Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Monday
CHAPTER 1 - 8.05 a.m. GMT BBC, Shepherd’s Bush, London
CHAPTER 2 - 8.19 a.m. GMT Shepherd’s Bush, London
CHAPTER 3 - 8.31 a.m. GMT University of East Anglia (UEA), Norwich
CHAPTER 4 - 11.44 a.m. local time Pump station IT-1B
CHAPTER 5 - 8.45 a.m. GMT
CHAPTER 6 - 12.35 p.m. GMT Manchester
CHAPTER 7 - 3.37 p.m. local time Desert, Salah Ad Din Region, Iraq
CHAPTER 8 - 12.38 p.m. GMT UEA, Norwich
CHAPTER 9 - 6.42 p.m. local time Road leading to Al-Bayji, Iraq
CHAPTER 10 - 9.21 p.m. local time Road leading to Al-Bayji, Iraq
CHAPTER 11 - 8.33 p.m. GMT UEA, Norwich
CHAPTER 12 - 11.55 p.m. GMT Whitehall, London
Tuesday
CHAPTER 13 - 5 a.m. local time Road leading to Al-Bayji, Iraq
CHAPTER 14 - 6.57 a.m. local time Al-Bayji, Iraq
CHAPTER 15 - 7.21 a.m. local time Al-Bayji, Iraq
CHAPTER 16 - 8 a.m. GMT Manchester
CHAPTER 17 - 11 a.m. local time Al-Bayji, Iraq
CHAPTER 18 - 11.18 a.m. local time Al-Bayji, Iraq
CHAPTER 19 - 8.21 a.m. GMT UEA, Norwich
CHAPTER 20 - 11.22 a.m. local time Al-Bayji, Iraq
CHAPTER 21 - 8.55 a.m. UEA, Norwich
CHAPTER 22 - 8.57 a.m. GMT UEA, Norwich
CHAPTER 23 - 9.41 a.m. GMT Manchester
CHAPTER 24 - 9.45 a.m. GMT UEA, Norwich
CHAPTER 25 - 11.37 a.m. GMT North Finchley, London
CHAPTER 26 - 12.30 p.m. GMT Whitehall, London
CHAPTER 27 - 3.42 p.m. local time Al-Bayji, Iraq
CHAPTER 28 - 12.57 p.m. GMT Hammersmith, London
CHAPTER 29 - 1.30 p.m. GMT Whitehall, London
CHAPTER 30 - 1.37 p.m. GMT Whitehall, London
CHAPTER 31 - 2.15 p.m. GMT Hammersmith, London
CHAPTER 32 - 2.45 p.m. GMT M6 motorway, north of Birmingham
CHAPTER 33 - 10 p.m. local time Al-Bayji, Iraq
CHAPTER 34 - 7.23 p.m. GMT Between Manchester and Birmingham
CHAPTER 35 - 10.24 p.m. local time Al-Bayji, Iraq
CHAPTER 36 - 7.40 p.m. GMT Shepherd’s Bush, London
CHAPTER 37 - 10.41 p.m. local time Al-Bayji, Iraq
CHAPTER 38 - 7.46 p.m. GMT Shepherd’s Bush, London
CHAPTER 39 - 10.50 p.m. local time Al-Bayji, Iraq
CHAPTER 40 - 7.52 p.m. GMT Shepherd’s Bush, London
CHAPTER 41 - 7.53 p.m. GMT Between Manchester and Birmingham
CHAPTER 42 - 10.53 p.m. local time Al-Bayji, Iraq
Wednesday
CHAPTER 43 - 5 a.m. GMT Between Manchester and Birmingham
CHAPTER 44 - 11.31 a.m. GMT Shepherd’s Bush, London
CHAPTER 45 - 12.15 p.m. GMT Beauford Service Station
CHAPTER 46 - 2 p.m. GMT Shepherd’s Bush, London
CHAPTER 47 - 2.01 p.m. GMT Hammersmith, London
CHAPTER 48 - 2.05 p.m. GMT Shepherd’s Bush, London
CHAPTER 49 - 5 p.m. local time Northern Iraq
CHAPTER 50 - 2.30 p.m. GMT Cabinet Office Briefing Room A (COBRA), London
CHAPTER 51 - 3 p.m. GMT Shepherd’s Bush, London
CHAPTER 52 - 3.47 p.m. GMT Shepherd’s Bush, London
CHAPTER 53 - 8.51 p.m. GMT South of London
CHAPTER 54 - 11.57 p.m. local time Northern Iraq
CHAPTER 55 - 10.03 p.m. GMT Shepherd’s Bush, London
Thursday
CHAPTER 56 - 7 a.m. local time The Turkey/Iraq border
CHAPTER 57 - 10 a.m. GMT Beauford Service Station
CHAPTER 58 - 9.12 p.m. local time Southern Turkey
CHAPTER 59 - 6 p.m. GMT Beauford Service Station
CHAPTER 60 - 6.11 p.m. GMT Beauford Service Station
CHAPTER 61 - 6.15 p.m. GMT Beauford Service Station
CHAPTER 62 - 9.51 p.m. GMT Shepherd’s Bush, London
CHAPTER 63 - 11.43 p.m. GMT Beauford Service Station
CHAPTER 64 - 11.46 p.m. GMT Beauford Service Station
Friday
CHAPTER 65 - 3 a.m. local time Southern Turkey
CHAPTER 66 - 3.25 a.m. local time Southern Turkey
CHAPTER 67 - 4 a.m. local time Southern Turkey
CHAPTER 68 - 4.05 a.m. GMT
CHAPTER 69 - 6.29 a.m. GMT
CHAPTER 70 - 12.31 a.m. EST New York, USA
CHAPTER 71 - 7.31 a.m. GMT Guildford
CHAPTER 72 - 7.51 a.m. GMT Shepherd’s Bush, London
CHAPTER 73 - 4.23 p.m. GMT Outskirts of London
CHAPTER 74 - 10.27 p.m. local time Over Europe
CHAPTER 75 - 10.05 p.m. GMT Shepherd’s Bush, London
CHAPTER 76 - 10.09 p.m. GMT London
CHAPTER 77 - 10.11 p.m. GMT Shepherd’s Bush, London
CHAPTER 78 - 11.59 p.m. GMT Guildford
Saturday
CHAPTER 79 - 4.21 a.m. GMT Heathrow, London
CHAPTER 80 - 10.03 a.m. GMT Shepherd’s Bush, London
CHAPTER 81 - 11.35 a.m. GMT Heathrow, London
CHAPTER 82 - 2.32 p.m. GMT Shepherd’s Bush, London
CHAPTER 83 - 9 p.m. GMT Cabinet Office Briefing Room A (COBRA), London
CHAPTER 84 - 9.15 p.m. GMT London
CHAPTER 85 - 9.51 p.m. GMT Shepherd’s Bush, London
CHAPTER 86 - 10.25 p.m. GMT Shepherd’s Bush, London
CHAPTER 87 - 11.36 p.m. GMT Shepherd’s Bush, London
CHAPTER 88 - 11.54 p.m. GMT Shepherd’s Bush, London
Sunday
CHAPTER 89 - 12.01 a.m. GMT Shepherd’s Bush, London
CHAPTER 90 - 12.07 a.m. GMT Shepherd’s Bush, London
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Jenny twisted in her seat and studied the pavilion anxiously, half-expecting a swarm of people to suddenly emerge from it and charge them down, hell-bent on pulling them out of the car and ripping their throats out.
My God, doesn’t this feel just like that . . . Like one of those crazy zombie movies?
This whole situation was like some post-apocalyptic scenario; the glimmering firelight from the bonfire, the debris and detritus strewn across the tarmac, the flickering torchlight and the frantically scrabbling crowd inside the building, the noise, the chaos.
Paul drove across the car-park towards the exit leading on to the slip-road that led out to the motorway and headed south once more.
She watched the service station in the wing mirror until it disappeared from view.
My God, this is how it is after only four days.
Alex Scarrow lives a nomadic existence with his wife Frances and his son Jacob, their current home being Norwich. He spent the first 10 years out of college in the music industry chasing record deals and the next 12 years in the computer games business. His previous novel - A Thousand Suns - is also available from Orion paperbacks. Visit his website at www.scarrow.co.uk.
By Alex Scarrow
A Thousand Suns
Last Light
Last Light
ALEX SCARROW
Orion
www.orionbooks.co.uk
AN ORION EBOOK
First published in Great Britain in 2007 by Orion
This ebook first published in 2010 by Orion Books
Copyright © Alex Scarrow 2007
The moral right of Alex Scarrow to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permissio
n in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All the characters in this book are fictitious,
and any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
eISBN : 978 1 4091 2454 2
This ebook produced by Jouve, France
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
www.orionbooks.co.uk
For my son Jacob, smart, imaginative . . . and maybe one day, competition. I love you man.
For Jacob’s eyes only:
VQ BMJJN RJXB GR ZWB BDWCB RNBADC
FADNSRMPR
OQXL CGN JRMP NO RWZTDUZWC
Acknowledgements
There’s a small list of people that deserve a mention for the help they gave me in putting together this book. There’s no particular order in which I want to do this, so I’ll dive right on in.
Robin Carter for extensive proofing and valuable comments. Yes . . . his name does appear in the book as you, dear reader, will soon see. Obviously for legal reasons, I need to say something about this being utterly coincidental and any resemblance . . . blah, blah, blah. A damn good character name that. I also want to thank Andy Canty for his proof reading and comments as well, and again . . . that’s another Christian name that has turned up in the book! Funny old world.
My thanks also go out to someone I can’t name for security reasons, who gave me some useful ‘on the streets’ details of life in Iraq. He knows I’m thanking him anonymously like this, and that’s how it needs to be.
I want to thank my wife, Frances, for reading the first draft. I must extend my apologies for making her cry with the second draft. Her comments were many and varied; you’ll never truly know how valuable her feedback is. Dad, Tony, and brother, Simon, thanks you two for your encouragement. Additional thanks go to Jerry Stutters for some background military details.
Finally, a thank you to my editor, Jon Wood, and agent, Eugenie Furniss, for working with me on this and helping me to finesse the story and take it up to the next level.
December 1999
Room 204
She stared at the door of room 204.
Like every other door along the corridor, it was a rich dark wood with the room number and handle in gold plate.
A bloody expensive hotel, that’s what Dad had said.
‘Enjoy it guys . . . we’ll probably never stay in another as expensive as this one.’
He’d made a joke to Mum about sneaking out the bathrobes and selling them at some place called ‘eee-bay’.
The corridor was silent; leaving the lift her footsteps were hushed by the thick carpet - not even the muted noise of quiet conversations or a TV on low, coming from any of the rooms, the doors were so thick and heavy.
Now it was decision time . . . and she knew this would happen on the way up from the foyer, where she’d left Mum waiting impatiently. She knew she was going to forget the number in the lift going up - way too busy thinking about what she was going to buy with the spends Dad had given her for the trip.
204? It is 204 isn’t it? . . . Or was it 202?
Leona wondered if Dad’s business was all done now, or if he was still waiting for his mystery visitor. He’d been a little nervous and jumpy when he had shoo-ed her and Mum out to go window-shopping; snappy, tense, just like Leona remembered being on her first day at big school earlier that year.
Nervous - exactly like that.
Mum was pretty sure he must have finished his meeting by now. Since he’d bundled them out a couple of hours ago, they’d both visited a big department store glistening with Christmas displays, and grabbed a coffee and a Danish in a bustling coffee shop that overlooked the busy streets surrounding Times Square. And Dad had assured them his very important business meeting would be over quickly.
Leona hoped maybe he would be able to join them; to come back down with her now that the ‘work’ part of their family trip to New York was over. It wasn’t the same without him. But either way she really needed to pick up that beanie-bag of hers with all her spends in. There were just too many things she’d seen in the last two hours that she desperately needed to buy.
She decided it was room 204 they were staying in, not 202, after all. She placed her hand on the old-fashioned brass door-handle. She noticed a flicker of light through the keyhole beneath.
Dad nervously pacing the room? Or maybe his meeting had started already? She was about to hunker down and spy through the keyhole to be sure she wasn’t going to interrupt his business, but her grasp of the door-handle was heavy enough that, with a click, the latch disengaged and the door swung in heavily.
The three men stared at her, their conversation frozen in time. They stood at the end of the emperor-sized bed; three men, old men, very smart men, looking down at her. She noticed a fourth, younger, dark-haired man standing to one side, a deferential distance away from the others. He broke the moment, starting to move swiftly towards her, his hand reaching into a pocket.
‘No,’ whispered one of the three. That stopped him dead, although his hand remained inside his smart jacket.
The one who spoke turned towards Leona, stooping down slightly. ‘I think you’ve come into the wrong room my dear,’ he said, his voice pleasant and disarming, like a doting grandfather.
He smiled warmly at her, ‘I think your room is next door.’
‘I’m really s-sorry,’ Leona replied awkwardly, taking a contrite step backwards out of the room and into the corridor, pulling the door after her.
The door closed gently with a click of the latch and there was a long silence before one of the two older men who had remained silent, turned to the others.
‘She saw all three of us. We were seen together.’
A pause.
‘Is this going to pose a problem?’
‘Don’t worry. She doesn’t know who we are. She doesn’t know why we’re here.’
‘Our anonymity is everything . . . as it has always been, since—’
‘She’s a little girl. A few years from now, the only thing she’ll remember will be whatever she got for Christmas and the Millennium Eve fireworks. Not three boring old men in a room.’
The Present
Monday
CHAPTER 1
8.05 a.m. GMT BBC, Shepherd’s Bush, London
‘He’s lost some weight,’ said Cameron.
‘Really? I think he’s put some on.’
Cameron studied the monitors lined above the mixing desk. On them, Sean Tillman and his co-anchor, Nanette Madeley, were exchanging a few improvised witticisms between items.
‘No, you can see it in Sean’s face. It’s less jowly.’
His assistant producer, Sally, wrinkled her nose in judgement. ‘I don’t think he’s lost any weight. Do you suppose he’s feeling threatened by the younger news team over on Sky?’
‘Christ, yes. Can’t blame him though,’ Cameron replied. ‘Let’s be honest, if you’ve just woken up and you’re channel-hopping first thing in the morning, whose face would you want yapping the news at you? Flabby old Sean Tillman, or someone who looks like Robbie Williams’ younger, sexier brother?’
‘Hmmm, tough call,’ said Sally casting a casual glance across to their news-feed screen.
The domestic feed, a horizontal news text bar, was scrolling some dull story on a farmers’ dispute in Norfolk whilst the Reuters’ feed was streaming results on an election in Indonesia. Pretty uninteresting stuff all round.
Cameron cast a glance up at the monitor to see Sean Tillman checking himself in a small hand-mirror. ‘I know Sean’s also worried about the chin f
actor.’
Sally snorted with amusement.
‘Yuh, that’s what he calls it. He’s really pissed off about the studio floor being re-covered last month with a lighter linoleum. I heard him having a good old moan to Karl in make-up that the floor’s deflecting the studio lights. That he’s getting lit from underneath.’
Cameron leant forward and studied the monitor, watching both Sean and Nanette preparing for the hand-back from Diarmid. ‘He’s got a point though. He’s really coming off worse there. Nanette actually looks better, more radiant since they changed the—’
‘Cameron,’ muttered Sally.
‘—floor covering. Poor Sean though. It sort of makes the flesh under his chin glow. And there is a fair bit of it wobbling away under his—’
‘Cam!’ Sally said, this time more insistently.
‘What?’
She pointed to the Reuters’ news feed.
As the words scrolled slowly across the display bar, he read them one after the other, gradually making sense of the text he was reading.
‘Shit!’ he said, turning to Sally. ‘We’re going to need a whole bunch of graphics. This is going to hog the news all day.’
‘It’s not that big a deal, is it?’
‘You’re kidding me, right?’
Sally shrugged. ‘Another bomb. I mean we get a dozen of those every day in Ira—?’
‘But it’s not Iraq, is it?’ Cameron snapped at her. She flinched at the tone of his voice, and despite the sensation of growing urgency and the first prickling of a migraine, he felt she deserved a word or two more from him. ‘Trust me, this story’s going to grow very quickly, and we don’t want to be left chasing it. Let’s get ahead of the game and get all the assets we’re going to need. Okay?’