Transmission Mast. There it is. So we’re up the hill. This may mean we’ve won, at least it means we have the advantage, what happened to the rest of the Islamists? For a moment, with that spidery tetrapod looming out of the rain—which had become a fine, stinging hail—Ax had the wonderful illusion that the battle was over and it hadn’t been too bad. But here they come, another rush. The voice in his ear told him what was happening now: about five or eight hundred Islamists had been waiting on the ridge, and it’s all to do again. Pull the company, such as has remained in reach, together. Slamdance over to the open base of the mast, not much shelter but a focus, and now we can use the rifles again, firing into the wall of this renewed advance. Sometimes you can think in this. As if walking in the night… Do the mechanical things, concentrate your mind on something else entirely. He realised that Sage was beside him. So they had made it. They dropped together behind a heap of stones, an old cairn that stood by the mast. Breather.
Ax stared ahead of him, listening for Signals, hearing only static.
‘What’re you thinking? Chris, don’t start posing, get down, you stupid fucker—’
‘Space programme.’
Sage tipped back his head and cackled, skull’s jaws parting on open—throated darkness.
‘Yeah, very funny, but think of what’s happening to us: no GPS on this battlefield. Phone networks wrecked in the name of landscape preservation, satellite owners changing the locks because we can’t pay the rent. I don’t see going back to a terrestrial system. We may have to put up our own hardware.’
‘Oh really? Launched from where and with what?’
‘That’s what I’m thinking about.’
‘You, beyond belief. Better get back on. Are we winning?’
‘Yes.’
The fighting was becoming scattered, spreading out. Their position between the great metal limbs would soon be out of the loop, the Islamists were giving ground fast. It’s over: nothing left to do but fire from comparative safety into what begins to be a full retreat.
‘I hate this,’ muttered Ax, coming down. ‘I fucking hate the whole thing—’
‘Could be worse. We haven’t had to torture anyone yet.’
‘Oh, right. We’re having a clean war. But we know what’s going on: and some of the most evil stuff is being done by our side,’ Suddenly he turned on Sage. ‘What d’you mean had to? Under what fucking circumstances would you feel you had to—?’
‘Figure of speech, Ax. Calm down.’
‘Fuck. Let’s get after them. No point in staying here til we run out of ammo.’
Ax went charging out across the ridge, the others followed. Some Islamists had formed a block and were departing in order, others spilling out in all directions. The weather had worsened again, the hail driven by a bitter wind: and suddenly, right overhead, that sound like tearing silk. Three silhouettes zoomed out of the cloud, three unmarked fighter planes shearing down, raking the field with machine gun fire. Everywhere bodies dropped, hit or diving for cover. The block of retreating Islamists kept going, some of them falling: it was not at all clear whose side the planes were on. Ax stood staring upward, trying to identify them. Where the fuck are they coming from? The voice in his ear was reporting victory but not any more. This is not a victory.
Someone grabbed him. It was Brock, the big mouthy Extreme Green. ‘Ax! Fucking hell! Yer not going to bring down any fighters with that popgun, let’s get off the hill!’
They ran: Sage and Brock in the fore with Ax, Chris and Zip, a few others, such as Jackie Dando, Romany ex-squaddie, the man with the smack, someone Sage would not have regretted much if he’d been left on the Moss. Soon Ax came back from his blank-out, stopped short, changed direction.
‘This way. Ground gets more broken, better cover—’
Of course he was right, he was always right. Through swerving gusts of hail they could see the upland folding into valleys, furze of bare tree branches almost underfoot: then they were dropping into a narrow gorge, a stream in the bottom. Sage, jumping down from the rocks, almost landed on top of a lone Islamist.
He’d been hiding among boulders, using a phone. Sage got the phone. Brock and Jackie got the unknown, hauled him to his feet, relieved him of a rifle, held him by the upper arms. He was a slight young man, in battledress that looked weirdly clean and tidy, like his mum had pressed it for him; a neat white bandana around his brow. ‘Who were you calling?’ said Jackie, amiably. ‘You won’t get a taxi to come and pick you up out here, Ahmed.’
The prisoner stood, mouth tight, eyes bright, staring at Sage: who was checking the phone, and discovering something disturbing. He handed it to Ax, the skull looking oh, shit, and went up to the prisoner, invasively close and evil.
‘You’re French,’ he said. ‘What are you doing here, mademoiselle?’
A second’s stunned panic. Then she burst into life, threw off the startled barmies, pulled a small automatic from inside her flak jacket and almost blew a hole through the mask before they disarmed her. The tableau resumed, Sage well in her face, that skull looking uncannily natural, peering out from a sage-green British Army Issue balaclava—
‘Yes, French, and a woman,’ She spat, glaring defiance, ‘So what, English?’
‘Well, I’d rather be a woman than a frog-eater,’ said Sage, grinning, wiping saliva from the skull’s chin with the back of a skeleton hand. ‘Just about, rather.’
‘Suit yourself, exhibitionist asshole.’
‘I bet you know something about those planes,’ said Brock.
The rest of the group had caught up. They scrambled into the gorge and stood staring at the prisoner. About twenty men, some gaps in the ranks, some walking wounded; some strays from other parties. All of them powder-blackened, dirty, unshaven, dishevelled, many of them pierced and scarified like savages.
Ax repeated Sage’s question, more gently. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I fight for the cause of religious freedom,’ she answered, visibly struggling now to assemble her English. Her eyes flickered, taking in the size of them, their numbers, the threat of their sex. ‘That’s all you will get out of me.’
‘Right,’ said Ax. He walked away, sat on a rock and stared at the ground. At last he took out his own phone. ‘You may as well relax, everyone. I’ve got to talk to some people. Sage, could you come over here?’
Sage went over, and sat by Ax. The hail flew into their eyes and faces, bounced glittering from the ground; rattled on stone. A very dead sheep lay festering on the brink of the noisy little stream. What’s that stain in the water? Iron? Ah, no: too dark, and crimson rather than rust. Blood, from some dead or dying human body fallen in, back towards Yap Moss.
There’d been reports of foreign nationals spotted with the Islamists. This was the first solid confirmation.
‘Of course she knows something about the planes,’ said Sage.
‘Yeah. Fuck. Looks like we’ve got international intervention. Non government, I suppose, like us. Not that the French have much government at the moment, not that it makes any difference. This is very bad.’
‘What are we going to do with her?’
‘I’ll get a police helicopter, we’ll take her to Easton Friars. It’s not important. Sage, I’m not going to pretend this can be fixed. I’m not going to carry on.’
‘Okay.’ Sage looked up into the darting white hail and the grey sky. ‘Sounds reasonable to me. If the Islamists have outside support, we are fucked. Might as well admit it now, ’stead of pissing around creating havoc for about ten years first. But what then? How do we stop the real military from moving in?’
Silence.
‘Ax?’
‘I’ve got an idea. No, it’s more than an idea. I know what to do. I think I’ve known since we came up from London. I just couldn’t face it.’
‘You gonna to tell me what the idea is?’
‘Not right this moment. Sorry.’
‘Oh, no problem.’ No problem, except Ax looking as if he
was about to jump off a very high building. See if he could fly. ‘Just remember, before you make any strange moves: the President is holding my band hostage, as well as your girlfriend, your brothers, your drummer, and the rest of the Few.’
‘Don’t worry. I can handle the Pig, and this will work.’
They walked a few miles to a headland where the helicopter (a very special concession: the police treasured those machines) could pick them up. The lads went on, out to the road: to rejoin their own groups, get medical treatment; or find their way back to the camp in the forest. Ax and Sage and the prisoner were taken to Easton Friars outside Harrogate, present quarters of the barmy High Command. Richard was waiting in the great desolate front hall.
‘Congratulations. Come upstairs, to the habitable regions, we’ve made arrangements for mademoiselle up there. You two’ll want to clean up.’
‘Suppose we will. Congratulations?’
‘I hear you won a famous victory.’
‘Old news.’
The house had been empty before the barmies arrived. It was ruined still: damp seeping through the bare walls, shards of plaster fallen from the ceilings; dust-sheeted furniture that no one had bothered to remove rotting in situ. While Ax spent the next day with the commanders Sage explored, opening doors, surprising fieldmice, spiders, ghosts. He found the prisoner alone with her chaperone, in a cavernous empty salon on the first floor. She seemed pleased to see him. The mask didn’t scare her now she realised it was merely a rockstar’s stupid affectation. Shame.
‘So your friend is Ax Preston.’
She’d been treated nicely and politely questioned, and in the end had made no difficulty about telling them who she was with. Her outfit called itself the Force Expeditionaire Internationale. They were French, German and Netherlanders, mostly. She didn’t know all the nationalities. Maybe some Russians. They were all Muslim, and it was their right and duty to join the jihad. She’d come over by sea. The planes were ‘borrowed’ from the French Air Force. She didn’t know about the pilots, or what weaponry they had, or where they were flying from.
‘He’s a superb guitarist, that I know. But how is he your Prime Minister?’’
Sage chose one of the rotting chairs and sat in it, cautiously. Outside tall windows, Easton Friars deerpark stretched gloomily to the horizon. Bit of a doer-upper; plenty of room to sling a frisbee though. The chaperone smiled, and pretended to go on reading her book.
‘Countercultural Prime Minister. It’s a dual system. No idea. Because he wants to be.’
‘Quoi? What kind of reason is that?’
He shrugged, took out a packet of cigarettes and offered them. She shook her head. My friend, he thought, had the bizarre foresight—before the crash—to get a data wafer planted in his head, holding a phenomenal amount of information about this country. He knows where the sewers are laid, how the contour lines run, where the bodies are buried. I’m not going to tell you that. The fewer people know or realise it the better. Richard knows, I’m sure: but he’s okay. But it’s not the reason. Fucked if I know what makes him do what he does. He’s just the Ax.
In the operations room, the group of men Ax had met that night in Doncaster discussed the girl’s revelations and Ax’s idea; and how to negotiate the necessary arrangements. Richard Kent was concerned and puzzled that Sage had been left out of the loop, actually barred from this meeting by Ax himself.
‘It’s for the best,’ said Ax. ‘Trust me.’
‘But won’t he—?’
‘I’ll get some shit, but it’ll be okay. Head Ideology will see me through.’
‘I suppose you know what you’re talking about.’
The same helicopter carried them to Bradford, some days later: Ax and Sage and the girl. They were to deliver her personally, unharmed, to the leader of Muslim Yorkshire—and, by general reckoning, the paramount leader of English Islam—Sayyid Muhammad Zayid al-Barelewi. The Muslim leader and Ax had never met. The Sayyid didn’t negotiate, he didn’t do tv: he had steadfastly refused to have anything to do with the infidel. Yet he’d agreed to this proposal. The barmy chiefs had been incredulous of the idea. Ax had known it would be okay.
The machine landed them at a motorway junction north of town. From here they were taken, in a cavalcade of huge black 4X4s, into the city centre. Then they walked, surrounded by a hollow square of smartly turned out Yorkshire Muslim soldiers, in battledress and white turbans. The streets were calm. There were women around, with and without the veil; even children. In this community armed men did not have the profile of a nightmare aberration. They were in keeping, they belonged to the order of things. Ax’s heart weighed him down like lead in his chest. This calm was terrible, a reason for Fiorinda’s mourning, the end of a world, an unbearable loss: but he had to bear it. Accept.
‘Ever been here before?’
‘Nah. Leeds, Durham, Middlesborough, Newcastle, Halifax… Beverley. Weird place, Beverley. Never played Bradford, that I recall. You?’
‘Don’t remember. Take off the mask.’
The skull looked dubious. ‘Ax, I don’t think so.’
‘Take it off. Please. No rockstar fancy-dress here.’
They’d reached a street where the substantial Victorian houses on one side had been razed, replaced by a mosque and another building inside a walled courtyard: the Sayyid’s home. At an Arabian Nights gateway, candy pink with gilt cartouches of Arabic lettering, Ax and Sage surrendered their weapons. The escort dropped back. The crowd of hawk-faced young guardsmen inside the gateway started muttering. When Ax tried to pass through there was suddenly a wall of bodies in his way, rifles levelled.
‘What’s going on?’
‘No Anglo-Saxons!’ they shouted.
‘Let me pass. It was agreed, you have to let me pass.’
He was so keyed up he hardly realised he was facing a row of trigger—happy assassins. Some of the escort that had brought them from town hurried forward in a panic. They hustled Ax and Sage and the girl back, and got between. There was a heated exchange: something had gone terribly wrong.
‘It’s not you, Ax,’ called one of the guards, suddenly, in pure Estuary English. ‘You’re okay. It’s him. No one said you were going to bring fucking Hereward the Wake along.’
‘Told you,’ murmured Sage. ‘I’m no fucking Anglo Saxon,’ he yelled, ‘I’m Cornish. Emissary of Free Kernow.’ The mask reappeared. That or the fellow-subject-races appeal swung it. They were in.
Inside, in a courtyard of combed, rose-pink gravel, a guy in white with a green sash and a turban came out to greet them—accompanied by a platoon of spruce-uniformed women soldiers, green scarves low over their brows. The women took possession of the French girl and marched her away: looking back over her shoulder, looking frightened. Poor kid. Hope they just send you home.
He would do what he had come to do, that was certain. But was there any way to do this without betraying Fiorinda? From the start and forever, make it something she would understand? Walking along these corridors, everything beautifully clean and serene compared to life with the barmy army: yes, it’s peaceful on the other side. At the entrance to the Sayyid’s diwan he almost couldn’t take another step, Sage caught his arm.
‘You okay, Ax?’
‘I’m fine.’ He pressed his hands to his temples, briefly. ‘Future shock.’
The diwan was a large, long room: plenty of space, plenty of people—that is, men—either in white or in suits. So much for the private meeting. Well, naturally. The Sayyid was in the position of strength. He could treat this as a coup, the English Countercultural Prime Minister, forced to come unarmed into his stronghold. They were led to a raised dais at the far end of the room, and introduced by Sayyid Muhammad’s son in law, their guide, to the Sayyid’s brothers, brothers in law, and finally to Sayyid Muhammad Zayid himself.
The leader of English Islam was a suit: a strongly built, thick shouldered businessman, very conventionally dressed, with a domed forehead and a badger-striped beard.
He looked like his photographs. He was briefly polite, then asked Ax to wait: he had something very important to discuss with somebody else just now. Okay, a standard move. Ax didn’t mind. While the Islamic leader pretended to do this very important stuff with his brothers, he took time to look, because he must know this man. What is he? He chooses to wear English formal clothes, not the robes. He doesn’t wear a turban. What is in his eyes? Sayyid Muhammad noticed this attention and returned it, and eventually beckoned Ax to his side.
Sage stayed back with the onlookers. Ax and Sayyid Muhammad Zayid sat together on a dark blue couch, trimmed with gold cord, strange hybrid of the caliph’s palace and some nice, solid, Yorkshire living-room suite: and they talked. Of course they had to go over the ground of the failed negotiations. The inferiority and corruption of Anglo Saxon culture, the outrageous irregularity of the barmy army police action. Of course, the Islamist had to get preemptively stroppy about the way Infidels treat their poor degraded womenfolk.
Ax took it all, without pretending to be very impressed. It was verbiage. He knew he could do business with Sayyid Mohammad, if only he had the right key. In a sense they had already reached an understanding, a distant but real engagement, dating from the time Ax had come to Yorkshire and initiated the blockades. Someone had chosen to put a brake on the anti-civilian terror tactics. Someone had accepted Ax’s alternative to urban mayhem. It was this man. This man, who was surely no happier than Ax—no matter what he said to his own public—about the arrival of the International Brigade.
Time to lay the cards down. ‘I suppose you will send that girl soldier home,’ said Ax. ‘But what are we going to do about the rest of them: the foreigners on our soil, muscling in on our quarrel? It’s a problem, Sayyid Muhammad. I’m hoping you and I can find some answers.’
Sayyid Mohammad Zayid looked at his bold visitor in silence, for a few moments. ‘It is very interesting to meet you, Mr Preston. No, more than interesting. It is an honour to meet the hero of the Deconstruction.’
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