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'For his first trick, the terrorist presents....' Ch. 2 - JHyde - 10-02-2010 07:17 PM
Same spoilers as before - please read chapter one before proceeding.
It's an exposition heavy chapter, but forgive me, the hype is necessary.
A huge thankyou to Tea Lady for answering all my questions about the Eurostar and the Chunnel so patiently. This chapter's for her x
**********************
Lucas lounged against the wall outside the library. The University College London campus was teeming with young adults, barely overgrown children experimenting with grown-up concerns. Abehsera, his contact, appeared from nowhere it seemed. He walked slowly towards the same square foot of wall to shelter from the rain, and pulled out a cigarette wearily.
"You saw the news this morning?" They only had a few minutes and Lucas didn't waste time with pleasantries.
The young man inclined his head slightly and took a convincingly long drag of what was surely not a prop piece in this little charade.
"The Algerian? I saw Mameui this morning, and nothing was said to say that he was one of us."
Lucas pushed. "What exactly was said?"
Abehsera shrugged. "Not a lot. Just that it would keep the coppers busy for a bit, right?" He turned to face his handler, but Lucas hissed and tried not to let his frustration show as he asked:
"Has there been any talk of new members? No-one new on the scene lately? No contacts from abroad, unusual post to the flat?"
"Nothing." The teenager's voice was flat as he worked the cigarette for all it was worth, savoring the last few puffs. "You know they make these shorter so that you....."
"...buy more, I know." Lucas cut him off. "So there's been no talk of anything out of Algiers, Morocco or northern Africa?"
"Nah, mate, nuffin'." Abehsera pushed off from the wall like a backstroker in reverse, and walked off into the rain. His handler wiped the drizzle from his brow and struggled to see the endgame.
************************
Ros clicked sharply into the office where she had been re-directed for the fourth time. She suspected she was being played with, while an assembly line of press was arranged outside the Met's station near St Pancras. Ros hissed impatiently upon finding the room she sought was empty and headed for the stairs.
"Can't be that hard," she said softly under her breath as she climbed downstairs swiftly, "thinking like the local plods. Bet they've hidden him in the basement."
She found them behind the third door she tried, and summoned the woman who appeared to be interrogating the man behind the desk. "DCI Angelo? A word please. Outside." She flashed her ID and exited the room, not bothering to see that Angelo was following her. She knew that the CID girl would be if she knew what was good for her health.
Ros turned to face the 30s something high flyer who had clearly arranged for her wild good chase through the halls of the Met station. "There's a car waiting outside for Henrik to leave for Thames House. Except it's out the back and we'll be leaving immediately, not waiting until the brass is here to get their photo taken. While the bad guy gets pushed into a car by the scary spooks of Millbank fame."
Angelo's hackles were raised. "And how do you expect to get him out of here just by yourself?"
Ros withdrew her mobile from her pocket and started to press keys on the number pad. "There are men enough outside with the car, they'll meet me at the door."
Angelo set her jaw and turned on her heel to fetch Henrik. Ros smiled, pleased such a basic lie had worked so well and so quickly. To be fair, she did have a driver, but for all intents and purposes she was handling Henrik solo. It didn't worry her in the least, however, as she knew the safest passage for them both back to Thames House lay along the route of relative anonymity.
******************************
Ros had left her charge in the hands of the guards downstairs, while she returned to see Harry, who raised his eyebrows as she entered his office.
"Any trouble with the local constabulary?" he queried.
Ros rolled her eyes. "Nothing that Maxwell Smart couldn't have handled. It's amazing, they just assumed I had brought the whole of Thames House with me. I'm not sure that the 'softly, softly' approach is something they understand."
Harry permitted himself a rare smile. "I'm not sure that you were anything like 'soft' with them either, Ros, but that's why I sent you. Henrik downstairs?"
"Yes." Ros paused and spoke her mind. "He doesn't strike me as a typical terror suspect, Harry. I mean, why was the bomb still unexploded by the time he got out at St Pancras? Unless he was targeting one person, the amount of Semtex was hardly enough to hurt many people, if any, other than Henrik himself."
Harry nodded his assent. "The same things are troubling me, but what concerns me most is that it was a careless strategy from a man who is clearly no fool, at least based on what Ruth and Tariq have gathered thus far. But there is a money trail, and Lucas is swinging by Henrik's flat on the way back here with what the Section Q boys have found so far."
************************
They were arranged around the conference table in the meeting room. Ruth sat immediately to Harry's left, a subtle difference in how things had shifted since they had formalized their attachment. No more looking when the other's face was turned. She gave him a small smile as she took her seat; a smile he acknowledged by gently squeezing her thigh under the table. It wasn't overtly sexual or even intended as anything more than a reassuring touch, but Harry found his heart beat a little faster as he watched her cheeks flush. It reassured him that so little response from her could still make him feel so giddy. He focused his attention on Lucas who had just entered, shaking his hair free of the rain which clung to it stubbornly.
"Anything interesting?" the Section Chief asked as he relucutantly withdrew his hand from his Section Analyst's knee.
"Well, a map of the Underground and some postcards I need Ruth's help with." He passed Ruth a small zip lock bag containing a few cards. "But Harry, he couldn't have done much with what he had in that bag, surely. And Abehsera didn't think anything was said that indicated he might be one of the North African kafi. He might be short spoken, but he rarely gets the important stuff wrong."
Harry and Ros exchanged a look and Lucas raised his eyebrows questioningly.
Ros filled him in. "We're also confused about the explosives, but there's a money trail - Tariq?"
Section D's resident techie got to his feet and grinned. "He'd never be an accountant this one. Messy finances. But a deposit of many, many pounds was made this morning, arriving in his bank account 'round about the time he got on the train in Lille - it was Lille, right?" He looked to Ruth for reassurance and she nodded. Strange the details that Tariq would forget but retain all sorts of others. The young man continued: "The money seems to come from a bank in South Africa, but the money then can be traced back to Morocco."
"So on the surface......" Harry began and Ros finished his sentence:
"it looks authentic, but there's a few maybes here I'm not crazy about. Ruth, what about Lille? Is there anything from French Intelligence to suggest that we're missing something and that this was a Tunnel attack?"
Ruth shook her head. "Henrik has dual citizenship, and in every way he's a model citizen. The French have no record of him on their files apart from some student activism when he was in Lyon studying at undergraduate level, but if I'm honest it's all a little too convenient. It's all so perfectly constructed. The money trail, the single young man in his twenties with only fleeting connections to radical orgnizations in Algiers? And the tunnel - such an obvious target! He reads like a classic fall guy."
Lucas looked dubious for a moment, but before he could speak Ros asked Ruth: "And there's no projected targets immediately beyond the station, are there?"
Ruth gestured in frustration. "Nothing that would be seriously harmed by such a small amount of explosives, no."
Ros sighed. "So we keep buffering against the same problem and....." she was interrupted by Tariq's distinct snicker.
"It's funny, because he was on a train and we keep 'buffering'....." he trailed off. "I like puns!" he protested feebly. Ruth spared him a smile as Ros finished her thought.
"We keep coming back to this problem that the explosives weren't exactly tailored for mass attacks. It's not as though there were ten of them coming through on the train all wearing them." She paused again. "Please tell me there weren't."
"If there were more of them, it's unlikely that they would have chosen to transport them via the Tunnel and not use them in an attack on the train itself." Ruth waved her right hand, pen in hand. "Of course, the conversation stopper is that Semtex is available here readily enough. Why bother doing something so risky as to transport explosives through the Chunnel of all things? They could get it through on a boat much more easily."
There was a moment's silence as Harry remembered another boat so many, many months ago, and the rest of his team grappled with the strange notion of Ruth referring colloquially to the 'Chunnel'.
"So why didn't he activate the bomb on the train?" asked Ros.
"Any cursory internet search on the tunnel reveals that an explosion of that size inside a train would have little impact. That was all of one of the most lauded achievements of its construction." Ruth shrugged. "The security analysis the Service did when it opened suggests several places where the tunnel is vulnerable to attack, and it's fairly accurate apart from several glaring typographical errors. But unless Henrik was targeting someone very specific, it's unlikely he would have achieved much beyond his own death."
"OK." Ros looked resolute. "Lucas, you and I will talk to him while Ruth and Tariq continue to follow the money and see how credible this is."
Harry had his head propped up by the tips of his left hand. "The problem is that we can't do anything with the fourth estate camped outside and every politician and his dog camped inside. Baying for blood, all of them. I've no interest in a media coup, whether this goes our way or not, but it will be hard for me to keep people out of the loop. We'll have to suffer company on this one, I'm afraid."
"Friends from upstairs?" Ros inquired quizzically.
"Friends? If you use the term very loosely, I suppose so. From upstairs certainly. And Whitehall too, I suspect."
Tariq cleared his throat. "I'm having some trouble getting hold of the footage of this whole thing, I'm having to retrieve some records and it's taking time."
"I want to see exactly how they apprehended Henrik," Ruth explained, "especially if this is a set-up."
"That's wise," said Lucas approvingly. "And who knows, there might be something in it we can feed to the press to keep them off our backs for a bit. Maybe the police stuffed up at some point."
The team dispersed, but Harry grabbed Ruth gently by the arm as she was last to leave.
"I wrote that report you know? The Security report on the tunnel?"
Ruth smiled sweetly, but with a touch of scorn. "Of course I know, Harry. Why else do you think I made fun of it?"
****************************
The surveillance footage eventually found its way to Ruth's screen and she settled down to watch it as Tariq tried to trace the exact source of the money from Morocco. She watched the disc of footage through once and then again. And again. It was forty minutes before she went to Harry. entering his office without knocking as he tried to disentangle himself from his conversation with the SIC and waited to have his full attention.
Harry hung up and faced the woman he so loved. Ruth held up the surveillance disc.
"Ros is downstairs, and I need you to see something."
*****************************
RE: 'For his first trick, the terrorist presents....' Ch. 2 - lwhite53 - 10-02-2010 07:33 PM
A teenage agent for Lucas, Maxwell Smart, Harry's hand on Ruth's knee under the table, and Tariq who still doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut -- loving it! Oh, and "glaring typographical errors" -- Ruth does manage to get her digs in, doesn't she?
C'mon, I need to know what she found on the disc!
RE: 'For his first trick, the terrorist presents....' Ch. 2 - Nia M - 10-02-2010 07:33 PM
Oh Tariq's sense of humour makes me laugh
And I love how it's to Ruth that he turns for reassurance
And the thigh-squeezing
Lovely!
RE: 'For his first trick, the terrorist presents....' Ch. 2 - YourFutureMuse - 10-02-2010 07:47 PM
Awww bless Tariq! I love him in this chapter
I also love a good pun haha I love all of your cliffhangers, you are so good at creating suspense!!!
RE: 'For his first trick, the terrorist presents....' Ch. 2 - TygerBright - 10-02-2010 07:49 PM
ah, the plot thickens.. before I don't get any work done at all.. POAROTBH (print out and read on the bus home)
comments tomorrow
thanks for now tho...
RE: 'For his first trick, the terrorist presents....' Ch. 2 - Aria - 10-02-2010 08:42 PM
Lovely and compelling story with the correct balance between characters and action. I have read Harry's diary recently and am enjoying finding the references to it in your work. Keep up the great work.
RE: 'For his first trick, the terrorist presents....' Ch. 2 - Beatriz - 10-02-2010 08:58 PM
Now I'm hooked
what will Ruth have found? :OI love the small hints between HR. And yes, I'm loving Tariq!!! he's so nice!! haha
RE: 'For his first trick, the terrorist presents....' Ch. 2 - Tea Lady - 10-02-2010 09:14 PM
Bless, thanks for my first fanfic dedication. I am glad my rambling email was of some use. This story really has the feel of a real episode and I can see it all in my mind as I am reading it. Loving Ros in this but how come Lucas gets to be all wet again?? Keep the chapters coming.
RE: 'For his first trick, the terrorist presents....' Ch. 2 - JHyde - 10-02-2010 09:16 PM
I couldn't have written this chapter and the next without your help, lovely one. Thanks for being so gracious with your assistance
RE: 'For his first trick, the terrorist presents....' Ch. 2 - TygerBright - 10-02-2010 09:17 PM
...you don't want to be putting pictures of wet Hairy in my head