The Bombmaker (6 page)

'We all do,' agreed Martin.

When he put the receiver down, his hand was shaking.

'You're crazy,' said Andy. 'Why would you think . . .'

Green-eyes silenced her by holding up a gloved hand. Then she wagged her finger at Andy, side to side, like a parent warning a child not to misbehave. 'You're wasting your time, Andrea.

We know everything. We know who you are and we know what you are. We're not asking you to do something you haven't done a hundred times before.'

Andy slumped back in her chair and stared at the masked woman. It felt as if all the blood had drained from her head. She tried to speak but no words would come.

Green-eyes bent down and pulled a briefcase out from under the table. She placed it on top, her eyes never leaving Andy's face as she clicked open the two locks. Click-clack, like the sound of a bullet being chambered. She opened the case, took out a large manila envelope, and tossed it casually in front of Andy.

'What's this?' asked Andy.

Green-eyes nodded at the envelope. Andy opened it and took out a dozen or so sheets of paper. They were photocopies of newspaper cuttings. Andy flicked through them. They were a mixture of Irish and English newspapers -- tabloids and broadsheets.

Andy scanned the headlines. BELFAST STORE DESTROYED.

BOMB ON MAIN LINE, TRAINS DELAYED.

BOMB DISPOSAL EXPERT KILLED. FIRE IN DEPARTMENT STORE, IRA BLAMED. TWO SOLDIERS DIE IN BOMB BLAST.

'Great reviews, huh?' said the lanky man. He chuckled and looked across at Green-eyes. Even through the ski mask he could see the warning look she threw at him and his laughter 52 THE BOMBMAKER dried up. Green-eyes waited until he was silent and fidgeting with his gloves before turning back to Andy.

Andy stared at the photocopied cuttings. 'If you know everything, then you know why I can't do what you want.'

Green-eyes reached into her briefcase again and took out a piece of newspaper. She unfolded it. It was the front page of the Belfast Telegraph, ripped along one edge as if it had been torn in a hurry. There were four black-and-white photographs of small boys in school uniforms, smiling at the camera. Just heads and shoulders, the type that might have been stored in a school's files.

The headline was brutal in its simplicity. IRA BOMB KILLS FOUR SCHOOLBOYS.

Andy turned her head away.

'Squeamish?' said Green-eyes. 'I wouldn't have thought of you as the squeamish type.' She put the page down in front of Andy. 'Read it, Andrea.'

Andy shook her head. 1 don't have to.' She knew every word, almost by heart, and the four young faces were burnt into her memory, seared there for all time. Four boys. Three aged ten, one just weeks away from his tenth birthday. His mother had already paid for the bicycle he was getting as his main present. Four boys killed, another one in intensive care who would later lose a leg and the sight of one eye. For weeks his life had hung in the balance, and Andy had followed his recovery in the paper and on the television. She'd never understood why she'd prayed so hard for the boy to live. Four dead. Five dead.

There was no difference morally, not really. But Andy had seen the crying mother on television, condemning the IRA and anyone who helped them and appealing for information. Four dead. One maimed. Innocents. And Andy was to blame. She'd carry the guilt with her to the grave.

Green-eyes pushed the page towards her. 'We're not asking you to do something you haven't already done, Andrea.'

Andy closed her eyes and shook her head. 'That was a mistake. A terrible mistake.'

'Casualties of war, the IRA High Command called it. But they never apologised, did they? Even though they were all 53 STEPHEN LEATHER good Catholic children. Two of them were altar boys, weren't they?'

Andy put her hands over her face and slumped forward so that her elbows were resting on the table. 'Is that what this is,

revenge for what happened ten years ago? Who are you?'

'It doesn't matter who we are. All that matters is that we have your daughter. That's all you need to think about. We have Katie. We have the power of life and death over her, Andrea.

But the decision as to what happens next is totally in your hands.

Do as we say and you'll soon have her back home. Refuse, and you'll never see her again. We're not holding a gun to your head, we're not going to torture you or hurt you, all ..."

'You don't think this is hurting?' hissed Andy.

Green-eyes tapped the newspaper page. 'I can promise you something else, Andrea,' she said quietly. 'We won't be hurting children this time. There won't be any mistake, no innocents killed. A lot of thought, a lot of planning, has gone into this. We won't be leaving a holdall in a railway tunnel for children to find.'

Andy shook her head again. 'I can't.'

'Yes, you can,' said Green-eyes firmly. 'You can, and if you want Katie back, you will.' She took a small padded envelope from the briefcase and handed it to Andy.

Andy took it, frowning. It felt empty, but it had been sealed.

'Open it,' said Green-eyes.

Andy slid a nail under the flap and ripped it open. She pushed the sides together to open the mouth of the envelope and peered inside. 'Oh no,' she whispered. She tipped the envelope up and shook out the contents. Blond curls. A handful. Andy could tell from the length that they'd been cut close to the scalp. 'Not her hair,' she said. 'She's so proud of her hair.' She looked at Green eyes, tears trickling down her cheeks. 'How could you do that to a little girl? How could you cut her hair?'

Green-eyes leaned forward slowly until her masked face was only inches away from Andy. 'It could have been an ear, Andrea.

Or a finger. Think about that.' She stared at Andy for several seconds, then visibly relaxed. She motioned at her two compa 54 THE BOMBMAKER nions, and they stepped forward and seized Andy by the arms.

The hair and envelope tumbled from Andy's grasp.

'No!' she shouted. She pointed at the blond curls. 'Please,'

she said.

Green-eyes walked around the table, scooped up the hair clippings and put them back in the envelope, which she then slotted into the back pocket of Andy's jeans before the two men hustled her away from the table. The men took her over to the far corner of the factory where there was a cluster of offices, large white plasterboard cubes with cheap wooden doors that looked as if they'd been brought in as an afterthought. The men spun Andy around so that her back was to one of the plasterboard walls. Green-eyes appeared in front of her with a Polaroid camera in her gloved hands.

'Smile, Andrea,' she said.

Andy stared at her in disbelief. 'Smile?'

'For the camera.'

Andy forced a thin smile and blinked as the camera flashed and whirred. The two men hustled her away down a narrow corridor that ran between the two lines of offices.

Egan used a Stanley knife to slit the black garbage bags along the sides, then he pulled them open into single sheets of plastic. It took five to line the boot of the Scorpio, and he used thick strips of waterproof tape to seal them together. He slit open another three bags and taped them together into a single sheet, then put it and the tape into the boot.

Back in the apartment he checked the action of his Browning,

slotted in a clipful of cartridges and gave the silencer a thorough cleaning.

He had taken a risk planting the listening device in Martin Hayes's office. He'd gone in at night, having disabled the burglar alarm system, and it had taken a full six hours from start to finish.

It had proved to be time well spent, though. If it hadn't been for the office device, he'd never have known about Mrs O'Mara's phone call.

Egan could tell from the recording that the school secretary wasn't the sort to be deterred by Hayes's clumsy explanation of his daughter's absence. He'd have to do something to silence the meddlesome woman. And quickly.

It had taken just one telephone call to the school's personnel office, pretending to be an official of the Revenue Commissioners wanting to check her employment details, and Egan had all the information he needed.

Katie was sitting at the Formica-covered table when she heard the bolts slide back. She looked up apprehensively, wondering which of her captors it was. It was the man who'd been nice to her, the one who'd given her Garfield. He was carrying a tray.

'Are you hungry?' he asked as he carefully made his way down the stairs.

Katie wasn't, but she said that she was. He placed the tray on the table in front of her. It was scrambled eggs on a paper plate and a paper cup of milk. She smiled up at him. 'Thank you,' she said.

'I wasn't sure how you liked your eggs,' he said. 'I'm sorry if they're too runny.'

'They're fine,' said Katie. They weren't, they looked horrible,

pale yellow and watery, but she wanted to be nice to him.

If she was nice to him then maybe he'd be nice to her. She picked up the plastic fork and took a small bite of the eggs.

'Delicious,' she said.

The Nice Man headed for the stairs, but then turned and looked across at her. 'Is there anything you like to eat? I'll try to get it for you.'

'Heinz tomato soup. And fish fingers.'

'Same as my kids.'

'You've got children?'

The Nice Man went stiff, as if she'd said the wrong thing.

Then he turned around and went up the stairs without saying anything else. Katie looked down at the eggs in disgust. They tasted horrible.

She wondered what the Nice Man looked like underneath his mask. She was sure of one thing -- he'd be better-looking than the other man, the man who'd cut her hair. He'd been really rough with her as if he'd wanted to hurt her. He was ugly.

Really ugly. Katie hoped with all her heart that the Ugly Man wouldn't come down the stairs again.

Andy sat on the floor with her back to the wall. The padded envelope was in her lap. In her hands, she held the locks of Katie's hair. There was a lot of hair. Clumps of it. Big clumps.

Someone had savaged Katie's head. There'd probably be bald patches. Poor, poor Katie. She had always been so proud of her hair. Every night, before she went to sleep, she would sit in front of her dressing-table mirror, brushing her blond locks a hundred times. She'd loved it when Andy had brushed it for her. Katie would count the strokes, and wouldn't let Andy get away with even one less than the hundred.

They'd left her in a disused office. Bare white walls, faded blue carpet tiles on the floor, polystyrene tiles on the ceiling.

Two fluorescent tubes filled the office with a clinical white light.

They hadn't locked the door. There was no need. She couldn't run because if she ran she'd never see her daughter again. She was as trapped as if they'd chained her to the floor.

Andy lifted the hair to her face and gently sniffed it, inhaling Katie's fragrance. She closed her eyes and imagined that her face was up against her daughter's neck. God, had it been just thirty six hours ago? Less than two days? Two days in which her life had been turned upside down.

Who were they, these people? Terrorists? Why else would they want a bomb? Could they be Irish? The only one who'd said anything at length was the woman, and the more Andy listened to her, the more she was sure there was an Irish accent mixed with Scottish. But that didn't mean anything. They could be Provisional Irish Republican Army. Or INLA. Or any of the Republican splinter groups like Real IRA or Continuity IRA.

But then why would they need her? The IRA had their own 57 STEPHEN LEATHER explosives experts, experts who were far more up to date than Andy was. And if it was the IRA, why the kidnapping? She knew most of the members of the Army Council by name, and they knew her. They could have summoned her before them at any time over the past decade and she would have gone. Maybe not willingly, but she would have gone. So if not the IRA, then who? The Protestants? The Ulster Defence Volunteers? The Ulster Volunteer Force? The Ulster Freedom Fighters? Or maybe one of the fringe terrorist groups, the Orange Volunteers or the Red Hand Defenders. The Protestant groups were less able to mount major bombing campaigns because they didn't have the IRA's technical expertise or access to equipment. Was that what this was all about? Did the Protestants want her to build a bomb for them? Or was someone else behind the kidnapping? Someone else who wanted a bomb built in England.

A very big bomb, Green-eyes had said. Andy wondered how big. As big as the bomb the IRA had used at Canary Wharf m !995. the bomb that had caused almost a billion pounds of damage? Is that what they wanted from her? And if it was, could Andy do it? Could she give them a bomb in exchange for Katie?

Andy lost all track of time as she sat on the floor, holding Katie's curls next to her cheek. Eventually the door to the office opened and the two men walked across to where she was sitting and grabbed an arm each. The bigger one she thought of as the Wrestler, while the thinner man with the gleaming white Nike trainers was the Runner. Both were still wearing the blue overalls and black ski masks. The Wrestler had put on a black nylon shoulder holster from which protruded the butt of a large automatic.

'Okay, okay,' said Andy. 'You don't have to be so rough.'

Her captors said nothing, though the Runner dug his gloved fingers even deeper into her flesh. Andy pulled her arm away and shoved the handful of hair into the pocket of her jacket. The men pulled her through the doorway and along the corridor to the main factory area. The woman was already sitting at the far side of the table, her arms at rest, her gloved fingers interlinked.

She watched with unblinking green eyes as the two men pushed Andy down on to the chair then stood behind her, arms folded.

There was a notepad and pen in front of the woman. Next to the pad was a pistol, the barrel of which was pointing towards Andy. The woman picked up the pen and began to tap it on the pad. 'So, Andrea, have you had enough time to think it over?'

'You're crazy,' said Andy. 'You're asking for the impossible.'

The green eyes seemed to harden fractionally. 'Let me be quite clear about this, Andrea. You are not the only option. If you don't want to co-operate, we'll use someone else.' She paused for effect. 'But you'll never see Katie again.'