Wade had studied computing at university, more to satisfy his parents than from any interest in the subject, and during all his holidays he had worked as a waiter. When he’d finally graduated — with a decent degree because, despite his lack of interest, he was actually quite good at the keyboard — he’d gone straight to London and found a job in a bistro in Southwark.
Wade loved the front-of-house part, the bit where he got to deal with customers. He didn’t enjoy cooking, and could think of nothing worse than standing in front of a stove all day. He enjoyed the company of chefs, especially drinking with them after hours or tasting something they had created, but he’d never had any desire to work alongside them. Chefs never really got to see the customers enjoying the fruits of their labour: full plates went out and, hopefully, empty ones came back, but they missed the whole process in between. That was the part Wade liked — watching people enjoy themselves, and sharing in the experience. He didn’t plan to stay a waiter for ever, though. His ambition was to be a maître d’ in one of the capital’s best restaurants. The Ivy, maybe, or Scott’s, but that was for the future. Today he was just happy to be busy.
He had finished taking the order of table eight, three suited businessmen he’d persuaded to try the sea bass special and upsold on the wine, when he saw the Asian man walk in through the door. He was young, brown-skinned, bearded, and wearing a cheap raincoat. Wade was pretty sure he was looking for work. At least a dozen people a day dropped in their CVs, but he still smiled professionally in case the man was a customer. ‘Do you have a reservation, sir?’ he asked.
The man didn’t say anything but he looked around as if searching for someone.
‘I’m sorry, we’re totally full,’ said Wade. ‘Or are you here to meet someone?’ The man didn’t seem to be listening. He was still looking around, deep furrows in his forehead. Wade heard someone behind him calling for a new bottle of wine. ‘We’re full,’ he said again. ‘We might have something in an hour, but I can’t promise.’
The man’s right hand lashed out and grabbed Wade’s. Then he clamped something metallic around Wade’s wrist. ‘What the fuck?’ shouted Wade. ‘Get the hell away from me.’
He pushed the man in the chest and he staggered back but the chain linking them snapped taut.
‘What have you done?’ Wade yelled. The man began to unbutton his coat but Wade yanked his arm with the chain. ‘Get this off!’
‘I can’t. I don’t have the key,’ said the man. He continued unbuttoning his coat and Wade stared in horror as the suicide vest was revealed. ‘Don’t push me again,’ said the man. ‘I don’t know what it takes to set this thing off.’
‘It’s a bomb,’ said Wade, his eyes widening.
The man nodded and finished unbuttoning his coat. ‘Yes, it’s a bomb, and if you and everyone else in here don’t do exactly as I say, everyone will die.’ His right hand slid inside his coat pocket and emerged holding a trigger with a Velcro strap. The man wiggled his fingers so that the strap slipped over his hand and the trigger nestled in his palm. ‘Just do as I say and everyone will be all right. Do you understand?’
Wade nodded slowly, dumbstruck, unable to take his eyes off the explosives and wires attached to the canvas vest under the man’s coat.
The man held up his right hand and shouted, at the top of his voice, ‘Allahu Akbar! Everyone stay exactly where they are. If anyone gets up everyone here will die! Listen to what I have to say and this will soon be over!’
LAMBETH CENTRAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMAND CENTRE (12.51 p.m.)
Kamran walked over to the SCO19 pod, carrying two coffees. ‘How’s it going, Marty?’ he asked, as he handed him a mug.
Marty Windle smiled his thanks and sighed. ‘We’re stretched tight, Mo. Bloody tight. We get another one and we’re buggered, frankly.’
‘How many SAS men do you have now?’
‘Eight more have arrived and they’re on the way to support the ARVs. I do worry that we’ve got so many of them. I mean, we need as many guns as we can get but there’s a danger that they’ll take over. I’m not sure how well trained they are for hostage situations like this. They prefer to go in with guns blazing. As you know, we like to resolve our situations without firing a single round.’
‘They know it’s a Met operation,’ said Kamran. ‘They’re here in a support role.’
‘Yeah, so far,’ said Windle. ‘But that could well change as the deadline gets closer.’ He groaned. ‘I’m getting a bad feeling about this, Mo.’ He stood up and looked at the large screen on the wall that mapped out all the hostage locations. ‘Seven,’ he said, ‘and nothing linking them. Do you think they’ve been chosen at random?’
‘I can’t see how that can be because everything else has been so well planned,’ said Kamran.
‘But look at the range of places,’ said Windle. ‘A church in Brixton, a shopping centre in Wandsworth, a post office in Fulham, a childcare centre in Kensington, a coffee shop in Marble Arch, a pub in Marylebone, a bus in Bloomsbury. There’s no pattern at all.’
‘The geographical location is the pattern,’ said Kamran. He sipped his coffee. ‘They dropped the first one off at Brixton, then headed clockwise around the city. One every fifteen minutes or so.’
‘Which means one vehicle, obviously. But why do that? Why limit yourself? Why not have seven vehicles? Why not have the bombers all strike simultaneously like they did on Seven/Seven?’
‘This way is more efficient, maybe.’
Windle shook his head. ‘This way is more risky. Suppose something had gone wrong at the start. They’d all have been caught. Seriously, why put all your eggs in one basket?’
Kamran nodded thoughtfully. What Windle was saying made sense. A simple road traffic accident could have derailed the entire plan. If one of the vests had malfunctioned and detonated prematurely, all the bombers would have died. It would have made far more sense for them to travel separately. And there wasn’t much sense to the locations. The bus in Tavistock Square was perhaps a reference to the Seven/Seven attacks on London, and a church made religious sense. But a childcare centre? And a coffee shop just down the road from Paddington Green, one of the most secure police stations in the country? A post office? Yes, they were soft targets, but if this was an attack on Britain then why not pick targets that reflected that? There was nothing political about the locations that had been chosen and they did seem to be random. But, again, Windle was right — why go to all the trouble of planning a multiple suicide-bomber attack, then choose targets at random?
Sergeant Lumley hurried over, looking worried. ‘There’s another one, sir. An MP’s surgery in Camberwell. A couple of people managed to get out before he locked the door but the bomber’s holding the MP hostage.’
For the third time that day, Kamran swore.
FULHAM (12.52 p.m.)
The phone behind the counter started to ring again and the three post-office workers turned to look at it. ‘Do you want me to answer it?’ asked the Indian woman in a headscarf, who was the closest employee to Ismail.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Let it ring.’
‘You should talk to them,’ said the woman he was chained to.
‘I’ve nothing to say.’ He glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘They have just over five hours in which to release the ISIS prisoners. If they don’t…’