Cheney shook his head. ‘Never heard of them.’
Arley rolled her eyes. ‘That’s useful.’
‘It’s also no great surprise. These terrorist groups chop and change their names and personnel all the time. New ones are always appearing. Have they made any demands yet?’
‘Other than the phone call to the
‘We’re still getting the occasional bursts of gunfire coming from inside,’ put in Matthews. ‘But not enough to suggest they’re killing hostages indiscriminately.’
‘Well, that’s one thing I suppose. Do we even want to know if they want to negotiate?’
Arley looked up towards the hotel. ‘They’ve been in there an hour, and they’re making no move to get out or to blow the place up, and they said something in the call to the
‘We need to listen in to them,’ Cheney said. ‘I’ve got contacts over at GCHQ. I can get on to them and see if they can set something up remotely.’
‘That’d be a help,’ said Arley, who’d been so caught up in the immediacy of events that it hadn’t yet occurred to her to use the technology of GCHQ, the government’s central listening station, to gather information on the terrorists.
At that moment, Chris Matthews’ mobile rang, and as he took the call Arley thought that the sooner they had a secure phone service at the scene, the better. Mobiles were far too easy to hack into, and the last thing they needed was some journalist, or worse still one of the terrorists, listening to them rather than the other way round.
‘The first of the incident rooms is here,’ Matthews told her, shouting above the shrieking of a police siren as a riot van pulled into the top of Park Lane.
Not before time, thought Arley, as the rain began to come down even harder.
Thirty-one
17.57
THE STANHOPE’S PARK View Restaurant was on the ninth floor of the hotel and had floor-to-ceiling windows right across its western side, which looked out on to a spacious roof terrace that was used for dining in summer, and beyond that to the green, tree-lined expanse of Hyde Park.
Elena usually loved this view, and when she was on night shift she liked to walk out on to the terrace after the restaurant had closed and smoke a cigarette while looking out across the lights and noise of London, enjoying the sense of being a part of something huge yet somehow intimate at the same time.
Tonight, though, all the blinds were drawn, and tables and chairs had been piled up against the windows by her and the other hostages to create a space in the middle of the floor. They were sitting in that space now, a frightened, confused, largely silent group of about twenty people bolstered in number by a group of guests and staff members who’d been discovered hiding in the adjoining kitchen. In the middle of the group, only a few feet from where Elena sat, was a rucksack bomb similar to the one she’d seen Fox preparing in the hotel lobby. She wondered why they’d been brought up here, a long way from the other hostages in the ballroom.
There were two gunmen in the restaurant: the man who seemed to be the leader, who she now knew was called Wolf, and his sidekick, the man who’d accompanied her to the lobby earlier, Fox. Both of them were holding assault rifles, and Wolf’s foot was on the pedal connected by wires to the rucksack bomb. They’d even set up a portable TV next to them so they could use the news channels to keep tabs on what was going on outside. At that moment they were conversing in hushed tones, while keeping a close eye on the hostages.
On the way up, Elena had tried to speak to Fox, to establish some kind of rapport, but he’d told her to shut up, and the tension in his tone had persuaded her that it wasn’t a good idea to carry on talking.
There were three young children among the hostages, two girls of about six and eight and a boy of about twelve who was dressed in his school uniform and who’d been one of those hiding in the kitchen, along with his parents. Elena guessed they’d come here for an early evening meal, maybe for a special occasion of some sort. Both the boy and one of the little girls were sobbing quietly – a sound that wrenched at Elena’s heart. She loved children and had nieces and nephews of a similar age. It sickened her that these innocents were caught up in this nightmare.
Before she’d had a chance to think about what she was doing, she stood up.
Wolf and Fox immediately turned her way, and Wolf raised his gun. ‘Sit down,’ he ordered.
‘Please,’ she said, still standing, ‘let the children and their mothers go. There’ll still be plenty of us left behind.’
‘Sit down.’
‘But they’ve done nothing to you. Please. Have some heart.’
Wolf took three steps forward and put the rifle to his shoulder.
For a terrible second, Elena thought he was going to shoot her, even though she’d been banking on the fact that, as the most senior member of the Stanhope’s staff on duty, she was a lot more useful to them alive.
‘I’ll tell you one more time: sit down.’
Reluctantly, and with anger coursing through her, she did as she was told, noticing that most of the other hostages were staring at her.
Wolf lowered the gun, and Elena saw him glance at the three young children in turn. ‘If you all cooperate, and if your government cares enough about you,’ he said at last, ‘then you will all be freed. But in the meantime you will suffer the way so many of the world’s people have suffered at your hands. You will be given no food or water, and you will not be allowed to leave the room. You will only speak when spoken to by one of us. Anyone who speaks out of turn from now on will be shot immediately.’ He glared at Elena. ‘Including you. Do you understand?’
There were a few nods and murmurs. Elena didn’t say anything. She held Wolf’s gaze, unsure why she was being so brave, or foolish, by constantly drawing attention to herself.
‘Do you understand?’ he demanded, enunciating the words slowly and carefully as he stared straight at Elena.
She nodded, hating him. ‘Yes.’
‘Good. Are there any guests staying in the suites?’
For a split second she thought about lying. Mr Al-Jahabi might have been a pervert but she had no desire to put him through this. In the end, though, it wasn’t worth the risk, either for her or the other guests. ‘Yes. Two of them are occupied, the Garden and the Deco.’
Wolf turned away. Elena looked round at the other hostages, and saw the fear in their faces. She caught the eye of the man next to her. It was one of the guests from the third floor. The man who’d had the rope in his room. He looked thin and pale, and Elena gave him a supportive smile, trying to forget the fact that he’d been planning to commit suicide in her hotel – an act she considered incredibly selfish, given that it would have been one of her staff members who had to deal with the aftermath. He smiled back weakly, and it was clear to her that he knew what she was thinking and was ashamed.
She turned away, and thought of Rod. He would almost certainly have heard what was happening at the hotel and would be terribly worried. For the first time she wondered whether she’d ever see him again. It made her feel sick to think that this could be it for her – the end.
She took a deep breath, keeping the panic at bay. She did have a future, she told herself. She was going to go to Australia with Rod, get married and have a family. But first she was going to have to get out of here, and that meant escaping. But how? She looked round the silent restaurant, feeling the sense of despair emanating from the other hostages. Wolf’s foot was back on that damned pedal. It seemed an impossible task.
But Elena had long ago learned that if you tried hard enough, nothing was impossible. And she had to make herself believe that now.
