Trafalgar Square. Nelson’s Column. The National Gallery. History. Gravitas. A thousand bloody pigeons. They take off in one great flapping mass as Felicity’s minivan bursts through a police cordon. Officers yell. Car sirens squeal.
To be fair it was a very unexpected roadblock.
Coleman plunges out of his car waving a badge. Devon is more hesitant, her arm held high as pitiful protection against the rain. Kayla falls into step next to her as the others and I tumble out of Felicity’s van. Devon ignores Kayla and pointedly steps toward me instead.
“Aren’t we meant to be all secret and undercover?” she says. “This seems a touch bombastic for cloak-and-dagger stuff. Not my area of expertise at all, of course. Could be that John le Carré’s been telling me terrible fibs all these years.”
“They’ll bill it as a feckin’ terrorist threat,” Kayla answers, not giving me a chance to display my ignorance. “Then a poorly conceived feckin’ publicity stunt. Always do.”
Devon turns and finally acknowledges Kayla. Complicated emotions play out. “Thank you, Kayla,” she says finally.
“There are the primaries,” Felicity interrupts our little soap opera. She points.
Misted by rain, framed by the monumental lions that guard the square, four figures stand in a loose group at the base of Nelson’s Column. I squint, trying to make out details.
There’s the tall bastard from the British Museum. The tree-maker. Or the warper of time, depending whether you adhere to the logical theory or my one. He’s wearing shades, and a trench coat, and generally trying to look like I did when I was fourteen, and discovered cyberpunk, and didn’t know any better.
To his right is a rotund little man in what appears to be an anorak and cords. If it weren’t for the fact that his right hand appears to be encased in the sort of power glove sci-fi artists drool over he’d look more like my dad than a threat to national security.
To the left of the group is the only one of the Russians who looks younger than forty. He has a scruffy goatee beard, little round glasses misted with rain, and an irate expression. The collegiate proto-Lenin look worn fifteen years too long.
Hanging back is a blond woman with a pretty, angular face. High cheekbones outlined in steel. Half her head is covered in long sweeps of blond hair. The other half is bald metal that creeps down to encase a frighteningly Terminator-like eye. She appears to be wearing a lab coat.
All in all, I feel like I’ve faced more frightening foes and lived to walk away. Plus, we outnumber them. If it wasn’t for the fact that it only took one of them to kick our arses at the Natural History Museum, I might have made it all the way to feeling confident.
Tall, dark, and Russian holds a bullhorn. He barks curt phrases into it, then glares at us. Behind him, the blond woman cracks her knuckles.
“They’re saying things?” I say. “No one mentioned that they’re saying things.” It seems like the sort of information it might have been useful to have.
“No hostages.” Coleman disengages from irate policemen and the tatters of their roadblock. “No reason for us to listen. So round them up. Standard delta formation.”
We all stare at him, confused by this last utterance. Felicity clears her throat.
“Oh bravo, Felicity.” Coleman gives her a withering look. “Not even the basics of field training. I understand your attraction to the incompetence of Wallace a little better now.”
And there, right there, that should be the moment when she tears the balls from his body.
“Is delta formation the one where Kayla goes and attacks everyone with her sword?” Clyde ventures.
Felicity’s head definitely goes down. And is there a chance that Coleman is right? That Felicity isn’t everything I believe her to be?
No. No, that way lies madness.
So instead I pipe up with a persistent, “You didn’t think it might be important to know what they’re saying?” I’d rather go on about the holes in Coleman’s thinking than in Felicity’s training. “Is this lack of field information going to be a constant thing?”
Coleman wheels on me. His arm comes out and, to my great shame, I flinch back. But he’s just holding out a smartphone. He smirks at me.
“Use the bloody MI6 translation app if you’re so fascinated, toy-boy. And keep out of the way of the real agents.”
“Hello? Researcher. Right here.” Tabitha rolls her eyes.
“That’s me too,” Devon pipes in. “I remember that. I’m a researcher too.”
Coleman pats her on the arm. “Oh don’t worry.” He smiles. Shows too many teeth. “No one really expects anything of you, gorgeous.”
Kayla takes a step toward Coleman, and he takes a step away.
By the shade of Devon’s cheeks, a large number of her new teammates are now dangerously close to clambering above Clyde on her shit list.
“Right,” Coleman says, “over by that bloody fountain.”
He pulls an improbably long, silver pistol from inside his jacket, crouches, and runs toward one of the fountains that lies between us and the column with its guardian lions. Rain patters off the back of his expensively cut suit. The Russians watch him warily, shifting positions slightly. The tall one continues talking into the bullhorn.
“Oh come on then.” Felicity starts moving. Then looks back at me. “Find out what they’re saying,” she tells me. “It’s a good idea.”
I smile at that. A little late for the praise, but I’ll take it.
Then Felicity’s off. Tabitha follows, then Clyde, all with the same doubled-over urgency—like victims of a bad buffet covering the final yards to the bathroom.
Devon remains standing next to me as I examine Coleman’s phone. Kayla doesn’t move an inch from Devon’s side. And to be honest, this is about the time when an overprotective Kayla becomes a very, very good thing.
“What do we do?” Devon asks, a look of concern on her face.
“You stay here,” Kayla says. “And I beat down every feckin’ one of them that comes this way.”
“Oh.” Devon’s eyes are wide. Apparently she’s still getting used to Kayla’s particular brand of doting. “Did not… hadn’t really considered that an option. But I suppose—”
I skim through a few pages of apps on the phone trying to find one that says something as obvious as “translate.”
Over by the fountain, Coleman, Felicity, Tabitha, and Clyde are all crouched in a large puddle. Coleman and Felicity have their guns drawn, Tabitha has her laptop on her knees. Clyde slips battery after battery under his mask.
And there is the translation app. I have to believe it was Coleman who named it “Foreign jabber.” I get the thing running and select “Russian-to-English” from a menu.
“—until the seventeenth of this month,” says a robotic voice from Coleman’s phone. I stare down in surprise. The translation app. It talks.
“If our demands are not met,” the thing continues, “then we will destroy London in its entirety.”
It talks, and it says the most awful things.
Over by the fountain Felicity pokes her face and her gun around the curve of stone to get a clear look at her target then ducks back. She nods to Clyde. I want to get over there. I don’t want Felicity out there alone. No matter how many big guns she has around her. I want to be one more.
The Russian says something.
“I repeat,” the phone says, “our demands are the complete and unconditional surrender of the West to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”
Wait. Their demands are what?
Devon stares at the phone. “Are they serious?” she asks.
To be fair, despite the madness, they probably are. This seems a little far gone for an improv comedy routine. But still, that demand’s a little eighties cliché, even for a fan of the decade.
I mean, “The surrender of the West”? What is “the West” anymore?
I look back at Felicity. She is out there with Coleman, and two people going through relationship trouble.
“I’ve got to get out there,” I tell Devon. “You’ll be safe with Kayla.”
In fact, I’d be safer with Kayla. It seems a little late to convince everyone to come back here, though.
I start toward the fountain but Devon catches my arm. She gives me a quick, savage hug. I look at her, confused. Kayla lets out an irritated hiss.
“Thanks,” she says.
“Whatever for?”
“Well,” she says, “it’s just… in a manner of speaking… I think they’re probably going to kill you.” Devon looks sad and slightly embarrassed at having admitted this. She gives me a rather pathetic-looking thumbs-up. “Good luck, though.”
Funny. That doesn’t make me feel any better at all.