The locker also contained a collection of Ordnance Survey maps. Francisco pulled out the ones for Berkshire and Oxfordshire and left the rest. Their best bet was to follow the Thames upstream and disappear into the countryside. He slipped the maps into plastic cases to protect them from the rain.
Next he found the first aid kit and a bottle of Evian water. He unscrewed the cap with his teeth, drank some, then pushed up the sleeves of his jacket and poured a little onto the wounds on his wrists where the handcuffs had been. They had been soaking in that filthy river water for ages and he didn’t want them to go septic. Scabs had begun to form, so he picked them off. It was painful but bleeding was the most natural way to get all the rubbish out of the wounds. He sluiced water over them again, took some antibiotic cream out of the first aid kit and smeared it on. Then he fastened the first aid kit again and put that in the rucksack.
There were other things to pack too. Francisco found the bars of Kendal mint cake, pulled the wrapper off one and ate it there and then. A couple of torches with spare batteries. Bolt cutters; two compasses. A sheath knife; a serrated knife. A Second World War knuckleduster knife — an unexpected find while shopping in an army surplus store in north London. It had a vicious steel blade about sixteen centimetres long, and a brass handle in the shape of a knuckleduster; it was a fearsome-looking weapon. He slipped it into the inside pocket of his jacket.
Now he was getting to the bottom of the locker and pulled out a small attaché case. The case itself was shielded with metal so that if the contents of the locker were x-rayed they wouldn’t show up. Francisco set the combination to the correct position and the lock sprang open. Inside was £1, 000 in cash in a waterproof zip bag, along with some credit cards and fake passports — and a Beretta 7.6mm pistol. The pistol had been bought with cash from a friend of a friend. Francisco lifted it out of its casing and snapped the ammunition clip into the grip with the heel of his hand.
‘Spare some change, guv’nor?’
Francisco whirled round, his heart thumping. A bedraggled-looking man with the corned-beef complexion of a down-and-out was standing looking at him, wearing the jacket he had discarded. He was also looking at the open locker with the gun case and the cash in the see-through bag.
You’ve seen too much, thought Francisco. He pulled the trigger And the shot echoed around the walls. Pigeons fluttered in the rafters.
The tramp collapsed immediately, face down in the water. He drifted towards Francisco, who nudged him away with his leg. Blood spread out in a cloud from under the white jacket.
Yes, the gun worked fine.
Chapter Twenty-nine
‘One of our submarines is on red alert because it has missed its routine all-clear signal. We are dealing with the situation — there’s a Nimrod jet on its way out there — but we thought you needed to be informed.’
The Chief Commissioner and General Chambers watched the faces on the screen digest the news. They had called a meeting of all the senior personnel in the bunker. Civil servants from the Ministry of Defence were crowded into the briefing room, along with Sidney Cadogan and Clive Brooks from the Department of the Environment. The Foreign Secretary was there, and that noisy woman Bel Kelland was still there too.
Madeleine Harwood was the first to speak. She was furious. This had been the worst day of her life as a politician, ever. First she’d had to authorize the shutting down of Rebro, then give the go-ahead to the military to use whatever force necessary — including firearms — to deal with looters, and now it looked like she was having to deal with a potentially very serious international incident. As Foreign Secretary, however, this was clearly within her portfolio and she felt on firmer ground responding. ‘It’s ridiculous that in this day and age this sort of thing can happen,’ she snapped. ‘We have safeguards and protocols.’
General Chambers had expected something like this. That was why he and the Chief had set up their end of the link in a private office, away from the emergency control room.
‘We do have protocols, ma’am,’ he replied. ‘They were set by Whitehall.’
Madeleine Harwood rounded on a woman sitting next to her with blue-rimmed glasses and a severe suit. ‘I want an internal inquiry.’
‘So do I,’ snapped the woman. ‘But until it makes its report, I don’t think you should be pointing the finger of blame.’
The General tried to bring the meeting back to the subject in hand. They could bicker all they wanted once he’d said what he needed to say, but if they did it now they were wasting precious satellite time.
The Chief Commissioner sat behind him, his arms folded, his head down. This meeting wasn’t his territory; he was just an impartial observer.
‘The situation is a cause for concern,’ said General Chambers, ‘but as long as the submarine follows its standing orders, it will get the message to stand down.’
Bel had been listening, her sharp chin resting on a folded arm. Now she sat up. ‘So if one transistor fails somewhere — in the satellite or in the sub or at your end — we’ve got an international crisis. That’s great.’
‘Dr Kelland,’ said the woman in the severe suit, ‘there are a million failsafes in our systems. And I’d like to remind you this is classified information and—’
Bel shook her head, her pale blue eyes narrowed as she interrupted her. ‘Don’t you get it? One day it will fail. This flood has caused a million tiny bits of chaos today. Only one of them has to get out of control and who knows what might happen?’
General Chambers stood up and cut the video link. The screen went blank. ‘We’ve done our bit. I think we can just leave them to it,’ he told the Chief Commissioner.
Dorek took the Puma down low. Meena, resting her head against the window, saw fields rush up towards her, then a small town, its buildings and streets completely dark. Traffic crept along its roads like ants. Dorek took them in a quick circle, the Puma tilting at forty-five degrees, then rose nearly vertically.
Meena held onto her stomach. ‘Dorek, do we have to do this? You’re flying like a demented bee.’
‘It’s a search pattern,’ he told her.
Meena leaned her head against the window again. Headphones snaked out from under her green helmet. Her mobile had a radio and she had found a programme that wasn’t sending out emergency broadcasts. It was a phone-in programme in French, which she spoke fluently. It made peculiar listening.
The host was cajoling listeners to call in with their views on the topic of the day — which was the disaster in London. It seemed like the French public were letting their imaginations run riot.
‘What will happen to the stock market? New York and Tokyo won’t have been able to do anything — the world economy will collapse. We should all be very worried about our pensions.’
‘The stock market will be moved out of London to Paris,’ said another caller confidently.
Phil’s voice on the headset inside the helmet drowned out the French scaremongering for a moment. ‘Dorek, what’s that down there? Circle around that traffic jam at eleven o’clock.’
Dorek nudged the stick and the Puma dropped its nose and swooped down like a bird. Meena felt queasy as the ground loomed up fast again.
Down below, a group of cars was clustered around a junction, vying for who would move first. Some people had got out and were having an argument. Wherever you went, it seemed people always had time for road rage.