Kapitan Todt regarded the doctor for a long while. Despite his youth, Doktor Rock was a more than competent medic. He and his team of ad hoc nurses worked tirelessly. “We need one last decisive strike,” he said.
The doctor looked exasperated. “I can’t treat the casualties from any kind of strike, Kapitan. Haven’t you been listening? We’ve reached a point where even something as straightforward as a burst appendix will be fatal because I just won’t be able to operate, or give even the basics of post-operative care. If you’re planning some kind of strike, better make sure none of our people gets hurt.” He stubbed the joint out in an old tobacco tin on the table. “And you’d better win.”
LUNCH WAS A solitary bratwurst, eaten at his desk, with another cup of coffee. Food was running low; it was days since he had been able to spare anyone for a foraging expedition. The sausage was of poor quality. One of the kitchen staff knew some English and joked with him that they were ‘down to the worst of the wurst.’ The Kapitan made a mental note to move the man to a work gang.
He finished his sausage, drank his coffee, then sat up straight behind the desk and said, “I know you’re there. Show yourself.” It was, if anything, an act of absurd faith.
But it was rewarded. A patch of shadow in one corner of the room rippled and shimmered, and all of a sudden a figure was standing there, apparently dressed in rags and an unusual-looking motorcycle helmet. It moved its hands and from the folds of the rags emerged the muzzle of a small semiautomatic rifle.
“Not a move,” said the figure quietly. “Not a sound.”
The Kapitan sat where he was and prepared to die.
“Florian Grüber,” the figure said. “Styling himself Kapitan Todt.”
“Yes,” said Kapitan Todt.
“I’ve been sent to help you escape from here.”
The Kapitan processed this statement. Apparently he wasn’t going to die just yet. He said, “If you’re the chef, you’re more than a year late.”
The figure removed its helmet, revealing the face of a young man, his brown hair tousled. “What?”
There had been a point, a day or so into the civil war, when he had believed that he was going to lose, and the Coureurs had become a real option. He had no qualms about this; he needed to survive, to recover and regroup, if he was to finally defeat Twenty.
The Swimmer had counselled patience. “Let me set it up for you, Florian,” he said. “I know how to do this kind of thing.”
And so the Swimmer had made connections and organised things, and Kapitan Todt had waited and waited, and the Coureurs didn’t come but some victories did. Now, he was in a position to make off from the Municipality himself, any time he wanted. He thought he might even be able to get across the Greater German border into Switzerland, where he had family. Thoughts of daring Coureur-aided escapes had faded from his mind. And now here was one of them, standing before him.
“The Swimmer wants to talk to you,” he said.
The Coureur raised his gun. “I want to know what’s going on.”
“The Swimmer will tell you. May I stand up?” When the Coureur made no response, the Kapitan said, “All I have to do is raise my voice and a dozen armed people will come in here and kill you.”
“Not if I kill you first, you scumbag.”
The Kapitan shrugged, but he stood up anyway. “You were supposed to be here more than a year ago. What happened?”
“I got sidetracked. Who’s the Swimmer?”
“I’ll take you to him. You might want to… disappear again first, though. I’d find it hard to explain you.”
The Coureur thought about it. Then he put his helmet back on, seemed to shrug, and vanished into the shadows once again. “I’ll be right behind you,” said his voice from the corner of the room.
“Good. Follow me, please.”
THERE WAS A room deep in the heart of Building 2. It had once been a community centre, a space big enough for parties and dances and the like. The Kapitan had ordered it reinforced to what some of his people privately regarded as a ridiculous degree. Deep courses of reinforced brickwork and breezeblocks had been laid inside the existing walls and on the floor. Thick plastic sheeting had been stapled over every flat surface and then sprayed with a thick, durable layer of white paint, and into this newly-white and well-nigh impregnable room they had installed the Swimmer.
He lay in the middle of the room in a glass-walled tank filled with a clear medicated gel. Almost every inch of his body was terribly burned, and the machines and devices and bottles of fluid and gas which kept him alive lined the walls, clear plastic tubes running everywhere across the floor. A bulky mask was strapped to his face, feeding some kind of oxygenated fluid into his ruined lungs.
Only Kapitan Todt and the doctor had keys to this reinforced room. The Kapitan let himself in, stepped inside to allow the invisible Coureur to enter, then closed and locked the door behind them.
“He finally turned up, Uncle,” he said.
Behind him, the Coureur shimmered into visibility again and took off his helmet. A few seconds later a synthesised voice from a pair of speakers beside the tank said, “Well, you took your time about it, cook.”
The Coureur stared at the tank. “Fabio?”
THE SWIMMER HAD come to the Municipality at an inauspicious time. The Kapitan had been watching Twenty closely for years, and he saw the signs. His lieutenant was schmoozing other members of the hierarchy, whispering in ears, making promises. Anschluss, the Kapitan’s late father would have called it. Tensions between the two men had been heightening for weeks. The Kapitan was starting to believe that the only way he could possibly survive this situation was to make a bold statement, drive Xavier into the ground like a tentpeg.
And then, late one night, a large van had turned up at Building 1, and inside, accompanied by several large, silent men, was the Swimmer, encased in a kind of gel-filled transparent body-bag, clearly close to death. He had a voice-synthesising computer which he somehow controlled by eye movement, and using this he was able to make his demands.
When the Kapitan called his senior officers together to tell them of the situation, Xavier was having none of it. The Kapitan over-ruled him and made arrangements to have the Swimmer installed in Building 2, and Xavier and his co-conspirators attempted a coup.
“Twenty didn’t want anything to do with this,” said the Kapitan. “He said it was espionage. He said it would bring down on us all kinds of unwanted attention. Really, though, all he wanted was an excuse to try and take over.”
The Coureur was sitting on an old kitchen stool in front of the tank, where the Swimmer could see him by using a mirror strung overhead. He seemed to be in the grip of several powerful emotions at the same time.
“What the hell happened to you?” he said.
There was a pause, while the Swimmer’s eyes picked out the words. Then the speakers said, “I was fired.” And then they made a horrible noise which the Kapitan had decided was laughter. When that died away, the Swimmer said, “I was made an example of. I wasn’t supposed to survive, of course, but I’m not without resources.”