Bridge had her lightsaber pen in one hand, impatiently clicking and un-clicking the top. She realised with some surprise that she was nervous, and eager to get this right. Maybe she wasn’t ready to quit, after all — assuming she didn’t fuck it up completely and get fired instead. She took a deep breath and said, “I think we were focused on the wrong target. Bowman never intended to attack yesterday’s Exphoria demonstration. There’s a project launch party tonight, here in London, with all the bigwigs present. I think he’s going to hit that instead.”
“We’re aware of that party,” said Andrea. “The Prime Minister is scheduled to drop by for ten minutes of handshakes, so Five sent a team to work with the police for security. What makes you think it’s Bowman’s target?”
“When you went to check out the fake startup — actually, Mr Patel, could we call Steve Wicker in on this? — you described a bench full of range extenders, wifi antenna, and so on, all in various states of being built or dismantled. And Bowman said he was working on a breakthrough in wifi technology.”
“Yeah, but I read that file, and it’s nonsense,” said Sunny. “There’s no ‘quantum state information’ in radio signals, he was feeding you a load of bollocks.”
“I know that,” said Bridge, reassuring him. “But what if he came up with that story so people wouldn’t ask why he was building wifi transceivers?”
“Hiding the truth in plain sight,” said Giles, elaborating for the room. “Go on, Bridge.”
She took a breath to calm herself. “Bowman still has the radioactive material. Naturally, we assume he intends to use it. But if you’re going to set off a dirty bomb, where’s the best place for it? Not a wide-open space like an airfield. You want a populated, crowded, urban area.”
“So why not a shopping centre, or a football match?” asked Mourad, on the phone. “Why a party in Whitehall?”
“First, because if Bowman’s mission is to sabotage Exphoria, all the higher-ups dying in a terror attack would put a big black mark on the project’s reputation. Plus the mole himself, James Montgomery, was scheduled to be at this party. What better way for Bowman to tie up a loose end than by killing the mole, while making it look like he wasn’t the target?”
Emily Dunston nodded. “That makes sense. But Montgomery is dead, so why bother going ahead with the attack?”
“Because I don’t think he was the prime target. Getting him would have just been a nice bonus, but the principal target is the head of the Exphoria project, Sir Terence Cavendish.” She paused to let everyone take this in, before turning to the speakerphone. “As for the second thing, Henri…the party isn’t in Whitehall. It’s halfway up the Shard.”
A murmur rippled through the room. Any attack on the Shard, the country’s tallest building and a symbol of modern London, would make headlines and instil fear; the aim of any serious terrorist.
“The CTA unit has been looking into this,” said Giles, and Bridge half-smiled at his determination to ensure everyone knew his brainchild was leading the way. “We’ve found compelling evidence, much of which was simply a matter of connecting dots we hadn’t previously looked for. But in light of Bowman’s identification, they became clear. Ciaran?”
Ciaran cleared his throat. “We went through the ICRs — that’s Internet Connection Records, all the traffic at a given IP address — from the Shoreditch startup office. Bowman didn’t use it much, as we assume he was on a cellular signal most of the time, and without the device he used we can’t trace that traffic. But what he did use the hard connection for was interesting. He looked up a lot of details and biographies of Sir Terence, for example, over the course of several weeks.”
“That doesn’t prove anything,” said Emily. “Sir Terence is a public figure. If Bowman knew of the project’s existence at all, it would make sense he’d also know the Air Vice-Marshal is in charge.”
“But he’s going to be at the party,” said Ciaran, as if that explained everything.
“We think —” Bridge began, then corrected herself. “You know what, I shouldn’t hide behind the unit, here. I think that this is personal, something between Bowman and Sir Terence. Otherwise, why keep looking him up? And those searches ceased immediately after Andrea visited the Shoreditch office, as if he suddenly assumed the connection was being monitored.”
“Are you implying Sir Terence is in league with Bowman?” asked Andrea.
“No, no,” said Bridge, “there’s no suggestion he’s involved with the leak, or being blackmailed. But I think he was always the principal target, for personal reasons.”
“Why go to such trouble over an RAF officer?”
Monica spoke for the first time. “You said the FCO suspected Bowman’s parents of being spies for Beijing. ‘Peking Ducks’, which by the way is so incredibly offensive, I can’t even. Well, guess who first raised that suspicion with the former British Governor, while serving at RAF Sek Kong?”
Emily Dunston groaned in frustration. “Oh, bloody hell. Sir Terence Cavendish.”
“Squadron Leader Cavendish, as he was then,” said Giles. “We assume this is also why we have no record of the Bowmans past a couple of years after handover. Beijing has never liked loose ends, and if they found out the family’s cover was blown…well, I wouldn’t fancy their chances.”
“But young Daniel Bowman survived somehow, and now he wants revenge on the man who effectively killed his parents,” Bridge added.
Andrea sighed. “How did we miss this before?”
“To be fair, we didn’t even know who Bowman was until you found his DNA. And Sir Terence is hardly the only RAF officer who served in Hong Kong.”
“He also returned several times as a civilian, after the handover,” said Monica. “Again, not unusual for someone with his record, but at a certain point there are so many coincidences,
