A Devil Is Waiting Read online

  The Alfa swung into the drive of the house and the security lights came on. Holley switched off the engine. Sara got out, taking the key from her shoulder bag, and as she went up the steps, a lean brown Burmese cat meowed and brushed her feet.

  “On your way, Samson,” she said, and glanced at Holley as she turned the key. “From next door. An absolute rascal.”

  She went into the hall, switched on the light, and Holley followed her, closing the door behind him. The security lights died as she started to take off her coat.

  Henri had been waiting for the dark. He gave each pencil timer a half-turn, inserted them into the Semtex, replaced the lid, and left the Citroën quickly, crouching as low as possible to avoid activating the lights, dropped on his knees, and reached under the Alfa with the cake box, the magnet clicking firmly into place. At the same moment, Samson, who had been crouching underneath, let out a loud wailing cry and fled, bounding up the steps and leaping onto the balustrade of the side terrace, the security lights turning the darkness into day.

  Holley had just helped Sara off with her coat. “Samson again. What’s wrong with him?” She glanced out through the window beside the door and saw Henri as he rose up. “Daniel, there’s a man outside,” she said, and reached for her Colt, which she was carrying in a spring holster against the small of her back.

  Holley moved on the instant, reaching to open the door with one hand, drawing his Colt with the other. Henri, dazzled by the sudden lights, pulled out the Walther, fired blindly in the general direction of the door, and ran for it, Holley’s shot chasing him into the street, missing by inches and striking the gate post.

  He got there in time to see Henri vanish round the corner, hesitated, then turned. Seeing no sign of Sara, he ran in panic up the steps and through the open door. He found her on one knee, pulling herself up with the aid of a large chair, the cheval mirror on the wall starred with a bullet hole.

  “I’m all right,” she said as he reached her. “A dull thud was all I heard. I dropped down instinctively.”

  “He was probably using a Carswell.” He pulled her close, for a moment holding her tight, and she smiled. “At least we now know for certain that we are being targeted.”

  “What was he doing when you saw him?”

  “He just rose up as if he’d been crouching beside the car. Could he have been messing about with the brakes again?”

  “I’ll take a look. Do you have a light?”

  “There’s a spotlight in the cloakroom.”

  She gave it to him, and followed as he went down the steps to the Alfa, got on his knees, and found the cake tin.

  “Oh, dear,” he said, and straightened. “I’ve got a strong feeling that if I ask you to go away, you’ll refuse.”

  “Yes, I damn well will, if it’s what I think it is. What are you going to do?”

  “Well, I’m trying to be logical. If whatever is in the cake tin that’s attached to this car was remote-controlled, we’d have been blown to bits by now. He’d have already activated it while he was running away.”

  She said calmly, “Which would leave pencil timers. Fifteen-minute, thirty, one-hour?”

  “I’d say thirty to give him ample time to be elsewhere.”

  “That would seem reasonable.”

  “Let’s hope so. I’d just like to say I love you.”

  “I know you do.” She smiled gravely. “You’d better get on with it, then.”

  He handed her the spotlight, got on his back, reached up, gripped the box in both hands, and pulled so hard that it came away from the lid. He eased back, got up, staring down at the red-ringed pencil timers, pulled them out quickly, and tossed them into the birdbath beside the steps.

  “You must live right, Sara Gideon. They were fifteens—fifteen bloody minutes. We should have been dead by now, and, somewhere, the bastard who concocted this very special cake is kicking himself because he’s been waiting for the sound of an explosion that hasn’t come.”

  “I suppose you’ll have to report in? Ferguson will go ballistic.”

  “I’ll call Roper now,” he said as they went up the steps.

  There was a meow, and Samson slipped out of the darkness, wound himself around her right ankle. She reached for him, and he faded into the night again.

  “He saved our lives,” Sara said. “It’s as simple as that.” She turned and smiled at him as they went into the hall. “Thank you for your dying declaration. Naturally, I’ll hold you to it.”

  “Somehow I thought you would.”

  Henri had found Kelly in Grosvenor Square with no problem, then scrambled into the Citroën, breathless from his running.

  “Is it done?” Kelly demanded as he switched on and drove round the square past the Eisenhower statue.

  “If you mean did I plant the bomb, yes. We should hear the explosion any moment, so pull over.”

  They sat waiting, Henri checking his watch until, with a certain despair in his voice, he said, “I put in three pencils, the extras just to make sure in case of a malfunction. Fifteen minutes. They should have heard the explosion all over Mayfair by now. Let’s get going—I’m beginning to feel cursed.”

  “But what went wrong?” Kelly asked as he drove away.

  “I’d just placed the bomb under the Alfa when Holley appeared. There was an exchange of fire, silenced shots, I ran for it. I can only conclude he suspected a device and found it just in time to remove the pencils.” He didn’t mention the cat—it would have been too embarrassing.

  “Well, Rashid won’t be pleased.”

  “We don’t tell Rashid we tried again and failed. It’s beginning to smack of burlesque.”

  “If you think so,” Kelly said. “What do you want to do now?”

  “Well, at this particular moment, getting drunk sounds like a very attractive idea.”

  Dillon happened to be at Holland Park when Roper received the news, so they all came together to Sara Gideon’s house. Tony Doyle recovered the box’s lid from the Alfa’s chassis, and they were now sitting in the Victorian library by the fireplace while Roper examined the Semtex with a professional eye.

  “This has been around for years,” he said. “Highly volatile. It’s absolutely incredible that you got away with handling it, Daniel. These pencil timers remind me of my Irish time as a bomb-disposal officer—wouldn’t you agree, Tony?”

  Doyle was checking one of them now, and he nodded. “Takes me back to Ulster in the bad days, but on the other hand, I can remember stuff like this turning up years ago right here in London when IRA sympathizers were run to earth. Maybe it’s just been sitting around in somebody’s cellar.”

  “I agree,” Roper said. “But it’s dangerous stuff. It’s a miracle you two are with us.”

  “Which raises the obvious question,” Dillon said. “What’s going on? Who’s behind this?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea,” Roper said. “All I would say is that it makes it highly unlikely that the attack on Sara last night was a mugging. There’s a pattern to all this. If only we’d caught them.”

  “I admit I should have done better,” Holley said. “But if I’d given chase to tonight’s villain, Sara would have come out of the front door in search of me and walked straight into the Alfa blowing up.”

  “We can all see that,” Roper said, and his Codex signaled. “Yes, General?” He made a gesture to them and went out into the hall, returning ten minutes later.

  “So tell us the worst,” Dillon said.

  “Well, no surprises here. With the President’s visit, talk of car bombs is the last thing the government wants. In other words, this little incident never happened. No police involvement. It is entirely our baby.”

  “And we can do that?” Sara asked.

  “Charles Ferguson can do anything, Sara,” Dillon said. “Get used to that now. What happens here, Giles?”

  “Best not to stay in the house right now. I doubt they’ll return here now that we’re onto them, but it’s safer if you stay
somewhere else for the next few days.”

  “She can stay with me,” Holley said. “What about Parliament tomorrow?”

  “I’ll join Roper at Holland Park,” Dillon told him. “We’ll pick you up at ten-thirty tomorrow morning.”

  “Excellent,” Holley said. “Let’s all get some sleep. To put it mildly, it’s been a memorable evening.”

  To Owen Rashid, who was dressing the following morning before picking up Jean Talbot for the reception, Abu’s phone call came as no surprise.

  “I’ve been waiting to hear from you about the Saudi delegation that was due to arrive yesterday. You said you would introduce them to Talbot’s nephew.”

  “Which I did. They arrived yesterday, two sheikhs and a couple of generals. I took them to the Le Caprice for lunch and persuaded Jean to join the party. They were impressed with her, and the fact that she owns most of the stock in Talbot International impressed them even more.”

  “Hmm. You know, it occurs to me that it might suit our plans if you could persuade her to make a trip to Rubat with you. She could see the Bacu Railway for herself, meet Sultan Ibrahim Rashid, your uncle.”

  The prospect did not particularly appeal to Owen, but, as usual, it was diplomatic to agree. “It’s certainly an idea worth pursuing.”

  “See what she thinks about it. I’ll let you go now. I look forward to a full report on the reception. It should be mem-

  orable.”

  A slight chuckle, and he was gone. Owen puzzled over it for a moment, then reached for his blazer, pulled it on, walked out into the sitting room, and as he approached the balcony window, a flurry of rain tapped against it. Good old British weather. You could always rely on it to be bad when it was particularly essential that it should be good. There were awnings there, however, so the show could go on. He found himself a light raincoat in the cloakroom, slipped it on, and went to pick up Jean. It was far too early, but it didn’t matter. It would take her ages to dress, but what else was new? After all, she was meeting the President of the United States of America for drinks.

  An hour and a half earlier, Ali Selim had said good-bye at Stukely Towers to Asan and Jemal, holding his niece close to him for a moment.

  “Allah protect you, child, and aid you in this great enterprise.”

  “It is a privilege to have been chosen, Uncle.”

  He shook Jemal’s hand. “My blessings go with you both, and I await your return anxiously. I shall spend the day in prayer for you.”

  They got into the ambulance, Asan at the wheel, for she was a better driver, and as she drove round the circular lawn, she reached out and waved to her uncle. He waved back, and then they were out of the main gate and on their way.

  Ali Selim turned to the steps leading up to the front door, which was opened by an Arab in a chauffeur’s uniform. “Are you ready to leave, master?”

  “Certainly, Mahmud. Have you brought down my luggage?”

  “It’s already in the Mercedes in the rear courtyard. I’ll go and get it.”

  “You’ve notified the airfield that I’m ready to leave?”

  “I called them the moment I saw the ambulance start down the drive, master. The Hawker will depart as soon as we get there.”

  He put up an umbrella, since it had started to rain, and hurried away, and Ali Selim stepped back into the porch. The sooner he was out of England, the better. There was nothing to stay for, certainly not his niece and Jemal. They were the walking dead now. He had no doubt the ambulance would be admitted, and, once inside, when the real plan came into play, the one they knew nothing about, the results would be shattering. Ali Selim’s bomb maker had packed every possible cavity in the ambulance with Semtex, and the electronic timer in the paramedic’s bag, which Jemal had been told was timed to give them thirty minutes to walk away, was actually set for the instant it was turned on. The explosion was bound to be catastrophic, although unfortunate for Asan and Jemal. On the other hand, that was no bad thing. He had, after all, been too open with them concerning the flight to Peshawar and his stay in Amira. There was no advantage in making that public at the moment.

  The Mercedes came round the side of the house. Mahmud got out and raised an umbrella and mounted the steps. Ali Selim flicked the stub of the cigarette into a flower bed.

  “Fast as you like, Mahmud,” he said as he joined him. “I can’t wait to get out of here.”

  Doyle, Dillon, and Roper pulled up at the Dorchester, where Sara and Holley waited at the top of the steps, sheltering under the canopy from the rain. A doorman held an umbrella for them as they piled in, and Doyle pulled out into the Park Lane traffic.

  “Well, the President won’t be impressed with the weather, that’s for sure,” Sara said.

  “So they’ll have the canopies out,” Dillon said. “And everybody crowding in a bit, but on the good side, there’s Captain Sara Gideon, with red hair to thank God for, and nicely set off by a scarlet blazer from Valentino, and I adore those navy blue raw-silk jeans. That’s got to be Gucci. You’ll be a sensation, girl dear.”

  “Why, Sean, is it your feminine side you’re revealing?”

  “Well, I was once an actor,” he told her.

  “Yes, we all know that, but you’ll have to spend more time on your lines. The silk jeans are Valentino and the blazer’s by Gucci. Not bad for an alpha male, though.”

  Sara turned round to Roper in his wheelchair behind her. “Are you looking forward to meeting the great man?”

  “You could say that. He’s certainly a remarkable human being, but with anything as important as this, all I want is for it to be over. All those years with the bombs in Belfast taught me one thing with complete certainty. No matter how well you organize and plan, something unlooked for comes round the next corner and screws everything up. It’s a kind of chaos theory.”

  They were into the press of traffic heading to Westminster, vehicles three abreast. As Sara glanced out, looking to the left across Holley, she saw the yellow ambulance ease past, noticed particularly the young girl at the wheel for no better reason than that she was extremely pretty. Asan glanced over briefly, then eased the ambulance forward in the column of vehicles aiming for the entrance to the underground garage at the House of Commons.

  Sara frowned, leaning across Holley as the van moved close to the ambulance again. He said, “What is it?”

  The ambulance had moved again, for they had joined the double queue of vehicles entering the garage.

  “The driver of that ambulance,” Sara told him.

  Dillon said, “I noticed her, too. Pretty girl. What about her?”

  The ambulance was being passed through. “It’s just that I seem to know her from somewhere.”

  With the documents Doyle showed the security men, they were passed through themselves, and as they moved forward, it struck Sara like a thunderbolt.

  “Oh, my God, I know where I’ve seen her before.”

  Roper said, “What are you talking about, Sara?”

  “That girl was at Speakers’ Corner with the men carrying Ali Selim. She was running alongside with a hand clutching his palanquin. She was all in black and wore a silk chador.”

  Doyle braked to a halt involuntarily, and Dillon said, “God in heaven, girl, are you sure about this?”

  “Of course she is,” Roper said. “Get after them, Tony. There’s no place for them to hide, not in that ambulance. If it’s a bomb job, there’s no time to lose, so be ready to go in hard.”

  Asan and Jemal had no idea they were in trouble. The trip into London had been without incident, and their identities and the work documents relating to the delivery of oxygen cylinders to level three had been accepted without question. Level three itself seemed pretty parked up, so Asan cruised, glancing from side to side, and it was Jemal who was stressed and cursing softly.

  “Calm yourself, Jemal, all will be well,” she said serenely, for she was on a complete high, never so certain. A moment later, at the far end, they came to a section of what obv
iously were work vehicles of one kind or another, and she pulled in on the end at a row and switched off. There was a wide gap to the next vehicle, a red Ford van.

  “So it begins,” she said. “Just as my uncle said it would. We are here.”

  Jemal was so nervous that he was close to coming apart at the seams. “And here we’ll stay one way or another unless we get out of here fast. I’ll go and set the timer.”

  Which was in the paramedic’s bag in the back of the ambulance. He got out, went to open the rear door, and Dillon’s van arrived in a sudden rush as Doyle took it past in a burst of speed. Jemal pulled out the silenced Walther he had been provided with and fired twice, and the van turned in to the other side of the red Ford for protection.