The Mentor. Steve Jackson
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sitting there shaking her head. ‘This is so fucked up, Paul.’
‘Fucked up … that doesn’t even begin to cover it.’
‘You owe me,’ George said, and then she was gone.
Aston hung up and took the Batphone from his shirt pocket. The Batphone was always on, always charged; he wasn’t allowed to go anywhere without it. Before he could flick it open, it started vibrating and chirping. He didn’t need to check the caller ID. Only one person had this number.
Mac jumped straight in without so much as a hello. A barrage of questions to make sure he’d heard the news, testing him out on the whats and wheres, and then he let rip.
‘Okay, so what the fuck are you sitting there with your thumb jammed up your arse for?’
‘You caught me on the way out the door.’
‘I hope you’re not trying to bullshit me.’
‘No, sir.’
A snort that could have meant anything, then: ‘I want you there straightaway. I want to know everything that’s happening. You got that? Everything.’
Aston made a face at the mobile. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘And Aston.’
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t use the journalist alias.’
Aston hit the street running; by the time he’d jogged over Vauxhall Bridge his shirt was soaked through with sweat. The evening was humid, the air heavy and moist. He stopped on the other side of the river to catch his breath and glanced back at MI6’s HQ. The elaborate architectural style had more than a touch of the Middle East about it; it was easy to see why the media had christened it Babylon-on-Thames. The cost of the building had run into nine figures and from the outside it wasn’t apparent where the money had gone. It was the things you didn’t see that cost the money. The elaborate anti-bugging devices, the bombproof walls, the triple glazing. The fact that five floors of the building were hidden beneath ground level.
The city was in chaos. All tube services had been suspended, so everyone had headed to the surface to get a cab or a bus. The roads were gridlocked and the air was alive with sirens, horns, arguments. Everywhere Aston looked he saw panic and confusion. Nobody had a clue what was going on. The PM had been assassinated, Buckingham Palace had been nuked … the mutterings Aston heard as he headed for Leicester Square ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. He stopped running, sweat trickling down his back. If he ran to Leicester Square in this heat he’d have a stroke. There had to be a better way.
The cyclist was dressed in a suit and the crash helmet made it look like he had a metallic blue alien skull grafted onto his head. He was riding along the gutter, squeezing between the kerb and a convertible BMW. The driver had killed the engine, resigned to being there for the long haul, fingers tapping anxiously on the steering wheel as he listened to a news bulletin. The cyclist drew level. Aston grabbed his arm and pulled him from the bike, sent him tumbling to the ground. He picked up the bike, jumped on and charged along the pavement, shouting at people to get out of his way.
He’d just passed the National Portrait Gallery when he saw his first survivor. The girl was in her mid-twenties and covered from head to toe in dust, as if frosted with grey icing sugar. She was sitting on the kerb with her knees hugged tight against her chest, rocking back and forth, focusing on nothing. Aston cycled on, passing more survivors. All of them had the same dead eyes, that same thousand yard stare. Some were crying, some were injured. They were cut and bruised, confused. Blood stained their faces, their clothes. An icy feeling settled in Aston’s stomach as he realised these were the lucky ones.
Then he heard the screams. Cries of anguish mingled with cries of pain, a full-on symphony of suffering that got louder the closer he got. He wanted to block his ears, wanted to turn around and ride as fast as he could in the opposite direction, anything to get away from that terrible noise. Instead, he let his training kick in. From here on he was Detective Inspector Stuart Bromley. One of the Met’s finest. There was no way DI Bromley, hardened by years of seeing the worst humanity could dream up, would run away. Aston got off the bike, propped it up against a lamppost, brushed the creases from his clothes. Handling the fear was easier when you were pretending to be someone else.
He turned a corner and stepped into a living nightmare. All the usual suspects were there. Cops, firemen and paramedics were beavering away on one side of the hastily erected barriers. Journalists, TV reporters, photographers, cameramen and rubberneckers were trapped on the other side. It was like stepping onto a movie set … except this was no Hollywood fantasy. His senses overloaded, slamming into the red. Colours, sounds and smells seemed sharper, more defined. Vehicle engines revving, orders being barked out, the screams and cries of the injured, red and blue lights throbbing on top of ambulances and police cars like a migraine, the excited voyeuristic murmur of the crowd, that dirty London smell coated with a thin layer of puke and cinders.
Aston pushed through the crowd, moving as if he owned the place. He almost smiled when a couple of the more seasoned hacks started firing questions at him. No comment, he fired back. That was the thing with cover. As long as you believed – really believed – you could fool almost anyone.
A PC manning the barrier stopped him, told him he couldn’t come through. Aston didn’t say a word. He drew himself up to his full height, pulled out his ID, flipped it open and thrust it an inch from the PC’s nose. Indignity personified. There was no way the ID wouldn’t pass inspection. Central Facilities had got it from the same place the Met got theirs. The PC muttered an apology, shifted the barrier and let him through. The media was still trapped on the other side. Mac had been right. The journalist alias wouldn’t have got him very far. He turned away from the barrier and marched towards the station entrance, dust kicking up from the heels of his shoes.
An old man wearing a neck brace was strapped to the gurney, a bright red blanket covering his body. His wrinkled face was twisted with pain, grime and blood filling the age worn crevices, ivory hair streaked black and crimson. He was calling out a name, over and over – ‘Helena, Helena, Helena!’ – his voice surprisingly strong considering his condition. There was the hint of an accent, something Mediterranean. Was Helena one of the dead? The paramedics pushed on three and the wheels folded away as the gurney slid inside the ambulance. They jumped in behind, pulled the door shut. The ambulance shot forward, siren wailing, and within seconds another had rolled up to take its place. Two paramedics were already waiting at the kerb with the next victim.
Aston did a quick 360 degrees. For the moment this was the medics’ show; the survivors took priority and everything else could wait. The police were nothing more than glorified security guards; there to keep the newshounds at bay, to keep the peace. The DI Bromley alias had got him this far but it wouldn’t take him much further. The only people going in and out of the station were paramedics and firefighters. He did another surreptitious 360 degrees, looking for the angle. There was always an angle. Aston made a mental note of where the PCs were. Uniformed police didn’t worry him: easy to spot, easy to bullshit. CID was a different story. Detectives were born with the curiosity gene and the last thing he needed was to find himself answering a load of awkward questions.
A huddle of suited detectives had set up shop by a news stand opposite the station entrance. They were acting big and talking animatedly, hands emphasising the more important points. Aston walked off in the opposite direction, putting some distance between them, all the time looking for that angle. Another ambulance screamed past, siren wailing. It pulled into the middle of the road to go around the line of fire engines parked at the kerb, the driver thumping at the horn and scattering a couple of firemen out the way. Aston stopped, watched for a second. All the action was centred around the lead fire engine; nobody was paying any attention to the one at the back.
Walking as though he was born to be there, Aston passed the firemen, passed the first three engines. He stopped level with the last one, glanced