“It’s all part of the same thing,” said River. “Must be. Don’t let them shoot that plane down. Catherine. The pilot’s been played, just like us.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
River slapped the jeep’s roof in frustration. “Here,” he said. “Here.”
Church end, Yates had said. That’s where Tommy Moult had been. The church end of the high street.
The jeep crunched to a halt by St John of the Cross’s lychgate, and River left it at a run.
As Marcus swung the axe a crunch shook the floor, and Louisa shrieked—“Jesus, was that you?”
He paused, the axe inch-deep in the door. “Plastic,” he said, and pulled the axehead free.
Plastic. She looked at Kyril. “That’s the plan? The building goes into terror-mode, and you bust into Rumble with plastic explosives?”
“Millions,” he said, through gritted teeth.
“It’d have to be. No one goes to this effort for petty cash.”
Another dull crunch from below. They were blowing open doors down there, and it wouldn’t take them long. Then all they’d have to do was head for ground level and slip away with the crowds. No one would check off their exit, because no one had signed them in. There’d be a car waiting, and one less to share the proceeds with.
Thwack! went the axe, and splinters flew.
She kicked Kyril. “Min saw him, didn’t he?”
The Russian groaned. “My leg. I need doctor.”
“Min saw Pashkin, or whoever he really is. When he was supposed to be in Moscow being a fucking oil baron. Except he wasn’t, he was in a dosshouse on the Edgware Road, because the Ambassador’s a little pricey when you don’t need to be there, isn’t it? When you’re not really a fucking oil baron, just a fucking thief. And that’s why Min died.”
“Didn’t mean it to happen. We were having a drink, that’s all—gah! My leg—”
Thwack!
“Tell you what, Kyril. Once I’ve put your scumbag friends in a box, I’ll come back and see what I can do about your leg, yeah?” She leaned in close. “We’ve got a fucking axe, after all.”
Nothing about her expression suggested she was joking.
The next thwack was followed by a thunk.
“Through,” said Marcus.
Louisa patted Kyril’s shattered leg again, and made for the door.
She’d never flown in radio silence before, and it added an odd dimension to the morning, as if all this were taking place inside a dream, in which the bluntly familiar—the panel of instruments before her; the view of empty skies; Damien by her side—rubbed surfaces with the strange. London was gathering shape; coagulating into an uninterrupted mass of rooftop and road, its districts strung together by buses and cars.
Stacked behind them were masses of the leaflet she’d designed; the one that would tell the marchers what they were doing—stopping the city; smashing the banks. The details remained vague, but it was enough to be a part of the crusade. There was greed and avarice and corruption in the world, and probably always would be, but that was no excuse for not attempting to make a change …
“We should put the radio on,” Damien said. “It’s dangerous. It’s illegal.”
She said, “Don’t worry. We’re too low to be on anyone’s flight path.”
“I didn’t think we’d be so …”
“What do you think they’ll do, for Christ’s sake? Shoot us down? You think they’ll shoot us down?”
“Well no, but—”
“A few more minutes, we’ll be over the centre. They’ll see what we’re planning on doing, and yeah, they’ll escort us home and we’ll be arrested and fined and all that. We knew that before setting off. Grow some balls.”
But she could hear, beneath the hum of the Skyhawk’s engine, a bass note, a growl, a pair of growls, and in that instant a different future occurred to Kelly Tropper; one in which, instead of proving herself a radical daredevil, scattering her self-designed leaflets on the marching crowds below, she became an object lesson in the lengths to which a once-bitten nation might go to protect itself. But that seemed so far-fetched, so at odds with the scenario she’d planned, that she was able to dismiss it, even as Damien began to babble louder, and with audible fear, that this wasn’t the good idea it had sounded back in the Downside Man; that maybe they weren’t invulnerable after all.
That last part, though, surely couldn’t be true, thought Kelly. And on they flew towards the heart of London, its buildings growing closer together now; its spaces further apart; even as the noises she could hear beneath her own plane’s hum grew louder, and took up more room, and swallowed everything else.
Tommy Moult, or the man who used to be Tommy Moult, was in St Johnno’s graveyard, on the wooden bench dedicated to the recent memory of Joe Morden, who loved this church. This faced the church’s western wall; the side on which its bell tower stood, and through whose rose window the setting sun would warm the church’s interior with soft pink light. At the moment, it remained in shadow. Moult had lost his red cap, along with the sprigs of hair that had tufted from under it, and which had been as familiar a sight in the village as the hawthorn trees flanking the lych-gate. Bald, older-looking, he did not rise at River’s approach. He seemed lost in contemplation of the medieval church, around which earlier versions of Upshott had risen and fallen. In one hand he nursed an iPhone. The other, dangling over the arm of the bench, hid from view.
River said, “Busy morning.”
“Not round here.”
“You’re Nikolai Katinsky, aren’t you? Lamb told me about you.”
“Some of the time.”
“I guess that makes you Alexander Popov, too,” River said. “Or the man who invented him.”
Now Katinsky seemed interested. “You worked that out yourself?”
“Seems kind of obvious at this point,” River said. He sat on the bench, leaving a foot of space between them. “I mean, all these hoops you’ve had us jumping through. That’s not the work of a language school scam artist. Or even a cipher clerk.”
“Don’t knock cipher clerks,” Katinsky told him. “Like any other branch of the Civil Service, all the work’s done low on the food chain. Everyone else just has meetings.”
In the shadow of the tower he looked grey, and though his head was mostly smooth, bristle stubbled his chin and cheeks. This was grey too, as were his eyes, which looked like the covers placed on wells to prevent accidents: things falling in. Things climbing out.
“On 7/7,” River said, “London kept a stiff upper lip. It’s how we knew we’d won, no matter how many bodies we buried. But this morning, the whole damn City looks like day one of the Harvey Nicks’ sale.”
Katinsky waved his phone. “Yes. I’ve been watching.”
“That’s what all this was about?”
“Only incidentally. Your Mr. Pashkin—not his real name either, I’m afraid—he’s taking advantage of the chaos to relieve the Needle’s tenants of some of their assets.” Moult glanced at his phone again. “He hasn’t rung, though. It’s possible not everything’s gone according to plan.”
“His plan. Not yours.”
“We have different aims.”
“But you’re working together.”
“He has access to various things I needed. Andrei Chernitsky, for a start. Some years ago, Andrei and I abducted your friend Dickie Bow. I was building the Popov legend, and wanted one of your people to get a glimpse of him, though nobody so reliable their words would be trusted. When you’re making a scarecrow, you don’t do it in plain sight, you understand.”