Big Boy Did It and Ran Away (14 page)

At the front, the dolly‐
in‐
chief was handed a copy of the final manifest by a smiling ScanAir official, with whom she appeared to be exchanging cheerful banter. Her ratification of the tally would mean the doors would be closing imminently, but only after one last confirmatory headcount, which the aft stewardess was now embarking upon. She moved swiftly through the cabin from the front, the scarcity of passengers meaning her arithmetic would be done well before she reached the back.

Simon put his magazine into the seat pocket and took careful hold of his car key. He kept his head down to avoid eye contact, watching her legs approach, waiting for the turn that would mark the end of the count. It came. He lifted his head, focusing on the front again. The fore stewardess, having got the nod, was going for her door; the aft one likewise. Action stations.

He pressed the Unlock button on his electronic key. Six rows from the front, his travel fan spun into action, unwinding the wire from the shaken champagne bottle and unfettering the straining cork. There was a thud from the overhead locker, followed by a sudden cascade of liquid on to the head of the passenger below. The aft stewardess turned around again to investigate, the now irate passenger already getting to his feet in response to his baptism of Taittinger. The passenger opened the hatch to investigate, microseconds before the aft stewardess could stretch an arm to prevent him doing precisely that, and received a further drenching for his troubles. This, understandably, did little for his mood. You didn’t have to speak Norwegian to understand that he was very forthrightly asking the passengers around him whose bottle it was, like anybody was going to own up. By this point the dolly‐
in‐
chief had closed her door and was moving in to assist, while the aft stewardess signalled to her colleague at the back to bring something to mop up the mess.

That was his cue. Simon waited until dolly three had urgently brushed past, then stepped into the toilet, where speed was the reward for the otherwise unthinkable indignity of wearing slip‐
on shoes. He quickly removed his polo‐
neck and trousers, revealing the blue overalls underneath, then stuffed his old clothes into the wastepaper chute and stepped back into the cabin.

The prepared line was going through his head – ‘Tristjeg matte bruke toalettet’ – for if he encountered one of the crew, but the diversion worked better than he’d hoped. He’d hit the jackpot in randomly placing the champagne above a distant relative of Thor, whose trip was not about to get any better. Closing the toilet door quietly behind him, Simon skipped lightly down the rear stairs then walked briskly but not hurriedly across the tarmac to the terminal building.

Once inside, he made his way back to the gents, where he retrieved the ziplocked folder and got changed into his new clothes, removing his replacement passport, ticket and traveller’s cheques from the discarded garments. He sealed the overalls and ID laminate inside the folder, then carried it out to the departure lounge, from where he watched flight 941 push back, taxi and take off. By the time it exploded, he was already checking in for his flight to CDG.

To say it was amateurish would be too kind, even allowing that his subsequent standards were a lot higher. It was crude, sloppy, seat‐
of‐
the‐
pants stuff, a miracle of sheer jamminess that it came off. Some said you made your own luck, that fortune favours the brave, but he wasn’t seduced by these retrospective sentiments of the negligent‐
but‐
spawny. All these years later, he still had gut‐
tightening flashbacks in which he vividly envisaged all the ways it could have gone wrong, all the individual factors that he’d had no contingency for if even one of them hadn’t run exactly to plan.

In this game, you couldn’t rely on being lucky, and after any operation, it was vital to acknowledge and analyse the ways in which he had been. This worked both ways, in identifying not only the shortcomings of Simon’s own plans, but also any unforeseen defence weaknesses he had inadvertently exploited. In the case of flight 941, he might have enjoyed a large rub of the green, but he also learned a salutary lesson about the biggest, most gaping and indefatigably enduring flaw in anti‐
terrorist security worldwide: people simply don’t expect to be attacked.

Those trolley dollies must have sat through dozens of briefings, training courses and rehearsed scenarios, all intended to raise awareness and condition their response to a potential terrorist threat. They might even have been put ‘on alert’ (whatever that meant) in light of the bombastic teddy‐
throwing that had followed Artro’s arrest. In practice, none of it meant a damn thing, because practice was four flights a day, five hundred a year, throughout which the most realistic threat was posed by the pilot’s hangover, and the principal thing they had to be ‘alert’ to was half‐
cut businessmen in first class trying to grope their tits as they leaned over to serve another G&T. The procedures they were following on flight 941 were intended to ensure that nobody missed the plane and that they weren’t carrying anyone who hadn’t sprung for a ticket. They were too busy getting on with their jobs to worry about terrorism. Christ, who wasn’t? The average person didn’t get up in the morning and start pondering whether today was the day someone would try to blow up their commuter train. He’d even heard people admit that their response to IRA bomb scares – and explosions – at London railway stations was to think ‘Oh, well in that case, I’d better take the District Line’.

It wasn’t just that people didn’t think about it – it was that they didn’t want to think about it, and who could blame them? The odds didn’t make it worthwhile. People only had so much worry‐
time built into their daily thought processes, even for their more irrational imaginings. Going home at night, you maybe worried about the train crashing, or getting jumped on that stretch of pavement where the streetlight is knackered; not that the sportsbag in the luggage rack opposite is packed with Sarin gas, or that the next parked car you walk past might explode. If you did, you’d never be able to leave the house.

Yes, he had been lucky, and yes, he’d taken risks he’d never repeat, but he’d got away with it because to the terrorist, despite global‐
wide counter‐
intelligence and ever more sophisticated surveillance technology, this was still that oft‐
mourned world where people never locked their front door. Sure, someone had made him a very clever bomb that effectively got itself through airport security, but it didn’t change the fact that a suburban marketing executive had been able to blow up a civilian passenger flight with the aid of some overalls, a stolen badge, a battery‐
operated fan and a bottle of bubbly.

Once he actually knew what the fuck he was doing, the possibilities were endless, especially given that officially, he no longer existed. His old life, his old name, in fact Simon Darcourt’s entire identity perished in the crash, and in that moment he became traceless, invisible, a ghost upon the Earth. He had no name, no files, no records, no past, and only one other person knew he’d once been someone else. People who’d known him could look into his face and dismiss what their eyes were telling them. Even Larry the little drummer boy had looked but failed to comprehend.

Still, that didn’t mean the incident could be ignored. Simon didn’t believe in destiny – he left that to the deluded, self‐
important bastards who paid his invoices – but he did know to respect omens. Not in any supernatural, David‐
Warner‐
plate‐
glass‐
interface kind of way, but as the mind’s little shorthand Post‐
it notes: incidents or images that reminded you to stay sharp and pay attention. Having come so far these past three years, he was back in Scotland for the execution of the biggest project he’d ever devised, and within minutes of landing he’d seen someone who could potentially unravel everything. The only thing preventing that chain of events from initialising was that the little drummer boy simply couldn’t believe he was looking at a dead man. From there, it wasn’t too far a leap to simply not believing the man he was looking at was dead. Not too far, and definitely not far enough for peace of mind.

With Mopoza unsure how much Thaba might have blabbed, there was an outstanding role to be filled in this production: that of a doomed, tragic fool; and merely by being there, by looking into Simon’s eyes, the little drummer boy had successfully auditioned for the part. The irony, in hindsight, was that it had been Simon Darcourt who was looking at a dead man. Raymond Ash just didn’t know it yet. And in payback for everything that had passed between them, Simon was going to enjoy giving him the message.

The driver was patrolling back and forth on the walkway above, training his weapon on all possible approaches in turn. Ray couldn’t see the not‐
jogger, who might well be down in the water too by now. As long as he stayed under the bridge, he was likely to remain out of the driver’s line of sight, but he’d have to make a move soon, as the other gunman could be at his back any second. The familiar sight of the rusted ladder was dead ahead, dangling down from the centre of the bridge into the murky water beneath. He breathed in, lunged the last few feet and began climbing, his stomach tightening with the awareness of his vulnerability. On a ladder, you were the easiest of targets: moving slowly, in a rigidly straight line, your intended destination obvious to any predatory observer.

He reached the top intact, his position still hidden from the driver by the column in the centre. One side of the bridge was a dead‐
end, leading straight to the enemy. The other offered his only chance of escape, though at the cost of moving briefly into view. The driver would have time for just one shot, but if he was accurate, it would be enough. Ray started running, fixing his sights on his footing, not daring to look back. The path turned hard right at the far end of the bridge, and would take him out of the firing line temporarily if he ever got there. He was going flat out but it didn’t seem fast enough, like he was moving through soup, or had bungee cords attached to his waist. He looked ahead.

The not‐
jogger came round the corner, levelling his weapon. Behind him, the driver jumped down from the walkway.

Ray jumped over the side as they fired, disappearing into the flooded circular pit. His submersion muted the sound, but he could still hear the noise of one of them grabbing the Quad Damage power‐
up, multiplying the impact of his weapon by four. He then heard them both splashing into the water behind him, by which time he was already swimming through the tunnel. Q2DM5: The Pits. Ray knew every inch, every pixel. He had enough of a start to reach the lift and leave them trapped down in the armour room while he got away, unless they got lucky with the trajectory of a grenade bounce, or a prediction shot from the rocket‐
launcher.

There was a high‐
pitched, pulsing, screaming sound in his ears, getting closer, louder, then he felt something hit, his back. Light flashed everywhere and the room spun wildly around him. A quad‐
impact, and yet somehow he had survived. The sound grew louder still, now less pulsing and more constant. Again he felt the thump in his back.

‘Ray.’

‘Huh?’

He sat up suddenly, opening his eyes to see a flurry of blue fleece in the cot at the end of the bed, where Martin was pouring out his signature howl. Kate was sitting up alongside, her bedside light on, the clock beside it informing him that it was four forty‐
one.

‘I think he’s filled a nappy. Can you do the honours while I get ready to feed him?’

‘Eh? What? Oh, yeah. Sorry.’

Ray climbed unsteadily out of bed, not quite awake, stalling in that transitory state in which the dream world and the one he’d woken up in had still to be fully separated and distinguished. Martin was playing a vocal part in sorting them out, but Ray remained confused about which immediate memories belonged to his dream and which to the evening preceding it. He remembered the airport. That was for real, wasn’t it? Then there’d been … no. That must have been dreamt. He was dead. Ray still dreamed about him every so often, evidence that despite the years and even death, Simon was still creeping around his subconscious. Sometimes they were reconciling, catching up on what happened to each other; sometimes they were way back when, having the same arguments. Even in his dreams, Ray still came off second best.

Ray lifted Martin out of the crib and placed him on his shoulder, the familiar whiffs of puke and liquid keech surrounding him like an unwelcome aura. After the airport there’d been … no. That was dreamt too. They’d all ended up on a Q2 map, for Christ’s sake. He thought he could picture them with pistols rather than railguns, but that was equally absurd, particularly the fact that they’d both missed.

Holding Martin in one arm, he switched on the bathroom light then knelt down and rubbed the changing mat to take the chill off it. He placed the infant carefully on the PVC and reached for the baby‐
wipes, which was when he caught sight of the washing basket, a still‐
dripping trouserleg dangling over the side.

‘Aaawww, fuck.’

After that, the true events of the evening played back like a demo.

It was difficult to select a highlight, but the polis probably shaded it from the assassins and the imaginary dead flatmate. They had an almost effortless way of making everything seem worse, arguably eclipsed by their equally reliable ability to make it all seem your fault as well.

Within moments of the interview commencing, he was wishing he’d just kept the whole thing to himself. He’d already lied to Kate about what happened, saying he’d been thrown over the bridge during an attempted mugging. Why didn’t he just tell her he’d fallen in trying to save a drowning puppy? There’d have been no cover story for him visiting the cop shop, and at least that way, only one person would have looked at him like he was a sad, attention‐
seeking fantasist. She had said Ray should call the cops and ask them to come to him, but he didn’t want her present when he gave his statement. He wasn’t in the habit of hiding things from his wife, but reckoned she had enough on her plate these days without worrying that her husband was being hunted by hitmen or even just going out of his mind.