“If we find him,” Fitzwilliam continued, “I think we have ample grounds for arrest, what with the trouble he caused at King’s Cross.”
Patel’s eyes stared over the top of his pad. “Arrest?”
“Arrest. Charge of public disorder, inciting a riot in a tube station, whatever. We can at least detain him before someone gets killed, put him on a plane back to wherever in the States he comes from. I suggest you start by having the security people at all rail and tube stations keep an eye out for him. The pictures show him with a bag, luggage. That would suggest he’s in transit. That’s just a guess, of course.”
“You are quite good at guessing, sah.”
29
Jason had been waiting for more than two hours for the excitement to settle down at the St. Pancras/King’s Cross station just a few blocks away. From a fish-and-chip takeaway across the street, he had watched a procession of armored bomb-disposal vehicles, helmeted bomb-disposal personnel with body armor thick enough to make them resemble turtles, and sniffer dogs with no armor at all.
The British took his threat seriously, as well they should. But now there was no way to know what lines were still operating and the only train to Durham might well be delayed.
Worse, the uniformed beat cop had peered into the fish-and-chip shop with increasing frequency. Perhaps it was the bag that had aroused suspicion. Jason had wiped his face and fingers and left the tasteless and half-eaten meal still oozing grease into the newspaper on which it had been served. He ducked into the Underground, gratified to notice the police were no longer blocking the entrance. Perhaps he could get on his way after all.
It was a young woman in uniform who caught his attention just as he reached the bottom of the escalator. And not because she was young, rosy-cheeked, and rather pretty in that wholesome English way. She was studying a photograph Jason instantly recognized as himself, taken in the King’s Cross station only hours before. Involuntarily, he raised his eyes to meet the glassy stare of a camera surveying the platform and those upon it.
The realization his picture might well be all over London made him think he was about to lose the fish and chips right here.
Carefully keeping his back to the young woman, he relaxed slightly as the next train whooshed into the station from his left. He stepped into the first door that wheezed open, shouldering aside a disembarking elderly gent complete with bowler on head and umbrella under one arm.
In response to the justifiable glare, Jason muttered an apology without slowing down. Instead, he reached the end of the car and stepped onto the small platform between it and the next. He continued at as a brisk pace as possible until he reached the fifth and final carriage, where the end was unlike the American subways to which he had become accustomed. The last car did not end in an opening simply barred by a spring gate. He was facing a locked steel door. Had it been that long since he had been in London?
A glance out of the window brought home another unpleasant unfamiliarity: there was no room between tracks even had he been able to leave the car. The London trains passed within inches, not feet, of each other, unlike their cousins across the pond.
A sound behind him made him turn around. A plump grandmotherly type was settling into her seat, eyeing him suspiciously over a large shopping bag that testified to a recent trip to the greengrocer’s.
This was not going to work: if he were spotted on the train, police would be waiting at the next station. Bumping shoulders with several more passengers, he exited the train back onto the platform, his bag grasped tightly as the wheels bumped over uneven spots. Keeping his face to the ground, he forced himself to shuffle, not rush, to the stairs to the National Rail station above. He paused twice, both times to rub a hand along the stairs, accumulating a palmful of grime.
This time, his memory served him well. On the concourse to platforms 1–3 was the paper-doll-cutout sign for toilets. Besides the row of urinals, half a dozen stalls waited behind closed doors. The operation was not one run by the London Underground but private enterprise, as indicated by the man in the white mess jacket seated by the door who caught and misinterpreted Jason’s urgency.
“That’ll be fifty p, sah,” he said pushing open the door to a vacant stall.
Jason handed the man a full pound, slamming the door behind him as he entered. First, he applied gritty palms to his face. Seated on the toilet, he rummaged through his bag until he found the wrinkled polo shirt and jeans. His clean shirt and khakis replaced them in the bag.
As he exited, the attendant made no effort to divert his stare or surprise. A quick glance in the mirror above the washbasins revealed the reason: Jason’s face was streaked with dirt, his clothes looking very much like he had slept in them, quite likely on the street.
The attention of the people on the platform was focused on the arrival of half a dozen more uniformed officers. No one noticed the man at the end, the one who looked like he had slept in the tube as some of the city’s homeless, scorning council housing, were wont to do. He was filthy: dark smears of soot across his face and hands that looked like they had handled coal dust. Bag tucked under one arm, he shuffled along with the gait of one who simply has nothing left in life to lose.
In London as in most American cities, street people are near invisible. The existence of the phenomenon has in recent memory become an embarrassment. The hobos and tramps of another era who survived on odd jobs and individual charity are today mere beggars, likely the victims of mental illness, addiction, or something else rendering them offensive if not potentially dangerous to the public. Collective charities have unwittingly soothed the common conscience by minimizing the sight of such people like the one dragging his feet along the platform now with soup kitchens, shelters, and counseling. None of those has removed the homeless from the streets but instead simply centralized them at such places as the Salvation Army’s Faith House on nearby Argyle Street, no doubt this man’s destination.
Consequently, no one paid the slightest attention to the rumpled, filthy wretch as he got onto the Up escalator and disappeared from sight.
Outside, Jason stepped off the curb and attempted to flag down a cab. The black Morris missed him by inches. A second effort with another taxi yielded the same result.
Of course. What hack driver was going to take a dirty — and very likely smelly — street person as a fare?
The third time, Jason moved as the taxi stopped for a light. Opening the door, he climbed into the backseat.
“Now, see here,” the cabbie began angrily, turning in his seat.
Jason proffered a twenty-pound note. “Twenty-four Grosvenor Square.”
London cabbies are famous for their encyclopedic knowledge of the city, so Jason should not have been surprised when the man asked. “US embassy? Are you daft, man?”
Apparently street people did not frequent embassies.
Jason sat back in the seat. “You have your fare. Drive.”
Other than audible muttering, not another word was spoken during the trip.
The United Sates embassy to the Court of Saint James is in London’s posh Mayfair section. Specifically, it takes up the western side of Grosvenor Square (which is actually circular), the street being closed to vehicular traffic since 2001. Statues of General Eisenhower and Franklin Roosevelt stand in the gardenlike green space at the center of the square. Nine stories (three underground) of white postmodernist architecture is capped by a huge gilt eagle. The style and statuary clash somewhat with the eighteenth-century Georgian town houses for which the square is known. One of them housed John Adams as the first American ambassador to England. It is likely the local residents will not be sad to see the embassy move to its proposed location in the Nine Elms section of Wandsworth. With one possible exception: the ground upon which the embassy presently stands is leased from the duke of Westminster because he would sell the site only upon the United States’ return of Virginia — land seized from his family by the rebels during the Revolution.