Soft Target

The inspector nodded.

‘How many stations are there on the system?’

‘Two hundred and eighty-seven,’ said the inspector.

Gannon did a quick calculation in his head. Even if each call could be completed in a minute, it would still take one man almost five hours to contact every station. They would have to split the workload. There were twenty officers here. Even with all of them on the case, it would still take about fifteen minutes. ‘Split your officers into teams and divide the stations between them. Cover the ones with mainline terminals first.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Gannon pointed at the BTP sergeant who had been sitting to the inspector’s right. ‘Show me how this equipment works,’ he said, and sat in the inspector’s chair. ‘Get me one of those headsets.’

Rose looked at Sutherland. ‘I wouldn’t mind a coffee, Mike,’ he said.

Before Sutherland could say anything, the main set burst into life. ‘MP to all Trojan units. Possible Operation Rolvenden in Central London, location unspecified. All Trojan units to report to nearest mainline rail station and await further instructions.’

Sutherland frowned. ‘That’s a bit bloody vague,’ he said.

‘Ours not to reason why,’ said Rose. ‘What would our nearest station be?’

Sutherland looked across at his visual display.

‘Six of one,’ he said. ‘Victoria, Charing Cross. Waterloo if you want to cross the water. They’re all five minutes away, max.’

‘Victoria,’ said Rose. ‘I can get a decent coffee there.’ He picked up the main set microphone. ‘Trojan Five Six Nine, en route to Victoria Station.’

Shepherd’s earpiece crackled. It was the female control officer at the Management Information and Communications Centre. She sounded blonde and thirtyish but that might have been Shepherd’s imagination in overdrive.

‘PC Marsden, please switch channels to three-seven.’

‘Will do,’ said Shepherd, but that was easier said than done with the radio in the small of his back. He got up and walked to the far end of the platform where there were fewer passengers and retuned it to channel thirty- seven. ‘Marsden receiving,’ he said, into his cuff.

‘Bloody hell, Spider, you said you were in deep cover but I didn’t think you meant going underground literally.’

‘Major?’ said Shepherd. ‘Where are you?’

‘The BTP control centre. I asked what resources they had in play and when they said they had a couple of SO19 officers undercover I asked for a description and put two and two together.’

‘No one can hear you, can they?’ asked Shepherd.

‘I’ve got one of those headsets on and everyone’s working so hard they don’t have time to eavesdrop on me,’ said Gannon. ‘At four twenty-four today a suicide bomber was found on a Brixton street, knifed. He was on his way to King’s Cross and we know he was looking to detonate at about five. If he was alone, all well and good and we’ve had a narrow escape, but if there are others the chances are they’ll be primed to go off at the same time, a few minutes either way at most.’

Shepherd was hardly able to believe what he was hearing. He looked at his watch. It was four thirty- five.

‘We’re checking CCTV cameras and station staff are checking their platforms. Where are you now?’

‘Piccadilly Circus,’ said Shepherd.

‘We think mainline stations are the most likely targets, followed by intersections. Have a look around. And forget all that PC crap spouted by the civil libertarians. We’re not looking for ninety-year-old Catholic nuns. You know the profile.’

‘Got you,’ said Shepherd.

Two middle-aged women were staring at Shepherd. He walked past them, scanning the faces of the passengers waiting for the next train. He knew the profile. Young, male and Muslim. Middle Eastern or Asian. Late teens a possibility. Twenties most likely. Thirties and above, possible but unlikely. Wearing clothing capable of hiding explosives.

Blinking or staring. And as the deadline drew closer, probably muttering phrases from the Qur’a?n.

Malik stood up, even though there were empty seats in the carriage. The raincoat looked fine as long as he was standing but if he sat down the vest would press against the coat and somebody might notice the outline of the blocks of explosive.

The train stopped at Oxford Circus and half a dozen people got off. Two Japanese tourists got on, clutching a street directory and peering at the route map above the doors. The man was wearing a Burberry golfing hat and squinted at Malik. ‘Baker Street?’ he asked.

Malik tried to ignore the man.

‘Baker Street?’ repeated the Japanese.

Malik forced himself to smile. ‘You need to go north.’

‘North?’ repeated the man. He looked at his wife. ‘North?’

The doors clunked shut and the train lurched towards the tunnel. Several of the seated passengers were looking at Malik, waiting to see what he would say next. Malik swallowed. He wasn’t supposed to be noticed. He was supposed to move unseen through the crowds until he detonated the explosives.

He tapped the Bakerloo Line map. ‘This is Oxford Circus. You’re going south. Baker Street is here. You need to go north.’

The man’s frown deepened and he spoke to his wife in rapid Japanese. More faces were turning to watch.

‘You need to get off at the next station,’ added Malik. ‘Piccadilly Circus. Then find the platform for northbound trains. Bakerloo Line. North. Okay?’

‘North. Thank you.’

A couple of teenagers in combat trousers and camouflage-patterned coats were whispering and smirking. Malik fought to keep calm. It didn’t matter who saw him. At precisely five o’clock he would press the button that would activate the bomb that would send him to heaven and take with him dozens if not hundreds of infidels. He looked across at the teenagers. Maybe they would get off at Charing Cross. Maybe they would be on the platform at five o’clock. He hoped so. Malik smiled. It was all going to be just fine.

It was, thought Major Gannon, like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. There were some six thousand CCTV cameras covering the tube system. In any one hour a hundred and fifty thousand people were heading underground, more at rush-hour – and it was rush-hour now. There were too many cameras to monitor. With twenty workstations in the control room, even a ten-second look at each camera would take fifty minutes. And there were no cameras on any of the trains criss-crossing the system. The bomber in Brixton had been on his way to King’s Cross on the Victoria Line. If others were en route, they would probably be travelling by train too, so they wouldn’t be visible until they stepped out on to a platform. The cameras would have to be checked every time a train pulled in. It was an impossible task. Even if they had a face recognition system they could run in conjunction with the CCTV cameras, they didn’t know who they were looking for. And there was a good chance that whoever had planned the operation had recruited Invisibles, men or women who held British citizenship in their own right and who were able to move around under the intelligence service’s radar.

A phone rang and the inspector answered it, then handed the receiver to Gannon. It was Commander Matt Richards, who was running the GT Ops room at New Scotland Yard, the main control room in the event of a major terrorist incident. Richards was in direct communication with COBRA, the Cabinet Office briefing room, and the prime minister.

‘How’s it going there, Major?’

‘Ronnie Roberts and I are checking the CCTV cameras but there are too many people down there. Can we evacuate?’

‘Sorry, Major, that’s not an option. Every scenario we’ve ever run shows that evacuation causes more problems than it solves. Crowds form outside the stations and if a bomb goes off there we have more casualties than if the explosion takes place below ground.’

‘The good of the many outweighs the good of the few?’