'It'll have to keep, Joe. I'm sure you understand.'
Through the wall of the room, Ibrahim heard the sounds of a man's weeping.
It should have been a time of joy as the day approached. He should have been able to share joy with brothers and a sister, but there had been dispute and argument, and now he heard desolate weeping.
He recited to himself from the Book, 3-169: 'You must not think that those who are slain in the cause of Allah are dead. They are alive and well provided for by their Lord.' He had thought the words would comfort him, but they did not. Despair was hooked in his mind. There was no celebration of what he would do when he walked, when he held the switch in his hand, only raised voices — and now hopeless tears were offered him through the wall. Why? Why was there no joy?
Ibrahim left his room, went down the corridor and away from the crying. He came to the living room and the curtains were drawn there. He stood in the shadows at the door. He was not seen.
From the centre of the room, a beam of light sliced the darkness and fell on the face of Jamal. The source of the light was a small video-camera — what his father would have sold in his shop — and its beam was on Khalid's face and his eyes, which blinked. Syed was behind the camera, and at his side was Faria. None of them saw him. He was not noticed. He held his breath and listened.
Khalid held a sheet of paper in his hand, and complained: 'It's so difficult — it's hard to read with the light in my face.'
'Doesn't matter,' Syed said. 'He will have had time to learn it.' Faria said, head angled and her hands on her hips, accentuating her curves, 'I'm not sure it sounds right, do it again.'
Syed took on the accent of an American — he was crouched over the camera, eye pressed to the view-finder, as if it was Hollywood. 'Ready? OK. Action. Go in five.'
Beside him, her hand out, Faria dropped each finger as she counted down five seconds, then pointed to Khalid.
Khalid gazed at the lens, and his eyes seemed to water. 'Here we go…"I would like to say to you that I have come to Britain in order to strive in the path of God and to fight the enemy of Muslims. I am the living martyr. God, be He exalted…" It's so difficult to read this. Do I keep going? Right…"At this time we say to the whole world, and declare it as a mighty shout, that the will of Muslims will not weaken and that the retaliatory fire will blaze until the crusaders and oppressors have departed from the Muslim homeland…" Do I have to read it all, or can I go to the end?'
'Just do the end,' Faria said.
'The last sentence, his sign-off,' Syed said.
'Going in five…"To Blair and Bush, I say that the curse is on your faces. I will await you all, my brothers, in Paradise. Do not forget me in your prayers…" That's it. Can he learn that, no stumbles, straight to The camera?'
'Yes, he can,' Faria said. 'At the moment it sounds like the written word, not the spoken word. It needs to be drafted again.' Syed mimicked the studio director: 'Cut. Break the set.'
'It is impossible to read it with meaning and make it a sincere testament because it is not me that is going to walk,' Jamal said.
Ibrahim turned away, went quietly into the corridor. Then lights flooded on and he heard the curtains dragged open.
'He will say it well,' she said, her voice faint to him. 'Just as he will walk well because he has the dedication — we do not — and the strength.'
Dickie Naylor said, 'We're moving fast, little pieces beginning to slot together. It's all about The Threatened Swan. I apologize, is that a riddle to you?'
'Miss Reakes briefed me on the work of Jan Asselyn in the Rijksmuseum, but out in Montana we're not big on art,' Hegner said, drily.
'I don't know how many hotels, accommodation addresses we've checked but it'll be hundreds…It's the swan on the T-shirt that did the business. Ibrahim Hussein was in a hotel in north London until Saturday. They remembered him checking in. Never left his room all the time he was there. So, he's somewhere in London and we have the city in lock-down. There were others in the hotel, probably linked, and it's being worked on. For the first time, Joe, I feel a faint justification of optimism.'
'Not warranted, Dickie.'
'Christ, you ape a kill-joy well. Why not?'
'Where I come from, Dickie, all the bombs are not at the airport or up against the Green Zone of Baghdad. A few, but not the majority. They hit round the country, not where the security is tightest Here, it won't be London. You call for a lock-down and you've every gun-carrying policeman you can muster on the streets, off days in lieu and furlough breaks, and every one of them who would be doing thieving, mugging, fraud, rape and administration. Your capital is stiff with policemen standing shoulder to shoulder. So, the Twentyman, the Scorpion, leaves it well alone. Go look where you're soft and unprotected, where your citizens gather in numbers, because that is where the threat will be. Look where there are no guns, no barricades. Look where ordinary people go about their daily business, where your citizens think they're safe.'
'But that could be anywhere.'
'I'm telling you it won't be London but somewhere that thinks it's safe and out of the terror frame. Somewhere there is still innocence, and ignorance.'
A wraith figure, Lee Donkin followed the woman. The light ebbed on the Dunstable road. The woman was perfect and soon she would come to the underpass tunnel. She was on her mobile as she walked and the handbag on her arm wasn't even zipped. And it all went bloody pear-shaped. This gang spilled out of the food shop, saw her and recognized her, and it was all kisses, and she was in the middle of them — in a knot of men and women — and she'd been perfect. Wasn't perfect any longer. He crossed the road, drifted on and never looked back. Twenty minutes he'd been following her. Twenty minutes wasted. He cursed, kicked a can off the pavement into the traffic, and went through the tunnel. After twenty minutes of it, psyched and steeled for the snatch, then let down like the fix was finished, he hadn't the will — or the energy — to go looking for another target. He went on into the town centre, head down and hood up, but his savage mood was short-lived. He was in the square. Through the trees, past the vagrants and the dossers on the benches, Lee Donkin saw the posters on the Arndale's walls…Bloody good, bloody ace. Sales, bargains and giveaways on offer this coming weekend. Starting up Saturday, nine a.m. Bloody brilliant. Punters would be coming into town, women would have their purses bulging, and they'd be half asleep, hurrying down the Dunstable road. Bloody first-class pickings.
Naylor scribbled reminders on the sheets of his Post-it pad and stuck them on his desk surface, where clear spaces could be found. Joe Hegner was far back in his chair and talked on. So much was now crammed, squashed, into Dickie Naylor's mind. Everything that day, the meetings and the briefing, had been of critical importance but his ability to absorb was failing — his thoughts were far away, where he had heard the gulls, the waves and the wind.
'Dickie, his problems are with the quality of the cell he has been given. They're not people of his choice. The Twentyman, or the Scorpion, has not interviewed them, has not had the chance to run vetting over them, or to check references — as a CEO would have. The only one alongside him whom he's certain of is the bomb-maker, the Engineer. The rest he has to take on trust, and that's a big step for him, but he cannot do without them. He will be in safe accommodation, probably a short-term rental. With him will be a driver, a guy who has done the necessary reconnaissance of a target, another who will provide immediate security where the cell is gathered, and another who is there to watch over the perimeter of those premises and is staked out at the end of the street or wherever, and he will need some sort of logistics individual. Can he rely on any of them? He will not be happy to depend on individuals whose recruitment was not in his own hands. Then, introduced into this little coven, there is the boy who will do the walk or will drive the car. They are all, believe me, boxed up together, and there will be tensions — have to be tensions — and it is then that mistakes are made, and you have the chance to get lucky. But the stakes for him are high and he must live with the stresses that might be fracturing the cell. If there's an opportunity, you have to be able to exploit it. Will you? Can you?'