He paused to sweep some water out of his eyes. The courier, clearly accustomed to large cities, was an expert at navigating the packed sidewalk, sliding from left to right, avoiding the crowd with surprising grace and agility. Vanderveen realized he was falling behind. Adjusting his pace, he looked to the left, waiting for the right moment. The vehicular traffic was moving far too fast for these narrow roads. The city officials seemed to have considered this inevitable, as their preventative measures were mostly passive. Police constables were positioned at the major crosswalks, and white letters on the cement warned tourists to “look right.” Khalil was passing one of the crossings now, and with a start, Vanderveen realized that they were drawing close to Villiers Street. The entrance to the station at Charing Cross was less than two blocks away.
As if reading his mind, the courier dipped a hand into his suit jacket and came up with a cell phone. He held it in front of his body as he dialed, obscuring Vanderveen’s view. Then he lifted it to his ear. Vanderveen looked past his target, checking the road. Traffic was hurtling past him at full speed. Coming up were a white Rover sedan, a Renault wagon, a black cab, and beyond that, a double-decker bus. Khalil stepped to his left to avoid an elderly woman with an armful of bags, and Vanderveen seized the chance. Coming up on the courier’s right side, he let the Rover go racing past, along with the Renault and then the cab. Khalil, with the phone raised to his ear, was giving Raseen instructions when his head turned to the right and his eyes went wide. At the moment of recognition, Vanderveen used both arms to shove him as hard as he could, directly into the path of the bus. Then he turned and disappeared into the crowd as the brakes squealed and the screams rose behind him.
“Fucking hell!”
Haines swore viciously and slammed on the brakes as the cars fishtailed in front of him. Craning his neck, he could see people running toward a double-decker bus. The vehicle was three cars ahead of his own, and every instinct he had told him that this was relevant. Pulling out his earpiece, he turned off the ignition and got out of the car, jogging toward the commotion. As he approached, he could see a few people stumbling away from the scene, their faces white, eyes wide in shock. To his right, a young woman was bent over at the waist, vomiting noisily onto the pavement. Her friend, looking nearly as sick, was standing by her side, rubbing her back and murmuring calming words.
Pulling his eyes away from this strange scene, Haines skirted another car and pushed to the front of the building crowd. An older man in uniform was standing front and center, hands wrapped in his ginger hair. He was screaming something that didn’t make sense. Listening closely, Haines heard a few words cutting through the hysterical rant: “…wasn’t my fault. I swear to God, it wasn’t my fault. They just fell right into the road. You all saw it….”
And then he saw the front of the bus.
It looked as if somebody had splashed red paint all over the grill. Despite the obvious signs, it took him a few seconds to realize what had happened. His eyes involuntarily moved down to the wheels, and he saw the twisted remains of a human body, part of it wrapped up in the axle, the rest scattered along the street. Moving forward, Haines caught sight of another body, that of a teenage boy. He was lying behind and to the right of the bus, his limbs broken and resting at strange angles. A middle-aged woman — presumably the mother — was draped over the lifeless form, sobbing uncontrollably. As he watched, a pair of police constables moved out of the crowd. One went to the woman, gently lifting her up and away from her son, while the other started ordering people back from the scene of the accident. Haines felt somebody tap his arm, and he turned. It was Scott. His animated expression was difficult to read; there were equal measures of horror and excitement on his young, unlined face.
“Did you see it?”
“No,” Haines replied slowly. “Did you?”
Scott grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the crowd. People were milling about, talking in low, horrified tones, and it was difficult to hear over the babble of voices. When they were far enough away, the younger man said, “I saw it all. Christ, I was right behind the poor bastard when it happened. The driver dragged him halfway down the fuckin’ road before he had the sense to stop.”
Haines did not respond. All he could think about was the woman hunched over her son’s body; he couldn’t get her anguished face out of his mind. Finally, the words leaked into his head.
“What happened?”
“He was pushed. I—”
“Pushed? Are you sure?”
Scott nodded firmly. “Like I said, I saw it clear as day. The kid was just in the way. Wrong bloody place and time, is all, but the Arab was definitely pushed. It was deliberate as hell.”
Haines allowed himself to be dragged along, still thinking about the woman. He couldn’t understand his reaction, as he had seen much worse in his years with 2 PARA. He had seen men torn apart by machine gun fire on a shingle beach in the Falklands, the aftermath of a mortar attack during the Battle of Goose Green, and the destruction caused by a pair of massive bombs in Warrenpoint, Northern Ireland. In that incident, both the primary and secondary devices had been strategically placed on a dual carriageway near the border. The bombing claimed the lives of 18 men in Haines’s regiment. He had been among the first to arrive on the scene — indeed, he had nearly been killed by the secondary blast — but it all seemed like a distant memory. More to the point, it had been war, and the people who’d died were trained soldiers, brave men who knew the risks. None of it seemed as bad as the stunned look of shock and despair he had just witnessed, and even now, just minutes after turning his back on the scene, he knew he’d be seeing the woman’s face in his dreams for years to come.
“Who pushed him? Why didn’t you follow?”
“The crowd closed up right away, and I lost him in the confusion,” Scott replied. “I didn’t see much, anyway. He was wearing a baseball cap and a black jacket, and I think he was blond, but I couldn’t swear to it….”
Scott continued to relay what he’d seen as they turned off the Strand. Soon they were moving northeast on Chandos Place, heading toward Bedford Street. “What about the car?” Haines asked.
“Fuck the car. No one’s getting off that street for at least an hour, mate. We have to get back and make a report. Robeson won’t be happy, but if you ask me, there wasn’t a damn thing we could’ve done to—”
“The pictures.”
Scott turned. “What?”
“The pictures,” Haines repeated. “You’ve got shots of our man, right? Whoever shoved him in front of that bus will be in the background.”
“Jesus, you’re right.” The young watcher thought for a minute, then shook his head. “No, I don’t think it’ll work. You saw how busy the street was… There’s no way we’ll be able to pick him out. I didn’t even get that good a look.”
“Maybe not, but that falls to the techs, not us. If there’s anything there, they’ll find it.”
A Vauxhall sedan pulled up to the curb, and Scott said, “That’s us. I called before you arrived on the scene.”
Haines moved toward the back of the car, pulled open the door, and got in. Scott found a seat in the front and tapped the driver’s arm. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER 34
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
It was just after 2:00 in the afternoon as Jonathan Harper reluctantly entered the room on the seventh floor of the OHB at Langley, pulling the door shut behind him. The sound of the secretary’s typing was blocked out instantly, replaced by an uneasy silence. He had expected the summons, but as he crossed the deep pile carpet, there was something about the resigned look on the director’s face that threw him off-guard. He had expected anger, bluster, and shouted accusations from the start. Anything but this quiet, restrained anger.