Death by Design (25 page)

Alone in his office, Ardıç leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. According to his opposite number in London, events there appeared to be entering some sort of final stage. Apparently with İkmen’s help they had discovered that the terrorist attack on the British capital was going to take place in a metro, or what they called a tube station. They were closing the station they felt was the most likely target. Ardıç wondered what part İkmen was playing in that operation. Apparently he had been wounded in the course of his undercover work for the Metropolitan Police. But he had as yet refused any treatment for his wounds. That was typical. It was difficult enough to get İkmen to have a routine medical. To say he had a phobia about hospital treatment was probably understating the case. Ardıç just hoped that İkmen, in his enthusiasm for his exciting foreign posting, didn’t get himself killed.

The vest was heavy and unwieldy. Unlike suicide vests worn in populous areas it didn’t need to be concealed underneath clothing and so could be as large as was required. Usually weighing a maximum of 20kg, this one weighed in at 30 and was packed with large cylinders of top quality Composition 4 plastic explosive. Around the explosive was another, outer vest which contained the nails, metal bolts and plates that would constitute the shrapnel element of the bomb.

Derek Simpson hefted it out of the large sports bag he had used to transport it and looked it over by the light of his torch. Once on Hajizadeh’s body, he’d have to check that all of the wiring was correct and then fit the detonator. It was he who had the skill and knowledge in this area, not the Iranian. All he had to do, as far as Derek was concerned, was die.

‘Come here,’ he said when he saw that Hajizadeh had taken his T-shirt off.

The Iranian walked over and, with a smile, slipped his arms into the vest.

‘You’ll have to keep very still while I check the wiring,’ Harrison said.

Ali Reza felt various tuggings on the vest as he stood looking out into the darkness. It was very heavy and cut into the tops of his shoulders deeply. But he was proud to wear it and was relieved that at last the time had come to kit up and get ready for his mission.

‘You don’t touch the detonator until you’re absolutely in position,’ Harrison said to him. ‘Understand?’

‘Yes. I’m not stupid.’

‘I know,’ Harrison said. ‘I just don’t want you running away with yourself before you get the text. I know what you lot are like. I’ve been around you long enough.’

Ali Reza put his hand into the pocket of his trousers and said, ‘You lot? What do you mean you lot?’

‘Jihadi types,’ Harrison said. ‘You’re so keen to get to the other side you often forget the details you have to go through to get there.’ He looked into the Iranian’s eyes and said, ‘I’ll be honest with you, Ali, I don’t like the fact that Ahmet has taken to working with you lot lately. All this religion stuff, it don’t sit well with me. Don’t sit with Ahmet either, much as you might like to think it does. He drinks, does all sorts of things Muslims ain’t supposed to do. He ain’t doing this for God.’

‘I know what Ahmet is,’ Ali Reza said. ‘He’s a means to an end.’

‘Well, for myself, I can’t say I’ll miss you, but I am grateful that you’re taking revenge for me,’ Harrison said.

‘It’s a strange sort of revenge, blowing up something inanimate. After all, Derek, it wasn’t the tube itself that hurt you, was it?’

‘My life ended down here,’ Harrison replied. ‘Moorgate weren’t no one’s fault. What else but an inanimate object can I take it out on? Anyway, you’re not perfect, whatever you might think.’

‘Shagging the boss’s wife?’

‘Bloody Maxine. Why Ahmet married a fucking lap dancer I—’ Suddenly something hurt – a lot.

More slowly than he had shoved it in, Ali Reza pulled out the short knife he had just thrust into Harrison’s abdomen.

‘Fortunately for my reputation, no one will ever know,’ Ali Reza said. He threw the knife to one side and then held Harrison as he began to sink slowly to the floor. ‘I’m doing this for myself but you should also know that Ahmet asked me to kill you. He didn’t want any loose ends.

‘You bastard!’ Wet bulging eyes looked at Ali Reza through the gloom and Harrison repeated, ‘Bastard!’

Although he could hardly see what he was doing and he was weighed down by the cumbersome suicide vest, Ali Reza managed to lower Harrison to the ground. Halfway through, a train went by and briefly illuminated Harrison’s grey, dying face. It also showed Ali Reza that there was a lot of sticky blood everywhere. He moved away from it before he got too much on his hands. Then he just listened to the sound of Harrison’s demise as he wiped his bloodied hands on the sides of his trousers.

Tower Hill station, İkmen learned, had one entrance, which doubled as an exit, and one dedicated exit. Apparently the single exit on Cooper’s Row had once been the only entrance and exit to the station. But an increase in passenger numbers had meant that another, bigger entrance had been built, with a ticket office.

İkmen was standing in Trinity Square Gardens with a small group of London Underground workers, one of whom, an elderly man called Alf, had tried to pump him for information about what exactly the police were doing. In line with his instructions, İkmen had assisted his colleagues in clearing out the station but now, along with Ayşe Kudu, he was to keep well out of the way. As he understood it, Inspector Riley and DI Roman were now coordinating a minute search of the station while trains had been instructed not to stop at Tower Hill. Neither Harrison nor Hajizadeh had been picked up on CCTV and so the chances of their being down on the Tower Hill platforms were slight. But apart from anything else, the police had to maintain their story about a suspect package and so they needed to be down there, and there was always a chance the men were in fact down there. It was possible to walk from station to station along the track. There were little alcoves in the wall where those working on the line could stand when trains passed. These could also be used by terrorists. There were three possible routes in: from the east on the Circle line from Aldgate, from the west on the District line from Monument, and from the east also on the District line from Aldgate East.

‘Suspect packages don’t normally take the coppers that long to deal with,’ Alf said as he offered İkmen a cigarette. ‘Even back in the old days when the IRA were at it all the time, suspect packages never took that long. Do you know if they’re calling out the army? To take it away and blow it up?’

İkmen took the proffered cigarette with a smile. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t.’

‘If the officers down there think they need bomb disposal, they’ll call for it,’ Ayşe said. ‘They’ll make a judgement about that.’

Alf lit his own and İkmen’s cigarettes and then said gloomily, ‘Better not blow up my station.’

‘I’m sure that won’t happen, sir,’ Ayşe replied. ‘You’ve obviously been around these things many times before, you know how often they turn out to be hoaxes.’

‘Yeah.’ Alf sucked hard on his cigarette and then said, ‘Mind you, this al Qaeda mob we’ve got now, they don’t muck about, do they? Back in the old days with the IRA you generally got the warning phone call. But not this lot. Just blow people up. For God, they say, although I can’t see that myself.’

‘Al Qaeda believe they’re working for God,’ Ayşe said, ‘but their view of God is not the same as everyone else’s.’

‘You can say that again!’

İkmen and Alf smoked in silence for a while, watching as the uniformed officers outside the station turned people away. A couple of people, angered at having to use an alternative station, argued uselessly with them, but in general people took the inconvenience well. In that the Londoners were very similar to İstanbullus, İkmen thought. Things cancelled or shut were inconvenient but what else could a person do but shrug his or her shoulders and just carry on?

‘Mind you, if they blow this place up, we could always go back to using the old station,’ Alf said as he looked up into the pale grey early evening sky.

‘The old station?’

‘Old Tower Hill station,’ Alf said. ‘Not many people remember it now. Shut in the late sixties, I think it did.’ He nudged his colleague. ‘When did old Tower Hill station close, Reg?’

Reg was older than Alf. ‘Gawd,’ he said. ‘I don’t know. Sixty-eight? Sixty-nine?’

‘About then,’ Alf said. ‘When this place was built they shut the old station, locked it up and turned off the lights.’ He smiled. ‘Like something out of the war, it was, old Tower Hill, or rather to give it its proper name, Mark Lane.’

‘Mark Lane?’ İkmen began to feel his heart increase its beat.

‘Mark Lane is what old Tower Hill was originally called,’ Alf said. ‘It’s like a proper time capsule down there. Posters on the wall for Marmite and Ovaltine. Course you can’t go down there now, not since the bombs in two thousand and five.’

Ayşe looked at İkmen who looked at her with the very same thought in his head.

‘Is this station on Mark Lane?’

‘No,’ Alf said. ‘You actually get into it, or you used to be able to get into it, by going down the Byward Street underpass. From the back of All Hallows underneath the road, to an opening next to some bar on this other side.’

İkmen turned to Ayşe. ‘That subway you took me down,’ he said. ‘The one where the trains running underneath reminded me of the earthquake. That’s where Mark Lane is!’

Ayşe took her phone out of her jacket pocket and began to scroll through numbers as she grabbed İkmen’s arm and started to run towards the west. ‘Come on!’ she said.

Ever since four o’clock the number of trains running in both directions had increased significantly. So timing – getting down on to the lines, detonating the device – was going to be crucial. Ali Reza switched the torch on again and pointed it at his watch. It was now one minute to five but still he hadn’t received anything from the ayatollah. Slightly anxiously he wondered what he would do if the text never came but then decided that that was just not possible. What he was doing was all part of Nourazar’s great work and so nothing would get in its way. And besides, even if the text didn’t reach him, he was committed to his course and would detonate eventually come what may.

Ali Reza smiled. Soon he would be in Paradise with all the pettiness and horror of the world very far away. For a second he trained his torch towards the back of the old platform and saw Derek Harrison’s slack body. One thing was for sure, he wouldn’t be meeting
him
in Paradise. What a ridiculous person he had been! To want to take revenge upon a means of transport on which you’d had an accident was insane.

Ali turned his mind back to thoughts of Paradise. Then, as if by some noble sacred magic, his phone beeped to tell him he had a text.

Both Ayşe and İkmen panted as they looked at the plain metal-faced door at the bottom of the staircase leading to the underpass. There were stickers all over it saying ‘No Entry’, ‘Keep Clear’, ‘Eye protection must be worn’ and ‘These doors are alarmed’. There was a numerical keypad halfway up the wall on the left-hand side of the door.

‘There must be some sort of entry code,’ Ayşe said as she panted to catch her breath.

İkmen, who felt as if he was about to pass out from lack of oxygen, said nothing. This door, when he had first seen it, had barely entered his consciousness. Now he read, ‘Keep clear. Exit from emergency escape route’. It was known about – as an escape route.

The clatter of heavy boots on concrete stairs heralded the arrival of Riley, Roman and a team of uniformed officers, one of whom was carrying a metal battering ram. As they approached, Riley terminated the call he had been engaged in on his mobile and turned to the uniforms. ‘Break it down,’ he said.

‘Sir, there’s a code,’ Ayşe said.

‘Yes, I know,’ Riley replied. ‘But we don’t have time for that now.’ He stood out of the way of the ram as a particularly burly officer began smashing it into the door. ‘I want you and İkmen out of here,’ he said to Ayşe. ‘If Harrison and Hajizadeh have set a bomb down there, I want you two a long way away from here. Now!’

For a moment İkmen stood rooted to the spot, mesmerised by the sight of the metal on the door buckling under the force of the battering ram. But then Ayşe took hold of his arm and said, ‘Come on, Çetin!’

They began to run towards the All Hallows exit.

Ali Reza had just jumped down on to the track when he heard the commotion up above. Either the man who had given Harrison the code had grassed them up to the police or someone had finally worked it all out. Not that it mattered. He could already see tiny pinpoints of light in front of him, meaning that a train was coming. It was the train he was going to destroy.

Up above, the hammering continued. In front of him the lights from the train grew closer at speed. Ali Reza put his hand inside the explosive vest and twisted his fingers round the cord that was connected to the detonator. If he pulled the cord too soon he would damage the old station without actually blowing up the train. But if he left it too late, the train might mow him down before he could pull the cord and then who knew what would happen? He assumed the device would still blow up but he couldn’t be certain.

Strange the way that everything suddenly felt really slow. The lights that had been coming toward him at such a fast rate now seemed as if they were only edging forward, centimetre by centimetre. It was odd. The sensation in his head felt very like his one and only experience with cannabis: floaty and without a care for anything much. There was something he wanted to say before he died but suddenly be couldn’t recall what it was. The only thing he could remember as the lights in front of him suddenly became massive in his eyes was that he had to pull the cord. This Ali Reza Hajizadeh did just before the front of the train barrelled into his chest.

The blast from the explosion in the tunnel beneath them picked İkmen and Ayşe up off their feet and slammed their bodies up against the tiled walls of the underpass. As the bomb detonated, the officers who had just broken through the door into the old station were also knocked off their feet. Dust and debris from the explosion blew out through the open door.