Nick Stone 1 - Remote Control.

by Andy McNab

  All I wanted to do now was get through Customs. First hurdle was security. Kelly went through first, and I followed.

  No alarms. I had to open up the laptop and switch it on to prove it worked, but I'd been expecting that. All the Flavius files were now in a folder called Games.

  We went straight to Gate C, walked through, and got on the shuttle bus. There was a five-minute wait while the bus filled up, then the doors closed, the hydraulics lowered, and we drove about half a mile across the tarmac to the departures lounge proper.

  The area was plush and busy. I heard a lot of British accents, mixed in with snatches of German and French. Kelly and I headed for the United lounge, via a detour to the candy stall.

  We sat quietly with a large cappuccino and a Coke. Unfortunately, the downtime just gave me a while to think about whether I'd made any mistakes.

  A security man walked into the reception area and talked to the people at the desk. My heart beat faster. We were so close to the aircraft on the other side of the glass that I felt I could reach out and touch them. I could almost smell the aviation fuel.

  I told myself to calm down. If they'd wanted us, they would have found us by now.

  But, in truth, so many things could still go wrong that one of them almost certainly would. I was still sweating away. My head was glistening. And I didn't know if it was the capsules or my worrying, but I was starting to feel weak.

  "Nick, am I Louise all day today or just for now?"

  I pretended to think about it.

  "The whole day. You're Louise Glazar all day."

  "Why?"

  "Because they won't let us go to England unless we use another name."

  I got a smiling, thoughtful nod.

  I said, "Do you want to know something else?"

  "What?"

  "If I call you Louise, you have to call me Daddy. But just for today."

  I wasn't sure what kind of reaction that would get, but she just shrugged.

  "Whatever." Maybe that was what she wanted now.

  The next three hours were grim, but at least we were out of the way. If I'd had any heart problems, I would probably have died, the blood was coursing through me so fast and hard. I could hear it pumping in my ears.

  I kept saying to myself: You're here now, there's nothing you can do about it; accept it. Just get on that fucking aircraft!

  I looked at Kelly.

  "You all right, Louise?"

  "Yeah, I'm all right. Daddy." She had a big smile now. I just hoped she kept it.

  I watched the receptionist move to the microphone. She announced our flight and told us that she had really enjoyed having us stay in the lounge.

  There were about a dozen others who stood up and started to sort themselves out, folding papers and zipping up bags.

  I got to my feet and stretched.

  "Louise?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Let's go to England!"

  We walked toward the gate, father and daughter, hand in hand, chatting about nothing. My theory went: if I talked with her, they wouldn't talk to us.

  Four or five people were ahead of us in line--like us, families with young children. Passports were being checked by a young Latino; he had an ID card on a chain around his neck, but we were too far way yet for me to make out what it said.

  Was he airline security or airport security?

  Two uniformed security men came up and stood behind him, talking to each other. It was the kind of chat that looked so casual it probably wasn't. I used my sleeve to mop sweat from the side of my face.

  Both of the uniformed men were armed. The black one cracked a joke as the white one laughed and looked around.

  Kelly and I shuffled forward.

  I held her beside me, the protective parent anxious in a crowd. The laptop was over my shoulder. Kelly held a teddy bear under each arm.

  We moved three steps forward; another wait, then it was our turn with the Latino.

  I wanted to make it all very easy for him. Smiling, I handed him the boarding passes and the passport. I was convinced the uniformed guys were looking at me. I went into boxer mode: everything was focused on the Latino; everything else was in the distance, muffled, distorted, peripheral. A bead of sweat fell down my cheek, and I knew he'd noticed it. I knew he could see my chest heaving up and down.

  Kelly was just behind and to the right of me. I looked at her and smiled.

  "Sir?"

  I silently exhaled in preparation and looked back at him.

  "Just the passport, sir." He handed me back the boarding passes. I grinned, the inexperienced dickhead traveler.

  He flicked through the pages of the passport, stopping at Glazar's photograph. He glanced at me, then back at the passport.

  I'm in deep shit.

  I let him see I was reading his thoughts.

  "Male menopause," I grinned, rubbing my hand over what was left of my hair. My scalp was drenched.

  "The Bruce Willis look!"

  The fucker didn't laugh. He was making up his mind. He closed the passport and tapped it in his hand.

  "Have a pleasant flight, sir."

  I went to give him a nod, but he was already paying attention to the people behind me.

  We moved two paces toward the women from Virgin and handed them our boarding passes. The two security men didn't budge.

  We started to walk onto the air bridge I felt as if I'd been trying to run through waist-high water and was suddenly on the shoreline.

  The Latino still worried me. I thought about him all the way onto the aircraft. It was only when I'd found our seats, put the laptop in the overhead locker, settled down, and picked up the in-flight magazine that I took a deep breath and let it out very, very slowly. It wasn't a sigh of relief; I was boosting the oxygen levels in my blood. No, the fucker wasn't happy. His suspicions had been aroused, but he hadn't asked any questions, hadn't even asked my name. We might be on the shoreline, but it was far from being dry land.

  The aircraft was still filling up. I kept taking deep breaths to try to control my pulse rate.

  Officials were moving in and out of the aircraft with manifests. Every time it happened I was expecting to see the two security guys in tow. There was only one entrance, only one exit. There was nowhere to run. As I worked through the scenarios in my mind, I just had to accept that the die was cast. I was a passenger now, and for a fleeting second I had the same feeling that I'd always had on any aircraft, military or civilian I was in the hands of others and powerless to decide my own destiny. I hated it.

  People were still filing on. I nearly burst out in nervous laughter as the speakers played Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive " I looked at Kelly and winked. She thought it was great, sitting there trying to strap in her teddy bears.

  One of the male flight attendants came down our aisle, still wearing his Virgin uniform, not yet in shirtsleeves. He came down to our row of seats and stopped. Judging by his line of sight, he seemed to be checking our seat belts. It was too early for that, surely? I nodded and smiled. He turned back and disappeared into the galley.

  I watched the entrance, expecting the worst. One of the female flight attendants poked her head out and looked directly at me. Kelly's teddy bears were suddenly very interesting.

  I could feel tingling in my feet. My stomach tightened. I looked up again. She was gone.

  The male attendant came out again, carrying a garbage bag. He approached us again, stopped, and squatted down in the aisle next to Kelly. He said, "Hiya!"

  "Hello!"

  He put his hand into the bag; I waited for him to bring out the .45. Good ploy, letting me think he's a member of the crew doing something for the kid.

  He pulled out a little nylon day sack Splattered all over the back was the Virgin logo and the words kids with altitude.

  "We forgot to give you one of these," he said. I nearly hugged him.

  "Thank you very much!" I grinned like an asylum inmate, my eyes one hundred percent larger through the lenses
of Sarah's glasses.

  "Thank you so much!"

  He did his best not to look at me, as if I were indeed some sort of weirdo, then offered us a drink before takeoff. I was dying for a beer, but I might have to start performing on the other side and, anyway, I just wanted to lean back and rest.

  We each ordered an orange juice instead.

  Sharing the in-flight guide with Kelly, I said, "What film are you going to watch, Louise?"

  "Clueless," she grinned.

  "Whatever," I said.

  Twenty minutes later, right on schedule, the aircraft finally lifted off from the runway. Suddenly I didn't mind being in a pilot's hands after all.

  We went through all the nonsense of the introduction by the captain, how wonderful it was to have us on board, and when we were going to be fed. My body heat was starting to dry out my sweat-drenched shirt. Even my socks had been wet. I looked over at Kelly. She had a sad face on. I nudged her with my arm. "You OK?"

  "I guess. I couldn't even tell Melissa I'm going to England."

  I knew how to get out of this type of thing now.

  "Well, all you have to do is think good things about Melissa and that will make you feel happy." I was waiting for her reply. I knew the sort of thing it was going to be.

  "Do you think about David? What do you remember about David?"

  Easy; I was prepared.

  "Well, nearly twelve years ago, we were rebuilding his house together and it needed a new wooden floor."

  She was enjoying this, stories at bedtime. She certainly looked as if she would go to sleep soon, cuddling up to me.

  I continued telling her how we'd both swiped a squash court floor from one of the HQ Security Forces bases in Northern Ireland. We were there at three o'clock in the morning with spades, hammers, and chisels. We put the boards in a van and brought them over to his Welsh cottage. After all, HM Government spent all that time and money training us to break in and steal things. Why not use it for ourselves?

  The next three days had been spent laying the hallway and kitchen of the house near Brecon with his nice new flooring.

  I grinned down at her for a reaction, but she was already sound asleep.

  I started to watch the video but knew I was going to fall asleep any minute--as long as the capsules wore off and I could stop my mind going back to the same question over and over again.

  There was an unholy alliance between PIRA and corrupt elements of the DEA, of that there was no doubt--and it very much looked as though Kev's boss was at the center of it. Kev had found out about the corruption, but not who was involved.

  He wanted to talk to somebody about it. Was it his boss whom he'd unwittingly phoned for an opinion the day I arrived in Washington? Very

  unlikely, because Kev would have had to include him on his list of suspects. Much more probable was that he'd spoken to someone unconnected with the DEA, someone who'd know what he was talking about and whose opinion he valued. Could it have been Luther? He knew Kev; would Kev have trusted him? Who knows? Whoever he had called, he was dead within an hour of putting down the phone.

  The cabin lights came on a couple of hours before landing, and we were served breakfast. I tried to wake Kelly, but she groaned and buried herself under her blanket. I didn't bother with the food. From feeling almost elated at having gotten past security, I awoke profoundly depressed. My mood was as black as the coffee in front of me. I'd been crazy to let myself feel relieved. We weren't out of the woods by a long shot;

  if they knew we were on the aircraft, of course they wouldn't do anything about it until we landed. It was at the point that I walked off and stepped onto the ramp that they'd lift me.

  Even if that didn't happen, there was Immigration. The officials trying to keep out undesirables are much tougher and a lot more on the ball than those in charge of waving you off.

  They vet your documents much more closely, scrutinize your body language, read your eyes. Kelly and I were on a stolen passport. We'd gotten through at Dulles, but that didn't mean we could pull it off again.

  I took four capsules and finished my coffee. I remembered that I was an American citizen now. When the attendant came past I asked her for an immigration card. Kelly was still asleep.

  Filling in the card, I decided that the Glazars had just moved and now lived next door to Mr. and Mrs. Brown.

  Hunting Bear Path was the only address I could talk about convincingly.

  If I was lifted at Immigration, it wouldn't be the first time.

  I'd come into Gatwick airport once from a job. I gave my passport to the Immigration officer, and while he was inspecting it a boy came up on either side, gripped my arms and took the passport from the official.

  "Mr. Stamford? Special Branch. Come with us." I wasn't going to argue; my cover was good, I was in the UK now, everything was going to be fine.

  They strip-searched me in an interview room, firing questions left,

  right, and center. I went through the whole routine of my cover story: where I'd been, what I'd been doing, why I'd been doing it. They telephoned my cover, and James supported my story. Everything was going swimmingly.

  Then I got put in the airport detention cells, and three policemen came in. They wasted no time; two held my arms, one threw punches; they then took turns. They beat the shit out of me. No word of explanation.

  Next I got taken for an interview and was accused of being a pedophile and procuring kids in Thailand which was strange, considering I'd been on a deniable op in Russia.

  There was nothing I could say; it was just down to denying, and waiting for the system to get me out.

  After about four hours of interviews I was sitting in my cell. In came people from the intelligence service, to debrief me on my performance. It had been a fucking exercise.

  They'd been testing all the operators as we came back into the UK; the only trouble was, they'd picked the wrong charge to pull us up on. The police don't wait for niceties like court rooms when it comes to dealing with child molesters, so everyone who was lifted got taken to one side and given the good news. One bloke got such a severe kicking he ended up in the hospital.

  * * * Kelly looked as if she'd been sleeping in a hedge. She yawned and made an attempt to stretch. As she opened her eyes and looked around, completely bewildered, I grinned and offered her the carton of orange juice.

  "How are you today, Louise?"

  She still seemed lost for a second or two, then got back with the program.

  "I'm all right." She paused, grinned, and added, "Daddy." She closed her eyes and turned over, trying to sort herself out with the pillow and blanket. I didn't have the heart to tell her we were landing soon.

  At least I got to drink her orange juice as a Welcome to London video came on the screens: loads of pomp, circumstance, and pageantry, the Household Cavalry astride their horses. Guardsmen marching up and down, the Queen riding down the Mall in her carriage. To me, London had never looked so good.

  Then the aircraft landed and we became actors again.

  We taxied and stopped at our ramp. Everybody jumped out of their seat as if they were going to miss out on something. I leaned over to Kelly.

  "Wait here. We're in no rush." I wanted to get into the middle of the crowd.

  We eventually got all the bits and pieces back into Kelly's day sack organized the teddies, and joined the line. I was trying to look ahead but I couldn't see much.

  We got to the galley area, turned left, and shuffled toward the door. On the ramp were three men--normal British Airports Authority reception staff in fluorescent jackets, who were manning the air bridge helping a woman into a wheelchair.

  Things were looking good; freedom felt so close.

  We walked up the ramp and joined the spur that led to the main terminal. Kelly didn't have a care in the world, which was good. I didn't want her to understand what was happening.

  There was heavy foot traffic in both directions, people running with hand luggage, drifting in and out o
f shops, milling around at gates. I had the day sack and the laptop over my shoulder and held Kelly's hand. We reached the walkway.

  Heathrow airport is the most monitored, most camera'd, most visually and physically secure airport in the world.

  Untold pairs of eyes would already be on us; this was no time for looking furtive or guilty. The moving walkway stopped by Gates 43-47, then a new one started about ten yards later. As we trundled along I waited until there was a gap on each side of us and bent down to Kelly.