Red Notice

69

The committee sat on the edges of their seats as Woolf gave it one more try. ‘Mr Antonov, please answer.’

Clements broke the silence. ‘It’s an absolute tragedy, of course, no doubt about that, but we have gained a very valuable piece of information.’

‘Do educate us, Mr Clements.’ Sarah Garvey didn’t turn to look at him, just checked the sea of blank faces around her. ‘I’m struggling to see anything but a major disaster in the making.’

‘Antonov was obviously planning to kill another hostage right from the start. It’s a classic strategy: a demonstration of raw power, a pause for discussions to show that you are open to negotiation and can be reasoned with, and then you go for the jugular with brutal, overwhelming force.’

‘So what do you propose we do about it?’ she asked icily.

‘As I have suggested from the start, we fight fire with fire. Send in the SAS as soon as they’re ready.’

Chief Constable Alderson was becoming increasingly exasperated with their sparring but he didn’t interrupt.

Sarah shook her head. ‘That option is a last resort, to be adopted only when all other avenues have been exhausted.’

‘For God’s sake,’ Clements was making no attempt to hide his irritation, ‘do we have to sit here discussing points of procedure while he kills one hostage after another after another, until you finally get the message?’

‘You heard the SAS estimate of potential casualties.’ She checked her notes. ‘It was forty per cent. Even if Antonov kills one hostage every thirty minutes, it would take days to reach that total.’

‘Home Secretary, if I may…’ Alderson received several megawatts of glare from Clements for his interruption, but he had had enough. ‘We have no idea what Antonov is up to down there. The demands he has made — to me they seem so basic and naïve. Even the bullion he has stipulated — it comes to just over five million pounds. Hardly worth all this effort. We know he has explosives, and we know he has manpower. This is not an escape attempt gone wrong just because some SAS trooper happened to bump into him on the train.’

Clements was fuming. ‘Mr Alderson, you must remember we dictate policy. Your police, and the military for that matter, are simply the instruments of that policy.’

Alderson could hold a stare as long as the next man, but he simply couldn’t be bothered. He was actually backing up what Clements had been saying, if only he’d bothered to listen. He sighed inwardly, and tried to console himself with the thought that in two more years he’d retire; he’d no longer have to deal with arseholes like this man.

Brookdale sparked up from his wall seat, tapping on his mobile screen calculator. ‘The government would still want to see a negotiated settlement. Even if there have already been more casualties in the explosions, and if we lose one, even two, every thirty minutes during the negotiation, the death to benefit ratio would be acceptable — as long as the number of survivors is still many times greater.

‘We could still be seen as saving lives, given that Laszlo had planned to kill many more. The government’s gain is well worth a certain amount of hostage pain. But forty per cent? That’s a very big number to sell out there on the street, Home Secretary.’

The elephant in the room was the likely scale of their own casualties: if the SAS attacked, how many of them would also be killed? But it wasn’t a very scary elephant. The Men in Black had volunteered to do what they did. No one had been press-ganged; no one had been bullshitted. It was their job, and there were thousands only too eager to take their place. The day they didn’t like it, they should leave; it was as simple as that. And Brookdale and his people would play the hero card: the nation would be proud of the courageous young men who’d sacrificed their lives in the battle against evil, terror, unspeakable violence… or whatever seemed the best way of selling the story that particular day.

The one thing Sarah Garvey was not was indecisive. ‘I’m going to need a little more than hunches to convince me. We all share the same distaste at the thought of casualties, but sometimes we have to accept one unpleasantness in order to forestall a much greater tragedy.’

Brookdale was scribbling furiously. She watched him for a moment then continued: ‘I will accept additional casualties while we learn more about what Antonov is up to in that tunnel. In the meantime, we continue to try to negotiate.’

She stood and leaned towards them, palms flat on the veneered table top. ‘Now I’m going to take five minutes to clear my mind and my bladder.’