‘Christ help us. Where did you put it?’
‘Bit Coins and Linden Dollars, babe.’
I sat with her on the bed, which was a warzone of empty icecream containers and opened cartons and bottles of various medicines. She handed me some chocolate, then a laptop and a set of those virtual reality glasses. On the screen, a source code editor was running alongside some sort of vector graphics generator. ‘You can shut those down. We’re going into Second Life. That’s where they are now. I’ve got FlameLite back under control, reprogrammed their parameters, set them hunting on MMORPGs and social networks. And they’ve found a mutual friend.’
I placed the glasses over my eyes and wiggled the bud earphones into my ears. I concentrated on remembering the controls. To my relief, I found that Bang-Bang had already set up my avatar. Years ago I’d wasted a good half-day trying to build a useful likeness of myself in the Second Life staging area, only to give up when someone had walked past me smoking a pipe with a chicken on his head. Followed by a giant bee.
I looked around. As I swung my gaze left and right the virtual world began to render itself from monochrome into colour. Bang-Bang’s avatar was standing next to me, and pointed left. Ah. It was coming back to me. I hit the headphone symbol and got her voice in my ears. ‘’Ello! OK babes. Look around. See where we are.’
I looked. Oh no.
“Hello RizwanSabir Welcome to RACCOON CITY Resident Evil Outbreak Sim” said the panel in my left eyepiece. We were in a grim grey brick bunker with green wallmounted displays. And before us were a good half-dozen stunted little figures. The raccoons, infomorphs, whatever they were called, looked even worse in this virtual environment. Like warped furry people. Two walked forward holding the hands of… a white girl wearing an England away shirt.
‘Duckie???’
The avatar made a hand gesture and Duckie’s voice popped into my left ear. ‘Wotcha you two. I’m actually in an internet café in West Bromwich, on a headset, and I’ve only got about an hour. These raccoon-things found me in here and were yacking away but I don’t understand them. But I’ve got something here in SL to show you… you’re not gonna like it. I’m in with the C18, the B and H crew, the Infidels, SVS, all of them. They’ve been planning their mission right here in a far, far corner of Second Life. Ready?’
Bang-Bang’s avatar nodded and looked at me. I took a deep breath and spoke into my headset. ‘OK. Ready. How do we get there?’
Duckie waved her other hand and a URL appeared in a box. ‘Click it. We teleport.’
We clicked the link.We materialised on a dark blue hill, under a dark sky, no stars, no moon. The raccoons chittered and Duckie spoke to us. ‘Look around you, guys. Recognise it?’
We panned right and left. I did. How could I not? It had been on constant rotation on the TV news for months since 22nd July 2011.
‘Duckie, this is a simulation of Utoya Island, isn’t it?’
Her avatar nodded slowly, the framerate making her head jerk. ‘Yeah. Look down there.’
The avatar pointed. I saw muzzle flashes in the distance. ‘All day and night, C18, Blood and Honour, Belgian Blood and Honour, Infidels… all day, they recreate the massacre.’
We watched.
‘All day and night, they practice. There’s more. Go to invisible and follow me.’
Bang-Bang spoke in my ear. ‘I’ve customised our avatars with b.places HUDs for rapid flying, and invisibility scripts for the obvious. Look for the button with the cloak on it?’
After a few false tries I was cloaked and we floated down and round a hill, to a sprawl of buildings. Hangar blocks. We faded in through the ceiling of the largest hangar and stopped. I waited for the frame rate to catch up and looked down. I was looking into a brightly-lit area. Red and black flags hung from the walls at either end. It was full of avatars, moving in groups, clustering. I could see weapons. AKs, grenades, pistols. Wooden crates. I turned to look at the other end of the area. There was a mockup of two large mosques, and parked vehicles. I saw an outline of a roundabout, and what looked like a gas or petrol tanker. We looked at each other and pressed the cursors to go lower. Duckie dropped down to the hangar floor into a knot of avatars.
We hung in the air above the meeting like wraiths as Duckie moved amongst the avatars, chatting away and exchanging greetings. Our two little infomorph friends sat in the rafters of the hangar, visible only to us. Their asphalt eyes gleamed wetly. In my earphones I could hear a soft “snick” sound every now and then as Bang-Bang used her camera function to take snapshots to be analysed when we got out. As carefully as we could, we ran our cursors over the figures gathered below us and watched the boxes that came up. We were looking for names. Snick.
I noticed a banner at the hangar’s end and moved towards it to bring it into better focus. A large khanda, the Sikh symbol, with “Sikhs Versus Shariah” underneath it. I turned back and gestured to Bang-Bang. She took a photo.
The whole thing was eerie. Was this the future of intelligence-gathering? No blood, no dirt, just time-lagged ghosts spying on each others’ virtual rooms?
Several minutes later Duckie’s avatar’s face turned ceilingwards. Her voice came to our ears on a private channel. ‘Guys. I’m out of time. Copy this flyer and copy my number, it’s a pay-as-you-go mobile you can get me on. Sparingly! See you in real life honeys.’
A text box came up next to her with a number and a virtual gig flyer. Snick.
On Bang-Bang’s cue, we hit the “up” cursors and floated up through the ceiling. A moment’s stickiness and then were out and floating away and turning into the deep blue gloom, our AI familiars floating up with us. Bang-Bang spoke to them and they chattered in their new language. They teleported out, going from 64 to 32 then to 8-bit. Then they were gone and we were alone in the sky above Utoya Island 2. The horizon thinned to a narrow, vivid line of blues, greys, and silvers. We faded up into the black, reverse-skydiving until we hung in nothingness.
I took off the glasses and returned to the real world with relief. ‘Was that it?’
Bang-Bang took her own glasses off and her eyes ever-so-slowly refocused on mine. ‘That was it. Give me two minutes and I’ll get the photos up on the main screen.’
I studied her as dispassionately as I could. She was off the heroin, with a rather snotty nose, and back on her old drugs of coding and the internet. I could never get truly comfortable with this weird shadow existence, but she was years younger than me and a child of Web 2.0, flying in it like a bird.
28
October 4th
The day was sunny and warm. Bang-Bang seemed fine, although a bit pale and wobbly, and demanded that we stroll the boulevards. She’d gone to the Crazy Horse Revue with Marianne last night and left me to man the computers and try and keep ahead of what was going on back in the world. And the world was falling apart.
Bang-Bang had returned at midnight with a bottle of Moet and we’d made the most of it and watched some Luc Besson films on cable.
And now it was a new day. We bought a map at a shop and decided to strike out towards the Avenue Foch and just go where the wind took us. By late afternoon we were sightseed-out and had plotted up on an outside table at a restaurant off Quai de Dion Bouton. We had a cheeky carafe of red wine and we were dead set on making the most of it. Bang-Bang stuck her gum on the underside of the table and said to me and no-one in particular, ‘Should we be on the lookout for runaway schoolgirls and English teachers?’
I laughed. ‘Yeh. Good one. I think DPSD have got their dragnet out in Paris for Nazis, not elopers.’
‘Ah. OK.’
‘Thought about what we’re going to do when we get back to Blighty, Holly doll?’
She stretched and smiled at me. ‘What do we do when we get back? Back to me getting asked for ID in shops again, whooh… See Mum and Dad. Not get shot or rendered for a bit. Cook lots. A dinner party. Cook for you, you’re skinny, Riz my darling. Go to bed for a fortnight... How about you?’
‘Same s
ame. Cook for YOU. You’re very skinny. We’ve got two jobs on at the office but we can work round that.’
‘Two jobs?’
‘Well, three really. First one is moving KTS’s offices to somewhere where the cops can’t get us. Second is the Colonel’s big plan to get Met cops on the payroll. Third is pinning down what the Infidels and or C18 are planning and taking them out.’
‘I know. Dangerous stuff.’
‘OK… apart from that…’
We both laughed and drank some of the rough earthy wine.
‘Penny for your thoughts Holly.’
She looked at me. ‘When we were in Second Life last night… that place Duckie and the raccoons took us to. Did the floor plans and building mockups look remotely French to you?’
‘No. It looked British. And I saw French and Belgian fellas going by their handles, but no reference to anything at all in France. I saw models of two big mosques that looked well-British, not French in style at all. French mosques are squarer, more blocky, they’re often in the style of Moroccan mosques, whereas UK mosques these days are sort of mock-Moghul.’
‘Mock what?’
‘Work with me here babe. I know this stuff. Oh, and the cars in their floor plans were driving on the left, not the right.’
She puffed out her cheeks and thought for a bit.
‘I noticed the cars. I’m thinking all this whack-the-NATO conference stuff is just a blind. I reckon they’re going to try and get the arms to Britain. And as and when we do find this truck and its container, what are you thinking of doing?’
I placed a Sony Ericsson W995 mobile phone on the table. ‘Already set up for Google Latitude. We gluepad this onto the chassis and track it. I’m sure our new French colleagues will jark the container too, but I want some backup.’
She nodded. ‘Plan. What’s the battery life on that thing?’
‘48 hours tops from when we turn it on. I hope.’
‘And when we’re tracking it in Britain, then what?’
‘We’re going to get the whole team on it and then you and me are going to have a chat with Tommy Robinson in Luton, luv. I want to know what he knows about Breivik, the Templars and the Infidels. Just a hunch. Well, not a hunch, Breivik’s talking to people from inside his prison and they never really did find the rest of those Templar Knight people.’
We were silent for a long while. Bang-Bang’s glum face suddenly brightened.
‘Riz. We haven’t hit the shops properly yet.’
I agreed. ‘Tomorrow I’ll treat ya.’
Bang-Bang blew me an ironic kiss.
Cars passed. We looked at the hospital opposite.
‘Holly, d’you reckon you’ve beat it?’
She nodded. ‘I reckon I have, because I swear to almighty Allah, if I ever so much as see smack or even a needle in the future, I’m gonna run like hell and call in an airstrike.’
She gave a little shudder. She reached for my hand and I took it. ‘All it’s left me with is a feeling I’m now a member of an exclusive club I never wanted to join. OK, penny for your thoughts, Rizwan Sabir.’
‘I was just remembering when me and the Colonel lost you in the MOD building and he put out an APB for a girl in a corset and French knickers.’
She laughed with me. ‘Oh God, all those years ago last month. You had to be there.’
I suddenly remembered I had on my person something else I’d requested the office send over. I’d been holding onto it till she was better. And found alive. Casually, I placed Bang-Bang’s Queen’s Gallantry Medal on the table in front of her.
‘For services to the nation, Her Britannic Majesty is pleased and all that…’
She picked it up and burst out in incredulous laughter. ‘Oh my Lawd would you look at this! That is brilliant. Hopefully I’ll live to tell the Queen thanks myself.’
Again we let the sheer randomness of our lives impress itselves upon us. We watched the river and the traffic. ‘Ain’t life ridiculous?’
‘Yes. Yes, it sure is…’
And then she suddenly gulped and went pale. ‘Doll. Look behind you. No DON’T look behind you. Wait. Wait one.’
‘What?’
She started to murmur as quietly as possible. ‘One of the French or Belgian army neo-Nazis that I spotted in Parwan, is walking up the street behind you.’
‘Please tell me you’re joking.’
‘I am so not.’
Subconsciously my hand went for a pistol that wasn’t there. This was going rapidly south. ‘Talk him in.’
Bang-Bang sipped her wine for cover and murmured out of the corner of her mouth. ‘Twenty… fifteen… ten…’
A man in a leather jacket, talking on a phone, walked past our table and kept going, left onto the main road. Gone. I watched his retreating back.
‘Are you sure?’
She nodded slowly at me.
‘Follow, doll?’
She was already out of her seat. We followed, one hundred metres back. I rang the Colonel.
‘Riz, what have you got?’
‘Boss. Holly just pinged one of our neo-Nazi possibles, heading right past us on Foxtrot, be advised we are tailing.’
‘Have that. Hang back and report. See if you can get him at a Loc, but do not endanger yourselves. I’ll let Tchéky know.’
‘Will do.’
I closed down.
Bang-Bang also had her phone out and within five seconds a nondescript Peugot 506 had pulled out and had smoothed ahead of our man, slowed at the junction, and turned left. OK… we had a loose box around the target. I looked at Bang-Bang. ‘Luv. I’m not going to wait for backup. Let’s track him. We’ll call him Alpha Two.’
She nodded and we walked, acting the happy couple oblivious to the world around them. Bang-Bang linked her arm in mine and looked up at me and said ‘Now… when twilight beams the skies above… ha ha.’
Alpha Two turned left up a sidestreet and we waited at the corner then looked round while absently checking our phones. Alpha Two was halfway up the street and looking at his watch. The Peugot had driven ahead of him and turned off right. Behind us, a black people carrier slid into the kerb. Marianne was driving. I smiled to her. We should be OK now, these guys wouldn’t lose him. She nodded at the departing figure of Alpha Two. ‘Follow?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Get in.’
We drove past Alpha Two and gave him a quick glance in the mirrors. ‘He’s waiting for something. A lift?’
‘Yeah.’
Marianne slowed our vehicle, not too slow, not too fast… we watched. Alpha Two was looking away from us, back down towards the main drag and the river. A blue Citroen turned in from the main road and stopped before him. He got in. Marianne hit the indicators. She let the Citroen ease past us and called in the license plate, colour and make in low tones, her lips hardly moving as she spoke for the benefit of the covert microphone fitted inside the edge of the sun visor.
Marianne laughed. ‘You can hardly see it but his Departement number on the license plate is 93, Seine-Saint-Denis. A tough banlieue… suburb, out north of town. Our boy is proud of his roots.’
We followed, hanging well back, and we listened to the murmur of the radio transmissions as the team formed up again, a loose box on the streets parallel and ahead of us. Within two minutes we were all back on Quai de Dion Bouton and driving west.
We went round the E5/E15 inner ring road, through Saint-Mande, and ended up in Belleville as the second follow-team took over. ‘Doesn’t surprise me,’ said Marianne, ‘this is a traditional FN area. Or maybe I’m generalising. We’ll see.’
Ahead of us the other chase cars accelerated away and Alpha Two’s vehicle slowed at a gaggle of people on the sidewalk. They double-parked and Alpha Two and another man got out and joined the crowd. Marianne brought our vehicle to a halt and pulled in a good hundred metres short, and we watched. I pressed my window down and listened. ‘Sounds like a block party, guys.’
Bang-Bang chipped in. �
�Yeh. The National Front Disco.’
Marianne called it in and listened to the radio transmissions. ‘OK. Tchéky is bringing the teams… hang on. Yes. We’re cleared to hit it as soon as.’ She looked around and then nodded at a small yard opposite the block party. ‘We’ll rendezvous there.’
Dusk fell. Across the road the block was in full party mode, and Oi music was blaring out of the upper windows. I recognised the track as the Smack Song from the soundtrack of Romper Stomper. Catchy little number. A steady stream of sketchy-looking guys had been arriving and leaving for the last hour. It had just been confirmed that we were going to hit the block as soon as possible, no messing.
Marianne had Bang-Bang strapped into a good set of body armour. She smiled at me and gave me a V for Victory. Tchéky looked at us both, without smiling, then handed us each a G36 from a kitbag and some magazines, and simply stated ‘Ma jurisdiction. How are you feeling Holly? OK to do this?’
‘Ben ouais, Tchéky. Alllll good. I’ve got a nice shiny coat and a wet glossy nose.’
She grinned and Tchéky gave me a despairing look.
We checked the rifles, pointing them to the ground and ensuring they were loaded and safe. I tightened the velcro on my own armour. Tchéky spoke to the two teams and Bang-Bang translated for me. He was pointing to various areas of a portable whiteboard that was standing on the rear footplate of the truck that had been reversed into the yard. The board had been hastily marked up with different coloured marker pens to show the floors of the block. Photos of the main targets including Alpha Two hung from the top of the board.
‘He’s saying… attention. Red Team is overwatch, Sniper element One and Two take out targets on the windows as they… present themselves. Blue team is GIGN, DPSD, and us. We go forward, to the door, blow it in and up the stairs, anyone even standing up gets shot down. We’re looking for our… friends in those photos. Hang on… yep. They will be armed. There will be a lot of people in the block and we have to go through it like a…’
She spoke to Marianne and they laughed. She looked back at me. ‘They’re saying like a dose of salts.’
Danger Close Page 12
