by Robert Webb
She froze.
Fight or flight? Neither. Plan A. There’s a good chance he doesn’t know who I am.
Kate smiled and closed the door behind her.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Janice is busy and she asked me to get something for her. I’m Charles’s deputy under-secretary.’
Petrov gave her a frank physical appraisal from head to toe and then turned back to the desk with impatience. He spoke in Russian to one of the attendant heavies. Kate detected a Moscow accent. ‘How long can it take for a man to have a piss?’
‘You make him nervous, boss.’
Petrov looked at his watch and Kate moved around him, scanning the windowsill behind Charles’s chair for the toast rack stuffed with this morning’s post.
It wasn’t there.
In a daze she walked to where it ought to be and weirdly stroked a gold-plated piggy bank which had been put in its place.
Petrov continued in Russian. ‘The problem is that Marsden bitch. The file will be at her house. I don’t know what we’re waiting for. Some sentimental affection from Hunt, the idiot. Maybe he’s fucking her. We should have raided her home last night and put a permanent end to this business.’
This was not the way he tended to talk on Have I Got News For You.
Kate’s envelope remained stubbornly absent and she realised she was now just a person standing in a room trying not to shake with fear. She stared at the piggy bank, wishing she could climb inside it. Petrov spoke again, this time in English. ‘Aren’t you a little old for a deputy under-secretary?’ His English was good: Kate wondered if this was due to or in spite of twenty years of succinct conversations with English football managers and newspaper editors.
Kate turned and began brazenly going through Charles’s desk drawers. ‘Yes!’ she said, winningly. ‘Tremendously old. Second career, you see. It’s a government scheme for middle-aged women.’
Petrov was watching Kate’s search with a frown. ‘What is your name?’
Kate trusted her subconscious and came out with the first noises to enter her head. ‘Buffindra,’ she said. ‘But my friends call me Buffy.’
‘Buffy?’ Petrov’s lips curled into something resembling amusement. ‘Like the vampire-slayer?’
Kate scanned the cluttered surface of the desk and started moving things around as if to tidy it. ‘Yes, that’s it. Although, as you say, I’m far too old to be named after the slayer. But I do love her work.’ She moved this morning’s untouched copy of the Financial Times and revealed a bundle of mail held together with an elastic band.
Her envelope!
She tugged it free from the rest and stuffed it in her back pocket. ‘I just fucking hate vampires, you see.’
‘What was that?’
‘Everyone okay for tea and coffee?’
‘What did you just put in your pocket?’
Kate was moving swiftly towards the door. ‘I’ll take that as a yes.’
The door swung open and Charles walked in, wiping his hands on his chinos and saying, ‘Sorry to keep you, gentlemen. Bloody hand-dryer keeps – Kate Marsden!’
‘Hi, Charles!’ Kate walked straight past him and out of the room. Behind her she heard Petrov’s raised voice.
‘That woman is Kate Marsden? … SHE JUST STOLE SOMETHING FROM YOUR DESK, YOU STUPID BASTARD!’
And then Charles: ‘Nestor, I can egregiously assure you of the large impossibility that—’
‘SHE’S GOT THE MISSING FILE!!’
Kate ran.
Chapter 21
‘Ooh Kate, you’re in a—’
Kate yelled, ‘Klingons on the starboard bow, Colin!’ as she raced past her friend and they both heard Petrov repeating his orders at the level of a scream.
He has to tell his men twice. They’re not FSB, they’re just violent goons. So that’s … good?
Hurtling towards the fire escape, she instinctively jabbed the lift button on her way past, hoping the sight of an empty lift arriving would baffle the heavies for a couple of valuable seconds. Maybe they would think she was waiting for it – hiding somewhere. There again, she thought as she swung round a bannister and clattered down past the third floor, it’s always possible that conveniently summoning the fucking lift for your pursuers is not what you do in situations like this.
Two, four, six, eight – down the white concrete stairwell she sprang like a demented gazelle. Breathing hard, she strained to hear the sound of heavy shoes above her.
They’ve both taken the lift.
She barged through the swing door into the ground-floor reception. Ray was still concentrating on his crossword. He glanced up to see Kate racing towards him and heading for the main entrance.
‘Nick of time, Ray!’
‘What?’
‘“Razor cuts clock”?’
Ray looked down and gave an elated, ‘Aah!’
Kate glanced at the lift indicator, which seemed to be static on ‘2’. What the hell was that?
Colin! Colin had the skill and wit to jam the lift software even from Janice’s terminal.
Playdate with Carly coming up if I get through this, my friend.
Right, then – get to Old Brompton Road and disappear into a crowd. It’s lunchtime. Maybe hide in Elvis Fried Chicken.
Through the door and outside. She turned right towards the main road. But now the third heavy – the suspicious dude with the Range Rover – was running at her and saying something into a mic in his sleeve.
Oh God, they’re wired for sound. Like Cliff Richard but even more frightening.
She turned back into the mews but there was only thirty yards of road before a dead end. Helplessly she ran towards a narrow alley at the side of the building that formed the cul-de-sac. There was a metal fire escape to her left but the steps ended one floor up in a bricked-off doorway. Ahead of her was just a deserted junk area littered with urban trash and a builder’s skip full of road signs and broken photocopiers. She had run out of space. Panting for breath, she turned.
The big guy slowed to a walk, his eyes scanning Kate’s surroundings in an efficient check for exits or witnesses. He spoke into his sleeve again in Russian: ‘I’ve got her.’ He was now closing the gap between them with something approaching a swagger.
Kate cleared her mind – save for one quotation from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, which insisted on dropping by. It was Scotty complaining to Kirk as usual, this time about the newly-refitted Enterprise:
‘I hadn’t expected to take her into combat, you know!’
Only yesterday she had been a boozed-up disaster zone. She hadn’t seen the inside of a gym for nine months, which, by karate champion standards, made her a pitiful slob. On the credit side, she had thirty years of muscle memory and enough adrenaline to stun a baboon. It was just a question of what would happen when the baboon got back up. She brought her breathing under control and imagined the blood in her veins charging with electricity. Habitually, She-Ra sized up her opponent.
Overconfident, 6ft 3ish, about 240 lb, way past optimal BMI but packing muscle, no spring chicken, my age or thereabouts, forget the neck – too fat. Cocky bastard checking his phone, right-handed, tiny hands. Out of shape. This will have to be quick and disproportionate. Like an Elvis Burger. Bit nasty. The others will be coming soon. Poor fucker. He never got a break. Just his shitty job. Don’t want to hurt him.
The heavy spoke again into his wrist mic: ‘Where d’you think she’s hiding it?’ He heard something in his earpiece and gave a repulsive snigger. ‘Yeah, I’ll search her pussy first.’
Okay, maybe do hurt him.
The goon rearranged his plump face into a stony glare and said in English with a thick Georgian accent, ‘Give me what you stole and I might not even rape you.’
Kate smiled pleasantly and replied in Russian, ‘I’m afraid I can’t do that.’
He looked surprised – but not as much as Kate had hoped. He really was a big bastard: she needed to push him much further off his balance. She w
ent on, ‘Was that your boyfriend whispering in your ear? Is he with you always? That’s so sweet! Do you have another earpiece in your ringpiece? Does he press a button and vibrate your tender arsehole? Aah!’
The heavy scoffed, but anger was bringing some colour to his neck. He advanced another step but now appeared indecisive, as if baffled by choice. Exactly what form of violence was he going to inflict on this short, disgusting woman? They were two metres apart.
Just a little closer.
Kate maintained her friendly smile and went on in impeccable Russian: ‘Of course, I’m being very stupid. You can’t possible retain any device in your anus.’ She deepened and slurred her voice, switching to an insulting, durr-brain Georgian: ‘’Coz Daddy made it too big from all the fucking.’
That did the trick.
The heavy wasted a lungful of power on a weird yell and rushed chaotically at her, his two tiny hands reaching for her throat.
Kate dropped, lunging with as much forward drive as she could and propelling her right fist squarely into the guy’s balls. Through his suit trousers and apparently light pants (silk-effect boxers?) she actually felt the bellend of his cock against her knuckles, as well as the pinball-machine rebound of his battered nuts. There was a split second of eerie silence as he crumpled over her and she quickly rolled to the left to avoid his huge crashing body. She heard him scream with pain as she came up on her feet. The powerful man was down but not out, scrabbling wildly to get up. A memory of the builder’s skip had Kate marching over to retrieve a triangular NO RIGHT TURN sign. Her attacker had made it to his knees as she walked back in three steps, swinging the metal high above her head and bringing it down flat upon the top of his skull.
‘Aargh!’
He was on his back and she sprang and dropped, landing her knees into his abdomen. She twatted his face with the road sign while shouting emphatic syllables in the most native of her native South London. ‘You DON’T … FUCK … with TEAM … G … B!’ She got up and tossed the metal aside. Standing over her smashed but still breathing assailant, she added, ‘We’re perfectly capable of fucking ourselves, thank you very much.’
She got down and levered his unconscious form into the recovery position.
Satisfied that Mr Might-Not-Even-Rape-You would basically live, she felt her back pocket for the memory stick in its envelope. Still there. She turned and ran out of the alley, out of the mews, onto the street.
She looked left and right. To the left, the two heavies from BelTech were finally running out of the door. One of them spotted her and grabbed his colleague, pointing. The other one saw her and said something into his wrist. Kate looked around in panic. Oh Christ. There! Across the street, another two heavies had their fingers in their right ears and were looking around.
No, not four of them at once. Two at a push. Not four.
Kate was running again. She ran down Old Brompton Road. It was a convenient thoroughfare for cars and buses but not exactly Notting Hill Market. Or Camden Town. Or Oxford Street.
Damn you, Charles. Why can’t you have an office where there are lots and lots of people, you awkward dick?
She looked behind. There were now four big guys in overcoats in pursuit and all of them apparently younger and in better shape than Mr Pussy. There was a junction ahead, Eardley Crescent. She didn’t want to run across the junction blind. This whole thing wasn’t going to end in her getting run over.
Screw that bathos.
She took a left and immediately saw an opportunity about fifty yards ahead. Halfway around the curve of the crescent was a parked taxi. The driver had set himself up with a little fold-out chair and was having his lunch in the autumn sunshine. Nothing spoke to Kate of home and safety like a black London cab. She speeded up, gasping, ‘Help! Mate! Help me!’
The driver was another overweight white guy in his forties. Jesus, they were everywhere. He looked up to see the short woman being pursued by four blokes. He put down his Sun newspaper and stood, still holding his large Subway roll.
‘What the bloody hell’s this, then?’
‘They work for Uber!’ Kate yelled.
‘They WHAT?!’
‘They work for Uber and they didn’t like my review! They’ve been using the bus lane during proscribed hours!’
The driver was instantly livid. He fucking knew it. Uber wankers! He put down his sandwich roughly on the seat of his camp chair and started marching towards the oncoming pursuers, his chest puffed out and his Hawaiian shorts and bald head dazzling in the sun.
‘Come on then, you Uber scrotes! Leave the lady alone! I’ll give you a fackin’ review! Once I review you, you’ll STAY fackin’ reviewed!’
Kate had the Knowledge. This wasn’t just an impressive recall of hundreds of London roads and landmarks. It was the Knowledge that when it came to bus lanes, London cab drivers could scarcely tolerate the presence of buses. Private cars using this lane were not to be borne. And Uber … they were the mortal enemy: the cheapskate, untrained, undercutting plonkers who in the right circumstances would sat-nav a fare into a lake.
As she got close to the driver she saw him start to slow and begin to wonder if taking on four athletic-looking guys was quite what he had in mind this lunchtime. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t the driver she was aiming for.
‘Right, then!’ he shouted at the heavies as Kate sprinted past him. ‘We’ve all had a pint. Let’s calm down.’
Kate glanced behind her and saw what the driver saw: the Russians watching her and working out what was about to happen. They skidded to a halt and started to run in the opposite direction as Kate dived into the front seat of the open cab and started the engine. In the wing mirror she saw the driver turn round in bafflement to see his cab screech out of its parking space with the woman at its wheel.
Kate wrestled her seat belt on and saw in her rear-view mirror that the heavies were crossing the road to a rank of white Range Rovers.
Of course. The white Range Rover – the unforgivable car.
The chase was on.
Chapter 22
She wrenched the cab into a hard left turn. It was a beautiful new TX – an electric cab. For a while before Luke died, Kate had been eyeing them up and thinking Phwoar in the same way that another car lover might ogle a Porsche. She felt sorry for the driver whose pride, joy and livelihood she had just stolen; she glanced at the serial number on the dashboard and made a promise to return it to the man fully charged and without a scratch.
She quickly got the feel of it – nippy and responsive; just as fast as the old FX4 Fairway that Bill had let her drive on his days off after she passed her test. But she had no intention of getting into a race on an open road. The cab would be no match for the diesel-chugging shits behind: she needed traffic and tight spots. She desperately fished her phone out of her front pocket and replaced the driver’s in the stick-on windscreen holder. Taking a right, she looked behind and counted three Range Rovers.
‘Danger in front of you, danger behind you, danger to the sides.’
Why was she trying to do this alone? She was back in the land of the living, wasn’t she? Kate stuck her thumb on her phone to wake it. ‘Siri, call Toby Harker.’
She was zooming down Finborough Road on a dual carriageway. In her mirror she saw the first of the Range Rovers pull out to overtake the cars between them.
Toby’s voice came over the phone speaker. ‘Kate?’
‘Toby!’ She took out a row of traffic cones as she swerved while turning up the volume.
‘Kate? Are you okay?’
‘Fine, thanks. Well, no, not really.’
‘What is it?’
‘Erm. Well, the thing is, I found out Charles is … look, it’s a bit complicated, but the headline is I’m in a stolen black cab being pursued by Nestor Petrov’s henchmen because I hacked and copied a file from BelTech implicating him in a massive conspiracy and I’ve got it on a USB drive in my back pocket and this guy can’t be fucking serious—’
The R
ange Rover behind rammed into the cab’s back bumper and Kate whiplashed against her seat belt. ‘You SHITHEAD!’
‘Kate?’
‘Hang on.’
She took a wild right turn at speed across the central reservation onto King’s Road. Oncoming traffic flashed and beeped like a family of outraged bees. The nearest Range Rover overshot but she saw the other two brake to make the turn. She immediately took another right, which brought her onto a residential road.
Hortensia – it’s just going to take me back to the carriageway. No fucking good.
‘Kate!’
‘Hi. Sorry. So, yeah. Bit stressed, to be honest.’ There was the briefest pause as Toby seemed to make a decision.
‘You’d better come to the office.’
‘What office?’
‘My office.’
Kate saw two Range Rovers back on her tail. ‘I don’t know where your office is, Toby! You’ve never said!’
‘Thames House, Millbank.’
Kate recognised the address as the headquarters of MI5. ‘Oh, NOW you fucking tell me!’
‘I’d say this is a very good time to tell you.’
The two Range Rovers were gaining on her. ‘I’m not sure I’m going to make it all the way to the river in this thing, Tobes.’
‘It’s okay, I’ve got you now.’
Kate was baffled for a moment. ‘That’s a bit forward. I mean, it was a nice present, but—’
‘I mean I’m tracking your phone. You’re going the wrong way.’
‘Oh. Hang on, I’m … excuse me, Commander Fucky, I am not going the wrong way.’ As she spoke, she saw in her mirror that the lead Range Rover was the perfect distance behind for a brief demonstration of the agile turning circle of a London taxi.
Toby said, ‘I mean that we can—’
‘Shut up for a second.’ Kate veered to the edge of the curb, braked hard and swung the cab a hundred and eighty degrees in one movement. She floored the gas and raised her middle finger to the heavy as she powered past him in the opposite direction. ‘Three-point-turn THAT, y’shitter!’ she yelled as she saw the bulky white car’s brake lights illuminate in frustration.