2084 The End of Days (20 page)

“Jesus, Ewan, did she tell him about us?”

“No way, Gaz. But Buckley did let it slip that MI5 and the cops are crawling all over Scotland looking for us!”

Gary drained the last of his coffee and banged the coffee cup down on the saucer. Michelle raised an eyebrow and one of Buster’s eyes opened sleepily.

“Right, Ewan, let’s go – we’ve got to get back to my place and wipe everything on Schenkler from my computer –“

Before Ewan could answer Gary, the door of Chuck’s iCafè crashe
d open and the place flooded with plain-clothes and uniformed police, some carrying sub-machine guns.

“POLICE! ARMED RESPONSE UNIT – NOBODY MOVE A MUSCLE!!”

Michelle screamed in panic dropping her magazine. Gary and Ewan sat frozen with astonishment in their seats. Old Buster was aroused from his slumber by all the commotion. A senior police officer presented himself in front of the two young men.

“Are you gentlemen Ewan Sinclair and Gary Mackintosh?”

They both nodded numbly.

“Ewan Sinclair – Gary Mackintosh – I am asking you to voluntarily come down to Metropolitan Police HQ in London for questioning on suspicion of internet sabotage on a secure network belonging to the United States of America. Are you agreeable to this?”

Before they could say anything Buster had stumbled across drunkenly to intervene.

“Hey, what’s goin’ on here? Leave these guys alone –“

The officer glowered fiercely at Buster.

“Excuse me, sir – you are interfering with police business.”

The old drunk had experienced many a run in with the police and he did not have much respect for them. Buster volleyed an angry outburst towards the officer.

“Police business – ah’ve served ma country at the sharp end, sonny! Ah was up tae ma oxters in muck an’ bullets before you were even born, ken. If ye had aw been here earlier ye wid hae seen me an’ ma comrades marching up the Royal Mile tae the Castle –“

The senior officer held up his hand to stop Buster.

“Sir, if you don’t sit down and be quiet I will have you arrested for obstruction of justice and being drunk and disorderly –“

Ewan spoke to placate Buster.

“It is okay, Buster. Tell Michelle to make you a coffee and I’ll square her up next time I’m in here.”

Buster raised his fists mockingly like a boxer to the group of policemen then, mumbling oaths under his breath, he staggered over to see Michelle, who was standing agog behind the counter. The senior officer turned to Ewan and Gary.

“Okay, gentlemen, are you ready to come with us?”

Gary answered back huffily.

“What is aw this about? You would think we were terrorists or somethin’ with all those guns trained on us. Do ye think we killed Prince Eddie or what?”

The officer was beginning to get frustrated with all the backchat.

“You are both needed for questioning on a matter of national security. This is not the time or the place to conduct that questioning. So we can either do this the easy way or we can do it the hard way. What is it to be?”

Ewan stood up and waved Gary on to his feet.

“Come on Gary. Look, sir, we are both happy to do it the easy way.”

As they all piled out to the waiting police cars Michelle put down a small cup of Americano in front of Buster.

“Ah could a told ye Buster that they two were gonna come a cropper one day, ken.”

*

It was almost 10.30pm and Jill was thinking about getting to her bed. She was exhausted by the day’s events. Jill had argued vehemently with Buckley about his demands to reveal her sources for the Schenkler comet story. He had argued back that there were matters of national and international security interests that outweighed the public interest and the fact one of his journalists was not obliged to reveal her sources. In the end Buckley had to accept that he could not force Jill to name those sources. She had then urgently phoned Ewan to warn him that the National Security Services and probably the CIA were hot on their trail. Jill had spent the rest of the day worrying about what would happen to Ewan and Gary. She knew that it was only a matter of time before they were caught and taken in for questioning. They would probably get the book thrown at them. She went in to the bathroom to brush her teeth when suddenly the doorbell rang. Maybe the cops are here for me too, she thought. Jill opened the door and he stood
there on her landing looking beaten and cowed.

“Khan – ah wasn’t expecting you at this time of night? Ah’ve been trying to get you on the phone for weeks –“

It had been raining heavily across Berkshire all evening and Khan stood there soaked to the skin.

“Can I come in, Jill - it is rather wet outside tonight?”

Jill waved Khan in and she made him get his wet clothes off and get into his bathrobe, which had still been in the bedroom wardrobe. Jill made some hot tea and they sat facing each other as they drank.

“Where have you been, Khan?”

Khan bowed his head.

“I know you have, Jill, but I have been very tied up with some heavy stuff lately.”

“That big property deal up in Manchester -?”

Khan did not answer. He put his forehead in his right hand and he ran his fingers nervously through his thick black hair. Jill thought he looked worried and exhausted. His black eyes seemed sunken and hollow with lack of sleep.

“Khan, you look terrible – what the hell’s the matter with you?”

He looked up into Jill’s eyes like a caged tiger looking for some means of escape.

“I’ll tell you in a minute – but you were looking for me. Did you want to tell
me
something, Jill?”

Now it was Jill’s turn to feel a bit nervous. They had not been getting on for weeks and now she had some important news for Khan. Jill was not sure how he would react, but she thought that she might as well just get it out in the open.

“Khan ah’m about eight weeks pregnant. You are going to be a father –“

Khan looked at her with his eyes bulging wide in disbelief. He broke down sobbing pitifully.

“Oh god, oh Allah – wh-what have I done, Jill? What have I done?”

Jill sat beside him and took him into her arms as he continued sobbing.

“Don’t you want to be a daddy, Khan?”

Khan looked deep into Jill’s eyes.

“I-it’s not that, Jill. I have betrayed you – I have betrayed my child –“

Jill listened completely aghast as Khan got all the months of guilt off his chest. He told her that his affair with Jill had just been a front for his operation with the Group. He admitted he had always been in love with Aisha al-Gazari. Aisha was the ‘A’ on the errant text message. He also said that it was the Group who had been bugging her home. Khan had ripped out the tiny bug from its hiding place. Jill could not believe what Khan was telling her. She should have been angry and shocked at what he was relating, but the investigative journalist mode switched on inside her and she was taking in every detail of his incredible story. He went on to tell her that he was the money man for the jihadists and he and the others had planned the assassination of the Prince of Wales. Jill felt her stomach churn at hearing that the man that she had been sleeping with, the father of her unborn child, was a murderer and a terrorist. But she kept her nerve.

“Khan, why are you telling me all this now?”

He looked at her with black dead eyes.

“Aisha was not meant to be in that air-car. I’m sorry, Jill, but I loved Aisha from the bottom of my heart and now she is dead. They had her killed because she knew too much. He did it and I am going to make the bastard pay!”

“Who did it, Khan?”

Khan shook his head.

“I cannot tell you. I can’t get you too involved. These are dangerous men that I work with. And they are planning something so terrible that I can’t go on living with all this guilt and living without my Aisha. I want you to take me to the nearest police station and I will tell them everything. Right now, Jill!”

Jill drove the air-bike with Khan riding pillion as fast as she could, heading for the police station at Richmond. Suddenly, a beam from a single headlight came up from behind them. Khan looked back and saw another air-bike closing in on them fast and he knew right away that they were in big trouble. He yelled into his helmet mic with urgency in his voice.

“JILL – go as fast as you can! It’s the Palestinian behind us – he must have followed me!”

They could both feel and hear a gunshot whoosh past them and Jill knew then how dangerous things had become. She started to bob and weave the air-bike and to try to get as much speed out of the machine as she could muster. The Palestinian kept firing shots at them, each one closer than the one before. Jill saw Richmond High Street below her and dipped the bike in a dangerously steep dive. She could see the police station about three hundred yards ahead. Another shot winged past them and she heard Khan screaming in pain on his mic.

“Aaargh – I’ve been hit Jill!”

“Hold on, Khan!”

Suddenly, a police air-car going out on a routine patrol started taking off from the police-station and it was heading towards the two oncoming air-bikes. The Palestinian saw the car and veered his bike back into the air and began heading back in the direction of Kew. Jill whizzed past the police car which instantly put on its sirens and flashing lights. She was going too fast coming in to land by the station and the bike hit the ground too hard. She and Khan were thrown off the bike. The police car had done a U-turn in mid-air at the top off the High Street. It flew back to land beside the crashed
air-bike lying at the bottom of the entranceway into the station. Two startled looking coppers jumped out of the car as a bruised and battered Jill was trying to tend to the injured Khan. Jill cried out.

“Please help me – he’s been shot!”

Khan groaned up at Jill. She could see he was in terrible pain.

“It is okay, Jill, I th-think it’s only a flesh wound –“

Then Khan passed out.

It was almost one o’clock on the Saturday morning and Jill had been sitting for hours in the waiting room of the Berkshire Royal General Hospital. The waiting had been punctuated with a couple of interviews with CID and field officers from MI5. Jill could detect their excitement at having made a major breakthrough in the Windsor terrorist attack investigation and there was a lot of coming and going between her and, she suspected, with Khan. She had also seen Chief Superintendent Mike Hollingsworth arriving with a cavalcade of other officers. He had not spoken with Jill but she could see he was exultant. She had also managed to get a call through to Buckley. He was not exactly thrilled at being woken up at that early hour. However, once Jill had told him that there had been a major breakthrough on the Prince of Wales story he was soon wide awake and full of excitement.

“Okay, Jill, I’m on my way to the Times office right now. I need your exclusive on this ASAP! The Bloid home page is all yours – and Jill, I don’t know how you managed to be first on scene again and I don’t care - bloody fantastic work, Jill!”

The two CID officers, Adams and Evans that had interviewed Jill earlier came back into the waiting room. Detective Adams looked grimly at Jill.

“Miss Geeson, we have been informed by the doctors working on Khan al Ahmed that we can no longer interview him tonight. Mr Al Ahmed has been extremely helpful to our investigation and we are currently in the process of making further fruitful enquiries, although I am not at liberty to say anything further at this stage, Miss Geeson.”

Jill stood up and looked at the two detectives pleadingly.

“How is Khan? He said that he had only taken a flesh wound –“

Adams looked at Detective Evans then back at Jill.

“You will really need to talk with the doctors, Miss Geeson…look, Jill, he’s in a bad way, but I can’t tell you any more.”

Jill felt an awful feeling in the pit of her stomach and she forced tears back. Evans changed the subject.

“Miss Geeson, based on Mr Al Ahmed’s statement, and we have no reason to disbelieve it, he states that you had no idea of his involvement in the
Windsor attack. Is that correct?”

“Yes, th-that is correct officer.”

“We will still require you to come to Scotland Yard in the morning - in order to make a formal statement. Do you have any objections to that, Miss Geeson?”

Jill agreed to appear at the Metropolitan Police HQ at eleven o’clock on Saturday morning and Detectives Adams and Evans left her alone in the waiting room. She watched through the glass doors at the MI5 and police entourage making their way out of the hospital. Hollingsworth passed by and he smiled his recognition of Jill from her attendance at his many press briefings. He stuck his head in the door.

“Hello, Miss Geeson, first off I have to say to you that I cannot make any comments at this crucial point in the investigation. But off the record, Jill, you have done your country and the world a great service tonight and I would personally like to thank you for that.”

Jill mumbled her thanks and as Hollingsworth departed with his other senior officers, she thought, and I’ve done your career a great service tonight too! She had only sat down for about another two minutes when a doctor in his blues came in to the waiting room. Jill could tell from his face that the news was grim.

“Miss Geeson, I am Doctor McKendrick – I was the surgeon who operated on your partner Mr Al Ahmed. I am very sorry to say that Mr Al Ahmed passed away about five minutes ago –“

Jill was ashen.

“Oh please God no –“

“I am afraid to say that the bullet went through one of his aortic arteries and he has died from internal bleeding. There was very little that we could do for him – but he did die peacefully and without pain.”

Jill began to cry.