Nick Stone 1 - Remote Control.

by Andy McNab

  "You mustn't forget I am your daddy today OK, Louise Glazar?"

  "As if!" she said with a big smile.

  I just hoped we were both smiling in thirty minutes' time.

  We came to the end of the walkway and took a down escalator, following signs for Passport Control and Baggage Re claim. From halfway down the escalator I could see the Immigration hall straight ahead. This was where we'd stand or fall.

  There were about four or five people waiting to go through the desks. I started joking with Kelly, trying to give myself something to do

  instead of just looking nervous. I'd entered countries illegally hundreds of times, but never so unprepared or under such pressure.

  "All set, Louise?"

  "I'm ready, Daddy."

  I passed her the day sack so I could get the passport and immigration card out of my pocket. We ambled up to Passport Control and joined the end of a line. I kept reminding myself about an American friend who'd traveled from Boston to Canada, and then from Canada back to the UK. He'd picked up his friend's passport while they were sharing a hotel room;

  he couldn't get back to exchange it so he had to fake it. No one had even batted an eyelid.

  We waited in line. Still with the laptop on my right shoulder, I was holding Kelly's hand with my left. I kept looking down at her and smiling, but not excessively so; that was suspicious behavior, and I knew that people would be watching on monitors and from behind two-way mirrors. The business type in front of us went through with a wave and a smile to the official. It was our turn. We approached the desk.

  I handed my passport and visa waiver to the woman. She ran her eyes down the details on the card. She looked down at Kelly from her high desk.

  "Hello, welcome to England."

  Kelly came back with a very American, "Hi!"

  I guessed the woman was in her late thirties. Her hair was permed, but the perm had gone slightly wrong.

  "Did you have a nice flight?" she asked.

  Kelly had Jenny or Ricky in one hand, hanging by its ear, and the other one's head was sticking out from the top flap of the day sack on her back. She said, "Yes, it was fine, thank you."

  The woman kept the conversation going.

  "And what's your name?" she asked, still checking the form.

  Could I trust her to get it right, or should I butt in?

  Kelly smiled and said, "Kelly!"

  What a farce. We'd come so far, we'd come through so much, only to be caught by a line straight out ofaB movie.

  Right away I smiled down at Kelly.

  "No, it's not!" I didn't want to look at the woman; I could feel the smile drain from her face, could feel her eyes burning into the side of my head.

  There was a pause that felt like an hour as I tried to think of what to do or say next. I pictured the woman's finger hovering over a concealed button.

  Kelly got there before me.

  "I know, I'm joking." She giggled, holding out a teddy.

  "This is Kelly! My name is Louise. What's yours?"

  "My name's Margaret." The smile was back. If only she'd known how close she'd been to a kill.

  She opened the passport. Her eyes flicked up and down as she studied first the picture, then my face. She put the pass port down below the level of the desk, and I saw the telltale glow of ultraviolet light. Then she looked back into my eyes and said, "When was this picture taken?"

  "About four years ago, I guess." I gave a weak smile and said in a low voice that Kelly wasn't meant to overhear, "I've been having chemotherapy. The hair's just starting to grow back." I rubbed my head. My skin felt damp and cold. Hope fully I still looked like shit. The capsules certainly made me feel it.

  "I'm bringing Louise over to see my parents because it's been quite a traumatic time. My wife's staying with our other child because he's ill at the moment. When it rains, it pours!"

  "Oh," she said, and it sounded genuinely sympathetic. But she didn't hand back the passport.

  There was a big lull, as if she were waiting for me to fill the silence with a confession. Or maybe she was just trying to think of something helpful and human to say. Finally she said, "Have a good stay," and put the documents back on the desktop.

  There was that urge just to grab them and run.

  "Thank you very much," I said, picking them up and putting them back into my pocket, then carefully doing up the button, because that was what a normal dad would do. Only then did I turn to Kelly.

  "C'mon, Louise, let's go!"

  I started to walk, but Kelly stood her ground. Oh fuck, now what?

  "

  "Bye, Margaret." She beamed.

  "Have a nice day!"

  That was it. We were nearly there. I knew there wasn't going to be a problem with the luggage, because I wasn't going to collect it.

  I checked the carousels. There was a flight from Brussels that was also unloading, so I headed for the blue channel.

  Even if they were watching and stopped us because Kelly had a Virgin Atlantic bag, I would play the stupid person routine.

  But there weren't any Customs officers on duty in the blue channel. We were free.

  The large sliding doors opened up into the arrivals hall. We walked through into a throng of chauffeurs holding up cards and people waiting for their loved ones. Nobody gave us a second look.

  I went straight to the currency exchange. I found I'd done well last night with Ron, Melvin, and the Glazars, ending up with more than three hundred pounds in cash. Like a dickhead, I forgot to ask for a smaller bill for the subway ticket machine, so we had to stand in line for ages to get to the kiosk. It didn't seem to matter; even the hour-long ride to Bank station was enjoyable. I was a free man. I was among ordinary people, none of whom knew who we were or was going to pull a gun on us.

  The central London district known as the City is a strange mixture of architecture. As we left the subway station, we passed grand buildings made up of columns and puritanically straight lines--the old Establishment. Turn a corner and we were confronted by monstrosities that were built in the sixties and early seventies by architects who must have taken a "Let's go fuck up the City" pill. One of these buildings was the one I was heading for, the NatWest bank on Lombard Street, a road so narrow that just one car could squeeze down it.

  We went through the revolving steel and glass doors into the banking hall, where rows of cashiers sat behind protective screens. But I wasn't there for money.

  The reception desk was staffed by a man and a woman, both in their early twenties, both wearing NatWest suits; they even had little corporate logos sewn into the material of their breast pockets, probably so staff wouldn't wear them after hours. As Kelly would have said, "As if!"

  I saw both of them give Kelly and me an instant appraisal and could feel them turning up their noses. I gave them a cheery, "Hi, how are you?" and asked to speak with Guy Bexley.

  The woman said, "Can I have your name, please?" as she picked up the phone.

  "Nick Stevenson."

  The girl called an extension. The man went back to being efficient on the other side of the reception desk.

  I bent down and whispered to Kelly, "I'll explain later."

  "He'll be along in a minute. Would you like to sit down?"

  We waited on a couch that was very long, very deep, very plastic. I could sense Kelly's cogs turning.

  Sure enough.

  "Nick, am I Louise Stevenson now, or Louise Glazar?"

  I screwed up my face and scratched my head.

  "Umm ... Kelly!"

  Guy Bexley came down. Guy was my "relationship man ager," whatever that was. All I knew was that he was the man I asked for when I wanted to get my security blanket out. He was in his late twenties, and you could see by his hairstyle and goatee that he felt uncomfortable in the issued suit and would be far happier wearing PVC pants, holding a bottle of water, and partying all night bare-chested.

  We shook hands.

  "Hello, Mr. Stevenson, haven't seen you f
or a long time."

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  "Work. This is Kelly."

  He bent down and said, "Hello there, Kelly," in his best "I've been trained how to introduce myself to kids" manner.

  "I just need my locked box for five minutes, mate."

  I followed him toward the row of partitioned offices on the other side of the hall. I'd been in them many times before.

  They were all identical; each contained just a round table, four chairs, and a telephone. It was where people went to count money or beg for a loan. He started to leave.

  "Could I also have a statement on my savings account, please?"

  Guy nodded and left. Kelly said, "What are we doing here?"

  I should have known by now that she hated to be left out of things. Just like her dad.

  "Wait and see." I winked.

  A few minutes later Guy reappeared, put the box on the table, and gave me a folded printout of my account. I felt nervous as I opened up the paper. My eyes went straight for the bottom right-hand corner.

  It read four hundred twenty-six thousand, five hundred seventy dollars,

  converted at a rate of 1.58 dollars to the pound.

  Big Al had done it. I had to control myself, as I remembered Bexley was still standing there.

  "I'll just be about five minutes," I said.

  "Tell reception when you're ready. They'll put it back in the vault for you." He left with a shake of my hand and a "

  "Bye, Kelly!" and closed the door behind him.

  The box was eighteen inches by twelve, a metal file container I'd bought for ten pounds in Woolworth's, with a very cheap lock on the top that opened under pressure. It meant that I didn't have to turn up with a key every time--I couldn't always guarantee I was going to have that with me. The only problem was that if I had to make a run out of the country, it could only be during banking hours.

  I flipped the lock and pulled out a couple of old soccer fanzines I'd put on top in case it accidentally opened. I threw them over to Kelly.

  "See if you can make any sense of those."

  She picked one up and started to flip through the pages.

  The first thing I took out was the mobile phone and recharger. I switched it on. The battery was still working, but I put it in the recharger anyway and plugged it into the wall.

  Next I pulled out a clear plastic freezer bag that contained bundles of US dollar bills and pounds sterling, five South African Krugerrands, and ten half-sovereigns that I'd stolen after the Persian Gulf War. All troops who were behind enemy lines in Iraq were issued twenty of the things as bribes for the locals in case we got in heavy shit. In my patrol we'd managed to keep ten of them each; we said we'd lost the rest in a contact. To begin with I'd kept them only as souvenirs, but they'd soon increased in value. I left them in the bag; I was interested only in the sterling.

  I dug out a French leather porte-monnaie with a strap, in which I had a complete set of ID: passport, credit cards, driver's license, all the stuff I needed to become Nicholas Duncan Stevenson. It had taken years to get cover in such depth, all originating from a social security number I'd bought in a pub in Brixton for fifty pounds.

  I then got out an electronic notebook. It was great; it meant that I could fax, send memos, word process, and maintain a database anywhere in the world. The problem was I didn't have a clue how to use it. I

  used only the phone number and address section facility because it could be accessed only with a password.

  I had a quick look over at Kelly. She was thumbing through the magazines, not understanding a word. I pushed my hand to the bottom of the box and extracted the 9mm semiautomatic Browning I'd liberated from Africa in the late eighties.

  Loading the mags with rounds from a small Tupperware box, I made ready and checked chamber. Kelly looked up but didn't give it a second glance.

  I powered up the notebook, tapped in 2422, and found the number I wanted. I picked up the telephone on the table.

  Kelly looked up again.

  "Who are you calling?"

  "Euan."

  "Who is he?"

  I could see the confusion on her face.

  "He's my best friend." I carried on pressing the phone number.

  "But..."

  I put my finger to my lips.

  "Shhh."

  He wasn't in. I left a message on the answering machine in veiled speech. I then put the laptop into the box, together with everything that I wasn't taking with me including the printout.

  Kelly was bored with the fanzines now, so I put them back in the box. I knew there was a question on its way.

  "Nick?"

  I just carried on packing.

  "Yes?"

  "I thought David was your best friend."

  "Ah yes. Well, Euan is my best friend. It's just that sometimes I have to call him David because--" I started to think of a lie, but why?

  "I told you to make sure you wouldn't know his real name if we got caught. That way you couldn't tell anyone. It's something that is done all the time. It's called OP SEC--operational security." I finished packing and closed the box. She thought about it.

  "Oh, OK. His name's Euan then."

  "When you see him he might even show you the floor I told you about."

  I poked my head around the corner and waved at the receptionist.

  She came in, picked up the box, and left.

  I turned to Kelly.

  "Right, then, time for a shopping frenzy.

  Let me see; we'd better buy some nice new clothes for us both, and then we'll go and stay in a hotel and wait for Euan to call. Sound good to you?"

  Her face brightened.

  "OK.!"

  Once this was all over I would have to set up a different named account and move the money, and I'd stop being Stevenson. A pain in the ass to organize, but I could live with that for $426,072.

  The cab ride to Trafalgar Square became a tour given by me to Kelly. I was more into it than she was, and I could tell by the taxi driver's expression in his rearview mirror that I was getting most of the details wrong.

  We were going down the Strand when I spotted clothes stores on both sides of the road. We paid off the taxi and shopped for jeans, T-shirts, and a washing kit. Once that was done, we took another cab to Brown's Hotel.

  I said to Kelly, "You'll like this place. It's got two entrances, so you can enter from Dover Street and come out the other side, on Albermarle Street. Very important for spies like us."

  I switched on the phone, got hold of information, and called the hotel to make a reservation. Less than half an hour later we were in our room, but only after discovering that the Dover Street exit was no longer open. Finger on the pulse.

  The room was a world removed from the ones we had been used to. It was plush, comfortable, and, best of all, had a minibar with Toblerones. I could have killed for a beer, but not yet; there was work to do.

  Jet lag was starting to kick in. Kelly looked exhausted. She flopped onto the bed and I helped undress her, then threw her between the sheets.

  "You can take a bath tomorrow," I said.

  She was a starfish in about two minutes flat.

  I checked that the phone had a good signal and that the charger was working. Euan knew my voice, so the "It's John the plumber, when do you want me to come and fix that tap?

  Give me a ring on..." would have done the trick.

  I decided to have a quick nap for ten minutes, maybe shower, have something to eat, then go to bed. After all, it was only 5 p.m.

  At a quarter to six in the morning, the phone rang. I pressed Receive. I heard "Hello?" in that very low, very controlled voice I knew so well.

  "I need a hand, mate," I said. I didn't want to give him time to talk.

  "I need you to help me. Can you get to London?"

  "When do you want me?"

  "Now."

  "I'm in Wales. It'll take a bit of time."

  "I'll wait out on this number."

 
; "No problem. I'll get a train; it'll be quicker."