Chapter Eleven.
The noise of helicopters flying overhead was a regular nuisance to residents of the housing estate next to the elevated motorway, but the sounds of missiles, explosions and weapon fire were not: and so it was less than five minutes after Sellick, Nick and I had been blown over the railings when a large blustering mustachioed man arrived, wearing a green plaid dressing gown and Wellington boots. It was lucky for him that two police cars with wailing sirens also arrived, otherwise he'd have been heading for a body bag too. As it was, there was a deal of confused shouting above us, after which the helicopter took off and vanished westwards at high speed.
The next couple of hours were a blur. The police became a lot less hostile once Sellick had shown them his identity card. Nick, still unconscious, was recovered from under the wrecked car and taken away in the first ambulance on the scene, and my arm was bound up and put in a sling by a kind female paramedic while we were given a hot cup of tea and a stale sandwich in the SWAT support vehicle. They treated us well, but with a certain amount of hostility until Sterling arrived; then they were overly polite. The situation stank.
Sometime later a Range Rover with blacked-out windows -- the twin to the one that had been destroyed -- pulled up next to the SWAT van. Jamal stepped out, followed by an older man and Martin, who flew into the van and then into my arms, all pretence at normality gone.
"Fuck!" I yelled in anger at the world. Seeing Martin's woebegone expression, I calmed down. "Sorry, Martin, my arm
it hurts." He looked at the sling, then at me.
"I thought
I thought you'd been
."
"Shh, I'm fine," I interrupted, pulling him into me with my good arm, "I'm fine."
Sellick, who hadn't said anything when they'd arrived, gave Jamal and Martin a hug, then grabbed a blanket from an overhead locker and, curling up in the corner behind us, shut his eyes.
"I'm going to speak to Sterling," Jamal said, pale-faced. Nodding at us, he left the van, closing the door behind him. Martin and I sat down.
"You saved my life," I said and pulled him to me, relishing the warmth of his body.
"Uh uh," he replied, nuzzling my neck, "Rajit did. I just told him where to go. I really should go and say
." He must have felt my body tense as he looked up at me, his eyes widening in shock. "Rajit?"
I shook my head. "I don't know
."
"And Alex?"
I shook my head again. "Don't know. They won't let me up on the
."
"They're dead," Sellick said quietly. "They're both dead."
*****
I felt empty inside. Bleak. Without emotion, because I had to be.
The pale shafts of light that heralded dawn bled across the horizon, though they were hard to see for the battery of searchlights that had given the elevated section of the motorway an aura of surreality. Swarms of firemen, paramedics and police moved with precision around the twisted heaps of metal and glass, like performers in some arcane Hadean ritual.
I had my arm around Martin, holding him close as if there were no tomorrow, his face buried in the jacket the police had given me, his sobs barely audible under the whine of emergency cutting equipment. Five out of the six body bags were filled; two held my friends. The last body, and the reason for the noise, was being cut out of the twisted pile of metal that had been the Range Rover.
I couldn't cry. I wanted to, but my brain had taken over, leaving me no room for catharsis.
"You're grinding your teeth, Gabe."
"Huh?" I looked over bleakly at Sellick, his face streaked with dirt and tears, and he gave me a small smile. I almost lost it. Almost.
The cutting equipment shut off, and in the relative silence we watched the paramedics remove the last body, placing the sundered remains in a bag on their gurney.
Though the motorway had been closed at the last junction, there were still unwanted members of the public milling about behind the police cordons, the murmuring of their voices a stark reminder of how real this actually was. The paparazzi were there too, with barrages of flashguns and obnoxious questions. I began to feel very angry. Two people I'd known, two people I'd liked and considered friends, were lying dead in front of me, and those bastards wanted to make money out of it. If Martin hadn't still been clinging to me, I'm not sure what I'd have done.
Jamal, who had been talking with Sterling and Sellick, walked over.
"We're going now. If you'll get into my Range Rover, we should have an escort arriving in a couple of minutes."
"Going?" I blinked, confused. "Going where?"
"Thames House, first. Then we'll see." I nodded, and Martin and I got into the back of the Range Rover along with Sellick. It was a tight squeeze, but I was so far gone I didn't complain, just grunted when Sellick knocked into my arm. A few minutes later Jamal got into the passenger's seat, and the older man who'd arrived with them earlier slid behind the wheel. With a police car leading the way, we set off, creeping past the emergency vehicles and speeding up once we were through the cordon.
Ten minutes later we arrived at the Hogarth roundabout and hit the morning rush hour. The traffic that had been diverted from the motorway was stop-and-start, and the police in the escort vehicle radioed there was nothing they could do. Stuck in the middle of the back seat, I had Martin on one side, asleep, his head resting on my shoulder, his breath tickling my neck in a way that in other circumstances I'd have found erotic. I turned to talk to Sellick, but he was staring out of the window, his body language screaming to be left alone. I sighed, and turned to watch the interaction between Jamal and the stranger. They obviously knew one another, and it seemed to me that the other man was more than likely a relation, and Jamal's equal.
"He's my uncle," Jamal said, his face impassive in the rear view mirror. I realised I'd been caught watching and reddened, then thought, 'what the hell.'
"Does he have a name?"
"I do," the stranger replied, in a voice equally as cultured but somewhat deeper than the Prince's. I shifted on the seat and saw he was smiling. Martin made a small snorting sound and snuggled closer. I watched as his hand moved to his mouth, and his thumb vanished.
"He does that when he's stressed and upset," Sellick said, looking at me. I hadn't seen him move, and it startled me. "So what do we do now?"
I frowned as I realised he was talking to me.
"We're going to Thames House
Jamal said," I replied after a short pause.
"And?" he pressed, moving closer to me, well inside my comfort zone.
"And what? I don't know, I thought you guys did
Sterling will sort it out."
"Do you trust him?" Jamal asked, and Sellick moved away slightly. I saw they were all waiting for me to answer, and found I was almost hyperventilating.
"I don't understand," I said. "What do you mean 'do I trust him?' you're the ones who should know."
"Gut instinct," Sellick said. I closed my eyes.
"Not particularly."
"Either you do or you don't." Jamal's uncle this time.
"No, then. I don't
but I have no reason."
"Gut's enough," Sellick said, looking at Jamal, who nodded. "Especially when yours is in agreement with mine and Jamal's."
"What about Martin?" I asked, sliding my arm around his shoulders, and beginning to stroke his hair.
"He didn't trust him, ever," Sellick replied. "In fact, he didn't want to have anything to do with him." There was a tension building that I couldn't fathom until Jamal sighed.
"I had to get them involved. There are
diplomatic problems. Father insisted, especially when the bomb went off."
"So," I said, shifting slightly to accommodate Martin, "none of us trust him, and we're going to let ourselves be taken to Thames House." There was a pause.
"No," Jamal said. "Karim?"
"Yes, Your Highness," Karim said, and with all the recent violence and death, I found his grin strange, but comforting.
The traffic was now bumper to bumper. When the police escort passed the next junction, Karim calmly turned down the side road and continued on as if nothing were out of the ordinary. I turned around to look, but the escort either hadn't spotted us leaving or, with the weight of traffic, couldn't get back to the turn-off. Five minutes later we pulled to the side of the road and dumped the Range Rover.
"Cell phones -- hand them over," Sellick said as we walked away up the pavement towards the tube station. He stripped them and snapped the SIM cards in half, putting them into the bin outside a corner store. We took the tube two stops and then got off at Hammersmith, where Jamal used a public phone and hailed a taxi. Ten minutes later, we were dropped off a block away from a large VW dealership.
"New vehicle, I think," Jamal said with alacrity and proceeded to use his uncle's credit card. We drove out some half an hour later in a brand spanking new, fully-loaded Touareg in black. I watched the franchise manager wave goodbye, shaking his head.
"He must be thinking it's Christmas," I chuckled, then felt guilty as Martin gave me a look. "Sorry." He'd woken up in a foul mood, made worse by the tube journey and a headache.
"So where to?" I asked, getting used to the smell of the Touareg's leather seats, and the gadgets in the back.
"The Embassy," Karim and Jamal said in unison.
*****
"You know, this reminds me of that scene in the 'DaVinci Code'," Sellick said. We were sitting at a red traffic light half a block away from three police cars that had cordoned off the Embassy entrance. "Lucky we changed cars."
"I told you," Martin said under his breath, his tone petulant. I put my arm out to comfort him and he shrugged it off. "What are we going to do? What the fuck are we
."
"Stop it!" Jamal spoke, and for the first time I saw him as a Prince. "What we do is turn left, park up and find a place to eat. Then when your blood sugar is back to normal we can work it out."
The lights turned green.
It was a small Italian bistro that opened early to serve croissant and coffee to West End office workers. We took a table right at the back and I watched the manager's face as Karim handed over a large banknote. They laughed and shook hands.
"We shouldn't be disturbed," Karim said, sitting down, "they probably think you're a boy band and we're your managers." He chuckled, as he watched Martin's dubious expression. "Either that or we're filthy rich Arabs, and you're our catamites. Take your pick. Anyway, I ordered coffee, cake and sandwiches."
Jamal shook his head and gave Karim a frosty look, as Martin, his eyes overly bright, pushed his chair back and disappeared into the lavatory. In the ensuing silence, the waiter arrived with a large tray, and spent a couple of minutes placing the food on the table and being cheery.
"So?" Jamal said, looking at me, "what do we do?"
As I looked back at him, mulling over the question and why he'd asked it of me, I realised I was salivating. Amid the carnage on the motorway I'd thought I would never eat again, but now, with the smells of freshly brewed coffee and bread, I realised I was starving.
"The Embassy's out," I answered, grabbing a pain au chocolat and dunking it into my coffee. I took a huge bite and chewed it reflectively, thinking of options. "We need communications, but we don't need interference; especially if Sterling is involved
and if he is, then nobody in authority will believe it until we get proof." I swallowed, wiped my fingers on a napkin and got up. "Back in a minute." I went to find Martin.
The bathroom seemed empty, the dripping tap annoying. I shut it off.
"Martin?"
"Go away
," I heard a hitch in his voice, "
I'll be out soon."
"Are you crapping, or are you sulking?" I asked in a mild tone, glancing around. I was sure the bathroom would have looked better at night; its peeling paint seemed a definite reflection of my mood. I sighed.
"Sulking," he said, pulling the chain and pushing the stall door open. "Sulking and
terrified." I took a step forward, unsure. He wasn't. He walked straight into my arms, and our lips came together in a painful, inelegant mess, our tongues slipping and sliding past each other. I was as lost in the moment as Martin was, and neither of us heard the door open.
"Ah hem!" Sellick cleared his throat. "Sorry to interrupt, but the coffee's going cold." We broke apart, out arms naturally falling together, his hand sliding into mine. The instant comfort I felt as he squeezed helped to push the dark thoughts away, though I still felt like crying.
"So
order some more, my boykie Afrikaans brah," Martin said. Sellick hesitated, then stepping forward, gave us both a crushing hug before leaving, closing the door behind him. We looked at each other, then it was my turn to fall into Martin's open arms.
A few minutes later we left, hand in hand, and returned to our seats.
"Well?" Jamal asked.
"Not really," I replied, deciding to take the question at face value.
"We need either an Internet cafι or a clean laptop," Martin said, looking at me. I nodded, letting him take the lead. "The CCTV cameras in the West End are all tied to a central control room, so we have to keep off the streets as much as possible, and we shouldn't travel together. The heuristics the security services use will have us spotted within ten minutes if we're out for too long. We need hats too, and a change of clothes."
"Not a problem," Karim said, flashing a roll of notes. I'll get the clothes and the laptop, if you give me a spec, and we can sit here, drink, eat, and fuck them over royally." Jamal snorted out the mouthful of coffee he'd just drunk, got up amid the laughter and vanished into the lavatory.
"So if Jamal's a prince, and you're his uncle
," I began, then stopped, realising that I might have crossed some sort of invisible line of protocol.
"Yes?" Karim replied, raising an eyebrow.
"So
I mean
that'd make you
."
"Yes," Karim answered and stood up, "it would." He walked over to the counter and had another word with the manager before coming back. "Spec, please." He looked at me.
"Top of the line PC with a WiFi card. Linux preferably, though if it has to be windoze, then not Vista if you can possibly avoid it."
"Not a Mac?" he asked; "I thought everybody liked Macs."
"Yes, they do," Martin chipped in. "But not for this, Karim."
I watched Martin as he spoke, and could see his self-control begin to fray, his lower lip start to wobble. I squeezed his hand, and he gave me a wan smile as he squeezed back.
"Anything else?" Karim asked, looking at us. "What colour would be best, hmm?" I stared back.
"Pink." He chuckled, then leant across the table and became serious.
"Death is never easy." He pitched his voice so low that Sellick, Martin and I had to lean in to hear him. "Especially the death of those we love." He paused and for a brief moment shut his eyes. When he opened them again it was obvious he was holding back tears. He blinked, and took a deep breath. "What happened this morning was an outrage, and it is an outrage we will all help to avenge." Karim locked eyes with each of us for a moment, then nodded. "I am so very glad Jamal has such friends." With that he pushed back his chair, got up and left.
"Well, that was weird," Sellick said, then gave a heartfelt sigh and shut his eyes. I poured another cup of coffee for us all, and was stirring mine as Jamal came out of the bathroom.
"Where's Karim?" he asked, sitting down, his tone worried.
"Gone to get the clothes and laptop," Sellick said, watching Martin and me out of the corner of his eye. I was contemplating adding another spoon of sugar to Martin's coffee, so I almost didn't see Jamal blanch.
"He's what?" Jamal said. I stopped thinking about sugar and looked at Jamal instead. He seemed nervous.
"He's gone out to get clothes and a computer," I reiterated, putting the spoon down. "Why?"
"Because
because," he stopped and sighed, then looked at me directly, a hint of wry amusement crossing his face, "because my uncle is the King."
Chapter 10
Index
Chapter 12
Seraph by Camy © 2006/2007/2008
Thanks to Kitty, for all the editorial input and tweaking.
She has made this tale much, much better than it was. Gassho.
