When she was a young girl, Elena’s grandmother had often told her stories about life under Nazi occupation, stories that had scared and upset her but which had always seemed strangely compelling. How the SS and Gestapo treated the Poles as sub-human; how they executed people for the smallest of infringements, often in public; how they would round up whole villages – men, women, even children and babies – and slaughter them just because someone in another village had killed a German soldier. And Elena had asked her grandmother how they could have committed such evil deeds.
‘Because they were cruel,’ she’d answered, as if this were reason enough. ‘Because they were cruel.’
Just like the gunmen in the ballroom now.
The door to the satellite kitchen opened suddenly and the leader and Fox came out. They strode over to the other terrorists, one after another, and spoke to them in hushed tones.
Then the leader approached Elena and, without warning, yanked her to her feet by her arm. ‘You’re coming with us,’ he snapped in his thick Middle Eastern accent.
‘Where?’ she asked before she could stop herself.
‘Don’t ask questions, bitch. Move.’ Grabbing her by the collar, he shoved the barrel of his assault rifle into her back and made her walk towards the exit. ‘Take us to room 316. Use the staircase.’
Elena did as she was told, conscious that three more gunmen, including Armin and Fox, were also coming with her.
As they reached the emergency staircase she could hear the occasional shouting of panicked guests, and the noise of footsteps on the stairs, and she prayed no one would come running down here, see her, and think they were safe. She’d seen Fox disable the lifts earlier, and right now the staircase was the only way out.
The third-floor corridor was completely silent as Elena led the gunmen through. She wondered how many people were hiding terrified behind their doors. The hotel was currently booked to over eighty per cent capacity, so there would be quite a few of them.
‘Which side’s room 316?’
She pointed right.
‘In a few minutes’ time you’re going to tell the people on this floor to come out of their rooms and line up outside. But first I want you to see exactly what, and who, you’re dealing with.’
Elena felt a growing sense of dread as they stopped outside room 316 and Wolf knocked four times on the door.
A second later it was opened from the inside by a young woman about Elena’s age, with black hair and olive skin. She was barefoot and wearing a figure-hugging black dress that finished above the knee. She looked completely normal, except for one thing: she was holding a pistol with a long cigar-shaped silencer attached to it.
She was also smiling at the leader. ‘Welcome,’ she said in lightly accented English.
Elena looked past her and saw a grey-haired man tied to the tub chair beside the bed, with his back to the window. He had a gag in his mouth and he looked pale and terrified.
They filed into the room and she saw the woman and Armin exchange small smiles. They obviously knew each other, and for some reason the thought filled Elena with rage. Armin was an animal, and she wished she’d called Rav and got him kicked out of the hotel when she’d had the chance.
The leader ordered Elena to stand against the far wall. He then walked over to the man in the chair and, pulling a pistol from his waistband, shoved the gun against his forehead. ‘Hello, Mr Prior,’ he said. ‘I trust you’re comfortable.’ He turned to Armin. ‘Get everything set up. I want this recorded and put online straight away in case they switch us off.’
Elena watched as Armin pulled a laptop out of the rucksack he was carrying and connected it via a cable to a camera. At the same time, the leader removed what looked like a large belt with pouches along its entire length. Then she saw the wires poking out of the pouches and the old-style battery-operated alarm clock in the middle.
Elena knew next to nothing about explosives, but even she could see that this was a bomb.
The leader looped the belt over their prisoner and the chair so that the bomb was resting across his chest with the alarm clock dead centre, while the woman who’d answered the door pulled on a balaclava and went over to join him.
As Armin lifted the camera and began filming, the woman put the barrel of her pistol against the man’s temple. He sat still, his eyes wide, sweat forming on his forehead. She spoke directly into the camera, her voice confident and educated. ‘The man sitting here is Michael Prior, a director of MI6. His job is to oversee the surveillance, arrest, torture and imprisonment of Muslims all over the world, and both he and his government are responsible for the ongoing slaughter of Arab and Muslim civilians. We, as members of the Pan-Arab Army of God, have taken him into our custody, along with a number of other British citizens, and we demand that the British government immediately cease all its current military, political and economic operations against Muslim and Arab countries.’ She pushed the gun barrel harder against the man’s temple, forcing his head to one side. ‘Unless our demands are met in full, he will be executed tonight, at midnight GMT, and this building will go up in flames, along with everyone in it.’
Elena felt her heart sink as the woman stopped speaking, and Armin lowered the camera and started typing on the laptop.
‘OK,’ he said after a few moments. ‘We’ve got the footage online.’
This was the cue for the leader to start giving orders again. He told the woman to take the laptop and go downstairs to the ballroom to reinforce the others. Then he ordered the rest of the men out into the corridor.
Finally, he grabbed Elena roughly by the arm. ‘We need more hostages,’ he said, bringing his face close to hers. ‘And you’re going to get them for us.’
Twenty-six
IT WAS ALL going so damn wrong, thought Martin Dalston as he lay behind the double bed, trying to keep as still as possible.
One minute he’d been sipping the Pinot Noir and remembering the sound of Carrie Wilson’s laughter, the pills still firmly in their containers, the next he’d heard the commotion coming from the room next door, followed by people talking just outside his door. He’d tried to ignore it, determined not to be disturbed, but then he’d heard a woman with a Polish accent introducing herself as the Stanhope’s duty manager, her voice shaking as she spoke. She was saying that the hotel had been taken over by a group called the Pan-Arab Army of God, that they had master key cards to all the bedrooms, and that everyone had to come out of their rooms, otherwise they would be shot immediately.
The whole thing seemed so surreal that at first he’d thought it was some bizarre joke, but then he’d ventured over to the window and peered out, which was when he saw the flashing lights of dozens and dozens of emergency vehicles blocking the road in both directions. That was when he’d knelt down behind the bed.
‘Please, please,’ the manager kept saying, her voice fading then coming back into earshot as she paced up and down the corridor, ‘do as you’ve been told and you won’t be hurt.’ She sounded very scared.
Martin was scared too. Terrified. Irrationally so, really, given that within the next few hours he’d fully intended to kill himself anyway. But the thing was, he wanted to die at a time and by a method of his own choosing, with happy memories filling his consciousness. Not at the hands of terrorists.
He could hear the sound of doors opening further down the corridor, barked orders, and the nervous whispers of frightened people. A young child was crying, and Martin felt his stomach knot. God, what on earth was happening? He knew if he didn’t go out he risked being shot. Dying on his knees in a pool of his own blood. Even so, he didn’t move, maintaining his position behind the bed, hoping that the terrorists were lying about having key cards, or that they’d rounded up enough people and therefore wouldn’t bother searching all the rooms.
The noise in the corridor faded, and Martin felt his hopes rise. ‘You wouldn’t believe this, Carrie,’ he whispered to himself. ‘All this happening outside our room.’
He had a sudden urge to speak to her then. Just one last time. To reminisce with her about those two fantastic weeks all those years ago. To find out what she was up to now. Whether she had children or not. How her
