by Mick Herron
Griff Yates burst in, panting. His face was still streaked with blood, but in his hand he had a phone. “I borrowed this.”
River grabbed it, his thumb pressing numbers before his brain could process them. “Catherine? It’s not a bomb.”
For a moment, she didn’t reply.
“Catherine? I said—”
“So what is it, then?”
“Did you sound an alert?”
“River … You called a Code September.”
“That’s not even a—”
“I know what it’s not. But I know what it means. So I told the Park. What’s going on, River?”
“What did the Park do?”
“Put the City on terror alert. Imminent danger.”
“Oh Jesus!”
“High buildings are being evacuated, especially the Needle, because of the Russian thing. River, talk to me.”
“There’s no bomb. The plane’s not … It’s not a terror attack.” He looked at the papers in his hand. They were reproductions of the same image: a stylised city landscape, its tallest skyscraper struck by jagged lightning. Along the foot of each page ran the words STOP THE CITY. “They’re leafleting the demo.”
“They’re bloody what?”
“Leaflets, Catherine. They’re dropping leaflets on the rally. But somebody, somebody wanted us to think there was a bomb. The terror alert, that’s the whole point. The evacuation.”
“The Needle,” she said.
Louisa had no signal. Nor did Marcus. The microphone-shaped device on the table was gone; taken by Pashkin and Piotr, but still nearby, and blocking their phones.
She checked Webb. The bullet had hit him in the chest, but he was alive, for now. Shallow breaths bubbled out of him, and whistled back in. She did what she could, which wasn’t much, then turned to Marcus, who was standing over Kyril.
“You put that there yesterday?”
The gun, she meant. But how else could it have got there? Taped to the table’s underside.
“Fixing the odds,” Marcus said. “I don’t wander into situations blind. Not with hostiles.”
Kyril was conscious and moaning; a dull counterpoint to the alarm’s shrill wail. Louisa put her hand on his wounded leg. “This hurt?”
He swore in Russian.
“Yeah yeah. You don’t speak English. This hurt?” She pressed harder.
“Jesus bitch you fuck!”
“That’ll be a yes. What’s going on?”
Marcus left her for the kitchen.
“They’ve left you behind. You think they’re coming back?”
“Bastards,” he said. He might have been talking about his absent comrades.
“Where’ve they gone?”
“Downstairs …”
From the kitchen, she heard breaking glass. Marcus reappeared with the fireaxe in his hand.
Louisa turned back to Kyril. “Downstairs,” she said, and understanding dawned. “Rumble? Their new iPhone? That’s what this is about? You’re stealing a fucking prototype?”
Marcus swung the axe, and the doors shuddered.
She put her hand on the fallen man’s wound once more. “Before he gets through that,” she said, “you’re going to tell me why Min died.”
Outside was warm spring air and a drift of pollen. The irritated officer had heard enough to know that whatever was happening was bigger than a trespass on MoD land, and was currently on his phone, establishing the level of national alert. Griff Yates was washing his face somewhere. And nearby, at forlorn attention by the jeep, stood one of the two soldiers they’d had their altercation with.
River showed his Service card again. “I need to be somewhere.”
“Yeah, right.”
“And you’ll need a friend once this morning’s done,” River added, thinking So will I. “Get me back to the village in the next two minutes, and you’ll have one.”
“You’re James Bond, are you?”
“We use the same gym.”
“Huh …”
A bird of prey wheeled overhead, loudly mewing.
“What the hell. Get in. Quick.”
River used the two-minute journey to speak to Catherine again. “Have they called the Harriers off?”
“I don’t know, River.” There was an unaccustomed tremor to her voice. “I’ve called the Park, but—are you anywhere near a TV?”
“Not exactly.”
“All hell’s breaking loose in the City. Half the world’s trying to get out, and the rally’s trying to get in—Jesus, River … That was us.”
Me, he thought.
He said, “And they told me I’d never top King’s Cross,” but a tight knot of dread had formed in his stomach.
“And you’re sure now, are you? The plane’s not heading for the Needle?”
“We’ve been played, Catherine. Me, Lamb, everyone. You don’t need to send a plane into a building to cause chaos. You just have to make us think it’s going to happen.”
“There’s more to it. That Russian, Pashkin? He’s not real.”
“So who?”
“Don’t know yet. Louisa’s phone’s dead. So’s Marcus’s. But Ho’s on his way there now. With Shirley.”
“It’s all part of the same thing,” said River. “Must be. Don’t let them shoot that plane down. Catherine. The pilot’s been played, just like us.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
River slapped the jeep’s roof in frustration. “Here,” he said. “Here.”
Church end, Yates had said. That’s where Tommy Moult had been. The church end of the high street.
The jeep crunched to a halt by St John of the Cross’s lychgate, and River left it at a run.
As Marcus swung the axe a crunch shook the floor, and Louisa shrieked—“Jesus, was that you?”
He paused, the axe inch-deep in the door. “Plastic,” he said, and pulled the axehead free.
Plastic. She looked at Kyril. “That’s the plan? The building goes into terror-mode, and you bust into Rumble with plastic explosives?”
“Millions,” he said, through gritted teeth.
“It’d have to be. No one goes to this effort for petty cash.”
Another dull crunch from below. They were blowing open doors down there, and it wouldn’t take them long. Then all they’d have to do was head for ground level and slip away with the crowds. No one would check off their exit, because no one had signed them in. There’d be a car waiting, and one less to share the proceeds with.
Thwack! went the axe, and splinters flew.
She kicked Kyril. “Min saw him, didn’t he?”
The Russian groaned. “My leg. I need doctor.”
“Min saw Pashkin, or whoever he really is. When he was supposed to be in Moscow being a fucking oil baron. Except he wasn’t, he was in a dosshouse on the Edgware Road, because the Ambassador’s a little pricey when you don’t need to be there, isn’t it? When you’re not really a fucking oil baron, just a fucking thief. And that’s why Min died.”
“Didn’t mean it to happen. We were having a drink, that’s all—gah! My leg—”
Thwack!
“Tell you what, Kyril. Once I’ve put your scumbag friends in a box, I’ll come back and see what I can do about your leg, yeah?” She leaned in close. “We’ve got a fucking axe, after all.”
Nothing about her expression suggested she was joking.
The next thwack was followed by a thunk.
“Through,” said Marcus.
Louisa patted Kyril’s shattered leg again, and made for the door.
She’d never flown in radio silence before, and it added an odd dimension to the morning, as if all this were taking place inside a dream, in which the bluntly familiar—the panel of instruments before her; the view of empty skies; Damien by her side—rubbed surfaces with the strange. London was gathering shape; coagulating into an uninterrupted mass of rooftop and road, its districts strung together by buses and cars.
Stacked behind them were masses of t
he leaflet she’d designed; the one that would tell the marchers what they were doing—stopping the city; smashing the banks. The details remained vague, but it was enough to be a part of the crusade. There was greed and avarice and corruption in the world, and probably always would be, but that was no excuse for not attempting to make a change …
“We should put the radio on,” Damien said. “It’s dangerous. It’s illegal.”
She said, “Don’t worry. We’re too low to be on anyone’s flight path.”
“I didn’t think we’d be so …”
“What do you think they’ll do, for Christ’s sake? Shoot us down? You think they’ll shoot us down?”
“Well no, but—”
“A few more minutes, we’ll be over the centre. They’ll see what we’re planning on doing, and yeah, they’ll escort us home and we’ll be arrested and fined and all that. We knew that before setting off. Grow some balls.”
But she could hear, beneath the hum of the Skyhawk’s engine, a bass note, a growl, a pair of growls, and in that instant a different future occurred to Kelly Tropper; one in which, instead of proving herself a radical daredevil, scattering her self-designed leaflets on the marching crowds below, she became an object lesson in the lengths to which a once-bitten nation might go to protect itself. But that seemed so far-fetched, so at odds with the scenario she’d planned, that she was able to dismiss it, even as Damien began to babble louder, and with audible fear, that this wasn’t the good idea it had sounded back in the Downside Man; that maybe they weren’t invulnerable after all.
That last part, though, surely couldn’t be true, thought Kelly. And on they flew towards the heart of London, its buildings growing closer together now; its spaces further apart; even as the noises she could hear beneath her own plane’s hum grew louder, and took up more room, and swallowed everything else.
Tommy Moult, or the man who used to be Tommy Moult, was in St Johnno’s graveyard, on the wooden bench dedicated to the recent memory of Joe Morden, who loved this church. This faced the church’s western wall; the side on which its bell tower stood, and through whose rose window the setting sun would warm the church’s interior with soft pink light. At the moment, it remained in shadow. Moult had lost his red cap, along with the sprigs of hair that had tufted from under it, and which had been as familiar a sight in the village as the hawthorn trees flanking the lych-gate. Bald, older-looking, he did not rise at River’s approach. He seemed lost in contemplation of the medieval church, around which earlier versions of Upshott had risen and fallen. In one hand he nursed an iPhone. The other, dangling over the arm of the bench, hid from view.
River said, “Busy morning.”
“Not round here.”
“You’re Nikolai Katinsky, aren’t you? Lamb told me about you.”
“Some of the time.”
“I guess that makes you Alexander Popov, too,” River said. “Or the man who invented him.”
Now Katinsky seemed interested. “You worked that out yourself?”
“Seems kind of obvious at this point,” River said. He sat on the bench, leaving a foot of space between them. “I mean, all these hoops you’ve had us jumping through. That’s not the work of a language school scam artist. Or even a cipher clerk.”
“Don’t knock cipher clerks,” Katinsky told him. “Like any other branch of the Civil Service, all the work’s done low on the food chain. Everyone else just has meetings.”
In the shadow of the tower he looked grey, and though his head was mostly smooth, bristle stubbled his chin and cheeks. This was grey too, as were his eyes, which looked like the covers placed on wells to prevent accidents: things falling in. Things climbing out.
“On 7/7,” River said, “London kept a stiff upper lip. It’s how we knew we’d won, no matter how many bodies we buried. But this morning, the whole damn City looks like day one of the Harvey Nicks’ sale.”
Katinsky waved his phone. “Yes. I’ve been watching.”
“That’s what all this was about?”
“Only incidentally. Your Mr. Pashkin—not his real name either, I’m afraid—he’s taking advantage of the chaos to relieve the Needle’s tenants of some of their assets.” Moult glanced at his phone again. “He hasn’t rung, though. It’s possible not everything’s gone according to plan.”
“His plan. Not yours.”
“We have different aims.”
“But you’re working together.”
“He has access to various things I needed. Andrei Chernitsky, for a start. Some years ago, Andrei and I abducted your friend Dickie Bow. I was building the Popov legend, and wanted one of your people to get a glimpse of him, though nobody so reliable their words would be trusted. When you’re making a scarecrow, you don’t do it in plain sight, you understand.”
“I get the picture.”
“Well, since then, like a regrettable number of former colleagues, Andrei has turned to private enterprise to earn his crust. In short, he was in the employ of one it’ll be simpler to keep calling Arkady Pashkin.”
“And you needed him to lay a trail Dickie Bow would follow.”
“Precisely. So Pashkin and I came to a mutually beneficial arrangement, which even now he’s reaping the benefit of. Or trying to. Like I say, he hasn’t rung.”
River shook his head. He ached all over, but underneath that a sense of wonderment pulsed. For the first time in his life, he was facing the enemy. Not his enemy, exactly, but his grandfather’s, and Jackson Lamb’s; he was putting a face to the history that previous spooks had battled with, and it was happening here, in a country churchyard, witnessed by the uninvolved dead.
He said, “And that’s it? You bring the City to a grinding halt for a morning, and that’s it? Christ, what a waste of effort. A few hand-wringing editorials and it’ll be forgotten.”
Katinsky laughed. “What’s your name? Your real name?”
River shook his head.
“No, I suppose not. You don’t have a cigarette, do you?”
“They’re bad for you.”
“Is that a sense of humour poking through? There’s hope for us yet.”
“That’s what this is to you? One big joke?”
“If you like,” Katinsky said. “So tell me. Do you want to hear the punchline?”
He must be on the twentieth floor, Roderick Ho thought, chest heaving, breath thick with the taste of blood. At least the twentieth. He’d crashed through the lobby in Shirley Dander’s wake; had waved his ID at the lone security guard, who was sticking to his post though the City crumbled; had followed his pointing finger to stairs that led forever up. And now he must be at least on the twentieth floor, and Shirley was out of sight. All he could hear was the crashing boom of the alarm, louder in the stairwell as it bounced off walls and skittered off the staircase, while he panted like a dog, on all fours, his forehead resting on the stair above. Drool unspooled from his lip. Everything was a blur. What was he doing this for?
Louisa and Marcus in trouble—didn’t care.
Pashkin not who he said he was—didn’t care.
Shirley Dander thinking him a wuss—didn’t care.
He should be back in his office, deep-sea diving on the web.
You’re aware you’re MI5, right?
Yeah: he didn’t care.
It occurred to him that the program he’d written to fake his work-pattern would have kicked in by now, and anyone checking up on him remotely would find him hard at work on the archive: sorting and saving, sorting and saving. If he’d had breath to spare, he’d have laughed. It was a shame he had no one to share the joke with because it was, after all, pretty funny.
What was her name: Shona? Shana? The chick from the gym he’d planned to meet, once he’d trashed her relationship. Except, he thought, he’d never do that, would he? Trash her relationship, yes; or at any rate, throw a virtual spanner into its works—he could handle that, no problem. But actually going up and talking to her? Never going to happen. And even if it did, how w
ould he explain to her about the program he’d written to fake his work pattern?
Catherine Standish, on the other hand. She knew about it. And you know, Roddy had the feeling she actually found it pretty amusing.
And that’s what he was doing this for, come to think of it. He was here because she’d told him to be here. To help Louisa Guy and Marcus whatshisname.
Sighing, he hauled himself to his feet, and staggered up towards what must be the twenty-first floor
Though was in fact the twelfth.
Marcus went through the fire doors low, arms outstretched, gun pointing ahead, then left, then right, then up. Nothing. He said, “Clear,” and Louisa followed him out of the stairwell. They were on the sixty-eighth, and the logo on the glass doors read Rumble in a streamlined font. There were lights on inside, but no one visible. The reception desk, in front of a huge repro of A Bigger Splash, was uncrewed. Marcus tried the door. It wouldn’t open.
“Maybe they locked it behind them.”
“They’re using plastic,” Marcus pointed out. He took a step back, braced himself, and kicked, to no effect. The noise this made was swallowed by the alarm. No one appeared inside the Rumble suite.
“Ideas?”
“Maybe they went through a wall.”
“Or maybe …”
Marcus raised an eyebrow.
Louisa said, “Maybe he was lying. What floor are the diamond people on?”
One breath, two breath. One breath, two.
There was a City challenge, Shirley had seen a poster for it—you ran to the top flight of a ’scraper, then down, then ran to another one and did it again. It must be for charity, because it couldn’t be for fun. She wondered how many folk died halfway through.
Her legs were soup. A label on a fire-door read 32. She’d seen nobody since the twentieth, when a dishevelled couple had burst into the well, asking, “Are we too late?” as if they’d missed the emergency. Shirley had pointed the way down, and carried on climbing.
And now she must be getting used to the constant wail of the damned alarm, fishtailing round the stairwell, because she was hearing other sounds too—some kind of explosion some minutes back: nothing you wanted to hear this high up.