Authors: Andy McNab
Remote Control (21 page)
Her face lit up. ‘Can we go home now? You said Pat was going to help us go home.’
I picked her coat off the hanger and helped her put her shoes on. ‘Really soon, yes, we will. But Daddy needs more time to rest. Pat will find out when it’s OK,’ I said. ‘But, first, we’ve got to do stuff. It’s really difficult for me to explain to you what’s going on just now, Kelly, but it won’t be long. I promise you will be home soon.’
‘Good, because Jenny and Ricky are missing me.’
My heart missed a beat. Had I fucked up? Had there been other people in the house?
She must have read my mind. ‘They’re my teddies.’ She laughed, then her face went serious. ‘I miss them. And I want to go to Melissa’s party.’
I started patting the top of her head. She looked at me; she knew she was being patronized. I changed the subject.
‘Look, I’ll show you where we’re going.’
I got out the map. ‘This is where we are now and that’s where we’re heading – just by the river. We’ll get a taxi, find a nice hotel, and we’ll make sure they’ve got cable so we can watch films. If they haven’t, maybe we could go see a movie.’
‘Can we see
Jungle 2 Jungle
?’
Jungle 2 Jungle
?’
‘Sure we can!’
What the fuck was that? Never mind, at least we’d got off the subject of family.
After checking out and, to my surprise, being offered a one-night rebate, I went upstairs to collect Kelly and the blue nylon sports bag. I left the USP in the cistern. It only had one magazine of 9mm and I was carrying three of .45 with the Sig.
Leaving the hotel, we turned left and immediately left again. I wanted to get out of line of sight of reception before somebody thought of asking, ‘Where’s the wife?’
We hailed a cab and I asked for Pentagon City. The driver was an Asian in his sixties. He had a map on his seat but didn’t bother to look at it. We seemed to be heading in the right direction. Kelly had her hat on. I thought of teasing her that she looked like Paddington Bear, but it would have taken too long to explain.
The driver asked where exactly I wanted to be dropped.
‘The Metro stop, please.’ I didn’t have a clue where that was, but it sounded as good a place as any.
I paid the old boy his cash and off he drove. The whole area looked new and high-rent, both shopping and residential. There was a Ritz Carlton hotel and, a few minutes away, the Pentagon. I got my bearings and led Kelly towards the mall. I wanted to visit an ATM to celebrate the start of a new financial day.
We exited and walked across the supermarket car park, then on towards the river. It was strange because, for the first time, I felt like I was really responsible for her. I still held her hand when we were crossing roads, but now it seemed natural to keep holding it on the sidewalks, too. I had to admit, it felt good to have her with me, but maybe that was only because I knew it looked natural and therefore provided ideal cover.
We walked under the concrete freeway bridge that led to downtown DC. It was very busy and the movement of traffic sounded like muffled thunder. I told Kelly about the scene in
Cabaret
where Sally Bowles goes under the railway bridge to scream when things get too much for her. I didn’t tell her that was what I’d been feeling like doing for the past forty-eight hours.
Cabaret
where Sally Bowles goes under the railway bridge to scream when things get too much for her. I didn’t tell her that was what I’d been feeling like doing for the past forty-eight hours.
Once past the bridge the landscape changed. It was easy to imagine what this area must have looked like maybe fifty or sixty years earlier, because it hadn’t been fully developed yet. It was full of derelict railway-siding buildings, some of which had been taken over as offices, though much of the area was just fenced off into lots or used as car pounds.
I looked left and saw the elevated section of the highway disappear into the distance towards downtown DC. A concrete wall hid all the supports and a road ran alongside. There was no sidewalk, just a thin strip of hard ground, littered with drinks cans and cigarette packets. It looked as if people parked up on the verges here to avoid the parking charges further in. There were old, broken-down buildings everywhere, but the place was still being used. On the right was a fringe theatre in what had once been a railway warehouse. The tracks were still there, but they were now rusty and weeds were growing through. From above us came the continuous roar of traffic on the elevated highway.
We passed a scrap-metal merchant’s, then a disused cement-distribution plant, where the boats used to come up the Potomac and dump their loads. I then saw something that was so totally out of place it was almost surreal. A late 1960s hotel, the Calypso, was still standing in defiance of progress. It was marooned in the middle of an ocean of chrome, smoked glass and shiny brick, as if the owners had decided to lift a finger to the property developers who were slowly taking over this dying area.
It was a very basic, four-storey building, built in the shape of an open square; in the middle was a car park crammed with cars and pick-ups. There were no windows on the outer walls, just air-conditioners sticking out of the breeze-block. I turned left; with the highway thundering away above me, I walked past the hotel on my right-hand side. I was now parallel with Ball Street, which lay behind it. Kelly hadn’t said a word. I was in work mode anyway, and if it weren’t for the fact that I had hold of her hand I would probably have forgotten she was with me.
As we got level with the Calypso I wiped the drizzle from my face and peered up into the gloom. On its roof was a massive satellite dish, easily 3 metres across. It wouldn’t have looked out of place on top of the Pentagon. We turned right and right again. We were on Ball Street.
From street numbers on the map I knew that the target was going to be on my left. I kept to the right side for a better perspective.
It was still incredibly noisy; if it wasn’t an aircraft taking off from the airport just the other side of the tree line, it was the continuous roar from Highway 1.
‘Where are we going?’ Kelly had to shout to be heard above it all.
‘Down there,’ I nodded. ‘I want to see if we can find a friend’s office. And then we can find a nice new hotel to stay in.’
‘Why do we have to change hotels all the time?’
I was stumped on that one. I was still looking at the street numbers, not at her. ‘Because I get bored easily, especially if the food’s no good. That one last night was crap, wasn’t it?’
There was a pause, then, ‘What’s crap?’
‘It means that it’s not very nice.’
‘It was all right.’
‘It was dirty. Let’s go to a decent hotel, that’s what I want to do.’
‘But we can stay at my house.’
A jet had just left the runway and was banking hard at what appeared to be rooftop level. We watched for a while, transfixed; even Kelly was impressed.
As the roar of its engines died down I said, ‘Come on, let’s find that office.’
I kept looking forward and left, trying to judge which building it was going to be. There was a hotchpotch of styles: old factories and storage units, new, purpose-built two-storey office blocks rubbed shoulders with car parks and truck container dumps. In between the buildings I could just glimpse the trees that lined the Potomac, maybe 300 metres beyond.
We were in the high 90s, so I knew the PIRA office block wouldn’t be far away. We walked on until we got to a new-looking two-storey office block, all steel frames and exposed pipework. All the fluorescent lights were on inside. I tried to read the name plates, but couldn’t make them out in the gloom without squinting hard or going closer, neither of which I wanted to do. One said Unicom, but I couldn’t make out the others.
It didn’t look much like the sort of Sinn Féin or PIRA offices I was used to. Cable Street in Londonderry, for example, was a two-up, two-down in a 1920s terrace, and the places in west Belfast were much the same. They certainly weren’t high-tech office blocks that looked like miniatures of the Pompidou Centre. Had Pat got this right? In my mind I’d been expecting some old tenement. Chances were this was just a front – it would be a commercial business and the people working there would be legit.
I focused on the target as we completed a walk-past, but didn’t look back. You have to take in all the information first time around.
‘Nick?’
‘What?’
‘I’m wet.’
I looked down. Her feet were soaked; I’d been concentrating so much on what to do next that I hadn’t noticed the puddles we were walking through. I should have bought her a pair of wellies at the mall.
We got to a T-junction. Looking left, I could see that the road led down towards the river. More cars parked up on verges, and even more scrapyards.
I looked right. At the end of the street was the elevated highway and, just before that, above the rooftops, I could see the dish on top of the Calypso hotel. I was feeling good. A target walk-past and somewhere to stay, and all before 11 a.m.
16
We walked into the hotel car park. I pointed between a pick-up truck and a UPS van. ‘Wait under the landing, keep out of the rain. I’ll be back soon.’
‘I want to come with you, Nick.’
I started my puppy training act. ‘No . . . wait . . . there. I won’t be long.’ I disappeared before she could argue.
The hotel reception was just one of the ground-floor rooms turned into an office, and checking in was as casual as the layout. The poor Brit family story was understood a lot quicker here; they obviously didn’t grow too much corn around these parts.
I went outside, collected Kelly and, as we walked along the concrete and breeze-block towards our new room on the second floor, I was busy thinking about what I’d have to do next. She suddenly tugged my hand. ‘Double crap!’
‘What?’
‘You know, not nice. You said the other one was crap. This is double crap.’
I had to agree. I even thought I could smell vomit. ‘No, no, wait till you get in. You see that satellite dish? We can probably get every single programme in the world on that. It’s not going to be crap at all.’
There were two king-sized beds in the room, a big TV and the usual dark lacquered surfaces and a few bits of furniture – a long sideboard that had seen better days, a wardrobe that was just a rail inside an open cupboard in the corner and one of those things that you rest your suitcase on.
I checked the bathroom and saw a little bottle of shampoo. ‘See that?’ I said. ‘Always the sign of a good hotel. I think we’re in the Ritz.’
I plugged in the telephone and recharger, then it was straight on with the telly, flicking through the channels for a kids’ programme. It was part of the SOPs now.
I pulled her coat off, gave it a shake out and hung it up, then went over to the air-conditioner and pressed a few buttons. I held my coat out, testing the air flow; I wanted the room to get hot. Still waiting for some reaction from the machine I said, ‘What’s on?’
‘
Power Rangers
.’
Power Rangers
.’
‘Who are they?’
I knew very well what it was all about, but there was no harm in a bit of conversation. I didn’t want us to be best mates, go on holidays together and share toothbrushes and all that sort of shit – far from it, the sooner this was sorted out, the better. But for the relationship to look normal it had to be normal, and I didn’t want to get lifted because some busybody thought we didn’t belong together.
I said, ‘Which one do you like?’
‘I like Katherine; she’s the pink one.’
‘Why’s that, because of the colour?’
‘Because she’s not a geek, she’s really cool.’ Then she told me all about Katherine and how she was a Brit. ‘I like that because Daddy comes from England.’
I made her change into a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. It took a lifetime. I thought, Fuck parenting, it’s not for me. Every moment of your time is taken up. What was the point, if you just spent all day on butler duty?
She was finally dry and sorted out. Next to the TV was a coffee percolator and packets of milk and sugar, and I got that on the go. As the machine started to purr and bubble I went to the window. As I looked out of the net curtain, left and right of me were the other two sides of the drab, grey concrete square; below was the car park, and across the road and higher up was the highway. I realized that my mood matched the view.
Rain was still falling. I could see the plumes of spray behind the trucks as they rolled along the highway. It wasn’t heavy, but continuous, the kind that seeps into everything. I was suddenly aware of Kelly standing next to me.
‘I hate this type of weather,’ I said. ‘Always have, ever since I was a teenager and joined the Army. Even now, on a really wet and windy winter’s day, I’ll make myself a mug of tea and sit on a chair by the window, and just look out and think of all the poor soldiers sitting in a hole in the middle of nowhere, freezing, soaking wet, wondering what they’re doing there.’
A wry smile came to my face as the percolator stopped bubbling and I looked down at Kelly. What wouldn’t I give to be back on Salisbury Plain, just sitting in a soaking-wet trench, my only worry in the world how to stop being wet, cold and hungry?
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