King Solomon's Curse

35

Roy gave Eddie an irritated look over his laptop’s screen. ‘You know, glaring at me won’t make it work any faster.’

He and his visitors had decamped from the flat some time earlier after receiving Alderley’s message, Roy bringing them to a trendy coffee shop not far from his home. ‘I’m a regular here,’ he had told them earlier as they settled into a softly lit corner at the rear. ‘They’ll leave us alone. Oh, and they do the best hazelnut macchiato in London. You should try it.’

Nina had taken his advice, but was less than impressed. She’d held in her critiques so he could work, but it was now after eleven o’clock. They were running out of time. ‘How much longer will it take?’

The damaged laptop’s hard drive was connected to Roy’s machine by a cable, the young man’s computer set to remain active even with the lid closed so the scrambled data could be copied and reassembled while on the move. ‘It’s over eighty per cent done,’ he told her. ‘So I’d say… half an hour before we can check the files.’

‘Can’t you only recover the video we’re after?’ Eddie demanded impatiently. ‘We don’t need anything else.’

‘Doesn’t work that way, chap. The computer needs to know which data belongs to which file first. Until the directory’s repaired, it doesn’t know its bits from its bollocks.’

‘But it can be repaired, yes?’ said Nina.

Roy nodded. ‘Looks like there’ll be some missing blocks, but considering that someone put a bullet through it, recovering anything at all is a minor miracle. Luckily, you had me on the case.’

‘The faster, the better,’ said Eddie. He glanced towards the entrance as someone entered the shop, but it was a young woman with a baby. Unless the Increment had really changed their recruitment practices, she was not a threat. All the same, he rechecked that the emergency exit was clear, having chosen their seats for rapid access to it.

‘Can you view any of the directory yet?’ asked Nina. ‘If we can see the dates on the files, we’ll know which one we want — it should be the most recent.’

‘I can certainly try,’ said Roy. He opened a terminal window and entered commands. A list of files scrolled up. ‘We’ve got a bit of it.’ He turned the machine to face her. ‘Should get more as the directory’s filled in, but you might see what you’re after.’

Nina read through it. Roy had listed the files by date, newest first, but the topmost were from the day before Brice’s confession. ‘Damn. It’s not there!’

‘Wouldn’t worry. The bigger the file, the more pieces there are to assemble, so videos will probably be the last to be recovered.’ He reached to turn the laptop back—

Nina grabbed his hand. ‘Oh, shit,’ she gasped.

Eddie quickly stood, hand moving towards his hidden gun. ‘What is it?’

She jabbed a finger at the menu bar — and one particular icon. ‘You’re on frickin’ wi-fi!’

‘Well, yah,’ said Roy. ‘I told you, I’m a regular — it finds it automatically.’

‘Yeah — which means MI6 can find you! You work for an intelligence agency, so they’ll have a list of all your computers to make sure you’re not emailing the Kremlin!’

He blinked. ‘Oh. Oh! I didn’t even — sorry, it didn’t even occur to me about the wi-fi. It’s just, you know… there.’

‘Some bloody spy you’d make,’ Eddie growled. ‘Come on, we’ve got to move.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘We can’t risk staying here,’ Nina told him, rising.

‘And turn off your sodding wi-fi!’ Eddie chided. Roy hastily did so. ‘It’s like a bloody tracking device. Where else can we go?’

‘If we only have to wait a half-hour for the files to be recovered,’ said Nina, ‘then we should head for the American embassy. And don’t start,’ she told Eddie. ‘What other choice do we have now?’

Roy picked up his laptop, holding it carefully so as not to dislodge the cable. ‘Okay, I’m ready.’

Eddie opened the emergency exit. The three piled through, ignoring the shout from a barista. They emerged in a dingy alley. ‘I still think giving the video to the Yanks is a bad idea,’ he said, ‘but you’re right, we’re out of options. The embassy’s in Mayfair — we can get there on the Tube—’

‘No, no!’ Roy cut in as they hurried along the alley. ‘That’s the old embassy. The new one opened a couple of years ago. It doesn’t have a Tube station yet, though — and you won’t want to use the one nearest to it.’

‘Why not?’ asked Nina.

‘It’s at Vauxhall — right by SIS headquarters.’

‘Yeah, okay, somewhere to avoid,’ she quickly agreed. ‘So what’s the best way there?’

They emerged on a main road and looked around. ‘Taxi,’ said Eddie, before seeing an alternative. ‘Or… bus?’

‘You want to get away from government goons chasing us by bus?’

‘Well, first thing is that they won’t be expecting us to do it. And second, there’s one right there.’ He pointed at an approaching red double-decker. ‘Won’t get us all the way, but at least we’ll be across the river.’

Nina was dubious, but the trudging pace of the traffic suggested that a cab would be little faster. They jogged across the road to meet it. ‘Okay, so we just jump on like in the movies, right?’

‘Not any more,’ Roy said. ‘They banned that when they fired all the conductors to save money. But there’s a stop down here.’

They hustled to it, joining the short queue. Eddie looked back. No sign of any speeding cars packed with large men, but after the wi-fi debacle he was sure they would be on the way.

The bus, a new-model Routemaster modelled on the iconic London vehicle, arrived. They boarded, Eddie and Nina paying with the cards lent to them by Alderley. Roy started for the rear, but Eddie called him back, finding seats as close to the driver as possible. ‘Just in case he gets any radio messages about us,’ he explained quietly.

‘You think he might?’ Nina asked as the bus set off, heading south.

‘There’s CCTV everywhere. They might have seen us get on.’ He turned to watch as a black Range Rover, flashing blue strobe lights concealed behind its radiator grille, muscled along the other side of the road to head for the coffee shop. ‘We got out just in time.’

‘Were they after us?’ Roy asked.

Eddie nodded. ‘You heard of the Increment?’

‘Yah, of course, although they’re called “E” Squadron now — wait,’ he added in alarm, ‘they’ve sent them after us?’

‘Who did you expect? Austin Powers?’

‘Oh, God.’ The young man’s demeanour had until now been that of someone embarking upon a slightly transgressive adventure, but now the gravity of the situation struck home. ‘That’s, ah… rather serious.’

‘No shit,’ muttered Nina. She indicated his laptop. ‘How much longer?’

Roy opened the machine. ‘The directory’s almost ninety per cent done. So fifteen, twenty minutes?’

‘Keep it going, then,’ she told him, looking back after the Range Rover.

Staite and Waterford had been joined in the control centre by two more young and keen operators. ‘According to building records, the coffee house has a fire exit into a back street,’ one reported.

‘Did you hear that?’ Staite asked the ground team through her headset.

‘Affirmative,’ came the reply.

‘Got them on cam,’ reported Waterford. A screen showed a live CCTV image from the main street, the Range Rover nearing a junction. It made a hard stop at the corner, two men jumping from its rear and running out of frame as the SUV set off again.

‘Can we see the shop?’ asked Staite.

He checked a grid of smaller images on another display. ‘Not directly. There’s a camera outside a bank that might have an angle, though. Hold on…’ His fingers rattled across a keyboard.

‘We’re here,’ the team leader warned. ‘Team Two, ETA?’

‘Ten seconds. Just reached the alley,’ a man replied.

‘Got it,’ announced Waterford. The view on the main screen changed. The camera was mounted high above the bank’s frontage, covering its entrance and ATM, but the coffee shop was visible in the corner of the frame. The Range Rover stopped on the pavement. Its two occupants leapt out and ran to the shop, drawing their weapons.

‘Team Two in position,’ said the second man.

Staite did not hesitate. ‘Move in.’

The pair on screen burst through the shop’s door. ‘Special Branch!’ the leader bellowed, the police undercover unit acting as the cover for MI6’s even more secretive operatives. ‘Nobody move!’ Cries of panic came from the shop’s customers, a baby screaming. ‘Two men and a woman! They were here — where are they?’

‘They — they went out through the fire exit,’ someone fearfully replied.

‘Team Two, did you get that?’ said Staite.

‘Yeah,’ came the response. ‘Door’s barred from inside, nobody’s here.’

‘Team One, search the interior in case they’re lying,’ she ordered. ‘We’ll try to pick them up on CCTV.’

A phone rang, Waterford answering. ‘Oh, you’re kidding,’ he said, aggrieved, after listening to the caller. ‘It’s GCHQ. Boxley logged off the coffee shop’s wi-fi over three minutes ago.’

‘Good of them to let us know!’ Staite said in exasperation. ‘Okay, that gives us a new time window. Poll the CCTV on the surrounding streets and wind back four minutes to see if we can spot them. And tell those nerds at the Doughnut’ — the nickname for GCHQ’s circular headquarters — ‘that this is a real-time operation, not something to catch up with on iPlayer!’

A report soon came in from the Removal Men that the targets were indeed no longer in the building. ‘We’ll update you as soon as we locate them,’ Staite told him, joining her companions to scrutinise recent footage from the dozen or so cameras covering the area. Minutes passed, Londoners stuttering along the streets in digitised fast-forward. Then—

‘There!’ cried one of the new operators. He zoomed in on three figures scurrying across a road. ‘That’s them, isn’t it?’

Staite’s gaze flicked to another screen showing pictures of the fugitives, now joined by SIS’s own identity photos of Roy Boxley. ‘Yeah. And they’re carrying a laptop! Where are they?’

‘North End Road, not far from the coffee shop.’ He zoomed out and rewound the footage. ‘They came out of the alley behind it.’

‘We don’t need to know where they were,’ Staite chided. ‘We need to know where they are.’

The young man hastily fast-forwarded. The trio popped across the main road and skip-framed down it until they passed out of sight. Waterford noted the time code, then brought up a contemporaneous image from a different camera. After a moment, their targets reappeared. Everyone watched as they continued down the street — then stopped. ‘Looks like they’re getting on a bus.’

That was confirmed when a double-decker pulled up. The three targets boarded. ‘We’ve got them,’ Staite said into her headset. ‘They’re on a number 397 bus, heading south down North End Road.’

‘Affirmative. Pursuing,’ was the hunters’ terse reply.

‘There are quite a few civilians on that bus,’ warned Waterford. ‘And Chase has a gun. This could get out of control very quickly.’

‘I’ll call Transport for London,’ said Staite, picking up a phone, ‘and tell them to slow the bus down until our teams catch up. If the driver fakes a malfunction, we can get everyone off — right where we want them.’

The bus continued southwards, leaving West Kensington and entering the more downmarket area of Fulham. Eddie kept watch for pursuers, while Nina checked on Roy’s progress. ‘Please tell me it’s almost at one hundred per cent,’ she said.

Roy shook his head. ‘Afraid not. But it’s getting there. Ninety-three.’

‘Great. Once it’s done, it might be best if you copy the file on to—’

She broke off as Eddie tensed in his seat, leaning forward to listen in on a radio discussion between the driver and his depot. ‘Buggeration and fuckery.’

‘What is it?’

‘I didn’t catch all of it, but it sounded like they want him to tell the passengers the bus’s broken down so they can get everyone off.’

Roy raised his head to listen. ‘Seems fine to me.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with it,’ Nina realised. ‘They know we’re aboard. What do we do? Get out and run?’

Eddie looked outside. He didn’t know the area, but MI6 would have every escape route mapped in detail. ‘If we’re on foot, they’ll catch up with us in no time. We need to go faster.’

‘I think we’ve picked the wrong vehicle for that,’ said Roy.

‘I dunno — didn’t you see Speed?’ He jumped to his feet and drew the gun. ‘All right! Everyone listen — I’m hijacking this bus!’

‘You’re what?’ Nina yelped, but she was drowned out by sounds of alarm from the passengers when they saw he was armed.

Eddie grabbed a handrail in case the driver braked suddenly, then pointed the gun at him. ‘Stop the bus and open the doors!’ When there was no immediate response from the stunned man, he fired a single shot at the floor. ‘I’m not fucking joking — everybody off!’

The terrified driver stamped on the brake, the bus lurching to a standstill in the middle of the road. He opened the doors. The passengers on the lower floor scrambled in panic towards the central and rear exits, more stumbling down the two steep flights of stairs from the top deck. Small screens above the windscreen showed CCTV images of the interior; Eddie waited until both decks were clear before pulling the driver from his compartment. ‘All right, bugger off. Nina, take over.’

‘What?’ she protested. ‘You’re the one who knows how to drive a bus, not me!’

‘Roy’s on the computer, I might need to shoot, so that just leaves you. Sorry, love.’ He ushered her into the empty seat. ‘It’s a hybrid, so it should be a piece of piss to drive — like a big Prius!’

‘A very big Prius.’ She reluctantly took her place at the wheel as Eddie ran to the rear. ‘Okay, what do I do?’

‘If it’s like the bus I learned on in the army,’ he called to her, ‘there should be buttons for the gears and a lever for the airbrake.’

‘Buttons, buttons… yeah, we got buttons!’ There were several banks on the dash, but the three marked D, N and R were the most obvious in function. The squat grey lever beside her right knee was also helpfully labelled ‘handbrake’. She put her foot on the brake pedal and pushed the drive button, then fumbled with the lever until it released and pushed it forward. The bus jolted, but remained stationary.

Horns sounded behind her as angry drivers expressed their displeasure at being held up. ‘All right, Jeez, give me a chance,’ she said, nervously switching her foot from the brake to the accelerator.

The bus crept forward. ‘That’s it!’ Eddie shouted. ‘Go faster!’

‘Ah… I still think it’d be better if you drove!’ The huge wing mirrors were convex, giving her a wider view but at the same time distorting it. She tried to compensate for what she thought was a drift to the right only to find herself instead swinging towards the left kerb. ‘Whoa! Okay, this is weird.’

‘Never mind weird, we need fast!’ He saw cars in their wake pull over as something bore down behind them — a black Range Rover. ‘They’re coming!’

Through the open front door, Nina heard a siren. ‘So are the cops!’

‘Well, what did you expect?’ said Roy testily. ‘You just hijacked a bus at gunpoint! Every armed woodentop in London’s probably on the way.’

‘You just keep watching numbers go up,’ Eddie fired back. ‘Nina, put your bloody foot down!’

With deep apprehension, she did so. The bus’s unscheduled halt had opened up a space ahead — but it shrank with alarming speed as the speedometer rose. ‘Okay, problem — there’s a traffic jam!’

Their side of the road was occupied by waiting cars — but the other side was relatively clear. ‘Then go around ’em!’

‘We’ll hit someone coming the other way!’

‘They’ll move, trust me!’

Nina was almost out of room to manoeuvre. No choice. She threw the wheel to the right to overtake the traffic — and the bus swerved alarmingly, centrifugal force tilting its tall body steeply to the left. She yelled as it veered towards the pavement on the road’s right side, pedestrians scattering as she swung back the other way—

A lamp post swept past just inches from the Routemaster’s front corner. Nina gasped in relief as she brought the bus back towards the road’s centre — only for her to be almost pitched from her seat as the rear corner, extending out far beyond the back wheels, clipped the obstacle. Metal crunched, a window shattering.

‘Jesus!’ Eddie shouted. ‘Mirrors, use the mirrors!’

‘I’m just trying to use the steering!’ she cried. The long front and rear overhangs made the bus’s handling very different from a car’s; each hard turn felt as if she was sweeping sideways rather than forwards. She finally brought the vehicle parallel to the stationary traffic and powered onwards — only for her heart to sink. ‘Oh, crap! There isn’t enough room!’ Even though oncoming drivers had swerved on to the pavement to get clear, the gap between them and the vehicles on the other side of the road seemed much too narrow to traverse.

‘Yeah, there is!’ Eddie shouted. ‘You’ve got loads of room on the left! Mirrors! Mirrors, mirrors! Use the bloody mirrors!’

‘You know where you can put your frickin’ mirrors?’ Nina growled — but a glance at the left mirror told her that he was correct. She was much farther over than she had thought, the combination of her seating position and the Routemaster’s size throwing off her spatial perception. A more precise turn of the wheel brought her closer in, just in time to whisk through the gap.

She saw that the road forked ahead. ‘We’re coming to an intersection! Which way?’

‘We’re on Fulham Broadway, so… right, go right!’ Roy told her. ‘It’ll take us towards the river — we can cross on Battersea Bridge. If we can reach it in one piece,’ he added.

‘I’ll try not to hit anything else!’ Nina sounded the horn in a warning blast as she tore through a set of red lights into the junction. Cars scattered like frightened mice as she accelerated on to the new road. ‘Roy, what about the laptop?’

‘Ninety-five per cent,’ he replied.

‘Seriously? Can’t you speed it up? My parents had a computer with a “turbo” button on it back in the damn Nineties!’

Roy sounded offended. ‘It’s working as fast as it can!’

Eddie had other concerns. The siren’s source had just appeared, a police car sweeping out from the left-hand fork — but rather than follow them, it stopped in the middle of the junction, blocking the confused traffic. The Range Rover entered the other side of the intersection and bullied its way through the chaos.

He thought the police car was waiting for their pursuers to take the lead. But when the Range Rover finally cleared the knot of cars and accelerated after the bus, the cops remained stationary.

There was only one reason why the police would have been instructed to leave the hunt to the Removal Men. Brice and those working with him wanted no official witnesses to their actions when they caught up.

‘Nina,’ he said, readying the gun, ‘you need to get away from these arseholes — or we’re going to die!’