The cabin light came on a couple of hours before landing and we were served breakfast. I gave Kelly a nudge, but she groaned and buried herself under her blanket. I didn’t bother with the food. From feeling almost elated at having got away with it, I awoke profoundly depressed. My mood was as black as the coffee in front of me. I’d been mad to let myself feel relieved. We weren’t out of the woods by a long way; if they knew we were on the aircraft, of course they wouldn’t do anything about it until we landed. It was at the point that I walked off the aircraft and stepped onto the ramp that they’d lift me. Even if that didn’t happen, there was Immigration. The officials trying to keep out undesirables are much tougher and a lot more on the ball than those in charge of waving you off. They vet your documents that bit more closely, scrutinize your body language, read your eyes. Kelly and I were on a stolen passport. We’d got through at Dulles, but that didn’t mean we could pull it off again.
I took four capsules and finished my coffee. I remembered that I was an American citizen now. When the attendant came past I asked her for an immigration card. Kelly still wouldn’t wake up.
Filling in the card, I decided that the Sandborns had just moved and now lived only one door away from Mr and Mrs Brown. Hunting Bear Path was the only address I could talk about convincingly.
If I was lifted at Immigration, it wouldn’t be the first time. I’d come into Gatwick airport once from a job. I gave my passport to the immigration officer, and while he was inspecting it a boy came up on either side, gripped my arms and took the passport from the official. ‘Mr Stamford? Special Branch. Come with us.’ I wasn’t going to argue; my cover was good, I was in the UK now, everything was going to be fine.
They strip-searched me in an interview room, firing questions left, right and centre. I went through the whole routine of my cover story: where I’d been, what I’d been doing, why I’d been doing it. They telephoned my cover and James supported my story. Everything was going swimmingly.
Then I got put in the airport detention cells and three policemen came in. They wasted no time; they piled in like rugby forwards, two holding my arms, one throwing punches, then taking turns. They filled me in severely. No word of explanation.
Next I got taken for an interview and was accused of being a paedophile and procuring kids in Thailand – which was strange, considering I’d been on a deniable op in Russia. There was nothing I could say, it was just down to denying and waiting for the system to get me out.
After about four hours of interviews I was sitting in my cell. In came people from the intelligence service, to debrief me on my performance. It had been a fucking exercise. They’d been testing all the Ks as we came back into the UK; the only trouble was they’d picked the wrong charge to pull us in on. The police obviously didn’t wait for niceties like court rooms when it came to dealing with child molesters, and everyone who was lifted got taken to one side and given the good news. One bloke, who’d flown into Jersey, got such a severe kicking he ended up in hospital.
Kelly was still half asleep and she looked as rough as I felt. She looked as if she’d been sleeping in a hedge. She yawned and made an attempt to stretch. As she opened her eyes and looked around, completely bewildered, I grinned and offered her the carton of orange juice. ‘How are you today, Louise?’
She still looked lost for a second or two, then got back with the programme. ‘I’m all right.’ She paused, grinned and added, ‘Daddy.’ She closed her eyes and turned over, trying to sort herself out with the pillow and blanket. I didn’t have the heart to tell her we were landing soon.
At least I got to drink her orange juice as a Welcome to London video came on the screens, loads of pomp, circumstance and pageantry, the Household Cavalry astride their horses, Guardsmen marching up and down, the Queen riding down the Mall in her carriage. To me, London had never looked so good.
Then the aircraft landed and we became actors again.
We taxied and stopped at our ramp. Everybody jumped out of their seat as if they were going to miss out on something. I leaned over to Kelly. ‘Wait here, we’re in no rush.’ I wanted to get into the middle of the crowd.
Eventually we got all the bits and pieces back into Kelly’s daysack, organized the teddies and joined the line. I was trying to look ahead, but couldn’t see much.
We got to the galley area, turned left and shuffled towards the door. On the ramp were three men – normal British Airports Authority reception staff in fluorescent jackets, who were manning the airbridge, helping a woman into a wheelchair. Things were looking good; freedom felt so close.
We walked up the ramp and joined the spur that led to the main terminal. Kelly didn’t have a care in the world, which was good. I didn’t want her to understand what was happening.
There was heavy foot traffic in both directions, people running with hand luggage, drifting in and out of shops, milling around at gates. I had the daysack and laptop over my shoulder and held Kelly’s hand. She carried the teddies. We reached the walkway.
Heathrow is the most monitored, most camera’d, most visually and physically secure airport in the world. Untold pairs of eyes would already be on us; this was no time for looking furtive or guilty. The travelator stopped by gates 43–47, then a new one started about 10 metres later. As we trundled along, I waited until there was a gap each side of us and bent down to Kelly. ‘You mustn’t forget I am your daddy today – OK, Louise Sandborn?’
‘As if!’ she said with a huge smile.
I just hoped we were both smiling in 30 minutes’ time.
We came to the end of the walkway and took a down escalator, following signs for passport control and baggage reclaim. From halfway down the escalator I could see the Immigration hall straight ahead. This was where we’d stand or fall.
There were about four or five people waiting to go through each of the desks. I started joking with Kelly, trying to give myself something to do instead of just looking nervous. I’d entered countries illegally hundreds of times, but never so unprepared or under such pressure.
‘All set, Louise?’
‘I’m ready, Daddy.’
I passed her the daysack so I could get the passport and visa card out of my pocket. We ambled up to passport control and joined the end of a queue. I kept reminding myself about an American friend who’d travelled from Boston to Canada, and then from Canada back to the UK. He’d picked up his friend’s passport by mistake while they were sharing a hotel room; he couldn’t get back to exchange it, so he’d had to bluff it. No-one had even batted an eyelid.
We waited in line. Still with the laptop on my right shoulder, I was holding Kelly’s hand with my left. I kept looking down at her and smiling, but not excessively so; that was suspicious behaviour and I knew that people would be watching on monitors and from behind two-way mirrors. The business type in front of us went through with a wave and a smile to the official. It was our turn. We approached the desk.
I handed my documents to the woman. She ran her eyes down the details on the card. She looked down at Kelly from her high desk. ‘Hello, welcome to England.’
Kelly came back with a very American ‘Hi!’
I guessed the woman was in her late thirties. Her hair was permed, but the perm had gone slightly wrong.
‘Did you have a nice flight?’ she asked.
Kelly had Jenny or Ricky in one hand, hanging by her ear, and the other one’s head was sticking out from the top flap of her daysack on her back. She said, ‘Yes, it was fine, thank you.’
The woman kept the conversation going. ‘And what’s your name?’ she asked, still checking the form.
Could I trust her to get it right, or should I butt in?
Kelly smiled and said, ‘Kelly!’
What a farce. We’d come so far, we’d come through so much, only to be caught by a line straight from a B movie.
Straightaway I smiled down at Kelly, ‘No, it’s not!’ I didn’t want to look at the woman. I could feel the smile drain from her face, could feel her eyes burning into the side of my head.
There was a pause that felt like an hour as I tried to think of what to do or say next. I pictured the woman’s finger hovering over a concealed button.
Kelly got there before me. ‘I know, I’m joking,’ she giggled, holding out a teddy. ‘This is Kelly! My name is Louise. What’s yours?’
‘My name’s Margaret.’ The smile was back. If only she’d known how close she’d been to a kill.
She opened the passport. Her eyes flicked up and down as she studied first the picture, then my face. She put the passport down below the level of the desk and I saw the tell-tale glow of ultraviolet light. Then she looked back into my eyes and said, ‘When was this picture taken?’
‘About four years ago, I guess.’ I gave a weak smile, and said in a low voice that Kelly wasn’t meant to overhear, ‘I’ve been having chemotherapy. The hair’s just starting to grow back.’ I rubbed my head. My skin felt damp and cold. Hopefully I still looked shit. The capsules certainly made me feel it. ‘I’m bringing Louise over to see my wife’s parents because it’s been quite a traumatic time. My wife’s staying with our other child because he’s ill at the moment. When it rains, it pours!’
‘Oh,’ she said, and it sounded genuinely sympathetic. But she didn’t hand back the passport.
There was a big lull, as if she was waiting for me to fill the silence with a confession. Or maybe she was just trying to think of something helpful and human to say. Finally she said, ‘Have a good stay,’ and put the documents back on the desktop.
There was that urge just to grab them and run.
‘Thank you very much,’ I said, picking them up and putting them back into my pocket, then carefully doing up the button, because that was what a normal dad would do. Only then did I turn to Kelly. ‘C’mon, baby, let’s go!’
I started to walk, but Kelly stood her ground. Oh fuck, now what?
‘Goodbye, Margaret,’ she beamed, ‘have a nice day!’
Then that was it. We were nearly there. I knew there wasn’t going to be a problem with the luggage because I wasn’t going to collect it.
I checked the carousels. There was a flight from Brussels that was also unloading, so I headed for the blue channel. Even if they were watching and stopped us because Kelly had a Virgin Airlines bag, I would play the stupid person routine.
But there weren’t any Customs on duty in the blue channel. We were free.
37
The large sliding doors opened up into the arrivals hall. We walked through into a throng of chauffeurs holding up cards and people waiting for their loved ones. Nobody gave us a second look.
I went straight to the
bureau de change
. I found I’d done well last night with Ron, Melvin and the Sandborns, ending up with over three hundred pounds in cash. Like a nugget, I forgot to ask for a small-denomination note for the machine and we had to queue for ages for tube tickets. It didn’t seem to matter; even the hour-long ride to Bank station was enjoyable. I was a free man, I was amongst ordinary people. None of them knew who we were or was going to pull a gun on us.
The City is a strange mixture of architecture. As we left the station we passed grand buildings comprised of columns and puritanically straight lines – the old Establishment. Turn a corner and we were confronted by monstrosities that were built in the Sixties and early Seventies by architects who must have taken a ‘Let’s go fuck up the City’ pill. One of these buildings was the one I was heading for, the NatWest bank in Lombard Street, a road so narrow that just one car could squeeze down it.
We went through the revolving steel and glass doors into the banking hall, where rows of cashiers sat behind protective screens. But I wasn’t there for money.
The reception desk was manned by a man and a woman, both in their early twenties, both wearing NatWest suits; they even had little corporate motifs sewn into the material of the breast pocket, probably so the staff wouldn’t wear them out of hours. As Kelly would have said, ‘As if!’
I saw both of them give Kelly and me an instant appraisal and could feel them turning up their noses. I gave them a cheery, ‘Hi, how are you?’ and asked to speak with Guy Bexley.
The woman said, ‘Can I have your name, please?’ as she picked up the phone.
‘Nick Stevenson.’
The girl called an extension. The man went back to being efficient on the other side of the reception desk.
I bent down and whispered to Kelly, ‘I’ll explain later.’
‘He’ll be along in a minute. Would you like to sit down?’
We waited on a settee that was very long, very deep and very plastic. I could sense Kelly’s cogs turning.
Sure enough: ‘Nick, am I Louise Stevenson now, or Louise Sandborn?’
I screwed up my face and scratched my head. ‘Umm . . . Kelly!’
Guy Bexley came down. Guy was my ‘Relationship Manager’, whatever that was. All I knew was that he was the man I asked for when I wanted to get my security blanket out. He was late twenties, and you could see by his hairstyle and goatee beard that he felt uncomfortable in the issued suit and would be far happier wearing PVC trousers, holding a bottle of water and raving all night bare-chested.