Mind the Gap

"Come on!" Stevie hissed.

There was a British Telecom junction box against the wall here, giving them a vital three-foot start.

Stevie took one quick glance around, then hoisted himself up. He took off his heavy leather jacket and, holding one sleeve, threw it up and over the vicious metal blades atop the wall. He gave one experimental tug, then used the snagged jacket to haul himself up.

Jazz held her breath as Stevie carefully stepped on, then over, the low, dangerous metal fence. He looked down at her and smiled quickly, then jumped out of sight.

They heard him land, and Terence looked at her for a loaded moment. This was when they would find out whether the nick was on or not. If they heard the noise of barking dogs, running men, or Stevie involved in a struggle, they would know to run. If there was no sound at all, they would climb.

"Bromwell out!" they heard from around the corner, the chants intermingled with some colorfully obscene language. From over the wall, nothing.

"Go," Terence said.

Jazz leaped nimbly onto the BT box, grabbed the trail-ing sleeve of Stevie's jacket, and hauled herself up. She stepped over the low fence atop the wall and jumped, land-ing with knees bent, rolling to the right and coming up in a crouch. She scanned the area quickly. They'd landed among some trees, just as planned, and she saw Stevie's shadow be-neath the canopy a dozen feet away. He was staring through the undergrowth and across a wide well-maintained lawn at the house.

Terence landed lightly beside her. He'd held on to the jacket sleeve as he jumped, bringing it over to this side of the wall. This was just one of their potential escape routes.

There was a plastic box fitted to the wall here, a thick black cable duct protruding from its base and sinking into the ground. Terence gave it one good kick and the cover broke and fell away. There was a spaghetti of colored wires inside, junction points and circuit boards, and a knot of wires almost as thick as Jazz's wrist snaked through a hole in the wall to the Telecom unit outside.

Terence took a pair of heavy pliers from the small bag over his shoulder.

"How do you know which ones to cut?" Jazz asked.

"Only one." He snipped a white wire, then took out a small device from his pocket. He checked its batteries, turned it on, and nodded in satisfaction when it emitted a short beep. There was a forest of wires protruding from the device, each ending in a small crocodile clip. Terence stripped the cut wire, connected both ends into the unit, and began stripping plastic and attaching clips to other wires in the bundle. He worked quickly, almost randomly, but Jazz knew there was nothing random about this. She could see the concentration on his face as he worked.

"There," he said after a minute. "Should give us a bit of time."

He and Jazz knelt beside Stevie. From beneath the trees they had a good view of the side of the large house. To the left were the two black cars, but the people who'd been milling around were now down closer to the front gate, still out of range of the eggs and fruit but forming a protective semicircle in case one of the protesters climbed in. To their right, at the rear of the house, stood a large conservatory with timber decking built all around. The double glass doors were open and there was no movement inside.

Between them and the house, the garden was spotted with several large flower beds, mostly planted with mature roses growing on frames. Plenty of cover.

"No dogs," Terence said.

"Not that we can see," Stevie replied.

"They'd have let them out by now," Jazz said.

"Conservatory?" Stevie looked from Jazz to Terence, then back at the house.

"There'll be other entrances around the back," Terence said. "Let's see when we get there."

"Harry should be knocking off now," Jazz said, looking at her watch. It had been over three minutes since he and the United Kingdom started their distraction, and if they were not careful they'd still be there when the police arrived. Last thing anyone wanted was for them to be caught. But this was a dangerous job —the most dangerous they'd ever pulled— and that called for extreme risks.

"I can just see them from here," Stevie said. "Harry's right at the gate. Think he's smiling. Maybe he sees the punks that beat him up."

"And killed Cadge," Jazz said.

"Yeah, Cadge." Stevie did not turn around, but Jazz heard the break in his voice "So let's get our own back," Terence said. He was the first to move, breaking cover and running crouched over to the first planting bed. He glanced back quickly, looked around the shrubs, and ran on.

Stevie followed, and Jazz brought up the rear.

They had considered breaking in at night, but then all the security measures this house employed would be in place. Floodlights in the garden, maybe patrolling security guards and dogs, contact alarms on all the windows and doors, motion and heat detectors inside, panic alarms, trip-wire alarms perhaps, and every one of them would be linked directly to the local police station. And, perhaps, to the homes of the BMW men. Weighing those risks against breaking in when the mayor was up and about, there had been little choice.

Terence reached the timber decking, vaulted the low fence, and lay along the conservatory's dwarf wall. He stretched to look in through the open doors, signaling back that the coast was clear.

Harry and the kids let out a final roar, then their voices died out quickly as they left. Be safe, Jazz thought. There were sirens wailing in the distance, but she knew that the United Kingdom was expert at avoiding capture.

She broke cover first, dashing across the lawn and step-ping lightly through the open doors. No alarm sounded, no shouts erupted, and no dogs barked.

Stevie was beside her then, crouched down low, and through the glass walls of the large conservatory they saw Terence skirt around toward another door farther along the rear of the house.

"Take care," Stevie said. He gave her a quick smile that reminded her of how it used to be, and for a second she wanted to reach out and touch him. But then he was gone, so light on his feet that she heard nothing, just saw him dis-appear quickly into the house.

This was the most dangerous part of the operation. They hoped that the people around the cars would be leav-ing now, instead of coming back inside. They suspected that the mayor's staff would be relaxed, many of them preparing to go home for the day. Maybe the mayor himself was even having a snooze after a hard day's campaign planning. But they could rely on nothing other than their own stealth and talent to get them through the next half hour.

Jazz took a quick look around the conservatory and thought, We don't even know what the hell we're looking for!

The battery, Terence had said. Something strange and out of place. Something unusual that doesn't belong. You'll know it when you see it.

There were several huge pots in the conservatory, home to various exotic cacti, thorns long and cruel. A bit of furni-ture, a table with a few empty cups and a spread of paper-work, nothing unusual.

Room by room, Jazz thought. So here we go.

She slipped into the huge kitchen. There were three doors in here, and she knew that Stevie must have taken the one on the right. Jazz headed left, crouched low and listen-ing all the time for approaching footsteps. The air smelled of old food. As she passed one work surface, she saw the detritus of a meal:

bread crumbs, meat scraps, shreds of browning salad. There were a few plates piled up beside the double sink, and on an island unit in the center of the kitchen sat several full shopping bags.

She opened the first door she reached, still crouched down low. She winced as the hinges creaked, stared through the narrow gap, squinted against the bad light. It was a walk-in larder, at least eight feet per side. The walls were lined with shelves stacked with all manner of canned and bagged goods. The entire rear wall was taken up by a wine rack, at least two-thirds of it filled with bottles. There were built-in cupboards at floor level, all of them shut with padlocks.

Weird, Jazz thought. So what's in there? Posh food? She closed the door gently behind her and switched on the light.

The cupboards were solid, and when she tapped the first door it sounded heavy. Metal lined with wood laminate, per-haps? She jiggled the padlock, but the hasp and eye were bolted firmly into the door. If she had a crowbar, perhaps she could pull it off, given time. But she had neither.

Last place to look, she thought. If we don't find it anywhere else...

She turned off the light, opened the door slowly, peeked out, and exited back into the kitchen.

The final door from the kitchen led along a short corri-dor to a large dining room. This was a grand place, with a table that seated at least twenty being the only item of furni-ture. The walls were paneled with dark wood from floor to ceiling, and a portrait held pride of place in each separate bay. At first Jazz thought they would be pictures of the Blackwood Club and that the accusing eyes of her father would soon bear down upon her. But then she recognized one of the paintings as the previous mayor of London, and from the end wall Mayor Bromwell stared at her. She smiled and gave him the finger.

Jazz hurried through the dining room. It didn't seem to be a place that was used very much; there was a film of dust on the table, and the air was musty and old. They should air this place, she thought.

Get rid of the stink. There was a pair of doors at the far end, and she opened them just a crack.

Then froze.

The doors opened inward, and beyond was the man-sion's main hallway. To her left she could see the spill of light where the main entrance doors still stood open. Directly across from her, another set of doors stood closed, and just to her right was the stairway, eight feet wide and climbing to a balcony that overlooked the hallway on three sides. On the first stair stood two men. One of them wore an eye patch.

Philip, Jazz thought. The BMW man she'd seen batter Cadge to death.

"Fuckin' tunnel rats!" Philip hissed.

"He's got guts, coming up here," the second man said.

"Yeah, well, I'll happily open his guts to the air." Philip's face seemed twisted into a permanent grimace, and a twitch pulled at the corner of his lip as though someone had a hook in him.

"Don't like being reminded —" the second man said, but Philip cut him off.

"Pussy! Those bastards did something to us down there." He twitched again, his head flipping to the side. Jazz saw his good eye, and it was almost completely black. "Gassed us or poisoned us. Bastards! Get my hands on 'em... Get my knife in 'em ..."

"Calm it, mate," the second man said, and from his tone he was obviously scared of Philip.

"Yeah," Philip said. "Calm." But he seemed anything but calm.

"Where's the mayor now?"

"Upstairs in that room of his. Fiddlin'."

"Weird," the second man whispered.

"He likes to be left alone," Philip said. "Needs to con-centrate."

"He really thinks it'll help him win?"

Philip shrugged, then grinned. "He'll win." The two men walked upstairs and passed from Jazz's line of sight.

She closed the doors. Fiddlin', Philip had said. In any other place, Jazz might have suspected that meant some-thing else. But not here, and not now, and not knowing what she knew.

"Upstairs," she whispered. Stevie was supposed to go di-rectly to the second floor, and Terence would likely still be working his way through the first floor beyond the hallway. There were probably the library and living rooms over there, much more likely places to hide the battery than in the kitchen and dining room, and probably a second minor staircase buried in the bowels of the mansion. But the mayor was upstairs —in "that room of his"—and suddenly Jazz re-alized she had an advantage.

I need to find that battery, she thought. Me. Not Terence, not Stevie. They've both got too much going on, and my need for revenge is fresher.

Revenge might be a dish best served cold, but as Jazz opened the dining-room doors and crept to the foot of the stairs, she was burning inside.

She glanced carefully up the stairs. The two men had disappeared, either around onto the balcony above her or into one of the rooms up there. She listened for their voices but heard nothing. Behind her the main doors still stood open, and she knew she had to get away from there as soon as possible. Visible through the doors was the rear end of one of the black cars, which meant that there were likely more people still outside. Maybe they'd come in, maybe they'd eventually get into the cars and go. She did not want to wait to find out.

As she started climbing the stairs, keeping as far to the right as she could in case the two men were standing silently above her, she heard the screech of tires. A police siren sang briefly before falling silent again. Jazz paused and held her breath; if Philip and the other BMW man were on the bal-cony above her, they'd probably pass some comment now. But all was silent.

She ran up a dozen more stairs and squatted at the top, looking around. Before her, a corridor led toward the back of the house, a door halfway down on either side. To her left and right, the landing swung around above the hallway, and there were more doors and corridors leading off. Several of the doors were half open, others closed, and though she concentrated she could not hear voices from any of them.

Stevie could be anywhere.

There were several small tables set along the landing, most of them bearing vases with sprays of dried flowers. A couple were empty. Some had small drawers, others larger cupboards beneath. Bloody thing could be anywhere! she thought, realizing for the first time the immensity of their task. Terence did not know how large the battery was or what it looked like; all he knew, based on Harry's walk-by, was that it was here.

Jazz went left. The first door she came to was ajar, and she knelt low and pushed it open slightly until she could see inside. A bathroom: toilet, bidet, shower stall, bath, basin, a couple of chairs. The shower was steamed up and still drip-ping water, and the air carried the warm, heavy smell of re-cent use.

The next door was closed, and Jazz pressed her ear to the wood. She couldn't hear anything inside.

She touched the handle, paused, and withdrew her hand. Doesn't feel right, she thought. Trusting her instincts, she moved on.