The Glory Boys (29 page)

'Don't worry about them. They're there to make up the numbers, make the circus look good. Do it yourself. I'll be there round about twelve.'

Jimmy crawled out of his bed and made for the bath-room out through the door and across the corridor. There wasn't much else of the flat, just a kitchen. Bachelor Towers, and he wanted it that way. He needed someone like Helen to visit, once or twice a week, and clean the place up while she was waiting for him. But not to live there, they'd be on top of each other, arguing, pulling hair out, claustrophobic. It was not a bad arrangement. Gave each sufficient companionship, and the minimum of commitment. Those in the department who knew them both and who knew of the limitations of the arrangement put the bond down to a mutual passed-over loneliness. Jimmy would have denied that, perhaps violently. Helen would have smiled and changed the conversation. It was generally agreed among their friends that neither allowed the relationship to impair their individual effectiveness at the department.

After he'd shaved and scrubbed with his toothbrush to eradicate the taste of last night's cigarettes, he dressed. He did it slowly and with thought, as if getting himself prepared for an important engagement, an interview for a new job, an evening out with a girl-friend. But it was the clothes themselves that let him down. His trousers were heavily creased, not just at the seams down his legs but all over, a legacy of the night-time hours that they had lain crumpled on the carpet after he had kicked them off. The shirt that he chose was clean, not worn yesterday, but it had been on his back for many other days before that and the collar showed the frayed outline where the cotton had rubbed worn against the unshaven bristles on his neck. A button was missing, but would be hidden by his tie. The socks too were clean, unholed, perfect, and he could smile quietly and secretly to himself as he pulled them on. Three pairs he'd bought, one of his few concessions to the semi-domestication Helen had tried to enforce on him. Beside the bed were his shoes, brown and lace-ups. The toes were scuffed and need the attention of polish and a duster. He pulled the handkerchief from his trouser pocket, checked to see that Helen was still asleep, and then rubbed the white cloth square hard across the leatherwork. She'd seen him do that once and screamed a protest. His habits hadn't changed; only now he employed discretion.

From the drawer of the table on which the telephone stood he took the pistol he had drawn from Leconfield House, and the shoulder holster apparatus that was his own. The holster, of strengthened black plastic, fitted across his upper back and chest like a carthorse harness. It had been made to fit, and until he placed the gun itself in the pouch provided he was hardly aware of the straps that looped round his arms and across his back. But the gun gave the holster a weight and presence. His jacket hung across the chair he had draped it over, and when that was worn the PPK and its props were decisively hidden. Same tie as yesterday - RAF Escapers Club. Nothing dramatic for the motif, just a pelican bird, and not many who would pass Jimmy on the street would know its meaning.

He shook her shoulder, gently and with a kindness that few who knew him casually would have guessed he possessed.

'Wake up, girl, time to be on our way.'

'What time is it?' She said it sleepily, resisting the intrusion, eyes squinting into the sudden light.

'Bit after nine.'

'You pig!' she shouted, scrambling from the warm security of the bedclothes.

it's a beautiful sight to start the day with.' Jimmy was laughing as she struggled to cover her thighs and breasts with the scraps of lace and nylon that she scooped from the chair near her side of the bed.

'You're a pig, Jimmy. A mean, miserable pig. All bloody dressed yourself, and not calling me. Jones'll be off his rocker when I drift in at this time.' She wriggled her long legs into the trousers she had used the day before. Jimmy didn't like her keeping spare clothes at the flat, so what she arrived in the previous night she went out with the next morning.

'Won't do him any harm. Let him sweat a bit,' Jimmy said.

She said nothing else, fiercely concentrating on her dressing and then the attack on her face in front of the mirror. Hunched over it, eyes intent on the reflection as she worked the pencils and brushes around her eyes. The lipstick she put on with a bravado that ensured disaster.

There was a low oath, in a pitch she seldom used, as she tidied the indulgence with a flick of the Kleenex tissue that had remained overnight on the dressing table.

'Are you coming down to the speech tonight?' Jimmy asked as they stood on the pavement beside her Maxi car.

'Only if I'm needed. I don't want to be there just to rubberneck. I don't know whether Jones is going.'

'I'd like you to come, might want the car there. If I've one from the department I'm saddled with the damned thing. If you come, slot in behind the convoy and when we've dumped the little bugger back in his bed we can shove off somewhere. I can call you later on.'

'There can't be much chance of Jones going. He may want to be at the Yard, or by his phone, but it's not like him just to be there if there's no purpose to it. There's enough of the thickies, you included, lined up for the evening without him shoving in and getting in the way.'

'Whether he comes or not I'd like you to be there with the car.'

She unlocked the driving door and sat far back into the seat. As she fastened the safety belt across her chest she said quietly and with a suspicion of mockery, 'Want me to see the hero boy in action? Roy of the Rovers defies Amazing Odds. Triumph of Virtue. Good wins through.

That it?'

When it came to needling Jimmy she was the great expert.

'Bugger off to your boring office,' he shouted. 'I'll call you, and I want you there. If you want a bloody meal on the house, that is.'

The car was away and lost in the traffic, leaving Jimmy searching the street for a black cab. They were not easy to find in the final throes of the capital's rush-hour, and he paced impatiently for a full fifteen minutes before he could hail one and then sprint a weaving path between the oncoming cars to the other side of the road where the driver waited for him.

When they were on the move Jimmy sagged deep into the seat, half-aware of the scurrying masses going about their business beyond the Perspex. This was the ideal guerrilla country, the perfect territory on which to wage the sharp and cruel form of warfare that the enemy had perfected. Thousands of faces were swept past his vision from the window, their preoccupation with their own affairs total, their knowledge of the threat minuscule. The perfect, unnoticing hiding ground, where anonymity remains a virtue. In this huge, ant-like society what hope could there ever be of selecting out just two who were different from the rest by the virtue of the fact that they had declared hostilities? Where to find them - where to start to look?

There can only be one killing ground. The one right beside David Sokarev. Not ten yards from him, or even five, but right up against his shoulder. Jimmy felt no sense of fear at the prospect of physical injury. What screwed up his guts was the possibility of failure. It always dogged him, that horror. That he would end up the ultimate loser.

He could picture the little man with the blood and the surprise in his face, and the look of betrayal that would dominate his eyes. That would be the awfulness for Jimmy.

The unmentionable and unspeakable disaster, if he lost Sokarev.

By the time he reached the hotel where he would spend the rest of the day before leaving for the Senate House, the very image of failure and the chance of it that had crossed his mind had rendered him irritable and tensed.

From where he crouched inside the small car Famy saw McCoy appear round the corner from the street and walk warily towards their hiding place. Twice he looked behind, to satisfy himself he was not under surveillance. He jogged the last ten yards to the car.

Under his arm was a brown paper bag, and he reached inside his pocket on the left of his trousers when he reached the window through which Famy stared at him.

McCoy took in the numbed astonishment in the other's face, and the sad, emotion-drained look in his mouth.

'I've got the keys. No problem, an old fool in a garage up the road, spilled him a yarn and had them straight away. Got the whole bunch and said I'd return them later.

Piece of cake. I've got the gloves we need for the window, too, motorcycle sort with protection half-way up the arm.

Made of leather and bloody expensive. Hope your mob are good on expenses.'

He laughed, then let the humour dissolve as Famy's face failed to react.

'What the matter?' McCoy said. 'You look like someone's just parachuted you into bloody Jerusalem.'

'I thought you'd gone,' Famy whispered, frightened of the words, but with no option but to speak them.

"Course I'd bloody gone,' said McCoy. 'I told you last night we'd need the keys. You said we'd need gloves.

What's special about that?'

'I thought you'd gone for all time. That you were not coming back.'

McCoy spat back at him, 'How many times do I have to fucking-well tell you? We're in this together. I've told you that. For once in your suspicious miserable life try believing what you're told.'

He stomped round the car, angry, kicking at a tin and clattering it away across the stones and debris of the site.

Famy climbed out of the car.

'I'm sorry,' he said, it was shameful to doubt you. I am abject to you.' He paused, letting the seconds of confrontation flitter away. 'How do we spend the rest of the day?'

McCoy nodded. He had the imagination to feel the Arab's sentiments on waking in the empty car.

'I should have woken you. Forget it now. We stay for the rest of the day. It's as good as anywhere. We'll go direct from here to the Senate. No sense in just moving about unnecessarily. What we need now is some sleep. I don't want to be yawning and looking for my bed tonight.'

The few tourists who had gathered on the pavement across the road were unaware of the identity of the man who stepped from the black Humber car and hurried into the extended and tranquil-lit hallway of 10 Downing Street.

No better informed was the police constable on the door, nor the morning-suited usher who glanced from the prof-fered card to the book listing the day's appointments of the Prime Minister, and matched the printed name on the card he had been given with the typed list that rested on the lobby table.

The Director General was taken by lift to the flat on the top floor that the country's senior politician had turned into a miniature home when pressure of work prevented him from using his more substantial town house. It was well known that the Prime Minister's wife disliked having her living rooms trampled on by Civil Servants and Members of Parliament and visiting delegations, and so when her husband had early business to conduct he 'slept over the shop' as he delighted to tell those who called on him at the start of his day.

He was at breakfast, but immaculate and ready to present a public face, the absence of a jacket to cover his waistcoat his only concession to informality. As he pushed the marmalade on to his squares of toast he motioned to the Head of the Security Services to take a chair opposite and pushed in his direction the china coffee jug.

'I've seen the Home Secretary this morning,' the Prime Minister said. 'He's told me what the police are doing concerning the Professor and his problems. I wanted to know your feelings about the affair as we go into these crucial hours. No minutes to be kept or anything like that, just your opinions and what your own department's state of readiness is. That sort of thing.'

The memoir business into which political leaders entered with such enthusiasm on retirement was sufficient to keep the Director General on his guard. He regarded the Prime Minister's request for information as legitimate, but saw no need to expand at too great length.

He chose a cautious path, describing what the other man would already know. He started with the police operation at the hotel, listed the precautions that would be taken to transport Sokarev across the city. Official-style decoy car driving from the hotel at high speed, while the target left via the kitchens in a closed police van, switching to a more formal type of transport in the concealed yard of Tottenham Court Road police station before arriving at a normally locked side entrance at the university main building. He spoke of the scale of the escort that would be used during the transit period, and also of the numbers of men on guard at the building and of the search procedures that had been adopted inside and outside the hall where Sokarev was to speak. He mentioned the gelignite-sniffer labradors, and the metal detectors that plain-clothes troops had employed before the room was sealed the previous night. He talked of the police liaison with his own department that had been set up. He went into the degree to which invitation holders to the lecture had been vetted, and lingered for a moment on the problems of body searches without giving offence to the members of some of the most learned institutions of the country. He touched on the convoy and the protection screen that would be used to return the professor to his hotel. And then he stopped and waited for the Prime Minister's questions.

They were not slow in following.

'Well, that covers the police side of things. Everything in fact that the Secretary of State told me. What are you doing?'

The Director General was in no hurry. His long pauses could be infuriating and he knew it, but did nothing to alter the pace at which he delivered his answers.

'I have the men who head the various departments involved in constant meetings, and they have a liaison line to Scotland Yard. We have endeavoured to provide the Metropolitan force with all information, relevant information, that is at our disposal.'

'Do you have a man on the ground with Sokarev?'

'I have a man right beside him. He is my direct liaison with the police protection force and with the Israeli Foreign Ministry protection team that is accompanying Sokarev.'