False Friends (36 page)

They took the escalators down to the ground floor. Khalid took Abu al Khayr through the crowds to a set of glass doors that led to the bridge leading across the railway lines to Stratford Regional Station and the town centre. It was the way they had come into the mal . ‘This is the exit to the station,’ he said. ‘There are five doors, a single at each side and three double doors between them. Do you see the handles?’

Each door had a long vertical chrome pole as a handle. Abu al Khayr nodded.

‘Al we need is a chain and a padlock,’ said Khalid. ‘It wil take a matter of seconds and al of the doors wil be locked shut. Once done no one can get out, and no one can get in.’

‘The glass is reinforced?’

‘It is. It wil resist a sledgehammer.’

‘And how many exits are there in total?’

‘On the ground floor there are six. Al have the same type of doors and al can be chained shut within seconds.’

There was a constant stream of shoppers entering and leaving the mal . ‘Won’t people try to stop them locking the doors?’ asked Abu al Khayr.

‘This entrance is the busiest,’ said Khalid. ‘We wil have a brother wearing a security uniform.’ He grinned. ‘We already have two brothers on the security staff and hope to have more within the next few days. The owners are very keen to demonstrate their commitment to diversity.’

‘They make it so easy,’ said Abu al Khayr.

‘Always,’ said Khalid. ‘They see it as a strength but it is their biggest weakness. And one that we shal take ful advantage of.’

They began walking through the mal . It was packed with shoppers and they were constantly being bumped into or having to step aside to avoid strol ers and wheelchairs.

‘How many people are here?’ asked Abu al Khayr.

‘On a busy day, more than forty thousand. On a quiet day, maybe half that.’

‘That’s a lot of people,’ said Abu al Khayr. ‘As big as a footbal stadium.’

‘Exactly,’ said Khalid. ‘And think how many passengers there are on a plane. A few hundred. Here we have tens of thousands of people and not a single check on who comes and goes.’ Three Asian youths in baggy jeans and basebal caps pushed by them, swearing and laughing. ‘Do you think anyone has searched them for a knife?’ asked Khalid. ‘Or a gun?’ He shook his head. ‘There are no checks at al . Not one.’

They reached the halfway point of the mal . Shops branched off to the left and at the end were four double doors that led to more shops outside the main mal . Khalid put his mouth close to Abu al Khayr’s ear. ‘One man could lock the doors and start shooting. In the panic they would have only one way to run.’ He looked up and gestured at the levels above them. From where they were standing they could see shoppers on the first and second floors and beyond them the glass ceiling and the clouds high in the sky. ‘Just look around you. Look at the crowds. Think of them panicking and fal ing over each other, like stampeding cattle. And from above come the bul ets of our brothers.’

Abu al Khayr nodded enthusiastical y. Khalid started walking again and Abu al Khayr hurried after him. They walked towards the John Lewis store.

‘This is the most complicated area,’ said Khalid. ‘Ahead there are two double doors that lead to John Lewis. To the left are six doors leading to the outdoor shops, and to the right are six doors leading to Stratford International Station.’ Abu al Khayr looked around. There were shoppers walking in al directions and it was as crowded as a Moroccan souk. ‘You notice how the ground floor of John Lewis is on the other side of the doors?’ said Khalid. ‘Once the mal doors are locked our brothers wil be able to exit through the store. They can enter on the first floor, use the internal stairs and leave at ground-floor level. They can do the same at Marks & Spencer at the other end.’

‘I understand,’ said Abu al Khayr. ‘They can mingle with the shoppers and escape.’

Khalid heard Arabic voices behind him and he looked over his shoulder. An old man with a long straggly grey beard was admonishing two young boys who could have been his great-grandchildren. Next to him was a woman in a ful burka sitting in a wheelchair. Al that could be seen were her eyes but from them alone it was clear she was as old as the man. An Arab man in a baggy grey suit was pushing the wheelchair, probably the woman’s son. The man caught Khalid’s glance and he smiled and nodded. Khalid smiled back. He and Abu al Khayr walked away from the Arab family and headed down an escalator to the lower ground level.

There was another exit midway down the mal , at the end of a line of shops leading off a bustling food court. There were three double doors which could be locked with a single padlocked chain.

The final two exits were at the far end of the mal – two double doors leading to the car park and five leading outside to the tube station.

The two men walked outside and sat down on a bench from where they could watch the shoppers pouring into the mal .

‘We wil need a minimum of fourteen brothers,’ said Khalid. ‘That wil give us one at each entrance. If they simultaneously lock al the doors then no one can get in, or out. But the more brothers we can get the better. I would prefer twenty.’

‘Do we have that many?’

Khalid nodded. ‘We can bring brothers in from Europe. I have spoken to mosques in France and Germany and they have brothers ready and wil ing to help.’

Abu al Khayr grinned. ‘So we can do it?’

‘We can and we wil ,’ said Khalid. He took a printed guide to the mal from his shirt pocket and unfolded it. On one side was a floor plan showing the four levels. ‘Getting access could not be easier,’ he said. ‘The brothers can arrive by tube, by train and by car. I suggest al the weapons are brought in by car. There are two car parks, A and B.’ He tapped them on the map. ‘Access to car park B, the bigger of the two, is from the lower ground floor only, here and here. Car park A connects to the mal on the lower ground floor, the ground and the first floor. Brothers arriving from the train and tube can col ect their weapons and equipment from the car parks on the lower ground floor, then take up their positions. I think two vehicles, parked close to the entrances to the mal s. Then we should have a vehicle in each of the three lower levels of car park A, again as close to the mal entrances as possible. That’s five vehicles and we need two brothers in each, a driver and an organiser. The brothers with the guns must stay hidden in the back. If we can use sisters in the front, that would be better. Just a husband and wife doing their shopping together.’

‘There are sisters we can use, but not many are trained in the use of weapons,’ said Abu al Khayr.

‘No need,’ said Khalid. ‘They only have to be in the vans. In fact they can drive away before the shooting starts.’

‘And the police? What happens when the police arrive?’

Khalid grinned. ‘We wil launch the attack at six o’clock,’ he said. ‘Most of the police work during the day. It wil take them time to cal in reinforcements. The first armed response unit wil take at least ten minutes and what can one car do? They wil see that the doors are locked and they wil have to wait for superior officers to arrive. And in the evening that wil take time.’

‘They won’t enter the mal ?’

‘Not with the doors locked, and not when they realise there are armed men inside. They are constrained by health and safety rules. Al they wil do is keep the area clear until they are able to assess the situation. By the time they’ve done that it wil al be over.’

‘What about the SAS?’

Khalid shrugged. ‘They are based in Hereford and even if they leave immediately and fly to London in helicopters they wil be too late. This won’t be like Mumbai, where the brothers had to move from room to room looking for targets. We wil have al the targets here that we need. The only limiting factor wil be the amount of ammunition that our brothers can carry.’

‘And how many casualties do you anticipate?’ asked Abu al Khayr.

‘In the first ten minutes I would expect there to be at least a thousand dead and many more injured. If we can continue for half an hour, the total could reach four thousand.’

‘It defies belief,’ said Abu al Khayr.

Khalid chuckled softly. ‘You can believe it, brother,’ he said. ‘Hundreds wil die in the first few seconds because no one wil have time to react.

Then there wil be panic but there wil be no way out. Most wil hide in shops but they wil be trapped there. The mal is so crowded that every bul et wil find a target. Our brothers can continue to shoot until their ammunition is expended.’

‘And then? What happens then?’

‘Then they leave. This wil not be a suicide mission, brother. If carried out properly we wil kil thousands and our brothers wil escape to kil again.’

Abu al Khayr nodded as he studied the map. ‘Yes,’ he said enthusiastical y. ‘I can see how it wil work.’

‘Inshal ah,’ said Khalid. God wil ing.

Shepherd headed down the road to Hampstead tube station. A vendor was giving away copies of a glossy magazine at the entrance to the station and Shepherd took the opportunity to stop and have a quick look around. He waited on the northbound platform until two trains had gone through, then he walked across to the southbound platform and caught a train to Charing Cross. To the casual observer he was simply sitting and reading his magazine on the train, but in fact he was taking careful note of everyone who got on or off.

When he did get off the train he walked slowly down the platform and was one of the last passengers to step on to the escalator. He walked through the station as if he was going to buy a ticket but then changed direction abruptly and headed instead for the taxi rank. He took a black cab to Thames House, confident that no one had fol owed him.

Charlotte Button was waiting for him in a meeting room on the third floor. Several dozen photographs taken from CCTV footage at St Pancras station were pinned to a board that took up most of one of the wal s. ‘How did it go?’ she asked him as he sat down at the long highly polished table in the centre of the room.

‘He’s a bit squirrel y, but that’s to be expected,’ said Shepherd.

‘Not too squirrel y, I hope.’

‘He’l be fine. But I was wondering if it would help for the two of them to have a chat with Caroline Stockmann.’ Stockmann was an MI5

psychologist who was responsible for Shepherd’s six-monthly psychological evaluations.

Button turned her back on the photographs and folded her arms. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘It’s no biggie, it’s just that the pressure is mounting and Caroline is always good at getting to the heart of any problems I might have.’

‘Caroline evaluates you twice a year to check that you’re up to undercover work,’ said Button. ‘If it ever gets to the point that you’re showing signs of being overstressed then we can move you into another area of work. That’s not an option for Chaudhry and Malik. This isn’t their job; it’s their lives. Even if they are under pressure there’s not much we can do other than offer as much support as we can. It’s not as if we can pul them out and put in someone else, is it? We’ve got to work with what we’ve got.’

‘I agree. I just thought it might help them, that’s al .’

‘Do you think I should talk to them?’

‘I’m not sure that’l help,’ said Shepherd. ‘To be honest, relaxation techniques are what they need. Yoga or meditation. They’re fairly tightly wound at the moment.’

‘Which is good,’ said Button. ‘Considering what they’ve been through and what they’re now involved in, they should be stressed. If they suddenly start looking as if they haven’t got a care in the world then their al-Qaeda handlers are going to think that something’s wrong.’ She sat down opposite him and linked her fingers. ‘We’re on the home stretch, Spider. St Pancras was a dry run and the real thing is likely to be in days rather than weeks.’

Shepherd nodded. She was right. There would be no point in doing a ful rehearsal and then putting everything on the back burner.

Button pointed at the photographs. ‘From our point of view the St Pancras rehearsal was a gift from above, it real y was. We’ve identified eighty-seven possibles from the CCTV footage, based on ethnic status, age and possession of a backpack.’

‘Ethnic profiling?’ said Shepherd.

‘We’ve no choice,’ said Button. ‘There were thousands of people at the station and most of them had luggage of one form or another. Now we know that Chaudhry and Malik were given backpacks by Khalid it’s a fair enough assumption that anyone else involved also had a backpack. What we’ve done is trawl through the CCTV footage looking for Asians with backpacks. We’ve done male and female even though previous attacks in the UK have always involved men. If we’d widened it to include al ethnic groups there would have been thousands and we don’t have time for that.’

‘And you think they had eighty-odd people there?’

‘Of course not. What we’ve got to do now is compare them with our watch list and disregard those who are just innocent travel ers.’

‘What about the passengers who arrived from France? Can’t you check with the Border Agency?’

‘Unfortunately it’s not as simple as that. Passports are checked in France before passengers board but they’re not checked at this end. And they’re not photographed. But we have CCTV footage of passengers disembarking at St Pancras so we can check that footage against the footage inside the station. We’re using a facial recognition system at the moment but it’s not great so we might end up doing it manual y.’

She stood up and walked back to the photograph display. Seven photographs had been put to the right-hand side, separate from the rest. The top two were of Chaudhry and Malik.

‘We’ve already identified four from our watch list,’ said Button. ‘They al came up from the tube station at different times and from different trains.’

She tapped a photograph directly below Malik’s. ‘This one was one of the leaders of Muslims Against Crusades and we have some very nice footage of him burning poppies on Remembrance Day in 2009.’ She tapped a second photograph, and a third. ‘These two are from Leeds.