Brute Force (16 page)

He put his hat back on and did up the flaps. 'No weapon?'

'No need. Next stop City Airport or the Eurostar.'

I headed out of the basement. 'I've got my new life. Now we'd better fix you one, so we can get out of here.'

45

I did have a weapon tucked away, but it was in another safety blanket, for use if I had to stay in the UK.

Everybody finds their own way to build an alternative ID, and, more especially, hide it. The second one was in northwest London, behind a bakery. It used to be in a safe-deposit box, but the police now had the power to open them up at will.

I wasn't worried about real people finding the caches. They'd probably just take the cash and sell the weapon and passport. It was the Firm that concerned me.

They would always be on the hunt for safety blankets. They knew any deniable operator worth his salt would have one. If mine was compromised, they'd have my new ID, my credit card details; they could let me run from the UK, allowing me to think I had evaporated, then just wait and see where I pitched up with my new passport and card, and do whatever they felt like doing.

I thought about Marc Richardson, who I'd bumped into in Zurich a couple of years earlier and set out to clone. He was a bit younger than me, but we looked vaguely similar.

I'd found him working in a bar in Mühlegasse, a notorious gay cruising ground. It's the best kind of place for what I had in mind, whatever country you're in. Marc had been living and working in Zurich for a couple of years. He had a steady job, and shared an apartment with his Swiss partner in the city. Most important of all, he had no intention of going back to England. I learnt all this as I got to know him over a couple of weeks; I'd pop into his bar when I knew it was his shift, and we'd chat. I met other gay men there, but they didn't have what Marc had. He was the one for me.

When I got back to the UK, I signed up to an online genealogical site and set about scouring the registers between 1960 and 1965 for his date of birth and his father's and mother's names. He hadn't liked to talk to me about his past, and I could never get anything more out of him than where he was born; trying to dig any deeper would have aroused suspicion. Besides, his partner was getting all territorial. It only took an hour to find him.

Marc Richardson the Second was soon the proud owner of a brand-new ten-year passport, complete with biometric chip. The Identity and Passport Service didn't provide it, of course. Brendan Coogan did.

Coogan was either a stickler for detail or just liked a laugh, because he even handed me the booklet that came with real passports. I nearly fell onto Coogan's kitchen floor laughing when I read it. I'm glad I didn't. His house made NHS wards seem almost sterile.

It told me that the IPS took Marc's security and privacy very seriously. The new British biometric passport met international standards, and they were confident that it was one of the most secure available. It featured many new security features which would show if the passport had been tampered with, and the facial biometrics on the chip would help link the passport holder to the document.

What was more, the data on the chip, Marc's photo and personal information would be protected against theft through the use of 'advanced digital encryption techniques'. The chip would complement the security features currently inherent in the passport, including the 'machine readable zone' on the personal data page.

The chip contained Marc's signature (from a joke bet I'd got him to sign that England would win the next World Cup) to show the encoded data was genuine; the place of issue; a secure access protocol; and the benefit of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) digital encryption technology, which provides protection against changes in encoded data. I'd never felt so secure.

I opened up an accommodation address in Marc's name, then went to the council offices and registered him on the electoral roll. I also applied for a duplicate of his driver's licence, which arrived from the DVLA just a few days later.

Over the next few months I signed up with several book and record clubs; I even bought a collection of porcelain thimbles out of a Sunday supplement, paying with a postal order. In return, I got a fistful of bills and receipts, all issued to the accommodation address.

Next I wrote to two or three of the high street banks and asked them a string of questions that made it sound as if I was a serious investor. I received suitably grovelling letters in reply, on the bank's letterhead. Then all I did was walk into a building society, played stupid, and said I would like to open a bank account, please. As long as you have your address on the appropriate documentation, they don't seem to look much further.

I put a few quid in my new account and let it tick over. After a few weeks I got some standing orders up and running with the book clubs, and at last I was ready to apply for a credit card. As long as you're on the electoral register, have a bank account and no bad credit history, the card is yours. And once you have one card, all the other banks and finance houses will fall over themselves to make sure you take theirs as well.

I thought about going one step further and getting myself a National Insurance number, but there was really no point. I had money to use and a card that would get me out of the UK. Cash payments can be flagged up by airlines as out of the norm. With a card, I could go online, book, print off my boarding card, and be away in a matter of hours. The UK blanket was created in the same way.

I replaced the key fob, then gave Lynn another hundred pounds. 'We need a change of clothes. But first, we've got to go to Woolworths.'

I half expected him to ask me who that was.

46

'Catford Bridge station, mate. Near the old dog track.'

The minicab driver nodded as if he knew exactly where that was, and then got busy with his sat nav as we climbed into the back of the Espace. He was then far too busy talking football into a Bluetooth headset to pay us any further attention, let alone take time to admire our new baseball caps and anoraks.

Twenty minutes later, Lynn and I exchanged a glance as we crossed Vauxhall Bridge. Vauxhall Cross, the headquarters of MI6, was ahead of us on the South Bank. It looked like a beige and black pyramid with its top cut off, and large towers either side. There was even a terrace bar overlooking the river. It only needed a few swirls of neon and you'd swear you were in Las Vegas. I wondered if he had half a mind to stop the cab, run to the gate and throw himself on the mercy of his old employers.

I could see the cogs whirring in his head as he looked out of the window.

'Don't even think about it. If you did, you'd come out in a bin-liner. This is the only way, believe me.'

He turned and gave me a slightly sheepish expression.

South of the river, London got grimier and more down-on-its-luck by the mile. By the time we'd reached our destination, I was starting to feel as depressed as Lynn looked.

I had a look around while he paid the driver. We walked uphill from the railway station, and the wreck of the old dog track soon came into view.

We carried on past rows of not-so-good-looking thirties bay-windowed terraces. Some of the occupants had gone for the seventies pebbledash or Roman stone cladding upgrade. Others had opted for the fixed one-sheet double-glazing that no one can escape through when the house gets torched. They were all in need of an urgent visit from a window cleaner and net-curtain washer.

Coogan's street looked in even shittier state than the rest. The two-metre-wide stretch of mud at the front had been given over largely to brambles and dandelions. A couple of council recycling wheelie bins stood against a low wall, but most of his shit seemed to have been thrown from an upstairs window and missed. Most of the cars parked along the kerb looked like they should be up on bricks.

Brendan and Leena had been in the passport business since the seventies, after they'd had to do a runner from the Free State for forging welfare coupons. For the last six or seven years Nigerians buying multiple passports for their multiple mortgages on their multiple buy-to-lets were keeping them generously afloat, but people like me had been their mainstay in the eighties and nineties. I'd first met Brendan during the Struggles, Troubles or the War (what you called it depended on who you were). We used to be sent down to Lewisham to be fitted up with the appropriate documents. I'd used him many times since then at my own expense. He was the best.

I told Lynn to stay out of sight while I rang the doorbell. Brendan himself answered. His face didn't break into a big smile and he didn't throw his arms around me. He just rolled his eyes, tutted and ushered me in. Just how I liked it with the old fucker.

'I have a friend.'

'Would that be a friend with money?'

'Yes.'

'A welcome awaits.'

I waved Lynn over and we stepped across the PVC threshold and into Minging Central. The stench of rotting vegetables and old newspapers reminded me of a run-down corner-shop.

He led us into the sitting room. The red velour curtains were closed. A green three-piece was arranged around a small TV. A raincoat hung over the back of the nearest armchair. A small dark wood table with two chairs stood against one wall. The fireplace was decorated with green thirties tiles, and an equally ancient gas fire had been fitted into the grate. It was doing its asthmatic best to fug up proceedings.

'Glad to see you still don't go for the minimalist look . . .'

He wasn't biting; he never did.

'It would be the usual you're after, would it?'

'My friend here has lost his passport and we need to travel tomorrow.'

He looked at me with a twinkle in his eye. 'And for some reason you choose not to avail your fine upstanding selves of Her Majesty's Passport Office's new premium same-day service?'

'Sometimes the old ways are the best. My friend wants to get away from his wife, her divorce lawyer and the Child Support Agency. He'd prefer not to be traced . . .'

Brendan looked at Lynn and raised an eyebrow.

I grinned. 'Second time round, lucky bastard. Young, beautiful, but, as it turned out, a bit too fond of the Bolivian Marching Powder.'

Coogan laughed. 'The young ones can be just as big a nightmare as the old ones. That's why I stayed with the missus – even though I'm never short of offers.' He cackled to himself.

'Where is the lovely Mrs Coogan? Still making that ginger cake?'

'She does, she does, and no, we haven't any left. She's down at bingo, thank God. She'd be fussing all over you by now and giving you all my biscuits.'

'Could you at least bring yourself to part with two cups of tea?'

He cackled some more as he disappeared into a kitchen that, if the smell coming out of it was anything to go by, was the source of the Ebola outbreak I thought might have brought London to a standstill a few days ago.

The look on Lynn's face told me this was a totally different world for him. A few hours ago he was in his lovely farmhouse, inhaling the sea air and staring out over acres of glorious countryside. Now he was in this minging thirties terrace with this minging old man. He'd probably never seen anything like this in his life, except perhaps when he was delivering coal and food parcels to the family servants at Christmas.

Brendan reappeared with three steaming mugs and half a packet of HobNobs and led us upstairs with a deep sigh. 'Things are a lot more complicated these days, you have to understand. The days of just pressing the printer button are long gone. Welcome to the brave new world of biometrics.'

'That sounds like a posh way of saying your prices have gone up – again.'

He looked pained. 'That it would be, that it would be. Seventeen hundred pounds, in fact. Half now, half tomorrow morning, when you collect.'

'No VAT?'

'Oh, I don't like to bother those nice people at the Excise. They've got quite enough to worry about.'

'What about a discount for old times' sake? My friend has been mauled by lawyers. I told him it was twelve hundred.'

'Fifteen?'

'Done. It'll be in dollars again. Shall we say at 1.90?' I didn't want to spend the whole day rug-trading, but I had to go through the motions. I didn't want to disappoint him.

He turned just short of the landing and looked down at me. At last I got a full smile from him. It always took a while. 'I don't think that would be terribly helpful, do you? There would be complicated calculations and even some change involved. Let's say two dollars a pound. I'll lose some in commission when I exchange, don't forget. A businessman has to watch his margins.'

47

I looked around his workshop. He might have embraced the new technology, but not with open arms. He wasn't working in a stainless-steel hyper-tech bubble, that was for sure. It looked like all his equipment had been salvaged from skips and second-hand shops. Still, if it did the job . . .

'We've brought the usual selection of passport photos, but he hasn't had time to get a new name for himself—'