Tuesday, 22 December 2015
9:34 A.M.
Baxter followed the signs for the Bakerloo line, descending deeper beneath the city into Piccadilly Circus Underground Station. She had tied her hair up into a ponytail and plastered herself in the few items of colorful makeup that had been gifted to her over the years—most a not-so-subtle hint from her mother to “stop looking like a vampire.” The disguise was effective enough, however, and she had barely recognized herself in the mirror after she’d finished.
She followed the crowds onto the platform. Halfway along, she spotted her destination and stopped outside a gray door adorned with the London Underground logo and a sign that read:
NO ENTRY—STAFF ONLY
She knocked, hoping she was in the right place and not trying to gain entry to a cleaning cupboard.
“Who is it?” a female voice called from inside.
Several people were within earshot, and she was not about to yell her name in front of them after going to the trouble of painting herself up like a clown.
She knocked again.
The door opened a cautious inch, but then Baxter shoved her way through into the darkened room. The woman quickly locked the door behind her, while the two other technical officers continued setting up the racks of monitors, radio base units, frequency boosters, computers, and encrypted relay stations, converting the sparse office into a fully functional tactical command station.
Rouche was already there, sticking an assortment of maps up next to a list of radio call signs.
“Morning,” he greeted her.
He reached into his pocket and handed over her car keys, making no mention of the events precipitating the need to borrow them in the first place or of her alarmingly colorful new face.
“Thanks,” Baxter replied curtly, shoving them into her coat pocket. “How long till we’re all up and running?”
“Ten . . . fifteen minutes?” one of the people crawling around under the tables replied.
“We’ll come back then, then,” she told the room ineloquently.
Rouche took the hint and followed her out onto the platform to speak in private.
By the time he’d returned to the flat the previous night, footage of the shooting had already spread to every major news channel in the world, immortalizing him in grainy video as he saved Baxter’s life. As a result, he had neglected to shave that morning, the dark shadow a notable change to the clean-cut agent’s appearance. He had also combed back his quiff, exposing the grayer layers beneath, a look that actually suited him far better.
“You’re a bit of a silver fox today, aren’t you?” Baxter smiled as they strolled to the far end of the platform, passing a huge poster for Andrea’s book.
“Thanks. And you . . . well, you . . .”
He was struggling.
“I look like a bingo nan,” said Baxter, unamused, amusing Rouche. “The FBI have elected to grace us with their presence,” she said quietly. “They wish to ‘assist in any way possible to bring to a close these atrocious acts of barbarism.’ Translation: they can’t piss off back home without Green, but MI5 aren’t done waterboarding him yet, so they might as well stick around and shoot somebody.”
“Yeah, I’d worked that much out myself,” said Rouche, a subtle nod toward the enormous ponytailed man standing a little farther along the platform. “Steven Seagal over there’s been choosing a chocolate bar for nearly an hour now.”
“For Christ’s sake,” huffed Baxter. “Report from the night shift: two more Puppets were picked up overnight.”
“So . . . ten to go?”
“Ten to go.” She nodded.
“And our Azazel, whoever he may be,” added Rouche.
They stood silently for a moment as a train clattered to a stop.
Baxter used the interruption to compose what she wanted to say, although she didn’t feel as though she could admit to opening his gift early and would probably have avoided the inevitably emotional conversation anyway.
“We’re both gonna get through this,” she told him, watching the train departing to avoid his eye. “We’re so nearly there. I know you believe that today is some sort of test or something, but we can only do what we can do. Don’t take any stupid risks or—”
“Do you know what I was thinking about last night?” Rouche interrupted. “I never answered your question.”
She looked puzzled.
“How someone who’s supposed to be intelligent and spends their life looking for evidence could ever believe in something as groundless and illogical as . . . ‘sky fairies,’ wasn’t it?” he asked with a smile.
“I really don’t want to get into this right now,” said Baxter, cringing at the memory of her vicious outburst on the plane.
“This is the perfect time to get into it.”
Another train decelerated into the station before a mass game of musical chairs played out over ten seconds of chaos, the losers’ forfeit: hold a diseased pole or fall over the moment it sets off again.
“I was like you,” started Rouche. “You know, before. I thought faith was just something for the weak—a delusion to help get them through their overwhelming lives . . .”
The way that Rouche had described it reminded her of how she had felt about counseling before it had saved her.
“. . . but then, when what happened . . . happened, I just couldn’t even process the idea that I’d lost them forever, that I’d never get to be with them again, to hold them, that my two girls and everything they were was just gone. They were too important, too special, to just not exist anymore, you know?”
Baxter was struggling to hold it together, but Rouche seemed perfectly composed, just trying to articulate his thoughts:
“The second I thought about that, everything just sort of made sense: they weren’t really gone. I could feel it, and now I’ve been led back down here today and . . . Am I making any sense at all?”
“I prayed this morning!” Baxter blurted, before putting her hand over her mouth as if she’d given up an embarrassing secret.
Rouche looked at her suspiciously.
“What? I don’t even know if I did it right, but I thought, What if I’m wrong? What if there is someone or something out there and I don’t? There’s just too much at stake today not to, right?” Baxter’s cheeks went bright red, but fortunately, the garish assortment of colors somewhat diminished the effect. “Oh, shut up,” she snapped when she caught him smiling at her. She quickly moved on to her real point. “While I’m making a complete fool of myself, I might as well tell you what I prayed for.”
“That we stop these sick bastards from—”
“Well, obviously! But I also prayed for you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you. I used my one and only prayer I’m ever going to make on you. I prayed that you’d make it through today with me.”
The unexpected revelation looked to have had the desired effect.
Whether Rouche’s God wanted him to live or die that afternoon was out of their hands, but Baxter hoped he might now, at least, pause for a moment before actively inviting it.
“What time is it?” groaned Baxter, her head in her hands and lit by the bluish light of the monitors in the makeshift command unit.
“Ten past,” replied Rouche, keeping his eyes on the live camera feeds from all over the station.
“Ten past what?”
“Three.”
She sighed heavily:
“Where the hell are these shits?” she asked the room.
The heightened terror threat level had resulted in an interesting day in the capital. A man had been arrested attempting to smuggle a knife into the Tower of London; however, all signs were pointing toward stupidity rather than mass murder as the driving force behind his actions. There had been a bomb scare at an event in Kensington Olympia. That, too, had ended anticlimactically with an irate, but admittedly forgetful, exhibitor learning that his missing laptop had been subjected to a controlled explosion.
Baxter and her team of twelve had detained five people throughout the day due to suspicious behavior. Although none had been involved with Green and his minions, it had highlighted the alarming number of weird people roaming the city at any given moment.
“Where are the MI5 guys?” Baxter asked. She didn’t raise her head off the desk.
“Still in with the FBI on the Piccadilly line platform,” someone answered.
She made a nonspecific noise in acknowledgment.
“Weirdo alert!” Rouche called out.
Baxter looked up excitedly. A man in a Santa hat, clearly concealing some sort of live animal inside his jacket, strolled past one of the cameras. She was just glad for something to do.
“Let’s check it out.”
Back at New Scotland Yard, Constable Bethan Roth had been assigned the task of reviewing camera footage relating to the case but of too poor quality to be utilized by facial-recognition systems. Over the week, she had compiled an entire album of fuzzy screenshots, which, after being processed through image-enhancement programs, had led to the arrest of two more Puppets.
She had spent the day studying footage from the Sky Garden security cameras, watching the narrowly evaded disaster play out from every angle. The current black-and-white video was as mind-numbing to watch as the two hours of people passing in and out of shot as they visited the bathrooms.
She was reviewing a recording from the indoor bar area. Unable to see any of the action out on the terrace, she could tell when Rouche had taken his shot only by the reaction of the crowd. Several people turned away, others continued filming, phones extended, and one elderly lady fainted, taking her zombie-looking husband down with her.
She leaned forward to select the next video file when one of the monochrome figures in the background caught her attention. She rewound the footage and watched again as the crowd reacted accordingly to seeing a man killed in front of them.
Bethan kept her eyes fixed on the dark figure at the back.
Just as the fainting woman dropped out of frame, he turned away and walked calmly toward the exit. Everything about his demeanor, even the way that he walked, suggested a complete emotional detachment to what he had just witnessed.
Bethan zoomed in but couldn’t find anything better than a pixelated circle where the man’s face should have been.
She had an idea.
She loaded up the footage from outside the toilets again and continued from where she had stopped watching. After a few moments, the unidentified man rounded the corner and passed beneath the camera, making sure to keep his head lowered at all times.
“Bastard,” whispered Bethan, now positive that she was onto something.
She replayed the snippet of video in slow motion, wondering what the shiny circle on the ground could be. She zoomed in further: a tray surrounded by broken glass. She zoomed in further still until the reflective surface dominated the entire screen and started flicking through frame by frame, her eyes wide in anticipation.
A shadow spilled over the upturned tray; a few clicks later, the top of the man’s shoe entered the frame. She continued clicking.
“Come on . . . Come on . . .” Bethan smiled. “Got you!”
Framed in a circle of silver, a workable image of a middle-aged man’s face.
“Boss! I need you over here!”