I heaved myself back.
“Catch up?” Tanya said.
I looked at her with incomprehension, at last nodded. She used her teeth to tear open the sachet, passed it carefully to me. I squirted the sauce over my chips. It effortlessly suggested blood. I reached for my drink and gulped a big mouthful, the ice cubes clacking against my teeth. Lime and soda. I’d always disliked lime. A mosquito whine filled my ears. Owain carried a tray of cakes and biscuits into the conference hall. The long room was windowless and stuffy, thick with an acrid haze of cigarette and pipe smoke. Low-slung overhead lights made glazed pools on the polished mahogany surface of a big table. Around it were seated two dozen figures, most of them men, most in uniform. Sheets of paper, empty cups and wineglasses sat on blotters, ignored in the angry exchange that was taking place.
“It’s intolerable,” a man in a dark blue uniform was saying in Italianate French. “You cannot expect us to police the entire Mediterranean when we do not have enough fuel for our ships. It is asking the impossible!”
“That’s no fault of mine!” responded another man, equally irately. He was burly and olive-complexioned, possibly Egyptian. “Until the contamination issues are settled my hands are tied.”
Both men were on their feet, glaring at one another across the table. The burly man wore desert khaki and the insignia of the quartermaster general’s office.
“Gentlemen,” said a third man, rising from his seat, “must we shout at one another? Urgent priority has already been given to remedying the situation. I understand that supplies of shielding equipment and new turbine housings for all major frontline vessels are already being undertaken, is that not so?”
This, Owain knew, was Marshal Coquelin, the French C-in-C of Strategic Operations. He directed this question at an anonymous-looking woman in a herringbone trouser suit. She gave a brisk nod.
“Deliveries are expected?” he prompted.
“Some have already been made. The Clemenceau, Moltke and Ark Royal battle groups are being refitted even as we speak.”
“And the time scale?”
“For capital ships, by the end of the month to the Mediterranean and Baltic fleets. Before April for the Atlantic fleets.”
“Excellent. That should enable you to get your ships to where they need to be, yes, admiral?”
The admiral did not exactly look satisfied but he subsided into his seat, as did the thickset man.
“Ah,” said Coquelin, as if he had only just registered Owain’s arrival, “an appropriate time to take a break, wouldn’t you agree?”
A braided kepi sat on the desk in front of him, a relic of the old French army uniform. It was obvious to Owain that the discussion had centred on problems with fuel supplies that had arisen now that wells in the Mesopotamian oilfields were being tapped that contained high levels of gamma emitters. Every ship bigger than a minesweeper in the Alliance fleet would have to have its engine room modified so that it could use the radioactive fuel. No doubt the tanker crews would be expected to make their own safety arrangements.
Coquelin fell into muted conversation with Owain’s uncle, who was seated to his right. He was the head of the French military government and hence a member of the thirty-person Chiefs of State Committee that directed the Alliance’s military and political affairs. On his other side sat the elderly Reichmarschall Schmidt, one of his counterparts and the representative of the German General Staff. He looked half-asleep. Further down the table was Carl Legister.
Owain ventured only the occasional glance in his direction. He was convinced that Legister was watching him as he arranged crockery on the table. A slim, fastidious-looking man, he wore a black suit and a high-collared white shirt buttoned up but without a tie. It lent him an ascetic air. He sat bolt upright, staring straight ahead through contact lenses that accentuated his penetrating eyes.
I kept myself in the background. This was a high-level meeting, and I needed to be as discreet as Owain was being wary.
When Owain came to his uncle’s shoulder, Sir Gruffydd helped himself to three chocolate-coated biscuits from the tray. Another aide was dispensing tea and coffee.
“Sir,” Owain said with an unaccustomed degree of public boldness, speaking in English, “I was asked to remind you of your insulin levels.”
“Damn cheek,” Sir Gruffydd said, though not unkindly. He returned one of the biscuits to the tray and said, “Two sugars in my coffee.”
His uncle suffered from late-onset diabetes. Giselle had earlier supplied him with a little cylinder of sweeteners. He clicked two into the general’s cup.
“Impudence!” the old man said theatrically. “Generaloberst, this is my nephew. What do you make of his insubordination?”
He was talking to the tall man sitting opposite him. Owain saw that it was none other than Wilhelm Blaskowitz, the C-in-C of the armies in eastern Europe.
Blaskowitz was a lean man in his early sixties who sat as stiff-backed in his chair as Carl Legister. Owain nearly blurted out that he had served under him while on the eastern front and that he was esteemed by his men. But such gushing would have been inappropriate as well as foreign to his nature.
Owain moved slowly upble, picking up snatches of conversation. A Spanish general was speaking in broken German to a Czech colleague, discussing refugee problems. A Free French Canadian commander was doubting that the Australians would be able to maintain their neutrality in the face of American encroachments in the Pacific. A Swiss air marshal was complaining that his pilots had been reduced to flying thirty year-old Valkyries and Henschels because disruptions in satellite signalling made state-of-the-art warplanes vulnerable to crashing. Henry Knowlton was scoffing at suggestions that this breakdown had actually been initiated by AEGIS itself in order to destabilise the prevailing period of truce.
Owain lingered, intrigued but sometimes missing the subtleties of the discussion, which was in brisk French. For months there had been gossip that the strategic network had become self-governing and now sought to control the conduct of military operations for its own nefarious ends. The Swiss commander even considered it conceivable that AEGIS was actually working in concert with the American SENTINEL and Russian PHALANX systems, as well as those operated by the Chinese and lesser power blocs. G in AEGIS now meant Gestalt, a global artificial intelligence whose aims superseded those of the humans it had been structured to serve.
It wasn’t the first time Owain had encountered the suggestion that AEGIS might have evolved a directed sentience of its own, though he was surprised to hear it aired at such a high-level meeting. But Knowlton remained airily adamant there was no basis for such a claim.
Owain returned to the kitchen to fetch a fresh pot of coffee. As he came back through the door, Legister raised a finger and beckoned him over.
“Black coffee,” he said.
Owain filled his cup. His hands were surprisingly steady.
“Major Maredudd, isn’t it?” Legister said.
It was a statement. They had met on several occasions, though Owain had never been formally introduced.
“I gather from your uncle that you recently had a narrow escape,” he remarked. “Some business in the West End?”
What was he supposed to say to this?
“An old incendiary went off,” he replied.
“Really?”
Surely Legister would know all the details. Was he fishing for more? Or was this the opportunity for Owain to confess that he met Marisa regularly? To stress as well that their friendship was a purely innocent one?
He couldn’t bring himself to admit it. Hated to imagine the two of them even sharing the same space.