Lee Child - Personal

Including a black Rolls-Royce and a black Jaguar, parked nose to tail two houses down on the left, behind a fence just like Joey’s. Part red brick, with a knee wall and tall spaced pillars, and part wrought iron, painted black and twisted into shapes like licorice, with two electric gates made of the same stuff, one for in and one for out. The Rolls-Royce was parked ahead of the chase car, which made logical sense, at least linguistically. Both gates were closed.

There was an 84 per cent chance he would leave home exactly one hour before .

Five minutes.

I looked at the map and said, ‘They’re heading for the North Circular Road. They’ll turn left out of the house. They’ll drive away from us. We need to be at the other end of the street.’

Nice said, ‘Do you want to risk a drive-by, or should we go around the block?’

‘We took a minicab for a reason. We can get away with a slow cruise, like a guy looking for an address, and then turning around and pulling over and waiting for his customer.’

‘These people have drivers of their own.’

‘Not all of them. Only the working-class heroes.’ I backed up a little and made the turn, and drove exactly like a guy looking for an address, slow and obvious, peering out the side window all the time. Charlie’s place was a solid old pile, fairly ornate, built back when bricklayers were cheaper than bricks. The front garden was long gone, replaced by a shallow curving driveway, in one gate and out the other, over flagstone slabs and gravel shapes, between concrete urns and concrete angels, some of them with pans of water held high above their heads, for the birds to drink.

I turned around two houses later, and I pulled into the kerb, and I waited.

Etiquette meant everything. And ten o’clock meant ten o’clock. Therefore exactly one hour before meant nine o’clock. And at eight fifty-nine on the nose Charlie’s front door opened, and he stepped out. He looked just like his photograph. Seventy-seven years old, bulky, round-shouldered, with thin grey hair, and a plain face, and a nose the size of a potato. He was wearing a black suit with a black tie under a black raincoat. Behind him came a shorter old guy, who I assumed was the driver. Behind the short guy came a stream of six younger men, all plainly dressed, all with shaved heads, all a useful size. Four of them headed for the Jaguar, and the other two trailed along towards the Rolls-Royce, now directly behind old Charlie himself, because by that point the driver had hustled on ahead to open his door.

Which was awkward, because it was a suicide door, with the handle at the front, one of a seamless pair with the driver’s door handle, which was on a regular door, and Charlie was approaching from the rear, all of which meant Charlie had to pass by his driver, and then stand and wait until the guy opened up, and then reverse direction, and get in. But between them they got the job done eventually. Charlie settled back, and the driver closed the door on him, and he opened his own regular door, and he slid in, and the two guards got in on the other side, one in the front and one in the rear.

At nine o’clock exactly the gate started to move.

I WAS CLINGING to two crucial assumptions, the first of which was that the short old guy in the Rolls-Royce thought of himself as a bit of an artist. Maybe he was a veteran wheelman from way back, an old pro, adaptable to any circumstance, whether the requirement was for a fast getaway from a bank job, or a silent chauffeur for the top boy, but one who secretly colluded in his boss’s obsessions, such as for precision timekeeping, especially with sensitive destinations ahead. Therefore I expected the guy to touch the gas when the gate was open some exact accustomed distance, such that it would be still wider open when the car actually got there, thereby allowing the car to pass through, fast and neat and fluent, but with only inches to spare, as if the guy’s mechanical precision was somehow a homage or a tribute to his boss’s chronological precision. I figured that was how an artist would play it.

Which meant I had to guess the guy’s hit-the-gas signal, and hit mine about three seconds earlier, because I was still some ways down the street, and I had distance to make up. But I couldn’t afford to arrive either early or late, so I set off at a slow roll, which I thought was acceptable, because a minicab driver might need to make a note or put his pen away, before looking up and engaging his brain and taking off for real. I saw the Rolls-Royce move when the gate was about two-thirds open, slow and smooth, a modest, whispering acceleration, as if the driver intended to take the turn into the street without pausing, as one fluid move.

I watched the speed of the gate and the speed of the car, and the depth of the sidewalk, and the distance between where I was and where I would need to be, and I let the back part of my brain make a quick and dirty decision about when to go, and I hit the gas when it told me to. The grimy old Ford jumped forward, ten yards, twenty, and then I stamped on the brake and the car came to a dead stop, right where the Rolls-Royce wanted to be, so the Rolls-Royce driver stamped on his own brake in turn, and he came to a stop with his majestic grille two feet from Casey Nice’s door, and behind him the chase car stopped two feet from his back bumper.

Then the next split second was all about Casey Nice sliding out through her narrow gap and heading left, her gun out exactly like the federal agent she was, with me skittering around the hood from the other flank, gun out too, and heading right, breathless, for the all-bodyguard side of the limousine, for the twin door handles, right there side by side in the middle of the car, such that both handles could be grabbed at once, and both doors thrown open at the same time.

The second crucial assumption I was clinging to was that modern automobiles had a device that locked the doors automatically, but only when a predetermined speed had been achieved. Which I was sure had not been achieved. Not in this case. Not yet.

I held the Glock finger and thumb and put my hands on the handles.

And pulled.

Both doors opened.

And both doors opened on Nice’s side, too, which put us exactly where we wanted to be in relation to the chase car, which was each of us safely behind our very own hunk of armoured steel and armoured glass. The back doors and the back glass , Bennett had said, in his sing-song voice. And the back doors were hinged at the rear, and they opened wide, to a full ninety degrees, so they stuck straight out sideways, like Little Joey’s ears, thereby keeping us protected as we went about our business. Only against handguns , Bennett had continued, but I figured that was OK, because I was sure the guys in the chase car had nothing bigger. Not that I expected them to shoot at all. Too much risk of hitting Charlie. They would know the rear windshield was armoured, but Bennett hadn’t mentioned anything else, so they wouldn’t risk a wild deflection through a soft-skinned area like the trunk, or a rear wheel arch, because it could come through the upholstery and hit a back seat passenger anywhere from the ass to the neck. So I expected them to freeze for a second, and then to react, and then to change their minds, and finally to do what they should have done first, which was come swarming out of the car and straight at us. But they would do it fourth, not first, which would give me three clear seconds to get my business done, one thousand, two thousand, three thousand , like the long lonely flight of John Kott’s bullet, through the cold Parisian air.

My business was to aim the Glock at Charlie White’s head in a threatening manner, while using the linoleum knife in my other hand to cut the rear guard’s seat belt, in two places, slash, slash , and then to lean in and launch a kind of backhand elbow to the far side of the guy’s head, so he ended up falling out, and then to shuffle sideways and do it all again, to the guard in the front, slash, slash , the elbow, the guy falling out, and then to turn and kick the back seat guy, in the head, and the front seat guy, the same, to keep them out of action on the ground, and then to hustle back to the Ford, and move it out the way, and jump out again, and turn, by which time I was into the fourth second, and they were out of their car.