by Andy McNab
I plugged in the telephone to recharge it. It was my lifeline.
Then I tipped all the supplies out of the bag and sorted them out. The new clothes were put to one side, and I packed the CTR stuff back into the duffel. I was pissed off about having to leave the video camera on the roof; it would be found and a connection inevitably made between us and the shooting.
Plus, the videotape was lost, and that might have been of use to Simmonds--it might even have been enough to guarantee me a future.
I repacked the kit and lay back on the bed, hands behind my head. Listening to the low drone of the air-conditioning, I started to think about this whole fucking game and how people like me and McGear were the ones that got used time and time again. I was starting to feel sorry for myself. I cut it. McGear and I both had a choice; this was what we chose to do.
There were a few good things that had come out of last night's drama. At least I didn't have to worry about dumping all the blood-and piss-stained clothes that were in the blue duffel. The cops would no doubt match the blood to the Browns', but that was nothing compared with the trouble I was already in. And best of all, I had confirmed a definite connection between Kev, PIRA, the building, and whatever it was that I'd copied from that computer.
I wasn't going to attempt to get the laptop out and start messing around with it now. I was too tired; I'd make mistakes and miss things. Besides, the adrenaline had gone, and the pain across my back and neck was even more intense.
I had a hot shower and tried to shave. McGear's bite marks on my face were scabbing nicely. I left them to sort themselves out.
I dressed in jeans, sweatshirt, and running shoes and reloaded my mags. I needed rest, but I had to be ready for a quick move. The plan was to have a couple hours' sleep and something to eat, then sit down and see what was on the laptop, but it didn't work out. I tossed and turned, snatched a bit of sleep, woke up.
I turned the TV on and flicked through the channels to see ifMcGear was news yet. He was.
The cameras panned the front of the PIRA building, with the obligatory backdrop of police and ambulance crews, then a man faced the camera and started rattling on. I didn't bother turning the volume up; I knew the gist of what he'd be saying.
I was half-expecting to see my piss-covered homeless friend describing what he had heard or seen.
Kelly was starting to toss and turn, probably with pictures ofMcGear in her head.
I lay there looking at her. The girl had done well, without a doubt. The last few days had been chaos for her, and I had really started to worry about it. Seven-year-old kids shouldn't be exposed to this sort of shit. Nobody should. What would happen to her? It suddenly occurred to me that I was worrying more about her than I was about myself.
I woke with the TV still on. I looked at my watch: 9:35. At noon Pat would be calling me. I hit the Off button. I wanted to start working on the laptop. I started to get up and found I could hardly move. I felt like a very senior citizen as I lifted myself off the bed, my neck as stiff as a board.
I made a racket getting the laptop out of the duffel and plugging everything in. Kelly started to wriggle around. By the time I'd got it up and running and connected to the backup drive, she was propped up on one elbow watching me. Her hair looked like an explosion. She listened for a while as I cursed the laptop for not accessing the backup drive, then said, "Why don't you just reboot and then look at the program?"
I looked at her as if to say. You fucking smartass! Instead, I said, "Mmm, maybe." I rebooted, and it worked. I turned around and smiled at her and got one in return.
I started to scroll through the files. Instead of the business like file names I'd been expecting, the documents had code words like Weasel, Boy, Bruce. A lot of them turned out to be spreadsheets or invoices I could see what they were, but I didn't know what they meant. To me, the whole forty or so pages could just as well have been in Japanese.
I then opened up the file called Guru. It was just dots and numbers across the screen. I turned to Kelly.
"What's that then, smart guy?"
She looked.
"I'm only seven, I don't know everything."
It was five minutes to noon. I turned the phone on and carried on flicking through the files, trying to make sense of them.
Twelve o'clock came and went.
By a quarter past, the call still hadn't come in. I was sweating. Come on. Pat, I need to get out of the US and back to Simmonds. I have enough information maybe. The longer I stay now, the higher the risk. Pat, I need you!
For Slack to miss an RV there must be a major drama; even when he was high, he'd managed it before. I tried to block dark thoughts by telling myself that he'd call at the next arranged window. But as I carried on halfheartedly on the laptop, I started to feel almost physically sick. My only way out had been lost. I had that awful, sinking feeling that everything was going to go horribly wrong. I needed to do something.
I closed down the laptop and put the backup disk in my pocket. Kelly was half-buried under the covers, watching TV.
I joked, "Well, you know what I'm going to have to do in a minute, don't you?"
She jumped out of bed and threw her arms around me.
"Don't go! Don't go! Stay and watch TV with me. Maybe I can come with you?"
"You can't do that, I want you to stay here."
"Please!"
What could I do? I felt her pain at being scared and alone.
"OK, come with me but you've got to do what I say."
"I will, I will!" She jumped up and went to get her coat.
"No, not yet!" I pointed to the bathroom.
"First things first.
Get in that bath, wash your hair, come out and I'll dry it, then you'll get changed into your new clothes, and then we'll go out. OK?"
She was trembling like a dog about to go for walkies.
"Yeah, OK!" She skipped to the bathroom.
I sat down on the bed and shouted into the bathroom as I flicked through the news channels.
"Kelly, make sure you brush your teeth or they'll all fall out and you won't be able to eat when you're older."
I heard, "Yeah, yeah, OK."
I found nothing more about McGear. After a while I walked into the bathroom. The toothpaste tube hadn't been squeezed.
"Have you brushed your teeth?"
She nodded, looking guilty.
I said, "Well, let's have a smell." I bent down and put my nose near her mouth.
"You haven't. Come on, do you know how to brush your teeth?"
"Of course I know how to brush my teeth."
"Show me then."
She picked up the toothbrush. It was way too big for her mouth, and she was brushing from side to side.
I said, "That's not the way you've been taught, is it?"
She said, "It is, too."
I slowly shook my head. I knew that she would have been taught properly. I said, "All right, we'll do it together." I put some toothpaste on the brush and made her stand in front of the mirror. I stood beside her, and she watched as I pretended to brush. Looking after kids was easy after all. It all came down to EDI: explanation, demonstration, imitation. Just that instead of doing it with a weapon to a room full of recruits, I was doing it with a seven-year-old girl.
"Now with me, like this, then brush around in little circles. And let's make sure we do the backs."
And then it got silly. She started to laugh at the sight of me pretending to brush my teeth, and as she laughed, all the toothpaste sprayed from her mouth and onto the mirror. I laughed with her.
She got on with her bath and changed into her new jeans and sweatshirt. I'd also bought us matching baseball hats at the supermarket, black denim with the words Washington,
D.C.
I wet my hair and washed, and we both looked sparkly clean. She put on her new blue coat and sneakers and we were all ready to go. My plan was to get to the vicinity of Pat's apartment. When he rang at six o'clock, we'd be able to meet right away.
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nbsp; What was I going to do with the backup disk? I decided to hide it in the room, because I was going to split my gold; if the backup stayed here and Kelly came with me and we were lifted, at least they wouldn't have the whole enchilada. The long, dark wood sideboard with the TV on top covered a third of the room; it was about two feet high and rested on little half-inch legs. I lifted one corner, gaffer-taped the disk to the underside, and positioned a couple of telltales. One last look around the room and we left.
It was drizzling and slightly colder than earlier in the morning. Kelly was on cloud nine; I gave her the same smiles and happy noises back but underneath I was sweating about Pat. As we crossed the grass to avoid the lobby, I wondered about phoning Euan. I decided not to. Not yet, anyway. I might need him later. He was a card to keep up my sleeve.
The whole area was dotted with hotels. We walked across the road to one about four hundred yards away, and I went into the lobby and ordered a taxi. Kelly waited outside under the awning.
As I came out again I said, "When we get into this taxi I'm going to put your hood up and I want you to rest against me as if you're sleepy. Remember, you promised me you'd do exactly what I said."
The taxi turned up and took us to Georgetown. Kelly leaned against me, and I got her nuzzled in on my lap with her hood up so it hid her.
We got out on Wisconsin. It was four o'clock, and every body around us looked so normal as they chatted, strolled, enjoyed their shopping. Two hours to go before Pat rang. By five-thirty the Georgetown mall where we were sitting was quite warm and we were both feeling sleepy.
I was having a coffee, Kelly was having a milk shake, which she wasn't touching because by now she was full of burger. I looked at the display of my watch every half minute until it was five to six. Then I switched the phone on. Good battery level, good signal strength.
Six o'clock came.
Nothing.
A minute past.
Two minutes past.
I sat there almost paralyzed with disbelief. Kelly was absorbed in a comic she'd picked out for herself.
Four minutes past. This was desperate. Pat wouldn't let me down unless he couldn't help it. He knew as well as I did that on operations, if you're a minute late, you might as well be an hour or a day late, because people's lives might depend on it. The attack might have gone in, unsupported by your covering fire.
There must be a problem. A major problem.
I kept the phone switched on. Finally, at six-twenty, I said, "Come on, Kelly, we're going to visit Pat."
Now the normality stopped. There was serious shit coming down. All hope had evaporated.
As we came out of the mall, I flagged down a cab.
Riverwood turned out to be a well-established, upscale area, rows of weatherboarded houses with neat lawns and two European cars in the drive, and smart apartment buildings with underground parking. The shops reflected its wealth, with good bookstores, expensive-looking boutiques, and small art galleries.
I stopped the cab a block past Pat's street. I paid the driver, and he left us in the light rain. It was getting dark, a bit earlier than it should have, but the cloud cover made everything gloomy. Some cars already had their headlights on.
"Let's hope Pat's in," I said.
"Otherwise we'll have to go all the way back to the hotel without saying hello!"
She looked excited about meeting him. After all, this was the man I'd said would help her go back home. I couldn't be sure if what I had said about her family had sunk in. I didn't even know if kids her age understood that death was irreversible.
Looking up the hill, I could see that Pat's street was pure Riverwood, broad and elegant, with houses and shops that had been there for years. Above the skyline one or two new apartment buildings seemed to be taking over, but even they looked very ordered, clean, and wealthy. I wasn't entirely sure which one Pat lived in, but it was easy enough to count the numbers and figure it out. We walked past, and I had a clear view into the secure rear parking lot. I saw the red Mustang, redder than Satan's balls. It was a quarter past seven. If he was there, why the fuck hadn't he phoned?
We went into a coffee shop across the way. The waft of newly ground beans and the blare of rumba music inside La Colombina took me straight back to Bogota; maybe that was why Pat had chosen to live here. We wanted a window seat, which wasn't a problem. The glass was misted up; I cleared a circle with a paper napkin and sat and watched.
Kelly was doing what she had been told, keeping quiet until I told her not to be. Anyway, Girl! magazine seemed the thing to shut kids up with. I checked the phone. Good signal, plenty of power.
A waitress came over to take our order. I was going to ask for food even though I didn't really want any because it would take time to prepare it, and then it would take time to eat it, and that way we could spend more time here without it looking unnatural.
"I'll take a club sandwich and a double cappuccino," I said.
"And what do you want, Josie?"
Kelly beamed at the waitress.
"Do you do Shirley Temples?"
"Sure we do, honey!"
It sounded like a cocktail to me, but the waitress went away quite happily to order it. Kelly returned to her magazine, and I just kept looking out the window.
The drinks arrived. When we were alone again, I said, "What is that?"
"Cherries and strawberries, mixed with Sprite."
"Sounds disgusting. Can I have a sip?"
It tasted to me like bubblegum, but it was obviously what kids liked. She was guzzling it down almost frantically.
The sandwich mountain arrived. I didn't need it, but I ate it anyway. In my days in the SAS and since, I'd learned to think of food the way an infantryman thinks of sleep: Get it down you whenever you get the chance.
Things were running their natural course in the coffee shop; it was now coming up to three-quarters of an hour that we'd been sitting there, and you can stay in a place only for so long without arousing suspicion or drowning in coffee.
Kelly made the decision for me as she spoke.
"So now what are we going to do?"
I put some cash on the table.
"Let's zip you up and see if Pat is home."
We went out and walked past Pat's apartment once again.
The car was still there. I was desperate to know one way or another what was going on. If it was just that he didn't want to play anymore, that was fine. But I couldn't really see that; I knew that he wanted to help. There was a problem, without a doubt. But I needed it confirmed; then I could reassess and make a plan without him in it.
As we walked back down the hill, Kelly asked, "Do you actually know where Pat lives?"
"Yes I do, but I know he's not there yet. We've just walked past his place and I couldn't see him."
"Can't you phone him?"
I couldn't contact him directly; if the phone was tapped, I didn't want anyone to make the connection between us. I'd promised not to compromise him. But she'd just given me an idea all the same.
"Kelly, do you want to help me play a trick on Pat?"
"Sure!"
"OK, this is what I want you to do."
We kept on walking and started to do a circuit around the area. We practiced and practiced until she said she was ready to go. We got to a phone booth about three blocks away, an open booth attached to the wall. I brought the receiver down to Kelly's level.
"Ready?"
She gave me a thumbs-up. She was excited; she thought this was great.
I dialed 911, and about three seconds later Kelly was shouting, "Yes, I've just seen a man! I've just seen a man on the second floor, eleven twenty-one Twenty-seventh Street and and he's got a gun and the man's shot, and and and he's got a gun please help!"
I put my hand on the hook.
"Good one! Now, shall we go and see what happens next?"
I picked a different route back. This time we were going to approach from the top of the hill and walk down toward the apartment bui
lding. By now it was properly dark, and still very wet. Heads bent in the rain, we made it to Twenty-seventh Street, turned right, and started walking slowly down the hill.
I heard its siren first, louder and louder, then the flash of its emergency lights as a police cruiser sped past us. Then I saw other blue and red lights, all flashing in the darkness in the area of the apartment.
As we got closer I made out three police cars. An unmarked car turned up, a portable light flashing on the roof, just above the driver.