unicorn 

James Bond could blend into any situation even wearing his trademark tuxedo, prepared for any eventuality with such things as exploding shirt buttons and a fountain-pen blow-torch.  That night the only gadget I had about my person, apart from a mobile that rarely had a signal, was a pair of gold-plated opera-glasses.  Admittedly, they lacked infra-red or x-ray capabilities, but they did allow me to observe was my quarry with perfect clarity from across the street.  The fact that gilded opera glasses lacked any subtlety the least of my worries being that I wore a bright white tuxedo with gold trim, a golden cummerbund and gold snakeskin shoes.  The costume was literally topped-off with a white top-hat – I figured that it was just as conspicuous to hold the thing as to wear it, and it was marginally less cumbersome upon my head than in my hand.  Luckily, the kid I had been ordered to follow seemed oblivious to the world, he didn’t even notice the raucous jeering of teenagers passing me by.  While I may have looked – and felt - like a fool, I had at least gotten out of going to the opera.  Personally, I cannot stomach even foreign films, let alone a foreign musical that does not even have subtitles.  But I was invited by my bosses, the Valentino family, who take their Italian heritage seriously, deathly seriously.  Obviously it was an honour that I could not refuse, especially as they had gone to the trouble of recommending a tailor for the occasion - it was this recommendation alone that saved the tailor from a severe beating when I saw the albino-penguin-suit he had for me.  Suffice to say that even with the continuous prepubescent taunts my tailors fashion-statement was attracting, I was glad to have been ordered to follow this kid and miss my first Opera.  As I watched the kid get off his scooter, I whispered in his direction, “Elliot Taylor – they call you ET don’t they? – take your time, kid, don’t be over ‘till the fat lady sings, takes a final bow and dials for Pizza.” 

Luke Taylor buzzed with nervous energy, his gaze darting haphazardly about the gigantic warehouse, pupils like flies trapped in his eyes.  Intermittently they would pause to rest upon the exact same spot.  His alertness was completely disproportionate to his menial work and therefore immediately suspicious to anyone who chose to take notice.  But no one noticed.  Working the conveyer lines at the Royal Naval storage depot was considered too tedious, repetitive and mundane even for the Navy.  Everyone in the room was therefore a civilian subcontractor whose physical world was reduced to sorting, scrubbing, painting and stencilling crates.  The only thing that broke the monotony was the occasional opening of a crate for inspection, more often than not made by Luke.  He worked the light munitions line, repainting crates that essentially contained big bullets for Warship deck-guns.  Even in wartime these guns were rarely used, and so the crates would travel the world stowed below deck for six months before returning to the warehouse to be stripped and repainted, sent back to the same ships, stowed and taken around the world again.  The crate he had his eye on had been under his care for five years and reconditioned maybe ten times by him personally.  The job may have been regular and reliable – like most anything Naval – but it brought as little pay as it did inspiration.  So Luke welcomed a business proposition that made the job more interesting and far more lucrative.  This particular crate did not contain munitions, somewhere along its voyage the crate was packed with cocaine.  Apparently by-passing international Customs, drug smuggling counter-operatives and Naval Intelligence was easy.  It was getting the drugs out of the Naval Base that took a little more finesse.  Luke usually had this covered, but that night he would have to rely upon his younger brother, so he played to the kids’ only known skills, Pizza-delivery and small-time drug-dealing, neither of which he did with any finesse.  Luke shrugged and thought you do the best you can with what’s at hand.

The plush leather interior of my newly acquired Land Rover stuck to the skin on my neck.  It was the middle of summer and, unusually for England, very hot, the windows wouldn’t open and the air conditioning was jammed.  I probably broke the electrics when I jimmied the door open being a bit rusty at grand theft auto.  The phone against my cheek was sliding about my ear, my sweat distorting the voice on the other end of the line, nonetheless I persisted in the conversation, “I am telling you it’s nearly impossible to chase a pizza delivery scooter in the city.”  The phone was crushed further into my ear by my shoulder as I slammed both palms against the steering wheel and veered to avoid someone on the pedestrian crossing, “There is only one exit on the road he’s on, so I’m taking a shortcut, boss.  Over and out.”  I shrugged the phone into my lap.  The car barely shook as I drove over and through an embankment – four-by-fours are not entirely pointless in a city.  Emerging in a sideward skid I scraped a red pillar box and caused a kid on a BMX to swerve into an abandoned shopping trolley.  Throwing up a panicked squeal from my tyres I picked up pace and sped over a long succession of speed-bumps doing sixty, with no perceptible jarring, and gunned for the road out of the housing estate.  One good thing about this shortcut, I reassured myself, is that no one on the Estate will report my driving to the Police.  Slowing to thirty, I sedately rounded a corner to find myself on the main road directly behind a thick black cloud spreading like squid-ink from a Pizza scooter.

The trouble with working a Pizza delivery job as cover, thought ET as he gouged a line of paint out of a parked car with his scooter handle-bar, is that to keep this damned delivery job I have to do it well!  It was exhausting running Pizzas all over the city at double-time so that he could fit in all his usual weed drops.  He preferred to work the seafront on foot, but once a week or so he would have to roam further into the city.  In the previous month he even did one Pizza run without drug-dealing, just to keep the job!  But that night was going to make it all worthwhile, because ET was not only delivering Pizzas and weed as usual to the Marines on guard-duty, he was also collecting a package from his brother with a considerable pay-off.  The guards were so preoccupied with covering their own tracks – adjusting surveillance cameras, taking sniffer dogs for a walk to the far side of the base, distracting the commanding officer with a Poker game - that they suspecting nothing about ET’s real reason for being at Unicorn Gate.    

I watched the kid carry a Pizza thermos bag from the sentry box.  He was not swinging the bag as he had on the other twenty times or so I had witnessed that evening, this time he clutched it to his chest as if it contained gold, or more likely, a couple of kilos of pure cocaine.  As I followed the kid back to his flat I updated my boss with a text – wouldn’t want to disturb the god-awful Opera after all.  My stomach rumbled, I had spent the best part of the afternoon chasing a Pizza boy around every nook and cranny of the city, without so much as a stuffed crust to chew on.  With a bleep, the reply read, Excellent, he won’t be going anywhere any time soon, call it a night…  As I walked to the car with the hope of catching a late-night horror and snacks at the cinema, my phone beeped again, it read BRACKET text missing CLOSE BRACKET  …if you leave now you’ll still catch the opera.