When the British intelligence service started to gather int about PIRA’s drug connections with Gibraltar, it seemed to present a window of opportunity. After the events of 6 March, however, the window was slammed shut. Those votes were too important.
By the early 1990s the US had a new administration – and the UK a new prime minister. In Northern Ireland, the peace process began. The US were told – and the message was delivered at the highest level – that unless they put pressure on PIRA to come to the peace table the UK would expose what was happening to Noraid funds raised in America. It would look to the world like a failure by a power that preached so readily to others, to fight the drug war in its own backyard.
Another deal was struck. Clinton allowed Gerry Adams into the USA in 1995, a move that was not only good for the Irish-American vote but made Clinton look like the prince of peacemakers. He also appeared to be snubbing John Major’s stand against PIRA, but the British didn’t mind; they knew the agenda. Behind closed doors, Gerry Adams was told that, if PIRA didn’t let the peace process happen, the US would come down on them like a ton of steaming shit.
A ceasefire was indeed declared. It seemed that it was now time to talk for real instead of the years of covert talks that had got nowhere. Clinton and the British government would be seen as peace brokers, and PIRA would have a say in the way the deal was shaped.
On 12 February 1996, however, a massive bomb exploded at Canary Wharf in London, killing two and causing hundreds of millions of pounds’ worth of damage. The ceasefire was broken. It was back to business as usual.
But it didn’t end there. Kev had also discovered that PIRA had been trying to blackmail certain Gibraltarian officials, with some success. It seemed Gibraltar was still the key to Europe. Spain was far too much of a risk. They had also targeted some important personalities in the US, so they could continue to operate their drugs business with impunity. One of the victims was high up in the DEA. Kev’s problem was he didn’t know who.
I did; I had the photograph of his boss.
And now I knew why McGear, Fernahan and Macauley had been in Gibraltar. Whoever the official was, they’d been there to give him a gypsy’s warning, and to try to blackmail him with the shipment documents and photographs to get the route open again. Maybe ETA had wanted too big a cut of the profits in Spain.
I closed down the laptop. I had to get back to the UK. I had to see Simmonds.
Kelly had been watching me. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Can we have breakfast now?’
I walked with her to Dunkin’ Donuts. She had a carton of milk, I had coffee and we both got stuck into some big stinking doughnuts. I had six.
At ten o’clock we went back down the escalator to International Arrivals. I needed passports – British or American, I didn’t care. I scanned the international flights on the monitor. Chances were we were going to end up with American documents as opposed to British, purely because of the number of families streaming back from the spring break.
Just like before, there were people both sides of the railings, waiting with their cameras and flowers. Kelly and I sat on the PVC seats near the domestic carousels on the other side of the international gates. I had my arm around her, as if I was cuddling her and chatting away. In fact I was talking her through some of the finer points of theft.
‘Do you think you can do it?’
We sat and watched the first wave of domestic arrivals come and collect their luggage.
I pinged a potential family. ‘That’s the sort of thing we’re looking for, but it’s two boys,’ I smiled. ‘You want to be a boy for the day?’
‘No way. Boys smell!’
I put my nose into my sweatshirt. I agreed. ‘OK, we’ll wait.’
A flight arrived from Frankfurt and this time we struck gold. The parents were late thirties, the kids were about ten or eleven, a girl and a boy; the mother was carrying a clear plastic handbag with white mesh, so you could check everything was where it should be. I couldn’t believe our luck. ‘See them? That’s what we want. Let’s go, shall we?’
There was a slightly hesitant ‘Yeahhh.’ She didn’t sound too keen now. All mouth and no trousers, my mother would have said. Should I let her do this? I could cut it right now. As they walked towards the toilets I had to make a decision. Fuck it, let’s carry on and get this done.
‘She’s going in with her daughter,’ I said. ‘Make sure nobody’s behind you. Remember, I’ll be waiting.’
We followed on casually. The husband had left with the boy, perhaps to visit one of the vending machines, or to get a taxi or their car.
They both went into the toilets via the ladies’ entrance, chatting and giggling. The woman had the bag over her shoulder. We entered via the men’s on the right of the disabled toilets, and immediately went into one of the large cubicles.
‘I’ll be in this one here, OK, Kelly?’
‘OK.’
‘Remember what you have to do?’
I got a big, positive nod.
‘Off you go, then.’ I closed the door and held it in place. The toilets were large enough for a wheelchair to manoeuvre in. The slightest sound seemed to echo. The floors were wet and smelled of bleach. The timesheet on the back of the door showed that the place had been cleaned only fifteen minutes ago.
My heart was pumping so hard I could feel it underneath my shirt. My whole future pivoted on the actions of a seven-year-old girl. She had to slip her hand under the cubicle, grab the handbag, put it under her coat and walk away without looking back. Not difficult, just majorly flawed. But without passports we couldn’t get out of the country, it was as simple as that. There was no way I could go back to Big Al’s. Besides the risk of the journey, I couldn’t trust him, for the simple reason that I had no idea what he’d been doing since I left him. It was just too fucking complicated. We needed to get out of this country, and now.
I was shaken from my thoughts by a sudden
knock, knock, knock
and a nervous, ‘Nickkk!’
I opened the door quickly, didn’t even look, and in she ran. I closed and locked it, picked her up and carried her over to the toilet.
I put down the lid and we sat together. I smiled and whispered, ‘Well done!’ She looked both excited and scared. I was just scared, because I knew that, at any minute, all hell would break loose.
And then it came. The mother was running out of the toilet, shouting, ‘I’ve had my bag stolen! Where’s Louise? Louise!’
The girl came out and started to cry. ‘Mommy! Mommy!’
I could hear them both run off screaming. Now was not the time to get out. People would be looking; attention would be focused. Let’s just sit tight and look at the passports.
We’d just robbed Mrs Fiona Sandborn and family. Fine, except that Mr Sandborn didn’t look at all like Mr Stone. Never mind, I could do something about that later on. But the names of both kids were entered on each of their parents’ passports, and that was a problem.
I pulled out the cash and her reading glasses. The toilet cistern was a sealed unit behind the wall. There was nowhere to hide the bag. I got up, told Kelly to stand and listened at the door.
The woman had found a policeman. I imagined the scene outside. A little crowd would have gathered round. The cop would be making notes, radioing Control, maybe checking the other cubicles. I broke into a sweat.
I stood at the door and waited for what seemed like an hour. Kelly tiptoed exaggeratedly towards me; I bent down and she whispered in my ear, ‘Is it all right yet?’
‘Almost.’
Then I heard a banging noise and knocking. Somebody was pushing back the doors in the vacant cubicles and knocking on the doors of the others. They were looking for the thief or, more likely, to see if the bag had been dumped once the money had been taken. They’d be at our cubicle any second.
I didn’t have time to think. ‘Kelly, you must talk if they knock. I want you to—’
Knock knock knock
.
In the echo chamber of the disabled toilet, it sounded like the slam of a cell door.
A male voice shouted, ‘Hello. Police. Anyone there?’ He tried to turn the handle.
I quickly moved Kelly back to the toilet and whispered in her ear, ‘Say you will be out soon.’
She shouted, ‘I’m coming out soon!’
There was no reply, just the same thing happening at the next cubicle. The danger had passed, or so I hoped.
All that was left to do was dump my pistol and mags. That was easy. I slipped them into Fiona’s bag and crushed it into a package that would fit in a bin.
It was an hour before I decided it was safe to leave. I turned to Kelly. ‘Your name is Louise now, OK? Louise Sandborn.’
‘OK.’
She didn’t seem fussed at all.
‘Louise, when we leave here in a minute, I want you to be really happy and hold my hand.’ With that I picked up the bag. ‘OK, we’re off!’
‘To England?’
‘Of course! But first of all we’ve got to get on the plane. By the way, you were great – well done!’
We got into the Departures area at 11.30 a.m. Still several hours to go before the first possible flight, the BA216 to Heathrow at 17:10.
I went to a phone and, using the numbers in the airport magazine, called each airline in turn to check seat availability. The British Airways flight was fully booked. So was United Airways’ 918 at 18:10, the BA at 18:10 and the United at 18:40. I eventually managed to find two spare seats on a flight with Virgin at 18:45, and gave all the details of Mr Sandborn, who was on his way to the airport right now. Payment was courtesy of the details for Big Al’s plastic on the car hire form.
I wandered past the Virgin desk for a check, and found it didn’t open until 1.30 p.m. One and a half hours to sit and sweat.
Terry Sandborn was a little older than me and his shoulder-length hair was starting to go grey. My hair was just below the ear and brown. Thankfully, his passport was 4 years old.
To the delight of Kelly and the terminal’s barbershop owner I underwent a number one crew-cut, coming out looking like a US Marine.
We then went into the travel shop and I bought a pack of painkillers that claimed to be the answer to a woman’s period pains. Judging from the list of ingredients, they were certainly the answer for me.
All the time, I kept hoping that the police had assumed the motive for the theft was money, and, rather than pursuing the matter further, had left it to the Sandborns to report the cards and passport missing. I didn’t want to turn up at the ticket sales desk and be jumped on by several hundredweight of cop.
Still 30 minutes to go before we could check in. One more thing to do.
‘Kelly, we have to go to the toilet up here for a while.’
‘I don’t need to go.’
‘It’s for me to get into my disguise. Come and see.’
We went to the disabled toilet in departures and closed the door. I took out Fiona’s glasses. They were gold-framed and had lenses as thick as the bottom of Coke bottles. I tried them on. The frames weren’t big enough but they looked OK. I turned to Kelly and crossed my eyes. Then I had to stop her laughing.
I got the painkillers out of the holdall. ‘I’m going to take this stuff and it’s going to make me ill. But it’s for a reason, OK?’
She wasn’t quite sure. ‘Oh, OK, then.’
I took six capsules and waited. The hot flushes started, then the cold sweats. I put my hands up to show it was OK as six doughnuts and a coffee flew out of my mouth into the toilet bowl.
Kelly watched in amazement as I had a rinse in the basin. I looked at myself in the mirror. Just as I’d hoped, I looked as pale and clammy as I felt. I took two more.
There were few customers at the long line of check-in desks and only one woman on duty at Virgin Atlantic sales. She was writing something and her head was down as we approached. She was in her mid-twenties, black and beautiful, with relaxed hair pulled back in a bun.
‘Hello, the name’s Sandborn.’ Because of the vomiting my voice was lower and coarse. ‘There should be two tickets for me.’ I tried to look disorganized and fucked off. ‘Hopefully my brother-in-law has booked them?’ My eyes looked to the sky in hope.
‘Sure, do you have a reference number?’
‘Sorry, he didn’t give me one. Just Sandborn.’
She tapped that out and said, ‘That’s fine, Mr Sandborn, two tickets for you and Louise. How many bags are you checking in?’
I had the laptop on my shoulder and the holdall in my hand. I dithered, as if working out if I’d need the laptop. ‘Just this one.’ I put the holdall on the scale. It didn’t weigh much, but it was bulked out respectably with the blanket.
‘Could I see your passport, please?’
I looked in all my pockets without apparent success. I didn’t want to produce Sandborn’s documents straight away. ‘Look, I know we were lucky to get seats at all, but is it possible to make sure we’re sitting together?’ I leaned a little closer and half whispered, ‘Louise hates flying.’