Jones ran back into the Tivoli and rounded up his men. By now only Haroun had failed to make use of the facilities.
Come, said Jones.
I must just go said Haroun, but such was the power of Jones, and so contemptuous was the expression in his eyes that Haroun followed him like a lamb and Jones ran back into the sunlight.
And now he couldnt believe it He couldnt flipping well believe it. Surely he had been gone only seconds, and now the clamp had gone but the ambulance was being hoisted up into a kind of hammock by a hydraulic lift, and the parkie was standing there, still scribing zealously away into his Huskie computer.
I am sorry, sir, recited Eric, but once all four wheels are off the ground, you have lost control of the vehicle. It is now the responsibility of Westminster City Council.
Jones waved the keys. But it is ours. Put it down.
All the craps are on, said Eric.
The craps?
Yessir, these are the craps. The metal craps.
You mean the crabs.
That is right, sir, they are the craps.
Jones gave up. Did you say all four wheels?
Yes, that is correct, sir. Now that all four wheels are off the ground, it is the law that you no longer have any control over this vehicle.
This was a big ambulance. Fully laden it weighed not far short of three and a half tonnes, with a 3.5 litre Rover V8 engine and bulky aluminium chassis, so that it was already astonishing that the tow-truck had been able to hoist it.
At that moment Jones had an inspiration. It was technically true that the wheels were off the ground. But the front pair were only a few inches up.
What about now? asked Jones. He and Haroun jumped on the bonnet of the Leyland Daf vehicle, painted with a blue star and caduceus, and it sunk its nose until the front offside wheel brushed the ground.
See! shouted Jones. Now it is ours again!
CHAPTER THREE
0832 HRS
Whose ambulance did you say it was? asked Deputy Assistant Commissioner Purnell, who was, today, in charge of anti-terrorist and security operations throughout the Metropolis.
Grover entered the room with an air of satisfaction. What did I tell you? Weve got it. An ambulance from the Bilston and Willenhall NHS Trust was seen at the Travelodge in Dunstable at one a.m.
Good. And its still there, is it?
Er, no. It left. Aha.
Were on the case.
A second later, he was back again. Ive got Bluett on the line.
The two London policemen looked at each other. They knew or strongly suspected that the Americans were tuning in to their frequencies.
Put him through, said Deputy Assistant Commissioner Purnell.
He listened with half-closed eyes to the Americans demands.
You want a sniper on the roof of the Commons? What did you say his name was? On a piece of headed notepaper Purnell printed PICKLE. Then he crossed it out and wrote PICKEL.
I see, yes, he said, I see, yes.
He listened some more, and then said: Well, I can understand if the First Lady is a bit anxious but Right you are, Colonel Okeycokey, chum. Yep. See you later, I expect No, no, everything else is, um, fine. We have no evidence of anything, you know, untoward.
He disconnected with a groan.
They want a sniper on the roof of the Commons, above New Palace Yard. Ive said well oblige. Someone answering to this name will be presenting himself in a few minutes. Whatever happens, I am not having him sitting up there alone.
He handed over the sheet of paper. And I want the choppers to start scanning Westminster for this flaming ambulance.
High above Soho a Metropolitan Police Twin Squirrel Eurocopter AS 355N banked and turned down Shaftesbury Avenue.
It passed directly over the head of Roger Barlow, who looked up and felt vaguely resentful. Why did they hover in that threatening way over innocent streets? It was like some dreary lefty movie about Thatchers Britain.
Then he continued to thread his way through the cars. Thats what he loved about bicycles: the autonomy, the ability to put your wheel wherever you chose. As you looked over the handlebars you could see your front tyre as a snub-nosed cylinder, nosing at will down the open streets of London. He passed an Evening Standard hoarding, announcing full coverage of the state visit.
Uh-oh. The Standard. He had forgotten about the Standard. How would he stop his wife seeing that one?
The traffic was getting heavier. Now he understood. It was the exclusion zone. The American security people had insisted on a total ban on traffic in the area to be honoured by their presence, and the result was that a freeborn Englishman could not even move down the Queens highway.
Strewth, he cursed, and used a disabled ramp to mount the pavement. He knew he shouldnt do it, but there you go. In any case, his political career might be over by tomorrow morning.
Then he was back on the road again, watching the shimmer starting to rise from the hot bonnets of the backed-up traffic, and thugga thugga whok whok the helicopter was ceasing to impinge on his consciousness.
CHAPTER FOUR
0833 HRS
In the Twin Squirrel Eurocopter the two sun-goggled officers peered into the hot canyons and smoking wadis of the city. So whos meant to be driving this ambulance? said the pilot, as they passed over Trafalgar Square and made for the river. Hes called Jones, said Grover from New Scotland Yard.
Jones? Whats he look like?
Kind of Arab-type thing.
Hundreds of miles away, at Fylingdales in Yorkshire, the word Arab triggered an automatic alert in the huge golf-ballshaped American listening post, and within seconds the conversation was being monitored in Langley, Virginia.
The pilot continued: Thats all we know: that hes a kind of Arab called Jones?
That, and hes on the CIAs most wanted list. His father was a gynaecologist in Karachi who was struck off for some reason. He knows a lot about explosives and is a serious wacko. Thats what we know about Jones
Who at that moment was sliding with Haroun off the bonnet of the ambulance and on to Tufton Street, as the vehicle was jerked up into the air.
Dragan Panic was standing by his Renault 150 authorized removal unit, twiddling the vertical line of six hydraulic knobs, and grinning. It was always fun when they went doolally.
One chap had leapt aboard his Porsche Cayenne, manacled to the truck, and put it into reverse.
He took it up to about 7,000 revs, smoke pouring everywhere, as the Bavarian beast struggled to escape the gin. There had been a bang and a fresh convexity appeared in the gleaming black bonnet, like a rat in a rubbish sack. That HAD been gratifying.
Jones decided to take a different tack with the traffic warden. He made the obvious point.
But we are ambulance men.
The parkie looked at him.
That was just it. He had watched the vehicle like a tethered goat. He had seen the men get out, leaving it parked in a disgracefully dangerous position.
He had seen them shamble into the Tivoli for breakfast. He didnt believe for one minute that they were ambulance men. They were the first ambulance men he had ever seen in scruffy old T-shirts and jeans, and he didnt see why they should be in possession of an ambulance belonging to the Bilston and Willenhall NHS Trust.
Please, let us pay now.
No, you must come to the pound.
Why?
You must establish that the vehicle is yours.
But I have lost the papers.
Then you must come to the pound.
The man called Jones went to the cabin of the ambulance and rootled in the glove box. He came back with a brick of cash, like the wodge the winner has at the end of a game of Monopoly, or what you get for a fiver in Zimbabwean dollars. Eric frowned and pretended to study his Huskie.
Then you must come to the pound.
The man called Jones went to the cabin of the ambulance and rootled in the glove box. He came back with a brick of cash, like the wodge the winner has at the end of a game of Monopoly, or what you get for a fiver in Zimbabwean dollars. Eric frowned and pretended to study his Huskie.
Please do not force me to beg, said Jones.
I aint forcing you to beg, sir.
My sister is pregnant.
With every second that passed, Eric was surer that he had done the right thing. Now if they had said that they were taking the Duke of Edinburgh on a secret assignation with a nurse from St Thomass hospital, that would have been one thing.
If they had said that they had a freshly excised human liver on board, and that it needed to be transferred in ten minutes to a terminally alcoholic football player, or if they had claimed to be part of Scotland Yards counter-terrorist unit, they would have appealed to his imagination.
But to say that his sister was pregnant that was sorry stuff. He looked at the four of them. He noticed that the youngest one was staring at him in a funny way, as if terrified.
Am I really so frightening? wondered Eric Onyeama, king of the kerb. He continued to tap into the Huskie.
L64896P, Tufton Street, 02, 62 The details were soon pinged into space, and stored in irrefutable perpetuity in the Apcoa computers. Somewhere in cyberspace the electronic data began to team up with other groups of electrons; in less than half a second they were having a vast symposium of sub-atomic particles, and among the preliminary conclusions would be that the vehicle was from Wolverhampton.
He looked up again, and saw the kindlier-looking one, Habib, who was cleaning his teeth with a carved juniper twig. But where was the other one?
Haroun had vanished.
He had stolen inside the machine and he was searching for something.
He knocked aside a cervical collar-set. He brushed a mouth-to-mouth ventilator to the floor. Ha, he thought to himself. This would unquestionably do the job, he decided. He extracted the prong of a pericardial puncture kit, and tested its needle point on his finger.
CHAPTER FIVE
0835 HRS
Looks like a killer, said Purnell. He gave a small shudder as he looked at the file on Haroun Abu Zahra, a slim docket. What do we know about him?
Not a lot, said Grover, but the Yanks are pretty keen on talking to him as well. There is one thing, though. He paused, as all subordinates will when they are keen to emphasize some tiny advance.
Our lads were talking to the Travelodge, and they said there was something most peculiar about their room.
After theyd left?
Yeah. Theres a picture by some posh artist on the wall, of a naked girl, you know, a print.