Don has struck up his arm for attention.
In the centre of town a people carrier is nosing its way through night traffic. It has a taxi sign on its roof and a single passenger on the rear seat, and one glance is enough to tell him that the passenger is the corpulent, very animated Aladdin, the Pole that Elliot won’t touch with a barge. He’s holding a cellphone to his ear and, as in the Chinese restaurant, he is gesticulating magisterially with his free hand.
The pursuing camera veers, goes wild. The screen goes blank. The helicopter takes over, pinpoints the people carrier, puts a halo over it. The pursuing ground camera returns. The winking icon of a telephone, top-left corner of the screen. Jeb hands Paul an earpiece. One Polish man talking to another. They are taking it in turns to laugh. Aladdin’s left hand performing a puppet show in the rear window of the people carrier. Male Polish merrymaking replaced by disapproving voice of a woman translator:
‘Aladdin is speaking to brother Josef in Warsaw,’ says the woman’s voice disdainfully. ‘It is vulgar conversation. They are discussing girlfriend of Aladdin, this woman he has on boat. Her name is Imelda. Aladdin is tired of Imelda. Imelda has too much mouth. He will abandon her. Josef must visit Beirut. Aladdin will pay for him to come from Warsaw. If Josef will come to Beirut, Aladdin will introduce him to many women who will wish to sleep with him. Now Aladdin is on his way to visit special friend. Special secret friend. He love this friend very much. She will replace Imelda. She is not gloomy, not bitch, has very beautiful breasts. Maybe he will buy apartment for her in Gibraltar. This is good news for taxes. Aladdin will go now. His secret special friend is waiting. She desires him very much. When she opens the door she will be completely naked. Aladdin has ordered this. Goodnight, Josef.’
A moment of collective bewilderment, broken by Don:
‘He hasn’t got fucking time to get laid,’ he whispered indignantly. ‘Not even him.’
Echoed by Andy, equally indignant:
‘His cab’s turned the wrong way. What the fuck’s it gone and done that for?’
‘There is always time to get laid,’ Shorty corrected them firmly. ‘If Boris Becker can knock up a bird in a cupboard or whatever, Aladdin can get himself laid on his way to sell Manpads to his mate Punter. It’s only logical.’
This much at least was true: the people carrier, instead of turning right towards the tunnel, had turned left, back into the centre of town.
‘He knows we’re on him,’ Andy muttered in despair. ‘Shit.’
‘Or changed his stupid mind’ – Don.
‘Hasn’t got one, darling. He’s a bungalow. It’s all downstairs’ – Shorty.
The screen turned grey, then white, then a funereal black.
CONTACT TEMPORARILY LOST
All eyes on Jeb as he murmured gentle Welsh cadences into his chest microphone:
‘What have you done with him, Elliot? We thought Aladdin was too fat to lose.’
Delay and static over Don’s relay. Elliot’s querulous South African voice, low and fast:
‘There’re a couple of apartment blocks with covered car parks down there. Our reading is, he drove into one and came out by a different one. We’re searching.’
‘So he knows you’re on him then’ – Jeb – ‘That’s not helpful, is it, Elliot?’
‘Maybe he’s aware, maybe it’s habit. Kindly get off my bloody back. Right?’
‘If we’re compromised, we’re going home, Elliot. We’re not walking into a trap, not if people know we’re coming. We’ve been there, thank you. We’re too old for that one.’
Static, but no answer. Jeb again:
‘You didn’t think to put a tracker on the cab by any chance, did you, Elliot? Maybe he switched vehicles. I’ve heard of that being done before, once or twice.’
‘Go fuck yourself.’
Shorty in his role as Jeb’s outraged comrade and defender, pulling off his mouthpiece:
‘I’m definitely going to sort Elliot out when this is over,’ he announced to the world. ‘I’m going to have a nice, reasonable, quiet word with him, and I’m going to shove his stupid South African head up his arse, which is a fact. Aren’t I, Jeb?’
‘Maybe you are, Shorty,’ Jeb said quietly. ‘And maybe you’re not, too. So shut up, d’you mind?’
*
The screen has come back to life. The night traffic is down to single cars but no halo is hanging over an errant people carrier. The encrypted cellphone is trembling again.
‘Can you see something that we can’t, Paul?’ – accusingly.
‘I don’t know what you can see, Nine. Aladdin was talking to his brother, then he changed direction. Everyone here is mystified.’
‘We are, too. You better bloody believe it.’
We? You and who else, exactly? Eight? Ten? Who is it that whispers in your ear? Passes you little notes, for all I know, while you talk to me? Causes you to change tack and start again? Mr Jay Crispin, our corporate warlord and intelligence provider?
‘Paul?’
‘Yes, Nine.’
‘You have eyes-on. Give me a reading, please. Now.’
‘The issue seems to be whether Aladdin’s woken up to the fact that he’s being followed.’ And after a moment’s thought: ‘Also whether he’s visiting a new girlfriend he has apparently installed here instead of keeping his date with Punter’ – increasingly impressed by his own confidence.
Shuffle. Sounds off. The whisperer at work again. Disconnect.
‘Paul?’
‘Yes, Nine.’
‘Hang on. Wait. Got some people here need to talk to me.’
Paul hangs on. People or person?
‘Okay! Matter solved’ – Minister Quinn in full voice now – ‘Aladdin’s not – repeat not – about to screw anybody, man or woman. That’s a fact. Is that clear?’ – not waiting for an answer. ‘The phone call to his brother we just heard was a blind to firm up his date with Punter over the open line. The man at the other end was not his brother. He was Punter’s intermediary.’ Hiatus for more off-stage advice. ‘Okay, his cut-out. He was Aladdin’s cut-out’ – settling to the word.
Line dead again. For more advice? Or is the Personal Role Radio not quite as augmented as it was cracked up to be?
‘Paul?’
‘Nine?’
‘Aladdin was merely telling Punter that he’s on his way. Giving him a heads-up. We have that direct from source. Kindly pass to Jeb forthwith.’
There was just time to pass to Jeb forthwith before Don’s arm shot up again.
‘Screen two, skipper. House seven. Seaward-side camera. Light in ground-floor window left.’
‘Over here, Paul’ – Jeb.
Jeb has dropped into a squat at Don’s side. Crouching behind them, he peers between their two heads, unable to make out at first which light he’s supposed to be seeing. Lights were dancing in the ground-floor windows, but they were reflections from the anchored fleet. Removing his goggles and stretching his eyes as wide as they’ll go, he watches the replay of the ground-floor window of house number seven in close-up.
A spectral pin-light, pointed upward like a candle, moves across the room. It is held by a ghostly white forearm. The inland cameras take up the story. Yes, there’s the light again. And the ghostly forearm is tinged orange by the sodium lamps along the slip road.
‘He’s inside there then, isn’t he?’ – Don, the first to speak. ‘House seven. Ground floor. Flashing a fucking torch because there’s no electric.’ But he sounds oddly unconvinced.
‘It’s Ophelia’ – Shorty, the scholar. ‘In her fucking nightshirt. Going to throw herself into the Med.’
Jeb is standing as upright as the roof of the hide allows. He pulls back his balaclava, making a scarf of it. In the spectral green light, his paint-smeared face is suddenly a generation older.
‘Yes, Elliot, we saw it, too. All right, agreed, a human presence. Whose presence, that’s another question, I suppose.’
Is the augmented sound
system really on the blink? Over a single earpiece he hears Elliot’s voice in belligerent mode:
‘Jeb? Jeb, I need you. Are you there?’
‘Listening, Elliot.’
The South African accent very strong now, very didactic:
‘My orders are, as of one minute ago, precisely, to place my team on red alert for immediate embarkation. I am further instructed to pull my surveillance resources out of the town centre and concentrate them on Alpha. Approaches to Alpha will be covered by static vans. Your detachment will descend and deploy accordingly.’
‘Who says we will, Elliot?’
‘That is the battle plan. Land and sea units converge. Jesus fuck, Jeb, have you forgotten your fucking orders?’
‘You know very well what my orders are, Elliot. They’re what they were from the start. Find, fix and finish. We haven’t found Punter, we’ve seen a light. We can’t fix him till we’ve found him and we’ve no PID worth a damn.’
PID? Though he detests initials, enlightenment comes: Positive Identification.
‘So there’s no finishing and there’s no convergence,’ Jeb is insisting to Elliot in the same steady tone. ‘Not till I agree, there isn’t. We’re not shooting at each other in the dark, thank you. Confirm you copy me, please. Elliot, did you hear what I just said?’
Still no answer, as Quinn returns in a flurry.
‘Paul? That light inside house seven. You saw it? You had eyes-on?’
‘I did. Yes. Eyes-on.’
‘Once?’
‘I believe I saw it twice, but indistinctly.’
‘It’s Punter. Punter’s in there. At this minute. In house seven. That was Punter holding a hand torch, crossing the room. You saw his arm. Well, didn’t you? You saw it, for Christ’s sake. A human arm. We all did.’
‘We saw an arm, but the arm is subject to identification, Nine. We’re still waiting for Aladdin to turn up. He’s lost, and there’s no indication that he’s on his way here.’ And catching Jeb’s eye: ‘We’re also waiting for proof that Punter is on the premises.’
‘Paul?’
‘Still here, Nine.’
‘We’re re-planning. Your job is to keep the houses in plain sight. House seven particularly. That’s an order. While we re-plan. Understood?’
‘Understood.’
‘You see anything out of the ordinary with the naked eye that the cameras may have missed, I need to know instantly.’ Fades and returns. ‘You’re doing an excellent job, Paul. It will not go unnoticed. Tell Jeb. That’s an order.’
They’re becalmed, but he feels no calm. Aladdin’s vanishing act has cast its spell over the hide. Elliot may be repositioning his aerial cameras but they’re still scanning the town, homing at random on stray cars and abandoning them. His ground cameras are still offering now the marina, now the entrance to the tunnel, now stretches of empty coast road.
‘Come on, you ugly bastard, show!’ – Don, to the absent Aladdin.
‘Too busy having it away, randy sod’ – Andy, to himself.
Aladdin is waterproof, Paul, Elliot is insisting across his desk in Paddington. We do not lay one single finger on Aladdin. Aladdin is fireproof, he is bulletproof. That is the solemn deal that Mr Crispin has cut with his highly valuable informant, and Mr Crispin’s word to an informant is sacred.
‘Skipper’ – Don again, this time with both arms up.
A motorcyclist is weaving his way along the metalled service track, flashing his headlight from side to side. No helmet, just a black-and-white keffiyeh flapping round his neck. With his right hand he is steering the bike, while his left holds what appears to be a bag by its throat. Swinging the bag as he goes along, displaying it, showing it off, look at me. Slender, wasp-waisted. The keffiyeh masking the lower part of his face. As he draws level with the centre of the terrace his right hand leaves the handlebars and rises in a revolutionist’s salute.
Reaching the end of the service track, he seems all set to join the coast road, heading south. Abruptly he turns north, head thrust forward over the handlebars, keffiyeh streaming behind him and, accelerating, races towards the Spanish border.
But who cares about a hell-bent motorcyclist in a keffiyeh when his black bag sits like a plum pudding in the middle of the metalled track, directly in front of the doorway leading to house number seven?
*
The camera has closed on it. The camera enlarges it. Enlarges it again.
It’s a common-or-garden black plastic bag, bound at the throat with twine or raffia. It’s a bin bag. It’s a bin bag with a football or a human head or a bomb in it. It’s the kind of suspicious object which, if you saw it lying around untended at a railway station, you either told someone or you didn’t, depending how shy you were.
The cameras were vying with each other to get at it. Aerial shots followed ground-level close-ups and wide-angle shots of the terrace at giddying speed. Out to sea, the helicopter had dropped low over the mother ship in protection. In the hide, Jeb was urging sweet reason:
‘It’s a bag, Elliot, is what it is’ – his Welsh voice at its gentlest and most persistent. ‘That’s all we know, see. We don’t know what’s in it, we can’t hear it, we can’t smell it, can we? There’s no green smoke coming out of it, no external wires or aerials that we can see, and I’m sure you can’t either. Maybe it’s just a kid doing a bit of fly-tipping for his mum … No, Elliot, I don’t think we’ll do that, thank you. I think we’ll leave it where it is and let it do whatever it was brought here to do, if you don’t mind, and we’ll go on waiting till it does it, same as we’re waiting for Aladdin.’
Is this an electronic silence or a human one?
‘It’s his weekly washing,’ Shorty suggested under his breath.
‘No, Elliot, we’re not doing that,’ said Jeb, his voice much sharper. ‘We emphatically are not going down to take a closer look inside that bag. We’re not going to interfere with that bag in any way, Elliot. That could be exactly what they’re waiting for us to do: they want to flush us out in case we’re on the premises. Well, we’re not on the premises, are we? Not for a teaser like that we’re not. Which is another good reason for leaving it put.’
Another fade-out, a longer one.
‘We have an arrangement, Elliot,’ Jeb continued with superhuman patience. ‘Maybe you’ve forgotten that. Once the land team has fixed the target, and not before, we’ll come down the hill. And your sea team, you’ll come in from the sea, and together we’ll finish the job. That was the arrangement. You own the sea, we own the land. Well, the bag’s on the land, isn’t it? And we haven’t fixed the target, and I’m not about to see our respective teams going into a dark building from opposite sides, and nobody knowing who’s waiting there for us, or isn’t. Do I have to repeat that, Elliot?’
‘Paul?’
‘Yes, Nine.’
‘What’s your personal take on that bag? Advise me immediately. Do you buy Jeb’s arguments or not?’
‘Unless you have a better one, Nine, yes I do’ – firm but respectful, taking his tone from Jeb’s.
‘Could be a warning to Punter to do a runner. How about that, then? Has anyone thought of that your end?’
‘I’m sure they’ve thought about that very deeply, as I have. However, the bag could equally well be a signal to Aladdin to say it’s safe, so come on in. Or it could be a signal to stay away. It seems to me pure speculation at best. Too many possibilities altogether, in my view,’ he ended boldly, even adding: ‘In the circumstances, Jeb’s position strikes me as eminently reasonable, I have to say.’
‘Don’t lecture me. All wait till I return.’
‘Of course.’
‘And no fucking of course!’
The line goes stone dead. No shuffle of breath, no background atmospherics. Just a long silence over the cellphone pressed harder and harder to his ear.
*
‘Jesus fuck!’ – Don, at full force.
Again they are all five huddled at the arrow-slit as a hig
h-sided car with full headlights shoots out of the tunnel and speeds towards the terraces. It’s Aladdin, in his people carrier, late for his appointment. It’s not. It’s the blue Toyota four-by-four without its CONFERENCE sign. Veering off the coast road, bumping on to the metalled service track and heading straight for the black bag.
As it approaches, the side door slides back to reveal the bespectacled Hansi bowed at the wheel and a second figure, undefined but could be Kirsty, stooped in the open doorway, one hand clutching the grab handle for dear life and the other outstretched for the bag. The Toyota’s door bangs shut again. Regaining speed, the four-by-four continues north and out of sight. The plum-pudding bag has gone.
First to speak is Jeb, calmer than ever.
‘Was that your people I saw just now, Elliot? Picking up the bag at all? Elliot, I need to speak to you, please. Elliot, I think you’re hearing me. I need an explanation, please. Elliot?’
‘Nine?’
‘Yes, Paul.’
‘It seems that Elliot’s people just picked up the bag’ – doing his best to sound as rational as Jeb – ‘Nine? Are you there?’
Belatedly, Nine comes back, and he’s strident:
‘We took the executive decision, for fuck’s sake. Someone had to take it, right? Kindly inform Jeb. Now. The decision is set. Taken.’
He is gone again. But Elliot is back at full strength, talking to an off-stage female voice with an Australian accent and triumphantly relating its message to the wider audience:
‘The bag contains provisions? Thank you, Kirsty. The bag contains smoked fish – hear that, Jeb? Bread. Arab bread. Thank you, Kirsty. What else do we have in that bag? We have water. Sparkling water. Punter likes sparkling. We have chocolate. Milk chocolate. Hold it there, thank you, Kirsty. Did you happen to catch that, Jeb? The bastard’s been in there all the time, and his mates have been feeding him. We’re going in, Jeb. I have my orders here in front of me, confirmed.’
‘Paul?’
But this is not Minister Quinn alias Nine speaking. This is Jeb’s half-blacked face, his eyes whitened like a collier’s, except they’re palest green. And Jeb’s voice, steady as before, appealing to him: