side as their colleagues poured through the French windows and into the restaurant.
Elena ran over and saw that they’d laid him out on his back. Two of them were frisking him for weapons, even though his shirt was stained with blood, and it was clear that he was badly injured. ‘Please,’ she said as one of the soldiers peeled off and blocked her view, ‘he’s not a terrorist. He attacked the terrorists in the restaurant. He saved our lives.’
‘Get back, ma’am, please,’ said the man in black, giving her a none too gentle push.
Behind him, his colleagues had finished their frisking and two of them had lifted the man to his feet. As they led him past Elena, her eyes met his.
‘Where’s Martin?’ she asked him. ‘I saw him go down to look for you.’
‘He didn’t make it,’ said the man in the suit. ‘I’m very sorry.’
And then he was being helped into the cherry picker, where two firemen waited to take him.
‘Come on, ma’am, you need to come to.’
Elena looked up towards the sky, and for a long moment she forgot everything and simply savoured the feel of the rain on her face.
The nightmare had ended. She was free.
Ninety-one
22.32
AS THEY EMERGED from the front of the hotel, the hostages were searched individually by SAS teams stationed just outside. The injured were moved to one side to be treated by paramedics, the remainder were funnelled into a narrow corridor formed by two lines of police tape, and flanked by armed officers, that ended in a large tent that had been erected earlier in the middle of Park Lane. The tent was a processing centre where the hostages would need to provide ID and an explanation of what they were doing in the hotel, in order to sift out anyone who might have been involved in the terrorist attack.
Fox wasn’t unduly nervous as he joined one of the queues that led down to four desks at the far end where officers with laptops were processing individuals, even though armed CO19 cops and at least one team of black-clad SAS men were positioned around the interior to make sure no one tried to make a break for it. He was dressed in a crumpled suit, with smoke marks on his face, and he looked just like any other civilian.
There were only a couple of people in front of him, and as he waited, he checked his new civilian phone, which had been registered in the name Robert Durran two weeks earlier. There was reception, and he felt confident enough to send a text to a number he’d memorized earlier. The content was innocent enough: HAVE MADE IT OUT! TOMORROW AT 10. I HAVE GREAT NEWS. RD XXX. Fox didn’t think anyone would bother checking his phone, but if they did he would tell them that, having made it out of the hotel in one piece, he now wanted to propose to his fiancee.
In reality, TOMORROW AT 10 represented his payday, the time when he would hand over to his contact the information given to him under torture by Michael Prior, in exchange for five million dollars. The information was simply a name, nothing more. But it happened to be the name of a very senior member of the Chinese government who was providing high-level intelligence to MI6, and very likely the CIA. This man’s identity was so secret that, including Fox himself, probably no more than half a dozen people knew it, which made the information very valuable indeed. Fox suspected his contact, the same right-wing extremist who’d put him in touch with Wolf all those months ago, was selling it on for far more money, but that wasn’t his concern. He’d be rich enough after this to retire to the home he was having built for himself in the tropics, and never be seen or heard from again, which was just the way he liked it.
It was his turn at the desk. Two officious-looking uniformed cops sat there, while a CO19 with an MP5 stood behind them.
‘Name please, sir,’ said the first one.
‘Robert Durran.’
‘Were you a guest in the Stanhope?’
‘Yes. Room 202.’
The second one typed something on the laptop, and nodded to the first, who asked Fox if he had any ID.
‘Yes, I do.’
But as he reached into his pocket for the wallet, he heard a commotion behind him.
‘I know him,’ said an older-looking black man in dungaree overalls who was standing a couple of people back in the next line. ‘He’s one of them,’ he continued, pointing at Fox. ‘He’s one of the terrorists. I was hiding in the crawlspace in the ballroom kitchen. I heard him speaking in there loads of times. It’s him. I’m sure of it.’
Everyone was looking at Fox now. He could have tried to brazen things out, but it wouldn’t take the authorities long to work out the truth if they delved any deeper into his background. Which left him with only one option.
In one movement he turned and bolted for the exit, knowing he was never going to make it. He was trapped and unarmed, but he knew he couldn’t surrender and face the rest of his days behind bars. That would be too much.
He heard the angry shouts of armed officers screaming at everyone to get down, saw people hitting the deck like a falling line of dominoes, saw the guns pointing at him from every direction.
And then someone in one of the lines threw out a leg and Fox pitched forward over it, his mobile clattering across the tarmac.
In the next second, he felt someone jump on his back, knees first, screaming and shouting. Fox gasped in pain as the wind was taken out of him. It was one of the hostages. As Fox tried to struggle free from his grip, a great shout rose up from the other hostages, and they fell upon him, tearing at his hair and face and screaming abuse as they dragged him to his feet.
He felt a surge of panic as he was kicked and punched and scratched. These people were going to tear him apart limb from limb – he could hear the bloodlust in their voices. They weren’t going to stop. Someone spat in his face; someone else was trying to ram fingers into his eyes; another tugged savagely at his hair.
But then the people moved away, and once again he was being slammed back to the ground, except this time he felt the cold metal of gun barrels being pushed against his head, and gloved hands roughly searching him. Unable to stop himself, he threw up, just as someone took a photo of him lying with his face in the dirt, completing his humiliation.
With his vision blurred from the attempt to gouge out his eyes, he heard rather than saw someone pick up his mobile from the ground, and shout something about the text he’d just sent.
It didn’t matter. None of it mattered any more.
He was caught.
Ninety-two
THE MOMENT ARLEY walked back in the room, everyone turned her way.
‘Ma’am, where the hell have you been?’ John Cheney asked incredulously. He was down to his shirtsleeves and looked more stressed than she’d seen him all night. ‘The SAS have gone in and we’ve got hostages coming out.’
‘Silver Commander’s on the line from 1600, ma’am,’ said Janine.
Riz Mohammed had the phone to his ear, but he was shaking his head. ‘I’m getting no answer at all. Right now, I have no idea what’s going on in the hotel.’
Arley looked around. She felt numb. She had her children back, and for that she was truly thankful in a way she couldn’t describe, but now that they were safe the enormity of her losses bore down on her like a lead weight.
