NanoStrike (11 page)

An hour after his meeting with Scott, Quinn played Abdul’s recording in his boss’s office at New Scotland Yard.

“Did you play this for Frank?” Superintendent James Porter spat out the words.

“Not yet.”

“Oxford Circus is his case, Quinn.”

“Frank worked for me for ten years. Sir, in my opinion, he isn’t capable.”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.” The superintendent glared at Quinn. “Take it to Frank. If he asks for your help, then I’ll assign you to the case. But you’ll report to him. Understood?”

Quinn snatched up the recorder, turned on his heel and slammed the door on his way out. He stormed down three flights of stairs to Frank’s office and burst in. Frank jumped and slid his feet off the desk. His eyes looked heavy.

“Did I wake you?” Quinn’s voice was thick with sarcasm.

“Piss off. Don’t you know to knock before you barge into someone’s office?”

Quinn slapped the recorder on the desk and filled Frank in on Abdul’s trip. They played the interview twice.

Quinn sat in a chair and Frank stood over him, shaking a fat finger in his face. “Listen Quinn, I don’t give a flyin’ fuck about your cozy relationship with Scott Shearer. He can’t print this.”

Frank was enjoying the moment a little too much, but Quinn wanted to stay on the case, so he gritted his teeth and sucked it up. “The name’s going to come out. These things always do. Allah’s Revenge, whoever or whatever it is, has chosen young Abdul Ahmed. Close the door on Shearer, and we’ll lose access to Abdul. Better the devil you know.”

“Yeah, what about this Abdul character; he’s an Arab, right?”

Quinn glared at his ex-partner. “Scott trusts him.”

“And you say his family threw him a party in Jerusalem a couple of nights before he made the recording.”

“So what?”

“Maybe Ghazi was there. Maybe he brought a keg. I think we should bring Abdul in.”

“Shearer
will
go public if you push his boy around.”

Frank’s cell phone buzzed. He picked up and listened for a few seconds. “Shit!” The color drained from his face. “E-mail it to me.” He moved back to his desk and tapped the keyboard to wake his computer. Quinn followed.

Frank opened an e-mail and clicked a link. A grainy video popped up. It showed the inside of a railway car. The passengers were acting crazy, pulling at their mouths and grabbing their throats as if someone had sucked out all the air. The screen was momentarily filled with a close-up of a young woman’s face, red, distorted, terrified. Quinn thought she might be the same girl he’d seen when they visited Mike Mitchell. The camera view shifted higher; along the length of the car, passengers jerked and writhed. There was no sound other than the rattle of the train.

“No screaming?” Frank said.

Quinn didn’t answer. Hardly surprising—considering what was growing inside their lungs. Then, like a macabre game of stop-the-music, the passengers collapsed: on the floor, across seat backs, on top of one another. The video ended on a still picture; identical to the scene Quinn had witnessed when he’d first entered the train carriage three days earlier. The footage ran for less than two minutes.

“Who sourced the tape?” Quinn asked.

“It’s on the Al Jazeera website under the heading “Allah’s Revenge,” Frank replied. “They showed it on TV an hour ago. It’s gone viral.”

Chapter 13

At the
Times of London
headquarters, less than ninety minutes after the Al Jazeera tape went live, Scott Shearer flipped his cell phone shut to end a call and stabbed the intercom button on his desk. “Amy, get Abdul on the line, stat. Then get in here.”

Twenty seconds later, his phone rang.

“You wanted me, Mr. Shearer?” Abdul said.

“Listen carefully. Copy your Allah’s Revenge files to a thumb drive. As fast as you can. Then call me back.” Scott hung up. Abdul would be wondering what was going on, but that copy might save him a lot of trouble.

Scott paced in front of his office window. Six floors below, police cars skidded to a stop fifty yards either side of the building’s entrance, blocking the street from both directions. A black van rounded them on the sidewalk and pulled up in front of the building.

“Amy!” When he turned she was already in his office.

“Go to the third floor. Take the stairs. Collect a thumb drive from Abdul and put it somewhere safe.”

She was running before he finished talking.

His desk phone rang.

“Ok, I’ve done the copy, Mr. Shearer. Is something wrong?”

“Amy is on her way to you. She’s coming down the stairs. Meet her. Give her the thumb drive, then come back to the phone and I’ll explain.” He heard the phone being laid on the desk.

Hurry Amy. Hurry.

Thirty seconds later, a breathless Abdul came back on the line. “Okay, she has the files. What’s going on, Mr. Shearer?”

Before he could answer, Scott heard shouting through Abdul’s phone.

“Abdul Ahmed! Where’s Abdul Ahmed?”

“I’m Abdul. What—”

By the time Scott reached the third floor, Abdul was bent over his desk, his cheek pressed hard against the surface, head facing the window. Two large policemen in dark-blue flak-jackets with SWAT emblazoned across their chest and back held him while a third secured his hands with an orange plastic tie.

“Is this your desk?”

“Yes. Let me up. What’s this about? Stop pressing my head. You’re hurting me.” Abdul pushed up and managed to turn to face the office before the policeman slammed him back down.

Scott shouted, “What the hell do you think you’re doing? This is private property.”

One of the paper’s photojournalists took rapid-fire pictures.

Scott recognized Quinn’s old partner, Frank Browning, holding his hand up to shield his face from the camera. He served Scott with a search warrant. Scott didn’t look at it. The photographer kept snapping; he was joined by a second, with a video recorder.

“Is this your computer?” Frank asked. Abdul looked to his boss. Scott nodded.

“Yes, that’s my computer. Now let me up!” Frank signaled, and one of the two officers removed his hand from Abdul’s head. The other pulled Abdul upright, maintaining a fierce grip on his shirt back. Abdul’s face was blotched red from pressing into the desk. He faced Frank Browning.

“Abdul Ahmed, under the powers vested in me under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, I am placing you under arrest. Under the terms of the warrant I served on Mr. Scott Shearer, the contents of your desk and your computer will be confiscated and may be used as evidence.”

Scott shouted, “Abdul! Abdul!” Abdul looked over at his boss, eyes confused, head trembling. Scott spoke slowly, sounding out his words. “I’ve called Legal. They’re on their way. We’re videotaping the arrest. I want you to understand that this newspaper will back you every inch of the way.”

“But I haven’t done anything wrong,” Abdul said.

“I know. What I’m telling you is everyone . . .” Scott swept his arm around the open-plan office. Abdul’s colleagues stood in the aisles outside their work pods. They stood on chairs or desks and craned over the partitions. “. . . is with you. You are not alone in this, and I’ll do my damndest to get you freed quickly. But for now, these . . .
gentlemen
. . .” His emphasis left no one in doubt that he considered the policemen nothing of the sort. “These gentlemen, unfortunately, are within their rights to arrest you. Abdul, you have nothing to hide and nothing to fear.”

“Enough of this; come on!” Frank said.

While Scott had been talking, the contents of Abdul’s desk and drawers were crammed into a black trash bag. His computer tower had been unplugged and covered with a similar bag. Both bags were emblazoned with the word
Evidence
. The policeman holding Abdul’s shirt pushed him toward the hallway.

Abdul’s face was drained of color. His eyes blank, stunned.

Scott positioned himself in front of Abdul and walked ahead of him, giving him something to follow, something to focus on. His colleagues lined the short corridor between Abdul’s desk and the office door. They executed a cynical, slow handclap for the police and shouted encouragements to Abdul.

“Go get ’em, Abdul.”

“Chin up, mate.”

Scott reached the hallway. SWAT team members guarded the elevator and the stairwell.

“Stairs!” Frank barked.

The guard opened the door, and Scott led the way. The photographers followed, still shooting. Scott talked to Abdul all the way downstairs and through the lobby. He was still talking as Abdul was pressed into a police car. He talked of support, of friends and family, of trust and belief in the system. He talked in an even, calm voice. The voice of experience, the voice that said everything would be okay.

Scott stood on the sidewalk, his eyes fixed on Abdul’s strained face staring back at him through the police car’s rear window until the car turned the corner.

Abdul sat alone behind the bulletproof screen in the rear of the squad car. The two policemen who had held him down on his desk were in front. The one riding shotgun turned. His face was red, angry, and ugly.

“Why’d you do it, raghead?”

Abdul’s heart pounded in his chest. Blood roared in his ears as he finally realized what he was being arrested for.

“What the fuck did those people ever do to you?” The policeman had his fist raised, knuckles tight and white, pressed against the glass partition. “I’ll tell you something, raghead. By the time we’re through with you, you’ll wish you’d strapped a fuckin’ bomb to your chest and pressed the button . . . fuckin’ coward.”

“He doesn’t give a shit about them, Matt,” said the driver. “He’s waitin’ to get his reward in heaven.”

Abdul met the driver’s mean eyes in the rearview mirror. “Hey, Abdul, how many virgins do you get for gassin’ two hundred innocent people?”

Abdul suddenly needed the bathroom.

Back in his office, Scott flipped open his cell phone and clicked callback.

“Goddamn it, Quinn. You didn’t give me much time.” Scott gripped his phone tight to his ear and paced back and forward in front of the window.

“I gave you what I could . . . How sure are you of Abdul?” Quinn asked.

It took all of Scott’s resolve to contain his anger, but Quinn was the messenger, and without his warning he’d never have secured the files. “I’d bet my life on him. He’s a fine young man. You met him.” Scott pictured Abdul’s face as he’d last seen him, terrified, staring out from the rear window of the cop car. “What happens now?”

“It’s a gray area. Under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, they can hold him almost indefinitely.”

“I’m going to run the Allah’s Revenge story tomorrow,” Scott said.

Quinn stayed silent.

“I can’t help him any other way except by getting Allah’s Revenge into the public domain.”

“It’s a clusterfuck no matter what you do,” Quinn said.

“What if Ghazi tries to get hold of him again?” Scott asked.

“Special Branch will intercept his e-mail and his cell phone. Scott, if Ghazi contacts you, promise me you’ll call.”

Scott watched from his window as the last of the police vehicles pulled away and turned the corner.

“I’ll call
you
. But not that prick, Browning . . . and Quinn, thanks for helping Abdul.”

“I hope I don’t regret it.” He hung up.

Scott pressed his intercom. “Amy, see if you can get Abdul’s father or mother on the phone, will you?”

“Sure.”

A few minutes later, his desk phone rang.

“Hello?” A man’s voice.

“Mr. Ahmed?”

“Yes.”

“This is, Scott Shearer, Abdul’s boss at the paper.”

“Hello, Mr. Shearer. Abdul has told me so much about you. What may I do for you?”

“Mr. Ahmed, I wanted you to hear this from me first. Five minutes ago, Abdul was arrested by the Special Branch Terrorist Response Team.” Scott didn’t wait for a response. What was the man going to say? “I called to assure you that your son is a remarkable young man and highly thought of at
The Times
. He has done nothing unlawful. This is a huge misunderstanding. I’ve scrambled our legal team, and they are working on getting Abdul freed.”