For a moment, Ho thought the rally had arrived—he could hear it not far off, a rumbling mobile chant like a rootless football match. But the types pouring into view from doorways all around were wearing suits and smart outfits: more marched against than marching. Through the Needle’s revolving doors they came too, appearing unsure as to their next move; pausing, most of them, to look back at the building they’d emerged from, and then staring round as it became clear that whatever was happening was happening everywhere.
Shirley was upright again. “ ’Kay. In we go.”
Ho said, “But everyone’s coming out.”
“Jesus wept—you’re aware you’re MI5, right?”
“I’m mostly research,” he explained, but she was already shoving her way through the emerging crowds.
The gun looked natural in Piotr’s fist, no more surprising than a coffee cup or beer bottle. He pointed it at Marcus. “Hands on the table.”
Marcus laid his hands on the tabletop, palms down.
“All of you.”
Louisa complied.
After a moment, Webb did the same. “Shit,” he said. Then, “Shit,” he said again.
Pashkin snapped his briefcase shut. The alarm was still looping, so he raised his voice. “You’ll be locked in. Those doors, they’re pretty good. You’ll be best off waiting for help.”
Webb said, “I thought we were—”
“Shut up.”
“—doing something here—”
Kyril said, “You were. You were helping us out.”
“Thought you couldn’t speak English,” Louisa said.
Marcus said, “They’re not just going to lock us in.”
“I know.”
Kyril said something that made Piotr laugh.
The alarm wailed on, swelling then diminishing. Other floors would be being evacuated; the lifts would have frozen, and the doors into the stairwells automatically unlocked, allowing access either way. Crowds would assemble at designated points outside, and names be checked off against lists held by security, or matched against the keycards currently in use. But no one on the seventy-seventh floor would appear on either of those lists. Their presence was off grid.
Webb said, “Look, I don’t know what the alarm’s for, but I promise—”
Piotr shot him.
Seventy-seven storeys below, people trooped onto the streets; some wearing that fed-up look that comes with unwelcome interruption; others happily lighting unscheduled cigarettes; and all—once they realised that not only their own but every building in sight was evacuating—changing mood: standing still, looking skyward. All were used to drills and false alarms, but these happened one at a time. Now, everything was happening at once, and the grim possibilities took root and flowered. The City broke into a run. Its directions were various, but its intentions clear: to be somewhere else, immediately. And still people kept appearing, because the buildings were ten, fifteen, twenty storeys high, and each floor was packed with workers. Whether at desks, in meeting rooms, huddled round watercoolers or chatting in corridors, all were hearing the same thing: their building’s alarm, instructing them to leave. Those who paused to look from their windows saw scattering crowds below. This was not conducive to orderly evacuation. Jostling gave way to shoving. Ripples of panic became waves, and the voices of reason drowned in the swell.
This didn’t happen everywhere, but it happened often. As the City warned its worker bees of a possible terrorist event, some of those bees turned on each other, and stung.
Most of the resulting injuries, it was later calculated, happened in those buildings containing bankers. Well, bankers and lawyers. It was too close to call.
Smoking again, Jackson Lamb slouched across a highwalk in the Barbican complex, heading for Slough House. Above him rose Shakespeare or Thomas More, he could never remember which tower was which, and ahead was a familiar bench. He’d fallen asleep on it once, clutching a cardboard coffee cup. When he’d woken, it held forty-two pence in small change.
He sat on the bench now to finish his cigarette. Above and behind him loured the 1970s, wrought in glass and concrete; below him the middle ages, in the shape of St Giles Cripplegate, and to the east, the up-to-the-minute sound of sirens, which had been building for some while, but only now crashed through his absorbed state. A pair of fire engines blared along London Wall, followed by a police car. Lamb paused, fingers halfway to his lips. Another fire engine. Dropping the cigarette, he reached for his phone instead.
Taverner, he thought. What have you done?
