Baptism Read online

  Neville froze, eyebrows raised in surprise.

  “I’m sorry, Nev, but I’m on the phone, all right?” George pushed past him.

  When George went to sign on with the duty manager, a round pink man who was sweating through his shirt, he was told that the city branch of the Northern Line had just been closed due to a “security incident.” This would normally have been enough to prick George’s curiosity. A security incident was fabulously vague. It was the sort of thing announcers said to customers over the public-address system in a station, not the sort of explanation given by a duty manager to a driver. But George had more important things on his mind.

  He made his way to his train, number 037, in Bay 12 of the shed. The mobile phone had become slippery with sweat and he slid it into the top pocket of his shirt slowly, being careful not to knock any buttons or keys and making sure he could still hear the open line humming in his ear from the headset.

  “They want to know what time you leave from Morden,” said Maggie as he approached the train.

  “Eight seventeen.”

  “Okay.”

  George hung up his bag and his jacket in the cab. The temperature being what it was, he made sure the heating was turned off. Then he checked the lights and changed the destination blind to MILL HILL EAST VIA CHARING CROSS. He was so used to the procedure he could sleepwalk through it. He checked that the PA handset was working, and the interior lights were on, and he tripped out the motor alternators and overloads and reset them. Turning on the radio, he heard the bronchial wheeze of the depot shunter as he called other trains out of the depot.

  George checked the wipers and whistle, the air-pressure gauge and the brakes. Satisfied there were no faults with the train monitoring system, he carried out a lamp test followed by a traction test, and checked the heat and vent system, the doors, and the passenger alarm. It was a few minutes before he was due to be called so he wandered through the six cars of the train checking that everything was as it should be.

  A group of maintenance engineers were working on a section of track in the shed. They were laughing at something. George had never felt so alone in all his life. He returned to the cab, slamming the J door—the door between the passenger area and the cab—after him. Usually he just sat and did the crossword in the Metro newspaper that he picked up on his way to the shed until the depot shunter called him down to leave the depot. Sometimes, as he waited to be called down, he played a game on his mobile phone called Snake. But as he thought of his own mobile phone, all thoughts of the game were forgotten. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? Reaching into the side pocket of his jacket, he took out the phone and looked at it. He couldn’t call anyone for fear of being overheard but he could send a text. Who could he send it to? Was it possible to text 999? Could he text a friend—Dougie perhaps? My family are being held hostage—call the police but tell them not to do anything for fear of alerting the hostage takers. Dougie would think he was joking, putting him on. Even if he did believe him and raised the alarm, his actions might inadvertently cost the lives of George’s family.

  George slid his phone back into his jacket pocket and sat with his legs bouncing up and down on his toes, his nerves jangling out of control. He felt like a condemned man. It was a struggle to keep the panic at bay. After years of mundanity and routine, something so frightening and profound was happening to him that he felt as though if he allowed himself to think about it with any clarity his brain would run away with itself. Because in whichever direction he looked, it was too much to take in. The people who had taken his family were armed and, more frightening than that, they were clever. There was no point trying to raise the alarm because he knew for a cold certainty, from that one-second image in the front window of his house that kept replaying over and over in his head, that if he did and they found out, they would kill his family without compunction.

  On the radio, the depot shunter called him forward to the outlet signal. George took hold of the dead man’s handle, pushed the lever into drive and the train moved off out of the shed. When the signal cleared, the train headed down the track to Morden station and he heard the radio switch across from the depot channel to the line channel.

  He pulled up to the signal in the station and opened the doors. Usually he would lean out and watch the commuters climb aboard. He enjoyed people-watching and often, to try and dispel a crushing sense of boredom, he would weave little stories about his passengers and where they were going. Sometimes it might be nothing more than trying to work out someone’s name from his or her appearance. With some people it was tricky but for others—a total Jeremy, for example—he liked to feel he could spot one a mile off. But today he didn’t indulge this interest; he stood in the cab and looked at the two tunnel entrances at the end of the deep man-made gorge up ahead, where the train would enter London Underground’s longest network of tunnels.

  George wasn’t a geek like some of his colleagues but he did know that from Morden to East Finchley on the Northern Line was—at over seventeen miles—one of the longest and deepest railway tunnels in the world. And once inside it, all phone signals would die. So, in approximately two minutes, he would be left all alone with only the radio channel linking him to the line controller. The people who had kidnapped Maggie and Sophie couldn’t listen in to him on that, could they? Would this present him with an opportunity to raise the alarm—if he felt it was safe enough to do so? Would he ever feel it was safe enough to do so?

  When the signal changed, George pressed the buttons to close the passenger doors, checked the pilot light was out, and turned the dead man’s handle. The train moved forward out of the station into the shadow thrown by the high sides of the gorge leading to the tunnels. George slid the mobile phone out of his top pocket and watched the reception bars down the side of the screen collapse to nothing as the train was swallowed by the darkness. As the line went dead, he took off the headset and put it in his pocket with the handset.

  It was a strange feeling being suddenly released from the surveillance that he had been subject to. It afforded no relief from his all-pervading sense of dread, however, and now he felt himself consumed by indecision. Was now the time to attempt to communicate his unique predicament to the authorities? Turning off the main light in the cab as he always did, in order to see more clearly in the tunnel, he reached for the radio handset on the console. But as his fingers touched the molded plastic, he heard an unexpected sound. Someone was opening the door into the cab.

  8:17 AM

  Northbound Northern Line platform, Leicester Square Tube Station

  He loved the rain in the Welsh mountains. It wasn’t like the rain in Louisiana, which was cleansing and ferocious, sometimes even biblical as it had been with Hurricane Katrina. Snowdonian rain could be powerful too but what he loved was the gentle patter that often went on all day.

  As Brother Varick of the church of Cruor Christi stood on the northbound Northern Line platform at Leicester Square tube station, he wondered whether he would ever feel the Welsh rain on his face again. He wished it would rain today—it might cool things down. But there was little chance of that. When he and Brother Alistair had entered the station, the sun was high in the sky and there wasn’t a cloud in sight.

  After they had bought their tickets and made their way down onto the Northern Line platforms, Alistair had caught the first southbound train on his quest to find the children. Both men had a mission. When they had set out from Madoc Farm that morning in the Land Rover, Varick had anticipated that Alistair would join him in his efforts to stop Brother Thomas and the others from completing their vile deeds, but after their discussion on their way into London, it was clear that one of them would need to save the train driver’s children. Alistair was hardly a man to whom heroics would come naturally but, on this occasion, he wouldn’t necessarily need to be. He just had to find them. It was imperative that amid all the other potential loss of life, the lives of two of the youngest and most innocent potential victims weren’t
forgotten.

  Travelers sweated as they rushed around Varick, climbing on and off trains, while he stood still on the platform peering over the top of the free Metro that he had picked up in the ticket hall earlier. He pretended to read it as he watched the front cab of each of the trains that rattled into the station.

  Varick knew that in one of them would be Brother Thomas; he also knew that his unmoving presence on the platform, watching the trains—it was at least an hour he had been standing there now—might arouse suspicion.

  Another train entered the station with a solitary driver in the cab. Varick knew that it had to be this line and it had to be this station. That was the plan that Owen had found in Brother Thomas’s notebook, the information that had cost him his life. So Varick stood and waited. His patience would be rewarded. He didn’t know exactly when but Tommy Denning would be there soon enough.

  8:19 AM

  Northern Line Train 037, driver’s cab

  London Underground procedure states that all staff entries into a cab should be made while the train is in a station but whoever was entering the cab had the standard issue London Underground J door key—so named on account of its J shape. The intruder alarm went off—beeping away—until the door was shut again, deactivating it, as George turned to see a slim, muscular man dressed all in black and carrying a large canvas bag. Although clearly not wearing London Underground livery, his bomber jacket was of a sort a nightclub bouncer might wear, and lent him an official air. George thought he might be a member of staff, after all, even though he had not been informed of anyone scheduled to be joining him in the cab. The man was in his mid-twenties, his head shaved to the length of the thick dark stubble on his face. The eyes that stared into George’s were a light blue, almost aquamarine, with pupils the size of a teenager’s on ecstasy.

  “Hello, George,” he said as he put his bag in the corner of the cab. The voice was British, almost accentless, with just a hint of London and the southeast—what’s known as “Estuary.” It had a soft, almost intimate tone.

  “Maggie and Sophie are fine.” George felt the relief flood through his innards. The guy was special forces, SAS possibly. They had taken out the bad guys and he was here to tell him that all was well and George was now free to sell his story to the papers, maybe even appear on a reality TV show. But the words that followed were like torpedoes that sank George’s hope: “And rest assured, they will continue to be fine so long as you do exactly as I tell you.”

  “What’s this all about?” asked George.

  “Just keep quiet, carry on with your job and we’ll get along famously.”

  George looked him up and down. He was only a kid. Maybe he could take him in a fight. George was taller than him by a good three inches after all. But the kid had that supple wiry physique that hid unexpected strength. That, and he was about fifteen years younger.

  “I need to know what this is all about,” said George attempting to convey an air of authority.

  “Why?” It was said with a smile.

  “Because this train and all its passengers are my responsibility.”

  “Good.” The smile remained. “Then I suggest that you carry on being responsible for them.”

  “What do you want?” George allowed a hint of desperation to enter his tone, which he regretted.

  The smile was gone. “I want you to allow your wife and children the opportunity to survive this situation and I want you to know that if you try to stop me from doing what I’ve come here to do then they won’t. You have to trust me on that one, George. If you try to do anything to stop me, they will die. Have you got that?”

  “Yes. But . . .”

  “Ssssshhhhh . . .” It was a soothing sound, the sound a parent might use to calm a baby with troubled sleep.

  “The next station is South Wimbledon.” The voice came from CELIA, the Complete Electronic Line Information Announcer, and was relayed throughout the carriages as the train entered the station. At the far end of the platform, gathered together in a tight group in the midst of the commuters was a party of schoolgirls aged no more than seven or eight, George guessed, all dressed identically in blue blazers, pink dresses, and straw hats. As the train came to a halt, George opened the doors and the sound of excited little girls’ voices could be heard as their harried teachers ushered them on board the train.

  “This train terminates at Mill Hill East via Charing Cross,” said CELIA.

  There followed a station announcement on the platform: “Please be aware that there are currently no Northern Line trains running via the Bank. Customers are advised to take the first available train and change where necessary.” This sent some more of the passengers who would normally have waited for a “via Bank” train hurrying on board, leaving the rest of the platform empty. George closed the doors, checked the pilot light and turning the dead man’s handle sent the train rattling into the tunnel.

  George’s need to establish what was happening was irrepressible, his compulsion to speak impossible to resist.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Looks like you just did.”

  “Why me?”

  “Go on.”

  “I’m asking you, why me?”

  “And I’m asking you to get all the questions out of the way now before this goes any further. Come on, you can do better than ‘Why me?’, can’t you?”

  “Okay, so how did you know who I am, where I live, who I live with, what time I go to work, what car I drive—how do you know so much about me?”

  George’s sense of unease felt like an abscess, throbbing, poisonous, agony. And when the kid spoke he felt it erupt.

  “It’s you, George, because you were the one who responded. You were the one who told me everything that I needed to know.”

  For a frustrated dreamer like George, the Internet provided a release. It allowed him to connect with people the world over. He enjoyed the immediacy and anonymity of chat rooms but he also liked the sense of community provided by message boards and those in particular that were hosted on the site that had been established by one “Piccadilly Pete” some ten years previously. The message boards on Piccadilly Pete’s site had become the central community forum on the Internet for London Underground staff and anyone interested in discussing the mechanics, society, and culture of the tube. Many of the discussion threads were overtly technical and George didn’t bother with them but often there were discussions of day-to-day procedure and working conditions that he found of interest. Sometimes a writer or journalist would post a message eliciting information for their research; sometimes prospective LU employees would ask for advice about finding work or request details of various aspects of the job.

  It was via Piccadilly Pete’s message boards that George had started an ongoing e-mail correspondence with a member of the community who posted under the name of “Pilgrim.” Here was a young man who clearly had a burning interest in becoming a train driver. When George had replied to his initial question regarding the best way of getting a job “on the handle,” George offered him the benefit of his own experience and a sort of Internet friendship had developed. George had found himself strangely flattered by Pilgrim’s attention and the reverence with which he treated him. George had opened up to him probably more than he should have done, more than was strictly safe. But George was a big boy; what possible harm could come of it? He hadn’t even stopped to consider when Pilgrim had gradually made his inquiries more personal. Now, however, George could see that he had been the subject of an ongoing grooming process.

  “You’re Pilgrim aren’t you?”

  The question received a smile.

  “I thought you might have figured that out before now.”

  George felt the bile rise in his throat, hot and stinging. It was a strange form of betrayal that he felt. Pilgrim’s smile faded as he said, “We can talk more later, but now I need you to concentrate on the job in hand, so let’s keep quiet. Okay?”

  The threat was implicit and
George nodded, trembling, returning his gaze to the darkness of the tunnel up ahead.

  The stations passed by, each one announced by CELIA’s automated monotone. At Stockwell, about a third of the passengers left the train to change to the Victoria Line. But others climbed aboard George Wakeham’s train, train 037, and sat down or stood holding the yellow handrails and read newspapers, books, tablet computers, listened to music or played games, nursed hangovers, sipped coffee, cast surreptitious glances at someone attractive, or just stared into space.

  “Okay, zero three seven,” said the line controller as George waited for the signal to clear. “There’s a trainee driver at Kennington going up to East Finchley, wants to watch how it’s done. All right?”

  It was common enough, trainee drivers riding in the cab or “riding on the cushions” as it was known by LU staff. There was no way George could decline the request without arousing suspicion. Pilgrim clearly knew this because, when George glanced nervously at him, he nodded his assent.

  “Fine,” said George into the radio handset. Once clear of Oval, George saw the tiny point of light at the end of the tunnel grow larger and he felt his panic intensify as he worried about how to explain away his existing passenger to the trainee driver.

  As the train pulled into Kennington, George could see him in his uniform standing at the end of the platform. He was about thirty, of medium height, slightly overweight with a ponytail. He waved to George as the cab pulled past and George waved back. Stationary at the signal, George opened the offside door to the cab and the trainee driver stepped aboard.

  “All right, mate,” he said, seemingly unfazed by the extra passenger in the cab.

  “All right,” said George, closing the offside door.

  The trainee nodded at Pilgrim, who nodded back, expressionless. The signal cleared and they moved off into the tunnel, all three of them in a line, George in his seat and the other two standing.