Abu Smadi Almussab got into the front passenger seat of the Dodge people carrier. Ibrahim Khalil was behind the wheel and on the second row of three seats behind him; Rahan Hussein and Waheed Khoklar were sitting, talking quietly to each other in English. Silent and alone on the rear row of seats was Ziad Hanjour. None of the others liked Hanjour, he hardly ever spoke and wouldn’t let anyone near the black suitcase he always had within arms’ reach and which was now beside him on the seat. He didn’t take part in any of the conversations, clean or wash up in the townhouse. He slept apart from the others, always on the floor in a sleeping bag. None of the others argued with him about not doing any of the chores; there was something sinister about Hanjour, something dark and malevolent.
The side door of the van was open and Faqir Rashid was standing by it. When Almussab was seated, Khalil turned the ignition key and pressed the button to open the garage doors. As the doors rolled upwards, Rashid ducked under them and walked into the road. He looked in both directions; there was no traffic and no witnesses to their exit, so he motioned for Khalil to move the vehicle forward. As it came past him, Rashid jumped in and closed the sliding door. The garage doors rolled back down again and there was no sign that anyone had occupied the townhouse for the last two days.
Khalil drove south-east to the junction with Interstate 75 then, due south, past Macon and crossed the Florida border just north of Live Oak. As the Interstate passed through wooded country beyond Ocala, Almussab decided it was time to take a break and he directed Khalil off the Interstate and down a country road, until they stopped in a clearing two miles off the highway. Here, Khalil checked the van’s engine, Hussein prepared the cold meal and the others relaxed.
After forty minutes, Waheed Khoklar started to reload the van and Faqir Rashid walked slowly round the clearing, checking that they had left nothing behind them. The others were sitting or standing, drinking the last of their coffee from Styrofoam cups. It was Rashid who heard it, a distant and inconsequential sound, but perhaps a heavy boot snapping a dry twig. He hissed softly until the others looked at him.
‘Someone is coming,’ he whispered and nodded towards the sound. At the van, Khoklar moved a piece of carpet which covered four machine pistols and waited to see if they would be needed.
Another quick snap, louder and nearer at this time and there was the sound of branches being pulled aside and the soft, intense muttering of swear words.
He came into the clearing in a stumble as he caught his foot on the exposed root of a tree, but recovered quickly and, seeing the men and the van in the clearing, rose to his full height of 6’4”.
‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘what have we here?’
‘We have had a long journey, officer,’ said Abu Almussab, ‘we stopped to take a break and eat some food. Is there a law against that in Florida?’
‘Why didn’t you use one of the rest areas on the Interstate?’ asked the policeman, adjusting his gun belt.
‘Too many petrol fumes,’ said Almussab, ‘the air is cleaner here.’
Officer Tyler Dawson was a sheriff’s deputy, Almussab recognized the uniform. Light green short-sleeved shirt, dark green trousers with a two-inch wide grey stripe down the outside of each leg and a Stetson hat, which he wore with the chin strap round the back of his head, like an army drill sergeant. He was a big man, fit and tanned and a man who lifted weights; his neck was thick with muscle and his biceps strained against the sleeves of his uniform shirt. He took his time looking at each of the group in turn, as if memorizing their faces. Then he turned his attention to the van. He strolled slowly to the rear of the vehicle and, taking out a notebook, made a note of the registration number. He reached for a personal radio clipped to the front of his shirt, to make a call to headquarters.
‘I have the vehicle documents, if you want to see them,’ said Almussab, walking towards the van.
The deputy’s hand hovered over the radio for a second, then he nodded. The hand moved to rest on the butt of his revolver.
Abu Almussab moved towards the van. To his front, out of sight of the officer, he made a small sign to Ziad Hanjour with his left hand. Hanjour picked up a thermos flask of coffee and walked casually in a wide circle, as if going to refresh the drinks the others were holding. When he was behind the officer he handed the flask to Rahan Hussein and took a length of thin nylon rope from his pocket.
‘I have the documents here,’ said Almussab, walking from the side of the van carrying a plastic folder. He offered it to the officer. As soon as Dawson’s hand left the gun butt and was held out for the documents, Hanjour slipped the rope over his head and around his neck. He tripped the officer with his foot and pulled sharply back on the rope. As the big man fell heavily to the floor, confused and surprised, Hanjour rolled him onto his stomach, pulling the rope tight against the windpipe. Waheed Khoklar and Faqir Rashid jumped forward and held Tyler Dawson’s arms and legs down. After four minutes, the officer’s violent struggles grew weaker and finally stopped. Hanjour released the rope and heard the death rattle from the deputy’s throat. He looked up and nodded to Almussab.
‘Find his car,’ said Abu Almussab to Khoklar, ‘it will be fitted with a tracking device. Disable it.’
Khoklar went through the trees, retracing the route Tyler Dawson had taken to get to them. Ten minutes later, he drove the police car slowly back into the clearing.
‘There is a lake about half a mile back,’ said Almussab, ‘it looks deep enough to drown that car, drive it back there.’
Rashid and Khalil lifted the body of Tyler Dawson into the back of the van and it followed the police car to the edge of the lake.
‘I will take care of this,’ said Hanjour. Almussab nodded agreement.
‘Put him behind the steering wheel,’ said Hanjour.
‘Why not a dump him in the boot?’ asked Khalil.
Ziad Hanjour stared at him with that dark, menacing stare that Khalil wouldn’t admit scared him to death.
‘Because, when they find him it will take them a few hours to work out that he was murdered. If he’s in the boot, they will know straight away. Those few hours can be important to us. Just do as I say.’
Rashid and Khalil, sweating heavily and grunting with the effort, carried the body of Deputy Dawson to the police car and put him in the driving seat.
‘Get back to the van,’ said Hanjour.
He turned on the ignition and started the engine. Then he pressed the switch to wind down all four windows. Balancing himself and half sitting in the gap made by the open window in the driver’s door, he leant into the car and selected the drive gear. The car started to move down the slope towards the lake, gathering speed as it went. Hanjour, one hand on the wheel, steered the vehicle through the open window. When the car was ten yards from the water and travelling at thirty miles an hour, he threw himself off and rolled over twice in the grass.
The car entered the water with a large splash, like the launching of a small boat. Its momentum took it twenty yards across the lake’s surface where, gradually filling with water, it sank in a storm of bubbles. When its roof disappeared, Hanjour stood up and looked at the smooth surface of the water. Satisfied that there was no sign of the car, he turned to walk back towards the van, disturbing the grass as little as possible on the way.
‘He won’t play ball,’ said Hoffman.
‘Denning?’
‘Yeah. Says he’s got too many things going on across the pond. He’s catching a plane tonight at ten, non-stop to Heathrow.’
‘Nothing you can say to stop him?’
‘Sorry, Mayor. He is a very determined man.’
There was a ten second pause.
‘Alright, Curtis. Keep your mobile on.’
Curtis Hoffman didn’t like it when the mayor gave up too quickly, it made him uneasy.
As he closed his phone, Mayor Taylor pushed the button for the operator on the desktop console.
‘Get me the Governor, tell his office it’s urgent. I don’t want any excuses that he is at the Senate, in a meeting or on the john.’
‘Erica,’ said Governor Chandler’s voice three minutes later, ‘they tell me you’ve got something urgent you want to talk to me about.’
‘I’m sorry to drag you to the phone, Governor, I don’t know who said it was urgent. It is this Second National situation. We’ve identified a terrorist expert and, by coincidence, he is in Atlanta, but he doesn’t want to stay around to help us.’
‘Then get someone to lean on him.’
‘That’s the problem, he is a Brit. We don’t have anyone who can put pressure on him and he is keen to leave for the UK tonight.’
In silence at the other end of the line, Erica Taylor could hear a soft rustling in the background. She smiled to herself, she knew that Benedict Chandler kept a box of salt-water taffy on his desk and he liked to chew while he was thinking.
‘Okay,’ he said after thirty seconds, drawing the words out, ‘I’ll take this upstairs and see if The Man will make a transatlantic call. But to be clear, young lady, you know how this business of ours works. I consider this to be a big personal and political favour. One day I’m going to call this favour in and I don’t want you telling me you won’t return it. Understand?’
When President Roland Howard was elected, he told the electorate that this was the day of open government. He promised he would never fail to accept a call from any Senator or Governor. It was a promise he regretted every day he was in office.
A Democrat, on the left wing of his party, he was pushing hard to get a number of groundbreaking welfare reforms onto the statute book. He was sitting across the table from three hardline Republican senators in shirt sleeves, his collar undone and his tie loosened, when an aide came into the room and whispered in his ear. The negotiations had reached a critical stage and the interruption annoyed the President.
‘Goddam it, Sam,’ he hissed, ‘can’t it wait?’
‘He says it only needs two minutes of your time, Mr President, the Governor is very insistent.’
‘Excuse me, gentlemen,’ said Roland Howard, getting to his feet, ‘this won’t take long at all.’
He walked to a side room where another aide was speaking into a phone. The President picked up a second handset on the same console and nodded to the aide.
‘I have the President for you now, Governor,’ said the aide.
‘Good to hear from you, Benedict, what can I do for you?’
‘We have a situation developing down here in Atlanta, Mr President and I’m hoping you can see your way clear to giving us some assistance with it.’
When the President asked what he wanted, Benedict Chandler told him that the problem could be solved locally in Atlanta, but they needed the help of a British expert. To get the President’s full attention, he told him that terrorists were planning an imminent strike in Atlanta. The expert specialized in counter-terrorism and he worked for Scotland Yard.
One of Roland Howard’s strengths was that he could assess a situation immediately. He asked the governor if he wanted him to call the Prime Minister. Chandler said it may assist in keeping the anti-terrorist specialist in Atlanta. The President said he would make the call.
The Chief of Staff had followed the President out of the negotiating room. Howard put the phone down, then raised his left arm straight up in the air, reaching with his other arm across his chest, and gently massaged the back of his left shoulder with his right hand. It was an old injury that had bothered him for years, since he broke the shoulder playing college football. It hurt more when he was tired.
‘How near are we, Pete?’
‘We’re pretty close, Mr President. There is nothing they can’t live with, except the housing issue.’
‘I get the feeling,’ said Roland Howard, grimacing as his fingers kneaded the knotted muscle, ‘that if we cut the budget, they’ll buy that.’
He asked the Chief of Staff what figure the senators had in mind. He was told $75 million and he asked if they could work with that figure. The Chief of Staff said that $50 million would make him more comfortable, but some money had been built as a contingency into the figures, so it was just about doable.
‘Then let’s go back in there and kill this meeting off,’ said the President.
An hour later the meeting broke up. They had spent forty minutes hammering out a deal on housing. The President got his way and the budget was cut by $60 million. The White House staff brought in drinks and for twenty minutes the senators gave the President the latest Capitol Hill gossip.
When they had gone, smiling into the early evening sunshine, President Howard strolled to the Oval Office and picked up one of the phones on his desk.
‘Get me the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom,’ he said.
The President hadn’t told Governor Chandler, but he already had reason to call the Prime Minister tonight. Trouble was about to ignite in the Balkans again and he was worried about the threat of a European trade embargo, so the request for an anti-terrorist expert would make a friendly way to end the conversation. He jotted down an agenda on the pad in front of him while he waited for the call to come through.
‘I have the Prime Minister for you,’ said the operator when he picked up the phone. By now he recognized their voices. She was the one with a low, melodic voice and soft Connecticut accent. She was one of his favourites and in working days that meant upwards of fifty phone calls coming in, he often wondered, in his few idle moments, what the operators looked like.
‘Prime Minister,’ he said as the call was connected, ‘I think we may be in a position to give each other a lot of help today.’
In a transatlantic conversation lasting just over thirty minutes, only the last two minutes were about Marcus Denning. The Prime Minister was happy to do what he could. There was a late night cabinet meeting in an hour, and he would speak to the Home Secretary.
The Home Secretary passed the problem to his Junior Minister, who phoned the Metropolitan Police Commissioner. He, in turn, walked down the corridor at Scotland Yard to the office of Commander Simon Armstrong, head of the Anti-Terrorist Squad.
‘Problem, Simon,’ he said, ‘the Atlanta Police Department wants to borrow Marcus for a while.’
‘How long is a while?’
‘I don’t know, but this comes from Downing Street, after a request from the White House, so we aren’t in a position to say no.’
‘We need him here, Sir. I wasn’t too happy that they invited him to give the speech in Atlanta, but that was only for a few days. Now they want to keep him, do you know why?’
‘They believe they may have an imminent terrorist attack, that’s all I know.’
Armstrong found an imaginary stain on his jacket sleeve and rubbed it vigorously. He did it to hide his anger.
‘If you say we’ve no choice, I’ll give him a call.’
‘No, they tell me you should wait for a call from Atlanta airport in a couple of hours, then you can talk to him. Tell him he has to stay.’