Dusk was falling as the car slowed by one of the blocks and turned in through an archway. The archway was like a narrow, long tunnel, piles of rubbish pushed up against the sides. Beyond the far end I could see a couple of stunted trees silhouetted against more balconies.
“Okay,” said Roger. “So where’s your –”And Eleanor leaned in close to him and pressed her hand against his chest and there were two muffled bangs. Roger jerked twice and then slumped against me, gurgling. The driver was in sudden motion, scrabbling to get out of the car, but Eleanor shot him through the back of the seat and he somehow managed to fold himself up very small and tuck himself into the driver’s side footwell. The smell of blood in the car was suddenly very strong, and I had an overwhelming memory of myself looking down at the bodies of Anna and Lou.
“Out,” Eleanor said.
I stared at her.
“Out. Now. Get your bag and get out of the car.” She was completely calm and unhurried, tucking a small pistol back into her pocket.
Roger was still gurgling. “What did you do that for?”
“He was annoying me,” she said. “Get out of the car, Tommy.” She started to search through Roger’s pockets, came up with a wallet and his phone, then opened the door on her side and climbed out, looking both ways along the tunnel.
Roger started to shake, then he became still and stopped gurgling. I got out of the car and Eleanor and I looked at each other over the roof.
“We’re going to walk out of here,” she said. “Not run. Running is what guilty people do. We’re going to walk down to the tram stop we passed a mile or so back and we’re going to catch a tram back into town. Then we’re going to hire a car and get the fuck out of this place.” She reached back into the car and I heard something small and heavy fall onto the floor inside.
“We’ve been seen with him,” I said. “The cameras at the station will have recorded us getting into the car.”
“Ah, but that’s the trick of it, Tommy,” she said, straightening up and smiling sunnily at me. “You see, it doesn’t matter. We don’t exist.”
We walked down the tunnel and as we reached the street I heard a quiet thud behind us and felt a wave of heat on my back. When I looked over my shoulder the car was on fire.
6
IT STARTED TO rain as we reached the pickup point. Not a heavy rain, but a steady drizzle that made the pavements slick and started to run in the gutters.
Müller sucked his teeth. “Not good,” he said.
“We can’t call it off,” said Leo. “There might not be another chance.”
The engineer shrugged. “That fall isn’t stable,” he said. “Too much rain, it might not be safe. I won’t know until I’ve seen it.”
The four of us were wearing utilitarian black coveralls with various bits of equipment – lamps, devices with meters on them and so on – hanging from our belts. A small pile of equipment cases was stacked at our feet. It was five o’clock in the morning, and earlybirds on their way to work were looking at us as they went by.
“Has anyone defined the word ‘covert’ to these people?” Leo said.
A grey car went past us. At the last moment, it sped up, sending a rill of rainwater out of the gutter and over our boots. Through the windows, I saw two young men inside, looking at us.
“That’s them,” Müller said. “The Nazis.”
“They’re coming back,” Eleanor said.
The grey car had performed a turn a little further down the street and was coming back more slowly on the other side.
“Try not to confuse them,” Müller said. “They aren’t bright.”
The car stopped and for a minute or so nothing happened. I could see the young men inside having an animated conversation while looking across the road at us. Finally one of them got out. He was wearing a long black coat, its collar turned up against the rain, and he trotted across to us.
“Who’s this?” he demanded.
“What’s going on?” Müller said. “Look at me, I’m soaked.”
“Who is this?” the young man said again. He was blond and blue-eyed and he looked on the edge of panic.
“These are my colleagues, Herr Doktor Schmidt, Professor Brown and Doctor Jones.”
“You were told to come alone,” the young man said to Müller. “You were ordered not to bring anyone else.”
“Well,” Müller said angrily, “since my last two visits don’t seem to have helped you very much, I thought I’d get a second opinion. Professor Brown is an expert in fractal stress analysis and Doctor Jones has forgotten more than I’ll ever know about spray cement tunnel linings. They’re in town for a symposium.”
The young man looked at Eleanor. “You’re a woman,” he said.
Eleanor had gone still again. “Yes,” she said.
“My orders are to bring you into the Neustadt, Müller, not offer your friends a day-trip. You. What are you doing?”
Leo looked innocent. “Translating for my friends,” he said. “They don’t speak German. Do you have a name?”
“Steiff.”
Leo looked at Müller. “Is this what you dragged me out of bed at two o’clock in the morning for?”
“I said I needed your advice, Schmidt,” Müller answered. “Don’t be such a baby.”
“Wait, wait.” Steiff was trying to keep a lid on the conversation, but Leo and Müller were arguing and Leo was translating for us and it was all getting away from him.
“I’m not going without him,” Müller said. “I’m sick of being picked up at some god-forsaken hour of the morning and driven into your stupid city; I want to get your bloody problem fixed. I have a life of my own, you know?”
Steiff went through agonies of indecision. Finally he said, “Wait here,” and went back to the car.
“Prick,” muttered Müller.
“Who’s the other one?” Eleanor asked.
“Name of Freisler,” Müller said. “Also a prick.”
Steiff came back across the road. “Come with me,” he said. “We’ll let the Leutnant sort this mess out.”
It was cramped in the back of the car.
A SINGLE ROAD ran between Dresden and the Neustadt. Barring the way was an enormous door in the wall, like a solid metal portcullis, which rose in front of us and descended again when we had passed through into the tunnel beyond. We stopped and Steiff got out and went over to a sort of gatehouse set into the tunnel wall.
After a few minutes, Steiff returned with a uniformed Leutnant, who bent down and looked in through the open driver’s window. “All right,” he said. “Out.”
Our identification was checked, and we were scanned. Our equipment was examined. In one of the boxes, I saw the meat gun’s support case, but the Leutnant, faced with numerous unidentifiable bits of gear, passed over it.
Finally, he said, “You will not operate this equipment above ground. You will all submit to a full body search before being allowed to enter the Neustadt.”
“Nazi,” Müller muttered.
The Leutnant glared at him, but clearly couldn’t think of a suitably acerbic reply. “Blindfold them and take them in,” he told Steiff, and he marched away.
WE WERE TAKEN into a building a short distance from the gate, and in a windowless room our blindfolds were removed. A man in a white coat was standing in front of a tableful of equipment, some of it digital, some of it alarmingly manual.
“No,” Müller said.
“Strip,” said the man in the white coat in English, for our benefit.
“This never happened before,” Müller protested.
“I promise you I take no pleasure from this,” the man in the white coat said in a bored voice. “The rest of you can sit over there and watch. Or there is an anteroom, if you prefer.”
WE DROVE QUITE a distance. Müller complained about the search the whole way.
Finally we stopped, and Freisler and Steiff helped us – not very gently – out of the car and up a set of steps, through a door and along
a hallway. Then another set of steps leading down, and when they took our blindfolds off I saw that we were standing in a large, bare, windowless room with a big hole in the floor.
Standing near the hole were three men. One of them, a nervous-looking German who spoke poor English, introduced himself as Herr Buch, from the Buildings Administration. Then there was Koniev, whose English was very very good and who smiled far too much to be trustworthy. And there was an older man, untidy and bearish, who was not introduced to us and seemed more interested in poking at one of the walls with the blade of a Swiss Army knife.
Buch seemed genuinely excited to meet Eleanor. “Not the Brown who wrote ‘Gradations Of Fractal Stress In Spray-Applied Tunnel Linings’?”
Eleanor nodded. “I’m surprised you’ve heard of it.”
“A wonderful work!” Buch cried. “A work of true insight. We must discuss it later.”
“That will not be permitted,” Steiff said from the bottom of the stairs.
Buch looked at the young man. “No. No.” He recovered himself and shook Eleanor’s hand again. “But a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for coming.”
“Why have I been called back?” Müller asked with exaggerated politeness. “I told you what you needed to do last time.”
“Ah.” Buch suddenly became sad. “Another collapse. The lining of the tunnel has become dangerously unstable again.”
“They haven’t stopped building, have they,” Müller said. When he saw the look on Buch’s face he turned to Koniev. “I told you, no more building until the work underground is finished.”
Koniev was a small, slight man in his mid-forties with his short hair parted to one side and pasted down with scented oil. He had a thin, starved-looking face that looked as if it had never carried a real honest-to-god uncomplicated smile. He said, “Work must continue. We have deadlines.”
Müller looked stunned. “Deadlines?” he shouted. “Good God, man!” He turned to appeal to the other people in the room. “Thousands of toilets backing up, and all this apparatchik is worried about is his precious Five-Year Plan!”
In his corner, the archaeologist looked over his shoulder as if irritated by the interruption of his investigations. He saw Müller and smiled and waved his Swiss Army knife in greeting.
Müller turned on Koniev. “You drag me out here at this ungodly hour in the rain to deal with a problem of your own making?” he yelled.
Leo came up and put his hand on the older man’s arm. “Herr Müller,” he said quietly.
“Bah!” Müller shook the hand off and started towards the stairs. “You,” he said to a surprised-looking Steiff. “Take me home. I’m wasting my time here.”
“Officer,” Koniev said smoothly. “Stay where you are.”
Müller walked right up to Steiff and stopped almost nose-to-nose with him, breathing hard. After a moment he turned and looked at Koniev. By this time, the archaeologist had left his corner and was watching the little drama with polite interest.
“Herr Müller,” Koniev said. “You must understand that we in the Neustadt have certain concerns which you would not necessarily encounter in your everyday work in Germany.”
“Damn right,” Müller muttered.
“But this is still a new nation, and much has to be done,” Koniev continued. He lifted his hands in supplication. “Please, Herr Müller. Perhaps we can come to some kind of accommodation?”
“All building work above the site of the collapse must cease immediately,” Müller said, walking back to Koniev.
Koniev shook his head. “That is impossible, for the reasons I just described.”
“Perhaps,” Leo said before a punch-up started, “I might say something?”
Everybody looked at him.
“It just occurs to me that the sewer which has collapsed will be serving the buildings currently under construction,” he said. “Without the sewer, the buildings will be useless.” Koniev was watching him with narrowed eyes. “So it seems pointless to continue building work until the sewer is repaired.”
Müller nodded triumphantly and crossed his arms and looked to see what Koniev’s reaction would be. Buch, who was nominally supposed to be in charge of the operation, was entirely ignored.
“We will carry out our survey,” Koniev said after a moment’s thought, “and then I will make a decision.”
“Oh Christ.” Müller waved a hand disgustedly. “That’s no good. You’ll get me down there and listen to what I have to say and you’ll go on and do whatever you want anyway. You’re just like my wife, Koniev. The only advice she listens to is the kind that tells her she’s right.”
“Look,” said Leo, “a couple of hours ago I was fast asleep. Then Herr Müller telephoned me and asked me to come out on an emergency job.” He looked around at us. “Now, I never suspected the job would be in the Neustadt, and to be honest I still can’t understand why you don’t do it yourselves.” This last directed at Koniev. “But I’m here now, and if I go home because you two can’t agree on something it’ll mean I’ve been woken up for nothing. So I’m here, I’ll do what you want, and I’ll be grateful if you could give me a ride home. I don’t care whether you take my advice or not, but I’m never coming back here. I promise you that.”
Eleanor cleared her throat. “Doctor Smith and I were also called out at short notice,” she added. “Herr Müller is an old friend who thought that your problem would interest us and that our input would be of value. Speaking for myself, I have a paper to present this afternoon, so I would really appreciate it if someone would decide whether we’re staying or leaving.”
Everyone looked at Koniev. Even the archaeologist. Finally, the Russian said, “You will carry out your inspection. I will take your recommendations on board.”
Müller shrugged.
“Excellent,” said Koniev. “Shall we...?”
“SHOCKING,” THE ARCHAEOLOGIST said to me after we had been wading ankle-deep towards the main sewer for a few minutes.
“Beg pardon?”
“The bureaucratic mind,” he said, nodding at Koniev, who was wading along ahead of us with Leo and Müller. “Deadlines.”
“Oh. Well, that’s the world all over.”
“You’re from London?” the archaeologist asked.
“Nottingham.”
He beamed. “Robin Hood!” he declared, loudly enough for Koniev to look over his shoulder at us. “Maid Marian!” His English was good, but heavily accented.
“Yes,” I said.
“I should very much like to go there one day.”
I thought of my three days on the streets in Nottingham. “It’s very nice,” I said, not entirely convincingly.
“I’m sure it is.”
I looked back to where Steiff and Friesler were trudging along behind us trying to ignore the smell. “I don’t think we’re supposed to be talking to each other, Mr...”
“Mundt,” said the archaeologist. “Heinz Mundt.” We shook hands while we walked. “I’m only really here because I’m interested in the topology of underground structures. I don’t get to come down here every day.”
“Me neither,” I said. “I’m more of a theoretician.”
Mundt guffawed at that, and slapped me on the back.
We reached the main sewer. The branch opened into it like the flaring bell of a trumpet. We walked down the slope and were suddenly thigh-deep in sewage. It was a lot warmer in here than I had expected, and even though we were all wearing nose-plugs the smell really was quite spectacular. Buch had suddenly fallen behind us, and Freisler was starting to lag as well.
Mundt, however, seemed not to notice. “Most people are only interested in what lies on the surface. The shops, the transport system, cafés – the collection of rubbish, for example. Do you know that most people don’t ever see the people who remove their rubbish? What do they think happens? That the kobolds come along and take it away? That it vanishes of its own accord? And yet there is an intricate system to remove the rubbish.” Mundt sho
ok his head. He looked back. Buch and Friesler were nowhere to be seen. Mundt smiled.
Steiff had also made a strategic withdrawal by the time we reached the collapse, and Koniev’s face had gone a curious lime-green colour in the torchlight and he kept swallowing convulsively and pressing his hand to his mouth.
It was obvious that a catastrophic collapse had taken place here. The sewer was filled armpit-deep in places. A slope of rubble rose out of the sewage and joined the roof. Leo shone his torch on the roof, and I saw roots twisting down out of bare earth.
“Dangerous,” Mundt said. “Six workers dead here yesterday.”
“Herr Schmidt,” Müller said from halfway up the slope. “Would this be a good place?”
“It’s the place I would choose,” said Mundt. There was a splashing noise, and Koniev turned and ran back down the tunnel, lifting his feet high and sending a wave of ordure ahead of him. “Oops, there goes our esteemed colleague.” He smiled benignly. “Did you know there are only seven hundred people in the whole of the Neustadt?” He looked at us. “No? The place is almost deserted. It’s just a huge server farm. Five hundred security staff and the rest just techs and administrators. There’s not a soul here who would have the first idea how to fix this.” He lowered his voice. “I didn’t expect so many Coureurs.”
“I’m a Coureur,” said Leo. “These two are journalists. They say they want to interview you.”
Mundt looked strangely at Eleanor and me. “I didn’t ask for journalists,” he said.
“They saw the letter you sent. Somehow.” Leo looked at Eleanor, who just stared back. “It was addressed to us,” he told her. “To one of our stringers. It doesn’t seem to have reached him.”
Eleanor nodded and put her hand in a pocket of her overalls and took it out again holding the meat gun. I hadn’t seen her take it out of its case. Leo tensed up but didn’t move from where he was standing. Mundt just looked puzzled about why Eleanor appeared to be pointing a fat pork chop at us.
“Everyone seems so tense!” a voice back down the tunnel called cheerfully. A splashing noise announced the return of Koniev, mysteriously recovered from his nausea and also holding a pistol. “All this whispering and conspiracy. Now then, who shall I shoot first?”
Europe at Midnight Page 21