He nodded and smiled at the young mother. She was pretty, a pity that in another twelve minutes she and the babe would be dead. From the blasts, or crushed beneath the tons of falling cement, flying glass from the smashed dome. All the cascading white roses wouldn’t be very pretty then.
Mary Ann Eiserly was tired. Ceci hadn’t slept more than three hours the night before, napped for only an hour this morning. She was thankful that now was the time she’d picked to pass out. It meant Mary Ann wouldn’t have to worry about her fussing in the middle of Ellie and Ryan’s exchange of vows. Yes, Ceci was down for the count. She lightly kissed her child’s head. Poor John was in worse shape, what with the terrorist red alert at MI5. She hadn’t seen him in twelve hours. She smiled again at the proud old woman beside her, who smiled back but remained silent. Her clothes were antiques, at least fifteen years out of date, but they were designer and expensive. Mary Ann saw the old lady had an odd profile, a pronounced hawk nose, not uncommon, she supposed, among the old aristocracy, and she was wearing a heavy layer of powder. There was something off with this old matriarch, but in truth, Mary Ann was too tired to care. She would ask Ellie who the old lady was when she returned from her honeymoon on Crete—if she remembered, that is. She felt brain-dead at the moment from lack of sleep. She would witness Ellie take her vows to a man Mary Ann wasn’t especially fond of, a gambler, she’d heard, then she’d haul Ceci home and pray John would drag himself in before midnight. She looked at her watch, wished they would get on with it. She wanted nothing more than to curl up next to her daughter and sleep the sleep of the dead.
? ? ?
JOHN EISERLY, MI5, sat in the control room at St. Paul’s with a half-dozen other agents and security staff, all eyes carefully studying the faces that passed into the cathedral. They’d been on high alert since the attempted bombing of St. Patrick’s. In addition, St. Paul’s deserved even more security this afternoon, given the number of very important guests here for the wedding. He’d heard the prime minister himself had spoken to John’s boss, ensuring they were going all out. Other than strip-searching all the guests, there was nothing more they could do.
The guests were all well dressed and in a festive mood, laughing, talking among themselves, not a suspicious character in the lot. Strip-searching them would most certainly put a crimp in the jolly mood. He grinned at the thought, then yawned. “Another two weeks” was his and Mary Ann’s mantra—the doctor said Ceci should sleep through the night in another two weeks. He hoped Mary Ann was finally getting some sleep. He chanced to look over at the monitor for the camera in the south transept and his heart stopped. There was Mary Ann sitting there, today of all days, Ceci hugged to her chest, sound asleep. She was wearing her beautiful blue dress she’d worn three weeks before when they’d celebrated their third wedding anniversary. For a moment he couldn’t get his brain around it. She hadn’t told him she’d be here today, had she? He remembered now. Of course she was here. She and Ellie Colstrap were friends, and her friend was marrying a man she’d told him she didn’t like. He’d forgotten about it in all the chaotic urgency of the last four days, forgotten they had even been invited. Ellie and Mary Ann had been close in the days before he and Mary Ann had married; Ellie was one of her very rich friends, who, John knew, thought Mary Ann had married beneath herself. A copper?
John focused on his wife sitting in the south transept, away from her friends, who sat among a huge knot of people in the center, closer to the altar, in case Ceci woke up yelling at the top of her lungs, so she could make a fast exit. He never took his eyes off his wife. He felt sweat trickle down his cheek and brushed it off. She was here, Ceci was here. No, nothing would happen to St. Paul’s. Nothing would happen to his family. Still, John couldn’t bring himself to look at the other cameras; his eyes stayed locked on Mary Ann’s face. He zoomed the camera in, saw a half-dozen people file in around her. A regal old woman stood near her, dressed to the nines, dripping with diamonds, her clothes out of date but screaming expensive. She was studying the Nelson Monument, moving closer, touching it. Then she turned, as if to leave, and Mary Ann smiled up at her and pointed to the empty chair beside her.
Wait. Wait. “Back up camera nine, now! The old lady, right there! Back up the camera!
“Stop, right there. That’s her—she’s stopped beside Nelson’s Monument. Okay, now go forward, half-speed.” Three agents crowded around him. They saw the old lady had a flat package, maybe six by eight inches in her gloved hand. If you weren’t looking closely, you wouldn’t have seen it. They watched her press close to the Nelson Monument, pause a fraction of a second.
“Zoom in!” John pointed. She shoved the package into a small crevice. They couldn’t see her after that, as people filed past her, blocked the view.
“Freeze it on her, full face!” John yelled. “Facial recognition! Quickly!”
The newly enhanced NCG homed in on the old woman’s heavily powdered face. Seconds passed as the program juxtaposed hundreds of faces next to the old lady’s. Then it stopped, narrowed her cheeks, removed the tight gray curls and her neck scarf. And there was the man Nasib Bahar, a fugitive wanted by the Algerians.
Bingo.
The agent at his elbow said, “John, there’s Mary Ann and Ceci!”
“I know,” he whispered. “I know.”
John watched Bahar sit down beside a smiling Mary Ann. Was he going to blow all of them up, himself included? No, he was an operative. He had no intention of immolating himself in the process. He was here to set the explosives and escape. How many other packets had he positioned throughout the cathedral? John set them all to retrace Bahar’s steps on the video recording. They counted as many as eight packets.
What if he was wrong? What if Bahar was going to stay, blow himself up sitting next to Mary Ann and Ceci? He’d never been so scared in his life. He had to make a decision. Then the old woman was getting up. She stood quietly, looking toward the altar, upward at the dome, and she smiled. She moved into the nave and slowly walked past several latecomers, back toward the entrance.
John and a half-dozen agents ran out of the control room, John yelling into his comm.
26 FEDERAL PLAZA
NEW YORK CITY
Monday
Agent Gray Wharton brought up a photo on his computer screen from the International Herald Tribune. “This is Sheikh Tamin bin Rashid al Amoudi. He’s oil wealthy and is treated like royalty whenever he visits London, which is often, because he spends lavishly. From what I can find so far, he is what he appears: an aging playboy who’s so rich he has not one but three jets.” Gray flipped to another photo. “On his arm is Lady Pamela Sanderson, daughter of Baron Pembroke. They’re on their way to a tony bash following a movie premiere, the latest James Bond.”
Sherlock studied the sheikh’s self-indulgent face, his dark eyes that saw nothing beyond his own desires. “No, not him, too old, too visible, too—pleased with all his wealth and what it brings him. What does he do with three jets?”
“Doesn’t say, but he’s got a good-sized family. I suppose you have to keep your relatives traveling happy.” Gray brought up the next picture, pointed to the man. “Here’s a British Muslim, Dr. Abbas Ghanbari, a professor at the University of Saint Andrews. The lady with him is the daughter of Viscount Pleasance. Look at him—stoop-shouldered, glasses, thinning hair, old. He looks too settled and content, doesn’t really fit the bill.”