Nemesis

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JOHN EISERLY, MI5, sat in the control room at St. Paul’s with a half-dozen other agents and security staff, all eyes carefully studying the faces that passed into the cathedral. They’d been on high alert since the attempted bombing of St. Patrick’s. In addition, St. Paul’s deserved even more security this afternoon, given the number of very important guests here for the wedding. He’d heard the prime minister himself had spoken to John’s boss, ensuring they were going all out. Other than strip-searching all the guests, there was nothing more they could do.

The guests were all well dressed and in a festive mood, laughing, talking among themselves, not a suspicious character in the lot. Strip-searching them would most certainly put a crimp in the jolly mood. He grinned at the thought, then yawned. “Another two weeks” was his and Mary Ann’s mantra—the doctor said Ceci should sleep through the night in another two weeks. He hoped Mary Ann was finally getting some sleep. He chanced to look over at the monitor for the camera in the south transept and his heart stopped. There was Mary Ann sitting there, today of all days, Ceci hugged to her chest, sound asleep. She was wearing her beautiful blue dress she’d worn three weeks before when they’d celebrated their third wedding anniversary. For a moment he couldn’t get his brain around it. She hadn’t told him she’d be here today, had she? He remembered now. Of course she was here. She and Ellie Colstrap were friends, and her friend was marrying a man she’d told him she didn’t like. He’d forgotten about it in all the chaotic urgency of the last four days, forgotten they had even been invited. Ellie and Mary Ann had been close in the days before he and Mary Ann had married; Ellie was one of her very rich friends, who, John knew, thought Mary Ann had married beneath herself. A copper?

John focused on his wife sitting in the south transept, away from her friends, who sat among a huge knot of people in the center, closer to the altar, in case Ceci woke up yelling at the top of her lungs, so she could make a fast exit. He never took his eyes off his wife. He felt sweat trickle down his cheek and brushed it off. She was here, Ceci was here. No, nothing would happen to St. Paul’s. Nothing would happen to his family. Still, John couldn’t bring himself to look at the other cameras; his eyes stayed locked on Mary Ann’s face. He zoomed the camera in, saw a half-dozen people file in around her. A regal old woman stood near her, dressed to the nines, dripping with diamonds, her clothes out of date but screaming expensive. She was studying the Nelson Monument, moving closer, touching it. Then she turned, as if to leave, and Mary Ann smiled up at her and pointed to the empty chair beside her.

Wait. Wait. “Back up camera nine, now! The old lady, right there! Back up the camera!

“Stop, right there. That’s her—she’s stopped beside Nelson’s Monument. Okay, now go forward, half-speed.” Three agents crowded around him. They saw the old lady had a flat package, maybe six by eight inches in her gloved hand. If you weren’t looking closely, you wouldn’t have seen it. They watched her press close to the Nelson Monument, pause a fraction of a second.

“Zoom in!” John pointed. She shoved the package into a small crevice. They couldn’t see her after that, as people filed past her, blocked the view.

“Freeze it on her, full face!” John yelled. “Facial recognition! Quickly!”

The newly enhanced NCG homed in on the old woman’s heavily powdered face. Seconds passed as the program juxtaposed hundreds of faces next to the old lady’s. Then it stopped, narrowed her cheeks, removed the tight gray curls and her neck scarf. And there was the man Nasib Bahar, a fugitive wanted by the Algerians.

Bingo.

The agent at his elbow said, “John, there’s Mary Ann and Ceci!”

“I know,” he whispered. “I know.”

John watched Bahar sit down beside a smiling Mary Ann. Was he going to blow all of them up, himself included? No, he was an operative. He had no intention of immolating himself in the process. He was here to set the explosives and escape. How many other packets had he positioned throughout the cathedral? John set them all to retrace Bahar’s steps on the video recording. They counted as many as eight packets.

What if he was wrong? What if Bahar was going to stay, blow himself up sitting next to Mary Ann and Ceci? He’d never been so scared in his life. He had to make a decision. Then the old woman was getting up. She stood quietly, looking toward the altar, upward at the dome, and she smiled. She moved into the nave and slowly walked past several latecomers, back toward the entrance.