A moment later Stratton heard the cubicle door close and he turned around, walked back and stopped outside the window to look into the room again. Bufi was seated with his back to the glass.
Stratton studied the man who was large and ape-like. In that moment all he could see was him beating Sally with his powerful hands. It was obvious there would never be a time better than this to kill the man – Stratton had seconds to make a decision. He decided that fate had put him in this position and that he could not pass the chance by.
He checked quickly to see that no one was looking from any of the other cubicles, stepped away from the glass and put the file on the floor. Then he removed the pack of gum from his pocket, shook out the remaining stick and unwrapped it. He rolled it around quickly in his hands until it was soft and then fashioned it into a small conical pyramid. He selected a quarter from his change, pushed the SX carefully onto one of its faces, took the chewing gum from his mouth, stuck it to the other side of the coin and pushed it against the glass directly behind Bufi’s head which was only inches away.
Stratton quickly turned his belt buckle over to reveal a small length of metal, no bigger than half a matchstick and held in place by gum. As he removed it a tail of black string attached to one end uncoiled: he carefully pushed the end no more than a couple of millimetres into the top of the conical pyramid.
He made another quick sweep of the cubicles as he took out a folding packet of matches, tore one from the strip and checked Bufi – he had not moved. This was it, the moment of no return. The hell with it, Stratton decided and struck the match.
As it burst into flame a loud buzzer sounded. Stratton looked up to see a lawyer inside one of the cubicles standing at the door to the corridor. Stratton shook the match out and headed back down the corridor to the seating area as the officer entered from the door at the opposite end. Stratton barely made it around the corner as the officer headed for the cubicle. The sound of a key turning in a lock was followed by voices as the lawyer thanked the officer.
Stratton could only pray that neither man saw the quarter stuck to the glass. Then he remembered his file on the floor. A second later the officer and lawyer arrived at the main door, which the officer then unlocked. The lawyer passed through and as the officer closed the door and locked it again he glanced at Stratton who smiled pathetically.
The officer walked away and Stratton listened intently, waiting for his footsteps to pause. But they continued to the end of the corridor and passed through the door there which clanged as it shut. Then there was silence.
Stratton got to his feet and looked round the corner to see the quarter and file where he had left them. He prepared another match as he approached. Bufi had not moved but as Stratton was about to strike the match the Albanian turned to look at him. He could not see the matches in Stratton’s hand below the level of the window and if he noticed the quarter stuck to the glass he did not react to it, more interested in Stratton who was staring at him.
Stratton smiled. Bufi gave him a chilling look before turning his back on him again.
Stratton lost his smile and struck the match. Back at the point of no return, he mused. From here on the plan was in its weakest phase: it relied on several factors that were hopeful rather than probable. The choice was a simple enough one: quit now or get the hell on with it. He chose to follow his heart and get on with it but felt suddenly and uncharacteristically nervous. His stomach began to churn. It was strange but he reckoned he knew why. Working against an enemy of his country was, after all, his job and the support he had from his government under such circumstances gave him the confidence he needed. But on this mission he was truly on his own – especially if he was caught.
Then Stratton looked at the man who had slaughtered Sally. He remembered her voice on the phone followed by her screams and then the sound of Josh crying. He touched the match’s flame to the bottom of the length of black string, which immediately ignited. He extinguished the match, picked the file off the floor and hurried back to the seating area.
The explosion was surprisingly loud for such a small piece of plastic, accentuated by the flat surfaces and confined space. Seconds later an alarm bell sounded as smoke began to drift along the corridor.
Stratton dropped to the floor as the sound of buzzers joined the alarm bell. The lawyers and defendants in the cubicles wanted out. The door beside Stratton opened and an officer stepped in, holding his gun.
‘What the fuck,’ he exclaimed as he looked around.
Stratton sat up, feigning shock and fear as another officer ran up to him.
‘What happened, Joe?’ one of the lawyers shouted above the noise of the alarms.
‘Don’t know,’ came the reply.
‘I heard a gun,’ Stratton called out. ‘In one of the cubicles.’
‘You hurt?’ the first officer asked him.
‘No.’
The buzzers continued to sound and were joined by the noise of banging on the cubicle doors, adding to the confusion.
‘Stay there. Don’t move,’ one of the officers said to Stratton as they made their way along the corridor and into the smoke.
Stratton didn’t waste a second. He got to his feet and slipped through the door, closing it behind him. The guard’s key was still in the lock so he turned it and left it in place. One of the officers saw the door close and called out as he hurried to it, yanking hard on the doorknob as he looked through the small window in time to see Stratton race up the stairs. He grabbed his radio.
Stratton made it to the top of the stairs at full speed. As he reached the door he slowed down and pushed calmly through it.
Most of the people in the crowded hall were listening to the alarm bells and asking those close by what was going on. The entire courthouse appeared to have come to a standstill after the explosion except for those officers who were running about listening to radios and trying to ascertain what was happening.
Stratton pushed through the crowd towards the front door where he saw several officers gathering. He paused to consider an alternative escape plan but could not think of one other than the obvious. ‘Fire!’ he called out. ‘There’s a fire below!’
It had the immediate desired effect. The crowd made a general move that soon became a panicky surge towards the entrance. Officers, as confused as everyone else, were pushed aside by those wanting to flee until one of them picked up a radio message. He called for his partners to close the doors and not let anyone out.
The officers’ concerted effort to push the large double doors shut only served to fuel the panic among those trying to get out. They shoved against the officers even harder.
Stratton got to the doors and added his weight to the would-be escapers. Along with a handful of others, he managed to squeeze outside just before the officers succeeded in closing the doors. He kept on going and crossed the parking lot briskly while removing his false moustache and glasses. A moment later he was heading down the street towards a large mall two blocks from the beach between the courthouse and his apartment building, leaving the pandemonium behind him.
Inside the mall entrance all was calm with no one remotely aware of what had happened a block away. Stratton dumped the removable parts of his disguise in a trash bin before casually making his way to another entrance and across the street to his apartment building.
It was a bright sunny day and Stratton’s heart rate was almost back to normal by the time he rounded the corner onto Santa Monica Boulevard where the blue-grey sea glistened beyond the palm trees that ran along the top of the cliff. He was confident that he had made a clean escape. Next would come the wait to determine the success or otherwise of his mission. With a regular mission it was not unusual to have to wait hours and sometimes days to learn the outcome of an attack: quite often it required satellite surveillance or other forms of high-tech intelligence to ascertain damage. In this case Stratton would use the best intelligence source of any criminal or terrorist organisation and that was the media. In his experience the media was generally a very poor source of accurate information since they were more concerned with drama. But in this case he felt that he could rely on them.