‘No option,’ Harry said. ‘Front way in.’
They returned to the front entrance and stopped by a flight of stone steps leading to a basement flat, carefully avoiding looking up at the first-floor apartment windows. A chauffeur was polishing the already gleaming bodywork of a large blue BMW nearby, but paid them no attention.
‘I used to live in a place like this in Earl’s Court,’ said Rik. ‘Full of backpackers and layabouts. It was connected to the rest of the building by narrow back stairs, from when they had servants’ quarters. We might strike lucky.’
Harry nodded. They hadn’t got any alternative. They descended the steps and knocked on the door. A woman opened up and peered out at them, large dark eyes in a coffee-coloured face above an overall and an apron.
‘Yes?’
‘Police,’ said Harry, flashing his MI5 card. ‘I wonder if you could help us?’
‘Police?’ The woman looked frightened. ‘What I do? Why you come here?’
‘It’s OK.’ Rik leaned past Harry and smiled broadly at the woman. ‘It’s not you we’re after, love.’ He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, towards the press pack across the street. ‘We need to get a view of that crowd, to make sure there’s no trouble.’
She frowned, mollified but puzzled. ‘But from here? Is too low.’
‘You’re dead right. But if we could get further up. . say, on the second or third floor, we’d have a great view. Are there stairs going up?’
She shook her head. ‘Yes, but they are locked. Only manager has keys.’
‘Great.’ Rik gave another winning smile. ‘And where is the manager?’
‘Belize.’
‘That’s a bit far. Do you live here?’
‘No, I cleaner and make sure everything is working.’
‘Brilliant.’ Rik delved in his pocket and took out some notes. He held them up. ‘I’m a magician with locks. You take this and go put the kettle on, and we’ll be through and gone before the water’s boiled. And I’ll lock the door behind us so you don’t get into trouble.’
The woman stared at the money for a long time, eyes flicking to both men and back. ‘Is this what British policemen do?’
‘In very extreme circumstances, yes.’
‘OK.’ She reached out and took the notes, and stood back to let them in, closing the door and leading them through a set of offices to a narrow door in one corner at the rear of the building. ‘This go up to ground floor,’ she explained in a hushed voice. ‘Turn right and stairs go up to other floors.’
She turned and disappeared, evidently not keen on staying to watch her part in their moment of larceny.
‘I didn’t know you were a magician with locks,’ said Harry.
‘There’s quite a lot you don’t know about me.’ Rik grinned and produced a short length of plastic. Inserting it between the door and jamb, he wiggled it about, at the same time leaning hard against the door, which gave a little under the pressure. The plastic moved and sank into the gap, and suddenly there was a click and the door was open.
Harry checked the cleaning lady wasn’t looking, then drew his gun and followed Rik through, closing the door behind him.
They were at the bottom of a flight of stairs piled with cardboard boxes and stacks of floor tiles. At the top was another door with the Yale lock and handle on this side.
The door opened onto a polished tiled hallway. To their right another flight of stairs led upwards, and beyond that, the hallway ran down to the front of the building.
The stairs to the upper floors were wide, carpeted down the centre, with a wood and metal bannister polished with years of use.
‘Straight up?’ whispered Rik. He drew his gun and slipped off the safety.
‘Might as well. Knock and wait.’ In Harry’s experience, pretending to be a water official or a delivery man only worked if you had sight of the people you were calling on and their suspicions were low to zero. Anyone armed and in hiding on the other side of the door would take any such pretence to be just that, and were likely to start shooting instead.
Rik reached the door first and knocked a light rat-tat, then stood to one side and waited, with Harry on the other side.
No answer. He knocked again. A door slammed down the hallway, to the rear of the building, followed by the sound of footsteps. Another door banged.
Harry stepped out from the wall and looked down the hallway.
‘It’s them — they had a back way out.’ He began running, while Rik took a step back and kicked the door open and disappeared inside.
Harry reached a door at the end of the hall, down a short flight of steps. It was part of an extension to the main building, with a side window giving a narrow view to the rear, and he guessed it gave out onto the street he and Rik had seen at the back. He tried the door. Solid and unmoving, opening towards him. It would take an axe to get through it.
He ran back to the apartment and found Rik standing in a living room littered with discarded pizza boxes and beer cans. A huge plasma television was on with the sound muted, showing a children’s programme.
‘If it was them,’ said Rik, ‘they travelled light.’
Harry bent to one side of an armchair. He picked up a small can of Birchwood Casey gun oil lying on its side, dripping its contents onto the parquet flooring. Near it, just under the edge of the chair, something shiny caught his eye.
It was a single round of 9mm ammunition.
FIFTY-NINE
Harry put down the can and called Ballatyne. The MI6 man answered immediately. ‘Where’s your watcher? The targets are on the move out the back. We’re blocked and need some eyeball backup.’
‘No problem.’ Ballatyne sounded unnaturally calm. ‘We’ve got a live map of the area on-screen. Make your way to the front. Bruce will be waiting for you. His controller will guide you from there. Out.’
Harry turned and ran through the building and down the stairs, with Rik hard on his heels. Going out of the front door, he remembered to put away his gun in time before coming under the curious gaze of the press pack.
The blue BMW was still there, the engine ticking over quietly. The chauffeur lifted a hand. ‘Tate and Ferris? Jump in and buckle up. The name’s Bruce.’
‘I’m Harry, he’s Rik.’
The BMW tore away from the kerb, narrowly missing a photographer being artistic outside the besieged embassy. As he came to the end of the road, Bruce hit a button on a central console, and a stream of radio chatter came out over the powerful hum of the engine.
‘Targets on foot. . could be heading for a multi-storey right behind. No, wait. Targets approaching dark saloon. . an Astra, in Pavilion Road. Getting in and heading south, south, along Pavilion. Stay on that heading.’
Harry was amazed. ‘You’ve got a helicopter up there?’
‘Good timing, huh? Your boss thought they might come out like rats from a burning barn. They cruised into position five minutes ago.’ He calmly steered the BMW through the narrow streets and locked onto the course provided by the controller’s commentary.
‘They’re going south,’ said Rik.
Bruce nodded. ‘Chelsea Bridge, I reckon.’ He squeezed through a gap between a builder’s lorry and a taxi, shifting skilfully through the gears and playing the brakes and accelerator for maximum effect. All the time he sat back as though in an armchair at home.
‘How do you know it’s them?’ Harry asked.
‘Your two subjects were in all night and they were using the Astra yesterday. It’s a hire car but we haven’t got the name yet.’
‘It’ll be false, anyway,’ said Rik.
‘Makes sense. They popped out earlier for breakfast. We didn’t have the resources for a full box surveillance, so I stayed on them all the time. Easy enough job, though.’
‘Just you?’ said Harry. He knew well that mounting a full, round-the-clock surveillance was very heavy on man-power and resources, but Ballatyne had said nothing about the level of commitment given to this operation.