Instead of driving into town, the car turned off onto a busy road. Rudi saw a sign that said Borough Of Ealing go by, then a big grassy space, then they were dipping down a hill to a frankly insane-looking interchange choked with early-evening traffic.
“Where are we going?” Seth asked.
Crispin didn’t answer. He seemed perfectly happy giving the driver directions, even though the driver appeared to know where he was going.
The car negotiated the interchange, then spent forty minutes or so stop-starting at traffic lights. Rudi saw a sign for Wembley Stadium. A branch of IKEA went by. He thought about what must be happening at the moment in the place where Heathrow had once been; it would be interesting to look at social media right now and be one of the few people in the world – in either world – to know what was going on. That would be a considerable novelty for him.
Eventually, after one particularly bad traffic jam, they turned off the busy road. Shortly after that, they made a right turn beside an Underground station. Bounds Green. Rudi, whose knowledge of the geography of Greater London was sketchy at best, was entirely lost, but that didn’t matter. For a very long time, it seemed to him, he had felt like a fly who had wandered into a grandfather clock and was gazing in awe at all the cogs without the slightest idea what they were for, just a dim insect sense that everything fitted together somehow. Maybe it was time he stopped, because it hadn’t done anyone any good.
They drove a short distance from the Underground station, then the car pulled into a side street and everyone got out. The driver and the bodyguards went to the back of the car and took out a number of bags and suitcases and rucksacks, then they closed and locked the car and Crispin led the way up the street.
After a few metres, he turned in to a narrow path between two houses, and they all followed. The path started out as tarmac underfoot, but as it passed beyond the houses the surface changed and Rudi could feel trodden-down grass and earth beneath his feet. They were walking along a quite narrow strip of wild land – he felt the thorns of an overhanging bramble catch his sleeve and pull away. Through the trees to one side, he could see the lights of houses, and on the other, down what seemed to be quite a steep embankment, more house lights.
“I never met a deus ex machina before,” Rudi said.
Up ahead, Crispin had taken out a torch to light their way. He guffawed. “Deus ex Michigan, maybe.”
“Where are we going, by the way?”
“You’ll see,” Crispin told him. “Got a little surprise for you.”
Ahead of them, Rudi saw two figures standing on the path. They were holding little lanterns, the kind you take camping with you and hang up in your tent. Luggage was piled at their feet. He only recognised one of them, but he knew who the other was. It couldn’t, he realised, have been anyone else.
“Chief Superintendent,” he said.
Smith grinned. “Hello,” she said.
He looked at her. “I wish I could think of something cutting or wry to say to you, but I really think I’m all out of smart lines.”
“About fucking time,” Crispin muttered as he fiddled with a rucksack.
“The people who died on Muhu, they were working for you?”
Smith shook her head. “No. That wasn’t supposed to happen,” she said. “It was a mess. I’m sorry your friend died.”
“What happened?”
“We don’t know what happened,” Crispin said. “We don’t know who the other guys were or who they worked for or what they wanted. All we were doing was watching you and waiting for you to lead us to Sarkisian and his boys, we weren’t prepared for a fucking bloodbath. By the time the chaos died down, you were gone. So we had to go through that fucking pantomime in Warsaw to smoke you out.”
Rudi didn’t know what was more disturbing, discovering that Crispin wasn’t omnicompetent after all, or discovering that there was yet another unknown player out there.
“For what it’s worth, I figure it was the Chinese,” Crispin said. “Or maybe just some guys who wanted the money.”
“Don’t you want the money?”
Crispin pulled a face and shrugged. “We’ve managed without it all these years. You keep it. Or give it to charity. Yeah, give it to charity, make some cats and dogs happy.”
“It’s almost a billion dollars,” Rudi protested mildly.
Crispin snorted. “You’re such a fucking straight arrow,” he said. “Money’s not everything.”
“No, but you can buy everything with it.”
“That fiasco in Estonia wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for the money,” Crispin pointed out. “We knew your dad worked for the Community but we didn’t know he was mixed up with Sarkisian’s bunch until the old guy got in touch.”
“My father?”
“The other old guy. The rocker. He tried to sell us the bank codes to our own money, stupid bastard.”
Rudi sighed and turned to the other figure. “If you didn’t know my father was involved, why did you send me that photograph of the Sarkisians?”
Andrew Molson was tall and fair-haired and handsome in the lantern-light, in a raffish, disreputable sort of way. His handshake was firm. He said, “Nice to meet you finally.”
Rudi looked about him at Crispin’s little excursion. He looked at Molson, and words failed him. He shook his head.
“You mustn’t be too hard on yourself,” said Molson. “You weren’t to know.”
Rudi squinted against the light of the lantern in Molson’s hand. “Who do you work for, actually?”
“He works for me,” said Crispin, slinging the rucksack over his shoulder.
“No I don’t,” Molson said genially. “You work for me.” And Rudi had a dizzying moment when he felt that he was the fly looking at the intelligence which had made the clock.
“Ah, whatever,” Crispin said.
“We thought you might help us find the remaining members of the Collective, if we made it an interesting enough problem,” Molson told Rudi. “We didn’t anticipate that you’d be quite so... intimately involved.”
“Well thank Christ you’re fallible,” Rudi said. “Otherwise I’d be really angry about all this.”
“I’ve spent a long time trying to stop my people and your people destroying each other,” said Molson.
“Why?”
Molson looked a little surprised by the question. “The Presiding Authority really were going to use the flu virus to depopulate Europe and then come over the border and take over, but it got out before they were ready and your people managed to survive. They would have tried again, if you and I and our friend from the Campus and a lot of other people hadn’t stopped them.”
“What the hell did I have to do with that?”
“Everyone did their bit.”
“Who elected you President of the World?”
Molson chuckled. “It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it. I don’t put as much stock in our friend’s giant calculating machine as he does; I think there’s a chance to avert a war between my people and yours.”
Rudi tipped his head to one side.
“The Union gives everyone a breathing space, time to take stock,” said Molson. “What we’ve done,” he indicated the little group, “is give Europe and the Community an incentive to work together.”
“Or you’ll push the button again.”
“It’s not as easy as that. We’d rather not do it.”
Rudi looked around him. Seth and Crispin and Smith were chatting in low voices; the bodyguards and the driver were standing off to one side, attentive but professionally deaf in the way of henchmen down the ages.
“Who killed Mundt?”
Molson looked soberly at him. “We don’t actually know,” he said. “We certainly didn’t, and neither did the Community. We’re working on the assumption that it was the same people who tried to kill you in Estonia. The sniper’s mind is completely gone, erased by layers of psychosis; he doesn’t even know who he is, let alone who he was
working for. I got there too late to stop him.”
“But not too late to use him to send a message to me.”
Molson beamed happily. “Anyway, the Community have Mundt’s research, and much good may it do them; all they can do is open and close borders, and without the Collective’s work that’s all they’ll be able to do.”
Rudi sighed. “It’s still enough to destabilise things, being able to open border crossings any time they want.”
“Well, yes,” Molson said. “That’s why we sent his research to The Guardian.”
“Oh, you didn’t,” Rudi said, aghast. “Are you insane?”
“It’s not Mutually Assured Destruction if only one side has it,” Molson said innocently.
“Jesus Maria,” Rudi muttered. “Who are you?”
In the lamplight, Molson’s face took on a sly expression. “Would it help if I told you my name was really Stephen?” He looked at Rudi and grinned. “No? Ah well, maybe you’ll work it out eventually.”
“Are we done?” asked Crispin.
Rudi looked from one to the other. “I wish you people would stop fucking with my life,” he said.
“Hey, it wasn’t just us,” Crispin grumbled. “To be fair.” He looked around the little group. “Let’s go, yeah?
The bodyguards and the driver started to pick up bags and suitcases. Rudi looked about him and it suddenly occurred to him that he couldn’t see the lights of the houses any more, or hear the distant sound of traffic. He inhaled slowly through his nose, breathed out again. The air smelled of damp soil and foliage and nothing else. He looked up, but there was too much cloud cover to be able to see the stars. He wondered which constellations he would see, if he could.
Molson shouldered his rucksack and nodded to Smith, who gave Rudi a little wave and turned and walked away down the path. The guards and driver followed her.
Crispin held out a set of keys. “Here, have a car,” he said. “Or not. Get the Tube, I don’t care.” Rudi took the keys, and Crispin turned and strode after the others.
“He’s actually very charming when you get to know him,” Molson said.
“I’ve done all the getting to know him that I’m going to do,” Rudi told him, and Molson laughed. “You might mention to him that this borderless Utopia of his will still have a border with us,” Rudi added. “There are always borders.”
“And where there are borders there are always Coureurs. Yes, you make a fair point. And I believe one such scenario was war-gamed in Dresden. Your name came up quite a lot in those war-games, actually. He has quite a lot of respect for you.”
“He has a funny way of showing it.”
Molson smiled. “You’re still alive, no? Anyway, best get on. I’ll be seeing you.”
“You’ll have to find me.”
“That’s never been a problem.” Molson turned and followed the others, an agent who had apparently doubled himself so many times that he no longer had a country, finally going home. For a few seconds Rudi and Seth could see the light of his lantern through the overhanging branches and bushes, then it was gone.
“So,” Seth said. “What now?”
Rudi sighed. “I need a drink,” he said, and he turned and walked back towards Europe.
1.
AFTERWARD, THEY WENT over to Ka˙zimier˙z for the reading of the will. The notary’s office was up eight flights of stairs above a klezmer bar, and the sound of violins and dulcimers and clarinets drifted faintly up from below as the six of them, as per the deceased’s instructions, sat crammed into the poky little room.
The notary looked after the legal interests of half the restaurateurs around Florianska, and as such was the final repository of many secrets. She was a small grey woman in a dandruffy business suit, and she had the annoyed look of someone who cannot be surprised any more but still has to put up with people trying.
There was the familiar Polish ritual of signing and witnessing and stamping of documents – all of them on paper because that was how things were done. There was initialling and checking of identifications, in order to ensure that no interlopers had wandered in on the proceedings. Only when all this was accomplished to her satisfaction did the notary open the threadbare cardboard folder containing the will.
The reading took around forty minutes, during which time Rudi judged that the temperature in the office fell by roughly fifteen degrees. He carefully kept his eyes on the notary the whole time, but he could not fail to notice in his peripheral vision as heads were turned and harsh looks directed at him.
Returning to Florianska, they found that the street had been taken over by seemingly hundreds of dachshunds and their owners. Many of the dogs were in costume, and so were a lot of the people. Rudi experienced a surreal moment, until he realised it was the annual Jamnik Parade. Poles loved dachshunds, and the parade had been part of Kraków’s cultural calendar for almost a century. Rudi had forgotten all about it, but all of a sudden it seemed perfect for the general Kafkaesque tone of the day.
At the restaurant, Max’s cousin had brought in a team of outside caterers to provide the meal. Many of the other mourners were already gathered there, and Rudi could actually watch as word of the events at the notary’s office passed through the restaurant like a gust of wind through a field of barley.
He decided to concentrate on the food, arrayed on several pushed-together tables at one side of the room. There was barszcz – made up using powder from a sachet, he decided after tasting it. There were various quick and easy salads, cold meats, roasted chicken drumsticks, carp in jelly, sliced baguette going stale in baskets. Cocktail sausages. Rudi thought it was disrespectful. Max’s current chef was a preternaturally calm woman named Zuza; she and Rudi had exchanged a few words, professional courtesy in the manner of two gunslingers passing each other on the street of a Western town. She seemed more than capable of producing a funeral luncheon.
“She said she didn’t want any money spent,” she’d told him. “The widow. Cheap as possible, I was told.”
“This is a restaurant, for fuck’s sake,” he’d said. “He deserved better than a buffet.” All she could do was shrug. Poles had a saying that went something like, ‘Not my circus; not my monkeys.’
He leaned on his cane and looked around the restaurant. All of a sudden, it seemed smaller than he remembered, and it needed redecorating. It was crowded with people, all chatting quietly. Some of them were eating, some not, but all of them were drinking. Max’s cousin, deep in choleric conversation with several older men and women, seemed to have taken particular advantage of the bottles arrayed on tables around the room. Rudi saw more harsh looks turned in his direction, heads shaken sadly.
At some point, he became aware of a presence beside him. He looked and discovered that Dariusz, Wesoły Ptak’s liaison with the restaurateurs of the area, had contrived to materialise soundlessly at his elbow, smoking a cigarette and holding a glass of vodka.
They looked at each other for a while, then Dariusz said amiably, “There was some debate about whether you would turn up, you know.”
Wesoły Ptak ran the protection rackets in this part of Kraków, and Dariusz was their representative on Earth, although he also worked as a stringer for Les Coureurs des Bois. Rudi had always wondered whether that meant the Coureurs actually ran Wesoły Ptak, or if the little mafioso was just moonlighting. That was one small mystery he didn’t have to worry about any more. He wondered among whom the debate had taken place.
“I wanted to pay my respects,” he said.
“And claim your inheritance,” Dariusz added.
Rudi shook his head. “No,” he allowed. “No, that was a surprise.”
Dariusz looked him up and down. “You seem well.”
And that statement could be parsed in any number of ways. But it seemed honestly meant, so Rudi decided to be charitable. “Thank you,” he said.
Dariusz lowered his voice a fraction. “My masters would like a word,” he said.
My masters. Rudi shook his
head. Central was a self-fulfilling prophecy, the creation and sum of its citizens. From that perspective, Wesoły Ptak was almost certainly being run as an operation by one or more Coureurs for the purpose of raising funds for other, more unfathomable, operations. And so on, like a Matrioshka doll or the Mandelbrot Set, infinitely recursive. He’d done something similar himself, in the past. If Les Coureurs were a nation, as Kaunas had said, they were a nation like Europe. Splintered, Balkanised. I am a nation, he thought, and he found it simultaneously scary and empowering.
He wondered what Wesoły Ptak’s Coureur creators were up to, and how much trouble he had caused them down the years. He wondered what would happen if he made contact with them. He wondered whether he even wanted to. He said, “I’m done with them.”
“But they’re not done with you.” There was no sense of threat in the statement. Just two old colleagues meeting again after a separation of... how many years had it been?
“How long is it since we last saw each other?” Rudi asked.
Dariusz thought about it. “Fifteen years?” he asked. “Twenty?” He, himself, seemed not to have aged a single day, a testament to the preservative properties of the life of organised crime.
“Surely not twenty.”
Dariusz shrugged. “So much has happened in the interim. The world has changed beyond recognition. Perhaps it just seems like a long time.”
“A lot has certainly happened,” Rudi said. “In the interim.” He looked around the room again. From the other side, Seth caught his eye. He shook his head fractionally and Seth went back to letting a plump babcia Rudi vaguely recognised practice her English on him. Gwen, standing beside him, waved hello; Rudi waved back.
“I’m to tell you that it’s over,” Dariusz said, lowering his voice further so that Rudi found it hard to hear him.
“How can this be over?” Rudi asked. “It’s not a football match. People have died.”
“It’s certainly not a football match,” said Dariusz. “There are no winners and losers, only survivors. You appear to have survived. Congratulations.”
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