THIRTY-SIX
I PUT MY hand on the Glock in my pocket, and the back part of my brain told the front part, seventeen in the magazine plus one in the chamber minus two fired in the Serbian garage equals sixteen rounds available, and it pulled me back against a real estate broker’s window, to cut 360 degrees of vulnerability to 180, but mostly it screamed at me: Dominique Kohl.
I took a breath and looked left and right. There was no traffic cop to be seen. Which would have been logical. Nice would have taken off in a heartbeat if she had spotted one. Digital information in a camera system could be erased at the touch of a button, but Nice’s face and the Skoda’s plate in the same human memory at the same time couldn’t be managed so easily. Grander schemes had unravelled for less. But there was no cop on the block. There was no uniformed individual sauntering along, with notebook in hand.
And there were no members of the public staring open-mouthed at the empty length of blacktop, either, as if after some big commotion. And Nice wouldn’t have gone down easy, not for the Romford Boys, not for the Serbians, not for anyone. She had doors that locked and a loaded gun in her pocket. Sixteen rounds available, the same as me. The street was far from quiet, but it was humming with nothing more than normal city activity. No big incident had taken place. That seemed clear.
I slid along the broker’s window and stepped back into a doorway, for ninety degrees of exposure, like I had only a baseball diamond ahead of me. Traffic on the street was one-way, from my right to my left. There was a steady flow. Small hatchback cars, black taxis, an occasional larger sedan, delivery vans. No drivers peering left and right, no shotgun passengers searching faces. No one looking for me. I stepped out a pace and checked the corners. No one waiting there.
She knows what she signed up for. And she’s tougher than she looks.
She was captured, mutilated, and killed. I should have gone myself.
I’m going to hang way back. It’s not going to happen again.
I stepped out of my doorway and walked against the flow of traffic. There were people on both sidewalks, hurrying in both directions, in cheap suits and thin raincoats, carrying small furled umbrellas, like British people do, just in case, and briefcases and shopping bags and backpacks, no one doing anything other than just hustling along. No furtive behaviour. No black vans idling at the kerb, no big guys looking around, no cop cars.
I took out the phone Scarangello had given me, and I found Nice’s number in the directory, and I called it. There was a long pause, nothing but scratchy silence, maybe waiting for network access, maybe waiting for an encryption protocol to lock in, and then I heard a ring tone, a long soft American purr in the heart of London, and another, and more, for a total of six.
No answer.
I clicked off.
Hope for the best, plan for the worst. Maybe she was driving, and couldn’t talk. Maybe something had spooked her off the kerb, and she was circling the block. Some innocent reason. Left, and left again, and again, as many times as it took for me to finish my business in the convenience store. Eventually she would see me standing on the sidewalk, and she would swoop in and pick me up.
I watched the corner ahead of me.
She didn’t come.
Or worst case, her phone was in some other guy’s hand, who would have a calculating gleam in his eye, as he watched the screen and saw my name there. Maybe they would stop, and try to reel me in. Right there and then. A two-for-one special. An improvised plan. Some kind of a trap, nearby. Casey Nice as bait, and some kind of an ambush.
I watched my own screen.
No one called me back.
Plan for the worst. The only other number in the directory was O’Day’s. There’s GPS in our cell phones, so they’ll be watching over us every step of the way. He could lead me to her. Literally step by step. Until they ditched her phone, at least. I dialled, and heard the scratchy silence again.
Then I clicked off the call, because up ahead of me the Skoda was coming around the corner.
Nice was driving, but she wasn’t alone. Behind her in the back seat was another figure, solid but insubstantial in the shadows, tilted somehow, as if watching over her shoulder. Then the car got closer and I recognized the guy. Maybe forty or forty-five years old, a little sunburned, with cropped fair hair and a blunt, square face, wearing a sweater and a short canvas jacket. With blue denim jeans, no doubt, and tan suede boots, maybe British Army desert issue.
Bennett, the Welshman with the unpronounceable first name. Last seen disappearing in Paris. The MI6 agent. Or MI5. Or something in between. Or something else entirely. It’s all pretty fluid at the moment, he had said, in his sing-song voice.
The Skoda swooped to the kerb and braked hard in front of me. Both Nice and Bennett looked up at me, necks craned under the windshield rail, eyes a little wide, appealing somehow, Nice more so than Bennett, as if she was saying, Pretend this is normal.
I got in. I opened the passenger door, and dumped myself in the seat, and got my feet in, and closed the door again. I held the environmental bag in my lap. Nice hit the gas and turned the wheel and took off again. She said, ‘This gentleman’s name is Mr Bennett.’
‘I remember,’ I said.
‘We’ve met,’ Bennett said, to her, not to me. ‘In Paris, where a gust of wind saved his ass.’
I said, ‘Now you admit to being there?’
‘Not in writing.’
‘Why did you hijack my ride? I was worried there, for a second.’
‘There’s a traffic warden two streets away. They use photo tickets now. Better if you don’t get caught up in that kind of complication.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Pull over,’ he said. ‘Any place you like. We’ll move again if we see anyone coming.’
Nice slowed the car, and hunted for a space at the kerb, and ended up half in and half out of a bus stop. Technically illegal, no doubt, but Bennett showed no great concern. I asked him again, ‘What do you want?’
He said, ‘I want to ride along for a day or two.’
‘With us?’
‘Obviously.’
‘Why?’
‘I have a roving brief at the moment. Which I interpret to mean I should keep an eye on the other thirty-six undercover operators in London and latch on with whoever’s furthest ahead.’
‘We’re not ahead.’
‘Neither is anyone else, I’m sorry to say. But at least you’re having fun.’
‘Not so far.’
‘But you’re making some kind of progress.’
‘Are we?’
‘Don’t be so modest.’
‘Are you wearing a wire?’
‘Want to search me?’
‘I will,’ Nice said, over her shoulder. ‘If I have to. There are rules.’
‘Says the unacknowledged asset, operating inside an ally’s territory, with two recent homicides in her slipstream.’
I said, ‘You can look at me for both of those.’
‘Implausible,’ Bennett said. ‘How do you explain Wormwood Scrubs? You took one and she took three? I don’t think so. You should have moved the bodies a bit. The pattern was too clear. I think the splinter of glass was down to Ms Nice alone. I’ll give you yesterday’s caved-in throat, though. So I’d say it’s a one-all draw at the moment. A tie, as you would call it.’
‘What do you want?’ I said, for the third time.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘There are no wires for NHI cases.’
Casey Nice said, ‘Which are what?’
‘No humans involved. We’re not very interested. But they are. That’s the problem. That’s the downside. Now you’ve got two gangs after you.’
‘How interested is not very?’
‘On our part? We’ll take notes, but we won’t actually do anything with them.’
‘Paper records?’
‘Inevitable, I’m afraid.’
‘In which case we weren’t there.’
He said, ‘Where?’
I said, ‘Anywhere.’
‘Technology says otherwise. We watch where you go, you know. And GPS is a wonderful thing. How else could I find you, just now for instance, parked miles from the scene of the crime, in a stolen car no less, and all at a moment’s notice?’
I said, ‘Our phones are encrypted.’
He just smiled and said, ‘Oh, please.’
‘Please what?’
‘Think about why you people put up with us. As in, why us and not Germany now? What do we bring to the table?’
‘GCHQ,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Our version of the NSA. Our listening post. But so much better than the NSA, it’s embarrassing. You need us. That’s why you put up with us.’
‘You’re eavesdropping.’
‘No, we’re facilitating,’ he said. ‘We’re gathering things up and passing things along. Occasionally we might test for intelligibility. On a purely technical level.’
‘Surely CIA transmissions are unbreakable.’
‘The CIA certainly thinks so.’
‘You’ve broken their code?’
‘I think we sold them their code. Not directly, of course. I’m sure it was a complicated sting.’
‘I’m sure you’re not supposed to do that kind of thing.’
‘And I’m sure it was all a long time ago.’
‘So did we do a public service? With the Serbians?’
‘You hurt them. But you didn’t kill them. Like cutting an arm off an octopus. Not that we’re ungrateful, you understand. Seven arms are easier to fight than eight. If only marginally.’
‘You want more.’
‘They’re both coming after you. Which presents opportunities, perhaps. In my opinion a few more casualties would not be frowned upon, in certain circles.’
‘With you riding along?’
‘Purely as an observer. Some of these people are British citizens. And as Ms Nice pointed out, there are rules.’
‘Are you going to give us help?’
‘Do you need any?’
‘We asked for a list of locations.’
Bennett nodded. ‘We saw that transmission.’
‘We haven’t had an answer.’
‘Locations are difficult. More than ever now, because we have to figure in Karel Libor’s portfolio, and the Serbians’ too, as of this morning. Because if the Serbians really are cooperating with Romford, then logic says they might have put Kott in one place and Carson in another, far from each other. Safer that way. And logic also suggests they’d be using remote addresses. And the land around London is pretty flat. Rolling, at best. Not the kind of terrain for approaching distant isolated farmhouses suspected of containing either one or two of the four best freelance snipers in the world.’
I said, ‘I would still like the list.’
‘OK, we’ll release it today. You’ll get it just as soon as it bounces off O’Day.’
‘But you’re betting on remote farmhouses? Well separated?’
‘Not necessarily. There are different possibilities.’
‘Such as what?’
‘They have safe houses, and there are plenty of houses they rent out, and therefore plenty of tenants just delighted to get out of town for a week or two. And there are plenty of people who owe them money, who would love to earn a rebate by feeding a stranger three times a day, and giving him a bed for the night, and then saying nothing at all about it.’
‘But you think far from prying eyes would be better?’
‘At first sight much better. But ultimately it’s a trade-off, isn’t it? They have to assume we have a plan for shutting down access to the centre of town. Like a post nine-eleven thing. I’m sure every big city does. And they wouldn’t want to get caught on the outside of a thing like that. Not when they’ve got a big rifle to bring through the cordon. So all in all I think they’ll move in sooner rather than later. They might already be here.’
‘We saw a few hundred viable locations overlooking Wallace Court.’
‘Which we’re searching very carefully. But what if they’re in viable locations we didn’t see?’
‘Do you have a plan for shutting London down?’
‘Of course we do.’
‘Then why aren’t you using it?’
‘Because we remain optimistic.’
‘Which is a politician talking.’
‘The aim is to wrap this up quickly.’
‘Which also sounds like a politician talking.’
‘Politicians sign our paycheques.’
‘So what kind of help will you give us?’
‘We’ll show you where Little Joey lives. Nothing happens without him. You can watch the comings and the goings, and you can see if you can figure things out.’
‘Are you saying you can’t?’
‘The movements we have so far observed have so far shown no coherent pattern.’
‘Then maybe Little Joey isn’t the guy.’
‘Charlie White is far too old and far too grand to be running around, and Tommy Miller and Billy Thompson are only ten years younger, and they’re nothing more than bureaucrats now, anyway. Which is what gangs are all about these days. Tax strategies, and legal investments, and things like that. Little Joey Green is the only one who actually does anything. Trust me on that. If they’re rotating the guards in and out, or sending food and women, then it’s all coming through Little Joey’s driveway.’
‘Except you haven’t observed it.’
‘Not as yet.’
‘How long have we got, before the politicians panic?’
‘Not long.’
‘Do they have a Plan B?’
‘It would help me if we didn’t get that far.’
‘So now we’re helping you?’
‘We’re both helping each other. That’s how it’s supposed to work, isn’t it?’
‘Do you listen to the hot line between Downing Street and the Oval Office?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Personal interest.’
‘By tradition we leave that one alone.’
‘Good to know.’
He said, ‘Let’s go and find you a new hotel. You should have some down time. I’ll text you when we’re ready to go out to Little Joey’s place.’
I said, ‘You have our phone numbers?’
He didn’t answer.
‘Silly question,’ I said.
Bennett swapped places with Nice and drove us south, to the Bayswater Road, which was the northern limit of Hyde Park, and then east to Marble Arch, and then south again on Park Lane, into Mayfair, which was rich enough to be neutral territory. No gangs there, at least of any type I would recognize. We drove past the Grosvenor House Hotel, and the Dorchester, and we pulled in at the Hilton. Bennett said, ‘They won’t look for you here. With the money you’ve taken, they’ll figure you went somewhere fancier. Somewhere with a bigger name, like Brown’s or Claridge’s, or the Ritz, or the Savoy.’
I said, ‘How do you know about the money we’ve taken?’
‘It was in Ms Nice’s report to O’Day.’
‘Which you happened to test for intelligibility.’
‘The choice of test sample is a random procedure. Purely a lottery. Driven by engineering. Something to do with the mean time between failures.’
‘We should throw our phones away.’
Casey Nice said, ‘We can’t.’
Bennett said, ‘I agree. You can’t. You need to check in with O’Day on a regular basis. That’s the deal he made with Scarangello. If you go to radio silence now, then the deal is off, and you’re disowned by all concerned, in which case you better be out of the country within an hour, or you’re going to be hunted down like common fugitives.’
‘You know about Scarangello too?’
‘Try to remember, anything that ends up in the state of Maryland goes through the county of Gloucestershire first. And in reverse.’
‘You must be listening to the whole world.’
‘Pretty much.’
‘So who’s bankrolling this thing? Have you figured that out yet?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘And you’re the A team, right? With the big brains? So much better than the rubes at Fort Meade?’
‘Normally we do pretty well.’
‘But not this time, apparently. So now you want to dump it all on us. You want us to keep on communicating with O’Day, so you can listen in while we take all the risks.’
‘We didn’t rule the world by being nice.’
‘The Welsh ruled the world?’
‘The British ruled the world. And the Welsh are British. Just as much as the Scots. Just as much as the English, even.’
I didn’t answer. Nice passed me the ammunition boxes, and I put them in the environmental shopping bag, and we got out of the car, and we walked into the hotel lobby.