Lexa Hackett was astonished by the suggestion of her colleague that they should that night launch a raid on Grieg Industries.
"I suppose, but it's the last thing they'll expect. Catch the lions while they're all fast asleep. No problem".
"But –"
Claire cut her off. "Let's eat first. We'll talk about it later".
It was one of the stranger meals that Lexa had ever experienced. The food was good, but as they ate and chatted she was conscious – as was Claire, she was sure – that there was a great unspoken subject about which they could not speak for fear of being overheard. This conceptual elephant hung over them like an ominous cloud, making Lexa feel like she had sunk into a terrifying world of mixed metaphors. Claire seemed in better form, but then she had made a decision she was happy with and had the feeling of relaxed confidence that goes with that.
After eating they went for a stroll to discuss what they were going to do. "I really don't know about this", said Lexa. "It seems like we are putting our head in a noose".
"It could turn out badly, I'll give you that", answered Claire, with an air of unnerving calm. "But I don't think we really have any other options. What else can we do? We're pretty certain that Grieg Industries are up to something and we've good reason to think they have Ryan. So if we are following our mission we have to investigate them further. Our only other option is to just abort the mission and go home as failures".
"As free and living failures".
"That's not really the spirit", said Claire.
Lexa reflected. Claire was right, there really did not seem to be any other option. It was either admit defeat and go home, or have a crack at the mysterious company. And admitting defeat would mean abandoning Ryan to his fate. Lexa had never had any great fondness for Barry Ryan, but when you worked for the Organisation it was drilled into you that you never abandoned your own. Lexa liked to think that if she ever found herself in a tight spot then the Organisation's agents would do whatever it takes to extract her. She realised that she had no option now but to do her utmost to rescue Ryan.
"No, you're right", she finally said. "This might be a terrible mistake, but it's a mistake we have to make. So – when?"
"Small hours of the morning tonight. That's when the least number of employees will be there. Any security guards will be half asleep and busy looking at porn on their computers".
"And how?"
"The derelict building next door. We can force an entrance there without setting off an alarm. Once we're on that building's roof we can easily climb up to the Grieg Industry roof. And breaking in from the roof of a building is always easy".
"Right. Let's go back to the hotel and get kitted up".
As they entered the Hotel Moonlight's lobby the creepy receptionist gave them his customary leer. Lexa wondered if he had been looking at the same jazz mag every time they had seen him. She did not really want to find out. And she found herself thinking that if tonight's mission went horribly wrong then she would probably never see that repulsive individual again, which would almost make up for having her life end or spending the rest of it in an enemy torture camp.
As they had a lot of time to kill and would be going out in the small hours, they rested in their room for a bit, trying to catch enough sleep so that they would be reasonably alert when they went to do the job. Of course, the magic of chemicals meant that they would not be falling asleep when they went to Tottenham, but the less enhanced they had to be the better.
Lexa's sleep was disturbed. She found herself dreaming about being chased by a malign coalition of clowns and men with moustaches. And they were giant clowns and giant men with moustaches. She could not shake them off her tail. Every time she thought she had left them behind and she stopped to catch her breath then they would suddenly appear behind her again. If she stopped to try and get someone to help her – why they turned out to be a clown as well. Or someone with a moustache. And for some strange reason this was all overlaid with a raucous version of the Benny Hill theme, which somehow made it all the more disturbing. The streets assumed an increasingly nightmarish character, the upward line of the buildings seeming to no longer be at right angles to the ground. Indeed, the buildings themselves seemed to be swaying and moving around her, pulsating and vibrating to the demonic music. It became harder and harder for her to find paths through the streets that would allow her to stay ahead of her pursuers. And the pursuers were getting ever closer, the clowns in particular marking this with their eerie chuckling. Then she realised that she was in a dead end – and there was no way back other than through her pursuers. They stopped now and leered at her malevolently. She was caught… caught… but maybe she could climb up and over the wall? There seemed to be handholds, but as she climbed she heard the sneers of the hunters. Climbing was difficult… there was something wrong with the wall, and something wrong with her. She couldn't grip the wall properly, but, worse, it seemed to be moving. Handholds were sliding out of reach, and then she realised what was more terrible again – the wall was now starting to lean over towards her pursuers, whose eager hands were reaching up for her. They were about to get her now, there really was no escape…
"Hey, wake up". It was Claire, speaking gently to her. "Are you OK? We have to go now".
"Urrgggh", said Lexa, groggily. "Give me a minute, I'll be fine". She stumbled from the bed to the bathroom and splashed water on her face. "OK, I got this", she said, coming back into the room where Claire was already up and getting dressed.
When Norbert Shunter on the reception desk saw the two women heading out he was not particularly surprised. The Hotel Moonlight was the kind of place where people came and went at all hours with no questions asked. That did not stop Shunter from speculating, though. Looking at the two women he found himself wondering just why they were wearing what looked like figure-hugging black leather catsuits under those coats. Maybe they were going to one of those fetish clubs, Shunter wondered. He had heard about those and the kind of thing that went on at them. He started imagining the two women at one of those clubs and the things that they might be getting up to there. And he smiled, putting down his copy of Playground and letting himself drift off into this appealing reverie.
Claire and Lexa were of course not wearing black leather to excite the imaginations of people like Mr Shunter nor because they were fetishists but because black clothing makes you harder to see at night and because leather gives you some protection against violent attacks by enemies not equipped with firearms. Leaving the Hotel Moonlight they engaged a taxi to bring them up to Tottenham, enduring the driver's ranting about how he was no racist but the country had really gone to shit since they let in all those Canadians. They thought of paying him extra to shut his mouth, but that might have drawn undue attention. Lexa did perk up slightly when the driver maintained that he had it on good authority that 90% of all clowns were recent immigrants from Canada, but she found it a bit outlandish – the whole clown mindset seemed rather alien to the miserable worldview of the Canadian. Besides, when she lived in Brighton's Jokerville the Canadian influx had not even started then, yet the infestation of clowns seemed as great as it was now.
"Don't get me wrong", added the driver, "I'm a supporter of the Transition as much as the next man, but they've got their priorities all wrong. I mean, going after the West Country when we got all those Canucks here in London – it don't make sense".
"Who gives a shit?" thought Lexa. She could see, meanwhile, that Claire was thinking of giving the driver some of that "I have Canadian friends and they're actually very nice" stuff, or maybe even something a bit more of that hippy live-and-let-live talk she had come out with when the subject of clowns had arisen between them. But she could also see that Claire was thinking better of it and biting her tongue. Well done Claire.
The taxi driver dropped them in Tottenham, near the train station they had arrived at the previous day. It looked even uglier at night, with the dead-eye youths in hoodie tops now clearly all drunk or worse and given to shouting incomprehensibly across the road at each other. It was obviously not the kind of place you would expect two women like Claire and Lexa to be heading, but the taxi driver was so caught up in his rant against the Canadian menace that he seemed not to notice. Or if he did, he kept his noticing to himself.
Claire and Lexa moved through the streets, feeling like ghosts. They were so alien to their surroundings that the locals instinctively avoided them, so they did not have to fight off the bestial advances of feral youth or resist the attentions of people looking for a fight with random strangers. Being women and looking weirdly out of place helped considerably here, especially when combined with their clear confidence and lack of concern as to the situation in which they found themselves. Any would-be thug or harasser who cast a look in their direction saw in them something that suggested they were not easy prey, deterring any unwanted attention and diverting it towards easier targets.
As they got closer to Grieg Industries the streets began to less closely resemble a painting by Hieronymous Bosch, but there still seemed to be as many derelict or boarded-up buildings. They were able to slip down into the back street that ran behind their target without attracting unwanted attention. From there it was not far to the empty building they wanted to enter. They had no problems forcing the door – someone had done it ahead of them. Somewhat superfluously, Claire signalled to Lexa to be silent as they made their way into the darkened building, lighting their way with pencil torches. Claire led them through the darkness. They could tell they were not alone in here – there was an omnipresent smell of urine and an occasional tang of excrement, together with the sounds of people trying to sleep or muttering away to each other in low voices. But they knew the drill with homeless people – to those of us who have homes and warm places to sleep at night they are sinister and dangerous, but Claire and Lexa knew that unless riled up the people sleeping rough in this building would not be a serious threat.
They found a stairwell and began to ascend. The stench of bodily waste was particularly pronounced here, suggesting that by tacit agreement among themselves the vagrants inhabiting the building had made this their latrine of choice. For all that the two women had to take care to avoid the occasional unfortunate who had chosen the stairs as their place of rest. They tried to focus on their mission but they both could not but wonder what had brought these people to this terrible pass, and how they might make sure that nothing similar ever happened to them.
Eventually they reached what had once been a doorway. The door had long since fallen off its hinges and the opening now led out onto the derelict building's roof. Once out here they both breathed a sigh of relief, as they were now free of the foul miasma of the building's interior. Now to get from here to the higher roof of the adjacent Grieg Industries building. First, though, they slipped on their face masks, to make them unrecognisable to anyone observing them and to prevent a flash of their white faces drawing attention to their otherwise dark forms. Lexa smiled to herself, thinking of how like gimps they both now looked. She really did not want to think of what the Hotel Moonlight's receptionist would make of them.
Claire threw a grappling hook up to the roof of the adjacent building. It caught. Good. She tugged at it and gave Lexa the thumbs up – the line was secure enough to hold their weight. She climbed up first and then Lexa followed. The roof of the Grieg Industries building was flat and littered with various pieces of electronic equipment – what looked like satellite dishes, aerials, and various other items whose use was not even remotely clear to the two women. They looked around for CCTV cameras… and saw that the only ones there were mounted on fixed heads, looking down to the front and back of the building. There was nothing scanning the roof and nothing looking down on the building they had climbed in from.
There was a door onto the roof. It was locked, of course, but Lexa set to work on it with her lock-picking tools. No one expects a forced entry from the roof – this kind of lock is designed to stop curious employees from wandering out. So it presented no special challenge to her skills. It took less than a minute of tinkering to open it. Now she gave the thumbs up sign to Claire. The door was open, there was no alarm going off. They were in. It was all proving to be so easy.
26/11/2011
An inuit panda production
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