I stepped out of my doorway and walked against the flow of traffic. There were people on both sidewalks, hurrying in both directions, in cheap suits and thin raincoats, carrying small furled umbrellas, like British people do, just in case, and briefcases and shopping bags and backpacks, no one doing anything other than just hustling along. No furtive behaviour. No black vans idling at the kerb, no big guys looking around, no cop cars.
I took out the phone Scarangello had given me, and I found Nice’s number in the directory, and I called it. There was a long pause, nothing but scratchy silence, maybe waiting for network access, maybe waiting for an encryption protocol to lock in, and then I heard a ring tone, a long soft American purr in the heart of London, and another, and more, for a total of six.
No answer.
I clicked off.
Hope for the best, plan for the worst. Maybe she was driving, and couldn’t talk. Maybe something had spooked her off the kerb, and she was circling the block. Some innocent reason. Left, and left again, and again, as many times as it took for me to finish my business in the convenience store. Eventually she would see me standing on the sidewalk, and she would swoop in and pick me up.
I watched the corner ahead of me.
She didn’t come.
Or worst case, her phone was in some other guy’s hand, who would have a calculating gleam in his eye, as he watched the screen and saw my name there. Maybe they would stop, and try to reel me in. Right there and then. A two-for-one special. An improvised plan. Some kind of a trap, nearby. Casey Nice as bait, and some kind of an ambush.
I watched my own screen.
No one called me back.
Plan for the worst. The only other number in the directory was O’Day’s. There’s GPS in our cell phones, so they’ll be watching over us every step of the way. He could lead me to her. Literally step by step. Until they ditched her phone, at least. I dialled, and heard the scratchy silence again.
Then I clicked off the call, because up ahead of me the Skoda was coming around the corner.
Nice was driving, but she wasn’t alone. Behind her in the back seat was another figure, solid but insubstantial in the shadows, tilted somehow, as if watching over her shoulder. Then the car got closer and I recognized the guy. Maybe forty or forty-five years old, a little sunburned, with cropped fair hair and a blunt, square face, wearing a sweater and a short canvas jacket. With blue denim jeans, no doubt, and tan suede boots, maybe British Army desert issue.
Bennett, the Welshman with the unpronounceable first name. Last seen disappearing in Paris. The MI6 agent. Or MI5. Or something in between. Or something else entirely. It’s all pretty fluid at the moment, he had said, in his sing-song voice.
The Skoda swooped to the kerb and braked hard in front of me. Both Nice and Bennett looked up at me, necks craned under the windshield rail, eyes a little wide, appealing somehow, Nice more so than Bennett, as if she was saying, Pretend this is normal.
I got in. I opened the passenger door, and dumped myself in the seat, and got my feet in, and closed the door again. I held the environmental bag in my lap. Nice hit the gas and turned the wheel and took off again. She said, ‘This gentleman’s name is Mr Bennett.’
‘I remember,’ I said.
‘We’ve met,’ Bennett said, to her, not to me. ‘In Paris, where a gust of wind saved his ass.’
I said, ‘Now you admit to being there?’
‘Not in writing.’
‘Why did you hijack my ride? I was worried there, for a second.’
‘There’s a traffic warden two streets away. They use photo tickets now. Better if you don’t get caught up in that kind of complication.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Pull over,’ he said. ‘Any place you like. We’ll move again if we see anyone coming.’
Nice slowed the car, and hunted for a space at the kerb, and ended up half in and half out of a bus stop. Technically illegal, no doubt, but Bennett showed no great concern. I asked him again, ‘What do you want?’
He said, ‘I want to ride along for a day or two.’
‘With us?’
‘Obviously.’
‘Why?’
‘I have a roving brief at the moment. Which I interpret to mean I should keep an eye on the other thirty-six undercover operators in London and latch on with whoever’s furthest ahead.’
‘We’re not ahead.’
‘Neither is anyone else, I’m sorry to say. But at least you’re having fun.’
‘Not so far.’
‘But you’re making some kind of progress.’
‘Are we?’
‘Don’t be so modest.’
‘Are you wearing a wire?’
‘Want to search me?’
‘I will,’ Nice said, over her shoulder. ‘If I have to. There are rules.’
‘Says the unacknowledged asset, operating inside an ally’s territory, with two recent homicides in her slipstream.’
I said, ‘You can look at me for both of those.’
‘Implausible,’ Bennett said. ‘How do you explain Wormwood Scrubs? You took one and she took three? I don’t think so. You should have moved the bodies a bit. The pattern was too clear. I think the splinter of glass was down to Ms Nice alone. I’ll give you yesterday’s caved-in throat, though. So I’d say it’s a one-all draw at the moment. A tie, as you would call it.’
‘What do you want?’ I said, for the third time.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘There are no wires for NHI cases.’
Casey Nice said, ‘Which are what?’
‘No humans involved. We’re not very interested. But they are. That’s the problem. That’s the downside. Now you’ve got two gangs after you.’
‘How interested is not very?’
‘On our part? We’ll take notes, but we won’t actually do anything with them.’
‘Paper records?’
‘Inevitable, I’m afraid.’
‘In which case we weren’t there.’
He said, ‘Where?’
I said, ‘Anywhere.’
‘Technology says otherwise. We watch where you go, you know. And GPS is a wonderful thing. How else could I find you, just now for instance, parked miles from the scene of the crime, in a stolen car no less, and all at a moment’s notice?’
I said, ‘Our phones are encrypted.’
He just smiled and said, ‘Oh, please.’
‘Please what?’
‘Think about why you people put up with us. As in, why us and not Germany now? What do we bring to the table?’
‘GCHQ,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Our version of the NSA. Our listening post. But so much better than the NSA, it’s embarrassing. You need us. That’s why you put up with us.’
‘You’re eavesdropping.’
‘No, we’re facilitating,’ he said. ‘We’re gathering things up and passing things along. Occasionally we might test for intelligibility. On a purely technical level.’
‘Surely CIA transmissions are unbreakable.’
‘The CIA certainly thinks so.’
‘You’ve broken their code?’
‘I think we sold them their code. Not directly, of course. I’m sure it was a complicated sting.’
‘I’m sure you’re not supposed to do that kind of thing.’
‘And I’m sure it was all a long time ago.’