Personal (Page 56)

The pizza-slice shape also meant the streets flanking us were not parallel. They ran away from us, one to the left and one to the right, like the spines in a fan. Which was good, at first glance. It meant the more distant the house, the more extremely oblique its line of sight would get, to the point where maybe we could eliminate some buildings altogether. A sniper could hardly hang out a window and aim more or less parallel to the glass, like riding sidesaddle.

But at second glance it was too good, because the angle exposed us to just as many side windows as front windows. You win some, and you lose some. I checked everything I could see, on the north side first, then the south, from about eight hundred yards out to sixteen hundred, which was thousands and thousands of windows, most of them winking the dawn sun back at me, in a ragged linear sequence, with moving spots of pink, first one street, and then a jump to the next, as if the neighbourhood had been built by ancient astronomers for solar celebrations.

In the end I figured the south side was worse than the north. It was denser, and on balance it had taller buildings. I picked one out at random, about fifteen hundred yards away, most of a mile, a tiny thumbnail, a tall, narrow house, red brick and handsome, with a steeply pitched roof. It looked like it had all kinds of attic rooms. And maybe actual attics. A dislodged roof tile would work as well as an open window. I pictured John Kott, prone on a flattened bedroll, on a board laid across rafters above a top-floor plaster ceiling, with a chink of light ahead of him, where a tile had been slipped sideways, unnoticeable from the outside, too high, and just one of many. We had gales last winter, Bennett had said, in his sing-song voice.

I pictured Kott’s eye, patient and unblinking behind the scope, the inch-wide crack in the roof giving him twenty yards side to side, at the far end of the deal. I pictured his finger on the trigger, relaxed but ready to squeeze, through the slack, pausing, then moving again, like clicking a tiny mechanical switch, the quiet tick of a precision component, causing an immense chemical explosion, the recoil bucking, the bullet launching on its long, long journey. More than three whole seconds in the air, one thousand, two thousand, three thousand, half an inch wide, like a human thumb, flying like a missile, straight and true, subject only to the immutable effects of gravity and elevation and temperature and humidity and wind and the curvature of the earth. I stared at the distant house and counted three long seconds in my head and tried to picture the bullet’s flight. It seemed as if I should be able to see it coming. Straight at me. Like a tiny dot, getting bigger.

Flash one thousand two thousand three thousand game over.

Which is when I knew.

More than three whole seconds in the air.

FORTY-ONE

I WAS A lot faster getting back into the anteroom than I had been getting out of it. Bennett was watching me, and I asked him, ‘The bulletproof glass in Paris was new, right?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Improved, anyway.’

‘Do you know anything about it?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Other than it’s glass, and, well, bulletproof.’

‘I need to know everything about it. Who designed it, who researched it, who funded it, who manufactured it, who tested it, and who signed off on it.’

‘We already thought of that.’

‘Thought of what?’

‘Borrowing the shields and flying them in from Paris. Putting one either side. They’re not very wide, but given the way the streets run, they would reduce the field of fire by about ten per cent each. But we decided against it. Politicians are civilians. They’d cower behind the shields. Subconsciously, maybe, but it wouldn’t look good. And they couldn’t stay there for ever. Which would give the bad guys the other eighty per cent to aim at anyway. So all in all we thought it would be a net loss.’

‘That wasn’t what I was thinking of. All I need is the information. On the quiet, if you can. No need to make a whole big thing out of it. Pretend it was just you and me. Like a private venture, outside of the mainstream. Like a hobby. But fast.’

‘How fast?’

‘Fast as you can.’

‘What does the bulletproof glass have to do with anything? We’re not going to use it. I told you that.’

‘Maybe I want to use it myself. Maybe I want to ask if they sell direct to the public.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘It’s a side venture, Mr Bennett. Just a small inquiry. Nothing to do with anything. But fast, OK? And face to face only. Nothing on paper. Nothing up the chain. Understood? Like a hobby.’

He nodded, and glanced back at the corridor, which presumably led to other corridors, and staircases, and rooms, and he said, ‘Do you need to see anything else?’

‘No, we’re done here,’ I said. ‘We’re leaving, never to return. Like the Darby family, after all those years, when the motorway was built. No more Wallace Court for us.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s never going to get this far.’

‘You sure?’

‘Hundred per cent.’

He didn’t answer.

‘You said that would be a favourable outcome. You said we were supposed to help each other. You said that’s how it’s supposed to work.’

He said, ‘It is.’

‘Then relax. Trust me. Crack a smile. It’s never going to get this far.’

He didn’t crack a smile.

We drove back to the hotel, snarled all the way in traffic, maybe the peak of the morning rush, an hour or so after sunrise, or maybe just after the peak, but bad enough anyway. The immense sprawling city was still packing them in, but only just, and very slowly. We got back to Park Lane two hours after we left it, three-quarters of which had been spent in the car. Worse than LA.

Bennett gave his keys to the valet, just like a regular person, and we all three rode up to the top-floor restaurant, where we figured the breakfast service would still be running. We got a booth behind a structural pillar. Worse view, but better privacy. Bennett spent a lot of time tapping on his phone. He said he was ordering stuff up for us, including large-scale government maps, and an architect’s blueprint still held by the zoning authority, and three sets of aerial images, one taken from a space satellite, and another from an accidentally-on-purpose-off-course sightseeing helicopter, and a third from an unknown source, which he said had to mean an American drone, except officially there were no American drones in Britain, which was why it was labelled an unknown source. He said his people would load what we needed on a secure tablet computer, and bring it to the hotel.

Then he said, ‘We can’t afford collateral damage. Not there. Some people on that street are innocent members of the public. Not many, but a few. Which is a shame. We could have taken care of this long ago. We could have planted a bomb and called it a gas leak.’

Then he left, but Nice and I lingered a little, over coffee in my case, and small bites of toast in hers, and she asked, ‘Why are you all of a sudden so interested in the bulletproof glass?’

‘Just a theory,’ I said.

‘Something I should know about?’

‘Not yet. It doesn’t change what we have to do next.’

‘Will Bennett get that information for you?’

‘I think so.’

‘Why? Does he owe you a favour now? Did I miss something?’

‘It’s a brother soldier thing. You should try it. You’d be happier.’