Sacred Stone

Another MI5 agent walked into the lobby. “Sir,” he said to Fleming, “we now have twenty vehicles prowling the roads nearby. As soon as the principal climbs into whatever car he’s going to use, we can stop traffic in an instant.”

“And the bomb experts are nearby, ready to move?”

“Four British experts”—the man nodded—“a couple from the United States Air Force.”

At that instant Amad’s praying stopped and the sound of him walking across the floor of the apartment came over the microphone.

“We have movement,” Fleming said into the radio to the dozens of men in wait. “Do not move on him until he is at his final destination.”

Fleming prayed it would soon be over. The time was 11:49 P.M.

THERE WERE MI5 agents at the front, rear and all sides of the apartment building. Every car on the street had been tagged with a locator; each had an electronic disabling device attached. Each had been scanned with a Geiger counter and found to be clean.

Everyone believed Amad would be driving to another location to retrieve the bomb.

But the bomb was downstairs right now. It was resting in the sidecar attached to a Russian-made Ural motorcycle—just like the one Amad had trained on in Yemen.

AS SOON AS the door to the apartment opened and Amad exited, an MI5 agent passed through the lobby and stared at the elevator button. It showed the elevator going to Lababiti’s floor, and then it started down. The elevator stopped on the second floor.

The MI5 agent whispered the information over the radio, then quickly walked from the lobby. Everyone who was listening tensed up—the time was now and this was the place.

THE FOOD AND beer and fun had not been diminished by the cold and scattered snow. The areas around Hyde and Green Parks were crowded with tens of thousands of holiday partygoers. Backstage, a liaison from MI5 was explaining to a rock star the cold reality.

“You should have warned us,” his agent said loudly, “so we could have canceled.”

“He explained that,” Elton John said. “That would have alerted the terrorists.”

Dressed in a yellow sequined jumpsuit, jeweled sunglasses and black platform boots with lights in the soles, it would be easy to dismiss John as just another spoiled and overindulged musician used to a life of pampered elegance. The truth was far from that. Reginald Dwight had clawed his way up from a hardscrabble existence with strength, perseverance and decades of hard work. No one can dominate the pop charts for decade after decade if they’re not both tough and realistic. Elton John was a survivor.

“The royal family has been evacuated, right?” he asked.

“Come in here, Mr. Truitt,” the MI5 agent shouted outside the trailer.

Truitt opened the door and stepped inside.

“This is the stand-in for Prince Charles,” the agent said.

John glanced at Truitt and grinned. “Looks just like him,” he said.

“Sir,” Truitt said, “I want you to know we’re going to recover the bomb and disable it before anything happens. We appreciate you going along with this.”

“I have faith in MI5,” John said.

“He’s with MI5,” Truitt said. “I’m with a group named the Corporation.”

“The Corporation?” John said. “What’s that?”

“We’re private spies,” Truitt said.

“Private spies,” John said, shaking his head, “imagine that. You guys any good?”

“We have a one hundred percent success record.”

John rose from his chair—it was time to go backstage. “Do me a favor,” he said, “give this one a hundred and ten percent.”

Truitt nodded.

John was at the door but he stopped. “Tell the cameraman not to do close-ups on Prince Charles—the bad guys might be watching.”

“You’re going out there?” the agent asked incredulously.

“Damn straight,” John said, “that’s a crowd of my countrymen and they came to see a show. Either these men”—he swept his hand at Truitt and the MI5 agent—“handle this problem, or I’m going out singing.”

Truitt smiled and followed John out the door.

THERE ARE SIX ways to enter a room. Four walls, the floor, or through the ceiling. Amad was using the latter. At the end of the second floor of Lababiti’s apartment building there was a utility closet. Two months prior, Lababiti had carefully sawed the four corners of the wood-planked floor and removed it, revealing the sub-floor. Then, using a two-foot-diameter round hole saw, he’d bored a hole into the lower shop. Between the sub-floor and the wood hatch above he’d hidden a rope ladder. After cleaning up the dust below, he retrieved the round section of floor and reattached it above with twin plates. Next he filled the edges around the wall in the closet with wood putty so it could not be detected. The hatch had been left alone until now.

Amad opened the utility closet using a key Lababiti had copied.