Private London (Private 4)

‘You lost me there, princess,’ I said. ‘Seems to me that’s a gun you are holding, not an olive branch or a banana.’

I wanted to keep her talking. By my reckoning the guard should have passed by again and he hadn’t.

‘The only way peace can be brought about in that part of the Middle East is by parity,’ Annabelle Weston said, the passion sparking in her turquoise eyes.

‘All the Palestinians can do by way of retaliation against the fact that a part of their country has been made a concentration camp is to fire small rockets over the border from Gaza.’

‘And kidnapping Harlan Shapiro does what, exactly?’

Mary Angela looked at me and smiled. I took no comfort from it.

‘It will guide those rockets, Mister Carter.’

Chapter 104

THE PENNY DROPPED.

Jack had told me that Harlan Shapiro had been working on localised missile-guidance systems.

‘And not just over the borders into Israel. Our people have had to resort to the use of suicide bombers to target areas. People prepared to sacrifice themselves to the cause because there was no way of guiding small missiles to a specific target.’

The professor smiled at me. It didn’t make me feel a whole lot better.

‘Hannah’s father here has been developing a system that can track to a mobile phone. It means that the missile can be dialled in. The suicide bomber doesn’t even have to be present.’

She was right. The implications were enormous. Anywhere could be targeted. If you didn’t have to take the explosives through security, you wouldn’t need car bombs and bombers could just, as she said, dial destruction right in.

And it wouldn’t end there. If this technology got into the hands of Al Qaida who knew what could happen? Their aim wasn’t just to drive Israel out of the Middle East, it was to make the whole world Muslim. Jihad didn’t do conference tables.

I looked out of the window. The guard had seemingly grown an inch or two taller. About Sam Riddel’s height.

I needed to create a distraction. I stood up as best I could, my knees bent.

Mary Angela Al-Massri pointed the gun at me. There was no humour in her eyes, no matter how beautiful they were. ‘Just sit down, Mister Carter. Like I said, nobody needs to get hurt here. Trust me – I am well trained.’

Hamas-trained, I was guessing, just like her brother. Which did not bode well.

I hopped backwards and smashed myself into the wall, shattering the chair and loosening the ropes. I stumbled up to my knees.

‘I am quite prepared to shoot you.’

‘Believe her, Dan. You wouldn’t be the first,’ said Annabelle Weston.

The guard came in through the French windows and turned to me.

‘If he moves again, shoot him,’ Mary Angela shouted, her voice ugly now. That’s the thing with some of these peace activists: they are so damn keen on killing people.

I stood up and Sam Riddel tossed me the gun and stood aside. I pointed the gun at an astonished Mary Angela and grinned. ‘Mexican stand-off,’ I said.

She moved closer to put the gun against Harlan Shapiro’s head.

‘He’ll be the first to die,’ she said.

I put a single round in her forehead. Turned out she was wrong about that.

Chapter 105

OUTSIDE I COULD just about feel the cold night air on my face.