by Chris Ward
He didn’t head back to his apartment. When he left this morning Cah had been awake, flipping through magazines in their living room, seemingly normal. That little box had sat on the table in front of her like a cancer searching for a body, and Lindon had left before his rage grew too strong.
Instead he headed across the city to Mile End. A short distance from the tube station he found Spacewell leaning against the railings of the green bridge, weeds kicking up around his feet, staring out at the blunt nub of Parliament Tower in the distance.
Spacewell nodded a greeting and held out a sandwich wrapped in government issued packaging. Lindon had already eaten something before meeting Frank, but couldn’t pass up the offer of tuna and parmesan, tastes so illicit few outside the government got to experience them.
‘Greetings to a fellow dog walker,’ Spacewell said. ‘Albeit one who’s forgotten his dog.’
Lindon leaned against the railings a short distance away. The bridge, linking the overgrown waste ground that had once been Mile End Park, rose over a road that had once seen busy traffic. Now it was silent except for a government bus in the distance, slowly chugging its way between heaps of abandoned cars, black smoke belching out of its exhaust.
‘Best thing they ever did was use up all the oil,’ Spacewell said. ‘Gotta love the fresh air out here, haven’t you?’
Spacewell, for all his eccentricities, wasn’t joking. To the west, London’s air was choked with belching factories, pumping the remains of whatever recycled fuel they were using up into the atmosphere in great towering plumes, but here to the east, in the surrounds of Parliament Tower, the Governor preferred a better quality of life. Just out of sight through the buildings was the Parliament Tower perimeter wall, a mile-long structure surrounding the building that, according to rumours, contained beautiful landscaped gardens, with several hundred horticultural staff employed to keep it pristine. In there somewhere too, were many of the animals that had formerly occupied the now closed London Zoo.
Spacewell, despite working in the government’s main research facility, couldn’t confirm or deny its existence, but the cleanliness of the air told its own story, and if you got close enough you could hear the cries of animals that certainly weren’t found roaming the streets.
‘Why did you need me to meet you?’ Lindon said. ‘You know I hate using the radio. Damn thing could be plugged straight into the DCA’s headphones.’
Spacewell nodded slowly, a smile on his face. He was playing a game, Lindon knew, just in case someone was watching.
‘It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it? I need you to make someone disappear. I need you to find a train to take them underground, out of sight of the Siamese Queen.’
The last two words, picked out of Spacewell’s lazy code to confuse anyone who might be listening, made Lindon’s cheeks flush. Dreggo.
‘And what happens then?’
‘Information. You want it, I got it.’
‘Are we in danger, Rick?’
Spacewell, the grin never leaving his face, nodded. ‘There’s always danger, my man. Danger is like an arrow. The question is only who is the next target.’
Lindon nodded. He tossed the plastic sandwich wrapper to the ground, and the breeze began to take it away, rolling it end over end until it snagged on the thorns of a bramble feeding in and out of the bridge’s safety railings.
‘Well, thanks for the sandwich, Rick.’
‘Pleasure.’
Lindon strolled away across the bridge, not looking back. He risked a glance up at Parliament Tower, wondering if the Governor was watching. Spacewell, for all his blasé smiles and dumbly veiled messages, had felt this situation urgent enough to call Lindon out here.
An hour later, he got off the tube at Charing Cross and walked south into Westminster, taking the secret way into the former Houses of Parliament.
In the wide chambers now bricked off into family-sized cubicles, his eyes scanned over the people living here, hundreds of them, all in some way connected to each other either by blood, business association, or old friendships. To the rest of London the Tank was a hive of criminals that needed to be stamped out, but the people on the inside knew it was the safest place in the city.
Lindon had a ticket to move in at any time, a private apartment cubicle waiting for him on the upper floor. With him he was allowed to bring anyone he vouched for, which would include both Cah and Spacewell. For his own reasons though, he chose to keep his distance, preferring to live outside the unofficial Tank limits, which roughly followed the old Borough of Westminster.
Down in the old ministry office chambers he found Tim Cold, sitting at a computer, surrounded by mounds of paper.
Tim raised an eyebrow. ‘Looks like you walked into a door again.’
Lindon smiled. ‘It was a big door.’
‘What can I help you with?’
‘I need a safe house,’ Lindon said.
‘Safer than here?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Spacewell. He has someone on the inside he needs to get out.’
Tim Cold nodded. ‘It’s a government worker?’
‘I believe so.’
Tim’s hard eyes watched him. ‘For anyone other than Spacewell I’d refuse. This could be interesting. I’ll have someone come for you in an hour. Wait outside.’
Lindon went out, taking a seat in a waiting room. He leaned his head back against the wall, listening to the distant rumble of sound that permeated the walls of the old palace. The Tank never slept. By day many inhabitants had regular jobs—often under secretive identities—while by night there were often parties, the sharing of any loot that was recovered, concerts by bands playing banned music, screenings of illegal movies, theatre performances. Everything the Governor had tried to take away still lived and breathed within these ancient walls.
The Tank was precious. It had to be protected.
The commotion seemed to be getting louder. Lindon lifted his head, frowning. It sounded like a mob was approaching. He stood up and walked out into the corridor just as Tim’s office door opened and the leader of the Tank stepped out, a frown on his face.
A woman was walking down the wide, ornate corridor towards them, clutching something wooden across her chest, a pair of knives in her hands. Straight dark hair framed a face that would have been prettier had her eyes not been bloodshot and her cheeks stained with tears.
The crowd of men woman and children were following her like a god had appeared on Earth, leaving a reverential space around her like a magnetic field as they spoke in hushed voices.
Lindon came to stand beside Tim Cold as the woman stopped in front of them. She looked up, meeting their eyes one by one. She opened her arms and the object she was holding crashed to the floor, a wooden board with handles and rubber straps on one side and metal hooks on the other.
‘A Huntsman took my baby,’ she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. ‘I want your help to get him back.’
25
Crossing
Airie stood on the hilltop, watching the sun appear through the haze to the east. As the sound of church bells rang out from somewhere nearby, she could almost imagine it was a normal day.
She felt a little embarrassed feeling jealous of a girl she had never seen, especially after what they had found. Yet this Raine person, whoever she was, had David twisted in knots. He was further down the slope, pacing back and forth, his clawboard tucked under his arm. Even in his misery he still looked perfect, and through the glare of mistakes and blame that he had chosen to shoulder she could still see the good in him, the desire to do something that would make a difference.
What was it like to feel that way? He had walked out of that crowd with the intention of giving himself up to the woman on the stage, offering to put his neck in the noose in place of those two boys. Despite the subsequent breakdown he had suffered, that was something Airie admired.
He would make a good boyfriend. Sure, he was a little ol
d for her, but he was younger than many of the men her brother had brought home.
And he was worried to the point of incoherence about some girl called Raine.
She had to be an ex-girlfriend. You just didn’t care that much about casual friends, not in London. There was no point when it was so easy to go London-gone.
The guy they had found had been ripped to pieces by something. David said it had to be a Huntsman, but there was no way that burned up woman bitch could do something like that.
There were other signs of a scuffle, but no other bodies. It was the baby’s room that made Airie most distraught. That pretty little cot lying over on its side, the baby clothes strewn across the floor as if a sudden wind had come whistling through.
Where was the baby now?
They hadn’t slept all night. They had caught the last tube out to the end of the line and found a high place from where to watch for pursuit.
Where did they go from here?
A mile to the north rose the perimeter wall, dark and imposing, those few houses beneath it not cleared in order to make a killing ground forever in shadow. It stretched away to the east and west, becoming gradually smaller until it was just a pencil line occasionally appearing between apartment blocks.
Whatever had killed Taku, that other man, and caused Raine and her baby to disappear, it was hunting them. The way Airie saw it, they had two choices. They could run or they could fight.
She had never been much of a traveller.
David was walking back up the slope towards her. He lifted a hand in greeting almost in relief that she was still here. The worry was apparent on his face, and Airie felt a sudden pang of sadness. He was looking failure right between the eyes.
‘Two things,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘We can’t find Raine unless we can get on the inside. If she’s taken her baby and run, we have to trust that she can stay ahead of them for now. If she’s been captured, we need to rescue her before she ends up on the stage at some rally.’
‘David, how do you plan to do that? We couldn’t even get to her on time. How can we rescue her if the government has her? She’s gone. She’s London-gone.’
‘We have to find a way, but first we have to break our scent trail.’
‘What?’
‘Huntsmen—and that woman thing we saw, I’d guess—track by scent. I’m guessing by how easily they found Taku and Raine that they can follow a trail that’s weeks old. They could be following us now, and unless we break the trail they’ll continue following us.’
‘How? If you think I’m covering myself in pig’s blood or something—’
‘Water.’
At the bottom of the hill, a small river gurgled down through concrete blocks designed to look artistic. It flowed into a pool where people had once swum, but was now filled with trash and a scum layer of broken up plastic and mulched cardboard boxes.
‘We wade through that cesspit and we’ll break the trail?’
David shook his head. ‘No, we need real water.’
‘There’s only….’
David nodded. ‘The Thames.’
They rode the tubes southwest across London as far as Chiswick Park. From there they walked south into Kew.
‘We might be safe if we stick to busy stations,’ David said, ‘but that will only diffuse our trail. If the Huntsmen are as good at tracking as I’ve heard they are, they’ll be able to pick our scents out of a crowd. If we ride the Underground back and forth long enough it’ll confuse them but it won’t break the trail. Only water can do that.’
They walked through an overgrown park, past a burnt-out ruin of what had once been a luxury block of flats. The road led up to an old stone bridge spanning the river, but David headed left, along a promenade. Airie looked down at the water, which didn’t appear to be flowing at all.
‘David, it’s just mud.’
‘They must have dammed it further up, perhaps by the perimeter walls. Or maybe rerouted it. The tidal flow doesn’t reach up this far.’
‘What do we do? Go further down?’
David shook his head. He climbed over a stone wall and down a grassy bank to the edge of the river, Airie following behind. ‘Here will do. There’s some flow in the middle. We just have to wade through the mud then drift for a while.’ He handed her some plastic bags. ‘Put everything you can in there. Take off your clothes.’
‘It’s broad daylight! Are you fucking crazy?’
‘Just do it.’
She glared at him a moment longer, then began to strip down, stuffing her clothes into the bag. When she got to her underwear she paused, then figured if she was going to do it, she might as well do everything. She strapped her belt of knives back around her waist and held the clawboard across her chest to hide her modesty.
David was standing naked in front of her, lean and toned. With his flowing hair he looked like a Greek god. Then he stepped into the mud and grimaced. Airie couldn’t help but laugh.
‘This is stupid.’
David was already waist deep in the sludge. ‘Come on, hurry up.’
Using the wooden clawboard to stop the heavy knives from sinking her, with her bag of clothing balanced on top, Airie waded out through the sticky, chilly mud to the centre of the river. A thin channel in the middle was still flowing with freezing water, and Airie’s teeth began to chatter as she followed David, kicking out her legs, the clawboard giving her buoyancy.
As they passed beneath the bridge the flow of the water began to increase. David reached out for her hand and pulled her close, his body just warm enough to ward off the water’s chill. If she hadn’t been close to freezing to death it might have been almost romantic as they drifted past half sunk, rotting pleasure boats and weeping willows clogged with litter and the odd rusting car.
‘How far are we going to go?’ Airie asked, careful not to let any of the brown, putrid river water get into her mouth.
David frowned, looking around them. ‘A little further … okay, there.’
He couldn’t point without letting go of his things, but he began to kick towards the shore, to where a rushing drain culvert was emptying into the river, creating a pool of swirling water in the muck.
‘We climb up there, follow it back as far as we can go.’
Airie began to climb out of the water, but David shook his head. ‘Cover yourself in mud first. We can wash it off further up.’
The cold mud was grimy but more soothing than she had expected, so she nodded and began to smear it all over her body. Then she climbed into the stone pipe that angled slightly upwards as it went underground, passing under a road that ran alongside the river.
On the other side it connected with a stone channel tributary discharging rainwater into the river. David said it was time to clean themselves, so she washed off the mud as best she could, then used a corner of her cloak to dry herself.
Dressed again, she was still shivering from the cold, but could feel a rising heat inside her. David’s hair was slicked to the side of his face, making him look more gaunt than usual.
‘That was an enjoyable morning fucking swim,’ she said, trying not to let her teeth chatter. ‘Any chance we can get some breakfast?’
David nodded. ‘Soon. We have to find ourselves a train again first.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘That was part one of our plan hopefully completed. If nothing else it’ll buy us some time. Now we have to do part two.’ He smiled. ‘We’re going to see an old friend.’
26
Secrets
The guy with the beat up face looked ready to pull a knife across her throat, but the older man with the grey hair lifted a hand to ward him off.
‘Lindon, let me talk to you a moment.’
The grey-haired man took Lindon the tough guy into a room off the corridor. Raine waited, her knives held out in front of her, with the crowd of onlookers right at her back. If they came for her, she would go down with blood on her hands, but
they looked terrified, as if she possessed a power that only strangers could see.
Then she realised. It wasn’t her at all. It was the board. She reached down and picked it up again, wrapping her right arm through the straps, ready to use it as a shield like an ancient Celtic warrior. The eyes followed her, gasps of excitement coming at the sight of the shining metal hooks.
‘Girl?’
She turned to see the man with the grey hair had reappeared and was beckoning to her. The man called Lindon stood at his shoulder, his face no less angry but pacified for now. The grey-haired man was the key, she realised. Lindon was his dog.
‘Come this way. You have ten minutes to make your case before you’re thrown either to the street or to the wolves.’ He smiled, as if making a joke. ‘Hurry now.’
He led her into an ornate study. A man with a thick red beard was sleeping on an Ottoman in the corner, surrounded by piles of old books that had fallen from the shelves. Raine blinked. She had never seen so many books in one place before. While not strictly banned, the government had done a good job of burning those they deemed unnecessary, and the printing of new copies was forbidden.
The grey-haired man pointed at the clawboard. ‘You’re in no danger inside this room,’ he said. ‘I must offer my congratulations. Your little toy managed to infiltrate into the beating heart of the Tank. Quite something for a piece of old wood. You use that to hang from the side of trains, is that it?’
Raine nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Tube Rider,’ Lindon growled. ‘We should hand her over to the government.’
‘Not so hasty. Girl, my name is Tim Cold. I lead here. This is Lindon, and behind us is Rusty Pete. Welcome to the Tank.’