no longer feel them. What I really wanted to happen, did. I became unconscious.
JUNE 1998
I came out of the flat on Cambridge Street, checked I'd put the key on the ring of my Leatherman and closed the door behind me. It was a strange feeling, being a virtual prisoner here in Pimlico. I'd brought plenty of worried- looking people here in the past, but never imagined that some day I'd be one of the victims myself.
The debrief was taking forever. The Firm was trying to strike a deal with the Americans. Both sides wanted this to go away, and they weren't the only ones. It had been four weeks since I'd come out of hospital, and I'd been confined to the area ever since, under what amounted to house arrest.
I was getting paid, and at operational rate, but it still wasn't a good day out.
None of my injuries hurt much anymore, but I still needed bucket loads of antibiotics. The entry wound had sealed up quite well. All that was left was a dent in my stomach, colored the same vivid pink as the puncture wounds in my arm.
Walking down the last couple of stone steps to the pavement, I looked to my left at the crowd enjoying an end-of-the-week drink at the picnic tables outside the pub. Friday evening's rush hour had turned the whole street into a car park. The traffic fumes were cooking up nicely in the early evening sun. The heat was unusual for this time of year. It felt more like
Los Angeles than London.
I crossed between the stationary vehicles, heading for the all-in-one shop on the corner. The Asian father and son combo were used to me now;
dad started folding a copy of the Evening Standard as soon as he saw me come in. I felt like a local. Weaving back over the road, I headed for the
pub. There were just as many people inside, and above the din Robbie Williams was giving it full volume on the sound system. The smell of smoke, stale beer and body odor reminded me not to come here again. It did that every night.
I worked my way toward the rear, where I knew it wouldn't be so packed, and, besides, that was where the food was. I'd started to recognize some of the regulars sad fucks like me, with nowhere else to go, or office workers big-timing it, or old men smoking their roll-ups and spending an hour nursing a warm pint.
I asked for my usual bottle ofPils and, helping myself to a handful of peanuts from one of the bowls, headed for a booth. The one with the most room was occupied by an old man who looked as if he'd just come from a British Legion outing, all tie and association badges. He couldn't have been there long; his bottle of light ale hadn't yet been poured into his half of bitter.
'Anyone sitting here, mate?'
He looked up and shook his head. I eased myself into the seat slowly, taking care that my jeans didn't ride up and expose the tag around my right ankle. Taking a swig ofPils, I opened the newspaper.
It was all the usual doom and gloom. Ethiopian and Eritrean forces had stopped bombing the shit out of each other with their MIG 23s to give foreign nationals time to be airlifred from the war zone. That was the sort of work I liked, just plain and simple war. You knew where you stood with that shit.
I scanned the rest of the news sections, but there was still nothing about what had happened in Washington. Still no mention of the injuries to the ERT guy and Josh, and I knew now that there never would be. Lynn had given me the American party line during one of our little evening rides around town. The press release was short: a stressed-out member of the domestic staff had become temporarily deranged in the White House basement. It was a minor incident, dealt with in minutes. The three world leaders hadn't been made aware until well after the event. The most the story ever got was a column inch in the following day's Washington Post.
I was glad the ERT guy hadn't died. He'd just been wounded in the thigh something to tell the grandchildren about. Josh had got it big time in the face. Lynn said the round had split the flesh on the right side and made his mouth look as if it ended by his ear. I'd been told the surgery was a success, but I doubted he'd ever be modeling for Calvin Klein.
My one hope was that his Christian thing would work in my favor. Sitting in the flat a few days earlier, waiting for the debriefing team to arrive, I'd been listening to Thought for the Day on the radio.
'If you can't forgive the sin,' the voice had said, 'at least try to forgive the sinner.'
Sounded good to me. I just hoped Josh could get Radio Four in his truck.
I hadn't spoken to him yet; I'd wait a while, give him time to calm down and me time to work out what the fuck I was going to say.
I hadn't seen Kelly since the Americans released me into the Firm's custody. We'd spoken on the phone, and she thought I was still away working.
She said that Josh had called. He'd told her nothing about what had happened, just that Sarah and I had visited.
I still had no regrets about killing Sarah. The only thing that pissed me off was that every time in my life I'd let someone get close to me, they fucked me over. Everybody, that is, apart from Kelly. It seemed to be my job to do that to her.
I'd blown it again by making promises I couldn't keep. She still wanted to go to the Bloody Tower, and she wanted to go with me. Three times now I'd arranged it, only to cancel at the last minute because the debrief dragged on. At least she was going to her grandparents this weekend. Carmen and Jimmy would spoil her rotten.
I took another long swig of Pils fuck the antibiotics, I usually forgot to take them anyway and checked Baby- G. They started serving in twenty minutes.
The debrief was going OK, I thought, but you never knew with these people. I wasn't getting as hard a time of it as I might, mainly because Lynn and Elizabeth were potentially in just as much shit as I was and were taking measures to cover their asses. Even so, every event of those five days was being dissected in great detail. Not documented, of course. How could it be; it hadn't happened.
Not that any of it meant much. I was lying to the team, using a script supplied by the good colonel. I'd RV with him each evening, and the Serb would give us a few laps of London. As Lynn had said, 'You need guiding, Nick, on some of the more, shall we say, delicate areas of the operation.'
And, of course, to avoid the slight problem of the T104, since not even the investigation crew would be aware that such things existed. The only ones in the know were lowlife like me, Elizabeth and Lynn. To the investigators, I didn't even have a name; I was just referred to as the 'paid asset.' That suited me just fine.
Lynn had already told me that I'd been sent on the job because, if anyone could find her, I could. But I knew there was more to it than that. It had become blindingly obvious that those two fuckers had known all along what she was up to, and thought I'd be so pissed off with her I'd feed her through the grinder without a second thought.
They'd even known where she was hiding, but wanted me to go through the process of finding her. They reckoned that if I thought I'd tracked her down through my own efforts, and if what I saw on the ground confirmed their story, that would put me even more in the mood.
There were still loose ends, of course. I still couldn't work out if Metal Mickey was part of Lynn's game or not. After all, Lynn did say he was loyal. But to whom? Fuck it, who cared? It just annoyed me that these people could never just tell it straight. Why bother to tell me all that bullshit?
I would still have done the job if I'd known the truth. The fucking games they played pissed me off, and worse, they put me in danger.
Naturally, nothing in the big picture had been changed by Sarah's death. Bin Laden was still out there doing his stuff. Yousef had closed down, but he'd probably resurface in a year or two. And I still wasn't going to be getting permanent cadre: they said I'd be a disruptive influence on the team. I'd tried to get a bung instead, claiming that what happened in the White House might have been my fuckup, but I did stop the president from being shot. Well... you have to elaborate a bit. It didn't work.
Even the deafest old duffer in the pub must have heard their laughter. All I got was the promise that if a single word came from my lips that was off message I was history.
My major concern now was, what did I get up to after this? I needed to get some real money together so I didn't have to carry on getting fucked over by these people. Maybe I'd take a look at the American rewards program.
Bounty hunting terrorists, white supremacists and South American drug dealers wouldn't be so bad. Maybe I
