Osama (46 page)

‘Ladies and gentlemen.’ The captain’s voice was not panicked, but he was clearly being very careful to sound calm. ‘There’s nothing to worry about, just a minor technical issue . . .’

But the passengers weren’t fooled. They too had seen the emergency vehicles. And as the aircraft ground to a complete halt, they saw the flak-jacketed, armed police burst out of the unmarked white van. Someone screamed. At least half the passengers ripped off their seatbelts and got to their feet.

The captain’s voice came over the Tannoy again: ‘Cabin crew, engage the emergency chutes. Ladies and gentlemen, please stand clear of the aisle to allow . . .’

Nobody was listening. Passengers were already rushing towards the emergency exits, even though they hadn’t been opened yet. From the rear of the plane two members of the cabin crew tried to push themselves down towards the centre, passing the sweating Middle Eastern man and his two neighbours, who had got to their feet and were trying to squeeze past him. The man angled his legs to the right, allowing them into the aisle to follow in the wake of the cabin crew.

And only then, as the other passengers scrambled for the exits, and the blue neon of the emergency vehicles flashed in through the windows of the aircraft, did the man remove his mobile phone from his pocket. His hands were shaking, his brow a sea of sweat. He felt detached from the noise and hysteria of the rest of the cabin as the emergency chutes opened. He felt at peace. He looked over his right shoulder. From here he could see, in the cabin crew’s service area, the metal food trolley. It was no more than three metres away.

He switched on the phone. It took thirty seconds to power up.

Half the passengers had alighted now. The man could hear harsh voices shouting instructions somewhere outside and although he could not make out what they were saying, he knew he didn’t have much time.

The cabin was almost empty now. The harsh voices grew more distinct. He could understand them: ‘Get away from the aircraft!
Get away from the aircraft!
’

He activated Bluetooth. The phone started to search for nearby devices.

He was muttering again. This time his words were not silent, but formed the dull drone of a whispered prayer. The harsh voices were closer. They were in the cabin and were shouting not at the passengers who had, he estimated, all disembarked, but at each other: ‘Rows A to F, clear! Rows M to S, clear!’

His prayer continued. Still seated, he couldn’t see the newcomers, but he could sense one of them drawing closer. They would shoot him on sight, of course. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck as he stared at his phone.

New device found.

He sensed the approaching man stop. How far away was he? Five metres? A little more?

Device connected.

Had the newcomer seen the man still sitting in his seat? Had he worked out something was wrong?

He had only to press a button now, and his phone would detonate the Semtex stashed in the meals on the food trolley.

Then the man heard the newcomer’s voice. ‘
Evacuate the aircraft! Evacuate!
Now!
’

The time had come. He would take at least one person with him.

He closed his eyes, raised his face to heaven, and pressed the button on his phone.

Mason Delaney prided himself on his ability to read a man’s face. But he didn’t need much skill to realize that something was going wrong. One look at General Sagan’s expression was enough for that. The man’s leathery skin had turned several shades paler; his brow was furrowed.

‘What is it, Herb?’ Delaney asked quietly. And then: ‘
What is it?
’

‘I’m getting word from Tampa,’ Sagan breathed.

Delaney closed his eyes. ‘What?’

‘They’ve located the bottles.’

Delaney could feel his fat neck pressing against his tight collar. ‘And?’

But Sagan was holding up one finger, listening intently to his headset. ‘Boston, Orlando, Cincinnati, Philly . . . same goddamn story.’

Suddenly Delaney was on his feet, clutching the edge of the table. His mouth hardly moved as he spoke. ‘What story, Herb?’

The general stared at him. ‘They’ve isolated all the passengers, they’ve located the bottles and they’ve done preliminary tests on the contents.’ He blinked. ‘Shampoo,’ he said. ‘They all contain shampoo.’

Delaney felt as if the blood was draining from his veins.

‘What do you mean?’

‘What the hell do you think I mean, Mason? Goddamn it, I thought you said your information was—’

But at that moment the door swung open. Scott Stroman appeared. He was out of breath and his eyes were slightly wild. He looked awkwardly over at Sagan, then at his boss. ‘Sir, we’ve just had word from the Federal Aviation Administration.’

‘What?
What?
’

‘All US and UK flights grounded, sir. There’s been an explosion at Heathrow, but the British were pre-warned.’ He looked over at Sagan again, before taking another deep breath. ‘They were also pre-warned about five strikes on US soil, sir.’

Delaney fell back into his seat. A chill wind was blowing through the room. ‘They had the same information as us?’

But Stroman was shaking his head. ‘We’ve been misled, sir. The explosives . . .’

‘Where?’ Delaney whispered.

‘Semtex, sir. In the in-flight meals.’

Sagan was looking between them, his expression somewhere between confusion and suspicion. ‘What the hell’s going on, Mason?’ he demanded, a dangerous edge to his voice.

But Delaney didn’t answer. Not immediately. For a full ten seconds he sat stunned.

Then he stood up and walked over to Stroman. When he finally spoke, it was in a low hiss that only his white-faced assistant could hear.

‘Find him,’ he said.

‘Sir?’ Stroman asked.

‘
Find Ashkani!
Now!
’

Twenty-three

Mahmood Ashkani was staring at the sky, awaiting the moment when Flight BA729 from London to Dublin entered his line of sight.

His laptop was open on the car seat beside him, its sat-phone connection to the internet established. He had chosen his viewing point with precision. At 1013 hours the British Airways flight would be in this airspace. And at that moment he would see it fall from the heavens. Only when he had verified, with his own eyes, that the strike had been successful, would he upload the footage to YouTube. No doubt it would be taken down within minutes, but that would be ample time for bin Laden’s taunt to go viral across the world.

Eight minutes past ten. He thought of Delaney. His handler, the man he had been playing like a finely tuned instrument, would know by now that something was wrong. And when the planes started dropping from American airspace as well as British, he would finally understand the extent of Ashkani’s deception. He wished he could see Delaney’s pasty face when he realized what he’d done.

Eleven minutes past. He thought of Joe Mansfield. He thought of how desperate Delaney had been to eliminate him and how much effort he, Ashkani, had put into the job. Mansfield could have ruined everything.

Twelve minutes past.

The sky overhead was clear. He took a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles from his jacket and put them on.

Thirteen minutes past. There was nothing in the sky except a flock of seagulls heading for the coast.

Ashkani breathed deeply, trying to keep a lid on his sudden unease. Perhaps there had been a delay.

Two minutes went by. Three. The sky remained empty of aircraft.

Ashkani glanced down at his laptop. It was all ready. He simply needed to press a button. But he could not do it. Not until he was sure . . .

He opened a new Firefox window and, typing meticulously with his two forefingers, navigated to Heathrow’s departures page. And as his eyes fell upon the list of flights, his slow, careful breathing suddenly became irregular. Each flight on the page was followed by a single word.

‘Cancelled’.

Ashkani stared at the page, and back at the sky. Then, in a sudden burst of anger, he ripped the phone from the laptop and hurled it to the floor by the empty seat. He stared at himself in the rear-view mirror for thirty seconds, his mind full of the explosions he could not see, trying to straighten his head and formulate a new strategy.

He was exposed. His cover was blown. By now Delaney would know that he had been double-crossing him, and Ashkani had nothing to show for it. But that didn’t change what he had to do right now: disappear. Quickly. Completely.

But first he had to cover his tracks. His mind wandered. He saw an isolated house and the dead body of an old woman at the bottom of the stairs. He saw a room filled with incriminating evidence.

He started the engine, performed a three-point turn, and began driving back the way he had come.

Both Eva’s body and mind were numb.

She had watched the clock tick relentlessly past ten.

Ten past.

Twenty past.

She couldn’t move. She could barely think. Her gunshot wound was terrible, but the state of her head, filled with images of burning aircraft and screaming children, was worse. She had no other thoughts.

Her body temperature dropped. Coloured blotches appeared in front of her eyes. She was vaguely aware of the clock. Ten twenty-eight.

Conor.

The thought was like a shot of adrenalin. She had forgotten him. Eva shook her head clear of the mist that was clouding her thoughts, and winced as a burning sensation shot through her trunk. Her breath had caused condensation on the inside of the windscreen and to lean forward and wipe it off with her sleeve was so painful that she gasped.

And she gasped a second time when she saw a grey Peugeot speed by in the opposite direction. The car passed in a flash. But she’d had enough time to see the face of the man at the wheel: the hooked nose, the dark skin and hair, even the slight hunch in his shoulders.

The same man she had seen just days before in Barfield, and whose photograph had since stared out of computer screens and been burned into her brain.

But he was dead. Joe had shot him.
Hadn’t he?

Within seconds Eva was swinging the Range Rover round, ignoring the stress the movement placed on her side. Ahead there was a bend to the right, and the Peugeot was out of view. She stamped on the accelerator and the car screamed through the automatic gears as she gripped the steering wheel and peered through the windscreen still half obscured by moisture.

Three minutes later she was speeding past the car park where they had stopped the previous night and surging over the brow of the hill. The sea appeared, about two kilometres in the distance, and between the top of the hill and the coast, about 250 metres inland, was the solitary house. Eva didn’t slow down. As the vehicle jolted over the hill she felt another hot jab of pain in her side, but she also saw, maybe a mile along the road that snaked out ahead, the Peugeot. It had taken a left at a fork in the road. There was no doubt about it: it was heading for the house.

Eva trod down hard, her face set in an expression of fierce concentration. A minute or two later the house was just thirty metres ahead. She barely slowed down as she entered the driveway, and came to a noisy, skidding halt a car’s length from the front door.

Silence.

The Peugeot was parked five metres to her right, at an angle that suggested its driver had also come to an abrupt stop. Sweating now, Eva fumbled for the handgun Joe had left her with, quietly opened the door and stepped outside.

There was no sign of Ashkani. She found herself gripping the weapon hard, resting it on her left forearm, which was raised in front of her. She felt faint, and worried that she would pass out any moment. She couldn’t prevent her footsteps crunching a little on the gravel as she covered the three metres to the door. It was ajar – just an inch – so she prodded it gently with her right foot, keeping her weapon raised.

The entrance hall was murky and quiet. No sign of anyone. It looked just as it had when she had left. She listened hard – no sound – and as she stepped inside she quickly checked left and right that there was nobody waiting to jump her.

Nothing.

Lightly pushing the door shut behind her, she crept across the hallway to the bottom of the stairs. Her weapon was pointing upwards now. The door of the bedroom where she had left Conor was wide open. Was that how she’d left it? She couldn’t remember.

The treads creaked as she ascended – each pace sent a tremor through her. By the time she reached the top of the stairs she was gulping for air.

She paused, gritting her teeth. Then she inhaled deeply several times and lunged into the room.

It was empty.

‘Oh my God,’ she breathed. ‘
Conor
. . .’

She limped across the room to the bed where he had been lying. The indentation of his little body was still there, and the coat that had covered him was lying over the open box in which she had found the airline meal tray. But there was no sign of Conor.