marked STAFF ONLY.
Straight away his nostrils were assailed by an appalling stench. Holding his breath, he made his way down a narrow, dark corridor, then through another door, and into the hotel kitchens. The smell was far worse in there and it took him only seconds to realize why, as his eyes became accustomed to the gloom. There were bodies, three of them as far as he could see, dressed in chef’s whites and lying on the floor in pools of blood. A wave of nausea overcame him and he had to put his hand on one of the worktops to steady himself. Graham Jones had never seen a dead body before, and to see three in such appalling circumstances was a nightmare come true.
Plucking up the necessary courage, he skirted around them and tried the windows that led out on to an empty courtyard behind the building, only to find them all locked. He needed to get away from the stench of death and breathe some fresh air. After hours trapped in the hotel room, freedom was finally so close.
Making a conscious effort not to look down, Graham stepped over a body and went through another door. He almost tripped over another corpse blocking the way, but managed to stop himself. To his right was a fire door with a push-lever handle. It had to lead outside, and it wouldn’t be locked. It might be alarmed, but right then that was the least of Graham’s worries. He hurried over to it, forcing down the lever and pushing it open in one movement, immediately feeling a welcome slap of frigid air against his face, hardly hearing the clunk as the fully primed grenade dropped to the floor.
Sixty-three
FOX STOOD IN the ballroom satellite kitchen, waiting impassively while Wolf ranted and raved.
‘You were the last person to see him alive, Fox. If it wasn’t you who killed him, who was it?’
‘I have no idea. And why on earth would I want to gouge his eye out?’
‘I don’t know, but it was your idea for us to kidnap him in the first place—’ Wolf stopped in mid flow, interrupted by a dull boom coming from below. ‘What was that?’
‘It sounded like a grenade,’ said Fox, immediately tensing. ‘I set a couple of them as booby-traps on the exit doors to the kitchen.’
Wolf checked the portable TV, then leaned over the laptop. ‘Are we under attack already? You said it would take them time to strike.’
‘What’s the TV showing?’
‘Just the front of the hotel. It all looks the same.’
‘Is there any email message on the laptop?’
‘No, nothing.’
There was an edge of panic to Wolf’s voice, and Fox knew he was going to have to take charge.
‘If they’ve come in via the kitchen, then they’re on their way up now. Come with me.’
Fox walked rapidly out of the kitchen with Wolf behind him. Cat and Bear were guarding the increasingly restless-looking hostages, and they both turned round when they heard the door open.
‘Everything’s all right,’ Fox called out, more for the benefit of the hostages than anyone else. ‘One of the booby-traps went off accidentally.’
Keeping a firm grip on his AK-47, he opened the ballroom doors and went over to the top of the main mezzanine floor staircase, leaning back against the wall to give himself cover as he looked down into the empty hotel lobby. If this was an attack the SAS would have been slowed down by the booby-trapped grenade. There was no sign of them yet.
He heard Wolf come up behind him.
‘Is anything happening?’ he whispered.
Fox pointed his AK-47 down the stairs, finger on the trigger. ‘Nothing yet.’
They waited a full minute. In the background, Fox could hear the faint ringing of the phone in the satellite kitchen. It seemed the negotiators were trying to make contact. If this was a surprise attack, then the element of surprise had long gone. And if it was a full-scale, multi-entry attack, then where the hell was everybody?
‘I don’t think that was the SAS,’ said Fox at last, still watching the lobby.
‘Then what was it?’
‘I’m not sure. We need to investigate.’
‘Are you going to go downstairs?’ asked Wolf.
Fox turned round. ‘I’ve got a better idea. Send Cat. She looks like a civilian, so if it is the military, or the police – and I’m pretty damn sure it’s neither of them – they won’t open fire on her.’
Wolf’s eyes narrowed and he looked at Fox suspiciously. Fox knew that, after the discovery of Michael Prior’s body, Wolf no longer trusted him. He’d spent a good five minutes interrogating him about Prior, and it was clear that Cat had stirred matters as well. In this paranoid place, with the tension mounting, Fox’s suggestion could easily be construed as a plan to get rid of Cat, yet it wasn’t. Sending her down seemed to him the logical thing to do. She was relatively inconspicuous, unlike the rest of them.
Wolf looked past Fox into the silence of the lobby. ‘All right,’ he said with a sigh. ‘We’ll send Cat down.’
Sixty-four
21.26
IN THE INCIDENT room, events had taken a sudden and unexpected turn. Officers inside the inner cordon had heard the explosion at the rear of the Stanhope, its exact location obscured by the high wall bordering the courtyard, but the officer who’d called it in said he could see a thin plume of smoke rising up.
Arley glanced at her watch. Her fifteen-minute deadline for calling the kidnappers was up, and she was going to have to make contact again. But she needed more time.
Tina needed more time.
One of the secure phones started ringing and Will Verran, the young police technician, who seemed to be looking younger as the night progressed, picked up. ‘It’s Major Standard for you, ma’am.’
She took the receiver, conscious of the sound of her heart beating in her chest. ‘Major Standard.’
‘Hello, Arley,’ said the major, sounding so calm it made her almost physically sick with jealousy. ‘Our spotters tell me there’s been an explosion at the back of the Stanhope on the ground floor. My understanding is its some kind of ordnance, possibly a booby-trap of some kind. Have you had any explanation for it from the terrorists?’
‘Not yet, sir. But it only happened a few minutes ago, and we’re going to keep trying them. It seems it might be some kind of one-off incident.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Standard, his tone noncommittal. ‘And you’ve got nothing new on Prior’s location?’
‘Nothing yet, but as I mentioned earlier, the lead terrorist calling himself Wolf has promised we can speak to him. As soon as we do, I’ll let you know immediately.’
‘Good. We’re ready to go in at short notice now.’
‘It may be worth waiting until we can speak to Prior.’
‘Keep trying to talk to him, but if you’re still having no joy in fifteen minutes, let me know. We may have to reassess.’
She handed the phone back to Will and left the incident room without a word, knowing that her actions were beginning to look odd, but no longer caring.
She’d got barely ten feet from the building when she dialled Howard’s number.
‘I said fifteen minutes,’ snapped the kidnapper, picking up on the first ring. ‘Not twenty.’
‘I was on the phone to the man in charge of the SAS operation,’ she whispered into the phone. ‘It was a long conversation.’
‘And you have the details of their assault, yes?’
‘I do.’
‘When will it be happening?’
‘Not yet. At the moment they’re waiting until we can find a location inside the building for Prior.’
