by Paul Sims
“That’s real neighbourly of you,” the barman said, and the atmosphere relaxed markedly. “Though I wouldn’t use the term ‘comrade’ around here, friend. People might get the wrong idea about where your loyalties lie – if you know what I mean.”
“Right – friend.” Iain nodded slowly. “You can call me Jan.”
“And I’m known as Frank.”
As the denizens of the bar gathered round Iain and collected their drinks, an elderly man peered closely into his face. “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before, friend Jan?” he asked, and Iain inwardly cursed those damned posters, stamps, magazines – all the things that plastered his likeness before the public – a day’s stubble was hardly an effective disguise.
“I don’t think you could have, my friend,” Iain told him. “I’ve never been up this way before.”
The old man shrugged, and took his ale back to his seat, muttering and shaking his head.
“I wouldn’t worry about old Michael,” said a voice on Iain’s left, “his memory’s not what it was. He’s always seeing people from his past – some of whom have been dead for years.” Iain turned and looked straight into the face of the portly security sergeant he’d last seen in the village square.
Somehow, he managed not to panic. His heart threatened to burst from his chest, but he managed a smile and, without a tremor, replied, “Faulty memory is a problem we all face at times, Comrade Sergeant. Why, my boss frequently forgets to pay me – or would if I let him.”
The sergeant laughed, and Iain joined him, though more in relief than in humour.
“Anyway,” Iain added, “I have one of those faces that a lot of people seem to recognise. I’ve been mistaken for other people many a time. I’ve even been confused with one of those Heroes of Pregeor – as if a common logger like me were anything like one of those pampered prima donnas. I have to work for my living, let me tell you.” There was a burst of sympathetic laughter, and one of the other drinkers slapped him on the back. “But it’s a little surprising to see someone of your obvious importance here at this time of day, Comrade Sergeant,” he continued.
The sergeant cocked an eye-brow and wagged his finger at Iain like a schoolmaster. “Now, what did Frank say about using that word?”
“But I thought…”
“Harry’s one of us,” the barman interjected.
“Yeah, well, anyway, I needed a drink after the visit of that lieutenant and his goons,” the Sergeant added.
“I’m surprised that they weren’t friendlier, at least to a fellow officer like yourself.”
The sergeant snorted. “Huh. They were as friendly as wild boar, and about as vicious. City-bred bastards – I’m sure my words won’t leave this bar?”
“I’ve no time for them either,” Iain assured him, and others murmured their assent. “That’s why I work out here. Security men like yourself are much easier to deal with – you understand how to maintain order with the minimum of officiousness.”
The sergeant nodded his head. “That’s what I told His Officership, but he hauled me over the coals because a couple of the villagers’ papers were a little out of date. Now I’ll get a letter of reprimand from headquarters, and that’ll mean I can say goodbye to any prospect of a pay raise this year.” He sighed heavily.
“You poor fellow,” Iain commiserated. “Why don’t you join us? Plenty of fresh air and healthy exercise – we make a reasonable living and answer to nobody but each other, most of the time. The boss is a bit of a grump, but all in all it’s a pretty good life.”
“Don’t you go tempting Harry away from here,” the barman said. “Like I told you, he’s one of us.”
“Yeah,” one of the other drinkers added. “When the damned Zelynans took over they sent one of their own people to ‘supervise’ our little community. Unfortunately, he had a little ‘accident’.” There was a chorus of sniggers. “They tried to foist another foreigner on us, and by some strange coincidence, he didn’t survive long either. We’re too remote and unimportant to waste a third man on, so they got the point and appointed a local – Harry, here. We really don’t want to go through all that again.”
Iain laughed, and Harry smiled and shook his head and hefted his considerable belly. “I haven’t got the figure for ‘healthy exercise’, and anyway, I’ve only a few more years to retirement.”
“Well,” Iain said, “at least have another drink on me. Do you know what that surprise visit was about?”
“They wouldn’t tell me.” The sergeant bristled indignantly. “They rousted us all out, checked our papers and for some reason, they stuck their fingers up our noses.”
“They seemed to be searching all the buildings very thoroughly as well,” Iain said.
“From the time they took, they must have. They can’t have been looking for the usual sort of stuff, though, or a number of the people who live in this village would be in trouble.” Glancing round, he caught the eyes of several of the drinkers, all of whom looked away in mild embarrassment. “As would I for turning a blind eye to their little – frailties, shall we say? Now all I’ve got to do is traipse around the outlying farms with these new security papers.” He waved a sheaf of documents.
“So I suppose my mates and I will need some of those,” Iain said.
“I’ve got plenty of spares, enough for you – and them as well. Let me know where you’ll be working next week, and I’ll come out and process you all.”
“We’re a couple of miles up the river at the moment,” Iain lied, “but we’ll be heading back for Tureskow after we’ve partied a little, so I wouldn’t bother yourself overmuch – we’ll get our new papers when we get back. Mind you, it might help if one of us had them. Perhaps you could process me now?”
“Why not? Let me have your old papers and I’ll copy over the details onto one of these new sets.”
Iain feigned checking his pockets. “Damn! I must have left them back at the tractor. You don’t often need them out in the woods, and I’m still not used to having to carry them. Oh well – never mind.”
The sergeant shrugged. “Don’t worry about that, friend Jan. We’ve shared a drink and a confidence or two, so I know I can trust you. We’ll do it from scratch: now, what’s your full name?”
Chapter 22
The tension grew as they waited for Iain to return. It seemed like an age, but it must have been less than an hour after Tanya got back when Bartes, who’d been watching out for him, turned and said, “He’s coming.”
Tanya breathed a sigh of relief, but as Iain pushed aside the camouflage net and entered their refuge carrying a couple of bottles of vodka, her fears for him turned into anger. “What the hell took you so long?” she asked.
“Whoa!” He raised his hands defensively. “Who rattled your cage?”
“I’m sorry,” she said, her anger dissipating. “I was so worried about you. What were you doing down there?”
He grinned. “Oh, just having a friendly drink with the locals.”
Anoushka gasped. “You took an awful risk,” she said.
“Not really – there’s no love lost between them and the Zelynans. They believed my story about being a logger, but I’m pretty sure that they wouldn’t have given me away even if they’d known the truth. And I even persuaded their security sergeant to given me these.” He flourished his newly-acquired identity papers.
“You must be quite an actor,” Bartes said. “I wish I’d been there to see it.”
“Opera – theatre – all forms of performance at your command.” Iain gave a florid bow.
Still tired from his exertions the previous night, RD lay down for a nap while the rest of them settled down to wait out the day. Tanya had almost dozed off herself when something occurred to her: their captive. “We’d better deal with Peter,” she said quietly to Bartes.
“OK,” he replied. “I’ll wake RD.”
Tanya shook her head. “I’d rather we did it without his interference.” They made their way to the back o
f their purloined vehicle, where the boy had been dumped. He was still bound and gagged, though he was now awake. “Help me sit him up,” Tanya whispered to Bartes, “and then go get Anoushka, Iain and Joseph.”
They sat the boy against the side of the vehicle and, when they’d all gathered, Tanya crouched down in front of him and took out her knife. She laid it down between them and said, “I’m going to remove your gag now. If you make a single sound without me telling you to, you’ll never make another. Nod if you understand me.” The boy inclined his head in assent, so she freed his mouth. “Now, who are you really?”
“My - my name really is Peter, but my surname’s Ackermann. I am the son of David Ackermann, the leader of the Silvanan Free Army.” The boy paused. “Are you going to kill me?”
“Why should we do that?”
“For spying on you,” he said glumly. “I’m not sure I want to live, anyway.” He looked down, and tears formed in the corner of his eyes.
“Why ever not?”
“They’ll kill her now, or worse…”
“Who?”
“My sister, Karla. Those damned Zelynans are holding her against my good behaviour, and now we’ve escaped...” He paused.
“Look, tell me all about it, and we’ll see if we can help.”
He snorted. “Why would you even want to? You’re aliens, and you’ve got no real interest in us or our affairs.”
“We’re none too happy with what the Comrade President and his people have done to us,” Bartes interjected. “We might be inclined to help you – if only to get up their noses.”
“Well…” The boy took a deep breath. “My father was the Chief Sanitation Engineer for Restavic City when the Zelynans marched in. We thought our government would fight, but they just collapsed. My father said they were spineless idiots. He took all the maps of the city sewers, and told us that we were a resistance movement.
“He called us the Silvanan Free Army, but we weren’t much of an army to start with – just Father and some of his friends – and Karla and me. But people soon got to know about us, and some of them joined up with us. We used to come out of the sewers after dark, like rats, and attack those bastards. We could do it from almost anywhere, and they couldn’t catch us.
“Food was the trickiest thing. You don’t want to eat the sort of stuff that comes down into the sewers. There were plenty of people on the surface who didn’t want to join us, but they hated the Zelynans and were happy to give us food. The problem was that we had to get it below without the security forces finding out.
“That’s where me and Karla came in. The blackshirts didn’t bother about kids, mostly – it was the grown-ups they kept their eyes on. I told Father we could do the job right under their noses. He didn’t like it, of course – after Mother died, we were all he had left – but after we managed two or three missions without any real difficulty, he realised it made sense.
“But in the end our luck ran out. We were making one of our regular runs on the west side of the city, and a friend of Karla’s recognised her. Bloody idiot rushed over to us shouting Karla’s name. Karla tried to shut her up, but it was too late. There was a security officer on the other side of the street, and he recognised us. He drew his gun and shouted for us to stop. We ran, but he radioed for help and two guards cornered us in a dead-end alley. I didn’t have the strength to raise the only manhole cover I could find, so they caught us.
“They took us to the Blockhouse – Security Headquarters – and separated us. They interrogated me... I don’t want to think about it. We heard a fair amount about the techniques they used – Father’s friends talked about it enough times... persuasion first, then drugs... and no sleep... and no food... and when those didn’t get enough information out of people, the pain... needles under the nails – I don’t want to remember it...
“Anyway, I didn’t tell them much, but to be honest, that was because I didn’t know very much. I wish I could say they got nothing out of me…” He looked down and shook his head slowly. “… but that Major Valentine came and just sat looking at me for a while. Somehow, he pulled information out of my head, like where our headquarters were, as well as the other bolt-holes I knew about.
“I kept asking about Karla. I thought perhaps they’d killed her. I wished they’d kill me. It would’ve been better...
“Soon Captain Reynard came to see me. I don’t know how long I’d been in the Blockhouse – you sort of lose track of time, you know. She had my sister with her. Karla looked – thin. Empty. But she knew me. She tried to run to me, but there was a guard. He grabbed her and twisted her arm behind her back. I couldn’t reach her – there were two guards holding onto me.
“The Captain asked if I’d do a job for her, and I said, ‘No – not in a million years.’ She nodded to Karla’s guard. He wrenched her arm again. She screamed... I think I was yelling too. I don’t know –
“The bloody swine... She ordered the guard to take Karla outside, and told my own guards to let go of me. ‘You do realise that I can make your life more comfortable?’ she said, ‘and even let you share a room with Karla? It wouldn’t be a problem. You’d only have to perform a small task for me – really easy. If you don’t... Well, is Karla a virgin?’
“‘She’s only eight years old,’ I told her. ‘What do you think?’
“‘Well, isn’t that sweet,’ she said. ‘What a dear little girl. If you don’t do what I tell you, I’ll get my men to make sure Karla isn’t a virgin, before they cut her throat.’
It was a minute or two before the boy could continue. “What could I do? I agreed – for Karla’s sake. That bitch had us moved into a cell together. It had beds with real, soft mattresses, and a proper bathroom. And we had food – real food. Two days later, the Captain came and told me about my assignment. She promised me I wouldn’t be asked to do anything that would harm my friends. She simply wanted me to spy on ‘a group of aliens who think they’re Heroes of the Republic’. She wanted me to get close to you all, and to Joseph in particular, and warn her about anything odd you said or did.”
Tanya exchanged glances with Bartes. “That explains a lot. But what happened at the Opera House?”
“Well, my father knew that I’d been seen with you people, so he was looking for a way to rescue me. When he heard we were going to appear at the Opera House, he took his chance. My cousin Marta stole a maid’s uniform and told me a van was waiting for me downstairs. With Karla still at the Blockhouse, I didn’t really want to go, but I didn’t have a choice. Then everything went wrong.”
“Bartes and I saw,” Tanya said sympathetically. “Captain Reynard must have got wind of the attempt – or been well-prepared.”
“M-Marta was killed – and her boyfriend Carl. She used to babysit me and Karla, you know. She had a lovely voice. I can still remember the lullabies she used to sing us…” The boy bit his lip.
“Anyway, the rest of us got away, and I was taken to meet my father. He hugged me and asked where Karla was. I had to tell him what happened, and that I had to go back, for Karla’s sake. He frowned, and told me to get some rest while he talked to ‘a friend’.
When he came back, he seemed different. He told me you’d met up with some of our people in the mountains, and that you weren’t our enemies. He told me to stick close to you while his friend did something about Karla.”
Tanya sighed. “Now, what are we going to do with you?” she said.
The boy shrugged. “Put me out of my misery. I won’t struggle. Just… I’d be grateful if you’d do it relatively painlessly.”
“Don’t be stupid. I can tell that you’re telling the truth, and my people only kill when it’s absolutely necessary – and perhaps...” Tanya had a thought and looked over at Slimmest, who had also been ‘listening’ to the boy’s tale. :Could your mistress help?:
The cat’s eyes unfocussed momentarily. :She’s a bit busy right at this moment, as you’ll hopefully see later, but she tells me that she’s already been working on
freeing the girl. Who did you think the ‘friend’ the boy’s father mentioned is? :
Turning back to the boy, Tanya said, “Peter, your father’s friend is also a friend of mine, and I know that she’ll free your sister if anyone can. Now, if you’ll give me your word of honour that you won’t try to escape or raise an alarm, I’ll untie you.” She looked around for confirmation: Anoushka and Bartes nodded agreement, Iain shrugged, but Joseph pointedly turned and looked away from his once-friend.
Peter thought for a few seconds. “Very well – I promise on Karla’s life not to betray you.”
“Fair enough.”
As Tanya cut his bonds, RD strode up, his eyes blazing. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Freeing an ally.”
“He’s a spy.”
“He was – very unwillingly. Now he wants to help us escape, don’t you, Peter.”
“Yes.” The boy stretched his cramped limbs and groaned. “Ow! My arms and legs hurt.”
“It’s just the circulation being restored,” Tanya told him. “Don’t worry, they’ll be OK in a minute.” Turning to RD she said, “I trust him.”
RD grunted. “Your gullibility will get us all killed someday.”
Bartes looked at him levelly. “I’ll be keeping an eye on the boy,” he said.
“So will I,” RD added, ominously fingering the knife in his belt.
Bartes frowned in thought. “Peter…” he began.
“Yes, sir?”
“First of all, call me Bartes.” The boy nodded. “And second, do you know anything about how we could reach Telphania?”
“Yes…” It was the boy’s turn to look thoughtful. “If you’ll trust me that is…”