Red Notice

66

They dragged the French girl, bruised and bleeding from her scalp, mouth and wrists, along the carriages and threw her to the floor in front of Laszlo.

Sambor nudged her with the toe of his boot, like a curious child with a dead bird. ‘Seems their super-hero is still alive after all,’ he grunted.

‘Are you sure it’s the same man?’ Laszlo thought for a minute. ‘Brother, we have to solve this little problem very quickly indeed, because we’ll be facing another much bigger one before long.’

‘But the SAS shouldn’t even be in Folkestone yet…’

‘All the more reason to deal with this man while we still can.’ He knelt down beside the girl. ‘And she is the key that opens the door to him…’ He took hold of her hair and yanked her head back far enough to stare into her eyes. He switched from Russian to French. ‘I think it is now time for you to tell me the truth. I need to know exactly what happened back there.’

‘I told you, a man took the children.’ Delphine tried not to show her fear.

Laszlo nodded. ‘And what was he wearing?’

‘A wet suit,’ she said, with a spark of defiance. ‘He was coming out of the toilet.’

Laszlo’s expression didn’t change, but he drew back his fist and punched her hard in the face. She slumped to the floor, trying to clear her head. He dragged her up again.

Blood streamed from her nose and tears filled her eyes. ‘I don’t know…’ She was having trouble breathing. ‘It was too dark. I couldn’t see properly.’

Laszlo gave her a contemptuous look. ‘Well, let me make it easier for you then. Was he tall or short, fat or fit, dark or light hair?’

‘I–I don’t know. It all happened so fast. I didn’t see his face. I guess he just looked… normal…’

Laszlo stood up and seemed to translate to his brother. He turned his attention back to the girl. ‘Tell me about the man who helped you when you were running to the toilet this morning.’

‘What man?’

‘The one who was with you when you had to throw up.’

She shrugged. ‘I felt terrible. He was just some nice guy who offered to help me.’

Laszlo gave a thin smile. He spoke even more softly, but there was no mistaking the menace in his tone. ‘And yet I’m fairly sure I heard you call him Tom…’

‘Maybe that was his name. I really can’t remember.’ She gave a hacking cough and spattered blood across the carpet.

‘Why would a stranger help you?’

‘Normal people do things like that for each other.’ She was beginning to regain her composure. ‘Not everyone has to be an arsehole.’

Laszlo chose to ignore the comment. The girl had spirit, and he couldn’t help admiring that. He glanced at Sambor, who was still standing impassively behind her, and nodded.

Moments later, Sambor held up a battered French passport and a mobile phone. Laszlo took the passport and flicked through it. ‘Hmm… so, Delphine Prideux…’ He nodded at his brother and asked him a question.

Sambor reached into his jacket and brought out a sheaf of closely printed sheets. Studying them intently, he ran an index finger the size of a sausage down each page. As he read them out, Delphine recognized the words ‘Tom’, ‘Thomas’ and ‘Prideux’. Then he repeated the process. ‘Tomas Alvarez… Thomas George Buckingham… Tom Leary…’

The alarm began to sound on Laszlo’s mobile phone. ‘Thirty minutes already.’ He switched off the pealing church bells. ‘As the English say, doesn’t time fly when you’re enjoying yourself?’ A thought struck him as he put Delphine’s passport into his pocket. ‘I’m getting careless. I must be losing my edge.’ He held out his hand to Sambor. He gave Laszlo Delphine’s phone.

Laszlo watched what little colour was left drain from Delphine’s cheeks as he began checking through her call register and texts. He didn’t have to scroll far. A moment later he turned the phone towards her so that she could see the screen. It displayed the most recent message she had received. It read:

Lock door. Lift toilet seat.

The sender ID simply said ‘Tom’.

His hand shot out, grabbed her by the throat and dragged her to her feet. ‘Do you know what those church bells tell me? That the British have failed to meet the deadline for accepting my demands.’ He didn’t wait for a reply. ‘It’s time to kill another hostage.’

Knuckles whitening as he tightened his grip, he pushed her down the carriage in front of him, towards the driver’s cab.

He stopped at the door, among a crowd of terrified passengers still standing upright, hands on their heads, facing the windows. Some of the older and frailer of them were feeling the strain: their arms, legs and, in one case, whole body were shaking from a combination of fear and the sheer effort of holding the stress position.

Laszlo detected a voice cutting through the mush from the speaker beside the driver’s controls. ‘Ah, they have mastered the technology at last.’ He released his grip on Delphine’s throat and punched her to the floor. Leaving Sambor to stand watch over her, he walked into the driver’s cab, picked up the mic, and kept eye-to-eye with the girl as he spoke.

‘So, who am I talking to now?’

‘My name is James Woolf.’

‘Ah, Mr Woolf… We talk at last.’

He had heard about Woolf. Known in the intelligence community as a dogged pursuer, he was the only foreigner who’d actually gone to South Ossetia to find out more about his target. It hadn’t taken long for word to reach Laszlo.

‘Indeed.’

Laszlo was very happy with the shift up the hierarchy from chief constable. So the British had started to get their act together. Not bad for thirty minutes.

‘Well, Mr Woolf, I take it that we have the first element of any negotiation completed. We have a relationship. You know me, and I know you — that is to say, I know about you. Whoever else is listening, I don’t know you, and I don’t care to.’

Laszlo knew that any negotiator needs to build a rapport, a relationship based on a form of trust. He or she needs to show that they are actively listening, to communicate openly so that the hostage-taker feels he isn’t being lied to — even when he is. The negotiator needs to connect on a personal level, to show that he or she cares, and to keep the conversation slow. Small-talk first; never straight to business. But that wasn’t going to happen today.

‘Your thirty minutes are up. What news do you have for me?’

‘You must understand that these things take time. What’s your intended route, so I can clear it with air-traffic control? Which sun-drenched tax haven is going to have the pleasure of your company?’

‘I wasn’t born yesterday, Mr Woolf. You sound to me like a man who is stalling.’

‘Mr Antonov, I need some more time. I’m trying as hard as I can, but you know how these things work — I have to get permission from COBRA.’

‘Mr Woolf, time is one commodity that you do not have. Stop stalling.’

‘I am trying to do what you asked — but thirty minutes to organize a helicopter and a substantial amount of gold?’

Laszlo could hear Woolf doing his best to slow the exchange — never antagonizing him, but at the same time not giving him an inch.

‘As the saying goes,’ Woolf continued, ‘the impossible I can do at once, but miracles take a little longer.’

Laszlo gave a sigh, like a teacher presented with some disappointing homework by a star pupil. ‘I confess I expected better of you. Can we not dispense with these formalities and speak really honestly, one professional to another? Is it absolutely necessary for us to have to go on with this very painful process, killing one passenger here, another one there?’

‘But I need detail. You need to help me help you here. I need to know how much fuel the aircraft will require. I need to know the number of passengers so the payload/fuel ratio can be factored in…’

The line went silent apart from a gentle electronic hiss.

Woolf’s pencil hovered over the sheet of A4 paper in front of him. It was now a mass of doodled caricatures, some charming, some grotesque — his way of attempting to calm himself during the potentially more heated moments of the exchange. He put the pencil to one side and began to build a small barrier of sugar lumps on the desk top.

Finally Laszlo replied: ‘May I call you James?’

Woolf took a deep breath. ‘No. You may not.’

Laszlo didn’t miss a beat. ‘Mr Woolf, I am reminded of your prime minister when he told us that we cannot coddle the slowest runners just because they are slow.’ He didn’t attempt the accent. ‘“We must inspire speed.” Now, please listen carefully.’

Woolf, those at the COBRA table and everyone in the Folkestone holding area listened to the squeak of combat boots followed by a whimper and the sound of a body being dragged closer to the mic.

There was a moment of silence, and then the muffled but unmistakable double report of a suppressed weapon.