Nine Lives by Tom Barber Page A

from today.’
    He didn’t respond; she noticed him looking over at the clock.
    ‘Everything alright?’ she asked.
    He nodded and forced a smile, but it was half-hearted and unconvincing. She moved across in front of him, up close, reaching up to adjust his tie.
    ‘Look at the state of you,’ she chided. Pausing, she read her husband’s mind. ‘They won’t succeed, sweetheart. Our best men are out there right now, searching for them. And I hate to say it, but something like this was bound to happen at some point. It’s the way things are now. You know who we are. Our standing in the world. We’ll always have enemies.’
    He sighed, shaking his head.
    ‘Do we even know who this enemy is?’ he asked her. ‘Pete told me earlier that six of these men were born and bred right here in the UK. How is that possible? Are we doing something wrong? What happened along the way that they would even consider doing something like this?’
    ‘You can’t sit here and ponder their motives. You’ll drive yourself insane.’
    He nodded; he knew she was right. But he couldn’t shake his malaise. It almost felt as if all the errors and mistakes he’d made in the last three years were culminating tonight, like some gargantuan trial or test he had to pass.
    He bowed his head and sighed.
    ‘The people who've held this office before me led this country through its darkest times,’ he said quietly. ‘Endless conflicts. Two World Wars. The Falklands. The Gulf. Afghanistan. They knew who the opposition was. The soldiers knew where to stand their ground and fight the enemy. Mostly.’
    He paused.
    ‘But how do we fight these men? Where? Out there, on our streets? And what do I tell the country? That we're at war with ourselves?’
    He shook his head.
    ‘And how on earth do we stop an enemy who actually wants to die?’
    The last sentence stayed in the air. But rather than withdrawing, Jenny pierced his gaze, her soft demeanour hardening.
    ‘By granting his wish,’ she said, quietly.
    Silence.
    Suddenly, there was a hurried knock at the door; in almost the same instant, it was pushed open. It was Rogers. He looked pale, an expression on his normally amiable face that the PM hadn’t seen before. His wife saw it too.
    ‘Goodness, Pete, you look dreadful. Whatever is the matter?’ she asked.
    The Prime Minister stayed silent.
    He knew something terrible had just happened.
     
    Inside Room 418 of the Heathrow Marriott Hotel, Dominick Farha was standing by the window again, pushing back the curtain an inch with his fore-finger and scanning outside.
    On the bed behind him, his new companion was hard at work. The young woman had a white dress made of thick cotton laid across her lap. Beside her, the holdall containing the vast quantity of bricks of C4 explosive rested against a pillow.
    She lifted a brick from the bag and slid it into a compartment sewn into the gown. It was a perfect fit, snug and secure. Beside it, five other bricks had already been tucked into the glove-like pockets. She raised the dress in front of her, testing the weight, lifting the garment up and down.
    She smiled.
    ‘It worked. It holds.’
    Farha turned. ‘Good. Keep going.’
    He saw her smile up at him.
    ‘You look beautiful,’ he added, as an afterthought.
    That had the desired effect and she returned to her work with renewed passion, desperate to please him. Dominick watched her, keeping his thoughts to himself.
    He’d met her a few months ago in a book shop in the city. He’d been trying to find a manual on home-made explosives and had found one under Science , written by a guy named Stoffel. The girl had been standing a few feet away from him in the same aisle. He’d sensed she was checking him out and he decided on a whim to strike up a conversation with her. The conversation progressed to coffee, and soon they were meeting up repeatedly during the next few weeks.
    At the time Dominick had been in the midst of identifying and persuading willing