had my back pressed against Smith’s windows and the daysack between my feet, keeping under the four-inch ledge to help kid myself I was out of the rain. About thirty metres to my right, the other side of the crossing, one male and one female police constable stood outside the closed tube gates, already bored, but probably pleased to be under more cover than I was, and certainly happy about the overtime. The pair of them had a good laugh about something the woman had said. If they’d known what was really happening, there wouldn’t have been any jokes.
Two men walked past from right to left, still in their office clothes, carrying briefcases and contorting themselves beneath one small fold-up umbrella. My eyes followed them towards the Kings Road, then switched to a woman coming in the opposite direction. Thank fuck for that. She might have her head down, but it was definitely Suzy.
A guy in his twenties came to share my ledge. He still had his NatWest suit on, collar up, logo on the breast pocket. He lit a cigarette: the smoke drifted the few feet between us and I smelt the alcohol on his breath.
I looked left again. Suzy had pushed her hair up into a ball cap, and her jeans jacket and baggy cream cargoes were soaked. She’d slung a large leather bag across her shoulders.
As she got closer, I lifted my head so she could see me. She was all smiles. ‘Hello. How are you?’ She gave me a friendly kiss on both cheeks.
‘Fine. Enjoying the weather. Just on my way home.’
‘I’m parked round the corner. I’ll take you.’
It would have been unnatural to go back the way she’d just come, so we carried on towards the tube, taking the junction right that led south towards the river. We followed the bend in the road until we were in dead ground from the police.
About half-way towards the next T-junction, Suzy’s head lifted just enough for me to see her lips move under the dripping peak. ‘You seen all the closed tubes?’
I nodded. ‘Got kicked off one at Bank. Power failure, my arse. It’s just like when they’re moving nuclear weapons along the motorways. All the junctions get closed off at three in the morning because of some mysterious accident further on, which suddenly clears as soon as the convoy has passed.’
Her lips curled into a wry smile. ‘Looks like the boss had to come clean with Number Ten after all. Fair one. I wouldn’t take any chances now – would you?’ She gave a slightly surreal giggle. ‘Bet Tony’s flapping big-time. Can you imagine the spin that’s going on in there?’
‘They’ll never keep it buttoned. It’s going to be a nightmare this time tomorrow.’
She glanced quickly behind her. ‘I spent the first half of the evening in the lobby of a Marble Arch hotel to keep out the way, but I got kicked out. They thought I was a hooker. So I did a quick couple of laps round the shops, got changed and here I am.’
‘I almost got caught in the B&Q the other side of the station. Sundance? Fucker drew down on me. Anyway, we’re here.’
‘What now?’
‘I’ve got to make the call.’
We arrived at the T-junction. Victoria station and Pimlico were signposted left, but we didn’t want to go there. I knew a right and a left would take us past Chelsea Barracks and on to the bridge.
There was a lot of activity on the other side of the wrought-iron main gates, behind the Gore-Tex-covered, SA80-carrying MoD police guards. Trucks were lined up on the vast parade square, lights on and engines revving.
Chelsea Bridge came into view, and so did a phone box. We dug around in our pockets and between us came up with about four pounds in change. Squeezing into the box beside her, I got the Polaroid out again to phone the source. Suzy took it from me and studied it.
Three police vans packed with uniforms screamed towards us from the other side of the bridge. It was nearly midnight, maybe time for a change of shift. She handed Kelly back. ‘It’s going to be a fucking sight slower tomorrow, when everyone gets to know about this shit.’
The Cabinet Office, at number seventy Whitehall, had a suite of rooms for the use of government ministers and officials referred to as COBR, Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms. They were lettered rather than numbered, and emergency meetings tended to convene in room A. They’d be having one right now. The Chief of Defence Staff, heads of the intelligence and security services, the Met and fire service, every man and his dog, would be sitting round a table in crumpled shirts, working out what the fuck to do about these five bottles of
I dialled the number, picturing the chaos in the rooms adjoining A: phones ringing, people running around with bits of paper, others instructing the military to stand-to, but not explaining why just yet, others still trying to get the official yes or no on their actions-on for bio attack.
My phone rang three times before the source answered. I didn’t give him a chance to speak. ‘It’s me. I’m back. Where do you want it?’
He was trying to sound calm. I heard him take a breath, and made out the voice of a TV announcer. ‘Do you have all five?’
‘Yes. Do you still have what I want?’
There was another pause. The News 24 theme tune blared in my ear and the newsreader piled straight into the headlines. Not surprisingly, it was all tube-station closures and power failures. ‘Things are extremely tense at the moment, aren’t they?’
‘They know about you – they know what we’re doing.’
‘Of course. I wasn’t expecting otherwise. Go to the usual coffee shop, and call me as soon as you get there. Someone will come to meet you. Do you understand that?’
‘Yeah, I got it.’
The phone went dead.
We got out of the box and into the shelter of a small mews. As we dodged the rain in the overhang of a small garage, I opened my bumbag and pulled out the pistol. ‘Here, it’s Sundance’s.’
She opened the chamber to check it wasn’t just full of empty cases.
‘OK,’ I said, ‘I’ll go and meet Fuck-face’s man, you follow me to wherever. Chances are they’re not going to release us till they’ve dumped all this shit around the place.’
Rain flicked off her cap as she nodded. ‘That’s if they plan to let you go at all.’
I shrugged. There was nothing I could do about that until it happened. ‘Give me an hour wherever I land up. If I’m not out by then, or you hear the shit hit the fan any earlier, you come and get Kelly, DW, me – whatever’s left.’
Blue flashing lights passed silently along a nearby street. She put the revolver in her bag. ‘Right, we’d better get a vehicle, then, hadn’t we? You keep dog.’
MOE girl moved away from me and began to check the cars squeezed into the narrow mews. The older the better, that was what she’d be looking for: easier to break into, easier to wire up. She stopped by a battered V-reg Renault 5, and five minutes later we were driving south across Chelsea Bridge. At the far side we turned left, heading east towards Westminster. After Tower Bridge, we’d cross back to the north of the river, skirt the ring of steel around the City, and head for Starbucks.
58
Smithfield was a hive of activity. Vans and trucks jostled for position alongside the brightly lit market, loading and offloading everything from small boxes of whatever to halves of cow. Men in white coats, hats and wellies milled about, having a fag and rubbing their hands together to stave off the cold.
The clapped-out Renault came to a halt, and so did the windscreen wipers. They hadn’t been much help anyway. I jumped into the public phone-box we’d stopped beside, fishing in my pocket for change. I got the Polaroid out of my bumbag again, thumbed a coin into the slot and dialled. It rang several times before he answered.
