Omega

Halfway up the Haymarket Owain came to a checkpoint and was directed to pull over. He showed his ID card to an MP. It resembled a credit card, with profile and frontal head shots, a magnetic strip on its rear. The MP told him that if he was headed north he would have to go along Piccadilly and up Park Lane since both Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road were presently closed to traffic. Effectively sealing off all the Soho margins, he thought.

“I’m headed west,” he said, the lie making his pulse surge.

He turned left into Jermyn Street, took a right, and found himself driving straight towards a full-blown roadblock. Temporary signs indicated a left turn only, which would force him west along Piccadilly, away from his intended destination. Instead he drove straight up to the razor-wire barrier.

Ahead of him hoardings around Piccadilly Circus carried patriotic posters featuring images of citizens and soldiers clone in a style that reminded me of Soviet heroic realism. One showed a multiracial group surrounded by a swirl of national flags and a scroll declaring: BROTHERS-IN-ARMS! Among the flags was a red, gold and black banner, its central band surmounted by a black Teutonic cross.

One of the soldiers from the roadblock approached the car. They were CIF men, equipped with Sterling submachine guns and snug hooded winter-camouflage body suits. This one held a senior guard’s rank, equivalent to a sergeant.

Owain surrendered his ID card. The guardsman swiped it through a hand-held scanner before frowning as if it wasn’t working. Or as if it didn’t check out.

“Can I ask where you’re going, sir?”

Owain decided to be direct. “I’d like to take a look at the bomb site.”

The man squinted at him, his eyes shadowed under the cowled brim of his helmet. “And which one would that be, sir?”

He had an Ulster accent; Owain had done a six-month tour of duty there while still an NCO. Suppressing extreme Catholic and Loyalist groups opposed to the Ecumenical Irish Republic.

“Soho,” he replied.

“I have no information on any bomb site, sir.”

“There was an explosion. A few days ago. I mean, a few days before Christmas.”

The man looked studiously blank. “I know nothing about that, sir. I’m afraid the area’s off-limits.”

He was scrupulously formal. Owain knew he wasn’t going to get anywhere unless he raised the stakes.

“Listen,” he said, “I was in Regent Street when it went off. Let me speak to someone.”

The guardsman’s face didn’t change. There were half a dozen of his colleagues at the barricade, all watching.

“Field Marshal Maredudd sent me over,” Owain said. “I’ve come straight from the War Office.”

Another glance at the scanner screen. “As far as I can see, there’s nothing here relating to site access.”

Owain essayed a shrug. “We didn’t imagine it would be a problem. Would I have driven up here otherwise?”

Once again the guardsman scrutinised him against the picture on his ID. “I’m sorry, colonel—”

“It’s major” he said. “Major Owain Maredudd. If I was a spy or a saboteur, you don’t really think I’d fall for that one, do you? Do you want my serial number and my mother’s maiden name?”

The guardsman had the grace to smile.

“Pull in over there,” he said, pointing to an area of waste ground on the corner of Piccadilly. “Oh, and sir?”

“Yes?”

“You might want to switch on your lights.”

A hard-topped truck and a Rapier armoured car were already parked on the waste ground, the latter standing with its view slits shuttered but its engine idling. Owain spun the Land Rover around and reversed into a space.

A blue haze of cigarette smoke was issuing from one of the vents in the armoured car. The guard had gone across to a female superior standing beside a long cargo lorry that was parked right across the entrance to Regent Street. Owain saw the woman look towards him before taking his ID and climbing into the back of the lorry. Cables were trailing from its rear into an open manhole on the pavement.

Owain waited, stamping his feet on the powdery snow, stretching his shoulder and neck muscles. A big RAF helicopter went by, the red-and-blue decal on its midsection enclosed by a circle of yellow stars. None of the personnel on the ground looked up as it went past.

The cles. opter was an Euro Avionics HT-11, I gleaned from Owain, popularly known as the Fishtail for its forked rear end. It was used as a vehicle and troop carrier, and Owain had flown in one many times, especially while on the eastern front. I had a brief image of him driving down a ramp from the belly of such a craft into a cold predawn darkness.

The woman emerged from the trailer. Her head was swaddled in a grey fur hat, the earflaps hanging loose in the wind.

“Good evening, major,” she said. “A raw day to be out and about.”

“Indeed,” Owain replied.

“Perhaps you’d like to sit in your vehicle.”