Fair Game (53 page)

‘Let’s have a look at the satellite photographs,’ said Shepherd. ‘There’s a chance that I’m wrong.’

‘Wrong about what?’

‘The clock’s ticking, Charlie,’ said Shepherd impatiently.

They both showed their MI5 ID cards to a blue-blazered security guard and walked through a metal detector arch manned by two more men in blazers. ‘I’ve got us an operations room on the fourth floor,’ said Button. ‘And I’ve got a few other people there just in case we have to move quickly.’

‘If I’m right, we will,’ said Shepherd.

Button swiped her ID card through the sensor in the lift and it took them smoothly up to the fourth floor. As soon as the doors opened Button led Shepherd down the corridor to a room with two double doors that had been left open. Shepherd could see six men sitting down facing half a dozen large LED screens on the far wall. All the heads swivelled as Button and Shepherd walked in. Only one of the men was wearing a suit, the rest were in casual clothing, and one man in his thirties looked as if he had come straight from his garden, in a baggy green sweater with brown suede patches on the elbows, and threadbare corduroy trousers with damp stains on the knees.

‘Gentlemen, apologies again for getting you all here on a Sunday but we have something of a situation. What that situation is I’m going to leave it up to Dan Shepherd to explain. Dan, over to you.’

Button stood with her back to the wall and folded her arms as Shepherd walked over to one of the female technicians and pointed at the photograph of the
Athena
, docked at Southampton. He pulled out the photograph that he’d ripped from the
Sunday Times
and gave it to the technician. ‘Can you blow this up and put it on one of the big screens, and then give me one of the satellite photographs on the screen next to it?’

The technician nodded, scanned the photograph, and tapped on her keyboard. The
Sunday Times
picture filled the left-hand screen. A few seconds later there was a second picture of the
Athena
, taken from overhead, on the screen on the right.

‘OK, so on the left is the
Athena
docking at Southampton,’ said Shepherd. ‘On the right is the ship at sea, just after it was taken by the pirates.’

Button looked at both screens and shrugged. ‘I don’t see it,’ she said.

The men in the room were all frowning as they studied the two images. Then one of them, a grey-haired man in his fifties wearing a suit with a red and yellow MCC tie, put his hand up to his face. ‘Good Lord,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t we spot it before?’

‘Will somebody put me out of my misery?’ said Button. ‘What am I not seeing?’

Shepherd walked over to the screens and pointed at the rear of the ship coming into dock. He ran his finger along the first line of containers on the top level. He pointed at them one by one. ‘Green, red, white, white, blue, green, red, white, red, green,’ he said. ‘Ten.’

He walked over to the second screen, to the satellite picture of the
Athena
at sea. He pointed at the containers in the front row, one at time. ‘Green, red, white, white, blue, green, red, white, red,’ he said. ‘Nine.’

‘There’s an extra container,’ said Button. ‘When the ship docked at Southampton, there was an extra container on board.’

‘This green one, here,’ said Shepherd, going back to the first screen and pointing at a container on the starboard side. ‘I heard a helicopter one night after the pirates boarded. Twin rotors. Probably a Chinook.’

‘The helicopter took a container to the ship? From Yemen?’ Button frowned. ‘Is that possible?’

Shepherd tapped the green container on the screen. ‘This wasn’t here before we were boarded,’ he said.

‘The
Athena
stopped at Jeddah, remember? On the way to the Mediterranean.’

‘Only to drop cargo off,’ said Shepherd. ‘They weren’t due to take on cargo there. I saw the manifest on the bridge. They unloaded thirty-two containers at Jeddah. They weren’t due to take on any. And Jeddah was the only port it stopped at between being released and arriving at Southampton. That container could only have been put on board while we were at sea.’

‘That would explain why they took the ship closer to land,’ said the man in the MCC tie.

‘So what are we thinking here?’ said a young man with pointed sideburns and rectangular designer glasses. ‘Drugs? Weapons?’

Button shook her head. ‘No one’s going to go to all that trouble over contraband,’ she said.

‘A container full of heroin would be worth hundreds of millions on the street,’ said the man.

‘Crazy Boy isn’t geared up for a drugs deal of that size,’ said Button. ‘But he is chummy with al-Qaeda.’

The man’s jaw dropped. ‘You’re thinking . . .’ He ran his hand through his hair. ‘You’re thinking a bomb?’

‘That’s exactly what I’m thinking,’ said Button. ‘But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I trust Spider’s trick memory, of course, but let’s get some details of that container and check that it wasn’t moved during the unloading at Jeddah. We need to contact the ship for a look at their manifest, and see if the people at Southampton can get us some sort of ID on that container.’

Crazy Boy switched on the left indicator and moved over to the inside lane, preparing to leave the motorway. ‘Why aren’t we going straight to London?’ asked Two Knives. He had a bag of khat on his lap and he spoke through a mouthful of leaves.

‘The Arab said it has to be checked first. There’s no point if it doesn’t go off. Everything will have been wasted.’ He reached over and helped himself to a handful of khat. ‘Don’t worry, we won’t be staying long.’

The two men had port IDs clipped to their overalls. The IDs and the truck had been supplied by al-Zahrani, along with the necessary paperwork to collect the container from the
Athena
. The container had been one of the first to be unloaded and Crazy Boy was sure that hadn’t been a coincidence. Al-Zahrani seemed to have planned everything to perfection.

A surveillance video flashed up on to one of the monitors. Button walked over to it and pointed at a truck driving out of Southampton Container Terminal. On the back of the truck was a dark green container. ‘There it is,’ she said.

The operator looped the video so that it replayed several times.

‘Right,’ said Button, standing up. ‘We have now received confirmation that the green container at the stern was not on the ship when it left Port Klang in Malaysia. It was also not loaded at Karachi or Jeddah, but was on board when the
Athena
arrived at Southampton. We can only assume that it was taken to the ship by helicopter while the
Athena
was under the control of the pirates. The question is, where is it now?’

‘GPS?’ said one of the technicians. ‘A lot of containers have GPS so they can be tracked by their owners.’

Button shook her head. ‘The registration number of the container doesn’t match any on record so we can’t trace its owner. It doesn’t exist officially.’

She nodded at the technician and a close-up still shot of the truck’s number plate appeared on another screen. ‘We have the registration number of the truck and again it’s a ringer. The vehicle belonging to that plate is on the Continent as we speak. But at least we have something to go on. We’re currently running the number through every CCTV database we’ve got and every police force in the country is on the lookout for it.’

There was a knock on the door and a man in his sixties with slicked-back grey hair and wearing a tweed suit appeared. ‘Dr Wilson,’ he said. Button nodded at him. ‘Dr Wilson sits on the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority and is something of an expert on nuclear- and radiation-based incidents,’ she said by way of introduction. ‘I thought we might all benefit from a quick rundown on what we might be facing here.’

She thanked Dr Wilson for coming at such short notice and waved for him to take a seat. He sat down, took out a pair of steel-framed spectacles, and began polishing them with a large white handkerchief. He nodded and smiled at everyone in the room, as if making sure that he had their undivided attention. ‘So, I gather that we might have an issue with a dirty bomb somewhere in the country,’ he said. He had a faint West Country accent. ‘The first thing to bear in mind is that in terms of immediate loss of life, a dirty bomb is not especially dangerous. We tend to refer to them as weapons of mass disruption.’ He chuckled at his own joke but stopped when he realised that no one was smiling. He put his glasses on and linked his fingers on the table. ‘What we’re talking about is a radioactive source that is dispersed into the environment, probably by means of a small explosion. The purpose of the explosion isn’t to kill but to spread the radioactivity across as wide an area as possible. It is a completely different animal to an atomic bomb.’ He looked over the top of his glasses at Button. ‘You are certain that we are not talking about a nuclear device?’

‘There are no nuclear devices unaccounted for that we know about, and if there were we’d have picked up intelligence chatter,’ said Button. ‘But we have heard whispers about several groups who are interested in putting together low-tech dirty bombs.’

‘That’s exactly what they are, low-tech,’ said Dr Wilson. ‘Basically all you need is an explosive, which could be as basic as dynamite. And a source of radioactivity, which could be something as simple as hospital waste or components from smoke detectors. If such a device were to be detonated in, say, Trafalgar Square, the initial explosion would cause very little damage and perhaps no loss of life.’ He paused for effect. ‘But the damage it would cause to the economy would run into billions. Literally billions.’

‘And loss of life?’ asked one of the technicians.

‘Short-term there would be no immediate deaths caused by the radioactivity,’ he said. ‘There wouldn’t be enough exposure to cause radiation sickness. I doubt that anyone would show any symptoms of any kind. We’re not talking Chernobyl. What we would see over the decades following the explosion is a slight increase in cancer deaths. More leukaemia among children, more lung cancer and bowel cancer deaths among adults. The increase might only be of the order of a few per cent but considering the millions of people who live in London and who would be exposed to the radioactivity, it would mean hundreds, possibly thousands, of premature deaths.’

He sat back to let his words sink in. ‘But it’s not the deaths that would do the damage to the country. It’s the terror that such an incident would cause. Who would choose to visit London? Or do business there? Can you imagine what would happen to property values?’

‘But the radioactivity can be dealt with?’ asked Button.

‘Of course,’ said Dr Wilson. ‘In fact the first time there was a heavy rain shower most of it would be washed away. If there were no rain, a comprehensive washing of roads and buildings would deal with most of the radioactivity. Citizens would be advised to avoid any food or liquids that might have been exposed to radioactive dust but other than that there’d be no other precautions needed. But it isn’t the true risk that matters, it’s the perception that counts. Most of the indigenous population would have no choice other than to stay, but who would visit the site of a dirty bomb by choice? We’ve run numbers on this and we calculate that a dirty bomb in any average-sized city in the country would result in a £20 billion loss in GDP over five years. Quadruple that if it went off in central London. So for any terror group it’s a pretty good return for an investment of a few thousand pounds.’

One of the technicians went over to Button and whispered in her ear. She stood up. ‘If I can just interrupt you, Dr Wilson, there’s something we need to see. We’ve managed to work on an image of the truck leaving the port.’ She nodded at the technician. ‘On the main screen, please.’

The picture of the
Athena
disappeared from the monitor and was replaced by a computer-enhanced image taken from the CCTV camera at the exit to Southampton Container Terminal. It showed the cab of a truck and the two figures in the driving seat and passenger seat were clearly visible. Young black men wearing baseball caps.

‘That’s Crazy Boy and his sidekick,’ said Shepherd.

‘Isn’t it just,’ said Button.

Crazy Boy reached into the bag of khat leaves, took out a handful and popped them one at a time into his mouth. He held out the bag to Two Knives, and he helped himself. They were sitting on folding chairs at a wooden table in an industrial unit outside Basingstoke, thirty miles to the west of central London. There were two Smith & Wesson revolvers on the table in front of them. The doors of the container were open and two Pakistani men were inside wearing radiation suits and helmets. They were connecting detonators to the tops of aluminium barrels. Two Knives pointed at the container. ‘If they’re wearing suits, why aren’t we?’

‘It’s only dangerous close up,’ said Crazy Boy.

‘That’s what the Arab said, right?’

‘We’re only driving the truck for a few hours and the radiation is sealed in the metal barrels.’

‘But you can’t believe anything Arabs say,’ said Two Knives.

‘We’ll be done soon,’ said Crazy Boy. ‘Once they’ve finished we drive it to the Olympic site and our work is done.’

‘Who’ll be detonating it?’ said Two Knives.

‘Someone else, it doesn’t matter who,’ said Crazy Boy.

‘And after we’re done, what are you going to do?’

Crazy Boy shrugged. ‘Go back to Somalia,’ he said. ‘I have no choice. They’ll take everything from me here.’

‘They can’t force you to leave,’ said Two Knives. ‘You’re British.’

‘But they can put me in prison,’ said Crazy Boy. ‘They can take away everything I have.’ He slotted more leaves into his mouth and chewed as he watched the two men in the container. ‘Whatever you do, you shouldn’t stay in London,’ he said. ‘Go north, at least fifty miles.’

‘You said there wouldn’t be an explosion.’

‘There will be a small explosion, but the wind will carry the radiation for many miles.’

‘I will come with you, brother,’ said Two Knives.

Crazy Boy grinned and pulled two airline tickets from his back pocket. ‘I had assumed that you would.’ He patted Two Knives on the back. ‘It will be like the old days,’ he said. ‘Taking ships and making the infidels pay. And out in Somalia no one can touch us. We will be kings again.’