‘Tori,’ said Frank, his voice low, as Tori went to sit, ‘take one last look around. Here we are, out in the open, exposed to TV cameras and thousands of phone cameras. Remind me why we’ve come to the last place you should be? I really do think that we should leave.’ He placed his hand on her shoulder.
She pushed it away. ‘Enough, Frank. If you want to leave, you’ll go with my blessing. Me? I’m willing to take the risk, to hide in plain sight.’
‘Or you could give yourself up, go straight to those cops over there and—’
‘So some pimply-faced, trigger-happy rookie who shits his pants when he sees the red-haired video killer shoots me before I can open my mouth? It’s either that or they throw me in a Spanish prison cell and leave me there to rot for the rest of my life. By staying right here,’ she said, taking off her backpack and sitting down to make her point, ‘I get the chance to trip up the bastard who’s behind all of this and clear my name.’
Frank shook his head. She knew what he was thinking because he’d said it three times on their way here: If just one spectator catches on to who you are, the whole place will erupt.
‘Frank, either go or stay, but if you stay I need you to focus on the show.’
He leant in close. ‘What if you are the show?’
‘Enough! Besides, with my knight in shining tweed at my side, what could go wrong?’ She tried a smile, but it wouldn’t come.
Frank started typing on his phone. She assumed he was messaging Thatcher but didn’t ask. Instead she said, ‘We should update Axel.’
He looked up. ‘I asked Thatcher to do that before I left the store to follow you. Axel, by the way, would undoubtedly agree that you’re crazy being here.’
‘Deu minuts … deu minuts … Si us plau, asseuieu-vos,’ an official shouted over a loudspeaker.
‘Tori, in ten minutes it’ll be impossible to get away. Please, let’s go now.’ He took her hand this time but she wrested it away and crossed her arms. ‘I know you don’t want to hear this but—’
‘Then stop telling me. Focus on the cars. Boys like cars. Hey,’ she said, noticing blue sections woven into the flags covering the display vehicles. ‘Those flags are Estelades.’ As they both knew, the Estelada was Catalonia’s separatist flag, identical to the official Senyera except for an added blue triangle and the five-pointed white star inside it. ‘You know what that means.’
‘The president’s going to use this to make a statement, and it’ll be about way more than innovation,’ said Frank.
‘Is he going to launch a new campaign for—’
‘Independence from Spain,’ they said simultaneously.
The secession movement was a recurrent stress between Madrid and Barcelona. Some of Oriol’s predecessors had gone to prison or went into exile over it. Back in Franco’s time, his father was murdered over it.
‘What if,’ said Frank, ‘The Voice’s next victim is Oriol and the reason you’re here – the reason he led you here – is so you’ll be his fall guy? Again. Tori, please, really. We’ve got to go.’ He started to get up and pulled at her hand.
‘Too late,’ said Tori. She dragged her hand away and pointed to the dais.
69
The musicians started up. ‘It’s Els Segadors,’ said Tori as the crowd around them roared and leapt to their feet and President Casals stepped onto the stage to lead them in song. ‘Catalonia’s national anthem, not Spain’s.’
At the end, when the audience began to sit, Casals raised his fist in the air and shouted out the song’s opening line, ‘Catalunya triomfant, tornarà a ser rica i plena.’
Much of the crowd was up again, going wild, as Tori translated courtesy of her FrensLens, ‘Catalonia triumphant, shall again be rich and bountiful.’
‘La innovació és la independència,’ Casals continued, to thunderous applause, although as Tori observed to Frank, only half the audience was clapping. Catalans were split on the independence question. It was a divisive issue.
The president raised both hands until he got silence. Cata-Cars, the home-grown driverless car technology launching today, he told them, leapfrogged every competitor, the Americans, the Germans, the Chinese. Cata-Cars were so safe, he declared, that he’d authorised a trial on Catalonian roads outside Barcelona to start in three months. Barcelona itself was set to follow four months later.
‘After the vote. That’s smart politically,’ said Tori, under the applause. ‘His electoral chances get a bounce from the decision, but if something goes wrong with the trials, it won’t be his ballot box that gets whacked.’
The audience hushed again when two children in traditional costumes came onto the stage and bowed to their president. The boy was wearing a red barretina, a sock-like woollen cap, and a wide red sash, a faixa, was wound around his waist. The girl wore a fine net over her hair, a ret, and a lace mantellina over her shoulders.
Casals gave them the nod and moved to the side as the boy took the loose end of his sash and handed it to his partner. She began to pull on it, and the boy began to spin around and around. As the sash got longer she kept stepping backwards until it was completely unravelled. With the long, wide red ribbon now held between them, Casals came forwards with a huge pair of scissors and cut it, repeating more words from the anthem, to more applause, ‘Com fem caure espigues d’or, quan convé seguem cadenes.’
‘Just as we cut golden ears of wheat,’ Tori translated, ‘when the time calls we cut off chains.’
‘He’s quite lyrical, isn’t—’ Frank was starting to say when the entire plaza let out a collective gasp. The flags were whipping off the cars, snapped high into the air, apparently pulled off by wires that none of the spectators, including Tori, had noticed before. They fluttered back down onto the dais where the two kids picked up one of the flags between them and ran it in circles around the president, getting even more applause.
In unison, the cars, all of them driverless and passengerless, backed into the empty roadway, turned to the right and slowly circled, nose-to-tail, around the grass parkland. A moment later, again in synch, they accelerated, the ring of vehicles going faster and faster then, as one, they slowed and shifted into a figure-eight routine. The mob went wild, the clapping and cheering almost deafening.
Eventually, the vehicles came to a sudden stop, the space between each car identical, then they repeated their previous routine, this time in reverse, and faster. At the end, they screeched to a halt, flashing their headlights into the grandstands as if to thank the public for the tumultuous applause.
The red velvet skirt that draped the sides of the central stage lifted and men and women dressed as matadors came out and circled the perimeter.
‘Didn’t Catalonia ban bullfighting years ago?’ said Frank.
Tori shrugged.
Still on stage, Casals took the Estelada from the children and waved it over his head, swooping the colours from side to side as all the cars started revving, like Grand Prix racers growling at their starting line. He started a countdown – tres, dos, un – and on zero the cars spun their wheels and smoked rubber, did 180-degree hand-brake turns and charged inwards towards the centre, as if they were bulls charging the matadors.
The matadors stood their ground and the audience, almost as one, leapt to its feet with a collective intake of breath, thousands of hands covering mouths and eyes.
‘One of those guys is shaking like a leaf,’ said Tori.
‘This is lunacy. If anything goes wrong—’
It didn’t, which gained even more massive applause, although the man Tori had noticed had collapsed. While the others took their bows, four paramedics rushed out from under the dais and carried him away on a stretcher.
As soon as the medics left, the cars swivelled around so their grilles faced the grandstands again. They were flashing their headlamps rhythmically, as if beating in time to a metronome. They rolled forwards slowly, inching towards the crowd but stopping a car-length short of the stands.
Excited children
were waving at them, older people laughing. The lights of the two cars nearest Tori were beaming directly into her eyes, like a challenge. One that was making her feel quite uncomfortable.
70
On the distant side of the plaza, Tori saw movement, two cars moving out of formation. They circled the plaza slowly, one clockwise, the other counterclockwise, their red hazard lights flashing.
They pulled up either side of the two vehicles that were already idling in front of Tori and Frank’s stand. These four cars began to rev their engines. Their bonnets went down, their boots rose, like snorting bulls about to charge. It was as if the cars were in gear and their non-existent drivers were simultaneously pressing on the accelerator and the brake.
‘This does not feel good, not remotely,’ said Frank, stating what Tori was thinking. The spectators in the front row just ahead of them grabbed their bags and their kids and peeled off to the sides, their heads bowed low, like embarrassed theatregoers leaving a show mid-performance.
The four cars began jerking backwards and forwards, their engines rising to a squeal. The remaining crowd was murmuring and shifting in their seats. More people around Tori and Frank were scooting away.
Tori nudged Frank’s arm with her elbow and said, ‘Let’s go’ at the same time he did but it was as if the cars had heard her. The two outside vehicles lunged forwards, smashing through the now-empty seats to flank Tori and Frank.
The passenger door closest to Tori opened. Her heart was banging against her ribs but she worked at staying cool. ‘How very chivalrous,’ she said, giving a weak smile to the car as she kicked away the seats in front of them, grabbed her backpack and Frank’s arm and pulled him forwards with her.
As they ran to the right, she looked back over her shoulder. The four cars were turning to follow them but held back, a momentary benevolence to let panicked spectators scatter out of their way. It was Tori they wanted.
A woman nearby yelled, ‘És ella.’ It’s her.
Tori felt as if the woman had thrown a knife into the side of her neck. The mother, her eyes ablaze, was simultaneously holding her three children back and jabbing her finger in Tori’s direction. ‘It’s the redhead from the video,’ she screamed in Catalan. ‘The killer in the polka dots.’
Tori saw that the onlookers had cleared away behind her and the four cars, now side-by-side in a squadron formation, had started to barrel forwards.
Further ahead, the frightened tide was splitting into two waves, a breach opening up in the crowd, and she quickly saw why. ‘Frank, there in that gap,’ she pointed, ‘see that manhole cover? It’s sliding open.’
‘Could be another trap,’ he said as they ran towards it.
‘No choice,’ she spluttered as they reached it. Calculating they had two seconds, three at best, before the vehicles mowed them down, she dropped feet-first into the hole. When she hit the bottom, she slipped on the watery surface below but managed to stay upright, ducked her head and sloshed her feet to the side to make room for Frank.
The hole was dank and sweat was pouring off her as she gasped for air. Frank also slipped but, as the motorised cover began to slide shut, Tori threw out her arms and stabilised him. The light from above was tapering off like phases of the moon and soon, in pitch darkness, they heard the thrums of tyres carom over the plate, then a stampede of footsteps.
Frank kicked a foot in the water, making a small splash. He switched on his phone’s flashlight, sending its beam into what they saw was a tunnel.
His light was only on for a second when the phone buzzed.
‘Thatcher or The Voice?’ said Tori.
‘Escape or trap?’ said Frank.
71
El Prat Airport, Barcelona
Since coming to office, Isabel and China’s leader had developed a strong and constructive relationship, one the entire world was grateful for. While Hou Tao always served his nation with strength and purpose, he mostly spoke, to her at least, with heart, contradicting the stiff, cold image often portrayed in the Western media. But today, in this call, he showed no warmth, his brow was furrowed and his hands clenched.
‘Madam President, my people are telling me that the two assassinations were ordered by the United States.’
He was not directly accusing her but he was sending a clear shot across her bows, a warning. His anonymous ‘people’, he went on, were also telling him that the US objectives were twofold: to humiliate China, blocking its ambition of a strategic Arctic foothold, and to poison the minds of other countries who might otherwise form alliances with China.
‘Madam President, if these allegations I’m hearing are correct, they mean that the United States has made a direct assault on my nation’s integrity.’
Hou’s statements were strong, for sure, but they were also judicious, and she was grateful for that. He was a far more astute diplomat than, say, Russia’s Tushkin, who’d toss accusations of calumny at her even if he had zero evidence. That aside, it was possible, she pondered, that Hou’s phrasing was also cautious because he was concealing some crucial fact, which, if it came out, would later let him stand behind his words. My people are telling me … If these allegations I’m hearing are correct.
He’d been a chess master at eighteen and had clearly retained an ability to think several steps ahead. She, on the other hand, needed to be very clear, to speak plainly. This was not a moment to cavil, to give a qualified response, to hide behind advisors, even though she’d have preferred it.
‘President Hou, you have my absolute, categoric assurance that the United States was in no way, no way, behind the assassinations.’ Isabel hoped her denial turned out to be true. In her last call with Spencer Prentice, they’d entertained the possibility that one of America’s agencies had gone rogue and was keeping her in the dark precisely so she had plausible deniability in a situation just like this. ‘I am so sorry for your personal loss,’ she added. ‘I understand Rao Songtian was a—’
The sharpness of Hou’s interruption surprised her as much as what he said. ‘The assassin, Dr Swyft, she is one of yours. I’m told she is a sleeper who the US secretly and deceitfully implanted with Greenland to thwart that country’s interests in favour of your own.’
Given the background papers she’d read detailing the CIA’s hostility towards Tori, Isabel felt she was on far firmer ground. ‘What you’re being told is completely and utterly false.’
‘Madam President, I hold you in the highest regard, and I know you would not knowingly lie to me, but I am afraid that the facts appear to be against you. For example, you personally called the prime minister of Greenland before the signing precisely to frustrate our negotiations. Until you did that, we had every reason to believe our negotiations had remained secret. If Swyft didn’t reveal the talks to you—’
‘Mr President, that’s not—’
‘If she didn’t give you the information, then what prompted your call?’ He’d put Isabel in check, and she could feel he was coming in for the kill. ‘Was it perhaps information gleaned and passed on by the cyber-security contractor engaged by Greenland’s parliament? Was it them who told you?’
Checkmate. Isabel noticed she’d unconsciously clenched her own fists, though luckily they were out of sight, under her desk. ‘Mr President, you—’
‘We both know that company is a long-standing CIA front. So how, Madam President, do you think the Greenlanders will react when they learn that the United States, their loyal friend and ally, has for years been spying on their most sensitive communications? And that’s saying nothing about the impact of today’s revelations about your Project Gusher.’
Isabel tried not to flinch or blink in case Hou caught her out, which was difficult since he was partly correct. Not about Gusher, that was a truly cheap shot, and not about Tori Swyft, but about the CIA’s shameful eavesdropping operation. She’d only heard about it herself in the past few hours.
‘President Diaz, America’s double standards are unbounded. On the one hand, your pe
ople spread false and grossly offensive claims that Mingmai, one of the world’s leading and most admired tech companies, is a puppet of my government. They defame Mingmai to get it banned from bidding for government contracts all through the West, despite its world-beating knowhow. At the same time, you operate a cyber-security firm that has the highest clearances to secretly do America’s dirty work and, before you protest, Madam President, I have proof. This,’ he was waving a sheet of paper at the screen, ‘is a list of thirteen other countries whose parliaments and congresses rely on that same firm, your firm, to protect their most classified data and communications. Shall I tell their leaders what you’ve done?’
Isabel didn’t take the bait and instead returned to territory where she still had a chance. ‘Tao,’ she said, using his given name, ‘the video from Room 420. We have good reason to believe,’ she glanced at Gregory, ‘that it is a deepfake, though I’m still awaiting confirmation.’ Out of the corner of her eye she saw Gregory raise both his eyebrows. She’d gone a little far but in essence it was true. She had reason to believe the tape was fake even if Hirsty did not and the test results hadn’t come back. She moved her hand off-screen and made a circle motion, which Gregory knew meant Speed up the results. He slipped out of the room.
‘We are also examining it, Isabel,’ his use of her first name suggesting she’d possibly softened his stance. He also looked pensive, another good sign, so she went in with her best shot. ‘Tao, it’s on the public record that your agreement with Greenland is conditional, that it needs their parliament to ratify it, which is scheduled – was scheduled – for two weeks from now. The thing is, that delay meant the United States had absolutely no need to sully our hands with what happened in Room 420. That two-week hiatus was more than enough time for us, for any country, to put together the bones of a counter-offer that, in turn, would persuade Greenland to delay the ratification vote further.’
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