"The bloody cow."
"She said…"
"What did she say.
"She said that it was selfish of us to expose others to danger, then she rang off."
"She's the only one, we're popular here, you see.
He heard, beyond the drawn curtain, a car's engine crawl by and wondered if it were the armed police. He felt the same chilly sweat as when he had come off the feeder flight and joined the emigration queue at Tehran for the international leg, as he had shuffled forward a small step at a time, dying to urinate, trying to appear unconcerned. He'd wondered then, as he did now, if the fear showed. The last times the sweat had soaked his shirt under his jacket as he had presented his passport at the desk. Behind the emigration official were always the penetrating eyes of the pasdar men, in their washed-thin uniforms, who leaned forward and stared in suspicion at the offered passport. When it was handed back, there was never a smile, no farewell joke, and he had walked away towards the departure lounge, his legs weak, fearing that they played with him and would let him go a few paces before the shout for him to come back. Each time as he'd slumped into the aircraft seat, before the engines gained power, before the steps were taken away, wondering whether they would allow him to settle before coming on board to heave him off, he'd felt the cold sweat, because he knew the fate of a spy in Iran.
Meryl had gone to the kitchen, and he heard her start to wash up the saucepans.
"Who's the P0?"
"An SB sergeant, Davies."
"He's useless. Who's on the other shift?"
"A DC, Blake."
"Next to useless. Who's in charge?"
"Box 500."
"Totally fucking useless bloody lights, get on through."
Paget was driving the escort car, with Rankin beside him, through heavy traffic into the road junction as the lights changed to red. The prison van they followed had gone on, shouldn't have. The dozy beggar driving it should have checked his mirror, seen whether the escort car was clear to follow, but he hadn't. No bloody option for Paget but to break the red light and follow across the junction. Rankin hit the siren button and the cars coming at them across the junction from right and left were braking and swerving to avoid them, all except one. The car heading straight for them was a battered old Cavalier with a toothy, grey-haired black at the wheel. They were two, three seconds from a disabling, side-on collision.
Rankin had his window down, the siren scream in his ears, and the H amp;K up. The gun was racked, bullet in the breach, and Rankin's thumb was resting on the lever at safe. As the escort team, they should have been right up behind the prison van. The guy in it was important, a drugs supplier and a bad bastard, on the daily run between the Old Bailey and the Brixton gaol remand block. He had the contacts and cash resources to buy a rescue bid, which was why armed police escorted him each day from his cell to the court and back. The bullet was in the breach, Paget and Rankin were not there for the ride, and they knew it.
The old Cavalier was coming right for them, on target for the driver's door. If the bad bastard had bought a rescue, the copper-bottomed certainty was that the armed escort car would be isolated and rammed, taken out. Rankin was close enough to see, through the Cavalier's grimy windscreen, the gold teeth in the black's wide open mouth and the big mahogany eyes. Rankin's aim, held steady in the swaying escort car, was on the black's forehead. His thumb hardened on the safe lever.
If he shot to kill the law was bloody vague. Section 3 of the Criminal Law Act, 1967, would back him if it were a genuine escape attempt and crucify him if it was only a traffic accident. They were on collision course and closing, and Paget was wrenching the wheel to avoid the old Cavalier, might succeed, might not. It'd take Rankin about half a second to depress the lever from safe and put a double tap, two bullets, through the man's forehead. He'd get a commendation if it was a rescue bid and a murder charge if it was not..~ And they were through, the junction cleared. Paget was ~~celeratmg like a mad idiot, wrong side of the road, to get back up behind the prison van, and in their wake, the old Cavalier had careered into a traffic bollard. The H amp;K was back on Rankin's lap.
"Where were we, Joe?"
No fast breathing, no taut hands, like it was a weekend run-out with the wife.
"We were on about who was in charge, Dave Box "What I said, totally fucking useless. Who's the principal?"
"Civilian, ordinary, an obstinate sod because they offered him the chance to bug out and he wouldn't."
"What's the opposition?"
'fran -he's up the mullahs~ noses.~ "That's bloody choice, that's not clever. When do we get there?"
"Go down tonight, recce, take over in the morning from the half-arsed locals."
They had left a minor traffic accident behind them and were comfortably cosied up behind the prison van. Constables Joseph Paget and David Rankin were a team and inseparable. The driver, Paget, was a toadlike man, short and squat, bald with a thick Zapata moustache, and he had been changing the oil, checking the tyre pressures and vale ting the interior during the long wait at the court, while his colleague had been given the new assignment's briefing. With the H amp;K resting loose on his thighs, Rankin was a wafer-thin willow of a man with a brush of cropped dark hair, the smooth-skinned complexion of a child, and a moustache identical to his colleague's. Anyone meeting them for the first time and noting their language and gait would have believed they made conscious efforts to ape each other. They were both forty-nine years old, lived in adjacent streets in north London, went on holiday together with their wives, and grumbled with each other like a married couple. They would retire on the same day. Both Joe Paget and Dave Rankin were considered expert marksmen. But they'd never done it. Been on the courses, been endlessly on the range, been on every exercise, but never actually done it. For all of their training and with a combined total of thirty-two years' service with firearms, neither had fired for real.
They saw the prison van go through the big gates of the gaol, and swung away.
They stopped at a news agent and Paget went in. He bought three books of crossword puzzles, some soft-drink cans and two packets of sandwiches.
When he had come back up from the canteen and his supper, but before he went to Fenton's room to collect the American, Geoff Markham took a single sheet of white paper and the roll of Sellotape from his desk. He fastened the paper to the outer face of his door, then scrawled on it, with a black marker pen, DAY ONE. The FBI man had said it would be over within a week. It was near to the end of the first day.
The American had gone off with Markham, and the fax purred on. to Fenton's machine. He thought of Markham, like a worrying dog at the heels of a sheep as he'd rounded up the American, made sure he had his coat, gently chided him for fastening the buttons of his waistcoat out of kilter and done them correctly himself. Sheep were stupid and wilful, a bloody nuisance, and necessary… He read the fax from Special Branch operations.
Incredible, an eighth wonder, remarkable. SB had done a deal with the local force. Must have been the angle of the moon, or some such crap, for SB and a local force to have done a deal. He would have predicted an on-going, entertaining dispute. SB would provide the close-protection detail and had liaised with 5019 of Scotland Yard for a static uniformed presence. The local force would offer armed vehicles to watch the single road into the godforsaken dead end and to cruise the area.
There was, had to be, a little scorpion's sting. At the tail of the message: "SB, on own behalf and that of local force, will negotiate with Security Service for budget funding during operation concerning Juliet Seven, with view to reimbursement of expendihire." It was the bare, basic level for protection, and it would cost a goddamn fortune, and the resources bucket was not bottomless. He pondered how to limit the extent of the commitment. He put on his coat, picked up his briefcase and switched off the light in his room.