Stone - 25 - Collateral Damage

managed to get to my feet and walked through a lot of glass back to the window and looked out. It was carnage, pure and simple. There were the remains of cars, taxis, and trucks everywhere, and bodies and pieces of bodies strewn all over the place. I stood there until the EMTs got to my floor, then they put me on a stretcher and got me to the hospital. I didn’t even realize at first that I was blind in one eye. Sorry, missing an eye. I didn’t know that, either.”
    “When you were looking out the window,” Harry asked, “did you see any people walking about?”
    “You must be joking. Anybody in the block was maimed and dead or dying, even those who had been running toward the blast when it occurred.”
    “Thank you, Mrs. Meyers-Selby,” Harry said. “I don’t think we need trouble you any further.” He looked at Stone. “Unless you have something, Mr. Barrington.”
    Stone reached into an inside coat pocket, removed a sheet of paper, unfolded it, and handed it to her. “Have you ever seen this person before?”
    “Yes,” Mrs. Meyers-Selby said unhesitatingly. “She is the woman who was filling out the employment application and who left my office a minute or so before the first explosion.”
    “What sort of accent did she have?” Stone asked.
    “BBC English.”
    “And what language did she wish to be hired to translate?”
    “Arabic and Urdu.”
    “Do you remember the name she used?”
    “Khan,” Mrs. Meyers-Selby replied, and spelled it. “I don’t remember a first name.”
    “How was she dressed?”
    “Like a British office worker—dark skirt, Liberty print blouse, and gray cardigan. She had a Burberry raincoat, looked like a knockoff. She left it in my office when she went to the ladies’.”
    “Thank you, Mrs. Meyers-Selby,” Stone said. “I hope you have a speedy recovery.”
    “I could go back to work now, if anybody could stand to look at me,” she replied, sounding sad for the first time.
    Harry thanked her again, and they made their exit. “I want that raincoat,” he said, taking out a cell phone.
    —
    Jasmine sat in the back of the van and waited while Habib took some packages from it and handed them to a uniformed pilot at the cargo door of a medium-sized jet airplane. When he had finished, he got a plastic shopping bag from his car and brought it to her. “Inside is a kind of money vest. I have removed your funds from the deposit box in the London bank, changed them into more convenient currency, and placed the notes in the vest which, worn under your clothes, will give you the appearance of having gained weight.
    “You will be met at the airport and driven to a safe house, changing cars along the way. Our people there have already located some possible targets for you to consider in the city, and we would like an attack as soon as possible. Any questions?”
    “Yes. Why am I being moved?”
    “Jasmine, you are too hot to remain in Britain. Everybody is searching for you.”
    “Oh, all right.”
    He looked around, then waved her out of the van, up the aluminum ladder, and into the airplane, tossing in her roller suitcase behind her. Habib unhooked the ladder and tossed it into the airplane, then, with a wave, closed the door.
    “This way,” said the pilot, who was a young, skinny East Asian in black trousers, white shirt with epaulets, and a black, gold-trimmed hat. He led her forward to the cockpit and settled her into a seat immediately behind and between the pilot’s and copilot’s seats. Another young man in uniform was in the left seat, running through a checklist. Shortly, he started one engine, then the other. The copilot handed Jasmine a headset.
    “You can listen if you want to. The chat with the controllers gets boring, but we’ll have some music later.” He handed her two folded newspapers. “Here’s the Times and the Sun , depending on your tastes. We already have our clearance, and if there’s no delay for takeoff we should be landing in Reykjavik in about two and a half hours.”
    The airplane started to taxi, and Jasmine strapped herself in and opened the Times . Big headlines and photographs of the bombing scene. She involuntarily smiled.
    The copilot looked at her curiously, then turned around.
    She put on her headset. “Southampton Tower, AeroCargo 3 ready to taxi to the active runway.”
    “AeroCargo 3, Southampton Tower, taxi to runway 18 without delay. We’ve got light aircraft traffic on a ten-mile final, so we can squeeze you