The Napoleon Complex

by E. M. DAVEY

  C said nothing.

  “Look at India, man,” Milne enthused. “We bestowed railways, courts, democracy and a civil service upon that rabble. We multiplied the amount of irrigated land by eight times, increased Indian life expectancy by eleven years and ran a bureaucracy with barely a trace of corruption. Now regard the political quagmire in Bangladesh or Pakistan. Or in east London for that matter. Even the damned Taj Mahal was falling down until a Brit stumped up for the repairs.”

  The spymaster polished his glasses and leaned his head to one side, evaluating the Prime Minister.

  “In the late Victorian Age,” Milne continued, “– and things were already on the slide then, by the way – there was this idea floating about that if Britain wanted to maintain her pre-eminence, she had to stop thinking of herself as a European country. Great Britain must no longer be a collection of islands in the North Sea. She must consider herself a worldwide state – or she would be overtaken. A mind-bending idea really, isn’t it? That Britain could be not a European country at all. That it might transcend its own continent.”

  He stopped talking as one of C’s subordinates drew near.

  “Anything from Vienna?” asked C.

  “Not yet.”

  “The greatest wickedness the politically correct ever wrought,” mused Milne once the minion had departed, “and by god there have been a few, was convincing us that the Empire was a Bad Thing. It wasn’t. And the world is poorer for it. So are the British people – lowered and traduced, shorn of dignity and self-respect.” He snorted. “If only you could see the dregs I have to shake hands with in our high streets and town centres. What happened to us!? A Victorian would be appalled. To conclude, the Empire was a Good Thing. Now, hypothetically speaking of course, might I enjoy your support in bringing it back?”

  “You don’t have to tell me about the benefits of Empire,” C said at last. “My grandfather ran a palm oil export company in Ghana. At independence we were Britain’s model colony, the richest country in West Africa. By the time his business was seized Ghana was in penury. We’d suffered half-a-dozen coups and the corruption was as bad as anywhere on earth. Next I consider the education my father and I received from Britain. Great Britain. I’ll do what I can, Prime Minister. MI6 is at your disposal. Moreover …” C breathed in, and a brief callousness flickered in his pupils. “Well, it’s exciting, isn’t it, Prime Minister? Your hypothetical project, that is. The ambition of it.”

  “If Wolsey finds what we’re looking for, by golly we will change history,” exclaimed Milne. “You and I, Dennis.”

  As the two men composed themselves the junior spy returned, brandishing a piece of paper.

  “From Vienna, sir.”

  C read the dispatch with increasing concern.

  52

  The sight that confronted the MI6 team as they entered the gallery was this: Jenny, her hands spread on the glass of an empty display case. The first American, twenty stone in weight and rosy-cheeked, his white-blond hair whisked into a Mr Whippy peak. An East Village style hipster with a pencil moustache, denim jacket rolled up at the sleeves to reveal tattooed forearms, and a haircut involving various fins and shaved bits. Damien di Angelo, with his hands in his pockets. And finally Jake, shamefacedly extricating himself from the cabinet.

  Parr closed in on the big guy, Chloë went for the hipster, Davis took di Angelo.

  Before any of them could react all three had a pistol barrel pressed into the back of their skulls. Five pairs of hands raised above shoulder height; Coppock-Davoli took a few steps back, pistol tracking back and forth. A fait accompli.

  “Hello, mate,” Davis said to di Angelo, twisting the barrel into the American’s skin where the neck met the skull. “You feeling a bit perkier?”

  A security guard wandered in and stood with mouth gaping, looking dumbly from protagonist to protagonist.

  “Oh, what do you want?” said Davis.

  Gunfire erupted from three sides of the room and the air was full of blood of the freshly-slain.

  *

  In the initial maelstrom nobody knew what was happening or who was firing at them. The hipster took a bullet to the cheek, head jerked back, gore splattered across the cabinet. His colleague was hit twice in the gut and once in the chest. The machine pistols were silenced, and their rounds emitted a futuristic pweut-pweut-pweut sound, like faeries of death, flitting about the room. There was the crack of bullets into granite, the splinter of wood and shatter of glass.

  A single round shattered Parr’s left elbow and her forearm dangled. Jenny threw herself to the floor; di Angelo dived into a granite sarcophagus, a bullet skimming the heel off one shoe. Chloë flung herself behind the slab of temple wall as a scattering of bullet holes peppered the ancient stars, and the rest of the MI6 team made it behind the two columns, cowering into twin triangles of cover. Jake and Jenny were close enough to touch noses, and for an instant they looked right into each other’s eyes.

  Blam-blam-blam-blam-blam. Blam-blam-blam-blam.

  A new firearm speaking, the machinegun fire briefly curtailed. Jake switched his phone to camera and used it as a periscope to peep over the cabinet. Davis was leaning against the column, loading a magazine into a cartoonishly huge handgun. Parr grimaced as Coppock-Davoli wound a strip of his shirt around her elbow. And by god, if it wasn’t Chloë. She squatted with her back against the slab of granite, a pistol clasped in both hands, eyes screwed shut as she summoned up courage to return fire. In all three doorways Jake glimpsed Chinese agents, the little black holes of their silencers flickering wickedly with white light. The air shimmered with disturbance.

  Blam-blam-blam-blam-blam.

  A scream in the far corner of the gallery; a drop in the volume of Chinese fire. Now Davis would whittle them down. Jake had seen this done before.

  “This is our chance,” Jenny shouted through the cacophony. “While they’re fighting each other …”

  An explosion rocked the centre of the gallery, horrendously loud. The whole gallery shook and a cascade of plaster bled from the ceiling. Jake chanced his camera again. The Chinese agents had fired a grenade round at the column which was blackened now, a crack running down it. Coppock-Davoli’s face was contorted in noiseless terror and his eyes blinked very fast. He had lost two fingers.

  Blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-blam.

  A female shriek this time.

  “How the hell are we meant to get out?” shouted Jake.

  “Like this.”

  Jenny grabbed the bundle of linen; Jake couldn’t help but noticed it was unmarked. And these were modern textiles. Early modern, to be precise. A plummeting sensation, even amid the heat of battle.

  Napoleon got there first.

  Jenny wound the bandages around one of the bricks and sparked a cigarette lighter. “When I throw this thing, we sprint for the nearest door,” she said. “Got it?”

  Jake nodded wordlessly. There was a fifty-fifty chance he was about to be killed. The textiles flared up immediately and Jenny tossed the burning bundle high across the gallery. For the duration of its flight all gunfire ceased; it was briefly possible to hear alarms. They made a dash for it. The ensuing moments went very slowly.

  In Jake’s peripheral vision, an impression of Chloë, darting for the flaming bundle. Her colleagues providing covering fire now, giving it everything. Blood all over the walls. Bodies everywhere. Chloë grabbed the burning linen and dived into the protection of the sarcophagus. Immediately Davis and Coppock-Davoli stopped firing and in a spasm of clarity Jake realised the Chinese gunmen were no longer pinned down. He and Jenny were metres from the door, marooned in space. The reaction that saved them was sheer instinct. Jake wrenched a granite stele off the wall – the grave marker was the size of a small door, and it landed upright with a thud. Adrenaline gave him the strength to pivot it like a shield and bullets smashed into the stone, nearly knocking him off his feet. Jenny rushed to help support the weight and they dragged it closer to the exit.
The skinny-legged Chinese woman lay in the doorway, boss-eyed, a bullet hole in her forehead. Then several things happened in quick succession that changed the battle completely.

  On his own initiative – impetuous, keen to impress – Coppock-Davoli dashed after Jake and Jenny. He was instantly picked up off the floor by a hail of gunfire and cast the length of the gallery, landing with a half-yelled glerk. A look of tragedy came into Davis’s eyes, followed by a fervour that made his pupils flash with violence and his face turn puce with rage. Suddenly a shotgun was in his hand and he strode from cover like a man of iron, too engorged with thoughts of vengeance to care whether he lived or died. The shotgun snapped and blasted and the Chinese agents disintegrated into red as explosive shells tore grapefruit-sized craters out of them. The Chinese team broke before the onslaught, fleeing deeper into the museum. The battle proceeded into the Greek and Roman galleries, but the rules and objectives had changed. Now it was Davis versus the People’s Republic of China, Davis bent on the destruction of every Chinese agent he could find, and none could stand before him. He pursued them through a gallery of red-figure vases – this was the really posh stuff. Shattering of pottery, snapping of bone, smattering of wine-dark blood into a double-handled drinking cup, where it submerged a painting of the bloodlust of Achilles after the death of Patroclus.

  Achilles leaped like a god bent on atrocious deeds, destroying right and left.

  Sad groans arose, and the crystal tide grew red with blood.

  The hurricane continued into the next gallery. A bearded Cypriot warrior with an archaic smile and beard of ringlets was blown clean in half by Davis’s shotgun. Behind it hid the agent with the tiny round glasses. He was blown in half too. Red slugs were splattered across a statuette of Asclepius the healer. A bust of Aristotle observed the carnage mildly; the philosopher’s pupil, Alexander the Great, would have been in awe. In the next gallery the Chinese attempted to make a stand. Sub-machinegun fire tore through three glass cabinets and six panes of glass. Oil lamps, votive figures, leering heads – all were catapulted around the room in a blizzard of terracotta. With three stamps of his shotgun Davis quieted the dissent once more.

  Who art thou, daring thus to oppose me?

  Unhappy men are they who encounter me in a fight.

  Jake and Jenny were forgotten. They ran down a fire escape and dived into the first vehicle they could, which was a pony and trap. The wheels span into a blur and they were away. Behind them the museum was a box of booms and explosions, rooms illuminated momentarily, smoke pouring from windows. Scores of people streamed from the building. Not one of them was Chinese.

  “Napoleon found all the inscriptions,” said Jenny as they clattered through the neoclassical Heldenplatz Gate. “Everything except the Zagreb Linen.”

  “We took the wrong path,” said Jake.

  Jenny leaned towards the driver. “Can you drop us at a train station for the airport?”

  “Where are we going?” asked Jake.

  They were passing the balcony where Hitler announced the Anschluss between Germany and Austria.

  “We’re going to the UK,” said Jenny. “We’re going to learn all we can about Randolph Churchill and his ‘curious letter’ from Queen Victoria. We’re going to discover why the sun set on the British Empire. We’re going to find out what became of Britain’s Disciplina Etrusca after the map was painted red, and then we’ll burn it to ashes so this can never happen again. We’re going back, Jake. We’re going home.”

  Part Three

  The Augur

  (?)

  The weary titan staggers under the too vast orb of its fate. We have borne the burden for many years … it is time our children should assist us to support it!

  Joseph Chamberlain, Edwardian politician

  53

  Serval. Back in London, drinking alone in the afternoon at the Windsor Castle in Kensington, where they first recruited him. Only it wasn’t beer at his elbow now, it was an expensive single malt. The tatty polo shirt had gone too, replaced with a tailored number from Huntsman of Savile Row, from where the first crate had just been dispatched to the steaming rainforests of Sierra Leone. A change in the way Serval appraised people too, as they bustled about the pub. A new pitilessness. The previous night he had chatted up an acquaintance, slept with her and then told her he loved her just for the hell of it. He had felt her wilt in his arms; he wasn’t returning her calls.

  His encrypted mobile rang and he put down the Financial Times.

  “Jacob. It’s C. How are you? Recuperating well?”

  “Not too bad, sir,” said Serval.

  He looked the picture of health.

  “Would you come to see me right away? We have need of your famous powers of persuasion.”

  Serval left the dram unfinished and caught a black cab to Vauxhall Cross. Thirty minutes later he was sitting in a Secure Speech Room with C and a woman he’d never seen before. She was silver-haired and impassive; her left arm was in a sling. C didn’t introduce her and Serval didn’t ask.

  “First things first,” said C. “The situation in Sierra Leone’s improved dramatically. You’ve saved a lot of lives and heartache. Well done.”

  Serval made no comment.

  “Now I’ve got another task for you. More of the same, I’m afraid.”

  “Ebola and African wars. That my beat then?”

  A skin deep smile. “You’re aware this drug ZMapp which was so effective a couple of years ago has had little effect on the outbreaks in Nigeria and Sierra Leone?”

  “Yup.”

  “Well, its descendant, ZMapp2, has been much more efficacious.” C wound a signet ring around his little finger. “But there’s not much ZMapp2 about, and it’s time-consuming to manufacture – only a couple of pharm companies make it right now. It goes without saying that one of those is in London, and they’ve just agreed a big sale to the Nigerian government. I want you to persuade them to think again.”

  “Respectfully, sir, why would we want to do that? Aren’t things grim enough in Nigeria right now?”

  “I want it to go to Sierra Leone instead. It’s like fighting fires – you put out one before tackling the next.”

  “I’ve seen what this virus does to people,” said Serval.

  That little girl; her flaking skin.

  “I hope you’re not questioning our judgement?” C had turned severe. “You’ve seen the Prime Minister’s ethical foreign policy yourself. Munificent to a fault, especially when it comes to the Commonwealth. This is for the best.”

  Serval shrugged. “You got it.”

  “The owner’s a man called Abdul Khan,” said C, tossing a folder onto the table. “You might have heard of him?”

  Serval opened the file. “Sunday Times Rich List … worth £500 million … and he lives in – Walthamstow, east London? That doesn’t seem like a natural fit.”

  “He’s a devout Muslim, Labour councillor, pillar of the local Pakistani population. Wants to be seen to be staying in ‘the community’. He also likes getting pissed. If that helps.”

  “It helps.”

  The silver-haired woman had said nothing, only studied him.

  *

  And so to east London. It was strange going on the Tube again, and everything he saw on the other side he did not like. Row after row of godawful chicken shops, all crammed with customers. Firms of solicitors specialising in immigration and criminal law; a grimy cash and carry furniture shop, now defunct. Groups of Bulgarians drinking super-strength lager; men with beards spilling out of a mosque in a converted shop, their burka-clad wives watching from a distance. It felt more foreign than Freetown, a place he’d be ashamed to tell his father he had bought a flat in.

  Serval was aware he was thinking differently now, that he was what some might call a xenophobe. Well, who cares? He knew such thoughts were out of step with the times, but let them come, he no longer cared. The savagery he’d witnessed had shown him something: about the value of Anglo-Saxon civilisation
, as opposed to that of other peoples. That Britain had built a country people wanted to live in was no longer a mark of success, but of failure. The country was an importer, not exporter, of human stock. Invaded, not invaders. Serval realised he was going to enjoy this job, blackmailing this hypocrite. He agreed wholeheartedly with the Prime Minister’s goal, so far as he understood it: the rebuilding of British global prestige by interventions abroad.

  Harold Macmillan came to mind.

  This is the choice – the slide into a shoddy and slushy socialism, or the march to the third British Empire?

  Britain had chosen hip replacements over Harrier Jump Jets, and the result was its own diminishment. Plus the descent of lesser nations like Sierra Leone into the chaos he had witnessed and made right.

  As Serval neared Walthamstow Village the houses got grander and better tended. He even saw the odd English person – yummy mummies with prams and dungarees. But Khan’s mansion was the biggest of all: a sprawling hotchpotch of columns and pediments. Bit otiose, his father would have said. A bloody great Bentley was parked up outside and some idiot had pebble-dashed the house in decades past. The other side of the street was a shabby row of post-war two-up two-downs, mostly converted into flats. Two were for sale, both top floor. Helpful. Serval peered at the upper windows, evaluating the potential crow’s nests.

  The door of the first flat was opened by a tired-looking woman in her forties with a fag in her mouth.

  She did something to her hair. “Oh, hello! Can I help you?”

  “Good afternoon. Are you Annabel?”

  “Sorry, I think you’ve got the wrong house.”

  Serval apologised with courtly manners and tried the second flat. Nobody answered. It was still light, so he went to the pub. A couple of respectable families were having a natter on the benches outside St Mary’s Church; opposite stood a newly restored fifteenth-century house, the timber frame visible. This is it, thought Serval, not quite engulfed yet. The England I am fighting for.