His second action was to drive into the Central Enclave to visit a house in a humble corner of the prestigious Mayfair district. The sirens of the motorcycle escort cleared the streets of pedestrians as a shark clears a path through a school of tuna. There were no man-hauled wagons or oil-fired limousines about. The only other vehicles were armoured cars and glory trucks, which pulled over at the scream of sirens. As the streets became progressively narrower, Donald had to call out directions to his driver. It was some years since he had visited the location in question—to drop off his daughters, not as a guest. His memory was hazy. After a couple of embarrassing back-tracks, the noisy little convoy drew up outside the gates of a fine white-painted stone mansion set behind a high wall backed with cypress trees.
No reaction stirred from behind the rivetted iron gates. Donald stood in his dark grey Party suit and black leather raincoat, Colt 38 pistol gripped inside the right pocket, scanning the upper floors of Laxbury House for any signs of life. The first floor and mansard windows had been shuttered with steel plates. He asked two of the motorcycle riders to give him a leg up against the gates. No one shot his head off as he peered into the garden. The ground floor windows were also secured by steel shutters. The place was abandoned and his daughters long gone to the Lands of Krossington. For several minutes he simmered over whether to order the place burned to the ground. As minister for trade he was authorised by the Provisional Cabinet of the Republic of the New Nation to take any actions he deemed necessary to invigorate the economy.
Burning down a mansion created demand for reconstruction. Any destruction was therefore creation; definitions were all relative.
After cooling a little, he wrote out an ordnance on an official form that declared Laxbury House to be the property of the Republic of the New Nation. No entry was permitted except by those authorised by the Provisional Cabinet. Signed, the minister for trade.
The next stop was back outside the Grande Enceinte. His fish-like black petrol car with its escort of one light armoured car in front, another behind and six motorcycle outriders roared up the turnpike from Ladbroke fort, restrained by the armoured cars’ maximum speed of thirty-five miles per hour. Their tormented oil engines spewed up clouds of grey smoke which swirled behind in a long tail and fouled the air of Donald’s car. The little convoy turned under the iron arch of the Friendly Cooperative of North Kensington basin. The gravel standing yard was empty. The vehicles pulled up outside the customs house and shut off their engines. Complete silence descended on the scene. Donald entered the customs house to find it empty of the usual line of ultramarine drivers. A single customs official stood at the counter. It was the same man who had served him when he came out here for the first time looking for Sarah-Kelly. That was only five weeks ago. The official switched on his flashlight smile and then switched it off.
“Are you aware that all frontiers within the Republic have been declared illegal by the Provisional Cabinet?” Donald said.
A big tough with a sawn-off shotgun stepped out of the back office and aimed at Donald’s face. He said:
“We don’t have time for you fucking radicals with your crazy laws and screaming leaders. Just state your business.”
Donald could have pointed out that the Provisional Cabinet had also banned the bearing of arms except by forces of the Republic. He decided to leave the individual concerned to learn the hard way. Instead, he laid down his brand-new citizen’s passport and paid the tariff for a day visa and a runner to fetch the members of the Basin Council.
An hour later he returned to his car in a thoughtful and gloomy mood. He had met the three basin councillors. One of them was Bartram Newman, although neither he nor Donald revealed they knew each other and there had been no chance in the tense encounter to ask him to one side for news about Lawrence. Such favoured attention would naturally have generated seething suspicions in the other two councillors. There was a fundamental deadlock of principles between the bargee enterprises and the Republic of the New Nation. The Provisional Cabinet had declared that all commerce must be conducted in the paper fiat legal tender of the republic, the Free Dollar. The bargees refused point-blank to take ‘boxes of paper’; they would take only gold. If the Republic did not like the terms on offer, that was the Republic’s tough luck so far as they were concerned. Donald was unable to budge them on the matter, not least because of his own sympathy with their position.
He was becoming suspicious of Farkas’ motivations in making him minister for trade. The other members of the Provisional Cabinet were more or less openly sceptical of a man who had been Tom Krossington’s appointed regent. One character called General Yelcho had been especially caustic.
“I trust you’ll show greater loyalty to us than you did to your previous master, you colourless puppet.”
Donald had suppressed a retort that Yelcho had until Sunday been, like Farkas, a team lieutenant of General Wardian and no doubt owed his absurd jump in rank only to his friendship with the president. As for the president, what was he? The Provisional Cabinet had been ‘declared’ on Sunday afternoon after an ‘emergency plenum’ of party survivors. In reality, Farkas was president on no stronger credential than having jumped on a box and yelled across Brent Cross market place that he was the president. In Donald’s eyes, the cabinet had no more legitimacy than a fourth-form debating club. Who the hell were they to insult him? Yet he had to be careful in his retorts; they were his raft. They were his place in the world. They held his leash, damn them.
Donald’s mood was not improved by his next effort as minister for trade. He wished to meet with gangster chieftains to introduce them to the Republic and tell them they were now citizens, with all the rights and protections that went with that. By way of making a start, he had tried to draw them out onto Willesden Market. If one imagined it as a hub, then gangster petty domains surrounded it like segments of a wheel. Firing his pistol in the air drew silence. Smarting with exasperation, he ordered his retinue back to Brent Cross for lunch. He was increasingly convinced Farkas had given him this portfolio knowing he would make a fool of himself. Doubtless it would lighten the Provisional Cabinet meetings to have a loser they could all laugh at. It would dissipate jealousies that otherwise could have been dangerous. The failure of ‘sensible Donald’ would also justify ‘effective action’ by the likes of General Yelcho against North Kensington basin, gangsters and anyone else who objected to the diktats of the Provisional Cabinet.
In short, he was being kept alive because he was useful, at least for the time being.
On the way home, his driver lost patience dawdling in the smoke of the armoured car. He swerved around it and put his foot to the floor. Donald gaped at the speedometer needle as it swung around past one hundred miles per hour. The engine shrilled with power. The brick walls of the turnpike swelled out of the distance and shot behind as the car leaped and writhed over the beaten gravel. What seemed smooth as water at a brisk walk turned into a dangerous swell at the speeds these petrol-fired motor cars could reach—and the motorcyclists had torn off ahead even faster, throwing up rooster-tails of dusk and grit that stung the bodywork of the car.
The driver had to slow down for the ruts and craters of Brent Cross market place. After they stopped, Donald called all the motorcyclists and the driver together to address them.
“From now, my fellow citizens, you will respect a maximum speed of forty miles per hour.”
To his surprise, this was greeted with bitter sullenness. An air of hostility closed upon him. He added:
“Can’t you see it’s for your own good? You can’t race about at one hundred miles per hour and get away with it forever.”
“Forty miles per hour, Mr Aldingford?” The driver’s voice was strained. “At that speed we’re sitting ducks.”
“Sixty then, but only well away from people and brick walls.”
This concession was taken in better spirit. The problem with these petrol-fired cars and motorbikes was they could
reach the speed of a flying boat in seconds—just feet from hard brick and soft flesh. There was a diabolical temptation in them. They turned normally docile, obedient men into reckless fools.
*
It was just after noon when he returned to the National Party headquarters at Brent Cross, where he sought out Sarah-Kelly for a quick lunch. She sat, extremely flustered, at a desk across the office from President Farkas, who had appointed her to the grand role of lead statement manager of the Atrocity Commission.
“Take a break?” he asked, rubbing her back.
“This is a nightmare—the records pour in and get dumped all over the place. The folk murdered at Bloomsbury kept so much in their heads that with them gone the whole thing’s chaos and meantime top killers are escaping out to the sovereign lands because they haven’t been named for arrest.”
“It’s always a good idea to step back and take a big view. Anyway, I want to talk about something.”
He led her downstairs to the canteen. It was packed. They waited twenty minutes in the queue, by which time the choice had narrowed to mashed parsnips and roesti. There was no chance of a quiet word whilst eating elbow to elbow. He waited until afterwards, when they strolled up and down the steps of the headquarters building.
“I want to talk about Lawrence,” he said, keeping alert for anyone drifting close enough to hear. He had not shown Sarah-Kelly the statement by Leading Basic Garrington. It had gone back into a process of thousands of such statements from which it was unlikely ever to surface to her attention.
“I haven’t had time to think about him.”
“I want your frank opinion. You see, I’ve been doing a little drifting about amongst former glory officers, sounding people out generally. I’ve got a far better understanding of promotion in the glory trusts—as always, when you look closely, it turns out things aren’t as simple as they appeared in caricature.
“People did get promoted without being top killers. One way up was through corruption. The contraband networks replicated themselves by pulling up juniors to be seniors who would in turn pull new juniors up behind them. On the other hand, there were also competent bureaucrats, people in planning, logistics, human resources, corporate sales and so forth. And there were excellent fighting leaders who tackled pirates or other brigands to keep the sea lanes open.
“What we have is a Lawrence who served on barges for three years and got rapid promotion. It does not prove anything.”
Sarah-Kelly said nothing, although her expression suggested she would rather have talked about her own funeral.
“You knew him better than anyone else,” Donald said.
“I can’t believe he did the kind of things I’ve heard about in the Commission. He was thoughtful. That was his downfall, I think, along with not hiding his contempt of most of the other officers. Why would someone who’d read a whole roomful of books slaughter people?”
“It’s not about whether he read a roomful of books or not. The Lawrence I remember never showed any cruel streak as a boy; he never tortured cats or bullied weaker boys. His trait was defiance in the face of authority...” Despite which, it was incontrovertibly the case Lawrence had made himself useful to General Wardian glory trust—Account-Captain Turner had been quite sneeringly emphatic about that during the meeting in Oban.
“Something disturbed him though,” Sarah-Kelly said. “He had nightmares, he babbled about ‘light brushes’ and ‘hard brushes’. A ‘light brush’ is when surplus are taken back to port—I’ve learned that in my work—and a ‘hard brush’ is a prevention; they use the so-called brass-muncher. I’ve also heard it called a killer-quad, which is a more honest name.”
“Maybe he picked up rumours.” Donald was thinking of Lawrence’s friendship with Team Lieutenant Haighman. “Before we can do anything at all, I need to check that the court martial has been revoked and the Night and Fog sentence cancelled as TK promised they would be. If it’s all done and dusted, life gets an awful lot easier for all concerned. Then he is no longer a wanted man and we can get him out here and talk to him. It must be driving Bartram up the wall sheltering a fugitive from the Night and Fog.”
“How will we find all that out?”
“I’ve asked for his personnel file to be sent up from corporate HQ.” Donald smiled. “Being in the Provisional Cabinet does have some perks.”
Chapter 21
Donald found both Lawrence’s and Garrington’s personnel files waiting on his desk. He opened Lawrence’s file. To begin with, he checked whether the revocation of the court martial and annulment of the Night and Fog sentence had been brought up to date in the file. They had been—a communiqué signed by the executive-marshal of General Wardian reinstated Lawrence at the rank of cost-centre lieutenant along with all privileges as they had been as of 15/07/06. A subsequent note signed by an account-captain somewhere in the HQ bureaucracy stated that as of 25/11/06 it had not been possible to trace Lawrence Aldingford but enquiries would continue.
The file made keen reading to a brother who knew almost nothing of his sibling’s career. Lawrence had made immediate impact as a quick-witted, natural leader, with a fine memory and probing intellect. He was marked for high command even while he preferred the clunking route up from probationary basic to senior NCO of a combat unit. One sensed a certain reticence in appraisals by his officers—the use of vague phrases like “solves problems efficiently”, “a discreet individual”, “may be trusted with difficult tasks” could mean a great range of things, all subject to a context known only to the writer. The impression was Lawrence completed his missions without incurring a fuss higher up the chain of command.
The file of Leading Basic Garrington was much thinner. It told of an unexceptional teenager who drew perfunctory comments of satisfactory progress in training. He had indeed been assigned to the Oban garrison, he had indeed been allocated as crew of ‘survey barge’ Oban-C. Grade Lieutenant First Class Aldingford had signed off a favourable preliminary evaluation. There followed a sequence of memos. Lawrence’s memo to his boss Account-Captain Second Class Turner that Garrington was missing after an informal search of the barracks, Oban’s pubs and brothels had failed to turn him up. Several crewmen had provided statements that money and personal valuables were missing on return to Oban from Garrington’s first patrol. Then Turner’s report to his boss, an executive-colonel in charge of Accounts Scotland, formally invoking a hunt by Corporate Audit to arrest Garrington on charges of theft and desertion. A stack of records evidenced the efforts of Corporate Audit to find their man: a watch put on the family home; routine visits to local pubs; interviews with old school friends and former teachers at the local street school. None of these had yielded success after almost two years, although “enquiries are ongoing”.
What would a court make of this? Garrington’s statement seemed to have the conviction of truth about it, against which, the ingenuity of clever liars should not be under-estimated. Equally, the charges of theft could have been fabricated. Donald felt suspended by suspicions and doubts running both ways.
His own convictions, as well as his legal training, held Lawrence innocent until proven guilty. It ran deeper than just wishing to believe the best of his last surviving kin. Donald just could not make himself believe a youth whose only vice was insolence could have become a pitiless mass-murderer. It was easier to believe Lawrence had been tempted into corruption, even if that ran against a boyhood free of cheating, lying or stealing. Father had once commented the only reason he continued to keep Lawrence at school was his honesty, which proved that somewhere within his errant son there was an honourable person.
Donald sat for a while, thinking of matters beyond Lawrence. By this time, National Party bulletins had spread throughout the Republic of the New Nation announcing Donald Aldingford as the new minister for trade. Probably TK and Wingfield had already read one. It chilled Donald to imagine TK’s reaction. He had sent Pezzini to the Nameless Gone for far less a crime than
very publicly inverting all loyalties to serve the deadly enemies of the sovereign caste. Donald’s appointment in the Provisional Cabinet would be seen as the single most potent way of humiliating the Krossington clan and destroying TK’s credibility within it. In truth, Donald was a dead man standing.
He faced a choice: either become a party fanatic or get away from the rebellion. The question was, get away to what?
Donald had no idea. However, being reunited with a brother who had been a successful glory trooper and had the resourcefulness to escape from the Night and Fog did look advantageous. Maybe they could hide out in the eastern marshes of the Republic towards Dartford Crossing until the rebellion was over. According to rumour, many glory troopers had sought this refuge to avoid being drafted into the National Army. Sarah-Kelly could hide with her family in North Kensington basin.
“I want you to send an official summons to one Lawrence Morton Aldingford at North Kensington basin,” he said.
“Why?” Sarah-Kelly said.
“There’s no other way we can speak to him. We certainly can’t wander in to the customs house and ask to see Bartram Newman. It would be around the basin in a flash that the Newmans are in some private business with the Republic. They’d be lynched by their fellow bargees.”
“Sending an official letter from here will do the same thing.”
“I shall send a general communiqué as minister for trade to the Basin Council—nothing radical, just some fluff to follow up on the meeting I had this morning. Bartram will get a copy along with the other two members and it won’t excite any suspicion. We’ll put the summons for Lawrence inside the copy sent to Bartram.”
“Well... It’s ridiculous. He’s just four miles away over Duddon Hill and he might as well be on the moon.”
“I’ll get something drafted. I suggest summoning Lawrence for 5 pm so we can go into town afterwards to celebrate.”
Sovereigns of the Collapse Book 1 Page 26