Ascension

by Oliver Harris

  It seemed logical that the hotel would be close to the center. Kane associated the center with the two big buildings. St. Mary’s Church had a spectral luminescence, its whitewash trapping moonlight. Facing it across an expanse of black ground was the old barracks. This was the site of the original military garrison, now known as the Exiles Building. In the silver light it appeared like something from a dream, with a pillared colonnade along the ground floor creating black arches. A few hundred meters beyond it, jutting into the water, was the island’s port.

  Maybe the hotel was by the sea.

  Kane walked to the port, which was no more than a small stone promontory protected by railings. A set of steep concrete steps sank down into the black froth. All the fishing boats were moored away from shore, safely into the bay, and even the dinghies for tendering were weighted at a distance from the stone. The sea churned, with sparks of phosphorescence moving in cryptic forms beneath the surface.

  A crane towered above him, warehouse buildings at the back—a shipping office, fire station. The ruins of an old stone fort remained to the side, one of the original lookout points, silhouetted against the water. No hotel.

  He headed back, past the church, toward the edge of the settlement where it ran up against a wall of starless black hillside. That was where he found the hotel. There was an expanse of empty parking lot with a giant anchor at its center, and a dark, bulky building a few meters beyond it with not a single light on inside.

  The door was locked. A laminated notice had been fixed to the glass beside it:

  It is with the deepest regret that the Shareholders in the Ascension Georgetown Hotel have decided to close their hotel and car hire business on Ascension. We have chosen to keep the business going for the six months since the curtailing of flight links with the U.K. in the hope that a worthwhile service would resume. Sadly, the air links currently proposed are inadequate for the purposes of maintaining a fully functioning hotel and it is impossible for the Ascension Georgetown to continue its operations any further into such an uncertain future.

  No date. The sign looked new. Kane studied the structure. His feeling, beyond anger at the total bungling by whoever had made the arrangement, was that if this could go wrong, anything could go wrong. It was a reminder that, due to exceptional operational sensitivity, he wasn’t working with a full team, that the people planning this operation had never set foot on the territory. The abandoned hotel was a disaster, but it wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to him here.

  Kane walked around to the back. The windows would be easy enough to open. He could get inside for tonight. Was there another hotel on the island? Could he get there if there was? It was past nine p.m. now.

  On his way back toward the residential area, he started looking at cars—old, rusted vehicles, a couple with keys in the ignition. This felt useful to know. There were lights on in some of the bungalows. When he saw his first silhouette behind a blind, Kane knocked. He was still surprised when someone answered it, and felt obscurely guilty, catching them existing in such a strange environment, as if everything on the island must be furtive.

  It was a woman in her forties, securing a pink dressing gown around herself. She had pink tubes of sponge tied into her hair.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you,” Kane said. “I’ve just arrived here and found myself in a bit of a situation. I had expected to stay at the hotel, you see . . .”

  The woman winced. “You booked online?”

  “That’s right.”

  “This happened with a group on a yacht a few days ago. Seems they haven’t sorted out their website.”

  “What are my options?” Kane said.

  “There’s not many.”

  “Any other hotels?”

  She laughed. “No.” Then she bit her lip, thinking. “There is one possibility.” She hesitated. “Follow me.”

  She put her lock on the latch, slipped some flip-flops on, and led Kane around the corner.

  “Where is everyone?” Kane asked.

  “It’s movie night on the base.”

  “What are they showing?”

  “Something good, I guess. It doesn’t really matter.”

  The woman knocked on the door of a bungalow and a man answered in Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt that said ASCENSION DIVING SCHOOL. He was stocky, with thick gray curls. He studied Kane with a touch of disbelief as the woman explained his predicament, then went back inside, reappearing a few seconds later with a set of keys and some bedsheets draped over his arm. They crossed the road to an identical bungalow, only unlit.

  “The previous tenant has just left,” the man explained as they walked in. He turned the lights on. It was a family home, furnished, even some pictures on the walls: flowers, lakes.

  Kane started to get a grim feeling.

  The three of them peered inside each room. The man checked the taps, opened the pedal bin. They seemed curious. He opened cupboards and swept up some dead leaves from where a plant had sat beside the sink. A line of ants continued their traffic. Kane peered apprehensively at a low single bed in a small bedroom. The only bed that had retained a mattress, it seemed. It was the room of a teenage girl.

  “There’s not an overabundance of accommodation on the island,” the man said. “Perhaps tomorrow you can ask at Two Boats. I don’t see the harm in you being here tonight.”

  “Sure. That’s great.”

  The wallpaper was yellow, posters of celebrities still attached, stickers on a mirror. An ornament hung from the ceiling above the bed: feathers dangling from a metal hoop with a web of threads crisscrossing it.

  “It’s quiet here,” he said. “You’re not too near the bar.”

  “It’s all I need. I’m sure I’ll be very comfortable. I’m Edward, by the way.”

  “Craig.”

  “How much do I owe you, Craig?”

  When Kane reached for his wallet, the man waved it away as if a transaction would seal the distaste.

  “Not mine to let, really. Just looking after it. See how you get on. If it’s just tonight, I wouldn’t worry about it.” He handed the key to Kane and departed as if he didn’t want to spend too long in the place. The woman took a final look around.

  “Well, it’s a roof over your head.”

  “I appreciate it. I was planning to hire a car from the hotel,” Kane said. “Know of anywhere else I could get one?”

  “Ask at the museum tomorrow. They should be able to sort you out.”

  “The museum. Okay.”

  “I have no doubt I’ll see you around. Welcome. I’m Linda. I’m sorry about all this.”

  “Edward.” He shook her hand. “You’ve been a great help.”

  When she was gone, Kane returned to the teenager’s bedroom and stared. He watched the dreamcatcher turning on its string, reached up and touched a feather.

  In the kitchen, he lifted his case to the table, found the phone with its hidden satellite function, and tried to send confirmation of his arrival. He was supposed to get immediate notification of the message’s delivery, but none came. Kane checked Taylor’s bespoke file-sharing system, fitted with the intelligence service’s own end-to-end encryption. He looked for an updated report, but there was nothing.

  He unpacked his torch, compass, maps, first-aid kit. There were lockpicks, a pair of binoculars, a wireless mini-camera that could fit several external cases, two listening devices, the phone with digital and analog radio scanner, the laptop loaded with software for accessing local networks and intercepting data packets, all buried deep beneath Edward Pearce’s research notes. But Kane anticipated an analog environment. He arranged some files of historical research on the table, then notes on the island, then opened the map beside them.

  The island was roughly an equilateral triangle with each side about seven miles long. He was currently on the west coast. Most of the island’s facilities were around here: the runway and airbase and GCHQ-NSA. Rory Bannatyne had been staying a couple of miles north of here, at the t
ip of the island. Kane’s visit to his home would have to wait until tomorrow.

  In the center of the island was Two Boats village, where Petra had last been seen. Beside it was Green Mountain, the highest peak. A lot of place names appeared to have been dreamed up by men in the grip of a bad fever: Dead Man’s Beach, Comfortless Cove, Devil’s Cauldron. Satellite images of the island only made the place more enigmatic: thin strings of road among plains of what looked like elephant hide, with some of the most powerful surveillance tech in the world reduced to white spores among the lava. But you could see the British base had a cricket pitch and the Americans had a baseball diamond, could see the cold geometry of the installations—squares and circles of antennae and God knows what else—strangely at home among the forbidding rock.

  Kane put the map away and listened to the waves pounding a few meters from his new home: the slow, alternating detonation and hiss as they crashed in, sending up spray that hung in the air before collapsing like a moment of rain. Then there was ten seconds before the next explosion, as if the sea was setting about destroying the island that had appeared in its midst one day. There was something measured and vindictive about it that reminded Kane of artillery shelling. He tried to slow his breathing to the rhythm of the waves. Then he heard a child scream.

  It was short, terrified, abruptly cut off. The silence that followed seemed deeper than before. Kane opened the front door and stood in the doorway, wondering if he could have mistaken it. Then he heard another cry—No—and the grunt of an older, larger person.

  Kane walked toward the sound. The settlement still appeared empty. Had no one else heard it? He stopped, listened, heard the voice again—less like a child now but still someone very young and terrified, a boy—he was sure it was a boy or teenager pleading. Then the older man said: What do you want?

  They were on the other side of the old barracks. Kane went to the corner to get a view. He saw the white of the church and then two figures in front of it. The struggle was between a boy of no older than sixteen and a large man around Kane’s age. The boy wore a white T-shirt and shorts. He was on his knees, trying to pick himself up. The man used a foot to push him onto his side. A torch beam came from the far side of the square, where two more men were approaching.

  “Get off me.” The boy had an American accent. A bike lay on the ground between the church and the barracks. The man above him lifted his head by the hair.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You fucking dare to come here?”

  Kane considered his options. Dive in? Without knowing anything about this scenario? That would jeopardize his cover before his first night was over. What would Dr. Edward Pearce do? He’d be in bed, asleep, earplugs in.

  “He was snooping around,” the man said to the new arrivals.

  “No, I wasn’t.” The boy tried to get up and the man stepped on his hand. The boy screamed. In the torchlight Kane saw the assailant was in his thirties, with a fade cut and tattoos, and the neat, polished muscles of military staff with time to kill. Kane’s guess was a corporal or junior technician. The other two wore identical red polo shirts branded INTERSERVE, one of the subcontractors running facilities. One was a Saint, darker skinned, the tallest of the three. The other was short and squat. He held a bottle and cigarette in one hand.

  “What are you doing here?” The smoker stepped closer to the boy, speaking quieter. Now the corporal lifted the boy up. The stocky man got his hand around the boy’s throat. “Eh? What the fuck are you doing?”

  The boy struggled, getting a foot up and trying to kick him. The bottle fell and smashed. The subcontractor grabbed his foot and twisted the leg, and then the soldier released the boy and let him fall face down in the dirt. The Saint drove a powerful kick into the boy’s stomach.

  “Take his shoes,” the first man said. The two subcontractors tore the boy’s shoes off. The corporal lifted the boy’s head by the hair and looked like he was about to slam it into the ground.

  Kane stepped forward.

  “Hey.”

  They all turned. One of the subcontractors aimed the torch in Kane’s face.

  “Who’s that?” the corporal said.

  “What’s going on here?”

  The boy watched Kane, chest rising and falling, blood and ash across his face. He looked wary, as if Kane might be the next to kick him.

  “Back off,” the short man said.

  “Okay. But I think that’s enough for now. Let him go.”

  Few people are ever up for a physical contest that holds the possibility of their losing. The mammalian brain is good at reading who has the psychological edge. Two of the men weren’t fighters—the Saint was going through the motions, but you could see he was deferential to the other two. The stocky man was angry but weak. He’d run if it came to it. The corporal was the one who needed to be taken out, and he was the one who walked toward Kane. He appraised the clothes and style of Kane’s cover: preppy, pallid, academic.

  “I said back off,” he said. “Who the fuck are you?”

  “What’s the boy done? It doesn’t seem like a fair fight to me.”

  The man came right up to Kane, fury in his eyes. The Saint at the back said: “Fuck’s sake. Let’s go.”

  The boy tried to move, then grunted in pain as the short subcontractor punched him once, hard, in the side of the head. The corporal was close enough for Kane to smell the tobacco on his breath.

  “Get out of here.”

  “Okay,” Kane said. He gave a placatory smile, backed off an inch, then slammed his forehead into the bridge of the man’s nose. The man stumbled backwards, hands going up to his face. Kane caught his wrist and turned it so that the man let out an involuntary scream, sinking to his knees.

  “Get the fuck off me.”

  The other two stared as blood began to gush from his nose.

  “Get off the kid,” Kane said to them. They took a step back, leaving the boy on the ground. The corporal got to his feet, looked at Kane. Kane spread his arms. Next round meant putting the man out of contention. He suspected the cartilage was weak and a second strike at the face could be excruciating. But he didn’t want to kill the guy. Maybe take the legs out, get him on the ground again and fuck with him psychologically. Sensing something troublingly composed in Kane’s stance, the man seemed to think twice about prolonging the encounter.

  “You’re a dead bastard now,” he said, walking backwards as if only the turning indicated surrender. He smiled through the blood. When he reached the other two, they continued as a group back into the darkness.

  Kane helped the boy up. He got a good look at him for the first time: a mop of curly, fair hair, a smattering of acne, a child’s narrow shoulders. His lip was torn, the right side of his face grazed, nostrils caked in blood. Kane found the boy’s trainers but he struggled to put them on.

  “I’m okay.”

  Kane watched him pick up the bike and try to walk.

  “Fuck.”

  He let the bike fall and sat down, removing his right shoe. It was filled with blood.

  “Let me see your foot,” Kane said.

  Kane gripped the boy’s ankle and plucked a sliver of glass out. It was bleeding heavily.

  “You’re going to need a bandage on that before you can do anything. Can I give you a bandage?”

  The boy nodded.

  “All right to come with me?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Connor.”

  “Connor, I’m Edward. I’ll try to get you cleaned up and you can go home. Try not to put weight on it.”

  Kane put the boy’s arm across his own shoulders. He wheeled the bike with his free hand and they progressed back through the town. In the distance he could hear vehicles returning, wheels on gravel, some laughter.

  “They stood on my knee. It’s broken.”

  “If it was broken you’d still be on the floor. Can you bend it?”

&nbs
p; “No.”

  “Keep going.”

  Kane unlocked the bungalow. The boy looked around curiously when they were inside.

  “You’re staying here?”

  “For now. The hotel’s shut down.”

  Connor leaned against the wall of the hallway.

  “Can you see okay?” Kane asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “They got your head pretty hard. You’re not dizzy?”

  “No.”

  The floor was already spattered with blood. Kane told the boy to go stand in the bath and rinse his feet. The boy knew where the bathroom was. Kane caught his own reflection in the hallway mirror and there was a speck of blood on his forehead where he’d headbutted the man. He wiped it off and stood there for a moment, listening to the taps run, thinking: I’ve fucked up already. All he had needed was to remain relatively incognito. This would be everywhere by morning. Had he needed to do that? Had he enjoyed it? Rory had come to this island unwell, and Kane had followed him without due consideration to his own state of mind.

  He got his first-aid kit and cleaned the dirt out of the boy’s foot before bandaging up the worst of it. Any deeper and the glass would have severed a tendon. The boy had been lucky. Kane used tweezers to get some of the worst grit out of the side of the boy’s face and applied some antiseptic, then had him extend his injured leg and checked mobility.

  “Know who they were?” Kane asked.

  “No. Who are you?” Connor asked.

  “I just got here. You need to get the cuts properly treated or they’ll get infected.”

  “I’ll be okay.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “On the base.”

  “The American one?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Think you should go to the police?”

  The boy laughed. “No.”