Sleeper Cell

1

Ruth Morgan was less than two hundred yards from the hotel when the bomb exploded.

The hot June morning was shattered by huge, sharp boom, followed a beat later by the deafening roar of falling rubble and the tinkle of breaking glass. Ruth saw only the leading edge of the fireball before she was hunched on the ground, hands over her head. The sound echoed off surrounding buildings and rippled the leaves on the trees in the park.

She looked up. Through the ringing in her ears she heard the screech of tyres out on Kensington High Street, the flap of hundreds of birds' wings and a sound like heavy rain as rubble cascaded from the sky. All around her people stood or crouched, stunned, silent.

Only Gavin was moving.

Her bodyguard was running across the park towards her. He always followed at a discrete distance, but this morning he had been slow stabling his horse and she had not waited. She had set off for Kensington Palace, along the back of the Serpentine, to pass the rear of the Park Hotel on her way to meet the royal couple at twelve.

She had been lucky. If she had taken the front way, past the hotel's main reception, she would have been killed.

She stood up. The bright sunlight was already becoming milky, the shadows losing their hard edges as the dust cloud spread out. She tried to run. Her legs felt weak, her movements stiff and disjointed.

She could have been killed. One different decision and she'd be dead.

Maybe that had been the idea. They'd targetted her father five years ago; maybe now they were coming after her.

Gavin caught up with her. He dropped his phone into his pocket and took her arm. He led her to the shelter of a tree, all the time scanning the park and the road beyond, checking, watchful.

'Are you alright?' he said. His voice was distant, muted by the ringing in her ears and the constant hiss of falling debris.

'I'm fine.' She cleared her throat. 'You need to get to the hotel. They'll need someone who knows what they're doing. Shit, Gavin, was that...?'

'It was a bomb. I need to get you somewhere safe.'

'I'm going to the Palace! How much safer do you want?'

'We don't know the Palace wasn't the main target. I've seen this before, remember? The first one's a distraction. Foot soldiers make the most of the chaos that follows.'

'Then stop making me a sitting duck out here!' She looked him in the face. The man who bore a three-inch scar across his face where an Iraqi bullet had come within a whisker of blowing his head off... she'd never seen him so edgy before.

'Let me go,' she said. 'The longer you keep me out in the open, the worse it gets for both of us. And them.' She nodded towards the hotel. A couple staggered around the corner: a man holding a woman upright, both of them grey with dust and glistening with blood. The man waved an arm in their direction and Gavin held his hand up.

'OK, go,' he said. 'I'll call Palace security, tell them you're on your way. Check in with Downing Street as soon as you're safe.'

'Of course. I'll speak to you later.'

Someone screamed inside the hotel: a long, animal howl. Others were shouting now, calling for help. A police motorcyclist weaved through the stopped traffic and leaned his bike on the stand. He ran into the dust cloud. All around people were on the move. Some ran towards the building, cameras in hand; most ran away through the ragged lines of cars. People were coming from the building too now, grey and dazed, some nursing horrific injuries. There were sirens in the distance.

Ruth stood for a moment as Gavin followed the lone police officer into the chaos, then forced her legs to move. There was a rumble as another part of the hotel collapsed. More screams. Car alarms in the underground car park. Someone behind her shouted. She turned and saw the car approaching, fast, along Broad Walk.

It passed her and swung hard left to block her path. The passenger door burst open.

'Miss Morgan. Come with us.'

The Specialist Protection Branch officer flashed his ID at her and opened the rear door of the Jaguar. The clip on his gun holster was open, as if he was expecting trouble.

'I'm going to the Palace,' she said.

'No, you're coming with us. Prime Minister's orders. We need to get you out of here. Now.'

She looked towards the Palace gates where security officers were beginning to swarm, MP5 carbines across their chests. There was another loud explosion from the hotel: a car's fuel tank maybe.

Or a second bomb.

'Please,' he said.

'OK, OK.'

Gavin Byers worked for her – he did what he was told. Specialist Protection worked for the government, and she was as much a subject of their authority as anyone else, whoever her father might be. She opened the rear door and slipped in. The SO1 man rounded the back of the vehicle and got in beside her.

They sped off north and turned right onto Bayswater Road, into a stream of emergency vehicles heading towards the hotel.