Assassin

23

Tord Bahr was sitting in front of a screen in Washington, DC, looking at water features in Bristol, England. They ran down the middle of Broad Quay, the waterside area at the city's heart that was once one corner of the Golden Triangle of the British slave trade. Three centuries ago, ships left Broad Quay for Africa, laden down with trade goods that would be exchanged for human beings. This living cargo was shackled with iron chains and kept in conditions so vile that more than twice as many Africans died on the journey as survived to be sold in the markets of Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas. The money raised by their enslavement was used to buy sugar, molasses, cotton and tobacco to take back home to Bristol.

Given all that, Bahr understood why the President wanted to make his public address from a stage at the end of the quay. He could see the symbolic significance of starting a war against modern slavery from that point. But that didn't mean he liked the President's sudden decision to go there, not when it was his job to keep Lincoln Roberts alive. An overseas presidential visit required a massive amount of planning, involving as many as two thousand bureaucrats, servicemen and women, presidential staffers and politicians, not to mention the bomb dogs that would sniff every square inch of the ground the President would cover. Under normal circumstances, a Presidential Advance Team would be sent out months in advance to consider every possible eventuality that might occur during a visit. Now Bahr was being given days, not weeks, to do the same job.

There was at least the minuscule consolation that any potential threats to his boss's life would be working at equally short notice. An assassination typically requires at least as much planning as its prevention, but even so, killers are as capable of being spontaneous as anyone else. So now Bahr was looking at dozens of water-spouts, no more than six inches tall, arranged in rows along a series of shallow, flagstoned basins down the centre of the quay. Assuming that the whole area would be packed with people – and when you had a president who made rock gods and supermodels look like minor local celebrities, every area was always packed – those basins would be as filled with people as the cobblestoned areas around them. And Bahr couldn't have people falling over and suing the President, any more than he could have them shooting him.

He gave a deep, frustrated sigh, ran a hand through his hair, momentarily ruffling its immaculate neatness as he scratched his scalp, and spoke to one of his subordinates. 'OK, Craig, you're gonna have to talk to the local people here, because all these fountains, or whatever, have got to go.'

'You want them turned off?'

'No, I want them totally boarded over, solid enough for folks to stand on. And I want those boards sealed tight so nothing gets underneath, and I mean absolutely nothing.'

'Sure, I'll get right on it.'

'Now, do me a favour, pan left and down, let me see those cobblestones.'

In Bristol, Special Agent Craig Bronstein turned his head and examined the ground beneath his feet. The signal from the miniature Motorola video camera hidden in his sunglasses was sent instantly to one of the TV displays in front of Tord Bahr, 3,600 miles away.

'I don't like cobblestones,' Bahr said, as much to himself as Bronstein. 'Too easy to dig up and use as missiles. Can we get asphalt or something poured over them?'

'I doubt it. This whole area's kind of a regeneration project. They're very proud of it. And I don't think the stones are gonna be an issue. They're pretty well secured. You'd need a jackhammer, pickaxe at the very least, to dig them up.'

'Let me think about that,' said Bahr, sounding a long way from convinced.

He switched his attention to another screen: 'Hey, Renee, those four-lane highways, either side of the quay: they're closed to traffic the night before the visit and they stay closed until the President has left the country. If anyone complains about it, tell them it's non-negotiable… Right, now I want to think about tunnels… What's under the ground down there? Where are the access points? C'mon, people, talk to me. I need to know…' Albanian gangs had been the dominant criminal force in the British sex industry for the best part of a decade and the Visar clan was the most powerful of them all. Of course, not all Albanian immigrants to the UK were drawn to organized crime. For the most part they, like so many immigrant communities in so many nations, survived by taking menial, minimum-wage jobs which the host country's natives refused to consider.

There were, for example, Albanians among the cleaning staff at the Bristol hotel where a Home Office official called Charles Portland-Smyth was staying while liaising with the Secret Service's Presidential Advance Team. On the day, several British police outfits, including the Royalty and Diplomatic Protection Department, the Met's Counter Terrorism Command, otherwise known as S015, and the Special Escort Group would all be publicly involved in assisting with presidential protection. Officers from MI5 would also be more discreetly deployed. All came under the overall control of the Home Office.

Charles Portland-Smyth was not a complete idiot. He did not – as so many other government officials have done – leave his laptop on a train, in a pub, or sitting on the front seat of his car, handily placed for any passing thief. He did, however, leave it in his room, unprotected by any password, when he went down for an early-morning workout and shower in the hotel gym, followed by a healthy breakfast of muesli and fresh fruit.

When he got back, the laptop was still there, exactly where he had left it. He had no idea that a memory-stick containing the entire contents of his hard drive was sitting in the apron pocket of an apparently humble housemaid. So it was that all the details of the President's schedule, movements and protection protocols were in the hands of the Visar clan by the time Portland-Smyth was walking through the hotel lobby, smiling ingratiatingly at the small group of Secret Service agents who were waiting for him, and saying, 'Jack, Craig, Renee… hope you all slept well. Let's just wrap up the fine points of the plan and then we can all go home!'