by Dc Alden
‘I have a permit. Besides, I didn’t take him seriously.’
‘Did he ever mention the name Faisal Al-Kaabi?’
Edith struggled to keep her face impassive. ‘Who?’
‘Al-Kaabi was a senior military intelligence officer. He was found dead in the same ditch as your friend. They’d both been executed.’
‘What?’ Edith’s surprise was genuine, but she recovered quickly. ‘Are you suggesting they were having relations with each other?’
‘It would explain your friend’s knowledge of the nuclear detonation.’
Edith sat a little straighter and held the investigator’s stony gaze. ‘Colonel Al-Huda, I’ve been a loyal servant of the caliphate for almost three years, and my record speaks for itself. Had I known any of this, or suspected anything, I would’ve reported it to the authorities immediately.’ She gripped the straps of her Louis Vuitton to stop her hands from shaking. Al-Huda studied her for several uncomfortable moments, then smiled without warmth.
‘Your loyalty is commendable, chief justice, yet questions remain; who killed Gates and Al-Kaabi, and why?’ He reached into his jacket pocket and handed her a business card. ‘My personal number. Call me, day or night, if anything comes to mind.’
‘Immediately,’ she assured him.
He left the room without another word, leaving the door wide open. Davies hurried over and closed it. Edith leaned back in her chair. ‘Fix me a drink, would you? A proper one.’
Davies handed her a tumbler of dark liquid. Edith swallowed it and placed it on the table. The brandy took the edge off almost immediately. She plucked a notepad from her bag, scribbled quickly, then showed it to Davies.
‘A bug? No,’ he told her, shaking his head. ‘I have a scanner, a left-over from the minister’s office. I sweep this place every day, just in case. See where I rank on the trust scale. Pretty high, it would seem.’
‘Then you were foolishly indiscreet,’ she scolded him. ‘I told you about the incident in China in confidence. Why did you repeat it?’
‘I wasn’t thinking,’ Davies snapped back. ‘He never mentioned Gates initially. He was asking about you, if you’d ever shared anything of a delicate nature, that sort of thing. I thought he already knew, that maybe it was a test, so I told him about the nuke. Jesus, these people make you paranoid, don’t they?’
Indeed. Al-Huda’s grilling had embarrassed her, made her feel soiled, dirty. She was reminded of her time as a young lawyer, defending society’s bottom-feeders, watching them struggle with underdeveloped thought processes, their inarticulate and expletive-riddled protestations a sordid assault on her ears. Time spent with the underclass always made her feel unclean. Being spoken to like one had brought those feelings rushing back. Davies’ voice cut through her depressive recollections.
‘I’m sorry, Edith. Al-Huda caught me on the hop.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ she lied. She’d held her nerve while Davies had lost his and blabbed. Today had truly been an education.
‘Did you know Gates was having an affair with this Al-Kaabi?’
‘Of course not,’ she lied again.
‘The Islamic Congress is deeply concerned. A delegate mentioned his name in our weekly meeting. They shut him down immediately.’
‘Why?’
Davies shifted closer and spoke quietly. ‘Al-Kaabi murdered someone at Northwood and stole sensitive data. Al-Huda told me before you arrived.’
‘What data? And what were they doing in Buckinghamshire?’
Davies shrugged. ‘He didn’t say.’
Edith leaned back on the couch. Ireland was lost, and the Alliance was reinforcing in Scotland. There was a de facto war with China, the secret police were trying to discover who-knew-what about Al-Kaabi, and Congress was deeply troubled. The future didn’t bode well.
She got to her feet and smoothed her headscarf. ‘These are troubling times, Hugh. I need to go home, rest, allow all of this to percolate.’
Davies stood. ‘Things look bleaker now than when we last met. We may need to rethink our plans.’
Edith cocked her head. ‘Oh?’
‘We should tread water. Not do anything that might antagonise the population.’
‘It’s rather late for that, don’t you think?’
‘I mean it, Edith. Cancel those crucifixions. Don’t make things worse.’
‘Worse?’
Davies stepped closer. ‘What if Wazir abandons Britain? Have you thought about what they’d do to us if we get left behind?’
Edith smirked. ‘Really, Hugh. You’re letting your imagination run wild.’
‘They’d lynch us, Edith, no question. Imagine that, you and I dangling from the same lamp post.’
She did and felt a shiver. ‘Nonsense. Wazir is too heavily invested here.’
‘Militarily, the caliphate is no match for the Americans. If they invade, it could go badly for us. I’m going to start deleting emails, just in case. The controversial stuff. I suggest you do the same.’
Edith’s nose wrinkled in disgust. ‘Do you seriously think that will make a difference?’
‘It can’t hurt. Then it’s our word against any potential accusers. Deny, deny, deny… isn’t that what we politicians are supposed to do?’
Edith glared at him. ‘I’ve sent hundreds to the gallows, thousands more to prison. I’m a chief proponent of the deportation program, and even I have no idea where those people end up—’
She stopped talking. Davies was making no sense. He was a rabbit, caught in the headlights of a speeding car. She nodded her head. ‘Yes, maybe you’re right, Hugh. We must look to the future, make plans. Save ourselves.’
Davies took the bait. ‘Absolutely, Edith. It makes sense, doesn’t it? Why go down with a sinking ship?’
She made her excuses and left. As the Mercedes made its way north back to Hampstead, she thought of Davies, pictured him sweating at his computer, hammering the delete key, force-feeding documents into his shredder, his brow spotted with a fearful sweat. Edith Spencer would not indulge in such cowardly labours, she decided. She was too long in the tooth, too committed to the cause to turn away now.
Besides, she felt no loyalty to the country of her birth, to its people or institutions. Its culture had been deliberately diluted over many decades, a social engineering process designed to divide the populace, a clandestine policy that had paid dividends for her former political allies in Westminster and Brussels. What she was doing now, as Chief Justice of the British Territories, was merely an extension of that work.
And those that would do her harm, who sought to rebel against their betters, who would dare to dream of lynching her from a lamp post, well, they would pay too.
And she would start with the traitor Bertie.
16
Byker Grove
From the cobbled courtyard of an abandoned manor house, the fixed-wing autonomous drone launched off its catapult rail and into the night sky, quickly reaching its cruising speed of 100 kilometres per hour. It climbed to an altitude of 1,200 feet and headed due south towards the city of Newcastle, just under 20 miles away. The drone’s black-painted carbon fibre fuselage and tiny electric motor were undetectable to ground radar as it flew south through the cloudy night sky, sweeping above the no-man’s-land of the frontier and into caliphate air space.
Its pre-programmed destination was a point in the sky above the playing fields of Gosforth Middle School, a scant three miles to the north of Newcastle city centre. As the drone approached from the north-east, it lost altitude, banking low and unseen over the A1 motorway, its on board delivery software running through its pre-drop checks. Satisfied that the system was functioning correctly, it sent a command to the small cargo bay doors beneath the aircraft. They flipped open, just as the plane swept low above the playing fields, and released the cargo inside the bay. Its mission complete, the aircraft banked to the north and climbed once more, heading back towards the military drone port from whence it came.
&nbs
p; Hidden in the trees that bordered those same playing fields, Jed Drummond heard the whisper of the unseen drone overhead, and a moment later, saw the package swaying towards the grass beneath its mini-parachute. He left the safety of his hiding place and scampered out into the open. He moved fast and low, as he’d been taught, the eyes behind his balaclava sweeping left and right. He slid to halt on the wet grass, snatched up the parachute and the cardboard box it had carried to the ground, and sprinted back to the tree line.
Lost in the shadows once more, Jed turned and looked back across the playing fields. There were no shouts of alarm, no torches waving in the darkness. He didn’t expect any either, because he’d been told that the caretaker would turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to anything that might happen within the grounds that night. Still, Jed waited another minute or two until he was sure, and then he picked his way carefully back through the trees towards the hole that had been cut in the chain-link fence. He squeezed his way through it and found his bike on the other side, propped against a tree. He shoved the parachute and cardboard box inside the backpack he was wearing, mounted his BMX bike, and cycled across the deserted, overgrown golf course until he reached the corner of Salters Lane. There he waited as he watched a police car cruise slowly past him, the cops inside oblivious to the finger Jed gave them from the leafy shadows. Then he waited a little longer until their lights were tiny red pinpricks in the distance.
After 15 more minutes of furious pedalling along deserted paths and pavements, Jed cycled into the alleyway at the rear of the shops on Field Street. He bumped open the gate with his front wheel and rolled his bike to the back of the brick building. As he approached, the door opened and a figure ushered him inside. Jed obeyed, rolling up his balaclava, and was led into a sizeable sitting room where a dozen adults waited for him. They greeted him with smiles and quiet words of appreciation, and a couple of them ruffled his thick red hair.
They gathered around as he shrugged off his backpack and handed over the cardboard box, its parachute still attached. Inside the box was a small plastic tube, and inside that, a sheet of yellow paper covered in letters and numbers. An older woman, Roz, the owner of the hairdressing business out front, took the paper and flattened it out on the coffee table. Then she began deciphering the code. Jed and the other adults watched as Roz worked her magic. When she finished, she repeated the process, just to be sure. Satisfied, she looked up at the surrounding faces, silent now, expectant. When she spoke, she looked at each of them and smiled.
‘They’re coming.’
Eddie parted the filthy curtains and peered at the street below. Most of the cars parked there had been torched a long time ago and were now charred, rusting shells. The rest had flat tyres and broken windows, and in sills and vents, weeds flourished. Debris lay everywhere, strewn across the road and pavements, and piled in rotting heaps in overgrown front gardens; he saw shattered TVs, broken furniture, clothes, luggage, books, papers, photographs, all of it rotted and unsalvageable. People’s lives, trampled beneath the boots of the caliphate army that had withdrawn south after they’d been stopped at the border. Where Eddie’s brother Kyle had died. And as they’d retreated, they’d laid waste to every town they’d passed through, pillaging and destroying town centres, tearing up roads and rail lines, blowing bridges and buildings. And killing indiscriminately.
They’d found bodies on the approaches to Morpeth, the historic Northumberland market town the Second Mass now occupied. As they’d marched across the fields towards it, they’d discovered long-dead civilian corpses, most of them hairless and shrunken, their yellowed bones poking through rotten clothing. They found 30 or so piled on top of one another in a muddy ditch, and another dozen in the woods just north of town, dangling beneath the dark canopy like macabre Christmas decorations. Most had rotted and slipped their nooses but others remained, the ropes that had killed them creaking in the wind. The victims were mostly men, but there were some women and children amongst them too. The grid references were radioed in, and the burial teams would take care of the dead. Eddie didn’t envy them.
The massacres had unnerved him, but Steve had taken it much harder, and his mood had darkened. Small talk was rare now; he’d withdrawn, only engaging when he needed to. Mac had spoken to him, but it was clear he wasn’t doing great.
Neither am I, Eddie admitted to himself. He let the curtain drop back into place and flopped back down onto his roll mat. The rest of Nine Platoon was crammed into a small terraced house on an estate just south of the River Wansbeck. The whole of the battalion occupied the surrounding houses, and the other estates to the north and west of them housed other battalions of the Kings Continental Army, a British force of just under 10,000 men. Eddie wondered how many of them would still be alive in a week’s time.
He picked up his notepad and pen and focussed on the letter he wanted to write. We’re going old school, Mac had joked when he’d handed the basic writing materials out. Their mobile phones had been stored away with the rest of their personals, and the only electronic devices permitted were media players. Most of the guys around the room were plugged in now, lost in their own worlds. Eddie wanted to write instead. He chewed on the end of his pen as he thought about what he wanted to say to his parents. He couldn’t tell them where he was or what he was doing so it really didn’t leave that much to say. He was still thinking when Steve’s voice interrupted his thoughts.
‘Writer’s block’s a bitch, ain’t it?’
His friend was stretched out on a roll mat, staring up at the weather-stained ceiling. ‘I’m struggling,’ Eddie admitted.
Steve sat up and leaned against the wall. ‘What do you really want to tell them?’
Eddie didn’t have to think too hard. ‘I want to say sorry, I guess.’
‘For what?’
‘For volunteering. For being here. Losing Kyle devastated them, so when I signed up they went nuts. Mum cried for days and Dad wouldn’t even look at me. All I cared about was doing my bit, enlisting like all the other lads. I didn’t think twice about how my folks would feel, how they must be feeling now. Every time I call home, Mum breaks down and Dad’s always got a reason why he can’t come to the phone. I didn’t realise how much pain I’d caused them.’ Eddie tapped the pen on his pad. ‘I want to tell them how sorry I am, tell them not to worry, that I’ll see them again soon. Something like that.’ Eddie stopped talking. He could feel the emotion starting to build.
Steve shook his head. ‘Just tell ‘em you’re fine. Tell ‘em the weather’s great and that you visited Kyle’s regimental monument up at the old border. Tell ‘em things are quiet and you’re bored. Tell them anything, just don’t tell them how you feel. Keep all that shit buried until this is over.’
‘Maybe you’re right.’ There was a quiet beat between them, then Eddie said, ‘How about you? You’ve barely said a word these last few days.’
Steve folded his arms and stared at his boots, his eyes taking on a faraway look. ‘When we saw those bodies in that ditch, the others hanging in the woods, I couldn’t tear my eyes away. I was looking at the clothes, see? I thought I might recognise a coat, a scarf, something like that. I kept telling myself it couldn’t be them; after all, what would my girls be doing way up here? But the invasion displaced millions, right? Maybe they were sent north to work, maybe—’
‘Hey, you can’t think like that,’ Eddie cut in. ‘You have to stay positive.’
Steve frowned. ‘Have I been anything else up to this point? We all know about the atrocities, but seeing it with my own eyes—’ He caught himself. When he spoke again, his voice had lost its edge. ‘I’ve always believed that my girls were okay. If anything had happened to them, I’d know. I’d feel it here,’ he said, tapping his chest. ‘But now I know that’s bullshit. So, I have to get home. I can’t rest until I know.’
‘Might be a while before we get that far south.’
‘I know. My place is an hour’s drive from here, but it might as well be a million fucking mi
les.’
They heard the stamp of boots and creaking stair treads. Mac appeared in the doorway in full battle-order, his face smeared with different shades of camo cream. Everyone in the room stirred. Digger unplugged his headphones.
‘Well? What’s the gen?’
Expectant faces stared at the section 2IC. A wide grin split the Scot’s green and black face. ‘You’ve got two hours to eat, shit, and square away your personal admin, because after that, the Kings Continental Army is heading for the frontier and we ain’t coming back, not until we’ve driven those cunts into the English Channel.’
‘About fucking time,’ Digger said, snarling.
‘When’s the mission brief?’ Eddie asked.
‘When we get closer. Much closer.’ Mac grinned again.
Steve shook his head. ‘Don’t fuck us about, big man. If you know something, tell us.’
Mac’s grin slipped from his face. ‘You heard me. Two hours, then we’re moving, so get your shit together and start switching on. The boss will reveal all when we get to the RV.’
The rest of the section began breaking out their mess tins and rations. Eddie stared at his blank notepad and realised there was nothing to say. Steve was right, he would tell Mum and Dad to their faces, if he got back home. All he could think about right now was that frontier, and it made him feel nauseous. He jammed the notepad in his rucksack and rummaged for his rations instead.
‘Don’t sweat it,’ Steve told him. ‘You’ll get another opportunity somewhere down the line.’
Eddie forced a smile. ‘You’re confident.’
‘I’ll swap you a chicken curry for a beef stew.’
Digger was dangling a packet of freeze-dried curry from his fingers. Eddie handed over the stew.
‘Cheers,’ Digger said, then he frowned. ‘You all right, Eddie? You’ve gone a bit green.’
Eddie noticed some of the others look his way. ‘I’m sick of rations.’
‘We’ve only been on them two days.’ Digger leaned closer, kept his voice low. ‘Listen, whatever happens, we’ll stick together, watch each other’s backs, see this thing through. Got it?’