Steven was beginning to think that there had been nothing to the noise — just another fact of life in the country when he heard a floorboard creak. There really was someone up there. Or something. But who? What? A burglar about to become fatally familiar with Ali’s notion of reasonable force in defending his property? A tramp looking for food and shelter. Maybe even a fox had gained access through the smashed window. Depressingly, he had to admit that that was more likely than the detachment of Royal Marines he would have preferred but at least it had taken Ali’s attention away from the scalpels for a few minutes.
Listening in the darkness, he sensed that Ali had reached the top of the stairs and had a hand on the cellar door handle. It gave out the tiniest of squeaks when he turned it. Almost immediately flood lighting silhouetted Ali at the head of the stairs and the air was filled with shouts of, ‘Armed Police! Lay down your weapon!
Ali only managed to get off one shot and had half turned away from the door when his body was riddled with bullets and he tumbled backwards downstairs like a rag doll to lie in a heap at the foot of the stairs in almost exactly the same spot where Leila’s body had been lying a short while before.
The lights came on and Steven saw Frank Giles coming downstairs. Giles looked up at the cable securing Steven’s wrists and said to his sergeant, ‘Wasn’t I just saying the other day, Morley, that the security services seemed to spend most of their time just hanging around while the police get left to do all the work…’
Morley released Steven and he slumped to the floor to lie there for a moment before looking up at Giles and saying, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever felt like kissing a man before. How on earth did you know I was here?’
‘Sheer bloody brilliance,’ said Giles.
Steven removed the last of the tape from his face and mouth and rolled up his trouser to examine his injured knee. ‘I’m still waiting,’ he said.
‘Shit, that looks nasty,’ said Giles, grimacing at the sight of Steven’s swollen and bloody knee. ‘It was your old soldier buddy, Stan Silver. He phoned to say that you hadn’t brought his Porsche back. As it was two in the morning I told him to go fuck himself but he insisted that you had both served with the SAS and you had made him a promise. The fact that you hadn’t kept it suggested that you were in real trouble.’
‘Bloody hell,’ said Steven. ‘That’s true, but how did you know where I was?’
‘Very nice cars like the Porsche 911s often have a satellite tracking system fitted as an anti-theft device. You got lucky. The silver Porsche told us where it was on the planet with an accuracy of plus or minus twelve feet.’
Steven felt himself go weak as all energy seemed to leave him. ‘I will never,’ he averred, ‘never ever complain about my luck again.’
‘That sounds just about right,’ agreed Giles. ‘I take it sonny Jim here is Ali?’
‘That’s your man,’ said Steven, looking at the crumpled body of his would-be tormentor.
‘Know anything about the woman’s body in the car outside?’
‘It’s Leila,’ said Steven, looking down at the floor to avoid Giles seeing what was in his eyes. ‘Dr Leila Martin. Ali killed her.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Giles. ‘I got the impression maybe you and she…’
Steven nodded and further examined his knee.
‘Does this mean that the al-Qaeda threat is over?’ asked Giles who had walked over to watch his colleagues deal with Ali’s body.
‘I’d like to think so,’ said Steven.
‘But?’
Steven gave an uncertain shrug.
‘Maybe shooting him wasn’t such a good idea,’ said Giles.
‘Personally, I think it was a bloody excellent one,’ said Steven with some feeling.
‘Sounds like the ambulance,’ said Giles as a distant siren sounded. ‘You can’t drive with your leg like that. Is the knee broken?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Steven. ‘But there’s too much swelling right now to be absolutely sure. I’ll need to have it X-rayed.’
‘I’ll have one of my guys take your pal’s Porsche back. I take it he should convey your thanks to Mr Silver?’
‘And then some. Tell Stan I owe him big time.’
Steven preferred to ‘walk’ out to the ambulance with the aid of Giles and Sergeant Morley. As he manoeuvred himself into the back and turned round to thank them he saw that Leila’s body was being transferred to a police vehicle. His first impulse was to get back out again and go over to her but Giles put a hand on his arm. ‘Maybe not,’ he said kindly. Steven thought about it before concurring with a nod.
Steven managed a couple of hours sleep after having been assured that his injuries — although painful — would not demand hospitalization. His face was swollen and discoloured but again nothing that wouldn’t subside and heal with time or as the houseman on duty had said, ‘Presumably that’s what you get for calling Mike Tyson a sissy.’
The first face Steven saw when he opened his eyes was John Macmillan.
‘I heard you had a pretty narrow escape. How are you feeling?’
‘They don’t come any narrower,’ agreed Steven. ‘But I’m fine.’
‘Ali’s dead?’
‘He’s dead. So is Leila.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Steven nodded but added. ‘You didn’t come here to be sorry.’
‘No, I didn’t,’ agreed Macmillan. ‘I have to know if you managed to get anything out of Ali to confirm your suspicions about the Cambodia 5 attack being another red herring?’
‘He was doing the interrogating,’ replied Steven.
‘Do you still think it was a false trail? I have to know. Pressure from above. HMG would like to be assured that the al-Qaeda operation has been thwarted.’
Steven put his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes. ‘I can’t give them that assurance,’ he said. ‘Ali was definitely trying to find out if I thought the Cambodia 5 attack on UK cities was a bluff and that to me suggests that it was. More than that, he was smug; smug as if something else was a done deal and there was nothing at all we could do about it.’
‘Damnation,’ said Macmillan. ‘That is exactly what HMG don’t want to hear with an election only weeks away.’
Steven swallowed the vitriolic comment that came to mind and instead said, ‘Of course not.’
‘You’ve absolutely no idea at all what he might have been planning?’
‘Only that it still involves Cambodia 5, I’m pretty sure of that. They wouldn’t have gone to all that trouble to get the virus just to use as a bluff.’
‘Then we’ve still got a chance,’ said Macmillan. ‘Auroragen say that the accelerated vaccine production process has been going well. They should be in a position to supply the first vials in about five days time.’
‘How did they manage that?’ asked Steven.
‘A top level decision,’ replied Macmillan.
‘Meaning?’
‘Although the company can’t have the vaccine ready for everyone, they are concentrating some of it by high speed centrifugation so that about twenty thousand doses will be ready for inoculation next week. They reckon about two million doses will follow in about three weeks time followed by up to forty million by the late summer.’
‘Who gets protection first?’ asked Steven.
‘The intelligence communities are still of a mind that the UK and the USA are the most likely targets for al-Qaeda so the first doses will go to all key personnel in both UK and American administrations and people vital to the infrastructure of both countries, police army, fire services, health personnel and so on down the line until all citizens can be offered protection.’