Red Notice (18 page)

COBRA?

He knew nothing about the police arriving to seal off the tunnel.

He knew nothing about the SAS taking over their holding area.

But why would he? Everything had happened in less than an hour.

The idiot knew nothing, apart from the fact that the fire alarms had been triggered and the French were dealing with it. And that they were holding all movement on the UK side. The tunnel’s entire CCTV system was down, and now the Eurostar crew were reporting explosions – explosions
on the train
. He’d thought he was dealing with a small fire, not a hijack and hostage emergency . . .

Out of his depth and thrust suddenly into a situation that was well beyond his pay grade, he began to stumble through a response, in a strange, robotic tone that suggested he was reading from a handbook or a
What to do when the shit hits the fan
instruction sheet. ‘I . . . er . . . I need to establish the . . . er . . . circumstances . . . of this incident . . . before I can make a judgement on the . . . correct response . . .’

Laszlo remained the personification of cool. He’d been expecting something like this. Most organizations carried out paper exercises to deal with a crisis. But, as the 7/7 bombings had demonstrated, when it came to the real thing, people reacted very differently. For Laszlo, this was a good thing. It provided an opportunity to take command of the situation, and to demonstrate that whatever threats he made, he
would
carry them out. ‘Then you, young man, have just killed the first hostage.’

He looked back along the carriage and pointed to a harassed blonde doing her best to comfort her two young children. The pretty French girl he’d seen at St Pancras reached out to protect the woman, but Sambor swept her aside. He grabbed the blonde’s arm and dragged her away. As he began to shove her up the aisle, the kids burst into tears.

‘Please,’ the woman begged. ‘My children . . .’

Laszlo inclined his head. ‘Sure, why not? Bring them too.’ There was no warmth in his smile.

Sambor gathered up the three of them. Laszlo held out the open radio mic with one hand, and rested the barrel of his sub-machine-gun across his forearm, pointing at the two children.

He turned his ice-cold stare back to the mother. ‘Choose,’ he said. His eyes darted between them. ‘Which one?’

She stared at him uncomprehendingly. It was a moment before she realized his meaning. Then her legs buckled beneath her and she sank to the floor. ‘Please, I beg you.’ She clasped her hands together, pleading. ‘They’re only . . . babies . . . Please, please . . . take me instead . . .’

Laszlo held the microphone by her face and looked down at her in silence.

She sobbed and implored as the seconds ticked by.

‘Very well.’ He swung his barrel towards her.

She turned to her children and her hair caught in the muzzle, as if trying to reach out and stop what was about to happen. ‘I love you both so very—’

Laszlo pulled the trigger. The bullet struck her in the top of the head. Her body slumped, leaving a few strands of hair wrapped around the weapon’s foresight. As he swung the sub-machine-gun away they fluttered gently to the floor.

The carriage was completely silent. The little boy’s eyes widened in disbelief. Then his sister gave a heartrending cry. She sank to her knees alongside their mother, trying to cradle her in her arms.

The boy remained as still as a statue, struck dumb with shock, staring at the muzzle of the gun that had killed his mother.

Laszlo brought the microphone back to his mouth. ‘If I do not hear from someone authorized by COBRA within fifteen minutes, her children will be the next to die.’

In his earpiece, he could just hear sobbing.

Laszlo had always found weakness revolting. His reaction to it was visceral. ‘Get a grip on yourself,’ he barked. ‘This woman at my feet showed great love, great strength and great dignity in death. But you? You disgust me.
Now, do what I say
.’

52

THERE WAS A
faint movement in the darkness beneath the train. Tom ran his fingers, as grey as the dust around them, across his forehead and down his cheek. He gave himself a moment to take stock. His head was pounding; he was covered with cuts and bruises; his nose and mouth were filled with grit; but he had no serious wounds or injuries. Not that it mattered much: he still had to crack on, no matter what condition he was in.

He slid out and hauled himself upright. Hugging the tunnel wall, he moved forward in a crouch to avoid the lozenges of light cast from the carriage windows. The contrast between the glow of the emergency lamps and the darkness of the tunnel allowed him to stand in the strips of shadow and see inside the train without being seen himself.

A line of passengers stood facing him, hands on heads and faces pressed against the glass. The ones that hadn’t been herded to the side were clustered on the seats, heads down. People were crying, begging, praying, comforting children; some just stared, accepting that their life would now come to an end.

Through the gaps between these visions of human despair and remorse, the muttered promises that if they ever got out of this they would change for the better, Tom spotted several
of Laszlo’s sidekicks. He eased himself closer, disabled the flash function on his phone camera and held it up, zooming in on each face in turn.

He kept going, hoping against hope that he’d spot Delphine. He eventually caught sight of her being comforted by a group of other hostages.

Relieved and elated, he risked inching his way into the pool of light spilling from an empty window close by, and stood stock still, willing her to glance in his direction.

As he watched, Delphine’s look of desolation was suddenly replaced by a beaming smile. Tom put a finger to his lips. She gave a faint, almost imperceptible nod, then signalled to the right with her eyes. Laszlo and Sambor were issuing a string of orders to their men further up the carriage.

Laszlo froze, antennae on full alert. He cast a suspicious glare along the carriage, but Delphine had already repositioned herself, her nose against the window and her eyes staring out into the darkness.

Tom edged further along the train and photographed the brothers. The lighting wasn’t strong enough to obtain good imagery of anything inside, but that didn’t matter. The team would need up-to-date shots of the X-rays and the computer geeks could sort out the pixels later. The quicker he got Delphine out of the train, the quicker Gavin would have the pictures and the quicker Tom could add some int to what the Slime had already gathered.

Sambor and Laszlo began to walk towards the driver’s compartment. Tom tracked their progress by monitoring their shifting weight as it depressed the train’s shock absorbers between the carriages, and kept in step with them. But when they reached the front of the train, he couldn’t see through its small side windows or the sharply angled windscreen.

Using his iPhone display to light his way, he lowered himself to the concrete track bed, wriggled between the wheels and beneath the greasy tangle of wires and cables of the undercarriage.

53

HAVING PARKED THE
two recently orphaned children outside the cabin, Laszlo turned his back on them and sank into the driver’s seat almost directly above where Tom lay. He reached for the radio mic.

‘Time’s up. Who is there to talk to me?’

Laszlo was well aware of the sequence of events that would have followed his discovery on the train. He knew, even if Eurostar didn’t, that the chief constable of whichever constabulary covered the location of the incident would be first to take command. But how had he been flagged? He was more intrigued than angry. The man helping the pretty French girl to the toilet? Very possibly. He hadn’t seen him since . . .

‘This is Chief Constable Michael Alderson of Kent Constabulary. Who am I speaking to?’

Alderson had decided to keep his tone uncompromising but courteous. He’d come by all he knew about Laszlo from the five minutes he’d spent reading the file sent to his BlackBerry while juggling a flurry of calls to and from his commanders.

He’d had to secure the area, co-ordinate the emergency services and keep a grip on proceedings from the back of a speeding, London-bound BMW. But now he was static on the
hard shoulder of the A2 – he’d asked the driver to pull in as soon as he’d got a full signal.

Alderson stuck a digit into his free ear to cut out the traffic noise and the clicking of the four-ways. The driver sat motionless, not even moving his head to check the fast-approaching traffic in the wing mirror.

Laszlo smiled to himself. ‘You know very well who I am. Laszlo Antonov.’ He paused, giving the policeman time for his name, and what it meant, to sink in. Maybe this Alderson would take the trouble to look more closely at the briefing notes he no doubt had in front of him.

‘I want to begin by congratulating you, Chief Constable. You’ve just saved some lives. One moment, please . . .’

He covered the microphone with his hand and turned to Sambor, then wrinkled his nose in disgust. The children were now huddled on the floor behind him. The sight of their mother’s murderer was enough to start them both shaking and whimpering all over again. And the brown patch spreading across the boy’s new holiday trousers was painfully obvious.

‘He’s shat himself . . .’

Sambor gave a crooked smile. ‘You seem to have that effect on people, my brother.’

‘It’s one of the secrets of my success.’ Laszlo’s smile faded. ‘Get them out of here.’

‘You want me to get rid of them?’

‘Clean him up or kill them, I don’t care which. Their lives are ruined now anyway.’

Sambor hustled the children out, and Laszlo turned back to the radio mic. ‘Chief Constable Alderson, my apologies. How kind of you to take my call.’

‘Mr Antonov, what is it you want?’

‘To live a nice quiet life in Hampstead. As indeed I was – until the SAS came knocking on my door.’ Laszlo leaned back in the chair, resting his feet on the head of the terrified train driver, who still lay face down on the floor with his hands and feet zip-tied. ‘However, as you know, I’ve taken
up a new, but purely temporary, residence near Folkestone.

‘It’s a little cramped for my taste, and there are far too many noisy neighbours but, as you may know, there are fewer of them than there were a little while ago.’ He paused again, to let the message sink in. ‘And there will be fewer still a few minutes from now, if our discussions do not prove fruitful.

‘First, do not even
think
about putting power back online. It does not serve me at all, only you. The back-up system will suffice for now. Second, I should imagine the gentlemen from Hereford will be attempting to pay me a call – in about . . . let’s see . . .’ He checked his watch. ‘Say three hours from now – that is, if you hand over control. Which you have to, of course, because the situation is already well beyond your very limited control. No doubt the home secretary will be ordering you to do so very soon, once COBRA is in session and the gravity of the situation is clear to all.

‘So I’d obviously like us to have completed arrangements for the release of these poor people, in exchange for a safe passage for myself and my associates. Do you think you might be able to manage that, Chief Constable?’

‘Mr Antonov, you ask a lot that I alone am in no position to guarantee. A demonstration of your good intentions might improve your situation, though. Perhaps the traditional release of the old, the infirm, the women and the children?’

‘Demonstration of
good intentions
?’ Laszlo kept his voice dangerously even. ‘You seem to be under the illusion that this is a negotiation, Chief Constable. Let me assure you that it is not.’

‘Quite so.’ Alderson knew he wasn’t going to get anywhere with that ploy. ‘After all, it is the stated policy of Her Majesty’s government never to negotiate with terrorists.’

‘But I am not a terrorist. The ICC have decided that I am a war criminal. There is a difference, which I would ask you to respect. Some call me a freedom fighter, but the truth is, Chief Constable, I’m just a soldier, who carried out his duty, fighting for his country. If necessary, however, I’m quite prepared to kill every man, woman and child on this train.’

‘Mr Antonov . . . My name is Michael. May I call you Laszlo?’

‘Of course you may, Michael.’

Laszlo liked the tone of this man. He knew that their time together would be short, however. Even before control was handed over, the chief constable would be out of the picture. The Security Service would install their own case officer; someone who did not need any notes or files. That was a shame – but it might mean he got to encounter the man who’d been tracking him for so long.

‘Perhaps so. Perhaps you are a soldier. But that is for others to decide. What concerns me are the hundreds of lives you are putting at risk. I want to make sure that you get what you need so
they
stay alive.’

Laszlo was pleased with what Alderson had said. ‘Thank you, Michael. And I, of course, will help you – if you provide me with the safe passage I require to a country with no extradition treaties in place with Great Britain.’

‘No doubt you already have somewhere in mind.’

‘Indeed I do,’ Laszlo said. ‘I’ve spent a pleasant few years in London, but now I think somewhere warmer, with less stringent banking regulations, would be much more suitable. I’ll need to be sure of that before I deposit the hundred and fifty kilograms of gold that you’re going to pay me.’

‘Gold?’

‘Correct. And I will require a Chinook helicopter. Both main fuel tanks full, and a full cabin fuel bladder to feed the main tanks.’

The chief constable couldn’t square what he had read about this man with what he was saying. It was as if Laszlo had taken his plan of action from a 1970s B movie.

‘More details will follow, Michael. Now you have thirty minutes to—’

The line went dead.

‘Hello . . . Hello?’ He jiggled the switch a few times, then swore and banged down the radio mic.