Siege

Forty

AS SOON AS Fox had the information he needed from Michael Prior, he used the laptop from his backpack to log into a hotmail account that only he and one other person had access to, where he left a simple three-word message in the drafts section: I have it. Leaving a message in the drafts folder was an old anti-surveillance trick. It meant that the content couldn’t be monitored or read by the security forces, since no message was ever actually sent over the internet.

He knew he had to move fast. Leaving Prior behind, he exited room 316 and took the emergency stairs to the second floor, where he stopped at room 202. Before he’d tampered with the guest reservation database, 202 had been empty. Now it was registered to Mr Robert Durran, a freelance architect who was on the first night of a two-night stay.

Using the master key card, Fox let himself into the room. The lights were off and the curtains open, letting in the flashing lights of all the emergency services vehicles gathered across the street. The bed was made and the room still had a fresh, unoccupied smell.

Fox unzipped the rucksack and removed the clothes and shoes he’d been wearing when he arrived at the Park Royal rendezvous earlier that afternoon. Next he pulled out a wallet containing a driving licence, passport and credit cards in the name of Robert Durran, as well as several hundred pounds in cash, from an internal pocket. He slipped the wallet into the front pocket of the trousers, then carefully placed the whole bundle under the bed, pushing it in so that it was well out of sight.

Finally, he looked round the room and, satisfied that his contingency plan was in place, headed back to join the others.

In the ballroom, Bear and Cat were sitting on hard-backed plastic chairs a few yards apart, watching the hostages. Both of them turned round as he entered the room. Cat gave him a bored, vaguely dismissive look, which meant that Wolf had yet to tell her about the death of her brother, while Bear, the ‘man with the face’ who’d saved Fox’s neck in Iraq all those years ago by pushing him out of the way of an IED, gave him a nod, which he returned.

Only a handful of the hostages looked up. There were seventy-seven of them in all, forty-six men and thirty-one women, and Fox had to admit they were an acquiescent bunch. Seated quietly at the far end of the room, their heads were down and they were behaving exactly as they’d been ordered. Either sensible or cowardly, depending on which way you chose to look at it.

To Fox, they were cowardly, and he walked past them and into the satellite kitchen.

Wolf was sitting alone at the far end next to the phone in the kitchen drinking a coffee and smoking one of his foul-smelling cigarettes. He turned round as Fox entered. ‘I’ve spoken to the negotiator and given him our demands. They want to speak to Prior. In fact, they are insistent.’

‘We need to be careful about that,’ said Fox. ‘They’ll be trying to pinpoint his location in the building. If you let them speak to him, they’ll know exactly where he is.’

‘We can always move him.’

‘True. But we’re already two men down so we can’t just shift him from room to room. It means manpower and logistics, not to mention risk.’

Wolf frowned. ‘So you think we shouldn’t?’

‘We don’t have anything to gain from it. Let them sweat a little. And in the meantime, let’s release the children. That’ll give them something to work with, and help to stave off any chance of an early assault.’

‘OK,’ said Wolf slowly. ‘That’s what we’ll do. But I’m not releasing any of their parents. I don’t want them giving anything away about us.’

Fox agreed with him. The minute any hostages were released, the police would be on them like a shot, trying to extract any information they could about what was going on inside the Stanhope – information that would later be handed over to the military for when they staged their inevitable assault. Children, however, would be of only limited help.

He rubbed his face beneath the balaclava. His skin felt itchy and sweaty, and he wished he could take the damn thing off, but there was no way he could risk anyone seeing his face tonight.

‘I’m guessing you haven’t told Cat about her brother yet?’ he asked.

‘Not yet, no.’

‘She’s not going to take it well.’

‘Of course she isn’t, you fool.’ Wolf looked agitated. ‘I’ll handle her. She listens to me. Take over out there and send her in.’

He turned away and Fox left the kitchen, thinking that not only was Wolf an arsehole, he was a weak one too. He looked at his watch. 18.50. The siege was two hours old. A little more than four more and it would all be over. And he’d be a rich man.

It was well worth putting up with a few insults in the meantime.