What
Why
For fuck’s sake
They slipped past Curly; unimportant moments, swallowed by the business at hand.
He’d swung the axe in a sweeping motion that almost caught the ceiling, but instead carved a graceful slice from the air before slamming to a halt in his target’s back.
The force of the blow sent a shockwave up his arm.
Moe coughed blood and slammed facedown on to the table.
Larry had always done the talking. But Moe had been the thinker.
Now Curly said to Larry, ‘Not too slowly. Don’t draw attention.’
Larry, on whose face a superior in-charge smile wasn’t likely to reappear soon, upped their speed.
Curly could still feel it in the muscles in his arm. Not the swing of the axe, but the abrupt stop it had come to. He rubbed his elbow, which seemed to give off heat, like a newly extinguished lightbulb.
In the boot of the car, bound and gagged, Hassan clenched his body tight, as if this might hold his life in place.
‘Downstairs’ at Regent’s Park meant different things, depending on the context. Downstairs was where records were kept; downstairs was where the car park was. But there was another downstairs, much lower, and downstairs, in this context, took you lower than the building was high. This downstairs wasn’t anywhere you wanted to be.
In Central London, there’s almost as much city beneath the streets as above. Some of this is publicly available: the underground itself, of course, and certain sites of special interest, the War Rooms and various bomb shelters among them. And then there’s everywhere else. Sometimes, names leak into the public domain—Bastion, Rampart, Citadel, Pindar—but they remain off-limits; part of Fortress London, the complex of subterranean passages and tunnels—the ‘crisis management facilities’—that exist less to defend the capital itself than to protect its systems of government. If the worst happens, whether toxic, nuclear, natural or civil, these are the redoubts from which control will be reasserted. They are fundamental to London’s geography, and appear on no A—Z.
And then there are the other, less acknowledged hidden places, like those under Regent’s Park.
The elevator ran slowly, and this was deliberate. A long slow descent had a weakening effect on anyone here involuntarily, inducing in those who were conscious a nervous, vulnerable state. Diana Taverner passed the while checking her reflection. For a woman who’d had less than four hours’ sleep in the past thirty, she thought she looked pretty good. But then, she thrived on the dangerous edge. Even when life was on a smoother track, she took corners on two wheels: office/gym/office/wine bar/office/home was a typical day, and sleep was never high on her agenda. Sleep was ceding control. While you slept, anything might happen.
It might while you were awake, too. Her agent, Alan Black, was dead; killed by the Voice of Albion thugs. Any other operation, and that would be it: the whole house of cards would have folded. There’d be an inquiry. When an agent died, there was a ripple effect. Sometimes the splash was so big, careers were washed away.
But this had been run under Moscow rules, like a deep-cover op on foreign ground. As far as Black’s record showed, he’d quit the Service last year, and Taverner had had only one face-to-face with him since he’d gone under. The Voice of Albion was a below-the-radar bunch of Toytown fascists, consisting, until Black had stirred them up, of one man and his dog. None of the op details—the safe-house address, Black’s co-conspirators, the vehicles they’d used—existed anywhere on paper or, God forbid, the ether. And yesterday’s report to Limitations had kept the details scanty; a ‘watching brief’ fell far short of surveillance, and Taverner couldn’t be blamed if Albion had slipped the leash … It was patchy, but Taverner had sealed leakier ops. One watertight report was worth any amount of tradecraft.
The elevator eased to a halt. Diana Taverner stepped into a corridor markedly different from those above ground level; here was exposed brickwork and bare concrete floor, pitted and puddled like a temporary pavement. Water dripped. It was an atmosphere that required careful maintenance. To Taverner’s mind, it reeked of cliché, but tests had proved its effectiveness.
Nick Duffy waited, leaning against a door. The door had a peephole, but the cover had been slapped across it.
‘Any problems?’
His look answered that, but he said it anyway. ‘None at all.’
‘Good. Now fetch the rest.’
‘The rest?’
‘The slow horses. All of them.’
He said, ‘Fine,’ but didn’t move. Instead he said, ‘I know it’s not my place to ask. But what’s going on?’
‘You’re right. It’s not your place.’
‘Right. I’m on it.’
He headed for the lift now, but turned when she called. ‘Nick. I’m sorry. Things have gone arse over tit. You’ve probably noticed.’ The vulgarity startled Taverner almost as much as it did Duffy. ‘This kidnapping business—it’s not what it seemed.’
‘And Slough House is involved?’
She didn’t answer.
He said, ‘Jesus Christ.’
‘Bring them in. Separately. And Nick—I’m sorry. He was a friend, wasn’t he? Jed Moody.’
‘We worked together.’
‘Lamb’s story is he tripped over his own feet, broke his neck. But …’
‘But what?’
Taverner said, ‘It’s too soon to say. But take Lamb yourself. And watch him, Nick. He’s trickier than he looks.’
‘I know all about Jackson Lamb,’ Duffy assured her. ‘He put one of my men down earlier.’
‘Then know this too.’ She hesitated. ‘If he’s involved in this kidnapping, he’ll disappear sooner than be brought in. And he’s a streetfighter.’
Duffy waited.
‘I can’t give an instruction, Nick. But if people are going to get hurt, I’d rather it was them than us.’
‘Them and us?’
‘Nobody was expecting this. Go. The Queens’ll give you their mobile locations. Call in soon.’
Duffy caught the lift.
As Diana Taverner tapped the fingerpad to unlock the door he’d been leaning on, she thought briefly of Hassan Ahmed, who had ceased to be a priority. One of two things was going to happen to Hassan. He’d turn up on a street corner, unharmed, or his body would be dumped in a ditch. The latter was more likely. Having killed Black, the Albion crew weren’t likely to let Hassan live. In their shoes, Taverner wouldn’t wait. But maybe that was just her. She set a high priority on watching her own back.
The fingerpad buzzed. The door unlocked.
She stepped inside, prepared to break a slow horse.
There was silence from the boot. They’d have drugged the kid again, but it was Moe who’d had the chloroform, and if he’d had more, they’d not found it. Moe had been responsible for most things: choosing the target, finding the house, all the website stuff. Larry had thought he was in charge, but it was Moe all the time. Fucking spook.
‘We could dump him,’ Larry said suddenly.
‘Where?’
‘Anywhere. We could park and walk away.’
‘And then what?’
‘… Disappear.’
Right. But nobody ever disappeared. They just went somewhere else. ‘Keep driving,’ Curly told him.