Authors: J.H. Kavanagh
‘The era of reality television is over. The age of Sensomondo has begun. I’m afraid, Jimmy, this is the end of the line. Pandi, I think we have an appointment to get to…’
Matzov is on his feet with hands spread wide in a gesture of beneficence for the viewing masses. His shaggy black hair is slicked back and looks wet in the lights, his tanned face lurid with make up like a bearded pumpkin.
The rest of the studio is a ring of darkness, no limit except the pale glowing lights high and far back. The air feels thick and a heavy stillness reaches down from above the lights as though to muffle the faint tidal rustling from the audience and the occasional dispossessed cough. Matzov is moving off stage, as hurriedly as he thinks is compatible with dignity. He has Pandi by the hand. She follows on his outstretched arm, still waving with her free hand and hitching her shoulders, wiggling her hips and breasts for the cameras.
A line of light becomes a square on the other side of the studio as a door opens and the first of the support team duck in, lithe and black as lettering. Zena is sending: ‘Go!’
Twenty-eight
Guts clasping like a cold fist. Almost comforting how like old times it feels, the tension mounting and mounting until paradoxically it’s calm; focus steadying the system as it prepares to act. There’s nothing like Death’s presence; he only shows up for the best. You can feel his urgency in your blood, testing the breathing routines that seem so familiar now. Knowing better how to deal with crises than normality. Extremes as your normality; your life in light bursting down a million cables.
There are smoke cans for each of the deep trouser pockets, spark flares. He wanted a party. You are on your feet and the room slides away. Doors burst open like cardboard flaps. Jimmy’s security guard, astonished and uncertain, is straining to hear the explanatory voice in his earpiece. The red light is on above the door of the studio and there’s a throng outside that turns. They make a gesture of silence and then they get it. You read it in their faces. They’ve seen the hood; they stand aside.
You can feel the awareness travel like a wave around the room. The people in the front rows start to chant the theme tune again, let’s get started. Some of them are clapping. You run forward and when they see you they smile and shout. You are on stage between the cameras jostling in, the heat from the lights a heavy pressure on your head and shoulders. Jimmy Line looks terrified. Up close he is smaller than he seems on television and his face looks sunken and old. He is bewildered. This is not what he expected and his familiar world has turned horribly against him. His instinct drives him to an audience that has already abandoned him. The rictus of his smile unchanging as you run past.
A sparker goes off behind the sofa and the stage is lost in golden streaks and a tent of dense blue smoke. The audience screams are half delight and half panic. The cameramen turn and follow you towards the double door to the corridor. The big guard doesn’t know what to do. He moves to block. The embrace is automatic, turns him and lasts long enough for you to rip the tab off another sparker and post the canister down the back of his wrenched black turtle neck. It fizzes and leaks smoke through the fabric of his jacket. He knows he has just seconds until golden balloon and drops everything to scramble his hands under the dancing cloth. You’re beyond the door and on the steps up to the roof by the time he has withdrawn the canister and launched its trail of blinding graffiti across the floor.
Steps across the rooftop. Wind blowing fresh on your cheek – rain coming in. Evening has switched on and across the estuary the distant city skyline is paddling on legs of reflected light. Your red helicopter now stands on its own, unattended and waiting for you, metal arms out wide at cabin step level, as wide as the rotors, plastic tanks dark with liquid to the top on each side of the cabin. The door is open and it’s a familiar step up on to the sill, a swing and shuffle, knees around the stick, forked belt over the head to rest on both shoulders and feet finding footing on the big floor pedals. The headset drops the noise, cans fit tight over your ears.
The cabin is a semi-globe of Plexiglas running all the way under your feet. The control panel directly ahead has rows of dials at the centre. Two switches to flick in the panel overhead: One, two.
The starter is a gurgle behind, becomes a repeated cough and then a drone, a rising whine and whistle.
Left hand has the twist grip of the collective – the whole bar tilts up like a big loose handbrake if you lift. The slow turn of rotors builds gradually, shadows flicking faster and faster – panting, breathless – now a train beat, persistent, rhythm with a flap in it – becomes a chug then ups speed to a drill. The noise is pervasive and the whole cabin vibrates. Like a locomotive running – like the fever end of a drum solo.
Everything turning, everything torque – sky-sucking zhou zhou sound tacker tacker tacker…
The seat shudders – whole airframe judders. A voice in the phones – clear – let’s go.
Jigger jigger turns to a flat note and ground sliding away, turning under foot pressure and a gentle push on the stick. Wipers on – sweeping from top outside corners, t-bars, frantic and spidery. You lift and turn, the city strip waistlining the watery view, blurred in a gauze of rain.
When Eva reaches the police building at Waterloo, it is evident in the faces of the people milling in the corridors that her presence is as much a surprise to them as it is to her. The operations room is a basement annex borrowed from the CCTV monitoring and radio tracking unit. It is alive with cables and screens and artificial lights. At the far end there is a low table and two crouching figures wearing KomViva headsets with leads trailing across the floor to a port in the wall. The long wall has three videoconference screens, blank and humming. Along the table there are laptops and headsets and conference phone microphones like black starfish. Several men are gathered around a large flat screen TV showing Network One News. Eva can see the marchers massed along the Victoria Embankment, their anti-KomViva banners fighting the wind.
‘Deputy Commissioner is on his way’ the woman says as she shuts them in.
Eva has the feeling of an operation being carried away on its own momentum. They sit at the long table to catch up quickly while seated figures call out intermittently, according to a protocol she can’t determine. She catches only snippets.
‘Helicopter,’ one says. ‘Three one one scrambled, monitoring approach at long range.’
Someone in the shadows barks a question. ‘Any clearances for city flights from Estuary City tower today?’ Another voice says ‘Thames approach over one thousand feet.’
‘We have a transmission live on headsets and we have them synched on twenty-one three hundred.’
‘Approximately four minutes. Trying to contact and confirm.’
Someone yells, ‘I want a ground crew turning over that departure. Is that boat ready – where is it?’
‘Thames barrier, Sir.’
Shaw breaks off to speak with a man in shirtsleeves who twiddles the controls of the control panel in front of them to start the video conference. Eva sees people taking seats in the distant conference room and the red light tells her they can now see into this room. A man with a bull neck and neat hair is staring into camera.
Dooley’s tone is impatient. ‘What have we got?’
‘Chopper, Sir. Approaching from the East.’ Someone says.
‘Who’s the responsible officer?’
A man in uniform takes a seat at the table in front of Eva. He looks authoritative and when he turns his head he looks pissed off. Eva catches the eyebrow game he’s playing with colleagues bunched by the door.
‘Are you going to intercept?’ Dooley asks.
‘I’m afraid it isn’t that straightforward. The only option would be a response from Fleeting Grade. But their brief is for surprise attacks commencing outside our borders. They patrol the whole country. Right now they are out of range.’
‘With a free-for-all looming after the election?’
‘With respect, sir, I am not proposing to debate tactics during this alert.’
Dooley swipes: ‘If this were Washington I’d want that chopper challenged and if necessary taken down outside city limits.’
‘We don’t routinely carry live missiles or ammunition. You don’t either, General. We have police helicopters deployed for a watching brief.’
Dooley doesn’t leave it: ‘Need jets with air to air. Scare the shit out of him, wing waggle and take him off limits…’
‘They’ll know, as you do, General, that the risk of jettison outweighs the practical usefulness. We don’t risk citizens' lives with Sidewinders or SkyFlashes.’
‘Don’t you even carry canon shells?’ Dooley growling
‘We’re not going to shoot down an aircraft over the capital. It’s not an option.’
‘Says who?’
‘We would need direct authority from the Chief of the Defence Forces. And CDF would need political authority from the Prime Minister.’
‘Hammer to crack a nasty nut.’
There’s another voice from behind. Eva sees extravagant metalwork on his shoulders and assumes he’s the Deputy Commissioner. ‘Our intelligence points to a nuisance flight of some kind. This isn’t a military attack or a suicide bomber.’
‘Intelligence? I hope to God you’re right.’
The Deputy Commissioner continues. ‘It’s a police matter.’
Dooley’s face doesn’t try to conceal his annoyance, ‘That individual is not a police matter. He’s carrying United States property that is of special significance to National Security.’
Eva looks at Shaw, open-mouthed. ‘He’s trying to kill him!’
Shaw tries to placate her. He knew it was a dumb idea to smuggle her in. He can only afford to whisper: ‘He’s just covering all the bases…’
‘Covering…what?’
‘Hell we don’t have much time – And what do you intend to do about it, Deputy Commissioner?’
‘We’ve two helicopters and three teams on the ground. We’re tracking him and we’ll land on him the moment he touches down.’
Shouts break out. ‘Live pictures on TV – streaming now. Can we merge into conference please?’
The helicopter first comes into view on the screen as red and green pinpoint lights and a spotlight blaze sweeping the water.
‘Police tracking please – put it on three.’
‘What’s that he’s carrying? See – to the side – is he armed?’
‘Can we zoom?’
Eva strains to see. Somewhere in those pixels there must be the confirmation she still needs. That cluster of lights holds an idea that is growing before her eyes, taking shape as a thing that will soon yield a person…
‘What the hell is that?’
Dooley’s voice seems louder than the rest: ‘When will we have Matzov in?’
We’re trying to conference him in now, sir. He was in transit but we have him in the studio at Media Tower now.
Good, get him online.
Shaw turns towards the KomViva tracking team and addresses a figure standing by the hunched and helmeted figures. ‘Are we still tracking live?’
Low, low over the water, nose down, skids almost touching, Let’s Get Started loud in the cans. The London skyline looms, buildings bunched behind chains of lights along the shore: White pyramid top on Canary Wharf, an adjacent stripe of green, flash of red – the backdrop a crazed wealth of brilliance sprawling away forever, the vast electric brain of the metropolis dividing as you approach, split by a wedge of black water.
Zigzag across the widening river and follow the turns – long low left bank smoothly at speed – short right-left-right that swings the city like lanterns in the windshield – a quick left and right kink that jerks the tanks. The river now a black intestine in the body of lights. You know the layout: the wider blackness, the works where no boats go; the City airport lights, studs down the runway; the derricks and cranes picking at tankers moored at the docks.
You check off the flood barrier – lining its row of hulls in golden light: Chinese junk race that never starts. You are on track and can enjoy the ride. Roll right – City towers swelling as you rise over the Millenium dome, a bulge of purple white translucence, shot through with spikes, St Sebastian jellyfish, then a hard swoop over the north bank’s electric tonsil of the Isle of Dogs.
Down, down, so close to the water, rotor downdraft buffeting and boiling the surface – a white ridge where it parts – crinkling the surface. Tower Bridge suddenly ahead. You’re up level with the road, bridge down, the two towers sprouting mini-towers, intricate stonework, the overhead criss-cross rail, carved dragons wrestling a shield in a coat of arms, golden cross looming, metal girders – rivets close up for an instant before it flits overhead, nerve-stab-near to the rotors – the echo off the towers like a shot as you shriek by.
Music shift as you careen down the river – jackhammer guitar – lights from the bank duelling with your own spots where both catch the water.
Stick back and up again – City galaxy on right, familiar constellations vying for prominence, helical hard-on Gherkin wins, Faberge finery prancing among the stiffs.
Along the black track of the river, bridges roll up like hurdles. Counting them down as Zena rehearsed: low stone arches and bulging pillars is London; next has a curve of green metal girders. Your lights catch a yellowish grin of supporting struts, streetlamps like crosses; that’s Southwark. Next is metallic, like a cable strung across the river: Millenium walkway, clumsy life support for old St Pauls’ floodlit dome to the north, then red studded arches, gold pillars, street lights in pearly pairs: Blackfriars. The long left hander under Victoria Embankment, Waterloo bulging up from the south. Zena sending; London eye on left, there! Giant gilt bezel improbably on its edge. Last but one checkpoint. And then you’re there; Westminster Bridge is dark shadowed underneath as you turn over the blazing whisky-lit Houses of Parliament, Big Ben’s fractured peppermint dials; the last checkpoint on the list.
Matzov patches into the conference. Hasty, bundled, just maintaining cool. He looks as though he’s in a cubicle and his head looks oversized. An overhead light finds a sweat-streaked scalp under the slicked hair.