after all.
At last the bus pulled out, giving Marcus a clear view of the subject, now walking further down First Avenue. His pace was quickening slightly, thanks to the steep downward slope. But this was no relaxed stroll. Marcus could see him studying the garden on the other side of the railings intently. He had drawn level with a large, heroic sculpture – the slaying of a dragon, the beast apparently fashioned out of an old artillery cannon – and stopped as if looking for something.
Marcus squinted. Was he searching for another, unguarded, way into the UN compound? If he was, he clearly had not found it. Now, with renewed purpose, the man turned around, heading back towards the main entrance.
Felipe Tavares' radio was bulky, low-tech and in this rain barely audible. It was hard to separate the static crackle from the rest of the noise. But the word ‘Alert’ came through clear enough, especially when repeated twice.
‘Watch Commander to main entry points, this is the Watch Commander to main entry points.’ Felipe recognized the accent: the guy from the Ivory Coast who'd started three months ago. ‘We have information on a possible threat to the building. Suspect is male, five foot eight, wearing a heavy black coat and dark woollen hat. No more details at present, but stay vigilant. Please stop and apprehend anyone fitting that description.’
Felipe had barely digested the message when he saw a blur of black striding, head down, towards the gate he was guarding.
Marcus was now halfway across First Avenue, struggling to hear the voice in his ear above the traffic.
‘… enter the UN compound. Repeat, agents are not to enter the UN compound.’
He stopped as he reached the kerb of the slip road, now just yards away from the man he had followed for more than ten minutes, and watched him walk briskly through the gate and up the few steps to the small piazza in front of the white marquee. He had crossed into UN territory: he was now officially beyond reach. All Marcus could see was the man's back. He felt his heart fill with dread.
From this angle, at the side of the piazza, Felipe could only see a little of the man's face in profile, the hat and the collar of his coat obscuring even that. But he fitted the Watch Commander's description perfectly.
Felipe watched him stop, as if contemplating what stood before him. Then he took three more paces forwards, then stopped again. What was he doing?
The security man could feel his palms growing moist. He was suddenly aware of how many people were around, dozens of them crossing between him and this black-coated figure. So many people. He wondered if he should say something into his radio, but all he could do was stare, frozen, his gaze fixed on the coat. It was raining, but it was certainly not cold. Why was the coat so thick, so heavy? Answering his own question spread a wave of nausea through him, starting in his stomach and rising into his throat.
Felipe looked around, desperate to see half a dozen of his fellow officers descending on this scene, men who by their very presence would take the decision for him. He wanted to use his radio – ‘Believe suspect could be armed with a bomb. Repeat, believe suspect could be armed with a bomb!’ – but what if that only provoked him to act? Felipe Tavares was paralysed.
The man was on the move again, now just yards away from the marquee. Felipe thought that perhaps he should wait, let him go through the doors and be stopped by Security. He wouldn't stand a chance: he'd never get past the detectors or a frisk. But he wouldn't care. That, Felipe realized as the blood drained from his head, was the absolute horror of it. Nothing could scare this man.
Now the subject changed course again, still showing his back to Felipe, but turning to face the street. Felipe wanted to cry out, demand that the man freeze and put his hands in the air. But that, he understood, could be no less fatal. Once the man knew he'd been discovered, he would push the button immediately, right here. And there were just so many people around …
Felipe did not decide to do it. That much he would remember later: there was never a decision. He simply reached for his gun. And at that moment he saw ahead of him, through the black iron railings, two men, one of them young, black and dreadlocked, both raising their hands, showing their palms, as if in surrender. The sheer alarm on their faces, the mortal panic etched on them, settled it for him. In a single motion, he pulled out his weapon and aimed it squarely at the man in black.
The next moment was one Felipe Tavares would replay over and over until his last breath, usually in slow-motion. For the rest of his life, it would be the last image he would see at night and the first when he woke up each morning. It would sear itself behind his eyelids. At the centre of it were the faces of those two men. They were aghast, not just frightened but shocked by what they had seen. One of them shouted the single word: No!
Felipe was certain what had happened. The man in black had obviously undone his coat, revealing the explosive vest underneath. The two men, on the other side of the railings, had seen that he was about to blow himself up. The sound of that cry, the look of horror on the dreadlocked man's face, coursed through Felipe, sending a charge of electricity down his right arm and into his finger. He squeezed the trigger once, twice, and watched the man collapse at the knees, falling slowly, even gracefully, like a chimney stack detonated from below.
Felipe couldn't move. He was fixed to the spot, his arms locked into position, still aiming at the man now lying in a heap no more than five yards before him.
He heard nothing for a while. Not the echo of the gunshots. Not the cries, as the crowd scattered like pigeons. Not the alarm that had been set off inside the UN building.
The first voice he heard was that of a fellow officer, who had dashed out of the marquee at the sound of gunfire. She now stood over the corpse, repeating the same word over and over, ‘No. No. No.’
Unsteadily, dumbly, Felipe walked over to the pile of black clothes now ringed by a spreading puddle of blood. And, in an instant, he understood. There, at his feet, was not the body of a suicide bomber. There was no explosive vest filling that jacket. All it had contained was the flesh and bone of a man, now broken and unmoving. Felipe could even see why he had been wearing a heavy coat in September. He understood it all and the horror of it made his knees buckle.
Felipe Tavares, and the growing crowd of security officers now circling him, were all looking at the same thing.
The corpse of a white-haired and very old man.
There was a moment, lasting perhaps two beats, of silence and then the noise erupted. There were screams of course – a man first, yelping in a language few around him understood – and then the cries of three women who had been posing for a photograph by the Pop Art sculpture of a gun, its barrel twisted into a knot. They had fallen to the ground, their larynxes temporarily stopped in fright, but now their fear pealed as loud as church bells. Soon there was crying, shouting and the sound, just audible, of a man contemplating the shard of human bone that had landed at his feet, murmuring in his own tongue, ‘Good God’.
Some in the marquee began to panic; one sounded the fire alarm. The rest remembered the drill they had practised. They abandoned their posts at the scanning machines, rushing to stand like sentries at the doors of each entrance, their pistols brandished. The United Nations headquarters was going into lockdown.
Felipe Tavares was now flanked by two colleagues, guiding him away from the corpse which lay, still uncovered and untouched, on the
