Joshua’s wristwatch sat in front of him, in his immediate eyeline and beside his rifle’s barrel. It was wedged face up, readable at a glance. Convenient but unnecessary. Joshua had been counting off seconds in his head since the first Secret Service transmission. Another symptom of his obsessive nature. One thousand, seven hundred and forty had passed.
His expensively engineered Rolex Submariner agreed. Twenty-nine minutes.
It had been time well spent. Joshua had moved through his ingrained pre-shot rituals without a conscious thought. The circumstances of the assignment might be strange, but the fundamentals were always the same. Load the mag. Chamber the round. Settle the line of sight. Identify the obstacles. Seven times over to satisfy his compulsion. Each time done with absolute precision.
Joshua knew his target’s name. He knew his face. And he knew where Eamon McGale would be found. McGale had been in Joshua’s crosshairs since taking his seat. If everything went to plan, he would not be leaving them alive.
It was an easy statement to make, and sometimes a harder one to fulfil. But not for Joshua. Joshua had been steeped in violence for as long as he could remember. There were, no doubt, many other men who could do what he did. But it took a rare man to do it so well. One who combined physical ability, cold obsession, professional training and an absolute lack of remorse in one lethal package. Joshua possessed all of these qualities in abundance, making him more than a match for the ageing, slightly ragged man who sat in his sights.
McGale had looked out of place from the start. Not physically. He wore aged clothing and looked in need of a good meal, yes, but there was nothing particularly unusual about his appearance. No. What Joshua noticed were his emotions. Or, more precisely, his lack of them.
Even from a hundred yards outside and two hundred feet above the square, Joshua could feel the effect of President Knowles’ arrival. The wave of goodwill was like nothing he had ever seen. Yet McGale had stayed rooted to his seat. An oasis of calm within a storm of hysteria.
Nor had McGale reacted to what had followed. William Davies had spoken from behind a two-inch-thick sheet of glass. A combination of teleprompter and bulletproof screen. Davies was a short, plain and unpopular man. Unused to enthusiastic applause. But today, with two thousand handpicked spectators caught up in the euphoria of the moment, even he received it.
Davies had started the event with a short thank you to Britain’s armed forces. The crowd had roared its agreement. All except for McGale. McGale had again remained static. Only the beads of sweat that trickled down his neck and brow were proof of life beneath the tweed.
But this changed when President Knowles took the centre of the stage. That was when McGale reacted. When he began to fidget. To repeatedly touch the underside of his chair. To the untrained eye it might look like an itch. To Joshua it was a starter’s pistol. He knew the effects of nerves when he saw them. And he knew what would follow.