by Bill Walker
The kitchen had not been spared either. Mason jars full of sugar and flour had been dumped out on the linoleum, the jars then smashed to slivers. Even the stove and refrigerator had been wrested out of place and now sat in the middle of the tiny space. It was all too much.
“Bloody fucking hell!” Michael said.
Erika remained silent while she moved about the room, her eyes scanning everything. She picked up an Emerson, Lake, and Palmer record that had been broken in half, then let the pieces fall back to the floor.
“This is all my fault,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Michael.”
He shot her an angry glance when he caught sight of his university diploma ripped into five ragged pieces. He sighed, shaking his head wearily. “Sorry, doesn’t cut it, love, but it’s okay.”
She nodded, her lips trembling. The phone rang then, and it took a moment for Michael to locate it under an overturned bookcase. Throwing it aside, he snatched up the receiver and brought it to his ear.
“Hello?” His voice was harsh, unapologetic.
“Michael? My God, are you all right?”
Lillian sounded frantic, and Michael frowned, puzzled.
“Why wouldn’t I be, mother?”
“Turn on the telly. Now!”
Michael nodded to Erika. “The telly, turn it on.”
“What?”
“The television. Turn it on.”
Ironically, the television was one of the few items that appeared no worse for wear. Erika moved over to it and snapped on the power switch. In a moment, the staid image of Gordon Honeycombe filled the screen.
“...Once again, police are searching for anyone with information on the murder of John Ferguson—late of the War Graves Commission—who was found shot late last night in his home in Streatham. The Police refuse to comment on the motive, saying only that robbery is not indicated.”
“Oh, God,” Michael said.
He couldn’t believe his ears. Ferguson murdered? It was insane—incomprehensible. But then again, the last two days had been exactly that.
His mother shouted through the earpiece. “Michael? What’s happened, what’s going on?”
He put the phone to his ear. “I’ll call you back, mother,” he replied.
Michael hung up the phone over Lillian’s filtered protests and it began to ring almost immediately. Ignoring it, he headed for the bedroom.
The condition of the bedroom was no better than the sitting room had been. His bed had been tossed, and his dresser drawers pulled out and overturned. Clothes and other personal items lay scattered all over the floor.
Cursing silently, he moved to the nightstand. The drawer hung halfway out, the contents a jumble of nose sprays, tissues, and old manicure sets. He pawed through the mess; his mouth set in grim determination. He smiled when his hands closed around a familiar shape. He pulled it out and glanced briefly at the British coat of arms embossed on the leather passport case. And then he frowned. Something wasn’t right. It was too light.
He tore it open and snarled, tossing it aside. “Blast!” he said, standing up and kicking his overturned mattress. “Fucking bastards!”
“What’s wrong?” Erika called out.
He stalked back into the other room and headed for the bar. “They stole my bloody passport.”
Throwing open one of the cabinets, he grabbed the Courvoisier, twisted off the cap and drank right from the bottle. Erika joined him, resting a hand on his shoulder.
“It’s bad enough that I’m having my life turned upside-down. But what really gets me is the feeling that I’m being manipulated like some bloody puppet.”
He took another slug of brandy and began coughing.
“I—I’m sorry.”
“Please, stop saying that,” Michael said, annoyed. “It’s no more your fault than mine. And if I had it to do all over again, I’d do the same damn thing. The one good thing about this whole mess is you.”
Erika smiled, her eyes tinged with a curious sadness.
“What about your passport?” she asked.
Michael scowled. “Take it from a bureaucrat who knows. It’ll take weeks to get a new one. We haven’t anywhere near that long. We’re finished.”
He took another drink, recapped the bottle and replaced it in the cabinet, slamming the door.
Erika squeezed his hand, her eyes shining with purpose. “Maybe we’re not,” she said. “I know some people who can help.”
“Who?”
She shook her head and kissed him on the mouth. “Do you trust me?”
Michael nodded, a puzzled look on his face.
“Good. Then don’t ask,” she said, moving toward the phone.
An hour later, Erika nosed the Toyota to the curb in front of a crumbling terraced house in Whitechapel. When they climbed out, Michael scanned the area, his eyes darting to the alleys, as if he half-expected an army of muggers to descend on them. It was silly, he knew, but a lifetime of hearing about the horrors of Whitechapel could not be overcome by mere logic.
Situated near the docks in East London, Whitechapel was still the home of the poorer classes, as it had been for two hundred years. And even though Jack the Ripper was almost a hundred years in his grave, his specter still haunted this borough of winding streets and decaying, tightly packed edifices. Street lighting was poor, and shadows dominated. As for the immediate neighborhood where Michael and Erika stood, it was populated primarily by Indians and Pakistanis, as evidenced by the plethora of Hindi signage and the smell of curry in the air.
“I don’t know why I let you talk me into this,” he said, locking the passenger door. “And just how does the spoiled rich daughter of a German industrialist know where to find a passport forger in Whitechapel?”
Erika came around the car and joined him, slipping her arm through his. “We spoiled rich girls have to be resourceful at times, especially in fending off the fortune hunters and gigolos.” She grinned at her little joke. “Besides, Jalil is an old art school chum who fell on hard times. He was a mediocre painter but turned out to be a master forger. Now, come on, we don’t want to be late.”
Shaking his head in both admiration and exasperation, he let Erika lead him into the building, neither of them aware of the silver-gray Jaguar that had parked across the street.
Inside the hallway of the terraced house, the smell of curry and dried urine increased to nauseating proportions. Michael wrinkled his nose when he stepped over a battered plastic tricycle that had one of its wheels missing, marveling that people could stand to live this way. Erika led the way up the stairs and Michael heard a cacophony of sounds when they passed each door: loud Indian music, a couple arguing, a baby squalling, a television tuned to a war movie.
Erika stopped at a door at the end of the hall. A small sticker was adjacent to the knocker: Artists do it with style! it said in bright splashy colors.
“Typical Jalil,” she laughed.
Erika extended her arm and rapped sharply on the door. Somewhere inside the apartment, they heard footsteps pounding down a hallway, and then a high-pitched voice. “Who is it?”
“Your favorite Kraut.”
A second later the door flew open and there stood a gnomish man with dark chocolate skin and pop-eyes wearing a white turban, a tie-dyed t-shirt featuring a picture of Jimi Hendrix burning his guitar, and a pair of stonewashed jeans covered with brightly colored patches. When he caught sight of Erika, he cracked a smile that split his face from ear to ear.
“Rika! My goodness gracious! You are too good looking for humble words!”
Erika giggled, then remembered why they came. “I need a favor, Jalil,” she said, turning serious. “My friend has lost his passport. We need a replacement—fast.”
Jalil became all business, turning his sober black-eyed gaze on Michael, appraising him at once. He turned back to Erika and nodded. “To you, I owe everything. Come, come,” he said, waving them inside.”
Jalil’s flat was best described as student eclectic. There
were the obligatory gallery posters on the walls advertising art shows from ten years in the past, some of Jalil’s art—a pastiche of early Andy Warhol—sat on an easel near the large bay window that dominated the room. As for furniture, the room was alive with pillows of every description, some as big as sofas. But nothing resembling conventional tables and chairs could be found. The only concession to modern living was an obscenely expensive stereo powered by valves and a door leading to a darkroom that held the best and most expensive equipment for the manipulation of photographic images.
The next few hours went by in a whirlwind of motion. Minutes after they’d arrived, Jalil had Michael filling out a forged passport application, which included a space for a signature. He told Michael to leave everything but the signature space blank.
Unlike passports from other countries, where the bearer signed his passport after receiving it, British passports had the signature re-photographed and made a part of the photo, presumably as means of preventing forgery. It was then pasted into the passport in the proper place, and laminated.
As Michael handed the form to Erika, Jalil brought out his photographic gear and set it up facing a light blue backdrop. Michael vaguely remembered when he had his original picture taken that it was the same robin’s egg color. Jalil, looked up from the viewfinder of his Hasselblad camera with a critical gaze. “Oh, my, this will never do,” he said, clucking like a mother hen.
Michael frowned and turned to Erika, who seemed to be staring at him with the same appraising eye. “He thinks you look too good.”
“What?”
“Please not to be misunderstanding. You must remember when you have a picture taken for a passport you are never at your best. Please do not smile and do look as if you have been standing in line for three hours.”
These people are bloody crazy, Michael thought, but he stared back at the camera with what he hoped was an expression of mild hostility.
“Perfect!” Jalil shouted and snapped the picture.
Blinking from the spots before his eyes, Michael watched while Jalil stepped into his darkroom and closed the door. A second later the red light over the door popped on, signaling to those outside that it was unsafe to enter. Half an hour later, Jalil emerged with a print about the size of a wallet photo. He was smiling broadly.
“The Passport office has a special prismatic camera that will photograph both the subject and his signature simultaneously,” he said. “Of course, I cannot get one of these marvels and must be content with my humble equipment. They forget the art of collage. I must be telling you that the gods have smiled on their humble servant this day.”
He proffered the photo to Erika, who nodded approvingly, and then passed it to Michael. The signature was seamlessly married with his photograph, laminated, then cleverly embossed with a forgery of the official Passport office embossing stamp. It would no doubt stand up to even microscopic examination. As for his image, he cringed when he saw his wide-eyed grimace. He looked like a bloody criminal. “Maybe we should do it again,” he said.
A look of annoyance flashed across the Pakistani’s face “No, no,” he said. “It is exactly perfect, my friend, exactly perfect.”
Next came the blank passport form that Jalil withdrew from a strong box he kept in a hidden compartment in the back of one of his closets. It was one of the old blue ones, with the gold coat of arms, before the changeover to the brown Common Market type.
“I have a friend at the firm who printed these magnificent items. He slipped me several after every run.” Jalil said, smiling proudly. “This one is among the last.”
“What about other countries? Does your friend have those, as well?” Michael asked.
Jalil wagged his fingers. “That, my inquisitive friend, is better left unsaid. Now, where would you like to have been?”
“Excuse me?”
“We must have a travel history, unless, of course, you want a new passport, in which case we will have to start over.”
“Oh, now I understand. I don’t care.”
“Have it show trips to the United States and the Orient,” Erika said.
Jalil nodded. “Very good.”
“What about East Germany,” Michael asked. “What if we need to go there?”
“That is quite the impossible, my adventurous friend. The DDR changes its stamps every month. It is too hard to keep up with. I would need the right stamp for the right month that you supposedly traveled. If it were wrong....”
The implication hung in the air and Michael shook his head. “Fine, we’ll deal with that if and when we need to. Carry on.”
Jalil then set about putting in the requisite stamps.
“What time of year do you take your vacation?” he asked, about to apply the first one.
Michael thought a moment. “Usually in early June.”
Jalil put down the stamp he was holding and picked up another. He pressed it onto a red ink pad and then into the passport. For some reason this made Michael nervous, as if he were taking some irrevocable step into uncharted realms. It was another silly feeling, but it persisted. He moved over to the window and looked out onto a tiny courtyard and the back of the building on the next street.
“You have any way of looking out onto the street in front?” Michael asked.
Jalil paused in his stamping, his expression grave. “Have you been followed here?”
“Not that we know of.”
“Then not to worry. We will be done here very soon.” He then picked up another stamp and pressed it onto a black ink pad.
After another twenty minutes, Jalil closed up his ink pads and put away the stamps, then drew out what looked like a fountain pen and used it to sign the name of some obscure Foreign Office functionary. He blew on the ink and then handed it over to Michael. He whistled. It was a bloody work of art. Erika had been right; her friend had produced a flawless document that would pass muster anywhere.
“There is only one problem, my friend,” he said tapping the passport with a long-fingered hand. “If they are checking numbers, you will be caught. That is the one part I cannot forge perfectly, for it would mean having access to their computers. I am sorry.”
Erika took Jalil in her arms and hugged him. “Thank you so much, old friend. You may have saved our lives.”
Jalil’s eyebrows arched. “Where are you going?”
“It is best you do not know,” she replied, shaking her head.
The little Pakistani shrugged and smiled, taking her hands in his own. “Take care, my child. The gods smile on you.”
Erika kissed him on the cheek, eliciting a deep blush. He then turned and fixed Michael with a level stare. “You would be wise to treat her well.”
“I intend to,” Michael said, extending his hand. “Thank you for all your help.”
When Jalil reached to grasp his hand, the front door exploded inward, knocked off its hinges by four black-clad men holding a battering ram. More figures dressed in black ran in around them brandishing Enfield automatic rifles. Michael instinctively grabbed for Erika and moved away from the door as the men barreled into the room screaming.
“ON THE FUCKING FLOOR, NOW!” they shouted. “HANDS BEHIND YOUR HEADS!”
Michael, Erika, and Jalil hit the floor simultaneously, their hearts racing, while the black-clad men encircled them, weapons aimed for their heads. It was obvious these men were Special Air Service. Their timing and efficiency spoke of military training, where split-second decisions were the rule rather than the exception. Special Branch would have knocked first. The question that remained was why the SAS were operating in a civilian environment? All this went through the back of Michael’s mind, though he barely had time to think before those questions were answered.
Directly on the heels of the SAS came a tall blond-haired man, who strode into the room with a pleasant smile and a confident air. He stopped and stared down at the three people on the floor and his smile widened. “Mr. Thorley, I’m Simon Welles, MI6. So sorry to intrud
e, but I thought it high time we had a talk.” He nodded to the SAS men. “Take the wog to Scotland Yard and have him booked on forgery charges; the others will come with me.”
Jalil was dragged to his feet, twisting and squirming, his dark eyes flashing with anger. “The gods will curse your children, you petty bureaucrat!” he said, spitting at Welles’s feet. “You have no honor.”
“Now, there’s the pot calling the kettle black,” Welles replied, chuckling.
Jalil misinterpreted the statement as a slur against his color and began hurling invectives in his native tongue at the top of his voice. The two burly SAS men hauled him out the door, his feet kicking at the air.
When Jalil’s curses faded away, Welles turned to Michael and Erika. “On your feet.” He saw them eyeing the automatic rifles and nodded to the SAS men, who stepped back and pointed their weapons at the ceiling. Michael then helped Erika to her feet.
“You two can make this easy, or not, it’s up to you.”
“What do you want with us?” Michael asked.
“I’m under no obligation to tell you anything; however, I think it would be in your best interest to cooperate.”
Michael shot Erika a glance. She appeared inordinately cool, and he found that both inspiring and worrisome.
“My car’s waiting downstairs,” Welles said, motioning toward the door. “We can talk freely there.”
Out on the street, they found a large Daimler Limousine waiting, its engine idling. The driver sat behind the wheel looking bored, while beefy MI6 agents stood by the open passenger door. One had his hand on the door’s handle and one on a holstered pistol. The other had his pistol drawn and held at the ready.
Welles let Michael and Erika enter first, then followed them inside. The two MI6 agents brought up the rear and took their places on either side of Michael and Erika. A moment later the driver stepped on the accelerator and the car glided away from the curb, headed back toward central London.
