and means. That little boy could grow up to be worse than you or even me.’
‘It’s still not right.’
‘You’ve left it a little late to turn to morality, don’t you think?’ Hart took out his phone. ‘Get your focus back on that terrace and tell me the second Kooi appears.’
Victor kept to the shadows and hurried along the exterior of the new mill, slowing as he came to the corner. He peered around to see the Rolls-Royce limousine parked in front of the building. The ambulance had been uncovered and was parked next to it. The back doors were open. Victor watched as one of the Chechens dropped out from inside the rear compartment. He wore a paramedic’s uniform. He was joined by another similarly attired Chechen, carrying a big bag for medical supplies in each hand. The bags would contain weapons and other supplies for the siege. The Chechen with the bags passed one to the other man, who climbed into the ambulance with it and placed the other on the ground.
As far as they knew they would be leaving soon. They needed to be close to the embassy for when the bomb was scheduled to explode so they could be among the first responders who would be on the scene within minutes. But the ambulance was stolen and the longer it was out on the streets the greater the chance of it being noticed and the plan failing. Therefore they would leave at the last possible moment, which wouldn’t be until after Victor was due on the terrace. They would still be within the mill complex when Hart realised Victor was no longer at the embassy. They were dangerous men with access to automatic weapons. They looked anxious but they were not alert. But all that was going to change in less than five minutes.
He waited until the second bag had been picked up and the Chechen was in the ambulance and made his way past the vehicles, keeping close to the new mill’s exterior, where the shadows were darkest. When he was out of line of sight from the back of the ambulance he circled around to it. He waited alongside the back doors for the Chechen to appear. The man dropped down from the rear compartment a moment later.
Victor attacked him from behind, wrapping his right arm around the man’s neck as he snapped his free palm over his mouth and nose to muffle the Chechen’s scream and stop him breathing. He pulled him backwards and down, dragging him away from the ambulance as the pressure on his neck cut off the blood supply to his brain. He thrashed and struggled but within seconds he had gone limp. By the time Victor had dragged him between the new mill and the fence he was dead. Not the best hiding place, but he didn’t have time for anything else and no one would see the corpse unless they made a point of coming round the back of the building.
He searched the dead Chechen, but found only cigarettes and a disposable lighter. He took the lighter and crept back around to the ambulance. Inside the back compartment he placed the suicide bomber’s vest beneath the newly loaded bags. There wasn’t time to hide it more thoroughly, but it should go unnoticed so long as no one searched for it. If someone did it meant Victor had failed and if he failed it was because he was dead.
One of the double doors leading into the old mill was open and through the gap Victor could see the antechamber beyond. Inside it was the Chechen who had carried the bags, accompanied by another. They were packing AK-47 assault rifles into bags. Victor stayed in the shadows and moved by.
The old mill was about half as long as the new building. At the north end, Victor saw a stone staircase leading down to what had to be the underground mill Francesca had described. At the bottom of the steps was a metal gate, padlocked. Lucille and Peter were down there. No one was around. There was no one in earshot. In other circumstances he could have undone the lock in under a minute, but he had no pick and no torsion wrench. The 9 mm bullets in the handgun would bounce off. But even if he could get them out right now, then what?
They couldn’t climb the fence and he couldn’t lift them over it. There wasn’t enough room to get