Personal

THIRTY-NINE

I stayed where I wanted to be for about thirty more minutes, with Casey Nice alongside me at her own pair of binoculars, both of us watching the static scene and trying to draw what conclusions we could from it. Bennett stood behind us, listing the activity they had already seen, and answering the few questions we had.

I asked him, ‘What kind of probable cause would get you in there?’

He said, ‘Apart from a muzzle flash?’

‘Let’s hope things don’t go that far.’

‘A positive visual ID on either one of them would work.’

‘Which you haven’t gotten yet.’

‘Not yet.’

There were lights in some of the windows, both upstairs and down, behind what looked like semi-transparent roller shades. But there were no shadows cast, no figures, no movement. And no blue glow from a television set. Probably the occupied core of the house was in the back, or on the far side, neither of which we could see. A kitchen and a family room, possibly, with guest bedrooms upstairs. Or a self-contained suite of their own. Like a pied-à-terre apartment, except 50 per cent larger. Designed either for the present purpose, or for giant and incapacitated parents, twenty years in the future.

I asked, ‘You got an opinion on when exactly they’ll move into position down at Wallace Court?’

Bennett said, ‘That’s the big question, isn’t it?’

‘What’s the big answer?’

‘We’ll be closing roads a day or two before it starts. I’m sure they’re aware of that. And I’m sure they know a day or two means three or four, sometimes. So my guess is they’ll move five days ahead.’

‘That gives them a long wait.’

‘Snipers love all that lying-up bullshit. All part of the mystique.’

‘Can you catch them in transit?’

‘We could if we knew what time on which day they’re due to head out. We could engineer a traffic stop. A broken brake light, or something. But we don’t know. So we’d have to stop everything of theirs that moves, for about a week or so, to be on the safe side. After the third or the fourth time, old Charlie White would start calling in favours. He owns some local politicians, and some local police, we think. Might be worth it, just for the entertainment value alone. We’d have half a dozen solid citizens swearing up and down that yeah, OK, old Charlie might be a pimp and a thief and a gun runner, but he’s definitely not a terrorist.’

I asked, ‘Who’s the we? As in, we could, we’d have to, we think, we’d have?’

Bennett said, ‘It’s all pretty fluid at the moment.’

‘Why?’

‘We aim to wrap this up quickly.’

‘Says the politician.’

‘Who gives, as well as gets. He removes certain barriers, at the stroke of a pen. He relaxes certain regulations. In fact he begs to. He’s ready to repeal anything and everything, all the way back to the Magna Carta. An attack of this nature on British soil would be worse than catastrophic. It would be embarrassing.’

‘Why don’t they cancel it?’

‘That would be even more embarrassing.’

I said, ‘How many viable locations did you count near Wallace Court?’

‘Your thing in Paris changed our thinking a little bit. That was sixteen hundred yards, and dead-on, apart from the gust of wind. So if we look at the back patio and the back lawn and a radius of sixteen hundred yards, then we figure about six hundred places.’

Nice said, ‘Which means you’d have to search a hundred and twenty a day to be sure of finding them there. Can you do that?’

Bennett said, ‘Not a hope in hell. Plus we’re worried about the M25. That would be the ultimate just-in-time delivery, wouldn’t it? Imagine a high-sided commercial vehicle pulling over on the shoulder, with some kind of elevated shooting platform constructed in the interior, and an unobtrusive hole in the siding. And big scopes on the rifles. They could cover the whole of the patio and the whole of the lawn.’

I said, ‘Can’t you close the motorway?’

‘The M25? Unacceptable. The whole southeast of England would be jammed solid. We’re talking about closing the shoulder and the inside lane, for phoney road repairs, but even that’s a big ask. Traffic dynamics are very weird on that road. Like chaos theory. A butterfly flaps its wings in Dartford, two hundred people miss their flights at Heathrow, forty miles away.’

I sat back from the binoculars. ‘So all in all you’re saying we should nail them before they leave Joey’s house.’

‘I think that would be a very favourable outcome.’

‘And according to your various closely held beliefs, they’re going to be in there at least the next several days.’

‘That’s only a best guess. Always better to strike while the iron is hot.’

Beside me I heard Casey Nice breathe in.

‘Not tonight,’ I said.

Bennett said, ‘Too soon?’

‘Do it once, and do it right.’

‘When, then?’

‘We’ll text you. We’ve got your number.’

Bennett locked up the bowling club’s door, and put the key back under the stone, and we walked back the way we had come, out of the small grit clearing into the narrow straight path, and then onward through the silent streets, and back to the pub, and around behind it, where the Vauxhall was waiting patiently, exactly where we had left it, untouched, and not even boxed in.

‘Where to?’ Bennett asked.

I said, ‘An all-night pharmacy.’

‘Why?’

‘We want to buy toothbrushes.’

‘And then?’

‘The hotel.’

‘I thought Americans had a work ethic.’

‘First light,’ I said. ‘Be ready and waiting. You’re going to drive us.’

‘Where?’

‘Wallace Court.’

‘Why?’

‘I want to stand on the back patio.’

Bennett said, ‘Wallace Court doesn’t matter. Not if we nail them before they leave the house.’

‘Hope for the best, plan for the worst. Could be the endgame is all in the last five minutes, just before they pull the triggers. We need to know the lie of the land. We need to triage those six hundred places. I’d like a top ten. At least a top fifty.’

‘Those streets are full of Romford Boys.’

‘I certainly hope so. I want to be seen, still here, still poking around. I want that message to get back to John Kott, double quick.’

‘Wouldn’t the opposite be better? You could take them by surprise.’

I nodded. ‘Surprise is good. But sometimes it’s better to unsettle them.’

‘They’re not the kind of people who get unsettled.’

‘Doesn’t take much to miss at sixteen hundred yards. A couple of beats per minute, maybe. He hates me because I sent him away. He hates himself because he let me break him down. There’s a couple of beats per minute in either one of those. Both of them together, then two and two make five. I want him to know I’m coming, because that’s the only way I’ll survive long enough to get there.’

He let us out in the Hilton’s carriage circle, and we went in, and he drove away, and we arranged to meet in the famous top-floor restaurant, twenty minutes from then. A late dinner, just the two of us. I knew she wanted to shower, so I did too, and we got to the maître d’ lectern about a yard apart. She looked good, which I figured was partly being resolute, and partly being twenty-eight years old, and therefore still full of energy and resilience and even a certain amount of optimism.

We got a square table near a window, where we got a spectacular high-floor view of the twinkling city, interrupted only by the black of the park. The window glass was also reflective enough to let us see most of the room behind us. Both picturesque and safe, all at once. A two-for-one deal. We ordered drinks, bottled water for her, black coffee for me. There was candlelight, and crystal, and a piano tinkling somewhere. She said, ‘This is very glamorous. It’s just like the movies.’

I said, ‘I guess it is.’

‘This is the scene where you try to get rid of me, isn’t it?’

‘Why would I do that?’

‘Because now it gets hard.’

‘Which would argue for maintaining numbers, not reducing them.’

‘But you’ll worry about me. You’ll look at me and you’ll see Dominique Kohl. That’s worth two beats a minute.’

‘Suppose I say I won’t worry about you?’

‘Then I’ll say you should. The only way to do this is to go through Little Joey first. Who will be difficult to go through. Who likes rough sex with new hookers. If you get captured, you’ll get a bullet in the head. If I get captured, I’ll be begging for one.’

‘Suppose neither one of us gets captured. That’s the more likely outcome. Joey needn’t be difficult to go through. He’s a big target. Lots of centre mass.’

‘With a driver and four guards in a Jaguar, everywhere he goes.’

‘Until we make them all unemployed. Then they’ll disappear. They won’t fight on for free.’

‘You really want me there?’

I didn’t answer. Dominique Kohl had asked: Will you let me make the arrest? Which was a question I wish I had answered differently. A waiter came over and took our order. I got a rib-eye steak. Nice got duck, and when the waiter left she asked again, ‘You really want me there?’

‘Not my decision,’ I said. ‘You’re the boss. Joan Scarangello told me so.’

‘I think the strategy is sound.’

‘Me too.’

‘But the execution will be complex.’

‘I’ll take all the help I can get.’

She said, ‘Suppose you had never picked up that newspaper? Where would you be now?’

‘Seattle, probably. Or the next place.’

‘And all of this would be happening without you. Do you think about that?’

‘Not really. Because I picked up the paper.’

‘Why did you call? Were you curious?’

‘Not really,’ I said again. ‘I knew O’Day would be involved. And I prefer not to be curious about his line of work.’

‘So why did you call?’

‘I owed Shoemaker a favour.’

‘From when?’

‘About twenty years ago.’

‘What kind of favour?’

‘He kept his mouth shut about something.’

‘Want to tell me?’

I said, ‘Personally, no.’

‘But?’

‘It could be argued the nature of the incident has a bearing on the mission. In which case you’re entitled to the information.’

‘Which is what?’

‘Long story short, I shot a guy trying to escape.’

‘Is that a bad thing?’

‘The trying to escape part was invented for the record. It was a routine execution. National security is a tricky thing. It’s all about public image. Therefore sometimes retribution is public, and sometimes it isn’t. Some traitors get arrests and trials, and some don’t. Some end up as tragic accidents, maybe shot to death by muggers, on street corners in weird parts of town.’

‘And General Shoemaker knew?’

‘He was an accidental witness.’

‘Did he object?’

‘Not in principle. He understood. He was in military intelligence. Ask around. The CIA was just the same. It was a pragmatic period.’

‘So how do you owe him a favour?’

‘I shot the guy’s friend, too.’

‘Why?’

‘I got a bad vibe. Which ended up righteous, because the guy had a gun in his pocket, and his home address was a treasure trove. He turned out to be my guy’s contact. As an espionage thing, they got a twofer out of it. More than that, in the end. They made arrests up and down the chain. But the inquiry panel wanted to be absolutely sure I had seen the gun first. Some legal thing. And the truth is, I hadn’t. And Shoemaker didn’t rat me out.’

‘So now you’re going to fight his battle for him. That’s a lot of payback. Seems out of proportion.’

‘That’s how favours work. Like in the mob movies. Some guy says, one day I will call on you to perform a service. You don’t get to pick and choose. And anyway, maybe it was Shoemaker’s battle in the beginning, but it’s mine now. Because O’Day was right. It’s a big world, but I can’t be looking over my shoulder all the time. So Kott gets a rematch.’

‘Do you want me with you?’

‘Only if you want to be. On an ethical level, first. The favour is a hint. Like a script for me to follow. O’Day wants an executioner. He doesn’t want arrests and trials.’

‘On any level, do you want me with you?’

I said, ‘Where do you want to be?’

‘I want to be part of it.’

‘You are part of it.’

‘Entering a phase not entirely suited to my skills.’

‘What’s wrong with your skills?’

‘I’m an average shot with no aptitude for hand-to-hand combat.’

‘Doesn’t matter. We’ll complement each other. Because the physical part is the least of it. The game goes to the fastest thinker. Which is what you’re good at. Or at least, two heads are better than one.’

She didn’t answer.

I said, ‘We start again at seven o’clock in the morning. Take the rest of the night off.’

We rode down in the elevator together, but I got out alone, on my floor, which was a couple above hers. The turn-down lady had been in my room. I reopened the drapes and looked out across the rooftops. I guessed most of what I was seeing was about a hundred yards away. The comfortable middle distance, in a crowded city. An easy angle, and some kind of default focus. I raised my eye line a little, and tried to guess double, for two hundred yards, and again, for four hundred, and again, for eight hundred, and then one last time, for sixteen hundred yards.

I was staring into the far, far distance. If Romford was Mayfair, we’d be searching ten thousand locations.

Kohl had asked, Will you let me make the arrest?

I had said, I want you to.

As a reward, really. Or an acknowledgement. Or a compliment. Like a battlefield decoration. An earned privilege. She had done all the work. And had all the ideas, and made all the breakthroughs. Hence the reward. Which was substantial, in the coded language of the military, because we had a big enemy. Not physically. Not as I recall. I stuck a chisel in his brain, many years afterwards, and I don’t remember a big man. But he was big in terms of power. And prestige, and influence. A real long shot. Especially for a woman. Which was part of it. It was a long time ago. Recognition was important. And she deserved it. She did the work, and had the ideas, and made the breakthroughs. She was very thorough, and very smart.

Hadn’t saved her.

I took my clothes off and got into bed, but I left the drapes open. I figured the city glow might comfort me, and the dawn might help me wake.

At one minute past seven the next morning we were on our way to Wallace Court, in Bennett’s car, which was no longer an anonymous blue Vauxhall, but an anonymous silver Vauxhall. Otherwise identical. Like rental cars. We drove most of the same route, but faster, because the morning traffic was running the other way. Into town, not out. Rush hour, but not for us. Bennett looked tired. Casey Nice looked OK. We didn’t talk. Nothing to say. No doubt Bennett thought I was wasting his time. Which was possible. Or probable, even. But there’s always a percentage chance of something. Maybe of not having to say if I had known then what I know now. Which phrase is used a lot. My mother said it all the time. In her case, she meant it sincerely, but she said it like an elocution exercise, like a person learning a foreign language, which she was, with all her attention on the three cascading vowel sounds at the very end, and none at all on the consonants along the way: If I ’ad known zen what I know now.

I know now, like drumbeats. Portentous, and a little sinister, like tympani strikes at the start of a gloomy symphony. Shostakovich, maybe.

I know now.

I knew twenty minutes into the visit.