Abruptly Extepan blanked the screen. Everything went silent, but I could still hear the roar. I looked down at my untouched breakfast. For long moments the very idea of eating – of anything remotely involving the everyday behaviour of ordinary individuals – seemed fatuous in the face of what I had seen on the screen.
‘Tsaritsyn was destroyed by such a bomb,’ Extepan said softly. ‘Its power comes from the breakdown of unstable atoms. As you have seen, enormous amounts of energy are released as a result. The Russians used a small missile to carry their bomb to its target. Our armies had just taken the city, and they were annihilated – over three hundred thousand men. My brothers Chimalcoyotl and Ixtlilpopoca were among them.’
I wanted to say something, but nothing seemed adequate.
‘Not everyone died immediately in the blast,’ he went on. ‘It is a particular feature of such bombs that they release radiation which is invisible to the eye but lethal to the body. It rots the internal organs, causing a more lingering death, hours, days or even months later, and it can poison the earth for years.’
Everything about the bomb was already beyond my power to imagine. The sacrifice in the church seemed like a minor breach of etiquette by comparison.
‘The Russians have made it clear that they intend to use several more such bombs on cities in Western Europe unless we accept an immediate ceasefire on their terms. They have long-range missiles which could reach London.’
‘But you’ve tested similar bombs yourselves.’
‘As long ago as 1945.’
‘Then why haven’t you ever used them?’
‘Motecuhzoma forbade it. He and the tlatocan agreed that they were a dishonourable means of waging war, allowing the enemy no opportunity to display his valour and making territory uninhabitable.’
This was typically Aztec. Though they were technologically the most advanced nation on earth, their codes of conduct for warfare bordered on the quaint, harking back to the ritual imperatives of pre-Christian days.
‘Then surely the war in Russia is lost,’ I said. ‘Your armies can’t hope to prevail against weapons of that magnitude.’
‘That presumes we don’t have a weapon of similar effectiveness.’
In the garden, birds were hopping among the cherry trees. Drab brown sparrows, but the sight of them pleased me enormously.
‘We haven’t been idle in the intervening years,’ Extepan said. ‘Motecuhzoma anticipated the eventual development of the bomb by other nations, and he was concerned to see a weapon developed which could counter it. A weapon of similar destructive power, but without any lingering after-effects. Something that would kill quickly but cleanly. We’ve had such a weapon for several years.’
Evidently this was the ‘weapon more mighty than theirs’ to which Pachtli had referred. But I still didn’t understand.
‘Then why haven’t you used it before now?’
‘For the same reasons we didn’t use the bomb. It’s always been our principle to match ourselves with our enemies as equally as possible. What virtue is there in using a mountain to crush an ant? But the Russians have shown no reluctance to use their most powerful weapon, so now we may do the same.’
‘I can’t imagine anything as terrible.’
‘That’s because you can only think in terms of a bomb. Our weapon is equally effective but more accurate.’
‘Can it destroy a city at a stroke?’
He nodded. ‘But cleanly, and just as swiftly. Instant death, or none at all. For the moment, I can’t tell you any more about it.’
‘And you’ll be giving the order to use it?’
‘I have no choice. The tlatoani appointed me to lead our armies here. The order has come directly from his palace.’
His new rank of tlacateccatl meant that he was now answerable only to Motecuhzoma or Tetzahuitl for his actions. Yet it seemed as if he was asking my approval. I couldn’t possibly give it.
‘The alternative,’ he said, ‘is to allow the Russians to destroy other cities with their bomb. In the end, they might turn the whole of Europe into a wasteland where nothing could live.’
‘When? When are you going to use it?’
‘This very day. Soon I shall be leaving for the front line.’
Despite what he had told me, I suspected the Aztecs had only recently readied their weapon and were making a last-ditch attempt to save the situation.
‘I want to come with you.’
I didn’t know what made me say this. It seemed like madness, a wilful desire to become an accomplice to an enormous crime.
Extepan wiped his mouth with his napkin and rose.
‘You will need to be ready within an hour,’ he said.
A glidecar escorted by four low-flying scouters took us through the ruined city until we came to a turreted grey stone building with a wide entranceway. Snowsuited soldiers were everywhere – crack troops, Extepan informed me, from the Alaska province of Greater Mexico.
The building was a railway station, tracks converging from many directions. Pigeons fluttered under the red-roofed platforms, their droppings streaking ornate iron pillars. Several burnt-out carriages sat in a siding, but the station itself looked undamaged. Soldiers milled about on the main platform, some guarding men in charcoal overalls, whom I guessed were Russian mechanics.
Faintly at first, then more loudly, I heard a regular, rhythmic hissing. Gouts of thick white steam came rolling down the platform and spiralled up towards the roof. They brought with them the smell of soot. Everyone stepped back from the edge of the platform.
It was an old steam train, the engine gleaming black and bottle-green, a vision from another age. It came grinding to a halt with a metallic screech and a great exhalation.
I waited for the steam to clear. The matching carriages were trimmed with gold, their windows hung with embroidered curtains. The engine had a big black snow-plough at its front and cattle-catchers on its flanks. The driver – a Russian, by the look of him – was guarded by two Aztec soldiers, all of them bundled up against the cold.
‘We found it in a shed,’ Extepan remarked to me. ‘It’s been quite excellently maintained.’
‘We’re travelling to the front in it?’
‘Of course. Let’s get aboard.’
Pachtli accompanied us into the front carriage. Various Aztec generals and other high-ranking officers were also boarding. I thought they looked disgruntled, as if they deemed it absurd to travel in such an antique when a fast-flying transporter would take them to the front in a fraction of the time. But Extepan’s insistence on using the train was typical of the whimsical side of his character.
The carriages were carpeted, with upholstered seats, and tables draped with white cloths. It was easier to imagine we were going on a sightseeing tour rather than to use a weapon of unimaginable destructive power.
Soon afterwards the train jolted and began moving out of the station. It quickly gathered speed, steam billowing past my window, wheels settling into a steady trocketa-trocketa rhythm on the rails. Extepan began explaining some of the difficulties involved in keeping a steam engine operational in such bitter weather: he had obviously been talking to the driver or his mechanics. Meanwhile Velikiye-Luki slid by the carriage windows. By day, the snow which had covered the city since the battle had softened its shattered appearance, ruined towers and gutted apartment blocks rising like amorphous sculptures and lattices out of a frozen white sea.
A waiter appeared and asked if we wanted drinks. He was a European, though his accented Nahuatl was fluent. A Pole, perhaps, or a German. Extepan and I requested orange juice, Pachtli a glass of red wine.