Marcus seemed more serene but was watchful, his attention divided evenly between Kyril and Piotr. Louisa remembered Min—she barely ever stopped remembering Min—and how he’d distrusted this pair on sight. Partly because that was his job, but partly because he was Min, and yearning for action. Her mouth filled, and she swallowed. Pashkin dragged the topic onto fuel prices, the ostensible reason for the meeting, but Webb still didn’t look happy. It wasn’t going the way he’d intended, Louisa thought. All he’s managed is I see and Oh yes. He planned this as a recruitment exercise, but he’s got no idea what he’s doing. And Arkady Pashkin had his own agenda, which seemed to consist of wasting time until …
Until a high-pitched looping wail came from everywhere at once; above, below, from outside the doors. It didn’t pierce so much as throb, and its message was immediate and unmistakable. Leave now.
Marcus turned to the huge windows as if to spot approaching danger. Webb got to his feet so suddenly his chair hit the floor. He said, “What’s that?” which Louisa decided was the stupidest question ever. Which didn’t stop her echoing it: “What’s happening?”
Pashkin, still seated, said, “It sounds like the emergency we discussed yesterday.”
“You knew about this.”
Reaching into his briefcase, Pashkin produced a gun he handed to Piotr. “Yes,” he said. “I’m afraid I did.”
The hangar looked bigger in the Skyhawk’s absence. The doors hung wide, and sunlight fleshed out its corners, drawing attention to everything that wasn’t there. Those bags of fertiliser headed this list. There was a faint spillage where they’d been, as if one of the bags had a rip in it, but that was all.
Behind him, Yates said, “She went up earlier. I saw her go.”
“I know.”
“There’s something wrong, isn’t there? With the plane?”
Except it wasn’t only in that one place—sinking to his knees, River scanned the floor from as low an angle as his battered frame would allow.
Another jeep pulled up outside, and he could hear the clenched barking of an officer. New arseholes were being torn.
Across the concrete, a faint trail of crumbly brown dust snaked away to the side door.
He had the feeling he was on the end of a long piece of string. And the bastard at the other end kept tugging.
Yates said, “If Kelly’s in danger …”
He didn’t finish. But judging by his blood-streaked face, it would involve punching something until it turned to jelly.
“What’s going on?”
And here was the officer, in an officer’s uniform, a detail he seemed to think outweighed his being on civilian turf.
River said to Yates, “You tell him,” and headed for the side door.
“You! Stop right there!”
But River was already outside, on the east wall of the hangar, with a view of the mesh fence bordering the MoD range; of the range itself, which was a bland expanse of overlapping greens; of a brim-full wheelie-bin chained to one of the fenceposts; and of a stack of bags of fertiliser, the topmost of which was split down one side. A gentle trickle had spilled onto the ground. River kicked the stack, but it remained solid and real.
And then he had company.
“You attacked my men,” he was told. “And they say you claim you’re with the secret service. Exactly what’s going on?”
“I need a phone,” River said.
Up in the skies and miles to the east, over London’s outer settlements—massed clusters of red and grey rooftops, connected by winding stripes of tree-bordered tarmac and interspersed with golf courses—Kelly Tropper could feel excitement building. This was no ordinary flight. It would have a different ending.
As if to underline this, the radio was babbling. They should identify themselves immediately. If they were experiencing difficulties, they should state them now; failing which they should return to their filed route now, or face severe consequences.
“What do you think that means? Severe consequences?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Damien Butterfield said, “I thought we’d be closer before they noticed us.”
“It’s okay. Tommy said this would happen.”
“But he’s not here, is he?”
This wasn’t worth replying to.
Like the other flying club members, she and Damien had grown up together; the children of incomers, whose parents had moved from bigger, brasher places to pretty, vacant Upshott. An unfathomable decision, the children had agreed, and yet they too had all remained rooted there. For Kelly, it was the only way she could have access to the aeroplane, owned by Ray Hadley, but for which she and the others paid maintenance and rental fees. Sometimes she had wondered if there weren’t more to it than that; if it weren’t cowardice that had anchored her in her childhood village; a fear of failing in the big world. Though Tommy had told her—
It was funny about Tommy; everyone thought he just sold apples from his bike, but he knew everyone in Upshott, and everything that happened there, as if he received reports from everyone—as if he were the centre of a web. You could always talk to Tommy, and he always knew what was going on in your life. This was true for her; true for her friends; true for her parents too. Her father never failed to chat with Tommy on the mornings he was outside the shop, or doing his rounds of the village, picking up the odd jobs that sustained him, though he disappeared mid-week, and nobody had ever found out where. Perhaps he had another village somewhere, where he lived a similar existence with a different cast, but Kelly had never discussed the idea with anyone, because you never did discuss Tommy Moult—he was everybody’s secret. So yes, it was funny about Tommy, but a kind of funny she’d long ceased to question; he was simply part of life in Upshott, and that was that.
What Tommy had told her was, there were ways of proving your bravery to yourself, and making your mark on the big world. Many ways.
It was hard, now, to remember whose idea this had been; her own, or Tommy Moult’s.
Beside her, Damien Butterfield said, “Are we nearly there yet?” and laughed at his own joke.
The radio squawked again, and Kelly Tropper laughed too, and turned it off.
Somewhere to the north west two more planes took to the air: sleek, dark, dangerous and on the hunt.
The taxi driver had kept up a relentless stream of invective about bloody marchers, who were achieving nothing except mucking hard-working cabbies about, and if anyone really wanted to know what to do about the banks—“Here’s fine,” said Ho.
He threw a note at the driver, and jumped out into the path of Shirley Dander.
“Sh-sh-i-i-i-it,” she managed, in a kind of elongated hiccup. Ho was pleased to observe she looked like crap.
They were right by the forecourt of the Needle, through whose huge glass walls Ho could see a living breathing forest—but before he could comment on this, a barrage of sirens erupted, as if every car alarm in the City had been triggered at once.
“What?”
For a moment, Ho thought the rally had arrived—he could hear it not far off, a rumbling mobile chant like a rootless football match. But the types pouring into view from doorways all around were wearing suits and smart outfits: more marched against than marching. Through the Needle’s revolving doors they came too, appearing unsure as to their next move; pausing, most of them, to look back at the building they’d emerged from, and then staring round as it became clear that whatever was happening was happening everywhere.