Remote Control, page 35
Straightaway I smiled down at Kelly, ‘No, it’s not!’ I didn’t want to look at the woman. I could feel the smile drain from her face, could feel her eyes burning into the side of my head.
There was a pause that felt like an hour as I tried to think of what to do or say next. I pictured the woman’s finger hovering over a concealed button.
Kelly got there before me. ‘I know, I’m joking,’ she giggled, holding out a teddy. ‘This is Kelly! My name is Louise. What’s yours?’
‘My name’s Margaret.’ The smile was back. If only she’d known how close she’d been to a kill.
She opened the passport. Her eyes flicked up and down as she studied first the picture, then my face. She put the passport down below the level of the desk and I saw the tell-tale glow of ultraviolet light. Then she looked back into my eyes and said, ‘When was this picture taken?’
‘About four years ago, I guess.’ I gave a weak smile, and said in a low voice that Kelly wasn’t meant to overhear, ‘I’ve been having chemotherapy. The hair’s just starting to grow back.’ I rubbed my head. My skin felt damp and cold. Hopefully I still looked shit. The capsules certainly made me feel it. ‘I’m bringing Louise over to see my wife’s parents because it’s been quite a traumatic time. My wife’s staying with our other child because he’s ill at the moment. When it rains, it pours!’
‘Oh,’ she said, and it sounded genuinely sympathetic. But she didn’t hand back the passport.
There was a big lull, as if she was waiting for me to fill the silence with a confession. Or maybe she was just trying to think of something helpful and human to say. Finally she said, ‘Have a good stay,’ and put the documents back on the desktop.
There was that urge just to grab them and run.
‘Thank you very much,’ I said, picking them up and putting them back into my pocket, then carefully doing up the button, because that was what a normal dad would do. Only then did I turn to Kelly. ‘C’mon, baby, let’s go!’
I started to walk, but Kelly stood her ground. Oh fuck, now what?
‘Goodbye, Margaret,’ she beamed, ‘have a nice day!’
Then that was it. We were nearly there. I knew there wasn’t going to be a problem with the luggage because I wasn’t going to collect it.
I checked the carousels. There was a flight from Brussels that was also unloading, so I headed for the blue channel. Even if they were watching and stopped us because Kelly had a Virgin Airlines bag, I would play the stupid person routine.
But there weren’t any Customs on duty in the blue channel. We were free.
37
THE LARGE SLIDING doors opened up into the arrivals hall. We walked through into a throng of chauffeurs holding up cards and people waiting for their loved ones. Nobody gave us a second look.
I went straight to the bureau de change. I found I’d done well last night with Ron, Melvin and the Sandborns, ending up with over three hundred pounds in cash. Like a nugget, I forgot to ask for a small-denomination note for the machine and we had to queue for ages for tube tickets. It didn’t seem to matter; even the hour-long ride to Bank station was enjoyable. I was a free man, I was amongst ordinary people. None of them knew who we were or was going to pull a gun on us.
The City is a strange mixture of architecture. As we left the station we passed grand buildings comprised of columns and puritanically straight lines – the old Establishment. Turn a corner and we were confronted by monstrosities that were built in the Sixties and early Seventies by architects who must have taken a ‘Let’s go fuck up the City’ pill. One of these buildings was the one I was heading for, the NatWest bank in Lombard Street, a road so narrow that just one car could squeeze down it.
We went through the revolving steel and glass doors into the banking hall, where rows of cashiers sat behind protective screens. But I wasn’t there for money.
The reception desk was manned by a man and a woman, both in their early twenties, both wearing NatWest suits; they even had little corporate motifs sewn into the material of the breast pocket, probably so the staff wouldn’t wear them out of hours. As Kelly would have said, ‘As if!’
I saw both of them give Kelly and me an instant appraisal and could feel them turning up their noses. I gave them a cheery, ‘Hi, how are you?’ and asked to speak with Guy Bexley.
The woman said, ‘Can I have your name, please?’ as she picked up the phone.
‘Nick Stevenson.’
The girl called an extension. The man went back to being efficient on the other side of the reception desk.
I bent down and whispered to Kelly, ‘I’ll explain later.’
‘He’ll be along in a minute. Would you like to sit down?’
We waited on a settee that was very long, very deep and very plastic. I could sense Kelly’s cogs turning.
Sure enough: ‘Nick, am I Louise Stevenson now, or Louise Sandborn?’
I screwed up my face and scratched my head. ‘Umm … Kelly!’
Guy Bexley came down. Guy was my ‘Relationship Manager’, whatever that was. All I knew was that he was the man I asked for when I wanted to get my security blanket out. He was late twenties, and you could see by his hairstyle and goatee beard that he felt uncomfortable in the issued suit and would be far happier wearing PVC trousers, holding a bottle of water and raving all night bare-chested.
We shook hands. ‘Hello, Mr Stevenson, haven’t seen you for a long time.’
I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Work. This is Kelly.’
He bent down and said, ‘Hello there, Kelly,’ in his best ‘I’ve been trained how to introduce myself to kids’ manner.
‘I just need my locked box for five minutes, mate.’
I followed him towards the row of partitioned offices on the other side of the hall. I’d been in them many times before. They were all identical; each contained just a round table, four chairs and a telephone. It was where people went to count money or beg for a loan. He started to leave.
‘Could I also have a statement on my Diamond Reserve, please?’
Guy nodded and left. Kelly said, ‘What are we doing here?’
I should have known by now that she hated to be left out of things. Just like her dad. ‘Wait and see,’ I winked.
A few minutes later Guy reappeared, put the box on the table and gave me a folded printout of my account. I felt nervous as I opened up the paper. My eyes went straight for the bottom right-hand corner.
Four hundred and twenty-six thousand, five hundred and seventy dollars, converted at a rate of 1.58 dollars to the pound.
Big Al had done it! I had to control myself as I remembered Bexley was still standing there. ‘I’ll just be about five minutes,’ I said.
‘Tell reception when you’re ready; they’ll put it back in the vault for you.’ He left with a shake of my hand and a ‘Bye, Kelly!’ and closed the door behind him.
The box was 18 inches by 12 inches, a metal file-container I’d bought for a tenner in Woolworths, with a very cheap lock on the top that opened under pressure. I’d been planning to rent a proper safe deposit box, but then I’d remembered about the Knightsbridge raid years before. Also, it meant I’d have to turn up with a key, and I couldn’t guarantee I was going to have that with me. This way was easier; the only problem was that, if I had to do a runner out of the country, it could only be during banking hours.
I flipped the lock and pulled out a couple of old Private Eyes I’d put on top in case it accidentally opened. I threw them over to Kelly. ‘See if you can make any sense of those.’ She picked one up and started to flick through the pages.
The first thing I took out was the mobile phone and recharger. I switched it on. The battery was still working, but I put it in the recharger anyway and plugged it into the wall.
Next I pulled out a clear plastic carrier bag which contained bundles of US dollar bills and pounds sterling, 5 South African krugerrands, and 10 half-sovereigns that I’d stolen after the Gulf War. All troops who were behind enemy lines in Iraq were issued with twenty of the things as bribes for the locals in case we were in the shit. In my patrol we’d managed to keep ten of them each; we said we’d lost the rest in a contact. To begin with I’d only kept them as souvenirs, but they’d soon increased in value. I left them in the bag; I was only interested in the sterling.
I dug out a European leather porte-monnaie with a strap, in which I had a complete set of ID – passport, credit cards, driver’s licence, all the stuff I needed to become Nicholas Duncan Stevenson. It had taken years to get cover in such depth, all originating from a social security number I’d bought in a pub in Brixton for fifty quid.
I then got out an electronic notebook. It was great; it meant that, anywhere in the world, I could fax, send memos, do word processing and maintain a database. The problem was I didn’t have a clue how to use it. I just used the phone number and address facility because it could only be accessed with a password.
I had a quick look over at Kelly. She was thumbing through the Eye, not understanding a word. I pushed my hand to the bottom of the box and extracted the 9mm semi-automatic Browning that I’d liberated from Africa in the late Eighties. Loading the mags with rounds from a small Tupperware box, I made ready and checked chamber. Kelly looked up, but didn’t give it a second glance.
I powered up the notebook, tapped in 2422, and found the number I wanted. I picked up the telephone on the table. Kelly looked up again. ‘Who are you phoning?’
‘Euan.’
‘Who is he?’
I could see the confusion on her face.
‘He’s my best friend.’ I carried on pressing the phone number.
‘But …’
I put my finger to my lips. ‘Shhh.’
He wasn’t in. I left a message on the answering machine in veiled speech. Then I put the laptop into the box, together with everything that I wasn’t taking with me – including the printout.
Kelly was bored with the Eyes now, so I took them off her to put back in the box. I knew there was a question on its way.
‘Nick?’
I just carried on packing. ‘Yes?’
‘You said David was your best friend.’
‘Ah yes. Well, Euan is my best friend. It’s just that sometimes I have to call him David because …’ I started to think of a lie, but why? ‘I told you because, if we got caught, then you wouldn’t know his real name. That way you couldn’t tell anyone. It’s something that is done all the time. It’s called OPSEC – operational security.’ I finished packing and closed the box. She had thought about it.
‘Oh, OK. His name’s Euan, then.’
‘When you see him he might even show you the floor we talked about.’
I poked my head round the corner and waved at the receptionist. She came in, picked up the box and left.
I turned to Kelly. ‘Right, then, time for a shopping frenzy. Let me see, we’d better buy some nice new clothes for us both, and then we’ll go and stay in a hotel and wait for Euan to ring. Sound good to you?’
Her face brightened. ‘OK!’
Once this was all over I would have to set up a different named account and move the money, and I’d stop being Stevenson. A pain in the arse to organize, but I could live with that for $426,570.
*
The cab ride to Trafalgar Square became a tour given by me to Kelly. I was more into it than she was, and I could tell by the taxi driver’s expression in his rear-view mirror that I was getting most of the details wrong.
We were going down the Strand when I spotted clothes shops on both sides of the road. We paid off the taxi and shopped for jeans, T-shirts and washing kit. Once done, we got another cab and I asked for Brown’s Hotel.
I said to Kelly, ‘You’ll like this place. It’s got two entrances, so you can enter from Dover Street and come out the other side, on Albermarle Street. Very important for spies like us.’
I switched on the phone, got hold of directory enquiries and called the hotel to make a reservation. Less than half an hour later we were in our room, but only after showing off to Kelly and discovering that the Dover Street exit was no longer open. Finger on the pulse.
The room was a world removed from the ones we had been used to. It was plush, comfortable and, best of all, it had a minibar with Toblerones. I could have killed a beer, but not yet; there was work to do.
Jet lag was starting to kick in. Kelly looked exhausted. She flopped onto the bed and I undressed her and threw her between the sheets. ‘You can have a bath tomorrow,’ I said. She was a starfish in about two minutes flat.
I checked that the phone had a good signal and that the charger was working. Euan knew my voice and my message – ‘It’s John the plumber. When do you want me to come and fix that tap? Give me a ring on …’ would have done the trick.
I decided to have a quick nap for ten minutes, maybe shower, have something to eat, then go to bed. After all, it was only 5 p.m.
Ten minutes later, at a quarter to six in the morning, the phone rang. I pressed Receive. I heard, ‘Hello?’ in that very low, very controlled voice I knew so well.
‘I need a hand, mate,’ I said. ‘I need you to help me. Can you get to London?’
‘When do you want me?’
‘Now.’
‘I’m in Wales. It’ll take a bit of time.’
‘I’ll wait out on this number.’
‘No problem. I’ll get a train, it’ll be quicker.’
‘Thanks, mate. Give me a call about an hour before you get into Paddington.’
‘Yep, OK.’
The phone went dead.
I had never felt so relieved. It was like putting down the phone after a doctor’s just told you the cancer test was negative.
The train journey alone would take over three hours, so there wasn’t much to do apart from enjoy the lull in the battle. Kelly woke up as I caught up with the election battle in the copy of The Times that had been slipped under the door – no walk to the street corner with some change at Brown’s. I phoned room service and tried out the TV channels. No Power Rangers. Great.
In lazy time, we both eventually got up, showered, changed and were looking good. We took a leisurely stroll to the station through Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square and Trafalgar Square. I delivered another tour lecture that Kelly didn’t listen to. All she wanted to do was feed the pigeons. I kept on looking at my watch, waiting for Euan to call, and while Kelly was still being overrun by pigeons having a feeding frenzy in the square, the phone rang. It was 9.50 a.m. I put my finger in my other ear to block out the traffic and the screams of delight from Kelly and the other kids as birds tried to peck their eyes out.
‘I’m an hour from Paddington.’
‘That’s great. I’ll meet you at platform three, Charing Cross station, OK, mate?’
‘See you there.’
The Charing Cross hotel was part of the station complex and just two minutes’ walk from Trafalgar Square. I’d picked it because I knew that, from the foyer, you could see the taxis pull into the station and drop off their fares.
We waited and watched. The place was full of package-tour Americans and Italians. The Americans were at the tour-guide desk, booking every show in town, and the Italians just moved from the lift to the exit door in one loud, arm-waving mob, shouting at each other and all trying to get through the glass doors at the same time.
It was about half an hour later that I saw a cab with a familiar figure in the back. I pointed him out to Kelly.
‘Aren’t we going to go and meet him?’
‘No, we’re going to stay here and look because we’re going to surprise him. Just like we did in Daytona, remember?’
‘Oh, yes. We have to stand off.’
I watched him get out. It was so wonderful to see him that I wanted to jump up and run outside. He was dressed in jeans and wearing the kind of shoes you see advertised in a Sunday supplement. Hush Puppies were positively cutting-edge fashion compared to these. He was also wearing a black nylon bomber jacket, so he’d be easy enough to pick out in the station. I said to Kelly, ‘We’ll give him a couple of minutes, then we’ll go and surprise him, shall we?’
‘Yeah!’ She sounded quite excited. She had two lumps of bird shit on the back of her coat. I was waiting for them to dry before picking them off.
I stood off for 5 minutes, watching his arse for him. Then we walked towards the station and through a couple of arches to the ticket offices. The station was renovated Victorian, with W. H. Smith and all the other normal outlets. We looked for platform 3, and there he was, leaning against the wall, reading a paper. The same feeling: I wanted to run over there and hug him. We walked slowly.
He looked up and saw me. We both smiled and said, ‘Hi. How’s it going?’ He looked at me, then at Kelly, but he didn’t say anything; he knew that I’d tell him at some stage. We went off to the side of the station to steps that led us down towards the river. As we walked, he looked at my head and tried to hide a grin. ‘Good haircut!’
Outside Embankment station we got into a taxi. Drills are drills, they’re there for a reason and that is to protect you: the moment you start falling down on drills, you start fucking up. We took the driver a roundabout route, covering our arses, taking 20 minutes to Brown’s instead of the straight-line 10.
As soon as we got back to the room I turned on the TV for Kelly and phoned room service. Everyone was hungry.
Euan was already chatting away with Kelly. She looked pleased to have somebody else to talk to, even if it was only another grown-up and a man. That was good, they were getting a relationship going, she was feeling comfortable with him.
The food came; there was a beefburger and chips for Kelly, and two club sandwiches for us. I said to Kelly, ‘We’ll let you eat in peace. We’re going into the bathroom because you’re watching TV and I want to talk to Euan about some stuff. Is that all right?’
She nodded, mouth already full.
Euan smiled, ‘See you in a minute, Kelly. Save us a chip.’
We went into the bathroom with our coffees and sandwiches, the noise of the TV dying the moment I closed the door.
