why couldn’t she have been the person killed by the shrapnel? She always stopped me from doing the things I wanted to and her tongue is as sharp as a carving knife. I don’t want to speak to her. In fact, I’d be happy if I never saw her again.’
Rick took a deep breath on hearing the unexpected reply. ‘You valued all the properties which were used by the terrorists. We’re missing one more address. You can help us stop the next attack.’
Wesson didn’t move.
‘How do you think your sister, who you’ve protected all these years, will survive as the sister of a murdering, terrorist collaborator? She won’t get any sympathy from her mother, will she? Think about it!’
Rick watched the turmoil bubbling up inside the young man. ‘Now would be a good time to tell me the addresses we don’t know about.’
Wesson did not raise his eyes. ‘All I know is that they have a building which is being refurbished. I do not even know its address, other than it’s in Stratford, East London…’
‘You must tell me more!’
‘I can’t! That’s as much as I know. You see, I accidentally overheard Talal and a director of his discussing this property…’
‘And?’
‘When Talal saw me – his eyes were like my father’s before he lashed out and hit me. He was livid and shouted at me – Never repeat what you’ve heard, if you value your sister’s life! Even if I knew the address, I wouldn’t tell you!’
Rick thought for a moment, concluded that Wesson had nothing more to say, pulled out his mobile and phoned Kate’s direct line. After several rings the call was diverted to the switchboard. ‘DI Adams, please. It’s urgent – Very Urgent.’
‘I’ll see if I can locate her; she’s not answering her phone.’
The seconds ticked by as if they were the last grains in an hourglass. The telephonist came back on the line. ‘She’s in a meeting.’
‘I need your help, please,’ said Rick calmly. ‘I have an urgent message for her. Please write this down: Urgent. Ring Me. Now! -Rick Feldon. As a matter of life and death, please take this message to DI Adams, now!’
‘I’m not allowed to leave my desk unless I’ve got cover.’
‘Of course you’re not, technically, but we’re trying to stop the bastards who planned the Bishopsgate bomb from letting another one off. Understood?’
‘Yes, sir… I’ll go straightaway.’
The phone went dead.
In his chauffeur-driven car en route to Downing Street, the Prime Minister thought about the events of the night. Had he been right in not activating COBRA earlier? The Ops Room at Wood Street had served its purpose and had worked well, he mused. Yes, now was the right time to get COBRA up and running.
He mused on the vast powers that the Civil Contingencies Act gave this committee. To all intents and purposes, when sitting, it became all powerful. In the first instance he chaired the committee, but if he was not available, it fell on the Home Secretary or his deputy to take his place.
The PM’s thoughts turned to his Home Secretary, whom he had chosen in order to placate the wing of his party he found most difficult to deal with. As he leaned back on the soft leather car seat, he wondered whether the Home Secretary and his department spent too much time courting favourable headlines and news coverage. Increasingly, in the few months since taking power, he realised that he had become progressively more anxious as to his Home Secretary’s motivations. The press painted him as good party leadership material and liked his and his ministers’ charm offensive. Perhaps his party’s waferthin majority had prompted his spin offensive and he was jockeying for position in case the PM slipped up.