Agent of the State (48 page)

Olga took a piece of gauze from her bag and tried to force it into Canning’s mouth. ‘What are you playing at, you stupid bitch?’ he blurted, but she calmly pinched his nose until he gasped for air, then stuffed the gauze inside. Canning began to twist on the bed, pulling himself up on his arms and flailing his bound legs.

She moved fast. Canning was still hard from the effects of the Viagra, so she pulled his underpants around his ankles to mock him. The scarf she had draped around his neck was tied in a loop. Lifting her dress, she sat astride his chest and yanked it tight as Canning writhed beneath her, his face distorted with panic.

As his eyeballs bulged and the veins stood out from his forehead, she deftly removed a toughened hair clip and used it as a tourniquet, revolving it until he began to choke. She lowered her face close to his to be sure he could hear her. ‘I saw what you did to Tania, you disgusting pig. Now you know what it feels like to die, yes?’ She spoke softly as she twisted the scarf. ‘It takes your breath away. Like I said, beyond your wildest dreams.’

With Jack Langton’s urgent voice in her ear calling her to the top floor, Olga stared into Canning’s eyes until the blood vessels burst. She held the pressure even when it was no longer necessary, keeping a finger on his fading pulse. In the moments before he died she quickly disentangled the clip and, raising it in both hands above her head, plunged it deep into his heart.

Only when she was satisfied that he could never harm another human being did she climb from the bed and wipe the bloodied hair clip on his immaculate white shirt. Then she calmly freshened her makeup in the mirror, concealed the murder weapon in her hair, replaced Langton’s microphone on her wrist and hurried down to join the party.

By the time she sashayed into the reception room, Yuri Goschenko had disappeared.

Fifty-eight

Thursday, 27 September, 19.47, 154 Pentland Crescent, Chiswick

Abdul Malik secretly made his farewells to the Turkish Secret Service agents in the deserted lobby. With enough explosives encircling his body to bring down half the crescent, he kissed them on both cheeks, dismissing them with a smile when they offered to remain by his side. It was their duty to escape, he told them. The work was not yet finished.

Unable to find Olga, Yuri Goschenko had already slipped away from the house through the kitchen. His instructions were to report to Rigov and Rashid Hussain with the names of the guests. The moment the Turks quietly locked and bolted the heavy double front doors, the house would become a tomb for Claire Grant, Robert Attwell and the other unwitting partygoers on the other side of the wall. It also sealed the fate of Harold and the innocent girls whose lives had already been diminished in freezing trucks driven across Europe. In completing his holy work, Abdul Malik was not selective. All were infidels, sunk in filth and depravity. Unworthy of salvation, they would perish with the rest.

Like Goschenko, the Turks were to escape into the safety of the back garden through the specially strengthened kitchen door at the rear of the house, double-locking it from the outside to block the escape of any survivors.

Before destroying himself, Abdul Malik needed somewhere to be quiet and pray. The Turks had invited him to prepare himself in the comfort of one of the first-floor bedrooms, but Malik chose the makeshift observation room beneath the staircase. The space would be convenient, he had said, for his final short walk across the hall. The blank TV monitor did not arouse his suspicion. There would be no further use for it, and he assumed it had been switched off. He sat carefully, removed his jacket and made a call to Rashid Hussain to co-ordinate the final phase. It was the last time they would speak, but there was no sentimentality as they said their goodbyes. Then Malik quietly swung to face the blank wall, committing himself to Allah.

With his eyes closed, deep in concentration, Malik never saw Olga as she silently eased the door open to restore the power.

‘This is Olga and there is a man here wearing a bomb.’

‘Say again?’ shot back Langton.

‘He is in the room under the stairs, where they put the TV screen to watch Sara. You must be careful.’

Lying prone on the landing, Kerr, Langton and Melanie watched Olga through the banisters as she hurried up the stairs towards them.

‘Where is everybody?’ said Kerr, as she lay beside them.

‘You can hear the hubbub for yourself,’ panted Olga. ‘They are all in the main room, with the doors closed. They are being kept in there. I don’t know why.’

‘How do you know the guy has a bomb?’

‘I am telling you, there are explosives all round his body, in a kind of jacket.’ Olga could feel Kerr’s eyes on her bloodstained dress. ‘You have no more time. John, it is too dangerous, we must get away.’

‘Olga, you’re fantastic,’ said Kerr, with a nod at Melanie. ‘Get her away from here now, Mel. Keep her warm in my car but you must get the dress off her, understood?’ he said. ‘Go to the rendezvous point. Tell the uniforms to stand off, but be ready to move on my command and prepare for heavy-duty entry. Tell them to drive the carrier into the fucking entrance if they have to.’

‘Gold control, urgent message from Alpha,’ said Kerr, as soon as Melanie had taken Olga’s hand and rushed her away. ‘We have probable suicide bomber inside the premises, about twenty people in the main ground-floor room to the front of the house, right side. Am assessing with Jack Langton but request immediate invocation of Andromeda, over.’

‘All received, John.’ Kerr was relieved to hear Alan Fargo’s soft Cornish accent. ‘Stand by.’

Fargo must have been keeping Channel Five open, for they could hear Weatherall firing questions at him. ‘Where are the firearms teams?’ she said.

‘Trojans are five to seven minutes away, ma’am,’ said another voice.

‘But the premises are sealed,’ interrupted Kerr, ‘so they won’t be able to intervene in time.’

‘Well, I’m ordering you and Red One out of there now.’

‘That’s not what we agreed, ma’am,’ said Kerr, with a glance at Langton.

‘I don’t care. We leave this to the Trojans.’

‘No time,’ said Kerr, quietly, reaching into the shoulder holster for his Glock as he and Langton edged down to the first floor. ‘I’m signing off till this is done.’ They crouched by the banisters again, switched off their radios and positioned themselves with a clear view of the reception-room doors and observation room.

On his last walk across the lobby, Abdul Malik was in Kerr’s direct line of sight. His jacket was buttoned up and, as he turned to close the door to the observation room, there was no sign that he was carrying a bomb. He looked totally calm, carried along in a trance. Before Kerr could react there was a swell of loud conversation and laughter as Malik opened the heavy reception-room doors and walked inside, reducing quickly to the same blurred hubbub as he closed the doors behind him. Kerr cursed himself for not moving as soon as Olga had warned them. The bastard was thinking about maximum casualties, he thought, seeking to contain the bomb’s explosive force in the room. Kerr got to his feet. ‘Cover me as far as the hall,’ he whispered to Langton, ‘then run like fuck for the fire escape.’

Kerr was halfway down the stairs, Glock at the ready, before Langton could hold him back. The second Kerr reached the ground floor the noise from the reception room was suddenly cut off, as if someone had thrown a switch. Kerr rapidly took in the bolted front entrance, looked up to wave Langton away, and silently eased open the double doors.

Kerr could scarcely believe his eyes. The guests had fanned into a perfect horseshoe. Not one seemed to notice him enter, but in the instant before he acted, he took in eight or nine faces he knew from television and the press, or had seen in person. There were a couple of senior politicians, a bureaucrat from the Cabinet Office current intelligence group, a general he recognised from the distant past and, almost hidden among them, a minor royal, his features locked in slack-jawed horror. Other faces, familiar but unplaceable in that split second, shuffled through his memory: an eminent barrister, a tanned business tycoon, a broadsheet journalist, even a senior diplomat he had bumped into at the Yard years ago. Champagne glasses in their hands, they formed a tableau, transfixed, faces stupefied from drink and drugs, eyes locked on the solitary figure who dominated the centre of the room, like some modern deity.

Abdul Malik was holding his jacket open as if to display the lining, drinking in the terror of the infidels he was about to destroy. In the moments before martyrdom, he seemed to enjoy watching their eyes flicker from the explosives and nails at his waist to the toggle he clenched in his right hand.

Kerr’s mind turned to ice, just as it had when he had faced Melanie’s kidnappers in Hackney. The man became a target, disembodied, no more human than the paper images on the firing range at Lippitts Hill. He stood five silent paces away from Kerr. Time to the target three seconds, provided Kerr remained unseen. The man had his back to the doors but was turning slowly clockwise, forcing every victim to stare death in the face. Weapon down by his side, Kerr took a single step into the room, eyes locked on the toggle. Then two more, which brought him within five feet of the target. Close, but still out of striking distance. If any of the victims gave him away, if the target spotted him, Kerr knew it would be too late. Letting his eyes dart upwards for an instant, Kerr saw the smile on the target’s face, serene with anticipation, and the glaze in his eyes.

He covered the remaining ground in three more steps, not two, because he moved slightly to the left to bring himself directly behind the man’s frame, the Glock held high. He got his right leg in front of the target and pushed him with all his strength, watching his arms instinctively stretch wide as he crashed to the floor. There was a crack of bones breaking as Kerr stamped on the man’s trigger hand and rammed his knee into the centre of his back.

With panic exploding all around him, Kerr twisted the target’s head to the right, held the Glock against his temple and fired a pair of shots, a double tap. Everyone was screaming as he rushed back to the double doors and yelled at them to lie on the floor, covering them in a wide arc and aiming at anyone who did not immediately comply. He clicked the radio live. ‘All units from Alpha, go, go, go!’

The Territorial Support Group had followed his advice. He heard an engine revving violently in low gear, then a deafening crash as the armoured carrier smashed into the hall. He rapidly holstered his weapon as the doors behind him burst open and officers in riot gear flooded the room, yelling at everyone to stay down as they checked the corpse.

Before they could register Kerr’s presence, Jack Langton appeared out of nowhere and dragged him away from danger into the street. ‘You all right, John?’

‘There’s no sign of those two thugs,’ said Kerr, as they raced for the Alfa. ‘Or Goschenko. Wasn’t anyone guarding the back of the house?’

‘We told the uniforms to stand off.’

‘Well, they must have got away.’ Kerr started the engine.

‘I think Ma’am would like a word, when you’ve got a moment.’

‘Well, I haven’t,’ Kerr said, accelerating away up the street. ‘We need to get hold of Karl right now.’

Fifty-nine

Thursday, 27 September, 22.19 local time, Malik Holdings, Istanbul, Turkey

The offices of Malik Holdings were empty when Rashid Hussain had taken his final call from Abdul Malik. Malik’s wife had encouraged him in his mission, giving her enthusiastic blessing, but the back-room staff knew nothing. Three days before he had left for London, Malik had redeployed them at his father-in law’s business. It was part of the plan agreed with Hussain weeks before, to protect the innocents when the truth was revealed.

The two men had agreed everything together, right up to the moment Malik caught his taxi for Istanbul airport. But all Hussain’s subsequent actions, even while his director waited calmly for the outward flight, were private, decided by him alone.

Three Al Mukhabarat agents had been flown in secretly from Damascus to Samandira Army Airbase just outside Istanbul the previous night. As soon as Hussain gave the order, they cleared the furniture from the deserted offices and obliterated every speck of evidence that could incriminate him or connect him to the site. As the final act, a technical engineer removed the secret server. Its hard drives were the heart of the operation, Malik had said, ready to pump the images of British decadence around the world as soon as his own had stopped.

Hussain had to lean against a wall for his last conversation with Malik in London. The telephone was the final trail to Malik Holdings, and the Al Mukhabarat engineer stood nearby, waiting to disconnect that, too. Hussain and Malik had planned their exposure of the scandal about Grant, Attwell and other, earlier, victims to coincide with Malik’s martyrdom. But the moment after he had promised to reveal the images he had scrupulously helped create, Hussain stole them.

Preparing himself for death, Abdul Malik would never know that the man he trusted as his friend and mentor above all others had used him for his own purposes. But to Hussain it meant nothing, for betrayal came to him as readily as allegiance. Both were equally necessary to the skills set of the secret agent.

As the life-blood from Malik’s head soaked into the carpet, Rashid Hussain watched the Syrian agents carry the server onto the military aircraft for the short flight back to Damascus.