On the morning of the seventh of July he rang me minutes after I had got out of bed; I had stayed at his flat overnight. He had transferred to Great Ormond Street Hospital to specialise in paediatric conditions only a fortnight before and was just finishing a crazy day night shift. I had to be at Thames House and he needed to crash in the bed I had just left. We tried to work out whether we could snatch some time together later in the day or have to wait until the weekend. I was in a rush to get in the shower, get dressed and then dash to King’s Cross for my ten minute tube journey to work. He was too tired to think straight and we ended our last phone conversation with nothing being agreed.
Nothing could have prepared me for the next few hours. I was travelling to work with hundreds of other people just going about their normal routine. I remember a sudden heat coming from further down the train; I must have been knocked out by the blast for a minute, maybe longer; when I recovered my senses I was groggy and the first thing I noticed was the silence.
How long that lasted I don’t know; it was eerie; then all around me I could hear people crying, screaming, terrible screaming. I tried to stay calm and work out what had happened; had we hit something on the track? Was it a derailment? From either end of the carriage the groans and screams continued. Then suddenly the driver was speaking and people quietened down to listen. Somehow, he moved the train forward and those of us who were walking wounded were able to get out of our carriage and carefully make our way in semi-darkness to Russell Square station.
Some time later we were above ground, in the station foyer; all of us were in shock, our clothes blackened. There were people there who comforted us, gave us bottled water. A woman looked at my left leg and left arm; they were peppered with fragments of glass and covered in blood. I hadn’t noticed before; I hadn’t even felt any pain.
We were ferried to UCL hospital and in time I was treated, my cuts cleaned of glass, I had several stitches; all around me people with far worse injuries were being treated. I felt guilty at having got off so lightly. Several times during the waiting periods I rang my partner to tell him I was safe but my calls kept going to voicemail. I assumed he was fast asleep in bed and didn’t have a clue there had been an accident.
It was early in the afternoon that people around me started to talk about it being a terrorist bomb not a collision or derailment; they said the Metropolitan Police Commissioner had confirmed it was a coordinated attack. I tried to find out what that meant; how many bombs were there?
When I was released from hospital I took a taxi home to my parent’s house. None of the buses were running; I wondered how long they had been stopped and how my boyfriend had managed to get back to the flat. I rang him again; someone answered.
It was a nurse at the Royal London. I asked her why she had my boyfriend’s phone.”
Athena was unable to continue; Erebus put a comforting arm around her shoulder.
“I don’t know whether you have followed the story of the bombings over the years Phoenix, but everything was not as was reported in the media. Confusion remains regarding who the bombers really were, how many casualties there actually were and so forth; there are more conspiracy theories surrounding this event than almost every other catastrophic event.
After a protracted shift at GOSH, Athena’s young man was dog tired; there was confusion regarding the earlier bombings and transport across the city was disrupted. Why he boarded the bus he did, we’ll never know. He died at the Royal London as a result of the injuries he received; his name never appeared in the official list of casualties.
Athena’s employers deemed it would be embarrassing if a victim was found to have been in a relationship with a security services officer; doubly so, if the press uncovered the fact that she had worked on an operation only twelve months previously where two of the suicide bombers might have been apprehended.”
Athena was still clearly highly emotional, but she had recovered sufficiently to complete her story. Erebus stayed at her shoulder to give her moral support.
“I couldn’t carry on in my job; I was given time off to recover physically and to grieve for my late fiancée; but in the end going back to Thames House wasn’t an option. I was suffering from PTSD; the nightmares I still suffer six years on are horrible, truly ghastly. During my waking hours the sound of a siren sends shivers down my spine.
Once I was on the outside, looking in I could see that the public had been fed an awful lot of misinformation about the attacks. For ages after, until I saw the advert in The Times that gave me a purpose in life, a cause that I felt was worth fighting for, I was drifting alone, reading reports on inquests, inquiries, conspiracy theories and the like. Nothing made sense; the numbers never seemed to add up, the time-lines became jumbled and I couldn’t untangle them.
In the end, the only conclusion I could draw was that there was at least some degree of cover-up. It appeared that HMG needed an atrocity to sell the anti terrorist legislation it was formulating and it got it, one way or another.”
Athena returned to her chair and sat down unsteadily. Colin wanted to go to her, to reassure her, but he knew that she would resent that. She was vulnerable, as Erebus had suggested, but she wouldn’t want his pity. After hearing Erebus and Athena tell their stories he recognised what a formidable number of grievances these two alone had brought to the Olympus group. No wonder the scope of the project was so wide ranging.
Colin looked to see which man would be the next to tell of his background.
CHAPTER 8
Thanatos — the demon personification of death; often referred to, rarely seen in person.
Thanatos remained seated and with a fresh glass of brandy, began his story. I was born in 1958 and joined the regular army at sixteen. Ten years later as an SAS sergeant I worked with FRU (Force Research Unit), an undercover security operation. Alongside other soldiers and double agents I carried out covert intelligence and military operations.
My superiors encouraged me to infiltrate the UDA and in ’87 after three years of taking part in various armed robberies and other criminal activities to gain their trust, I was finally accepted as one of them.
Over the next five years I provided details of suspected IRA members to the UDA; details that were supplied to me by my army paymasters. On occasions, I carried out assassinations myself when directed to by the British Army. Every day was a nightmare. I risked being killed by the IRA in one of several reprisal attacks, or uncovered as a British agent by the UDA.
Throughout the Troubles the British government colluded with paramilitary organisations. People like me were on the inside of those organisations. We had very little security during that period. In spring ’92 I was pulled out; my handlers were concerned about my mental state. Eventually I was posted to Bosnia for Operation Joint Endeavour. It was a pig of a job yet oddly I didn’t feel as threatened as I had in Ireland.
It was Christmas ’04; I had served my country for thirty years. They decided to dispense with my services. Pulling me out from my undercover role in the UDA had exposed me as a mole. I started to receive death threats in the post.
I demanded the MoD provide me with a new identity, relocate me if necessary. I had been promised protection and support when I agreed to act as an agent. Without that support I was likely to be assassinated. I discovered that I wasn’t alone; the vast majority of us were discarded without protection. In fact, the authorities have never officially acknowledged the existence of FRU and have take steps to prevent sensitive and classified information about the network ever being revealed.”