by Mick Herron
‘The what?’
‘They’re following a list. What’s next?’
‘I haven’t checked.’
‘You don’t think that would be useful?’ she said, after a pause.
‘I don’t think it would help to have a paper trail,’ he said. ‘Not if we’re going to achieve deniability.’
Taverner nodded. ‘Like I said the other day, you’re learning. What are the boys and girls doing?’
‘Whereabouts of Korean nationals, and ethnically similar. Not exactly the time for PC niceties.’
‘Of course not. But this is good. We’re nearer catching them. Now we know what they aren’t, I mean.’
‘And we also know they’re not simply trying to slaughter their way through the countryside. They’re using our own imperial past as kerosene. It’s the propaganda coup to end them all.’
‘Only if they complete their mission,’ Lady Di said. ‘The penguin thing, that was them too?’
‘And the bomb on the train, I think. And the Gimball death’s a mess, but it could easily be part of the pattern.’
‘Yes, and could easily be the flotsam and jetsam of everyday reality. Welcome to 2017.’ She went to the frosted wall. Up close, it was like seeing the world through a film of gauze. As if there were ghosts on the other side; or reality on the other side, and ghosts on this. ‘The whole thing has the look of a master plan cooked up by a fantasist in his mum’s box room. So we find them before they reveal what they’re doing, and that bursts their bubble.’ She was saying all this to the wall, or to herself. ‘The Supreme Leader can spout all he likes about how this crew were acting on a British blueprint, and we can say, sure they were. And you lot firing warheads into the Sea of Japan, that’s right there in Nostradamus.’
‘They’ll produce the document.’
‘And we’ll deny it’s genuine. Come on, Claude. We’re playing a propaganda war here. The winner’s the one with the pokerest face.’
‘“Pokerest”?’
‘It’s two in the morning. What do you want, Will Self?’
‘And if the killing crew show up, saying look what we did?’
‘Yes, well, that part can’t happen.’ She turned to face him at last. ‘They have to die, Claude. I would have thought that was obvious.’
‘It can’t look like an execution.’
‘It doesn’t matter what it looks like. You think their deaths will play poorly? Maybe a year from now, when one of the Sundays does an in-depth. But three days after Abbotsfield, and there’ll be a street party in The Mall, with crowds queuing up to see their corpses. And any lefties screaming judicial murder had better be wearing hard hats.’
‘It’s the sort of decision we don’t make without Home Office input.’
‘Fuck that,’ said Lady Di. ‘They started it. They want to play London Rules, they should have known to write their wills first.’ She shook her head. ‘We end this. And then we take a long look at the SS fucking D. Starting with chopping their balls off.’
When she left he’d tried to take a nap, which turned into a feverish ten-minute wrestling match: he’d come to with an erection frighteningly close to a victory cheer. Its memory still an ache in his groin, he’d splashed water on his face and patrolled the hub, hovering by Josie’s desk, trying to feel paternal. He asked whether she ever went home; she laughed and said she could say the same thing. There was something in the air, the ozone that crackles during an emergency.
Around five, two names popped up at almost the same time. Students, on Chinese passports, both of whom had dropped out of sight the previous weekend.
‘Let’s find out where they are,’ he said, as if saying the words made a difference. All around him, the boys and girls were already focused on this very task.
Those loose threads, he thought again. Let’s start tugging.
‘Dancer Blaine,’ he said to Josie.
‘Sir?’
‘Call him,’ Whelan told her. ‘It’s time I had a word.’
‘They’re kids.’
‘Kids?’
‘Students. Nineteen, twenty, like that. Planted here years ago. Could I get a cup of tea?’
Catherine made to move, but Devon Welles was faster; was out of the door, heading kettlewards, before she was on her feet.
Emma Flyte lowered herself into the chair he’d vacated. Exhausted as she was, she still possessed a radiance. From the overhead bulbs a high-watt light left everyone else – Welles and Shirley excepted – colourless. Falling on Flyte, it found hidden golds and greys.
River said, ‘Middle East?’
‘North Korea.’
Louisa whistled softly. ‘That’s big.’
‘But nothing new,’ said Lamb. He poured the last of his bottle into his glass. ‘The Fat Controller’s sponsored so many terrorist acts, it’s a wonder he hasn’t had Tshirts printed. Have you locked her in?’
‘Trust me,’ Flyte said. ‘She’s not going anywhere.’
Welles returned with a mug of tea, and she took it gratefully. ‘Thanks. They recruited her a couple of months ago. Picked her up in a club. She has relatives, she said. They showed her pictures.’
‘They’re probably already dead,’ said Coe. When looks turned his way, he shrugged. ‘That’s how they do things. The State Security Department.’
‘The SSD,’ said River.
‘Thanks. If I have trouble with any other sets of initials, jump right in.’
‘She was already involved with Ho,’ Flyte continued. ‘Scamming him, pure and simple.’
‘Told you,’ said Shirley.
‘And they reeled her in, on the SSD’s instructions. They wanted the blueprint. The whatyoucallit—’
‘The Watering Hole paper.’
‘Which they already knew about,’ said Lamb, almost to himself. ‘That’s interesting.’
‘So glad I’ve got your attention,’ said Flyte.
‘How come they didn’t kill her?’ Louisa asked.
‘She did what she does. She wrapped one of them round her little finger.’
‘I doubt it was her finger.’
‘Yeah, this is the parental control version. Shin, his name is. That’s how she got away. The others think he killed her, after they came for Ho.’
‘Clearing house,’ Welles said. Chairless now, he’d planted himself against the wall next to Louisa, who’d ceased her exercises.
‘Uh-huh. Because they’re nearly done.’
‘And when he wasn’t rolling around for her to scratch his tummy,’ said Lamb, ‘did this Shin mention what their final act would be at all?’
Unconscious of doing so, they all leaned in as Flyte answered.
‘Not as such,’ she said. ‘What he did tell her was, the whole world would be watching. And then he said something about the snake eating its own tail.’
Everyone fell quiet for a moment.
Then: ‘Oh for fuck’s sake,’ said Louisa.
‘Sorry. But it’s what she said.’
‘Where’s it from? Sun Tzu?’
‘More like Kung Fu Panda,’ said River.
But Lamb said, ‘I keep forgetting you lot are idiots.’
St Paul’s was bathed in heavenly light, or that’s what it was hard to avoid thinking. In his heart, Zafar Jaffrey knew it wasn’t so, and would have felt the same had it been a mosque. Which it actually looked like, a bit. A thought best kept to himself.
On the commuter train, surrounded by businessmen, voters, he’d tried to disappear; to cloak himself in the early morning misery colouring the carriage. All he’d wanted was anonymity; just another upright stiff on the daily pilgrimage: whisked through the half-light, dumped on a platform, spat underground. They’d barely left Birmingham before a man leaned over and touched his elbow. ‘First class travel, eh?’ Chuckling. ‘Not quite the man of the people after all.’
‘Go fuck yourself,’ Zafar had told him.
A vote lost, but a moment won.
Last night, he’d given Tyson all
the cash he had to hand; instructed him to go as far as possible as soon as possible. Short-term advice, but that was the only kind Tyson was likely to hear, the long term always having been a puzzling perspective where that young man was concerned. What could be more important than the here and now? For Tyson’s own good, what Zafar should have done was call a lawyer. All he’d done, really, was buy breathing space.
He had the address memorised.
‘A stationer’s?’
‘Office supplies an’ stuff, yeah.’
For some reason, this was the detail Jaffrey’s imagination snagged on; that a criminal enterprise was being run from a stationer’s. Pick up a few rollerball pens, a notebook, some Post-its. Want some fake passports to go with that? A driving licence? A gun?
‘He needs the rest of the money, yeah? Funny looking geezer.’
Said the man with the face tattoo, thought Jaffrey.
Tyson left, his pocket full of cash. How far would he get? Jaffrey wondered. Soon, if not already, people would be hunting Tyson Bowman, who wasn’t an unnoticeable man; had gone out of his way to be someone you gave a second look. He was a moving violation of the law of common sense: someone who’d spent his adolescence in criminal activity, and just to simplify things for everyone, had had himself branded to that effect. Which made Zafar Jaffrey wonder whether that was why he’d recruited Tyson in the first place. Not to offer redemption, but on the off chance he’d need a partner in crime one day. It was Tyson who’d known how to solve Jaffrey’s problem, Tyson who’d shown him to Dancer Blaine’s door. It was the way the world turned. You dipped a toe in the criminal waters, you could always get dry again. But once you’d inked your face, nobody would ever truly believe it.
Jaffrey located the stationer’s easily enough, but it wasn’t open yet, so he circled the nearby streets, glad to put the moment off. How did one approach this, exactly? My name is … Hell, no. I believe you have something for me? One of the speeches he habitually delivered, addressing young people at risk, was to explain that the criminal life was the easy option, that they had to believe themselves capable of the tougher choice, but he wondered now whether that was true. There were difficulties in criminal enterprise that had never occurred to him before. A whole new set of rules.
London was stirring; coming to life. It had been full enough already, but that was with people hurrying to work. Now came the new wave, of those who weren’t in a rush. Those with time to look in shop windows, or to pause at corners and check their phones.
When he reached the shop again, it was open, and he went in.
A youngish man was the only creature visible: behind the counter, reading his phone. A mug of something steamed on a shelf beside him, not quite aromatic enough to mask the sweet-sick smell of marijuana coming off his clothes. He took no notice of Jaffrey’s arrival. Barely looked up when Jaffrey spoke.
‘I’m looking for Mr Blaine.’
‘Never heard of him.’
Okay, Jaffrey thought. So what now? Buy a ream of A4 and wander back to Euston? He reached into his pocket, brought out the envelope he’d been carrying for days, scared to leave it anywhere in case it disappeared. A frightening chunk of his savings account. The remaining half of what Blaine was owed. He slapped it on the counter, hard; the unmistakeable sound of money.
The young man looked up.
‘Heard of him now?’ said Jaffrey.
The body was starting to smell.
Truth is, it wasn’t clear it was the body on the turn; the body was wrapped in cling film, which should be keeping it fresh, and there were other possible sources: Shin, for a start, and An, and Chris. The back of the van was a mobile oven, and it was days since any of them had showered. So it might be that Joon was blameless, the only one not contributing to the rancid atmosphere, but he was also the only one currently dead, so there was little chance he could evade blame.
As well as body odour, tension muddied the air.
Shin said, ‘There will be armed police.’
‘We do not know that,’ said An.
‘And helicopters.’
Again: ‘We do not know that.’
Danny nodded, to show An his agreement. Noticing this, Shin scowled.
But Shin had diminished overnight, and his presence carried no more weight than Joon’s. They no longer believed in him. Shin had yet to threaten to raise this in his precious daily report, but only, Danny thought, because he knew how weak it would make him appear. When Shin’s face crumpled in frustration or rage, he pretended it was the tightness of his collar enraging him, or the looseness of his belt, and he would fumble briefly at the supposed cause of offence. But in truth, it was Danny and An who were angering him; their having seen through his weakness and failure.
They had left Birmingham an hour ago, Chris at the wheel once more. Of all of them, Chris alone seemed unchanged by events; seemed happy to drive, to wait, to follow orders.
Shin said, ‘They know what we are capable of.’
An was down on his haunches, a position Danny found impossible to believe was comfortable in a moving vehicle, and was holding one of the assault rifles across his lap. One palm was laid flat across its trigger guard, and the barrel was pointing at the back door.
‘And they will be expecting us to make a move.’
An said, ‘But they cannot know where.’
He stroked the gun.
Shin tried again. ‘They will know the document we are following. Ho will have told them. We are no longer working in darkness.’
An said, ‘But Ho knows nothing of our actual plans. There is nothing he would be able to tell them.’
‘But maybe the girl …’ said Shin, and stopped.
The van went over a pothole: always potholes on the roads. The whole country was sliding into a pit, one small chunk at a time.
Danny said, ‘What did you say?’
‘Nothing. I said nothing.’
‘You said something about the girl.’
‘The girl knew nothing either. That is all I was going to say.’
Danny said, ‘The girl is dead.’
‘Yes,’ said Shin.
‘So why do you say she knew nothing?’
Shin said, ‘Because even if she were alive, it would not help them. That is all I meant.’
‘You said you killed her.’
‘I did.’
‘When you came out of her house, you told us she was dead, that you had ended her.’
‘Yes.’
‘But nobody else saw her body.’
‘I saw her body,’ said Shin.
Danny looked at An, waiting for him to reach the obvious conclusion: that Shin was lying. That Shin had betrayed them.
But An said nothing.
Shin said, ‘Why are you asking me these questions? Have you forgotten who is in charge?’
Nobody had forgotten who was in charge.
The heat in the van increased as sunlight took hold. In here for hours now, for days, and their old lives as lost as a snake’s sloughed skin. It was true, though, that they were no longer working in darkness; somewhere there would be doors being knocked upon, computer records shuffled, names and descriptions gathered in. But they only had one more thing to do, and all that mattered was that they do it.
Because they were soldiers. As a student in this strange world, Danny had been amazed at the words and antics of those who imagined their lives their own to do with what they would, never realising that everything they thought they desired had been imposed on them by forces greater than themselves. It was only in accepting those forces that true freedom could be found. Example: when he learned that the Supreme Leader had had his own uncle executed with an anti-aircraft gun, Danny understood that such a thing had been necessary to punish dissent. When he further learned that this story had been concocted by the Western media, Danny understood that the Supreme Leader was a gentle soul, vilified by his enemies. In neither of those different worlds was his faith in the Supreme Leader shaken.
<
br /> As if he were reading Danny’s mind, An spoke. ‘It does not matter,’ he said. ‘They are expecting us, they are not. It makes no difference. We will fulfil this destiny.’
Then he reached up for the transistor radio that hung by a strap from a hook; a small, cheap, apparently indestructible device, that didn’t mind being slapped against the panel every time they took a corner or hit a bump. When he turned the knob, a news broadcast chirruped into life. The subject under discussion was the service that afternoon at Westminster Abbey, where there would be princes and politicians, the PM among them, and all of it taking place under the eyes of the world’s cameras.
Shin said, ‘I am not afraid. I am simply saying we should be careful. That is all.’
Danny said nothing. Shin had let the girl go free. Shin had endangered all of them. He was a traitor and a coward, and this should not go unpunished. And he tried to communicate all this to An, but An’s eyes were closed, and the look Danny gave passed harmlessly by him.
And on they drove through the lengthening day.
14
TO STEP OUT INTO morning air – to leave the dentist’s surgery, or a job interview – to find one’s feet on firm pavement again, with the day stretching out bared and steady as a racetrack – is to know oneself alive, thought Zafar Jaffrey. He emerged from the warren of alleyways to catch a glimpse of St Paul’s, a moment of purity he felt to his toes. In his jacket pocket nestled the package he’d just collected. Everything might still be worth it. Even the mess Tyson had stepped into, the death of Dennis Gimball – there was no law that said things couldn’t work out right.
Dancer Blaine, as Tyson had said, was a funny-looking fellow, with grey-streaked hair folded into a rope, and squirrelly brown eyes behind thick round glasses. Even during their short conversation, he’d allowed Jaffrey to understand that his nickname was honestly earned; that he was nimble as a flea. Jaffrey had nodded politely. Oddly, he had no trouble picturing this creature floating an inch or two above a dance floor; no difficulty imagining him executing balletic movements. What he couldn’t see was the woman who would partner him. Beneath his dirty rope of hair, his pocked and greasy skin, lurked an odour of rot. Blaine smelled the way Jaffrey’s toenails did, if left too long between clippings.