‘What? What?’
‘All US and UK flights grounded, sir. There’s been an explosion at Heathrow, but the British were pre-warned.’ He looked over at Sagan again, before taking another deep breath. ‘They were also pre-warned about five strikes on US soil, sir.’
Delaney fell back into his seat. A chill wind was blowing through the room. ‘They had the same information as us?’
But Stroman was shaking his head. ‘We’ve been misled, sir. The explosives…’
‘Where?’ Delaney whispered.
‘Semtex, sir. In the in-flight meals.’
Sagan was looking between them, his expression somewhere between confusion and suspicion. ‘What the hell’s going on, Mason?’ he demanded, a dangerous edge to his voice.
But Delaney didn’t answer. Not immediately. For a full ten seconds he sat stunned.
Then he stood up and walked over to Stroman. When he finally spoke, it was in a low hiss that only his white-faced assistant could hear.
‘Find him,’ he said.
‘Sir?’ Stroman asked.
‘Find Ashkani! Now!’
TWENTY-THREE
Mahmood Ashkani was staring at the sky, awaiting the moment when Flight BA729 from London to Dublin entered his line of sight.
His laptop was open on the car seat beside him, its sat-phone connection to the internet established. He had chosen his viewing point with precision. At 1013 hours the British Airways flight would be in this airspace. And at that moment he would see it fall from the heavens. Only when he had verified, with his own eyes, that the strike had been successful, would he upload the footage to YouTube. No doubt it would be taken down within minutes, but that would be ample time for bin Laden’s taunt to go viral across the world.
Eight minutes past ten. He thought of Delaney. His handler, the man he had been playing like a finely tuned instrument, would know by now that something was wrong. And when the planes started dropping from American airspace as well as British, he would finally understand the extent of Ashkani’s deception. He wished he could see Delaney’s pasty face when he realized what he’d done.
Eleven minutes past. He thought of Joe Mansfield. He thought of how desperate Delaney had been to eliminate him and how much effort he, Ashkani, had put into the job. Mansfield could have ruined everything.
Twelve minutes past.
The sky overhead was clear. He took a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles from his jacket and put them on.
Thirteen minutes past. There was nothing in the sky except a flock of seagulls heading for the coast.
Ashkani breathed deeply, trying to keep a lid on his sudden unease. Perhaps there had been a delay.
Two minutes went by. Three. The sky remained empty of aircraft.
Ashkani glanced down at his laptop. It was all ready. He simply needed to press a button. But he could not do it. Not until he was sure…
He opened a new Firefox window and, typing meticulously with his two forefingers, navigated to Heathrow’s departures page. And as his eyes fell upon the list of flights, his slow, careful breathing suddenly became irregular. Each flight on the page was followed by a single word.
‘Cancelled’.
Ashkani stared at the page, and back at the sky. Then, in a sudden burst of anger, he ripped the phone from the laptop and hurled it to the floor by the empty seat. He stared at himself in the rear-view mirror for thirty seconds, his mind full of the explosions he could not see, trying to straighten his head and formulate a new strategy.
He was exposed. His cover was blown. By now Delaney would know that he had been double-crossing him, and Ashkani had nothing to show for it. But that didn’t change what he had to do right now: disappear. Quickly. Completely.
But first he had to cover his tracks. His mind wandered. He saw an isolated house and the dead body of an old woman at the bottom of the stairs. He saw a room filled with incriminating evidence.
He started the engine, performed a three-point turn, and began driving back the way he had come.
Both Eva’s body and mind were numb.
She had watched the clock tick relentlessly past ten.
Ten past.
Twenty past.
She couldn’t move. She could barely think. Her gunshot wound was terrible, but the state of her head, filled with images of burning aircraft and screaming children, was worse. She had no other thoughts.
Her body temperature dropped. Coloured blotches appeared in front of her eyes. She was vaguely aware of the clock. Ten twenty-eight.
Conor.
The thought was like a shot of adrenalin. She had forgotten him. Eva shook her head clear of the mist that was clouding her thoughts, and winced as a burning sensation shot through her trunk. Her breath had caused condensation on the inside of the windscreen and to lean forward and wipe it off with her sleeve was so painful that she gasped.
And she gasped a second time when she saw a grey Peugeot speed by in the opposite direction. The car passed in a flash. But she’d had enough time to see the face of the man at the wheeclass="underline" the hooked nose, the dark skin and hair, even the slight hunch in his shoulders.
The same man she had seen just days before in Barfield, and whose photograph had since stared out of computer screens and been burned into her brain.
But he was dead. Joe had shot him. Hadn’t he?
Within seconds Eva was swinging the Range Rover round, ignoring the stress the movement placed on her side. Ahead there was a bend to the right, and the Peugeot was out of view. She stamped on the accelerator and the car screamed through the automatic gears as she gripped the steering wheel and peered through the windscreen still half obscured by moisture.
Three minutes later she was speeding past the car park where they had stopped the previous night and surging over the brow of the hill. The sea appeared, about two kilometres in the distance, and between the top of the hill and the coast, about 250 metres inland, was the solitary house. Eva didn’t slow down. As the vehicle jolted over the hill she felt another hot jab of pain in her side, but she also saw, maybe a mile along the road that snaked out ahead, the Peugeot. It had taken a left at a fork in the road. There was no doubt about it: it was heading for the house.
Eva trod down hard, her face set in an expression of fierce concentration. A minute or two later the house was just thirty metres ahead. She barely slowed down as she entered the driveway, and came to a noisy, skidding halt a car’s length from the front door.
Silence.
The Peugeot was parked five metres to her right, at an angle that suggested its driver had also come to an abrupt stop. Sweating now, Eva fumbled for the handgun Joe had left her with, quietly opened the door and stepped outside.
There was no sign of Ashkani. She found herself gripping the weapon hard, resting it on her left forearm, which was raised in front of her. She felt faint, and worried that she would pass out any moment. She couldn’t prevent her footsteps crunching a little on the gravel as she covered the three metres to the door. It was ajar – just an inch – so she prodded it gently with her right foot, keeping her weapon raised.
The entrance hall was murky and quiet. No sign of anyone. It looked just as it had when she had left. She listened hard – no sound – and as she stepped inside she quickly checked left and right that there was nobody waiting to jump her.
Nothing.
Lightly pushing the door shut behind her, she crept across the hallway to the bottom of the stairs. Her weapon was pointing upwards now. The door of the bedroom where she had left Conor was wide open. Was that how she’d left it? She couldn’t remember.
The treads creaked as she ascended – each pace sent a tremor through her. By the time she reached the top of the stairs she was gulping for air.