A cloud of dust marked Queen’s location and movement as effectively as the icon in the glasses’ display. She was making a beeline straight for Bishop, who was closest to the approaching aircraft.
King spared Bishop the dilemma of having to decide whether to join Queen in her little mutiny. “All right. I don’t like this either. Queen, if you’ve fixed your commo issue—” The exasperation in his tone came through loud and clear. “—pick up Bishop and Rook and get clear. Draw that helo off, if you can. I’m going to continue to the objective.”
Bishop shook his head, but didn’t comment. The helicopter was close enough that he could zoom in on it and make out the silhouettes of its occupants. The side door was open, revealing one of the passengers, a man wearing what looked like desert camouflage fatigues, his face swathed in a kefiyah-style scarf. The man was turned sideways in his seat so that his body faced out, and Bishop had no trouble distinguishing the rifle he cradled in his arms.
Bishop broke his long silence. “I think these guys might be military.”
“Ours?” Rook asked.
“Not sure. Probably not. Could be Russians trying to roll up their missing nuke.”
Through some trick of the Doppler effect, the helicopter seemed to pick up speed as it approached, and then it was past Bishop’s location and continuing toward the hillside. An instant later, the report of a gun was heard, then another, and still more. Five shots rang out, all in the space of about three seconds, after which the helicopter began to descend, dropping behind the berm like a satellite over the horizon.
Bishop stared at the empty space where the aircraft had been. The rotor noise was muted, echoing weirdly off the atmosphere. There was a crunch of tires on sand as Queen pulled the car up alongside him, but before he could make a move toward it, there was a change in the pitch of the sound, and the helicopter rose into view once more. It smoothly banked away from them and headed west, quickly disappearing into the distance.
Bishop didn’t get in the car. Instead, he sprinted forward and scrambled up the hill of loose sand. He was faintly aware that Rook and Queen were doing the same, and thirty seconds later, they had joined King at the top of the berm, staring down at the carnage beyond.
Hadir al-Shahri and his accomplices lay in a tight circle, motionless, awash in a small sea of blood. There had only been five shots from the shooters in the helicopter, one bullet for each of the terrorists, but the bodies were practically shredded, as if they’d been hit by close range shotgun blasts.
There was no sign of the bomb.
“What the…?”
Rook’s voice trailed off, so King finished for him.
“Fuck.”
4
The heavily armored, black SUV, with three men inside, cruised south along the eastern boundary of Hyde Park. All three occupants gazed out the windows at the passing cars, people and scenery. Two of the men scanned for potential threats — cars moving up too fast, places where snipers might be concealed — while the third was simply enjoying the ride. His head bobbed back and forth as he admired locations he had previously viewed only in photographs or as names on maps.
Not only was this his first time in London, it was his first trip more than four degrees north of the equator. His travels, up to this point, had been limited to the nations surrounding the country of his birth. That country that had changed names several times during his lifetime: the Belgian Congo, Zaire and since the late 1990s, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It was his dream that it might see yet another name change.
The man’s name was Joseph Mulamba. The son of a Luba farmer, Mulamba had lived much of his life on the banks of the Congo River in the city of Kisangani. It had been called Stanleyville when his parents had moved there almost fifty years earlier, named for the famed British journalist and explorer Henry Morton Stanley, who had founded a trading post there, marking the navigable terminus of Africa’s second longest river. It was an intense interest in Stanley that had brought Mulamba to London, though not for the reason that most people would have suspected.
As was the case for many of the native Africans living in the vast Congo basin, Mulamba’s opinion of Stanley was complicated. Stanley was a white man, and a foreigner. In a quest for wealth and glory, he had arrogantly claimed a huge portion of Africa for foreign nations. Like Christopher Columbus, who by virtue of being the first European explorer to ‘discover’ a land that had already been inhabited for thousands of years, Stanley’s claims rested solely upon a racial conceit: he was the first because he was the first white. And like Columbus, historians saw him as a divisive figure, responsible for the exploitation of a land that already belonged to someone else, and for the enslavement of the native inhabitants. His critics pointed to widely reported incidents of brutality directed at the porters in his expeditions. His contemporary, Sir Richard Francis Burton, opined that ‘Stanley shoots Negroes as if they were monkeys.’ Yet, despite these accusations, many Africans in the region credited Stanley with bringing civilization to the Congo and opening it up to the modern world, in a way that would not have been otherwise possible.
Mulamba however wasn’t interested in Stanley’s reputation.
The SUV turned right and headed down Kensington Avenue, along the southern edge of the park. Ahead and to the left the curving dome of Royal Albert Hall was visible, like a moon rising from the midst of the city. But Mulamba’s goal lay closer, among the long row of elegant brick residences, many of them with historic pedigrees.
The vehicle pulled to a stop at the corner of Kensington Gore and Exhibition Road, in front of a house known as Lowther Lodge. Built in the latter quarter of the 19th century, the stately brick edifice had, for more than eighty years, been the headquarters of the prestigious Royal Geographical Society. The Society, which had been in existence for nearly two centuries, had counted Charles Darwin among its many members, as well as famed polar explorers Ernest Shackleton and the ill-fated Robert Falcon Scott, as well as the legendary Everest conqueror, Sir Edmund Hillary. Scottish missionary David Livingstone and journalist Henry Morton Stanley were also part of the Royal Geographical Society’s proud history.
Mulamba’s fellow passenger — a former Royal Marine sergeant named Ian Woodhouse — got out first, firmly closing his door. He scanned up and down the street for a moment before rapping on the front window. The driver — another British military veteran named Bryan Clarke — turned off the engine and got out, likewise closing the door and checking his side of the vehicle before returning the signal. Only then was Mulamba allowed to get out. He thanked the two members of his security detail and then took a position between them for the short traverse to the public entrance to Lowther Lodge.
As Mulamba entered the lobby, Clarke fell back, taking up a position at the front of the building, where he could keep an eye on the SUV. Mulamba and Woodhouse continued inside and approached the reception desk.
The receptionist, a young man with an earnest and pinched scholarly expression, glanced first at the imposing figure of Woodhouse, and then at Mulamba. “May I help you?”
“Thank you,” Mulamba replied. He spoke fluent French, along with Swahili, Tshiluba and Lingala, but he was less confident with English. “I am Joseph Mulamba. I am here for Henry Morton Stanley.”