Davenport started to say something, but Sam waved his handgun in his colleague’s direction. ‘Shut up,’ he said.
Commotion over the comms. ‘What’s going on?’ Sam didn’t answer.
Gigo was stripping, slowly because of his shaking body. ‘Hurry up,’ Sam barked at him. He went a bit faster, then stood wearing nothing but his underpants, a pair of gartered socks and a humiliated, incensed expression. He was fat, with a hairy stomach. But there was no concealed weapon.
‘What the hell’s going on, Sam?’ Davenport demanded. Sam’s breath came in short, nervous gasps. He looked around. He was missing something. Damn it, he was missing something.
And then his eyes fell upon the briefcase, still on the floor where Gigo had been using it as a seat. He felt a cold sickness oozing through his body. ‘Open it,’ he told the stunned assistant. ‘Open it!’
Gigo walked over to the briefcase, unable to keep his eyes from Sam’s gun. He bent down and fumbled with the clasps. When it was open, he stood back.
Sam approached. It looked perfectly ordinary: a few papers inside, nothing more. Gingerly, he picked it up and upturned it. The papers wafted to the floor like autumn leaves, leaving him with nothing more than an empty box.
‘You need to calm down, Sam.’ Davenport’s voice. Tense. Urgent.
Sam looked back at the assistant. His expression was still horrified. But confused too. Gigo obviously didn’t know what the hell was going on.
‘You sure this is his briefcase?’ he demanded of the ambassador.
‘Of course it is his briefcase,’ the ambassador replied. ‘For God’s sake, what is…?’
He didn’t finish his sentence. He just watched as Sam ran to the weapons cache, pulled out a knife, then cut into the lining of the briefcase. Two slashes, then he dropped the knife and started using his hands.
I gave the Coke can some extra sugar.
Moments later, the extra sugar was revealed.
A thick penetrating silence. Sam held the briefcase in his hands. He stared at it.
Taped to the inside shell of the case was a mobile phone. It was on, but it had been tampered with. From the back of the handset led a wire, connected to several blocks of plastic explosive. A bomb, and a remote detonator.
The world slowed down. He turned to Davenport, whose wide eyes showed that he quite clearly knew what he was looking at. Davenport’s voice: ‘Jesus, it could blow at any second!’
And then Sam yelled.
‘GET OUT! GET OUT OF THE FUCKING HOUSE! EVERYONE… NOW… GET OUT!’
20.59 hrs.
Jamie Spillane waited outside the phone booth, his head bowed and his features obscured by his hooded top. Booths like this were scarce in these days of mobile phones and he had scouted out this one days before. And he had been here earlier. Twice. To check it was operational and that nobody had vandalised it.
He looked at his watch. It was time.
Stepping into the booth, he pulled from one pocket his fifty-pence piece and from another a slip of paper. On it, he had scrawled the number of the mobile phone which he had used to create the detonator. The one inside the replica briefcase he had swapped over just a couple of nights before. Vaguely he wondered where it was now. Near? Far? He shrugged. It didn’t matter to him. He just kept thinking of his instructions. This is an important job for the British government. Don’t get clever. Don’t start improvising. Just do what I’ve told you and everything will run smoothly.
He felt a little tremor of excitement as he stepped into the booth. He thought of Kelly, and how she hadn’t believed him. He thought of his mum and dad, and how little they thought of him. It brought a small sneer to his lips and a heat to his blood.
He picked up the handset, waited for the dialling tone, then pressed the fifty pence into the slot.
And then he punched in the number…
‘GET OUT! GET OUT OF THE FUCKING HOUSE! EVERYONE… NOW… GET OUT!’
Davenport was already moving, but the two Georgians were frozen with shock. Sam suppressed his urge to hurl the briefcase away, instead laying it softly on the floor. Then he put the gun to Beridze’s head. ‘Get out!’ he repeated and pushed the ambassador to the door. His alarmed assistant tried to start putting his clothes back on, but Davenport grabbed the semi-naked man, lifted him from his feet and threw him towards the door.
Chaos over the comms. The rest of the unit were talking over each other. ‘Just get the fuck out of here!’ Sam bellowed over the top. ‘This whole fucking place is going to blow!’
They were on the landing, then the stairs. Beridze tripped; he fell headlong down the steps, ending up in heap on the hallway. Sam launched himself down, covering the entire staircase in two big jumps. At the bottom he didn’t bother to stop and see if the Georgian ambassador was injured; he just picked the heavy man up, his strength increased by adrenaline, and dragged him to the door. It was locked. Sam fired at the lock, emptying the chamber of his Sig with a succession of blasts that tore the air in two as they splintered and split the door open. It was a fucking hair-raising manoeuvre, because if the round hit the lock at the wrong angle it could ricochet off the metal and back into the discharger’s face, and Sam would be properly fucked. But he had only a split second to act. Then two solid kicks and he was out, the bruised and terrified Beridze was with him.
Gigo came next, rushed out by Davenport and his M16. Sam was briefly aware of Tyler’s features, but he didn’t stop to count the rest of the unit into the street. There were pedestrians in the road – only a few, but too many. ‘Run!’ he yelled at Beridze. ‘Fucking run!’ And then he waved his Sig in the direction of the pedestrians. ‘Get away from this house. Now!’
The terrified members of the public didn’t need telling twice: they joined the waddling ambassador and ran away from Sam.
More shouting over the comms before a voice shouted, ‘Clear!’ He turned round to see the rest of the unit sprinting the opposite way down the road. ‘We’re clear!’
Sam jumped over the bonnet of a parked car and hurled himself onto the other side, landing heavily on the tarmac, but protected by the metal shell of the vehicle.
He felt the force of the blast almost before he heard it, like a hot, dry wind that scorched his hair and made him grind his face into the ground. And then the sound of the explosion, a flat, deep thump that blew out the windows of the safe house and rocked the car.
A wave of cordite-bleached fog followed, like a giant, thick burnt cloud passing over them. Sam held his breath and closed his eyes, but thick, hot dust filled his nostrils and singed his eyes. He accidentally inhaled and coughed till he was red in the face. It was like he’d smoked fifty tabs in a row.
Shrapnel showered onto the ground.
Then silence.
It didn’t last long. From either end of the street, the sound of shouting. Panicked members of the public. Doors opposite the safe house opened. Alarmed residents spilled into the streets. In the distance, sirens.
Sam pushed himself to his feet. His whole body ached. Squinting, he looked down the road and saw Beridze. The Georgian ambassador to London was open-mouthed and shocked. But he was alive, and that was all that mattered.
Then, over the comms, a voice. One of the unit, he didn’t know who. ‘Mission accomplished,’ it said. ‘Mission fucking accomplished. Christ, Sam. Try and make it a bit closer next time, will you?’
Sam drew a deep breath. ‘Yeah,’ he replied. His voice was dry and croaking. ‘Yeah. I’ll see what I can do.’