Secret Asset

59

The policeman was moving everyone away from the windows, though Tom knew it wasn’t necessary. They were led to the vast downstairs room of the bookshop and made to stay there for almost half an hour. He kept a careful eye on his watch, and after eight minutes smiled involuntarily as the countdown finally ended. Three years, he told himself, I planned this for three years—and now at last the moment’s come.

He felt absolutely jubilant. He knew that upstairs on the street the police would be reeling with confusion as they discovered the crashed van contained fertiliser that had not exploded: the detonators he had given Bashir were useless—they wouldn’t light a cigarette, thought Tom, much less set off a bomb.

The local reaction, as news spread like wildfire about this near-disaster, would be relief, though Tom was certain Oxford would never know another public Encaenia procession. But further away, at Thames House, the reaction would be altogether different. In Thames House, he reckoned, the inhabitants would be having a collective heart attack.

For they would have no idea where he was, and no lead to finding him. They would be worried sick that he would strike again—and they were right to worry. Oxford was just the beginning, and he could see no reason why he could not stay one step ahead of his former colleagues for a long time to come. He looked at his watch. In three hours he’d be in his hotel room on the outskirts of Bristol. In little more than twenty-four, his plane would be preparing to land at JFK.

In the short term as well, he had given MI5 plenty to cope with. Their embarrassment at this close call would rapidly give way to anxious post-mortems, internal inquiries, a media storm, questions in the House, the blame game, the indisputable damage to the reputation of the intelligence services. “Why had they failed to stop the bombers?” “What if the detonators had worked?” And that was before they’d even begun to grapple with the knowledge that for almost fifteen years, they’d had a mole in their midst. A mole they couldn’t catch.

Now a policeman let them out at last, and they all trooped up the staircase that led directly out onto the Broad. Tom lagged a little behind, for safety’s sake, and was very glad he did. Twenty feet short of the exit, he looked out at the street from the top stair and saw the familiar figure of Liz Carlyle standing in the middle of the road, talking to Charles Wetherby.

At first, he didn’t believe his eyes. How had they got on to him here? How had they known his target? It didn’t make any sense; he had been so careful.

Could they have turned one of the bombers? No, for only Bashir had known the exact target—Khaled had been content not to know, and Rashid was too weak ever to be trusted either by him or Bashir. Bashir would never betray a cause he was so willing to die for. And if any of them talked now—he assumed they would have been captured minutes before—they would know nothing that would let either the police or Tom’s former colleagues find him.

Who then could have given him away? Had O’Phelan talked before Tom had got to him in Belfast? It seemed inconceivable—why would the lecturer have rung Tom and warned him that Liz had been to see him, asking nosy questions?

There seemed no obvious answer to what had gone wrong, but he had no time to think it through. Turning back, away from the door, he moved back into the building. One of the Blackwell’s assistants touched his arm—she had been like a Border collie, herding them up the stairs from behind—and he flashed the charming smile he’d learned to use like a weapon. “I left something behind,” he explained.

She’d smiled back, and let him go. Patience, he told himself. Don’t panic. But you’ve got to get out of here fast. This was just stage one, after all. He mustn’t be stopped now.