And now, the end is neah...
Can’t get that fucking song out of my head at the moment, and to make it worse, I mean the Sid version, boasting the quite unsurpassed crassness of rhyming those immortal opening words with the line: You cunt, I’m not a queeah! God almighty, make it stop. I can’t let that be the internal soundtrack to my farewell performance.
Understandable that it should be something theatrical and hammy, I suppose. Here I am, after all, sitting in front of the mirror, putting my face on while I wait for the Final Act Beginners call. It’s odd, though, that I should feel so nervous, as it’s many long years since opening night for this old-stager. Maybe all the veteran thesps feel the butterflies returning when they know it’s their last ever show. The pressure for it to be perfect is all the greater because there can be no making up for it if it goes wrong, and though it may not be the show they remember you for, you want to tell yourself you were still able to give your best, even at the end. I want to give it my best. I want it to be very special, as befits the task in hand: that of executing the one, ultra-high-profile death warrant that really did come in a manila folder.
That’s why I’ve been double and triple checking everything for hours: timers, sensors, triggers, gas levels, engines, fuel, batteries, phones, computers. After so much planning, so much painstaking and meticulously executed work, I’m getting cumulatively jumpy about the possibility of a single oversight or act of forgetfulness making it all for nothing.
It’s only nerves, though. I’ve been methodical and thorough. My systems are in order, my prisoners secure in their holding cells, all having succumbed to the sleep agent I have deployed in case anybody might get boisterous and deduce from my lack of a response that the cat’s away.
There remains but one final duty. I have to record my parting-message video, as every good suicide bomber must. It’s the only thing I haven’t fully thought through, as even this close I remain unsure what to say. Penitence would be appropriate, much as it might stick in the throat, but I have to remind myself that it’s about what I intend to leave behind, not how I feel right now. I have to give them some kind of closure. I owe them that much. I have to remember that every act of contrition, every gesture of amelioration, while gall to my lips, may prove balm to the son I will never know, but who will unavoidably one day know me.
My make-up complete, I take a last look in the mirror, the final time I will see this face. Then I turn my seat so that I am facing directly into the video camera, and I set it recording.
Standing in the musty half-light of his old lock-up, Albert turns the nightstick in his grasp, his fingers reacquainting themselves with its touch, like he’s shaking the hand of an old friend he hasn’t seen in years.
‘Well, Mr Spank,’ he says, ‘can you also be coaxed out of retirement for one last ride?’
Though he hasn’t been inside it for Lord knows how long, the lock-up smells of the same things it always did: dry dust, old paper, WD40. As these fill his nostrils, they unlock so many memories: some that bring a wicked smile to his face, others a wince, and one or two that would have his cheeks burning with regret were he to dwell on them. Memories of past deeds, memories of a person he once was and hadn’t thought he could be again. However, the lady had been very persuasive.
‘Let me talk to you in a language I know you understand,’ she had said.
She even came to see him. He liked that. No high-handed summons to her office. A person of rank and importance yet she knew you had to be humble when in need, especially given what lay in the past.
It wasn’t purely about the money, either. She appealed to his sense of obligation too. He was a man of civic responsibility these days, weren’t he? Who was he to refuse a respectable woman, one of some standing, in her attempts to catch a bank robber?
Plus there was the irresistible bonus attraction of finally putting a net around the one that got away.
‘I need someone who understands what he’s up against,’ she said.
Albert was the last man she needed to tell that Innez had thus far proven rather tricky to apprehend. That was why he and Mr Spank would have to bring along a special friend who helped out on such risky occasions: Madam Boom. A right saucy piece, with a wicked mouth on her, though you wouldn’t want a blow-job from those pouty little lips.
New handcuffs too. Forewarned is forearmed, after all. You live and learn.
Nine-millimetre Beretta M9 semi-automatic pistols: two. Fifteen-round magazines: ten. Heckler & Koch MP5 sub-machine guns with night-sight scopes and laser-aiming attachments: two. Thirty-round magazines: twelve. Aircrew Survival Egress Knife with calf-mounting sheaf: one. Ka-bar knives: three. Waist-mounting multi-sheaf for same: one. Hicks G12 grenade launcher: one. Teargas grenades: eight. Groeller-Duisberg gaspropelled dart pistol—
Beep.
The Guarantor instantly interrupts his inventory to consult his PDA. He glances at the screen very briefly then returns his attention to the flightcases in the boot of his Audi A8. The information is important, but it is not the message he must continue to wait for. The PDA shows him the name and location of a private airfield near Hereford, being where the handover will now take place. His contractor, Bernard, will be supervising the exchange personally, arriving via the Proprietor’s private jet, which will be used to take the target out of the country. After that, the next, and final, leg of Darcourt’s journey will be by sea.
The Guarantor completes his inventory and keys the airfield’s detail into his satellite navigation device. He will drive there now, familiarise himself with the approaches, memorise the routes to and from all major trunk roads in the vicinity, as he does not yet know from which direction he and his cargo will arrive. The last communiqué put him in a holding pattern, still awaiting the update that would inform him precisely where he must pick up his target.
There is a major police operation under way; he has been instructed to stand back and allow them to do their job, after which, the police will have far less control than they assume. Doors will be opened and actions taken by people who do not know for whom or why, or perhaps by people who suddenly found they had a compelling reason to cooperate. The Guarantor doesn’t know the details, doesn’t know who else is involved, any more than they would know about his involvement unless and until it becomes necessary. Neither he nor anyone will be given information that could prove in any way a burden or a risk.
Blind Complicity Measures, they are called. These are often a means of reducing the need for bloodshed, sometimes even a knowing trade-off by individuals in positions to make such compromises. The Guarantor’s instructions today, however, contain no directive of restraint. He is authorised to eliminate all complicating factors if necessary, including those facilitating his access. His remit is to deliver Darcourt, an objective he implicitly understands to supersede all consideration of life and limb, not least his own. That is what makes him the Guarantor.
That is the deal when you are working for the Proprietor: you are paid extremely well, but on certain jobs it is mutually recognised that you will go to any length to deliver success. If you fail but survive, then you better play dead, because the Proprietor cannot afford it to be known that anybody has defaulted on this arrangement. That is why the apprehension of Simon Darcourt is being given the Proprietor’s highest priority, and why the Guarantor will deliver him, or die trying.