Soft Target (46 page)

'I'm just having a few words with Mr Anderson,' said the detective.

'He's a sick man,' said the doctor.

'He almost killed a policeman.'

'And once he's stabilised you can charge him. But at the moment he's my patient.'

'I'm done anyway,' said the detective.

'Yes, you are,' said the doctor.

The detective stared at him, long and hard. The doctor tried to meet his gaze but his face reddened. He began to busy himself with the equipment monitoring Anderson's vital signs.

'So that's it?' said Anderson. 'I'm in the clear?'

'Fingers crossed,' said the detective. He left the ward, his black leather shoes squeaking with each step.

It was only as the detective barged out through the double doors that Anderson realised the man hadn't identified himself, and the warrant card had been too close to his face to read.

The name on the passport that the man was using was Muhammad Zahid. It was a good name, but it wasn't the name that he had been born with. The passport was Iraqi,

but the man was Palestinian. When he had joined the ranks of the shahid a video would be shown on Arab TV stations across the Middle East proclaiming his love for the Palestinian people and his hatred for the infidels who aided the Israeli murderers. The man calling himself Zahid hadn't been in Palestine for five years and hadn't seen his family 374 1 for six. Ever since his Arab brothers had achieved martyrdom during the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the West's intelligence service had gone into overdrive. Suspected terrorists were watched, hunted and held without trial. Phones were tapped, emails were read, letters were opened. There was no such thing as secrecy any more. The Americans wanted to photograph, fingerprint and take DNA samples from every human being on the planet, but until they did, all that a man like the Palestinian needed was a valid passport with a valid visa. The immigration officer at Heathrow's Terminal Three was underpaid and overworked: he had only seconds to look at the passport and compare the photograph in it with the man in front of him. The resemblance was close enough and the passport was genuine, so the Palestinian was waved through. The immigration officer even welcomed him back to the United Kingdom. It had been so easy. The British were so trusting, so gullible.

The passport the Palestinian was using belonged to an Iraqi whose brother had been murdered by Saddam Hussein.

The man had fled with his wife and two young sons before the Iraqi secret police could visit him in the middle of the night. The British had granted the family asylum, and permanent residency in the United Kingdom. The Iraqi hated the British as much as the Palestinian did, but he was happy to take advantage of them. He had received a new hip, courtesy of the National Health Service, lived in a spacious threebedroomed council flat in Notting Hill, with a balcony and use of a communal garden, his children were receiving a free education and would, hopefully, go to university one day.

The Iraqi didn't need his passport any more. He had no plans to leave the country. Iraq was a hellish place run by the infidels, but even if it wasn't he wouldn't want to return.

In Britain he was richer than he would ever be in Iraq. His 375 children would soon be granted British citizenship, and they already spoke with British accents.

The Iraqi wasn't grateful for what the British had done for him. He saw it as his right. The British helped the Americans, who murdered and tortured Muslims around the world. He owed the infidels no loyalty. His only loyalty was to Islam and his Arab brothers. When he was approached by the Saudi one summer afternoon as he strolled through a pretty London square, he didn't take much convincing to hand over his passport. He didn't even want to know how it would be used. All he knew was that his Arab brothers were preparing to strike at the heart of the infidels and lending his passport was the least he could do. Even if the authorities ever traced it, all the Iraqi had to do was say it had been stolen. That was one of the benefits of living in Britain: it was so easy to lie to the police. Unlike in Iraq,

where the secret police could torture and kill with impunity,

the British police had to call him 'sir' and would get him a lawyer, free of charge, if he needed one.

The Palestinian had been in the UK for two weeks, and he had spent all that time in the bedsit that had been found for him. Food and drink was brought to him by a man who never spoke. Another man - a Saudi, the Palestinian thought - came after a week, took measurements of his chest and waist and gave him some newspaper cuttings about the latest atrocities on the West Bank. Five schoolchildren killed by an Israeli rocket. A baby shot in crossfire. A student killed by a rubber bullet that hit him in the throat. The Palestinian didn't need the newspaper stories to fuel his hatred for the West.

That had been forged more than ten years earlier when the Israelis had thrown him and his family out of their house,

then bulldozed it. His father had fought back and been shot in the leg. The doctors had amputated it above the knee and he had never worked again. A year later, the Palestinian's 376 1 elder brother had died when Israeli soldiers had fired into a crowd of protestors, and his mother had died of a broken heart six months later. The Palestinian hated the Israelis, he hated the Americans, who funded the Israelis, and he hated the British, who kowtowed to every demand the Americans made. It was time to hit the British, to show them what it was like to have people die in the streets. To make them suffer as the Palestinians had suffered.

There was a knock and the Palestinian got up off the prayer mat. He unlocked the door. It was the Saudi.

The Saudi opened his bag and took out a canvas vest with bulky packages in pockets spaced around it at even intervals.

Red and blue wires ran from the pockets.

The Saudi helped the Palestinian fit the vest and tightened it with straps and buckles. The button to detonate the explosives was at the end of a white wire. The Palestinian tucked it away in one of the pockets. He knew how the vest worked: he'd been on a training course that was part technical,

part indoctrination. He hadn't needed brainwashing:

he'd welcomed the opportunity to join the ranks of the shahid. Once he had given his life for the jihad, he would be with his mother and brother in heaven, his father, too, when his time came.

The Palestinian put on his coat over the vest and fastened the buttons. The Saudi walked round him several times. He made a small adjustment to the shoulders, then handed the ¦ Palestinian an envelope. He picked up his bag and left.

'Allahu akbar,' he whispered, as the door closed. God is great.

The Palestinian opened the envelope. Inside, there was a single sheet of paper. It was a photocopy of a map of the London Underground system. One station had been circled 1 in red ink. King's Cross. And written in the margin was a time: five o'clock.

IThe Palestinian looked at the cheap clock on the wall by 377 the door. It was a quarter to one. He had plenty of time. He knelt to pray.

Ken Swift swiped his card and pushed through the revolving door. His boots squeaked as he walked down the corridor,

head swivelling to left and right. He popped his head into the comms room and saw Mike Sutherland checking a radio.

'Seen Rosie?' he asked.

'On the range,' said Sutherland. 'He's not happy with the sights on his Glock.'

Swift turned on his heel. He heard the cracks of 9mm rounds as he went down the stairs to the range, single shots,

evenly spaced. He barged through the door and saw Rose firing at a bullseye target ten metres down the range. Rose was in his black overalls, wearing orange ear-protectors.

'Rosie!' shouted Swift.

Rose carried on firing. When he'd emptied the magazine he pressed the button that brought the target closer so that he could see exactly where his shots had gone.

Swift walked up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder.

Rose pulled off his ear-protectors. 'What?' he said.

'Where's Marsden?'

Rose frowned. 'He's with BTP this afternoon. They want him undercover on Operation Wingman. Why?'

'We're in deep shit,' said Swift. 'Deep, deep shit.'

The Palestinian pulled the door to his bedsit shut behind him and walked slowly down the stairs. He heard loud rock music from one of the rooms on the first floor. Whoever was living there played music all day long and well into the night.

Some nights the Palestinian had been unable to sleep but he had never gone down to complain. He hadn't wanted to draw attention to himself. He just hoped that whoever was in the room would be at King's Cross station at five o'clock.

At the bottom of the stairs a glass door led to the street.

The Palestinian pulled at it but it wouldn't open. Then he realised he had to press a button to unlock it. He stared at it. It was exactly the same as the one on his vest. It was an omen, he decided. An omen that everything would go as planned. 'Allahu akbar,' he whispered. He pressed the button and the lock buzzed. It would be just as easy to press the other button, when the time came. Click, and he would be in heaven. He pulled open the door and walked into the street. He was just five minutes' walk from Brixton station in South London, the terminus of the Victoria Line.

The sky was overcast, another good omen. He had to wear the coat to cover the vest and it would have looked out of place on a warm, sunny day. Allah was smiling on him because what was about to happen was Allah's will.

The streets were busy with afternoon shoppers. Music blared from an open window. Reggae this time, not rock, but it was just as offensive to the Palestinian's ears. He walked past a travel agency, whose windows were plastered with posters offering cheap holidays - one for two weeks in Israel.

The Palestinian shook his head sadly. Why would anyone want to holiday with murderers? he wondered. Had the Nazis offered package holidays to their extermination camps?

London was full of tourists, coming to spend their money in a country that aided the persecution of Muslims. It was time to show those tourists that they would have been better to stay at home.

He walked under a railway bridge and a train rattled overhead,

making him flinch. Brakes squealed with the sound of a tortured animal. He walked along a street filled with market stalls selling cheap clothes, flimsy luggage and counterfeit batteries. Most of the shops catered to the Afro-Caribbean community, supermarkets with open boxes piled high with vegetables the Palestinian had never seen before, butchers 379 }

offering halal meat, posters advertising phonecards to make cheap calls to Jamaica and West Africa. The Palestinian moved through the shoppers, trying to avoid physical contact with those around him.

He turned right on to Brixton Road. He was only yards from the tube entrance. He was so busy with his thoughts that he didn't see the two men blocking his way until he had almost bumped into them. He mumbled an apology and tried to step to the side, but a hand gripped his right arm just below the shoulder. He looked up to see two big black men.

One had dreadlocks tumbling from under a red, green and yellow woollen hat. The other was shorter but wider, with a large medallion on a thick gold chain. Both stared at him with undisguised hatred.

'Give us your mobile,' said the man with dreadlocks.

'Excuse me?' said the Palestinian.

'I don't want your fucking apology, I want your fucking phone. You speaka da fucking English, don't you?' He pushed the Palestinian in the chest and he staggered back against a shop window. He was facing a bus stop where half a dozen housewives and old men stood with bags of shopping. They didn't intervene: they knew from experience that it brought only grief and a trip to the local Accident and Emergency department.

The Palestinian was confused. 'I understand English, but I don't have a phone.'

'Everybody's got a fucking phone,' said the shorter of the two men. He pulled a small knife out of his pocket, a shiny blade with a brown wooden handle. 'Now, give us your fucking phone or I'll stick you.'

'I don't have a phone,' said the Palestinian. 'Please, I have to be somewhere.'

'Give us your wallet, then.'

'I don't have a wallet,' said the Palestinian. He had nothing 380 in his coat pockets and only a handful of coins in his trousers, just enough to buy his tube ticket to King's Cross.

He had been told to carry nothing that might identify him.

The Palestinian tried to push between the two men. 'Excuse me, please,' he said. The knife flashed in and out and he felt a searing pain in his side. He gasped.

'You fucking Arab piece of shit,' hissed the man with the medallion. He stabbed the knife into the Palestinian's side again. And again. The Palestinian staggered back against the window and it rattled from the impact. He felt blood flow under his vest and his legs went weak. He tried to reach under his coat so that at least he could die with honour, with glory, but his arms were like lead.

'Think you're better than us, do you?' hissed the man with the knife. The knife struck again, in his chest this time. The Palestinian's breath gurgled in his throat and he sank to his knees, a red mist falling over his eyes. His last thoughts were of the shame he would bring upon his family when they heard he had died in the street, that he had failed in his mission,

that he had died for nothing, murdered by an infidel for not having a phone. He slumped forward and slammed face down on to the pavement, bloody froth spilling from his lips.

Shepherd took a drink from his plastic bottle of water, sat down under a map of the Underground system and stretched out his legs. He had been walking around Piccadilly Circus tube station for the best part of an hour, moving from platform to platform. His radio was clipped to the back of his belt under his leather jacket and there was a microphone inside his right cuff.

Nick Wright, Tommy Reid and four other British Transport Police undercover officers were on the same frequency, as were Brian Ramshaw and a controller at the Management Information and Communications Centre in Broadway. She 381 was monitoring the CCTV cameras at Piccadilly Circus,