Atom Bomb Angel

12

It was probably because I was deep in thought after the meeting that I didn’t think hard enough about the message waiting for me on my desk. It was short and clear, and read: A man telephoned. He said he was a friend of Ahmed. He will wait for you at the farthest table at the back of the downstairs floor of Richoux in Knightsbridge until three o’clock.

I grilled the girl who had taken the message, but she could give me very little help. The voice was foreign, unsteady, and the caller obviously had a limited vocabulary. I could have had the voice played back, as all incoming telephone calls are automatically taped, but there wasn’t enough time to go winding backwards and forwards through the tape, and since I didn’t know anyone who didn’t speak English fluently, hearing the voice probably wouldn’t have helped me. I put my jacket and coat on and went out through the front entrance of number forty-six into Carlton House Terrace.

It was a bitterly cold day, sleeting slightly. I did up my coat buttons, put my hands in my pockets, and started to walk down towards Pall Mall to find a taxi. I was surprised to hear the familiar diesel rattle after only a few moments, and turned around, to see a taxi with its ‘For Hire’ light on, coming down right behind me. I flagged it down and climbed in. ‘Harrods,’ I said, Richoux being right across the road from the department store, which would give me a chance to see if there was anyone hanging around watching Richoux who shouldn’t have been.

‘Pardon?’ he said in a thick accent. He was young — couldn’t have been much more than twenty-two — with a Middle-Eastern complexion, and a large gold-coloured watch.

‘Harrods,’ I repeated.

‘Harrods, Knightsbridge?’ he asked.

‘Correct.’ During the best part of thirty-two years living in London, I had never come across more than one Harrods. This man obviously knew better. The watch was a genuine Rolex. I wondered at which branch of Harrods he’d bought it. The cab was smart — almost brand new; maybe it came from Harrods too. I leaned forward to the partition window. ‘Nice new cab,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he laughed nervously, ‘yes, this is my cab.’

An advert on the back panel told me I needed a new postal franking machine. The driver crashed the gears badly going from third to fourth as he negotiated St James’s Street. I have always had a love-hate relationship with London’s taxi drivers. When I am driving myself, I think the entire bunch of them are miserable bastards who reckon they own every inch of the road, who never let anyone out, and who carve anyone up given the slightest chance, even if they have to go out of their way to do it. When I am a passenger in a cab, I think they’re bloody marvellous, terrific people, ace drivers, and I can more than fully understand their contempt for the average drivelling moron creeping his saloon around the centre of London’s roads at five miles per hour, and letting the whole world and his dog go before him at every opportunity.

But right now, my confidence in the London cabbie was taking a severe battering. For the privilege of having to stump up the best part of a week’s wages for every tenth of a mile that I travelled, I felt I was entitled to expect someone who was at least able to drive, who could, at the minimum, string a few sentences of the English language together, and who didn’t think there was a Harrods on every street corner.

As we rounded the comer into Piccadilly, we stopped at a red light. At least Mustapha wasn’t colour blind. He opened his door and hopped out. ‘You wait please, one moment — I buy Standard.’ He darted off towards a news kiosk.

I wasn’t sure afterwards whether it was his Rolex watch, or his lack of knowledge of London, or his lack of driving skill, or my sheer disbelief that with his limited grasp of the English language he could have any use for a newspaper, or the fact that for a quarter to three on a Monday afternoon he had just appeared too damn quickly, but something made me lean forward and look into his cab. There was a hand grenade on the seat and there was no pin in the grenade.

The explosion happened as I was somewhere between the door and the pavement. It picked me up, and blasted me clean over the railings into St James’s Park, and blasted most of my trousers away. It turned the cab into a ball of fire, and sprinkled smaller balls of fire around the foyer of the Ritz, and other parts of the immediate vicinity.

I lay for a moment on the cold grass, my ears completely numb, my face stinging, my legs hurting like mad, as I gulped in air; and as I gulped in air, I got mad, and as I got mad, I gulped in more air still, and as I gulped in more air still, I got even madder, and I reached for the inside of my jacket, only to discover I no longer had either a coat or a jacket, but I did still have my holster with a Beretta inside it. I pulled out the Beretta, and snapped off the safety catch. I checked the selector was on single fire. I was going to get that Arab; I was going to get that sodding bastard. I climbed over the rails, gingerly, for everything hurt. There was complete silence. The whole of Piccadilly had come to a halt. I pinched my nostrils with my fingers and blew hard until my ears popped; but still there was silence — silence except for the ticking of car engines. Somewhere in the distance I heard the blast of a horn. The cab burned fiercely, crackling viciously. The paintwork of a Ford Granada parked on a meter next to it was blistering and bubbling. The newspaper vendor was wide-eyed and blinking.

I stared up and down for the Arab. He was nowhere in sight. I looked at doorways, inside cars, up and down the street, but I didn’t move. I waited. I looked for that one movement, somewhere — but there was none. A pretty girl in a Metro was staring at me; her face was frozen in a mixture of horror, pity and puzzlement. I couldn’t blame her; standing there dressed in nothing but black calf-length boots, blue Marks and Sparks Y-fronts, half a gingham-check blue and white shirt, and a hefty great 9mm Beretta 93R, I couldn’t have looked the world’s prettiest sight.

I tried to conceal the gun, by sticking it inside my shirt, and I became conscious of the fact that I wasn’t going to be able to stand here much longer without attracting a crowd of several thousand. A front-page news story and my mug plastered over every newspaper would not greatly enhance my career prospects. I needed to move away from here, fast. I began walking; somehow, I just didn’t fancy a taxi.