Baptism Read online

  Though he’d been nervous and frightened, the man in the sports jacket had broken the ice and social barriers started to come down. Conversations started up and down the carriage interspersed with the hollow clatter of forced laughter. Maggie kept her head down. She didn’t want any form of social contact. She feared that if she so much as caught someone’s eye her facade would crack and she would tell them everything, starting with the fact that on the other side of the door to the rear cab of the train were two terrorists, hijackers, kidnappers, whatever they were, and they were armed and dangerous. But she couldn’t risk it. Whoever these people were—whatever they wanted—their plan with regard to her and George was brilliantly simple, based as it was on their natural parental obsession that nothing bad should befall their children. George, as a tube train driver, was obviously integral to the project’s success. They needed him alive and willing to take orders and it was therefore imperative that it appeared as though Sophie and Ben were cowering somewhere with guns against their heads.

  Not knowing her children’s whereabouts was the cruelest torture she had ever known. Sitting there on the train, surrounded by people who might be able to help save her children, but also, in the worst-case scenario, unwittingly cause their deaths, was just an extra little horror. She glanced up at the peephole in the door to the cab. It looked like it had some sort of fisheye lens in it like those in the front doors of houses or apartments, so that even though she was sitting below it and to one side she would still be visible. For all she knew, she was being watched at that very moment.

  Before they had boarded the train, she had been told by the younger of the two men, the one with the shaven head, that Sophie and Ben—he had even known their names—would be fine just so long as she did nothing to communicate to other passengers.

  Her mind scrambled around trying to find something solid, something safe and reassuring to cling to. She closed her eyes. She was sitting with George, Sophie, and Ben in the corner of Mr. Pieces almost exactly a year before and the jolly waiters were throwing their metal trays on the floor. It was time. She watched Ben. He had been looking forward to his birthday for months and he could barely contain his excitement. Sophie giggled, a string of mozzarella hanging from the corner of her mouth that Maggie pinched away. As the clanging of the metal trays against the stone floor receded, they began to sing:

  Happy birthday to you . . .

  Sophie and Ben could barely articulate the words, their grins were so wide. Other diners in the restaurant joined in . . .

  Happy birthday to you . . .

  Maggie looked up into George’s face and he was staring back at her, smiling, affectionate, his eyes sparkling. He reached across the table and took her hand in his. This was happiness. This was safety.

  Happy birthday dear Be-en . . .

  They were in there, behind that door, they’d taken her children, they’d defiled her family. Her hands on which she sat were sweating into the seat. She wanted to scream. She wanted to claw at her face with her nails, slam bloody hands against the door, she wanted to lose control.

  Happy birthday to you!

  Sophie and Ben were shrieking with delight as one of the smiling waiters approached their table with a birthday cake. The lights were dimmed and Ben blew out the candles.

  “Make a wish!” Ben screwed his eyes up and thought hard.

  George squeezed Maggie’s hand and smiled.

  Make a wish.

  When George made an announcement over the PA once again, as he had a few times over the past hour, to reassure the passengers that everything possible was being done to move the train either forward or backward and “we’ll have you out of here as soon as possible,” she could hear the emotion in his voice.

  His claustrophobia would be really bad by now. He would be close to cracking up and then what would happen? If the man with the shaven head was in the cab with him alone there might be a struggle. George was a little out of shape, probably didn’t get enough exercise, but he was strong. If it was just the two of them in the cab together and no further accomplices had joined them, then he might be able to overpower the kidnapper. It was a possibility. It was something.

  George’s voice cracked when he said, “I’ll keep you up to date with any information as and when I receive it.”

  Could the other passengers not hear that he was being forced to lie? She tore her gaze away from the floor of the carriage and looked around at the people. She was shocked by their expressions of willing acceptance. They were buying it. All except the man in the sports jacket. Why couldn’t more of them be like him? People wanted to believe they were held in a tunnel because of a security incident at Tottenham Court Road station, as George kept telling them. To them it was the truth; to her it was a sick joke.

  She wiped away a tear that made its way down her cheek but no one noticed. All eyes were on the man in the sports jacket as his panic got the better of him.

  “It just doesn’t make any sense at all. There’s something wrong.”

  “Calm down,” said the black man in the sharp suit sitting next to her. “I’m sure they’re doing all they can.”

  “Don’t tell me to calm down.” It was loud enough that even the little girls stroking the guide dog were distracted.

  The man in the sports jacket looked around at the faces turned toward him. He took a deep breath and retook his seat. “It’s just so bloody hot,” he said. “And there’s no reason for keeping us locked up like this. They could just turn off the power to the track, open the doors at the back or the front and let us walk between the rails to the next station. That’s what they should be doing. It’s just appalling customer service, as always.”

  “There’s nothing we can do about it,” said the woman from New York, taking time out from her breathing exercises. “I’m sure we can all write letters of complaint as soon as we get out of here.”

  The sports jacket looked around at her, went to say something, but thought better of it and shook his head as he emitted a series of exaggerated sighs.

  From the other side of the door against which she sat, came the faint sound of static from a walkie-talkie radio. Maggie could hear muttered voices but nothing she could actually decipher. She was the only one remaining in the carriage who had actually seen them enter the cab at Morden station. Before they went in, the male one had leaned toward her to whisper in her ear, close enough that she could feel the stubble on his chin scrape against her cheek. To someone who was watching—and no one was—it might have seemed like he was telling her a joke or even sharing an intimacy. But there was nothing loving about what he said.

  “I’m just going through that door there. If you do anything to draw attention to me or try to raise the alarm in any way, you will never see your children again. Got it?”

  She wanted to be in Mr. Pieces with her family. She wanted to hear the laughter as Ben blew out the candles on his birthday cake. She wanted George to be squeezing her hand and smiling—just as he had squeezed her hand and smiled at her on that first date.

  They had come in through the back door just as George was walking out of the front. They must have had the house under surveillance. It was the young female one who frightened her the most. With her pretty gamine looks and pixie bob haircut, she looked so normal, in every way except the eyes. They looked as though they were emotionally switched off and she contemplated Maggie with all the humanity of a wolf.

  The man with the crew cut was quiet, calm even. It was like he had done this before and he was clearly the one in charge.

  When they first appeared through the back door she almost soiled herself. The door was open in a moment and there they were, guns pointed, telling her that so long as she cooperated with them in every detail they would let her live. It was something George used to say—I nearly shat myself—he would say. He was joking, talking about some horror film he had seen perhaps. But she really did think she might do so—or urinate at least. It was as though all her muscles had relaxed, slip
ped into a catatonia born of fear.

  She used all her powers of persuasion to try and reassure Sophie and Ben that everything would be all right. But she could see it in their eyes. Their mum was telling them everything was okay but something else, something instinctive, was telling them it wasn’t.

  George had told her he loved her when he was on his way to the depot earlier. Her kidnappers had heard it on the speakerphone. The female one had smiled when he said it. A smile of derision. The man with the crew cut had told her to tell George to be quiet and continue with his normal routine.

  Never in all the years that she had been with George had she wanted to see him as much as she did now. She wanted to see him and she wanted to tell him that she loved him too.

  9:18 AM

  Flat 21, Hyde Park Mansions, Pimlico

  It wasn’t only his sense of hearing that had improved after he lost his sight. His sense of smell was, if anything, even keener than his enhanced auditory perception. He’d never been a big one for aftershave, either on him or on others—the same went for perfume. The soap he used and the deodorant he wore were both unscented. The moisturizing cream that he applied to his face every morning to prevent the scar tissue from becoming dry and flaky was only very slightly perfumed—jojoba, aloe vera, or some such—and he liked the smell. He might have been known as “the blind guy with the fucked-up face”—a description of himself that he had overheard once—but he insisted on his personal grooming being the match of any sighted colleague. He always wore black; color no longer played a part in his life. A woman who he had almost become romantically involved with a couple of years before had asked whether he wore black out of mourning for his sight. He could tell from the tone of her voice and the way she said it that she had given this question much thought, believed that she was providing some psychological insight by asking it. Their nascent relationship ended soon afterward.

  Romance didn’t play much part in his life. There had been a couple of women since he was blinded; the one who had made the comment about his black clothes was one of them. A drawback to being more sensitive to people’s tones of voice was that he could tune in more clearly to latent emotion, like sympathy. There were some women—men too—who were drawn to people who had disabilities, who were damaged in some way. The last thing he wanted was that someone should be attracted to him, even partially, because he was the blind guy with the fucked-up face. He was overly sensitive to it, possibly unfairly so at times, but he couldn’t help himself; as soon as he felt, or even suspected, that someone was with him because they felt sorry for him, any potential there might be for an ongoing relationship was shot down in flames. That oversensitivity meant that he was probably doomed to being single. But, on balance, he could live with that. It was probably something to do with his lifelong bloody-mindedness but he liked to prove his independence, liked proving that the loss of his sight had not compromised the quality of his life, liked proving to himself and others that he could cope.

  Ed planned on spending the next half hour answering e-mails via his speech reading and recognition software on his PC. He sometimes got more done in a half hour at home than during an entire morning at work. His car was booked for ten. Not for him, the white stick or the guide dog, the awkward accident-prone navigation of pavements and steps; not for him the reliance on the kindness of strangers to take his arm and help him across the road. It was stubbornness and pride that prevented him from doing what other blind people did—and it curtailed his personal freedom, no doubt about it—but that was how he wanted it to be and because of his job a car was provided for him on all official business.

  As Ed finished applying the moisturizer cream to his face at the bathroom sink, his phone let out a soft beep, denoting an incoming call. He walked through to the bedroom and answered it.

  “Ed Mallory.”

  “Ed, this is Serina Boise.”

  As soon as he heard the name and heard that unmistakably posh voice, with the hint of West Midlands accent so often imitated by his Special Branch colleagues, he knew there was work to be done. If it was an admin issue then an assistant would have called him. The fact that Commander Boise was calling him direct meant that, whatever was going on, things were moving fast.

  “Hi, what can I do for you?”

  “We’ve got a situation in the Underground; we don’t really know anything at this stage—it might be nothing—but there’s a train in a tunnel and it won’t respond to any radio contact. I’m putting together a team just in case. I’d like you down at the incident desk at the LU Network Control center in St. James’s.”

  She spoke quickly—she was nervous—and the “it might be nothing” was a clear tell. She didn’t for one moment think that it might be nothing. As far as she was concerned—according to the intelligence she had—it was very definitely something.

  “Okay, no problem,” said Ed.

  “There’s a car on its way to you with Mark Hooper in it from G Branch at MI5. We’re going to be collaborating on this.”

  There was the faintest hint of derision in her voice when she mentioned G Branch at MI5. It was not uncommon—he had come across it before, particularly in Special Branch. There was bound to be friction between two agencies so closely linked in terms of their common goals in counterterrorism, and yet so far apart in their approach.

  “Hooper is heading up any potential negotiation at this stage, but I want you very closely involved.”

  “Okay.”

  “DI Calvert and DS White are also on the team. They’ll meet you at St. James’s.”

  Serina Boise told Ed that they would “speak soon” and rang off. Ed pushed the phone into the top pocket of his shirt and, realizing that he still had some stray spots of moisturizer between his fingers, rubbed his hands as he went across to the dresser, opened a drawer, and took out a pair of his favorite Ray-Bans. Sunglasses were his one concession to vanity. He kept his eyes closed most of the time—not much point in opening them—but when he did, he didn’t want the sightless lumps of jelly in his eye sockets to be on display to the world.

  When the intercom buzzed, Ed answered it and heard the voice of an ex–public schoolboy who introduced himself as Mark Hooper. Ed went down in the lift and came face to face with the man who would be his partner in any potential hostage negotiation.

  “Hi, Ed, good to meet you.”

  “And you.”

  They shook hands. Ed thought Hooper was probably about thirty-five. His hand was manicured and smooth and his handshake was firm enough to suggest that he was somewhat physically insecure. Ed was just under six feet and it didn’t sound as though Hooper was speaking from a lower trajectory so maybe it wasn’t his height that he felt sensitive about. It could be anything, from facial appearance to an undersize penis but Ed was certain there was something. And he wore too much aftershave. It smelled soapy and alcoholic.

  Hooper cupped Ed’s elbow in his hand and led him across the street to the waiting car, which mercifully was chilled enough to dry up the perspiration that he could feel forming on his body after the short walk from the door of his apartment block. Once seated in the back of the car, a Jaguar judging by the smell of it and the sound of the engine, Ed said, “So, Mark, what’s the latest on this train?”

  “Well, it might be nothing.”

  “That’s what Commander Boise said.”

  “What we’ve got is a tube train on the Northern Line between Leicester Square and Tottenham Court Road. It’s stationary in the tunnel. London Underground is spooked because not only is the driver refusing to communicate but it would appear that he has tampered with the onboard computer so they can’t even check from the control room if there are any technical faults with the train.”

  Ed couldn’t resist needling Hooper with his next question: “So how come MI5 appears to have operational control of what appears on the surface to be a fairly minor incident?”

  “There’s been some chatter for a while about a possible attack on the tube. We’ve b
een monitoring it closely after last time.” Hooper paused, tongue-tied by indecision about how much he should divulge.

  Ed couldn’t pinpoint why it was that he felt a certain amount of animosity toward Hooper. No doubt it had something to do with his perception that Hooper was a new breed of MI5 personnel, a product of human resource management, behavioral profiling, knowledge flow, mission statements, and performance appraisals. Gone were the days when young men and women at Oxford or Cambridge universities were approached by some old bloke in a tweed suit who asked if they would like to do some secret work for the government. For the likes of Hooper, the secret service was as viable a career choice as any other.

  “So maybe the driver’s passed out,” offered Ed. “Or suffered some sort of seizure.”

  “Well, that’s just it. They say he must be conscious because he’s deliberately blocking radio signals.”

  “They?”

  “The Northern Line Control center. You see, there’s a safety feature on the 1995 train stock that they use on the Northern Line. It’s called a one-person operator alarm and it alerts the control center if the dead man’s handle is not activated for ninety seconds. Well, the alarm has gone off and, as would normally happen, the control center has tried to make contact with the train. Usually they would make a request over the PA in the carriages for someone to use the emergency handle and go into the cab to check the driver is okay. But the radio has been tampered with and they can’t get a message through.”