Bluebird Down

Chapter Seven

Elizabeth

A pot of coffee sat on the side in the break room, too cold to infuse the air with anything other than the ghost of its aroma, whilst pastries dotted the table—the choicest picks already plucked from the cardboard trays. The hostage taker, the one who had met Elizabeth in the lobby, scoured the room. He yanked open each drawer in turn and rifled through, a clatter of cutlery. One by one, he tossed the knives into the bin—though who would bring a butter knife to a gunfight?—and then hauled the bin over to the doorway and stood guard whilst Elizabeth and Blake ventured inside.

Elizabeth motioned to the pastries. "Gather those together, will you?"

"Of course, ma'am," Blake said. "Is there anything else I can do?"

Elizabeth tipped the cold coffee down the sink, placed the pot back in the machine and then frowned at the array of buttons. "Why do they have to make these things so complicated?"

"Elizabeth," Henry's voice spoke in her ear, "we have their names. The one with you is Oliver King, born Omar Khan. His brother is Harry King, born Hamza Khan. And the one operating the laptop is their cousin, Alex Good, born Akeem Hussain."

Elizabeth frowned. She played the names over and over. Omar Khan, Hamza Khan, Akeem Hussain; Omar Khan, Hamza Khan, Akeem Hussain...With each repetition, a thread in her mind thickened, until there was enough that she could grasp. She pulled, and her mind lurched back to 2000. Ahmed Khan. Her stomach dropped. It couldn't be.

She glanced over her shoulder to where Omar hovered, staring along the corridor, his fingers twitching against the gun. And oh God, it was. She bit back the curse that leapt to her tongue, and palms sweating, she turned back to the coffee machine. "Blake," she said, and she smoothed the wrinkle from her voice.

"Here, let me." Blake stepped up beside her and pressed one of the buttons on top of the machine before offering her the glimpse of a smile. "There."

The coffee machine whirred into life, and the noise filled the room. Elizabeth tilted her chin towards her collar and whispered, "Ahmed Khan." She closed her eyes. Please let Conrad hear. Please.

***

Henry

"Ahmed Khan." Elizabeth's voice shivered through the microphone, and given the way that Conrad froze, perhaps Henry wasn't the only one struck by the undercurrent of fear.

"Ephraim," Conrad said, "pull up the files on Ahmed Khan."

"Certainly, sir." Ephraim stooped over his laptop as he tapped at the keys, and the glare of the screen reflected blue and white in his glasses.

Conrad leant forward over the desk and pressed the button at the base of the microphone. "I hear you, Bess. Keep them talking, find out what it is that they want." He paused and then added, "We're going to get you out of there, you hear me?"

Elizabeth's breath shook. Then she said, "Is it clean or does it need to be sanitised?"

In the footage from her camera, Blake peered down at the coffee mug in hand, his brow furrowed. But a chill prickled through the Situation Room, and all those versed in the language of the IC stopped and turned to Conrad. Clean or sanitised? Clean or sanitised?

Time slowed. Henry's heart pounded, and the thud, thud, thud beat out that endless pause.

Conrad surveyed his colleagues. "Does anyone here have any reason to believe that these men may have accessed classified documents?"