Twenty-three
17.11
ROOM 1600, THE Operations Control Centre on the sixteenth floor of the New Scotland Yard building, was bedlam. Of the twenty or so officers and staff crowded inside, many of them talking on phones, DAC Arley Dale was the most senior, and she had the Herculean task of coordinating the evacuation of the entire London transportation system, as well as all major public buildings, in response to the bombs at Westfield and Paddington Station. No one knew where the next bomb would strike, or how far to extend the evacuation, and now matters had been further complicated by multiple reports of an attack on the Stanhope Hotel in Park Lane.
Arley knew she had to clear some of the people out of the room if she was to impose a semblance of order on the situation. She remembered all too well the criticism levelled at the Met following the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. Huge mistakes had been made in this very control room because there were too many people inside, many of whom didn’t seem to know what the others were doing. But the scale of this operation, coupled with the volume of information being sent through to them from the Central Control Room at Hendon, where all phone traffic relating to the attacks had been directed, was making things next to impossible. They’d already had a reported sixty claims of responsibility for the bombs as well as separate bomb threats for a total of thirty-seven locations within London, including four in the City of London financial district, and right then Arley was wrestling with the decision of whether or not to extend the evacuations to all prominent buildings within the Square Mile.
A bank of TV screens showing real-time CCTV footage of central London took up the whole of the wall, and they recorded vividly the problems the police faced. All the major roads, including the A40 and Marylebone Road, both of which were needed by the emergency services, were gridlocked. On a screen somewhere in the middle, a thick pall of smoke could be seen above Paddington Station. The latest reliable report said that there were already thirteen dead and as many as sixty injured at Paddington, while the number of injured had risen to nine at Westfield, although thankfully there were still no fatalities. But for Arley, what it all meant was that there was no point taking risks with public safety.
‘We need to make a decision on the Gherkin, ma’am,’ said a young male officer manning one of the phones. ‘We’ve just had a second bomb threat against it.’
‘Evacuate it,’ she answered, raising her voice above the noise. ‘In fact, evacuate every building we get a threat against.’ Arley wasn’t at all sure she had the authority to make this decision, but there was no time to worry about that now. The important thing, she knew, was to keep making decisions. ‘And let’s clear this bloody place out. Anyone who does not have to be in here, get out. Now.’
‘Ma’am, I’ve got the head of Westminster Council on the line,’ said someone else. ‘He wants to speak to you urgently.’
‘Find out what he wants and I’ll call him back.’ The last thing she wanted to do was waste time talking to someone from the council.
A female officer stood up at the end of the room, a phone cradled in her shoulder. ‘I’ve got Brian Walton of London Transport on the line. He wants to know if they can keep a bus service running from zones three through to six.’
‘Have we had any specific threats against buses?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘If there haven’t been any, he can. If there have, he can’t. Find out and let him know.’ She had to delegate as many tasks as she could to keep her head above water amid the chaos that was all around her. ‘And can we try and get some cameras on the scene at the Stanhope Hotel? I want to see what’s going on there.’
‘Ma’am?’ Her secretary, Ann, was tapping her on the shoulder. ‘You’re wanted in the commissioner’s office. DCS Stevens is going to take over in here.’
Arley snapped out a few more orders, repeated her demand that anyone who shouldn’t be in the room must leave, then went out into the corridor. Like most police officers, she craved the excitement of a crisis, and she had a cool enough head to cope with one, which was the main reason she’d travelled as far as she had in the Met. More than one colleague had hinted that it might also be down to the fact that she was a woman, but her bosses knew better than that.
Chief Commissioner Derek Phillips was one of the good guys, a copper’s copper with the best interests of the people beneath him at heart, but Arley sometimes wondered if he had the necessary decisiveness to deal with a major incident. It wasn’t just that he looked more like a comfortably off accountant than a police officer; his stewardship of the recent student protests in London, when the students had been allowed to go on the rampage virtually unhindered, had seen him become a hostage to events rather than the person in control of them.
He was standing behind his immense glass desk when Arley walked in, the backdrop of a murky London skyline stretched out behind him. ‘Thanks for coming so promptly,’ he said, without gesturing for her to take a seat. ‘How are things in 1600?’
‘We’re under the cosh, sir. Do you have any more information on the Stanhope attack?’
‘Apparently a group of gunmen have broken into the building and are taking hostages. There are unconfirmed reports of casualties, and we do know that shots were fired from inside the hotel at the first officers on the scene. That was about twenty minutes ago. But so far the picture of what’s actually going on is very patchy. Chris Matthews, the chief inspector down at Paddington Green, is on the scene. He’s put a cordon in place and set up an RP in Hyde Park, but he’s being hampered by all the gridlock round there. It looks like everyone’s trying to leave the city at once.’
‘I can’t say I blame them. We’re getting a lot of claims of responsibility for what’s happening, but nothing’s confirmed. Whoever it is is clearly well organized.’
‘I’ve just been on to Hendon. They say one call stands out. It was made to the
‘So there’s no way the caller could have known about the bombs unless he was responsible for them?’
‘Exactly. It was too quick and too assured to have been a hoax. The caller claimed to be from an organization called the Pan-Arab Army of God. They’re not on our list of proscribed organizations and no one at Counter Terrorism Command seems to have heard of them, so we’re guessing they’re new boys. It’s possible they’re being sponsored by an unfriendly Arab government because the caller said something about the attacks being in retaliation for British and NATO interference in Arab and other Muslim countries. He also claimed that there were bombs at a number of London’s other mainline railway stations. Have you had any other reports of bombs going off?’
Arley shook her head. ‘Plenty of scares, but nothing else.’
‘Thank God for that. We’re stretched enough as it is.’
The commissioner looked shaken by the afternoon’s events, which wasn’t good. Arley was shaken too, but she knew how to keep a lid on her emotions, and she was hoping that Commissioner Phillips did too. Trying to remain as businesslike as possible, she filled him in on the evacuation plans she was putting in place.
‘You’re doing a good job,’ he told her, sounding like he meant it. ‘But I need you out in the field. It looks like it’s turning into a siege situation at the Stanhope. The PM’s been informed and he’s convening a meeting of COBRA for six p.m. In the meantime, we have to respond fast. We’re using the usual structure. I’m Gold Commander. Assistant Commissioner Jacobs is Silver. We’ll both be based here. I want you as Bronze, running things on site at the Stanhope. I’ve asked Paddington Green to requisition a suitable building you can use as an HQ, and we’re sending over a mobile incident room as well, but in the meantime you’re just going to have to make do with whatever’s available at the scene.’
Arley was pleased to be Bronze Commander, though a little awed by the size of the task ahead. ‘I’ll get down there as soon as I can but you know what the traffic’s like. It may take me some time.’
‘We haven’t got time. There’s a helicopter waiting on the roof. It’ll take you there now.’
The phone on Commissioner Phillips’ desk rang. He picked up the receiver, listened, then replaced it. His expression was grim. ‘That was Hendon. They’ve just had a call from a wounded kitchen worker inside the building.
