Baptism

by Max Kinnings

  “Okay,” whispered George and pulled Ben, Sophie and Maggie close to him as they waited.

  4:07 PM

  Leicester Square Tube Station, ticket hall

  It was the policewoman holding his arm that did it. If it hadn’t been for that, Mark Hooper might not have recognized him. Ed Mallory was dripping wet and his formerly pristine black clothes were soaked in muddy water. After Mark had seen to Tommy Denning, he had gone to the office in the ticket hall where the train driver had been reunited with his family, but there was a special forces soldier on duty. He had been forced to wait. But clearly believing that the driver was no longer in danger, the soldier had obviously been instructed to stand down. Just as Hooper was about to move in, however, Mallory had arrived with a policewoman. Now, they were leaving, heading down the escalators with the train driver and his family. Where the hell were they going? It didn’t matter. He had come too far to turn back now. With the train driver taken out of the equation, the intelligence leak was contained. It was a tough call. An innocent man who had already gone through so much was going to have to die. Possibly his family too. Possibly Ed Mallory. A cover story would be difficult but not impossible. Ed Mallory had already gone rogue. What was employing an ex-IRA bomber to blast a hole in the tunnel if not evidence of a mind gone awry? Mark would try and pin the train driver’s death on him. So he was blind, that didn’t mean that he couldn’t go berserk with a gun. If only the blind bastard had just stuck to the script and accepted that his negotiation had failed then everyone on the train would have died and no one would have been any the wiser as to the service’s foreknowledge. That was all that had needed to happen. But now Mark was exposed. All roads led back to him, and Berriman would be only too happy to hang him out to dry. Well, if he was going down, he was going down fighting.

  At the bottom of the escalators, Ed Mallory and the others turned into one of the pedestrian tunnels leading to the train lines. Keeping them in a clear line of sight, he followed them and only hung back when he saw them turn into a doorway. Ed Mallory spoke to the policewoman. He couldn’t make out what was being said but he knew that he had to take cover as she turned and made her way back toward him. Near to where he was standing were some stairs providing access to the two Piccadilly Line platforms. He descended the stairs taking two steps at a time and waited for the policewoman to go past. When he could hear her footsteps recede, he climbed up the steps and reached into his pocket, his fingers closing around the handle of the Glock. It wasn’t his favorite handgun. That accolade went to the Walther PPK he had left in Tommy Denning’s hand. But this would do its job well enough when the time came.

  4:11 PM

  Leicester Square Tube Station, service tunnel entrance

  Ed could hear footsteps on the other side of the door. The person making them was walking on tiptoes, trying to be as quiet as possible. There was only one person who would see fit to try and keep their approach a secret. The footsteps stopped but Ed could smell Hooper’s aftershave. They needed to move fast but he didn’t want to alarm the children in case they cried out and gave away their position. He put his hand on George’s shoulder and was about to steer him toward the steps down into the flooded service tunnel when the door was kicked open, the hinges screeching, the air displacement brushing against his face.

  “No!” George’s voice was charged with fear. The threat to which it referred was implicit. Ed threw himself forward, fists clenched. Hooper wasn’t big; if Ed could reach him, he might be able to restrain him long enough for George and his family to escape into the service tunnel. But before his hands could find Hooper, his shoulder was speared with a pole of agony as a muted gunshot made a flat echo in the enclosed space and he was thrown backward, staggering into George and his family. He struggled to maintain his balance and realized that it was futile to do so when his foot reached out for the floor and found nothing. He was pitched backward; his shoulders, one of them shattered by the bullet that had, only moments before, passed through it, smashed against the stone steps as he fell. Ed’s head made contact with a stone riser and just before he blacked out, he felt himself falling into water, sinking deeper and deeper.

  4:12 PM

  Leicester Square Tube Station, service tunnel

  The man with the gun looked around the dark enclosed space. Ed Mallory wasn’t his only target. He was searching for someone else. Looking at Maggie first, he raised his gun, finger on the trigger, then he looked at George. Their eyes met. The man was going to kill him. George had never been so sure of anything in his life. He threw a reflex punch that made contact with the man’s abdomen and with his other hand, he made a grab for the gun, pushing it back, cracking it against the wall. Lunging forward, George’s forehead connected with the man’s nose. He battered the gun against the wall again and he heard a reassuring clatter as it fell to the floor. The man was dazed but there was plenty of fight left in him. He lashed out and his fist made contact with the side of George’s head. It was a powerful blow and George knew that he was in trouble. This guy was in the secret service; he had probably been trained in unarmed combat.

  “George!” Maggie was shouting at him. The children were crying. The two men struggled at the top of the steps. Another punch struck George’s jaw. Before the man could draw his fist back once more, George pushed him backward, past Maggie and the children to the top of the steps and over, the two men falling, the stone edges providing far more painful blows than either of their fists ever could. The cold water into which they fell brought some clarity back to George’s perception. He appeared to have survived the fall in better shape than his attacker and, seeing the man rise up out of the water in front of him, flailing around, George threw his head forward into the man’s face for a second time. His forehead cracked against the man’s nose and as he heard his gasping pained exhalation, George held him at arms’ length, his hands closing around his neck as he forced him down into the water. George was bigger than him, his arms were longer; he had a whole lot more to lose.

  The man lashed out with everything that he had, kicking and punching, but the impact of the blows was reduced by the water and George could cope with the pain as he drove his thumbs into the man’s neck and forced him downward. George pulled his head back so the fingers that desperately scrambled around for something to hold onto fumbled across his face but could find no purchase.

  George dragged the man toward the tunnel wall and cracked his head against the brickwork, once, twice, three times. The kicks and the flailing arms became more desperate but weaker now and George pressed even harder against his neck. The man’s hands picked at his fingers, trying to pry them off, but they lacked the necessary strength and finally they dropped away. George felt the life go out of him and he flopped back into the water.

  “George!” Maggie shouted from the top of the steps. “George, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, it’s over.”

  But this wasn’t enough for Maggie. She had been through too much that day to accept a vague reassurance.

  “What happened? Where is he?”

  “He’s down here,” said George. “But stay where you are.” Sophie and Ben were still crying after their shock and fear of moments earlier but were consoled by the sound of George’s voice.

  It was a struggle to unclench his fingers. They were locked in a stone grip and he had to concentrate to relax them. He looked down at his victim. He didn’t look like a bad man, just an office drone with his smart shirt and his tailored slacks, someone who wanted to get along; someone who had ambition. He had seen the type at school. You knew they were going places; but you also knew that whatever they did, it would never make them happy. But happiness didn’t come into it now. This guy would never be happy again, would never be anything.

  George turned to where Ed Mallory lay in the water, slumped against the side of the tunnel. A cloud of blood hung in the water around his neck. The bullet had entered through the top of his back by his shoulder blade breaking his collarbone. H
e was semiconscious, groaning and struggling to keep his head above the water. George dragged him to his feet.

  “You’re going to be all right,” he said.

  George had no idea whether this was true. But from the amount of bleeding, it looked as though the bullet had missed any arteries or major blood vessels and the wound was far enough away from the spinal cord and the heart so he would probably make it.

  “You killed him,” said Ed.

  “I had to stop him,” said George.

  “It was self-defense,” said Ed. “I can attest to that.”

  Blood seeped between Ed’s fingers as he pressed down on his shoulder and George helped steady him as they climbed the steps to join Maggie and the children. As they made their way toward the escalators, Ed stumbled and George put his arm around him to hold him up.

  “Do you want me to go and fetch someone?” George asked Ed as they started climbing up the stalled escalator with Maggie and the children following behind.

  “No, it feels as though I’m losing blood so we’d better keep moving. But you need to remember this. Think of it as an insurance policy. Two names: Howard Berriman and Mark Hooper. Berriman is the head of MI5—you’ve probably heard of him—and Hooper is, was, the guy in the tunnel just now. They knew all about Denning’s intended hijack, but they let it happen because they wanted the kudos of appearing to have stopped it right at the last minute. The trouble was that Denning got wise to what they were up to and he moved the attack to a week earlier. That’s what all that was about down there. Mark Hooper thought that you knew the truth and he could save his skin if he took you out.”

  “But what about Tommy Denning?”

  “Hooper killed him.”

  George didn’t have time to explore his feelings about the death of the man who had engineered the horror that he and his family and so many others had been forced to endure. He had wanted him to live, had wanted him to suffer for what he had done but it was not to be.

  “So what will happen to Howard Berriman?” asked George.

  “His career’s over,” said Ed. “I’m going to take great pleasure in bringing him down.”

  They made their way into the ticket hall and seeing Ed Mallory limping, clutching his bleeding shoulder, a tall man with a shaven head rushed forward.

  “Ed, I only just got the message, what happened?” he asked.

  “It’s all right, Nick, I’ll explain later after I’ve got some medical attention,” said Ed. “In the meantime, I need you to look after these people.” Ed explained who George and his family were and introduced them to Detective Inspector Nick Calvert.

  “I’ll be in touch,” said Ed to George. “Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.” Ed held out his right hand that he had been holding against his bullet wound and George shook it, their palms both wet and sticky with blood.

  As Ed was helped onto a stretcher by a paramedic, Nick Calvert ushered George and his family up the steps leading from the ticket hall to ground level. As they emerged into the daylight, George thought that the London air, so much maligned under normal circumstances, tasted cleaner and fresher than ever before.

  George saw the reflection of a man in a shop window on the opposite side of Charing Cross Road. He was filthy, marinated in sludge and his face was swollen, bruised and bloody. It took a moment for him to realize that he was looking at a reflection of himself. He looked like a refugee from a nightmare. His outward appearance, however, belied his state of mind. His hands had stopped shaking; his breathing had steadied. Despite his recent ordeal on the train and his even more recent explosion of violence, he felt calm, strangely uplifted, somehow new and cleansed.

  George heard someone call his name and then someone else did and then more voices were calling to him. He looked toward the perimeter of the evacuation zone to the news crews and photographers that had gathered behind the barriers.

  “George! How are you feeling?”

  “George! Over here.”

  They knew him; they had seen him on Denning’s video feed from the train. The media had processed him and now he was part of their story. After all those years of craving recognition for something other than driving a tube train and now here it was, a direct response to doing exactly that and nothing he could do to prevent it.

  News of who had just emerged from below ground had spread fast. Cameras and camera phones were pointed from the growing crowd as George held Maggie and the children close. People jostled to catch a glimpse of them as the shutters clicked and the sun shone down from the cloudless London sky.