Revenger

92

At Kennington police station DI Keane’s office door burst open and a young detective constable ran in.

‘Ma’am, ma’am, they’ve found him!’ he exclaimed.

‘The Second Man?’

‘What’s happening?’ called Commander Stamford down the line.

Keane switched to speakerphone just as the DC went on, ‘There were a couple of reports of a man answering his description running hell for leather through Regent’s Park. Then more of him on Wellington Road, and by the studio at Abbey Road.’

‘So where is he now?’

‘Well, that’s the thing,’ said the DC. ‘He was spotted going into a building on Abbey Road, and then about a minute later someone called up saying a bomb had gone off.’

‘Get over there at once, Inspector,’ Stamford said. ‘Take whoever you’ve got. I’ll call SCO19 and get them on the move. This time we’re damn well going to get him.’

The Metropolitan Police weren’t the only ones on the move. When someone gets on the phone and reports a bomb going off, key-word programs at GCHQ in Cheltenham and the National Security Administration at Ford Meade, Maryland immediately signal an alert. When the address given by the caller is the same as that of a US diplomat, it becomes a red alert. Within less than a minute of the 999 call concluding a message was on its way to John D. Giammetti at the CIA in London. And within a further sixty seconds a team of armed field agents had already been scrambled and were running for the black, bullet- and bomb-proof Chevrolet Suburban people-carrier that would take them straight to Abbey Road.