A Devil Is Waiting - Jack Higgins [37]
“Give it to me.” Roper held out his hand, took the weapon, and lifted it. “It’s been a long time.”
Tony slipped some mufflers on him. Roper gripped the left arm of his chair and fired from left to right three times, hitting each target in the chest.
“You’re still up for it, sir,” Tony said, and Roper handed him the weapon. “You finish.”
Which Tony did, all heart shots. “Will that do, sir?”
“Try not to sound so satisfied, Tony,” Roper said. “And see to Captain Gideon.”
Sara had covered her ears, taken the Colt from her shoulder bag, and loaded it. She weighed it, then fired, double-handed, very fast at the fourth target, riddling the heart and chest area.
Tony took the Colt from her. “Not much left with those hollow points, ma’am.”
She picked up the Glock, remembering, face serious, extended her arm, and shot the fifth target in the heart. No one said a word, and she laid it down carefully. “A good gun to have in a bad place.”
She picked up her Colt and returned it to her shoulder bag, and Holley said, “Lunch, anyone?”
Roper sat there, a slight smile on his face, as if waiting for something, and Tony picked up the Browning, held it out without saying a word, and Holley took it. “Do I have to?”
“Josef Lermov called it a gift from God,” said Roper. “We must show Sara.”
“More like a curse.” Holley turned sideways, left hand on hip, right arm extended like some old Western gunfighter and double-tapped the last three soldiers, shooting out their eyes.
“Oh, my God,” Sara said softly.
“Satisfied, Giles?” Holley asked.
“Absolutely,” Roper said calmly. “Let’s go and have Maggie Hall’s idea of a simple lunch. French onion soup, tossed salad, poached salmon with Lyonnais potatoes. Join us, Tony, when you’re finished here.”
He coasted out in his electric chair. Sara took Holley’s hand without a word, and they walked after him.
After the meal, they went to the computer room and discovered the news screen alive with footage of the riot in Hyde Park. It had all been caught: Ali Selim’s dramatic arrival, his appearance and subversive speech high above the crowd, including the rain of missiles, the riot police surging past the van. There was some further footage of Ali Selim, with what appeared to be blood on his face, emerging from the crowd, surrounded by minders, who bundled him into the back of a van waiting beside the Marble Arch entrance to the park and which had last been seen driving toward Bayswater.
A Scotland Yard commissioner made excuses for the police failure to arrest and detain Ali Selim, who could not be found at his home or the Pond Street Mosque. The Prime Minister emerged from 10 Downing Street to inform journalists that the speech could only be construed as advocating the assassination of the President of the United States and every effort would be made to find and arrest Selim.
Roper cleared the screen for a while. “You noticed Ferguson, of course, standing at the back with a few other functionaries?”
“We certainly did,” Holley said.
“For future information, Sara, the rather jolly-looking chap with the permanent smile and the blond hair is a good friend of ours. Henry Frankel, the cabinet secretary.”
“He looked nice,” she said. “But what do you think Ali Selim was up to making such a speech? Was it really incitement to murder?”
“Others have made similar speeches with the hope that they will be imprisoned. They need martyrs to attract more followers to their cause. Al Qaeda knows damn well that the majority of Muslims don’t want this kind of trouble.”
“So what do you think he’s done?”
“Who knows?” Roper said. “Gone into hiding, done a runner. Maybe Al Qaeda has a plan for him. Anyway, I was thinking, Sara, maybe it would be a good idea if you spent the afternoon with me. I’ll show you everything we get up to here, who our contacts are with outfits like GCHQ, the CIA, and the GRU, all the tricks of our rather nefarious trade.”
“I’d like that very much,” she said. “What do you think, Daniel?”
“I think it’s an excellent idea. They coined the word