Ascension

by Oliver Harris

  “Yes.”

  “You’re alive?” He could hear Taylor’s relief, and wondered where she was.

  “I’m alive.”

  “It looks like there’s been some serious interference on the island. It centers on an individual going by the name of Thomas Lindgren. He may be working for Russia. Is that someone you’ve crossed paths with?”

  “I crossed paths with Thomas Lindgren, yes.”

  “Do you know his whereabouts? Is he still active?”

  “He’s no longer active.”

  “Oh, Elliot. That’s incredible. Well done.” He heard her breathe a sigh of relief. “You arrested him?”

  “He drowned.”

  “I see.” Her voice grew a touch less confident. “We’ve got a lot to catch up on. Who’s with you now?”

  “Lindgren’s family,” he said. “We need medical assistance, but the emergency services are all attending other scenes. Are you able to contact the Administrator directly? It should be possible to arrange assistance from one of the bases. We’re on the pierhead at Georgetown.”

  “I can try. We’re reestablishing a connection now. I can do that,” she said. “The pierhead, okay. Are you able to stay on the line?”

  “Not right now.”

  The connection was breaking anyway. Kane hung up. He could see Anne through the window, looking toward the sea.

  34

  Taylor passed on the good news to the Crisis ManagementCentre, who received it with a combination of relief and circumspection. In the aftermath of her briefing, the war room reached a crescendo of activity. Instructions were dispatched to the other command rooms and up the hierarchy of government itself. There was discussion regarding the channels via which the fate of Nikolai Pravik could be communicated to Moscow and onward to the Yantar. Then Taylor sensed a slight pause in proceedings as all the new information percolated through; a moment of sanity, perhaps. She felt she’d done her bit, and that she wasn’t particularly welcome anymore.

  “Let’s get some air,” Mackenzie said.

  They went back through the subterranean corridors, up to the equivalent maze on the ground floor. Finally, they reached a small door with one guard who nodded at the chief and released them into a courtyard. Taylor took a breath of air, looked gratefully up at the sky. There was a view of green landscape ahead that must have been St. James’s Park. It was behind locked gates, protected by two armed police with submachine guns. In her disorientation Taylor briefly wondered why the park needed such heavy security, then realized it was herself who was on the secure side. They were at the back of Downing Street.

  Mackenzie walked her slowly toward the exit. Signal returned to her phone and she saw eight missed calls from Markus Fischer. She thrust it back into her coat pocket.

  “Daniel Kudus,” she said. “He’s been assisting me. He’s in headquarters now.”

  “He’s okay. Don’t worry.”

  “HQ know?”

  “HQ have been fully informed. Daniel Kudus is safe and well.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Quite a few days you’ve had.”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “In all honesty? A little shaky.”

  “I’m sure.”

  The air was thick with peace: a day slowly softening toward its end without a war beginning. In the distance, tourists peered through the gate’s ironwork. The chief slowed to a stop a few meters before it.

  “Well, you know now. Ptolemy. It’s not going to become any less critical. You’ve seen the future.”

  “It’s dramatic.”

  “Potentially very dramatic.” Mackenzie nodded. “Needs someone with a cool head.”

  It took Taylor a second to realize what he was saying. “I can see that.”

  Her phone buzzed again. She reached into her pocket and switched it off, making a mental note to wipe Fischer’s number when she got the chance.

  “Find it interesting?”

  “Space war?” she said.

  “Space security.”

  “I’m not sure I’ve got the technical know-how.”

  “As you’ve seen, it’s going to involve a huge amount of intelligence work on the ground. A new set of priorities.”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you work with a company like Quadrant? After these events?”

  Taylor considered. Would she? Already she could feel the rationalizations arriving, smoothing a path for her conscience.

  “I’d have to see. I wouldn’t rule it out.”

  “Why don’t you come to my office on Monday and we can talk about it further. I can imagine you contributing significantly.”

  Taylor nodded. She didn’t even know where the space department was in Vauxhall Cross. Yet she could imagine herself contributing too. But then, success is easy to imagine. She’d been doing it long enough.

  “I’ll certainly have a think,” she said as the armed police nodded, angling their machine guns down and opening the gates back out to the real world.

  35

  Connor had vanished by the time Kane got back to the jetty.Carina had begun shivering. Her eyelids fluttered and quiet groans escaped her pale lips. Anne rested a hand on her daughter’s forehead and one on her trembling shoulder. Kane looked around for Connor and eventually saw the boy up on the fort beside the harbor, silhouetted against the sky.

  Kane walked over, climbed up the old stones. The sun was high now and his clothes were already drying on his body. He realized how thirsty he was, and as the adrenaline seeped away he could feel his injuries, his left knee starting to seize up, hands throbbing where the skin had torn.

  Connor sat on a rusted gun mount. He stared out to sea, and Kane thought he must be searching for signs of Thomas, but as he got closer he saw that the boy was looking at a ship. It was a few kilometers out from shore, long and narrow, with a small white radome and antennae that from a distance looked like masts. A spy ship.

  “Ever seen one like that before around here?” Kane asked.

  “No.”

  “Looks like it’s watching us,” Kane said. The boy nodded.

  “It has to do with him, doesn’t it,” he said.

  “Maybe.”

  The boy stared ahead.

  “Are you going to ask for the gun?”

  “No. Did you reload it?”

  “No. It’s empty. Is Carina okay?”

  “She’ll be okay. Want to come back?”

  Connor shook his head.

  “Mind if I stay up here with you?” Kane asked. The boy shook his head again. Kane sat on the gun mount beside him. He felt the heat off the old metal, and there was something comforting about it. The sea remained rough, but from their vantage point it was hypnotic. No traces of the life it had swallowed.

  Eventually Connor said, “Is it true? Did he kill Petra and Lauren?”

  “I think so.”

  “I should have done something. I should have seen.”

  “There’s not always something you can do.”

  “Why did he do it?”

  “Because he wasn’t who he said he was, and when you’re in that situation you can get desperate.”

  “Who was he?”

  “I don’t know exactly. It’s possible he didn’t know either.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that people can be more than one person at a time. It doesn’t make anything less real or less true. The time you spent with him, I mean.”

  Connor considered this. Eventually he turned to Kane.

  “You’re not who you say you are either, are you?”

  The assertion took Kane by surprise, even after everything that had transpired. In the chaos of the preceding few hours he’d overlooked the extent to which he’d abandoned all cover. Edward Pearce had departed the island for good.

  “No, I guess not.”

  Connor seemed on the verge of asking more but must have thought better of it. Kane looked to see how Anne and Carina were do
ing, down on the jetty. They hadn’t moved. Long plumes of smoke unfurled across the sky behind them. He thought of Anne watching the sunrise from outer space and couldn’t match it to the woman bent over her daughter’s body. No sign of any help arriving. The only thing now was to wait. Wait and try to stay sane.

  “They would have gotten on the dinghy,” Connor said.

  “I don’t see how they would have managed that.”

  “You don’t think? They might have been okay.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Will I be arrested?”

  “No. I think people will say you did the right thing.”

  They were silent for a while. Finally the boy said, “So will we leave here now?”

  “I imagine so.”

  Connor took a breath and shut his eyes. Kane watched the sea. It could have been his imagination, but he thought he saw the ship begin to turn away. He thought of the men on board staring at the island, at the volcanic peaks gaining color, at the miracle of the whitewashed church and the jumble of fever graves, and realizing there was nothing there for them. That the ocean had its dangers, but you could move through it and you would find life elsewhere, and whatever that involved it would be less threatening than the lifeless rocks.

  After another minute he saw he was right: The boat flattened, presenting a clear profile, then continued away from the island, growing smaller by the minute. Kane watched it go, feeling the heat of the metal beneath him and the slow breathing of the boy at his side. By the time Connor opened his eyes again he seemed calmer, as if he’d decided something, and the boat was a speck against the darkness of the ocean.

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to Michael Grist, Clare Smith, Zoe Hood, Jaime Levine, Veronique Baxter, Sara Langham, Gráinne Fox, Nicky Lund, Alice Howe, Heather Tamarkin, Alison Kerr Miller, Michelle Triant, Fariza Hawke.

  Thanks also to New Writing North and my colleagues and students at Manchester Metropolitan University.

  Most of all, thanks to Jihyon, for everything, and Taehee, to whom the novel is dedicated. Welcome.

  About the Author

  © Eamonn McCabe

  Oliver Harris was born in London in 1978. He has an MA in Shakespeare studies and a PhD in psychoanalysis. He writes occasionally for the Times Literary Supplement.

  Connect on Social Media

  Follow us for book news, reviews, author updates, exclusive content, giveaways, and more.