Chameleon - A City of London Thriller (32 page)

Chapter
43

National Shrine, El
Cobre. Cuba. Present Day,
Thursday 9am.

When Gillian
looked into the bathroom mirror she saw exactly what she had wanted
her watchers to see. A pretty woman with long fair hair who had
been overly enthusiastic when applying her make up. Her long dress
covered her entire body and legs. Not even her feet were visible.
In short she looked like a WAG or soap star on holiday.

With a deft
move of her left hand she removed the wig, revealing a dark short
bob hairstyle, one so beloved by women of the cloth. The difference
it made to her appearance still shocked Gillian, even though she’d
had eighteen hours to get used to her new look.

The day before
in, the women’s spa at the hotel, the Cuban hairdresser had pleaded
with her new client not to have her magnificent long mane of fair
hair butchered, but Gil was insistent. The hairdresser muttered to
herself in Spanish as she cut the hair short and coloured it with a
French semi permanent crème which the chart described as being
Noir: Nombre Une, or almost black. Two hours later the Hairdresser
threw up her hands in despair and called Gil a “Mujer Loco”, or
crazy woman, when Gil admired her new cut and then proceeded to
take a long fair haired wig from her bag and place it over her new
style, making herself look exactly the same as she had when she had
walked in.

The Chameleon
lived up to her nom de plume and minutes later she was clad from
head to foot in black, with her face scrubbed clean of make-up. Gil
did not need make-up to be pretty, but she looked very different
from the heavily made up woman who had walked into the
bathroom.

“
They only
ever see the uniform,” she said to her reflection.

Sister
Margaret Rose, as she had now become, was dressed in a traditional
habit with a pristine white coif covering her neck and head. She
wore a plain silver ring on her left hand that denoted she was a
Bride of Christ, and a large silver Crucifix hung from her neck on
a black cord and rested on the pristine starched white coif. The
outfit was completed by a black woven woollen belt which had her
Rosary hanging from it and a pair of unfashionable spectacles
glazed with plain glass. Once she had crammed her few belongings
into the traditional, top opening, hand held black bag, the image
would be complete. The passport and picture were now almost eight
years old, but the hairstyle was identical and the picture was
clearly a freshly scrubbed younger version of the Sister Margaret
Rose who would fly to Nassau in the Bahamas very soon.

***

“
Sister
Angelica, I am so grateful for your help. I appreciate that seeing
a worldly woman like myself wearing these sacred robes must be hard
for you to bear,” Sister Margaret Rose pondered.

“
Nonsense, my
child, we will do whatever it takes to further the Holy Mother’s
work under this godless communist regime. And in that regard I must
thank you for your generous donation. I assure you, even without it
I would have assisted you without any hesitation in return for your
brave efforts on behalf of this order in 2005.”

Gillian Davis
knew that her six figure donation would keep the nuns of El Cobre
in funds for a year or more. Three more nuns of varying sizes and
shapes gathered in the corridor as Sister Angelica hugged Sister
Margaret Rose, blessed her and bid her a safe journey. The shortest
and oldest nun, Sister Therese, took the bag and exited the
dormitory with the three taller nuns.

***

Thom Passarell
was already fed up of coffee, and the tourists had only been gone
forty five minutes. He looked up to see four nuns exiting the
building. It was a somewhat amusing sight; three were tall and had
their hands concealed in their capacious sleeves, their arms in a
cradling position. They were giggling. The last nun was about four
feet six inches tall and she scurried behind the others with a
stern look on her aged face that spoke volumes about her
disapproval of her younger sisters’ public behaviour.

Light relief
over, Passarell ordered another coffee and resumed his observation
of the Basilica’s sole public entrance.

***

Inside the
Basilica, Sister Angelica examined her handiwork and smiled at her
finished product.

“
I feel a
little vulnerable dressed like this, Sister Angelica,” the novice
nun admitted, temporarily concealing her Novice’s calf length work
habit under Gillian Davis’s flowing summer dress, and replacing her
veil with a flowing wig of fair hair.

Sister
Angelica looked at the heavily made up face of the young woman and
worried that she looked a little too much like a dancer at the Copa
Cubana, but that was how her predecessor had arrived. Handing the
novice a pair of Gillian Davis’s oversized sunglasses, she gave
final instructions.

“
Your veil is
in the handbag. When you get to the Ducal Hotel restaurant, eat the
set lunch and sit in the back, well away from the window. When the
bus arrives to take the tourists to their next destination, go into
the hotel restrooms, discard the dress, wig, hat and sunglasses,
scrub your face and replace your veil. Wearing the habit under the
dress will be warm, but it is the only way.”

The older nun
paused for thought. “After you have done that, walk straight to the
front desk and ask the concierge to order you a taxi. I want you
back here in three hours.”

The novice was
excited and nervous in equal measures as she passed an hour waiting
for the bus.

***

When the
tourist bus arrived, Thom Passarell looked over to ensure that his
quarry was in the throng. He need not have worried; the sun hat,
the glasses and the flowing summer dress stood out from the
scantily dressed crowd who clambered aboard the bus, which then
headed for the old city and lunch. Thom paid his bill. He was in no
hurry. He knew exactly where the bus was headed.

***

At 10:30am
Sister Margaret Rose presented her passport and boarding card to
the uniformed customs official. He glanced at it with little
interest before making a joke.

“
The Bahamas,
Sister? Perhaps you will be getting a nice tan.” He laughed at his
own joke as the nun glared at him, only her face and hands visible.
In a broad Irish accent the nun rebuked him, using the name on his
badge.

“
Christos,
how would your mother feel if she knew how you treated the servants
of the Saviour whose name you bear?”

The man
visibly blanched, then offered a subdued apology as he quickly
stamped her exit visa into her passport.

Gillian Davis
smiled as she headed to gate 107 and her seventy minute flight to
Nassau in the Bahamas. If everything worked out according to plan
it would be almost 2pm when her followers realised that they had
lost her, by which time she would be on a casino cruise ship bound
for Fort Lauderdale.

***

Thom Passarell
was annoyed with himself when he lost contact with his quarry. For
almost an hour he searched high and low in the hotel, but she was
nowhere to be seen. Passarell knew that she had not climbed aboard
the bus, which had waited an extra ten minutes for her to
show.

Nonetheless,
he wasn’t worried. Some time later that night she would return to
her hotel room and to her belongings, and when she did his team
would be waiting.

Chapter
4
4

Nassau Cruise
Terminal, Festival Place, Nassau Thursday 1pm

The seventy
minute flight from Havana to Nassau had proven uneventful. The
fifty seat turboprop aircraft, which was owned and run by
Bahamasair, was comfortable enough and the aircraft appeared to be
relatively new. The De Havilland Dash 8, painted in a yellow and
aqua branding, had landed exactly on time at the
Lynden Pindling
International Airport.

Passing
through the capacious airport building was swift and efficient.
Less than thirty minutes after touching down, Gil had exited the
hangar sized terminal building and was waiting at the courtesy car
stand, where a jolly Caribbean man in a bright yellow and green
shirt was awaiting her arrival.

“
We will have
you on your cruise liner within the hour, Sister,” he smilingly
promised, not questioning why a nun should be considering a cruise,
let alone a casino cruise.

The Chevy
sedan almost floated along John F Kennedy Drive on its way to the
cruise terminal before turning onto Coral Harbour Road. The sun was
shining, the skies were a pristine and cloudless blue and there was
little or no traffic to contend with. Gillian began to
relax.

Eventually the
car pulled into a side road and a multicoloured building
constructed of timber, in the old Colonial style, stood before
them. The sign on the top said “Starbucks”. They were everywhere.
Gillian tipped the driver well and entered the modern cruise
terminal. Her first port of call was the restroom.

Gillian
removed the nun’s habit and all of the associated accessories, to
reveal a pair of shorts and a Hollister So-Cal Tee shirt
underneath. From the nun’s bag she extracted a foldaway Suzy Smith
shoulder bag, which she proceeded to fill with her toiletries, a
change of underwear and her make-up. At the bathroom counter she
applied make-up to her face and gel to her hair, spiking it to make
it a little more contemporary. Satisfied that she looked nothing
like Sister Margaret Rose, but perhaps more like her bad sister,
Gillian packed the black case with the nun’s habit and
paraphernalia. Slipping her old passport into the concealed pocket
at the bottom of the bag, she retrieved the new passport she was
about to use for the first time and slipped it into her
pocket.

The DHL man
behind the Terminal Cargo Counter was happy to despatch the nun’s
bag back to Cuba for his attractive new customer. He grinned
widely, white teeth gleaming as he spoke.

“
For you,
Lady, I have a special rate, just forty eight dollars.” Gillian
paid in cash and checked the address on the DHL plastic sack that
encompassed her escape disguise. Satisfied that it would reach
Sister Angelica intact, she left the cool interior of the air
conditioned terminal building and stepped into the sun to walk the
few yards to the large cruise liner berthed at the jetty. As she
walked along the paved walkway, she turned to look back at the
bright orange and yellow building proudly displaying a sign which
read “Festival Place” and wished that she could stay awhile. The
Bahamas were such a friendly group of islands.

Gillian walked
along the gangway and stepped up to a handsome young American man
dressed in a white dress uniform with a naval cap and shorts. He
announced himself by name and rank and wished Gillian a safe return
to the United States. He scanned her passport but took little
notice of its contents; she was, after all, an American passport
holder returning to the States on a casino boat.

***

Unbeknown to
her MI5 bosses, in 2007 Gillian had started a long and quite
laborious process to obtain American Citizenship, a social security
number and a US Passport. She had only received them after her
third face to face interview at the US Embassy in London at the end
of 2009. Given that her entitlement was based entirely on her
paternity - she was born to a US citizen, who was her father - her
shiny new passport gave her name as Gillian Miles. In due course
Gillian Davis, Sister Margaret Rose and two other identities would
become history, and she would be like everyone else - one name, one
identity, one future.

Sitting at the
bar sipping a Margarita, Gillian Miles looked across the casino
floor beyond the slot machines and over towards the Blackjack
table. Perhaps she would try her luck later. She rubbed her finger
around the edge of the cocktail glass, displacing the salt, and
sipped her drink. The orange flavoured liqueur slipped across her
tongue with a slight acidic tang. That would be the lime. Then the
Tequila hit. She would have to be careful. She didn’t want her
first entry to the States as a citizen to be on a stretcher. Gil
had played many parts and had many skills, but she had realised at
an early age that she reacted to alcohol very quickly and that if
she wanted to be sharp she would just have to be abstemious. The
last thing Gillian Miles wanted was not to be in control. That was
her weakness, and also her nightmare.

Gillian took a
quick glance at her watch as she felt the boat pull away from the
jetty. It was 2pm. About now her watchers in Cuba would be
wondering how they had lost her in a hotel with one main entrance.
She smiled as she imagined the confused looks on their faces when
they realised that she was never returning for her suitcase, her
clothes and her hair straighteners.

Chapter
4
5

Green Earth
Fashions, Church Place, London, Thursday 7pm

The fashion
shoot was coming to an end. Katie was wearing the last of the
summer range of dresses made from fair-trade cotton. So far she had
worn a plethora of tee shirts, shorts, jeans, scarves, jackets and
skirts. The mission statement of Green Earth Fashions was to
produce high quality fashions from cotton and other sustainable
materials secured from reputable sources. The entire supply chain
was under the control of Maxi Jameson, former actress, singer and
flower child.