‘Tigerman is a joke. Here today, gone tomorrow. A madman in a funny hat.’
‘Not so. Tigerman is everyone. He fights crime! He walks through fire and saves the innocent. He burns up drugs. He stops riots.’
‘Your riots.’ Dog-killing, because it would upset the English in particular, and the BBC would have to cover it. And because Sandrine hated dogs, he realised, remembering the cobblestone and the mongrel. She was afraid of them, the way some people are afraid of spiders. Everything serves twice. Three times. Nothing is one thing. Everything is the story.
‘Not mine. Mancreu’s. You cannot make riots. Only make the possibility. You cannot control them. Real riots, real fire.’ The boy stretched out his hand for a moment. ‘Real Tigerman.’ He left the hand there for a moment as if he hoped the Sergeant would take it, but it did not come within reach. Then he straightened and drew his hand back. ‘And tonight he will expose the Fleet. He will show the world. Live on TV! We interrupt this programme! It will be known: this is what is done here, under the cloak of law! Made possible by the nice countries, in the name of the good people. This place is a convenience for killers and torturers and tax evaders and drug bankers, for scum of the earth. But Tigerman will not stand for it! He will not back down! Because he knows what is right.’
‘They’d blow my fucking head off!’
The boy nodded. ‘Yes. They would. Lester Ferris, the hero of Beauville many times over, killed by his own side for being a good man. Close-up pictures. Scandal! He gave his life for a cause, for a people who had made him their own. You see? That is a story! And there is continuity. There is shape. First the cave, then the footrace, now this. And then I would say you gave me something for if this happened, and I would read Inoue’s report. “Mancreu need not burn.” Tigerman’s last will and testament. “This mess was made to order. It is a lie from the beginning. The island need not burn, but if it might burn then it is an un-place and all the dirty deeds can be at home here.” Two weeks ago, no one would care. Today, from Tigerman? It is the greatest show on Earth! Now tell me they would carry on! Tell me they would dare, after Tunisia and Egypt and Libya, after Khaled Saeed and Mohamed Bouazizi! No. No. People would march around the world. Tigerman for ever! For Mancreu! They would. It is a great story. Everyone wants to touch that kind of story.’ He punched the air, then slumped. ‘Already there are shirts. Shirts, and a band in Kentucky. By tomorrow there will be dolls. In six months, a movie. And it would have been an Oscar winner, too.
‘I was going to buy my island with your death, you see. But now, not.’
The Sergeant dragged air into his lungs. He felt as if he was carrying the whole island on his chest. ‘Why not?’
The boy threw his hands in the air. ‘Because White Raoul tricked me! And then he tricked you! He is a wicked, deceitful old man who thinks he is wise, and now words have been spoken and it is impossible to unhear them!’ And then his voice caught, with emotion or puberty or a little of both, the Sergeant could not be sure. ‘Why couldn’t you come before?’
‘I’m here now.’
‘Too late.’
‘It doesn’t have to be.’
The boy nodded as if this was a perfect statement of despair. ‘I am a leaf on the wind,’ he intoned.
The Sergeant had no idea what this meant. He said so.
The boy looked at him as if he were a barbarian or an idiot. ‘Stay here. I will show you.’ He walked to the door through which the Sergeant had come in, and closed it behind him.
A few moments later the Sergeant realised he had locked it and taken the car.
His first reaction was a sort of weary resignation. He was, genuinely, not cut out to be a costumed hero. This proved it. You’d never see the pros in this situation. Batman would never have managed to get himself locked into a dilapidated hotel lobby while someone nicked his car, any more than Superman ever woke up and found that Lois Lane had sold naked pictures of his body to the tabloids. Not even the Blue Beetle had ever had to deal with that sort of crap. But here he was, and the person who had created him, the evil boy genius who was both his herodaddy and his nemesis, had turned the key and left him standing by a plastic fern like a pillock.
It occurred to him that he was upset about this because for as long as he concentrated on it his heart would not actually break into a thousand pieces and kill him.
And then it occurred to him to wonder where the boy was going with his vehicle. Away, obviously, although there was nowhere which was away enough for a moment like this, for discovery and revelation and the end of a friendship.
Some part of him objected that they had never truly been friends, they had been something else, and the distinction was important. But leave that aside for now, the car was worrying at him, and the locked door. Away, yes, was a fine place to go when you were in pain, but where away? The boy was escaping in possession of a car full of explosives and equipment. Well, so. A child driving a load of military gear was no more likely to crash than a child driving anything else.
Not friends. Something else.
And the boy was not fleeing with the nearest vehicle to hand. He was answering a question. The plan, after all, was still a good one. It lacked only a sacrifice, a lynchpin. Would ‘child-criminal emperor slain by Fleet’ clinch the deal? It would certainly create a story, hours and hours of coverage, endless debate. Dead children always lead, always require soul-searching by organisations which on most days cannot locate their soul, let alone interrogate it. But someone would still need to deliver the coup, to accuse and to interpret.
Say, a heroic non-commissioned officer, recently seen in action helping fleeing refugees. And if that NCO also happened to reveal that he was the mystery man who had quelled a riot, who fought crime on those outlaw streets . . .
He stared in horror at the nearest table, at the papers spread out upon it like a map drawn for an idiot. Stages of a media campaign. And documents, too, showing his adoption of the boy, needing only his signature.
Not friends. We were never friends.
And now he thought about it: of course not. ‘Friends’ with your kids was a modern invention, the stuff of daytime talk shows and quality time, of that craven insistence that children make their own decisions while you lurked in the shadows to penalise the ones you didn’t like. It was all so much nonsense. ‘Friends’ did not mean what it meant between adults, a balance of selves and strengths. It meant setting standards your children could not maintain, because if they could you wouldn’t need to set standards for them. It meant child-rearing by remote and by phone. It was an abdication, for parents who never wanted to admit they were grown-ups, who dressed from shops which were too young for them and listened to the new music to stay in the swim.
To do the job right was something else, older and different and patient and endlessly enduring, something which got stronger the more it was clawed and scratched, which bounded and uplifted and waited delightedly to be surpassed. Which knew and understood and did not shy away from the understanding that there would be pain. Which could accept shattering, could reassemble itself, could stand taller than before.
No, not friends at all.
He laughed, and knew exactly what to say.
Jack.
I am your father.
He used the sharkpunch on the door, and stepped through.
21. Win
WHEN THIS WAS over, Lester Ferris promised himself, he would never run anywhere, ever again. He would walk. For the bus, for exercise, for fun. In battle, even, if it should ever come up. He would just walk. He would never gasp, never burn like this again, with the heavy suit weighing on his shoulders and the mask’s tongue flopping back and forth across his chest. Never again.
He had considered calling for help, but there was no one he could really explain the situation to, not with the Tigerman outfit on, and no one he trusted anyway. A child with a consignment of ordnance was a present threat, and would be treated as such. They would take him down from a distance and worr
y about the blowback later. The apparat had a long experience of blurring the deaths of children. Male insurgent, not yet a full adult, killed in action. And that was that.
So he had no one to call, and he ran: out of the utility door and down the hill, through the shanty and down to the waterfront. Some of the houses were burned, some of them were pristine, and some had scaffolding up as if the people intended to rebuild them, as if the island was not in its last hours. He reached the water without seeing anyone: the streets were empty. The rain was coming down hard now, and there was nothing for the press pack to look at. The Fleet was just a distant collection of lights, even if they’d been disposed to look at it, and nothing was happening outdoors. He was just a man running.
He reached the Portmaster’s office, and went in, water streaming from his clothes.
Beneseffe sat in front of his communications gear, listening and talking, his voice very tense. The storm was rising and it had come in fast, the ships were out of place. Was he working them? Had the boy reached out to him? Or was he doing his best?
‘I need a boat,’ the Sergeant said, and saw Beneseffe jump. ‘Give me a boat. Now.’ He wondered whether it would speed things up if he shouted or did something violent, broke something.
‘You’re here,’ the Portmaster said.
‘Yes.’
‘He said you would not come.’
‘He was mistaken.’
In ten seconds, the Sergeant was going to tear him apart. He wondered if he could afford to wait that long. What if he was three seconds too late? Would he come back and kill the man? Wring his neck, and tell himself that was somehow absolution? ‘It wasn’t my fault, guv’nor, he kept me hanging on.’
The Portmaster handed him a set of keys. ‘Red button, green button. Then it drives like a car.’ And then, with something like shame: ‘Do what you can.’
Lester Ferris ran through the back door of the office and onto the dock, went out onto the black water.
The speedboat was light and strong, but the waves were higher than he had realised and it was terrifying. Twice the boat nearly flipped over before he learned how to make ground through the troughs and peaks, when to change direction and when to slow or accelerate. Even so, he was pounded with spray, and salt built up on the eyeholes of the mask so that he had to keep wiping it. Without it, he thought, he would have been blind. His clothes were sodden and heavy. They wrapped around things and billowed in the wind, trying to take him overboard. If he did go over, he would die. He was simply wearing too much that was heavy and would drag him down.
He could see the Fleet about half the time, had no idea how the boy might be doing or where he might be, but Jack was experienced on this water, knew the shape of the land and the shallows, knew the ships of the Fleet and might even seek shelter aboard one if he needed it. That might even be his plan for boarding: simply ask and be admitted, as a gesture of friendship. Sailors held to their obligations, even secret ones.
Jack. He tried the name in his head, didn’t like it. Too much came with it. The boy was the boy, and that was that, and if he needed another title then it should be ‘son’.
Son.
A wave took him in the chest, warm water slamming him, wind chilling him instantly until he shivered. His hands were clenched on the wheel of the boat; releasing them was harder each time, and so was closing them. He was already exhausted.
Then he was between the ships, in the lee of a pitted metal cliff which must be the Pride of Shanghai, watching it roll over towards him until it was actually sheltering the speedboat from the rain. The ship was sucking water in along its sides, huge stabilisers churning, and he spun away, leaned on the throttle. The boat almost couldn’t cope, chugged and sputtered as water washed into the exhaust, blasted back out again.
In his mind there was a map of the Fleet, but it was out of date now and nearly useless. He remembered how it had been. He had intended to sit down with Beneseffe – or with someone – and work out an understanding of where the ships should be in relation to one another, how to reach the Elaine in the chaos. Now he was staring into the murk as the water got rougher. He had to get on board something soon, anything, or he would simply vanish below the surface, a stupid footnote, and the boy’s plan would come to nothing. Or, not nothing. Because surely he had taken out insurance against the possibility the Sergeant would not play ball. White Raoul, no doubt, knew it all. Perhaps he had even been Bad Jack himself once. Perhaps that was how it had come about, how it had begun.
The sky howled, a first great blast of thunder. Thunder on the water was different: unmitigated by hills and trees it was a stunning hand of pressure closing in a fist around him. Even over the storm he heard the Pride of Shanghai reverberate.
And the sea answered, in a great whooshing column of white fire. Thermite or phosphorus or maybe both, and all he could think was that it looked as if God was coming up out of the ocean to deliver some kind of appalling justice and: That’s a fuck’s sight better than custard powder.
The Fleet seemed to think so too, because abruptly the night was a blazing webwork of searchlights and incomprehensible demands blared from massive speakers. Circles of white picked out the boiling muddle where one of the Brighton House inflat-ables had been, combustion still going as the incendiary it contained fell down into the depths, then off towards other ships: Was it you, was it you? Did you do this? Why? What does it achieve? What do you know that I do not? What is your operation, your gain?
The Sergeant knew to look away, and, squinting into the penumbra at the very edge of his vision, off towards a black hulk which ran even in this catastrophe with barely any lights, he saw a speck which might have been a half-brilliant, half-mad teenager trying to save his mother.
The second bomb went off a moment later, over on the other side of the Fleet, and something bad must have happened because a ship started sounding its horn over and over, like a donkey screaming in a marsh. Dear God, he must have holed it. He can’t have done. There wasn’t enough stuff.
But perhaps there had been more from another source. No doubt Jack could lay his hands on the necessaries. And close on the heels of that: He can’t have meant to. In this weather, people would die. Rescue would be all but impossible and the captain would be under orders not to beach the vessel, not to expose the secrets it contained.
That was a score in itself, to drag the Fleet out from behind the curtain. And they were on stage now, for sure: the white pillars of flame would see to that. Kathy Hasp and her friends would be staring out of their hotel windows and calling their network bosses, letting them know that the Mancreu theatre was good for another impossible scene before it finally gave up. The plan was working and the story was alive. All it lacked was the big finish.
The night went bright again and the Sergeant was in the middle of a searchlight beam and someone was shouting. He couldn’t see but he recognised the tone, the demand for surrender. Yes, you prick, I came out here in this weather just to turn myself in to a bunch of confused wankers in the spook trade. He gunned the engine and lurched away. If they fired at him, they missed, and they couldn’t keep the beam on him in the swell.
He vanished, following the boy.
Elaine was a shadow against a background of night. Picked out occasionally by the desperate lights of the main Fleet, it skulked at the edge of the safe channel. Lester Ferris wondered whether that was for operational reasons, or whether whoever chose the station had been secretly ashamed that Britain, diminished now and unreconciled to the fact, should participate for power’s sake in the slow slaughter of a place it had claimed and cherished in its high imperial day. He wondered if it had been Africa herself, or if she had simply been handed the mess and told not to interfere; if Elaine looked the same in her office as it did tonight, a dark ghost rolling on dark water, Brighton House’s own bitter twin.
The crewmen were lowering a ladder. Whatever tactic the boy had used to gull them was working. It was a telescoping metal ladder with a motor, buil
t into the structure of the ship so that it wouldn’t easily tear away. The upper reaches had a cage around them, a wide tunnel of metal, but the boy hadn’t got to that part yet and the sea was throwing the inflatable all over the place. It could end here, the Sergeant realised, and the boy must know that, must know this was an insane way to carry on.
The boy lunged, knapsack on his back, and the inflatable yawed away. He got both hands on the ladder, but his feet were still on the little dinghy and it was unguided so he might as well be hanging by his arms, and then he was, shoes trailing in the water, but he hauled himself up and went on, fast, as if this was nothing, as if it was just what he did. The Sergeant grinned as a sort of mad pride bloomed in him. The boy was doing a great thing. It was terrible and it was all kinds of wrong-headed and dangerous, but he was making it work. He was near as dammit leading the world around by the nose, and he was a genius and an action hero and everything he wanted to be. If it wasn’t going to cost him his life the Sergeant would be inclined to let him get on with it, but you had to draw a line in bringing up a young person, and this was definitely on the far side of it.
Then the small figure reached the deck and was hauled aboard. How long before he started doing whatever he proposed to do to create a death for himself that would resonate? And for that matter, how would he transmit it? In the end perhaps he didn’t need to, he could just incriminate the Fleet and let those left behind do the talking. Perhaps it could work if he just went off somewhere, to France, say, or Thailand, and bought a house. The Fleet vanished bodies all the time. But no: the full impact, the vileness, required a body. Or better, live footage. There would be a plan for that, too. If the Sergeant had been quick enough, he might have tackled this from that end, stopped the signal on shore and used that to leverage retreat. A parental stand-off.
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