walking into the lobby.
In front of her was a security gate that you needed a swipe card to pass through. To the left of it sat Mark, a security guard, a big barrel of a man in a peaked cap. She fished around in her shoulder bag and took out her now- invalidated employee swipe card along with another one that she used for her local library. She wriggled her shoulders like her sister and giggled at Mark; he smiled back. When she got to the gate, she used her library card to try to get through. A red light flashed and the machine honked at her. She tried again. Another red light and another honk. She looked at Mark helplessly and waved her swipe card at him. Like a middle-aged knight, he got out of his chair and came over to help.
The bank had strict procedures about access. Mark’s role was to examine her card and see whether there was a problem and, if necessary, refer her to the security office. But Rukshana knew Mark well. His view was that strict procedures didn’t apply to ditzy, sexy women with long legs. And today, Rukshana was a very ditzy, very sexy woman with very long legs. Mark towered over her.
“Is there a problem, miss?”
“Oh, yes, Mark,” she breathed. “My card is always letting me down.”
Mark slipped his own security card into the machine, and there was a green light, a ping, and the gate swung open. She squeezed his arm.
“Oh, Mark, you’re such a sweetie . . .”
Mark saluted and Rukshana walked through with the almost physical sensation of his eyes drilling into her backside. She walked to the elevator and went up to the fifth floor, taking out her sister’s blue leather gloves and putting them on. When the doors slid open, she was face-to-face with Renata, a colleague who knew Rukshana as well as Rukshana knew her. Rukshana stiffened; everyone who might have recognized her, with or without her headscarf, should have been out at lunch. Renata smiled at her.
“Do you really need those sunglasses in here, dear?” For a few seconds Rukshana thought it was all over. Renata held the elevator door open for her and said, “If you don’t get out, you’re going back down.” Rukshana got out, fingered the sunglasses, and stammered, “G-got to look cool . . .”
Renata got in the elevator, smiled, and said, “You look very cool, darling. You’d better watch out or you’ll have that sleazy lecher Jeff after you.”
The elevator doors closed. Rukshana hurried down the corridor to Jeff’s office and peered in the window. It was empty. With her gloved hands she pulled the handle and went inside. She sat at his computer. On the screen was a website featuring romantic breaks for two in Paris:
Rukshana had the feeling it wasn’t Jeff’s wife who would be going. She took a list out of her handbag and began typing in the web addresses of radical Islamic websites, one after another, so that a casual observer of Jeff’s computer history might think Jeff spent all his time looking up death-to-the-infidel!, death-to-the-great-Satan!, death-to — well, death-to-pretty-much-everyone-really! websites. Then she changed his screen saver from a sugary snapshot of Jeff’s wife and kids to a photo of a radical Islamic cleric.
She decided to skip the elevator and took the stairs down to the lobby. Mark didn’t wait for her to try her card this time; he jumped up smartly and opened the gate for her, assuming her card still wasn’t working. She gave him a long, sultry look with the promise of the East in it — a look her sister had perfected — and with that she was back out on the street.
She walked the two blocks to her bike and changed into her burka and ballet shoes. She checked her watch. It was 12:40 p.m. She had to move. She pedaled furiously away from the glass and glitz of London’s financial district to a poorer quarter of town and parked her bike in the yard of a disused workshop. Over her loomed a minaret. She walked a couple of streets until she was standing in the shadow of the tower.
Al-Nutjobs Mosque. That wasn’t its real name, of course. It was called Al-Nutjobs by the British newspapers; they claimed that every Muslim extremist in London was a regular there, but the members of the Muslim community weren’t so sure. Their view was that most of the people who hung out at Al-Nutjobs were undercover newspaper reporters, police spies, and operatives from various Western intelligence agencies. Whatever the case, Rukshana knew the street was plastered with CCTVs and other forms of surveillance and that all the local public phones were bugged. She had to be very, very careful.
She walked up to the pay phone opposite the mosque. She checked that her gloves were on and then went inside. She picked up the phone, put some coins in, and called the special police antiterrorist hotline. When she got through, she faked an Indian accent, the sort that had been thought very amusing on British comedy shows in the 1970s but that in these more liberal times wasn’t considered funny anymore.
“Please, please, this afternoon, bombs, bombs!
Rukshana explained in her accent that she’d overheard a campaign being planned in Al-Nutjobs, and the ringleader was an undercover white convert who worked at — and she gave them all Jeff’s details. As the operator desperately tried to keep her on the line, Rukshana shouted, “Please, please, this afternoon, bombs, bombs!
She hung up and walked smartly down the street. Rukshana collected her bike from the disused workshop and checked her watch. It was 1:15 p.m. Time was short. As she jumped on the bike to pedal back to the bank, a siren wailed through the air. Shit — she hadn’t expected the cops to move that quickly. A police car screamed down the street heading toward the mosque. Rukshana didn’t look back as she cycled to the bank. Once there, she parked her bike in the same spot as before, took off her burka, and slipped into her heels.
Her old bench opposite the bank was still available, and she sat down and checked her watch. It was 1:55 p.m. She was just in time. At 2:00 p.m. precisely, just as Kelly had said he would, Jeff appeared and walked back into the bank. Five minutes later, Sarah arrived, looking a little red-faced and with her clothes askew, and followed him in. Now Rukshana just had to wait.
If you reported any ordinary crime, the police would assess the evidence and decide what, if anything, to do. If you reported a terrorist bombing from a pay phone outside Al-Nutjobs, the police couldn’t wait. They couldn’t investigate the threat to see if it was serious; they couldn’t weigh things up. They had to act fast and worry about it later.
At 2:15 p.m., the police acted. In the distance Rukshana heard sirens, and then more sirens as other police vehicles joined the chorus, and then they all came around the corner, brakes squealing, lights flashing, careering down the street. A police van mounted the pavement and juddered to a halt; it was followed by police cars and motorbikes. The doors to the van flew open and a half a dozen cops in black-and-white-checkered baseball caps, submachine guns slung over their shoulders, jumped out. Pistols were pulled from holsters; safety catches were disabled. The police raced up the stairs and into the bank. Other vehicles arrived, and soon there were so many flashing blue lights, you might have thought you were at a carnival.
Five minutes later, Rukshana rose to her feet to enjoy the view. Jeff was dragged down the steps, being frog-marched by two burly cops. He was thrown to the ground and spread-eagled; one cop kept a pistol to his head while the other cop pressed his knee into Jeff’s back and handcuffed him. Down the steps came another officer holding Jeff’s computer. Then the doors to the bank flew open as two policemen tried to stop Sarah from running after Jeff. She screamed, “Leave him alone, he hasn’t done anything, what’s the matter with you?”
Rukshana winced as Sarah punched one of the policemen in the face, after which Sarah was bundled to the ground, long legs akimbo, and thrown into the back of a van. Then the two suspects were driven away.
Rukshana sat back down. An old teacher of hers had once quoted a French saying: Revenge was a dish you ate cold. Perhaps that was true. But it certainly filled up the belly.
“OH, RUKSHANA, YOU should have been there!” Kelly rang that evening to tell Rukshana about the day’s events. “The cops turned up and nicked Jeff. And they took Sarah away too, it was so funny.”
Rukshana put on her best sympathy voice. “Poor Jeff . . .”
Kelly couldn’t believe it. “Poor Jeff? After what he did to you?”
The following evening Kelly updated Rukshana. “It was all a hoax! The police released Jeff in the small hours without charge. Now we’ve had a team of detectives in all day trying to find the hoaxer. They’re drawing up a list of suspects. It’ll be pretty heavy for the guy who did it. The police don’t take too kindly to that sort of thing — the cops say it’ll mean jail time for the culprit. That won’t help Jeff, of course, now that it’s all out about him and Sarah. The bank’s really embarrassed. Word is that when it’s all calmed down, they’re going to sack him. And Sarah.”
“Poor Jeff.”
