Fortress

EPILOGUE

The first reports to emerge from the US ambassador’s residence were confused and contradictory: a shooting, a frenzied stabbing, a bloodbath. All three were true.

Throughout the night, Downing Street and White House press officers vainly attempted to impose news blackouts, which simply fanned the flames of rumour online as well as on TV. By the end of the night people at home on either side of the Atlantic could choose from at least twenty interpretations of what had just happened.

By seven a.m. London time, some of the rumours had solidified into confirmed reports. The frenzied attack of a lone female guest had been eclipsed by a much stranger and even more compelling claim. The Mail Online dubbed it a ‘Romeo and Juliet attack’, the suicide pact by a pair of doomed lovers who had given their lives to jihad.

At ten a.m. a joint press conference was convened, but only after several hours of wrangling had taken place between the two governments over what could be said, should be said and definitely could never be said. The agreed line was that the US Secret Service had magnificently thwarted an audacious attempted suicide bombing. But nothing could be done to cover up the fact that the young male bomber had actually been in the pay of the UK’s governing party. As for his lover, the woman known only as Nasima, her identity remained a mystery.

Five thousand miles away, Aaron Stutz stood alone in his penthouse, watching multiple screens featuring TV and online attempts to get to grips with the story. Either way, for him it was a win: whether the two premiers died or survived, both outcomes guaranteed that anti-Islamist tensions would escalate to new heights. Public demand for stiffer measures against Islamist extremism was inevitable. Getting the incumbent President and prime minister off the stage would have ushered in successors who would be obliged to consider the case for the digital fortress — and almost certainly act on it. But even if they survived, and in any case both of them were up for election within the year, they would have to be seen to act. The digital fortress would become a reality now.

Stutz helped himself to a tumbler of Jim Beam Black and turned away from the screens to the picture window that ran along the whole side of the room. He looked in the direction of the mosque rising in the south-east of the city and raised his glass to the memory of the young woman who had given herself so bravely and so audaciously for the cause.

In Thames House, inside Mandler’s glass refuge, Jonathan Rhodes, his opposite number from Vauxhall Cross, was just finishing his briefing. It had been an awkward encounter.

‘Our conclusion so far, Zuabi doesn’t exist. He’s a clever construct. Someone’s been fucking with the systems, some digital über-geek has created a persona for financial purposes. But we’ll keep digging.’

There were also a lot of difficult questions about Buckingham and his antics in Texas. ‘Your man pissed in our tent big-time.’

Mandler didn’t attempt to protest.

‘And now he’s untouchable, I suppose.’

Mandler gave him a curt nod, not wishing to rub it in. ‘I think that’s the right attitude.’

‘What will you do with him?’

‘That’s probably up to him, I suspect.’

It had been a long night for Tom. After the Secret Service heavies had fallen on him he was cuffed and carted off to a secure room where they’d tried to question him. He had told them to piss off and call Mandler. In the end Sarah Garvey had come to his rescue. She had witnessed the whole incident, and after one of her trademark bollockings, during which the men of the US Secret Service heard words they had never known a female politician to utter, she had sent them off to find him somewhere to shower and a change of clothes and Tom was released into British custody. Even then there were a lot of questions about what had made him focus on Nasima. The device in her hand was the answer. But what had also come back to him, from among the many mysteries about his time in Texas, was what he had heard on the building site. And as he had zeroed in on her, the thought had flashed through his mind: was she the woman to whom the mosque would be dedicated?

Woolf caught up with Tom later that night. He had been at Karza’s bedside, piecing together his story and wondering how long he could hold off telling him about the fate of his brother. They had contacted his mother, who sounded like a handful, and she was coming in by plane that morning.

Woolf didn’t go in for jubilation. ‘I think a drink is in order,’ was about the sum total of it. Very British, for two men who together had just saved the lives of the leaders of the Western world.

‘Your round, I think,’ said Tom.

‘So, what now?’

‘I’ll let you know when I know,’ he replied.

Low cloud hung over the city. Central London was still on lockdown. The tubes and buses weren’t running, checkpoints had been set up all round Westminster, and what looked like every serving member of the Metropolitan Police had been called out onto the streets. As Tom walked across St James’s Park, he marvelled at how only the ducks were calm, happy in their oblivion. The question on everyone’s lips: was this a one-off, or was there more to come?

The few pedestrians he encountered eyed him, and each other, uneasily. Not a good day to be carrying a backpack — or sporting a dark beard. A row of police vans with armoured mesh over the windows parked nose-to-tail formed a cordon around the Invicta headquarters.

Inside, Phoebe was still at her post. The look in her eyes as Tom approached suggested Woolf had kept her up to speed. She came out from behind the desk and put her arms round him. ‘So, I guess this is it?’

He smiled at her.

But before he could answer Rolt was at the door. The gleam in his eye said it all. ‘A good night for Invicta, you might say.’

No pretence now, no frown of concern.

Tom nodded. ‘Yes, you might say that.’

Rolt let him into his office and closed the door. The sun was blasting in through the huge windows. The Turner over the mantelpiece looked fabulous. ‘Well, what’s your decision?’

Tom clasped his hands. There was a tiny fleck of Nasima’s blood under a fingernail. He scooped it out, then looked up at Rolt. ‘Count me in.’