by Adam Roberts
But nothing could make his crest fall. ‘I’ll move the car forward!’ he beamed. ‘I’ll have it moved in a jiffy!’ So he slinked himself back into the driver’s seat, drove the car four yards forward, and then he waited whilst I shuffled and heaved myself out of the car. Then he reversed back in, and extricated himself, and retrieved my luggage.
As we walked underneath the oppressively low concrete ceiling towards one of the exits Martin’s flow was unstoppable. ‘There have been fits and starts of an Alsatian independence movement for hundreds of years,’ he said. ‘But mostly Alsace has been the plaything of France and Germany, swapped between them on the political chessboard of - well, you know.’
I was aware of a growing claustrophobia in that space. I couldn’t stop picturing a detonation above ground bringing that low concrete ceiling slamming down upon me. I couldn’t stop registering the way the stench of petrol lingered in the air, and thinking how flammable petrol was, and what people look like when they spent too long in a burning building, and came blundering into the open where the gunmen were.
We got the lift, Martin hauling my bag behind him. The metal doors were etched, some lines quite deeply scored, into various curlicues and graffito tags, including what looked to me like a pretty good drawing of a German Shepherd hound’s-head. Scritchy, scratchy. If there had been any spraypaint graffiti on the doors, then it had been very efficiently cleared off; but these scored lines resisted erasure. ‘It comes down to money,’ Martin was saying, jabbing at the little illuminated call button like he was playing Space Invaders. ‘As it always do. As it always do. This is a rich-enough corner of land, see, but most of the money is in the hands, actually, of French and Germans, not Alsatians, you see. I know the EU is supposed to have made all you Europeans one big family, but the, eh, the roots of history go, you know, deep. I mean, take a look at it from the point of view of America. History, in the very broadest sense - what has it been?’
‘A nightmare from which . . .’ I muttered. Perhaps Martin didn’t hear me. Certainly he spoke over me.
‘It’s been one European civil war after another! That’s what! Europe’s capacity for civil war is a continual source of astonishment to us, stateside. And here we are again, in the middle of another one! Yet another!’
The lift doors did their metal origami fold, and we got into the steel lift. Martin pressed the button with his thumb.
‘So, yes. Alsace has had neither the population to raise its own force, nor the money to hire others to do its fighting,’ Martin said. The confined space altered the acoustics, and so the timbre of his voice.
My stomach keened as we rose.
‘Until now,’ I said.
‘Well, sure. NMAs change everything. There’s a different one for each pocket, though, isn’t there? So although the Alsatian Freedom Parliament can’t afford a big fuck-off NMA like Rebellais or Pantegral - sparing your blushes—’
‘My skin has lost much of its physiological capacity for blushing,’ I said.
‘—Hell they can afford something smaller, something not so experienced or efficient. Hence Schäferhund gets the gig. German, Czech, mostly: Schäferhund. A young giant, is Schäferhund, and not so good at the fighting. A danger, obviously. That’s why you’re here. And us regular army types, well we’re a whole lot better at containing NMAs than we used to be. Just look at what we did to the Liberty Army in Missouri.’
‘That wasn’t Europe.’ I said; and on eur of Europe the lift chimed, a resonant, plangent ding. The doors opened.
I followed Martin out into the lobby of what was, evidently, an expensive hotel. One young man, dressed in expensive-looking thread-jeans and a screen top, was sat in the lobby’s wide settee; he was reading, the book perched in his hand like a bird about to fly off. But actually he was only pretending to read, because his eyes followed us as we crossed to the main desk. I didn’t like the look of him. My instinct singled him out. Martin, though, was wholly oblivious: and he was the military man. I was just a strange sort of relict. Martin was looking after me, not the other way around. Or, it would be closer to the truth to say, he was helping to move me into position.
I checked out the rest of the arena. There was a chandelier, the crystal skeleton of an alien spider, hanging from the ceiling by a steel rope. One well-aimed bullet would bring that down. The carpets were very plush, the pile very deep. It was like walking on soft sand. A couple of obvious tourists loitered by the door. A young man with acne like spattery wine-spill running over both cheeks manned the coffee counter in the corner. I looked again at the pretending-to-read-a-book man. In all this human action he was the potential danger. With a tingly sense of detachment and, if I’m honest, of superiority, I looked across to see that Martin had not registered him at all. Instead he was talking: ‘Schäferhund may not be very good, that’s not the point. They may not be likely to win. I don’t think they are likely to win, in fact - but that’s not the point either. Because they certainly are capable of causing a great deal of damage and death, and we’d like to stop that, thank you very much. Yes, we spoke earlier.’ This to the exquisitely good-looking young girl behind the desk. ‘Room, name of Block?’
‘One moment please,’ she replied, with no hint of accent.
I addressed Martin in a none-too-pleased tone: ‘You booked the room in my name?’
‘It’s your room, after all. I think you’ll like it.’
‘That’s not what I mean,’ I said. ‘My point is that, don’t you think a little, uh, circumspection . . .’ But I was coughing again, or I was making the dry rasping equivalent which is all I’m capable of now.
‘Leah, is it?’ Martin was saying, leaning a little too far over the desk, and peering at the girl’s bosom on the pretext of reading her nametag. ‘That’s real kind of you. Thank you very much. That’s très gentil. Now, now, how about this? What if I asked you to come for a drink with me later, this evening? Would you tell me that you’ve already got a boyfriend?’
Two cherry red spots were visible in her cheeks; but she held her composure. ‘It is against hotel policy for staff to date guests, m’sieur.’
‘Oh, I’m not the guest, Leah. This mein-herr here,’ he reached out and lightly tapped my chest with the back of his hand, without looking at me, ‘he is the guest. I’m not the guest.’
‘Sure, tell everybody,’ I said. ‘Make a general announcement! Who needs discretion, in our line of work?’ I’ll concede I was crotchety.
Leah’s smile did not waver. She shook her head fractionally. ‘Your room card, sir,’ she said, holding the plastic rectangle out to me. I put up my mangled right claw and she did not flinch. I took the key between thumb and clenched fingers and thanked her.
‘I hope,’ Martin beamed, ‘that you’re not offended that I asked, Leah?’
‘Not at all, m’sieur,’
‘You have a nice day, now.’
And he marched off without the least kink in his swagger, back to the lift. ‘We can take the stairs if you like,’ he said, ‘but maybe the lift would be better, what with your - what would you call it? Your condition?’
‘The lift,’ I said.
So we stepped back inside the lift.
I might have hated this man. At the least I might have been infuriated by him. But I’ll tell you the truth; something about him touched me. I do not make a habit - believe me - in falling for straight men; and I’m not suggesting there was any actual spark or draw in my heart. He was certainly nothing at all like Simic. But I found myself disarmed, nevertheless. His irrepressibility.
He did a little shuffle of his boots, forward-back, forward-back, as the lift doors slid shut behind us. ‘You’re a restless fellow,’ I observed.
‘Too much coffee,’ he said. ‘Or,’ he added, with a laugh, ‘not enough coffee. Either way, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Trooper Block.’ The lift tugged mildly at my innards. ‘I’m hoping it’s the first of many opportunities to work with you. I’m real keen to see you do your Jack thing.’
‘My Jack thing,’ I repeated. ‘Right. Do you know what it involves?’
‘Sure.’
‘You’ve seen it at work?’
‘Not directly.’
‘But you understand the, uh, principles?’
‘I took a minor in Computer and Virtual Assault Strategies,’ he said.
‘Really.’
‘University of Fort Worth. I wrote my freshman diss on viral assault.’ He beamed. ‘Not that I remember all that. I’m no tech. But, heck, you don’t need to understand all the chemistry of gunpowder to shoot a gun . . . right?’
‘Gun.’ I said.
‘You telling me you understand all the ins-and-outs?’
I liked the unconscious irony of this. ‘I may understand more than you realize.’
‘Sure!’
Conversational smalltalk has never been my forte. ‘So,’ I said. ‘Were you involved with the Liberty Army takedown?’ I asked.
‘Personally? No, sir. But I have talked with people who were.’
Ding. The doors folded away, and we stepped on to a landing. Ruby carpets, smooth as velvet. Dark-wood panelling, scalloped along its width and fringed with madeleine-shaped wooden ornamentation. We walked along the soft scarlet sand.
‘And you don’t have qualms?’ I asked.
‘About?’
‘About what we’re doing, here.’
‘I’ve been regular army since seventeen,’ he said, as if that answered my question. He stopped in front of a door. ‘This is your room. You want that I should swipe? They sure don’t make these locks for people with chewed-up hands, do they?’ He took my key and opened the door. ‘Is there not some surgery? I thought I saw something on the web about, like, little motorized spokes they put in along the bones to restore movement? I thought I saw that, online somewhere.’
‘I have those,’ I said.
‘No kidding?’
‘Well, I have them in my thumbs,’ I said. I didn’t add: it’s agony every time I try to move the fucking digits. Instead I followed him into the room.
‘They help?’
‘A little.’
He deposited my bags beside the bed, and sat himself ostentatiously in the room’s sole comfy chair.
It was, I have to say, a very nice hotel room. Spacious and well-appointed. The windows looked down from a fourth-floor vantage across nineteenth-century roofs and along narrow streets, and to the western flank of the cathedral building. Bed, screen, desk, chair; door through to the bathroom on the left. The main door clucked shut behind us.
‘Here you go,’ he said. ‘Pretty good? No expense, spared. Mine’s the same size, but I gotta share with - well you’ll meet him soon enough. This is yours all on your lonesome.’ He looked up at me from the comfy chair with a twinkle. ‘Qualms?’ he said. ‘You mean, in the sense of, what?’
‘Well, let’s say: your commitment to democracy,’ I said, feeling vaguely foolish saying such a thing.
‘Democracy? Sure. Democracy’s great. Sure beats tyranny.’
‘Well then.’
‘Well then? Let’s be sure we know what we’re talking about, yeah? It’s not like democracy is an absolute value. I’m not offending your religion when I say this, Tony?’
‘Religion?’ I lowered my arse on to the bed, feeling thoroughly worn out by my trip and ready to lie back and sleep, but unable to relinquish the soldier’s instinct to be ready to leap up. If Martin didn’t take the hint in five minutes, I told myself, I would simply ask him straight out to leave me in peace.
‘I know how deeply embedded you were in the south-east England NMA, Tony. I have read your file. I have spoken to the Colonel who debriefed you.’
‘Who turned me.’
‘If you want to - let’s say you want to put it like that. Sure. Turned you, like a spy. So I guess he persuaded you, in all those conversations you had, that proper democracy has the moral edge on all this NMA stuff. Yeah? Or how else could he have turned you?’
‘How else?’ I replied, drily. Then, in a weary voice: ‘Religion is quite the wrong word,’ I said.
‘Sure. Oak. Ede-oaky. My father was in the army too. You know? Now when he served, the point was to defend us against Communism, and by Communism was meant tyranny. By the time I was growing up it was Islam, and the same thing. Rule by mullahs and the religiously inflexible. People not getting to vote in their congressmen and senators. Democracy as opposed to that, sure.’
‘Just not democracy as such,’ I said.
‘Oh, as for that, there’s just another form of tyranny wrapped up in that,’ he said. ‘I guess you don’t see it. For me, it’s the middle ground. People need a little structure - I mean, hierarchy. But not too much, no sir. A little deference to people better than they are. Social awe. A little of that. But not too much - not kings and queens, and so on, and so forth. But the idea that everybody is absolutely equal - that flies in the face of human nature, don’t you think?’
‘NMAs don’t treat everyone as equal,’ I pointed out. ‘Look at me. Too deep-fried to fight. Taking everybody to be equal means assuming everybody is capable of fighting on the same battlefield.’
‘Yeah, well, all right then, right there is one thing I don’t like about radical democracy. Why don’t we ever see, you know, NMAs constituted for other reasons? Reasons apart from fighting, I mean? Why don’t we see groups of people using this logic of association to, I don’t know, landscape-garden? Pick up litter?’
‘No you don’t get that,’ I agreed.
‘Why not?’
‘You’re asking me?’
‘Sure!’ he said, and he bounced up from the chair and stood upright. Oh there was an irrepressible, puppyish quality to him, all right. But there is one thing, in this sublunary world, that’s sure to repress even the most irrepressible. We’ll come to that in a moment.
‘Because the world is, when you get right down to it, not a garden,’ I said, in a croaky voice. ‘Because the world is much more like a battlefield than it is a garden.’
‘Look, I don’t mean to bend your ear. That’s the English expression, yeah? Don’t mean to gabble. Is that rhyming slang, by the way? I did wonder. Never mind, I’ll leave you in peace. I’m sure you could do with a rest. So: I’m down the corridor if you need anything. This,’ he held out a piece of card, ‘is all the numbers, rooms, mobiles, log-on. You get a nice room to yourself. I have to share, and not with a pretty receptionist either. I think I said.’
‘At least you won’t get lonely.’
‘Oh, sure. He and I will keep one another company, sure. You can join us, if you want. We’ll only be watching TV. Or you can enjoy your own company. Up to you. Now, if you need anything at all, let me know. Otherwise, I’ll up and leave you in peace. I’ll come get you at six, and we’re going to dine with half a dozen top brass. It’ll be a nice meal, sure, but a strategy meeting too, so get yourself ready for that. I don’t know what you need to do to get ready for a top-level meeting, but whatever it is, maybe you want to do it. You’re the weapon, after all! Until then, enjoy the room. The screen, wire access, over there. No expense has been spared. In the bathroom you’ll find—’ and he opened the bathroom door.
I heard a thud.
A mallet hitting wood.
Martin, no longer talking, moonwalked backwards, the soles of his feet sliding over the carpet, his legs flexing a little. His arms went up in front of him. Then the backs of his legs banged against the side of the chair and he tipped backwards, pivoting over the armrest. I saw, then, that something had been added to his chest. His arms went up, and then flopped down again. It was all very startling.
As all his motion stopped he was sitting crossways in the chair, his legs over one of the armrests, his head flopped back over the other. The bar, or blade, or spike, or whatever-it-was was sticking exactly out of the middle of his chest.
My heart went bumpbetty, bumpbetty, as in that old Peter Sellars and Sophia Loren song. Or was it Peter Sellars and Gina Lollobrigi
da?
I scrabbled in amongst my jacket, almost on reflex; but of course I was carrying no weapon. I was a civilian now. And, since my fingers didn’t open, all I was doing was, in effect, lightly pummelling my own torso. I couldn’t have gripped a gun anyway. I was in charge of a different sort of weaponry now.
I could see that Martin was dead.
The hider in the bathroom stepped into the room. He was exactly as you’d expect him to be: a young man, dressed casually, although not cheaply, in jeans, boots and a smartcloth top. Broad face, large nose; dark glasses. Long bread-coloured hair tied in a queue at the back of his head. He had a carryall slung over his left shoulder and I didn’t doubt that he had a variety of weaponry inside. In his right hand (right handed, then: I stored that information away) he was holding a shaft-tube, the compressor reservoir balanced casually in the crook of his right elbow. Those things aren’t light, which suggested he was physically strong. But most of all, he came into the room in a certain way. I recognized his contained swagger. It had once been mine.