Mr Johnson had been in bed with his wife, at their home in a peaceful residential district of Washington D.C., when he took the call. His mobile phone was always with him and he was prepared to answer it at any time of the day or night. He had to be. Mr Johnson was unique. A one-off. He operated in areas almost everyone he came into contact with, including his superiors, preferred not to know about.
Mr Johnson could never be off duty. He didn’t mind. He liked being in a position of almost absolute power. When even the senior echelons of government in your country prefer not to acknowledge your existence, then you can pretty much do what you like. As long as you don’t get caught out.
The power Mr Johnson was able to exert on his sole authority was actually rather shocking. And he had never been caught out yet.
Mr Johnson was used to waking up quickly. He had to be. He climbed out of bed and carried his phone into the bathroom so that he could talk freely. Mr Johnson trusted nobody. Not even his wife.
He sat on the toilet seat and reached into the cabinet beneath the washbasin for the packet of black cheroots he kept there, tucked away at the back. It was not uncommon for him to find it necessary to retreat into the bathroom in this manner in the middle of the night, and he believed that the little cigars helped him think more clearly.
Holding the phone in one hand, he removed a cheroot with the other and lit up. Acrid smoke almost immediately filled the small room. With the cheroot still between his lips Mr Johnson leaned sideways to open the window as wide as possible, otherwise, in the morning, his wife would make his life a misery. All the while he murmured soothing noises into the phone. It was vital that he calmed Mikey MacEntee down, assured him he would be taken care of, indeed told him almost everything he wanted to hear. And Mr Johnson was good at that sort of thing.
But when he ended the call Mr Johnson felt unusually ill at ease. Mikey was not going to be any use at all from now on. That was patently obvious. In any case Mikey was a lightweight, a Bureau joke, who had only ever been of use because of his connections with areas of scientific innovation the US government had always liked to keep under close observation. Which, of course, the Bureau had known about when they’d hired him. And this operation was not turning out the way Mr Johnson had planned at all. It had originally seemed so simple, in his mind a perfectly straightforward case of confronting anything or anyone that might ultimately constitute a threat to America. Of putting a stop to the enemy within. But the initial mistake, of somehow allowing that mad woman scientist Connie Pike to escape the RECAP explosion, had led to a catalogue of disasters. Not least the continued interference of the troublesome Englishwoman.
Extreme measures were called for. Radical decisions must be made. Drastic action had to be taken. And quickly.
Mr Johnson was used to working alone. But sometimes he was confronted with matters of such international import that even he knew better than to even attempt to do so.
Mr Johnson stood up, flushed the end of his cheroot down the toilet, and sprayed the bathroom with air freshener. Then he sat down again on the toilet seat and lit another cheroot.
There were several phone calls, all overseas, which he had to make before giving the orders he hoped would end this affair once and for all.
Mr Johnson checked his watch. It was two a.m., outside normal office hours in Europe as well as in the US. That didn’t matter. Mr Johnson first dialled a number in the United Kingdom of someone who could be regarded as his British equivalent, or as near as would ever be possible. A lone operator who believed the security of his nation rested squarely on his shoulders. A patriot of the old school. A man who also was never off duty.
Seventeen
Meanwhile Jones and Ed headed northwards out of New York City towards the New Jersey Turnpike and the succession of freeways which would take them virtually all the way to the border and on to Montreal.
Jones had done most of the journey before, from Princeton, when as one of a group of impoverished post-graduate students she had driven to Montreal for a weekend convention. But that had been long ago. She knew, however, that the drive should take little more than six hours, particularly as they were travelling during the early hours of the morning, however, not daring to use satnav in case they were tracked, it was not out of the question that they might take a wrong turning. They were both bone tired too.
They set off from the centre of Manhattan around two a.m., at almost exactly the same time as Mikey made his call to Mr Johnson, and three hours later had not quite travelled halfway when Jones decided that she just had to turn into a rest area to sleep for a bit.
Ed seemed even more wiped out than she was, and although he offered to take a turn at the wheel Jones declined. Ed had never been much of a driver, and, judging from his earlier spell at the wheel, the stress of the night’s events appeared to have turned him into a liability. In any case she saw no reason not to stop for a while, as she was pretty sure there wouldn’t be any flights back to the UK from Montreal’s Trudeau Airport until late afternoon or early evening.
They also needed fuel, and Jones congratulated herself on having drawn so much cash out of that Manhattan cashpoint two days earlier. It was more important than ever not to leave a credit card trail. She just hoped she had enough to also pay for their air tickets in cash.
Ultimately they arrived at Trudeau just after noon. Crossing into Canada from the United States had been as easy as Jones had remembered. Immigration and customs procedures between the two countries remained cursory. Border control on the freeway felt and looked much the same as passing through a toll road pay station. Jones and Ed had briefly shown their passports to the Canadian officials, confirmed they were not carrying illegal drugs or livestock, and been waved on their way.
Jones thought that the airport also felt much more relaxed than either US or British airports, since 9/11 certainly. There was little visible sign of armed security presence, and nobody took the slightest notice of her or Ed.
The street shoot-out involving Gaynor, and the revelation that she was a cop, had been the final straw for Jones. Her nerve had gone and she just couldn’t wait to leave North America.
Ed desperately wanted to try to contact Mikey, and also his Princeton neighbour to explain, as best he could, about the car, and to ask him to keep Jasper a little longer. But Jones talked him out of it.
‘No unnecessary risks, not at this stage, please,’ she said. ‘Let’s not contact anyone until we’re safely in the UK.’
To her relief, she did indeed have just enough cash left to buy the cheapest tickets for the next available flight to Heathrow, which she was told would arrive just after six a.m. the following morning. She waited until the last possible moment before booking, so that her and Ed’s names would be on the Air Canada passenger list for only a short period of time before departure.
Nonetheless, they were both on tenterhooks going through security and passport control, but everything passed without incident.
Only when finally aboard, and the aircraft had begun taxying for take-off, did Jones breathe a huge sigh of relief. She really was going home.
The aircraft was packed, and Jones realized that she had become somewhat spoiled. She wasn’t used to flying economy any more. In addition her entire body was still sore from the battering it had received over the last few days. Yet in spite of her discomfort, her exhaustion was such that she quickly fell asleep, and did not waken until shortly before arrival at Heathrow, when she was disturbed by the dubious antics of some of her fellow passengers who had learned that a certain Hollywood superstar and his new bride were travelling in first class. One young woman actually sank to her knees in the aisle, as she begged a flight attendant to acquire an autograph for her.