Henry Porter: Empire State

‘Hold on,’ said the pilot, ‘the lorry’s moving. No. He’s stopped again. He’s put the vehicle across both lanes. You might just squeeze behind him or in front of him, as the cars are doing, but there’s not much room either way.’

‘That’s not an option,’ said Llewellyn. It was fast occurring to him that there were very few options. If they tried to pass the lorry and a device was detonated inside, it would certainly blow them all into the next world. And they could not cross the central reservation to the westbound carriageway or mount the bank to their left, which was fringed with dense hawthorn trees. Reversing up the hard shoulder to the service station a mile or so back was the only way left to them, unless the lorry moved of its own accord.

By now the Jaguar and its escort had slowed to 35 mph. The traffic that had been held up behind the lorry had all slipped through the gap and a stretch of about 800 yards of open road lay ahead of them. The two remaining police outriders had dropped back to prevent anyone overtaking the convoy.

‘Shit,’ said Llewellyn. ‘This is a fucking mess.’

‘If you can keep this part of the motorway clear,’ said Chambers, ‘you could bring the chopper down and we can hitch a ride.’

‘Let’s do that,’ said Norquist, his voice moving from compliance to command.

The pilot heard this in the cacophony that was now reaching him from central control, but he had other things on his mind. ‘You’ve got two vans approaching from behind – a red Transit and a dark blue Toyota. They’re about half a mile along the bus lane and closing fast. I’ll come down and get you, but the wind isn’t good for this kind of thing and you’ve got to do something about those vehicles.’

Llewellyn told the drivers of the two unmarked escort vehicles to fall back and prepare to block the vans, forcing them off the road if necessary. He knew the conversation was being heard in New Scotland Yard and he told them very deliberately to open fire if they judged it to be the only way of stopping the two vans. He was now convinced that an attempt on Norquist’s life was in progress and he said as much to New Scotland Yard, adding that it wasn’t effing well going to happen on his watch.

The Jaguar and Range Rover shot forward over the next seventy yards then coasted along the hard shoulder, reducing their speed to almost walking pace. Jim Needpath’s eyes moved from his wing mirror to the lorry, every part of his being jangling with the imperative to take flight, to bolt from the situation and save his passengers. In front of them they saw the driver of the truck jump down from the cab, run the few yards to the side of the deserted carriageway and scramble up a bank towards the breaking wave of hawthorn blossom. Two of the three police motorcyclists brought their machines to a halt just before a narrow rail bridge over the motorway, kicked them back on their stands and set off in pursuit of the driver. The third drove up to the truck, circled it and accelerated away shouting in his helmet microphone that a liquid was seeping onto the road from the side of the truck. The vehicle was an Iveco diesel but the liquid smelled like petrol.

The helicopter pilot took matters into his own hands and decided to land on the motorway. The aircraft swooped over the rail bridge and flew at a height of a hundred feet towards the Jaguar, throwing up a storm of spray in its wake. At the exact moment that he lifted his nose and settled the aircraft onto the tarmac, the red Transit burst along the hard shoulder followed by the police BMW. The driver of the Range Rover saw what was happening, slammed his vehicle into reverse and went to meet the van, colliding with it a second or two later.

Needpath didn’t wait any longer. He shot the Jaguar forward to the helicopter, pulling the car round with a handbrake turn so that Norquist’s side was protected from whatever was going on behind them, which was not at all clear because of the roar of the engine and the swirling clouds of spindrift. Llewellyn and Chambers got out, dragged Norquist from his seat and pushed him towards the helicopter, ducking under the rotor blades. They were halfway there when the Toyota van appeared through the mist and hit the Jaguar on its flank, just behind Jim Needpath’s seat, and caused it to spin round. The Ford saloon carrying four Special Branch police officers was not far behind, but it slewed to a halt without hitting either car and disgorged at least three of the policemen, who began to shoot at the van. The same thing had occurred on the hard shoulder after the Range Rover launched itself backwards into the red Transit van.

Llewellyn and Chambers didn’t wait to witness the battle on the motorway. As they lifted Norquist through the door of the helicopter, a shot glanced off the hard perspex in front of the pilot. Chambers had just scrambled in behind Norquist when the helicopter rose, tipped forward and roared away.

They climbed to 1,000 feet before the co-pilot turned round to check that his passengers were strapped in and saw blood was coming from a wound in Norquist’s neck.

He was already unconscious.

On a grassy bank running down to a swollen stream about ten miles from the Albanian border, a man dozed in the morning light. The sun had not yet risen above the hill in front of him so the ground and his bedding were still wet. For some time he had been aware of his travelling companions moving around him, packing and rolling up the sheets which they’d hung between the bushes to give shelter. They coughed and grumbled to each other, mostly in languages he didn’t understand. But the sounds of the camp breaking in the early morning were familiar – men stiff from a night in the open, wondering how they found themselves without bed, food or a good woman.

Someone was prodding the campfire into life. At first he didn’t understand why: they’d eaten the last of the food the night before – dried lamb and a broth made from chicken bones – and he knew there was no coffee or tea. Then he smelled the mint and remembered they’d gathered it in a ditch the night before. They’d made mint tea and now one of them was beside him, nudging the back of his hand with a warm tin cup. He opened an eye to see a grin of chipped teeth, spreading in an unwashed, slightly pock-marked face: the youngest of the three Kurds, an amiable character who was always jollying the others on. He said in English, ‘Drink, mister, for your health.’

The party began to move off down the bank towards the track, but he still couldn’t bring himself to jump up and follow. The delicious memory of his dream was still fresh and part of him didn’t want to leave it behind. He watched shafts of light moving over the hill to catch the top of a tree nearby. A tiny bird, one that he had never seen before, was flitting to and from a vine that had become detached from the tree. Each time it arrived to perch on the twig, it bobbed up and down, checking the area for predators before diving into the shade of the vine to feed its young. He realised the bird must have been there all night, within a few yards of the fire and the men under the shelters, and he marvelled at its nerve and discretion.

At length the sunlight fell on the ground above him and he shook himself from his reverie, stood up and stretched. He had only a few possessions and it didn’t take long for him to bundle them up and tie them together with the belt that he’d kept with him these past six years. As he made his way down the bank, slipping on the damp grass, the men’s voices were brought to him on a soft, warm wind. It would be a good day, he thought. Yes, they were due some luck after all that had happened to them. Maybe they would find a way of crossing the border into Greece without being arrested and treated like dirt.