The Dutchman was another unreliable factor, now that Elder had his hands on him. That was why she was here early, just to check what extra security precautions they’d taken.
As the sleek black cars had arrived, while she was listening to her radio, she’d been watching Dominic Elder. No chance of his spotting her of course. She was just one of a crowd who had stopped on their way to work to watch, from behind the metal barriers, the famous people arriving. She’d tucked herself in between two large men. And she watched Elder, watched him talking to two other men — they looked like police to her, probably Special Branch, MI5’s dogsbodies. One of them made a big show of the fact that he was armed. The other was quiet, almost sleepy in comparison. Elder looked tired and alert at the same time. Like her, he wouldn’t have been getting much sleep recently. Like her, he’d been waiting for this day. Beneath the shabby suit he would be carrying his own gun, the Browning. It was typical of him to buy British. Typical of him to keep faith with something which had failed him before...
She’d watched for a few moments and she’d looked up occasionally to spot the marksmen, armed only with binoculars thus far, as they examined the scene from their lofty heights. Then she drifted away. Her car was parked outside a mansion block in a street behind Westminster Cathedral, tickets on the windshield showing she’d paid for three hours’ parking. Three hours was the limit. She’d toyed with the idea of breaking into another car and taking a resident’s parking permit to stick on the Alfa’s windscreen. But any traffic warden worth the name would pause to compare license plate details.
She was playing a cassette on her personal hi-fi: an Ohm mantra repeated over the sound of a human heartbeat. It calmed her as she walked back to the car, got into it, and rummaged beneath the passenger seat for her civil service satchel and a green Harrods carrier bag. She glanced around her before opening the satchel and peering inside, seeming happy with what she found there. Her own choice of pistol was an Italian-made Beretta 9-millimeter 92F, a link to her days in Bologna as a member of Croix Jaune. She’d first handled a Beretta during the Gibson kidnapping. Christ, she’d been the only one of them who knew how to handle a gun. She’d practically had to teach them. Still, despite the clumsy trap laid for them, they’d all managed to escape with the ransom money. It had come in useful, that money...
She slipped the gun out of her satchel and into her jacket. She’d stitched a special pocket into it, hanging loose from the jacket by two straps. It was funny how often the authorities would want to search your baggage, but not your clothes. She had a feeling this might be one of those days at the DTI.
She closed the satchel again and got out of the car, this time taking satchel and carrier bag with her. She had a little time to kill. She noticed as she passed that there were men hanging around outside some of the buildings on Victoria Street itself, and especially outside the DTI Headquarters. It was only to be expected. She walked to a small supermarket and bought two large fresh chickens, two packs of fresh sandwiches, and a catering-sized tin of cheap instant coffee, then retreated to Victoria Station and locked herself in a toilet cubicle, where she did what she had to do. An attendant knocked eventually and asked if everything was all right.
“Everything’s fine,” Witch called back. “Bad curry last night, that’s all.”
The attendant chuckled and moved away. Witch flushed the toilet and came out. The attendant, a small brown-skinned woman, was waiting.
“Sorry,” the woman said, “it’s just that you’ve got to be careful. We get all kinds coming in... injecting themselves, that sort of thing.”
“I understand,” said Witch, washing her hands. “Like you say, you’ve got to be careful.”
She walked around the back of Victoria Street, to where her car was, and from there to the back entrance of 45 Victoria Street. There was a guard with a dog outside the door. The dog barked as she approached, rearing up on hind legs, causing the guard to rein it in on its leash.
“It’s all right,” he told her.
“I’ve some chickens here,” she said.
“That’ll be it then, not that he doesn’t get fed enough.”
She walked past him. She wasn’t concerned, there was nothing for her to be concerned about. She was a government employee, she made this trip every day. Nothing to worry about. She entered the building and showed her security pass to the guard who stood in front of his desk. He looked at it a bit more carefully than usual, and thanked her.
“I don’t often forget a pretty face,” he said.
“I usually come in the front way,” she explained, “but it’s pandemonium out there.”
“I’ll bet.”
Witch slipped the pass back into her handbag. She had altered the name on Christine Jones’s card to Caroline James, knowing they would be on the lookout for poor starving Christine. She made to move past him.
“Sorry, miss, I need to check all bags today.”
“Yes, of course.”
“It’s pandemonium in here, too.” He looked through her handbag first, then her official bag. “I’m on my own. They’ve sent my partner up the road to Number One.”
“Really?” She allowed herself a small smile.
He was looking at her shopping.
“Chicken’s on special offer at Safeway,” she said.
“Really? I like a bit of leg myself.” And he gave her a wink, to which she responded with her most winning smile. He glanced towards the other items: it was obviously her turn to provide the office coffee, and lunch today consisted of nothing more than a sandwich.
In her Harrods bag were some clothes, a pair of shoes.
“Partying tonight, eh?”
“That’s the plan,” said Witch.
“Thank you, miss,” the guard said.
“You’re welcome.”
She walked to the lifts, pressed the button and waited.
The lift arrived. She got in and pressed the button for the third floor. On the way up, she did not blink. She just stared ahead, even when the lift stopped at the ground floor and some people got in. There were guards pacing the space outside the lifts. They did not look at her. She looked through them. Then the lift was ascending again. She got out at the third floor and made for the Conference Room. God, wouldn’t it just be her luck to bump into that slimeball from yesterday, Blishen, Mr. Folded-arms? But she didn’t. She looked up and down the corridor, saw that no one was paying her any attention, and opened the door of the Conference Room.
Inside, she worked quickly. She took out both chickens and reached inside them, where the plastic bags of giblets had been until she’d flushed them down the toilet in Victoria Station. Now the hollow chickens housed small soft packages wrapped in gray polyethylene and black tape. She dumped the chickens in the wastepaper bin, and reopened the packs of sandwiches, which she had closed herself using tiny strips of clear tape. Inside were thin coils of copper wire and small connectors, plus a tiny screwdriver. She joined the two packages by runs of wire, working quickly and calmly. She held one foot wedged up against the door, preventing anyone from opening it while she worked.
At last she was satisfied. Time for a break, she thought. She lifted out the large tin of coffee and pried off its lid. The toilet at Victoria had taken a lot of punishment: giblets, sandwich fillings, and an awful lot of instant granules. The blond wig inside the tin still smelled of bitter coffee. She shook it free of brown specks, then dumped the tin in the basket beside the chickens.
She lifted the clothes and shoes from her bag, stripped and changed. With lipstick and the aid of a hand mirror she turned her lips vermilion. Makeup is the beginning of disguise. She’d learned that early in life at the fairground: she could be virgin or whore to order, twelve or sixteen, above or below the age of consent. She could smile and be unhappy; or weep while she was overjoyed. She’d been playing a game of dressing-up with her life until the Irishman had come...