She shook her head and sagged. “My husband was going to investigate.”
He had climbed out of a ground-floor bathroom window, to avoid my watching officers. A few steps across the road, what could have merely been a breaking of the rules we had set him, but he had blundered out of a crosshatching and into an alter area, a yard that existed only in Ul Qoma; and Breach, who must have watched him all the time, had come for him. I hoped they hadn’t hurt him too badly. If they had I was pretty sure there wouldn’t be any doctor back home who would be able to identify the agent of his injury. What could I say?
“I’m sorry for what happened, Mrs. Geary. Your husband shouldn’t have tried to evade Breach. I … We are on the same side.” She looked at me carefully.
She whispered to me eventually, “Let us go, then. Go on. We can walk back to the city. We have money. We … my husband’s going crazy . He needs to be looking. He’ll just come back. We’ll come through Hungary and, or, we’ll come up via Turkey or Armenia-there are ways we can get in, you know … We’re going to find out who did this …”
“Mrs. Geary, Breach are watching us now. Now .” I raised my open hands slowly and filled them with air. “You wouldn’t get ten metres. What is it you think you can do? You don’t speak Besź, Illitan. I … Let me , Mrs. Geary. Let me do my job for you.”
MR. GEARY WAS STILL UNCONSCIOUS when the plane boarded. Mrs. Geary looked at me with reproach and hope, and I tried to tell her again that there was nothing I could do, that Mr. Geary had done this himself.
There were not many other passengers. I wondered where Breach was. Our remit would end when the plane doors were sealed. Mrs. Geary cushioned her husband’s head as he lolled in the stretcher in which we carried him. In the plane doorway, as they took the Gearys to their seats, I showed my badge to one of the attendants.
“Be good to them.”
“The deportees?”
“Yeah. Seriously.” He raised his brows but nodded.
I went to where the Gearys were seated. Mrs. Geary stared at me. I squatted.
“Mrs. Geary. Please pass my apologies to your husband. He shouldn’t have done what he did, but I understand why.” I hesitated. “You know … if he’d known Besźel better, he could probably have avoided falling into Ul Qoma, and Breach couldn’t have stopped him.” She just stared. “Let me get that.” I stood, took her bag and put it overhead. “Of course when we know what’s happening, if we get any leads at all, any information, I’ll tell you.” Still she didn’t say anything. Her mouth was moving: she was trying to decide whether to plead with me or accuse me of something. I bowed a little, old-fashioned, turned and left the plane and the two of them.
Back in the airport building, I took out the paper I had taken from the side pocket of her bag and looked at it. The name of an organisation, True Citizens, copied from the internet. That his daughter must have told him hated her, and where Mr. Geary had been going with his own dissident investigations. An address.
Chapter Nine
CORWI COMPLAINED, more dutifully than with fervour. “What’s this all about, sir?” she said. “Aren’t they going to be invoking Breach any minute?”
“Yes. In fact they’re taking their time. They should’ve done it by now; I don’t know what the holdup is.”
“So what the fuck, sir? Why are we in such a rush to do this? Mahalia’ll have Breach hunting for her killer soon.” I drove. “Damn. You don’t want to hand it over, do you?”
“Oh, I do.” So …
“I just want to check some things first, in this unexpected little moment we have.”
She stopped staring at me when we arrived at the headquarters of the True Citizens. I had called in and got someone to check the address for me: it was as it was written on Mrs. Geary’s paper. I had tried to contact Shenvoi, my acquaintance undercover, but couldn’t get him, so relied on what I knew and could quickly read on the TCs. Corwi stood beside me, and I saw her touch the handle of her weapon.
A reinforced door, blocked-off windows, but the house itself was or had been residential, and the rest of the street remained so. (I wondered if there had ever been any attempt to close the TC down on zoning charges.) The street almost looked crosshatched, its random-seeming variation between terraced and detached buildings, but it was not, it was total Besźel, the variation of styles an architectural quirk, though it was only a corner away from a very crosshatched area.
I had heard it alleged by liberals that this was more than irony, that the proximity of Ul Qoma gave the TC opportunities to intimidate the enemy. Certainly no matter how they unsaw them, the Ul Qomans in physical proximity must have registered at some level the paramilitary fatigues, the Besźel First patches. You could almost claim it was breach, though of course not quite.
They were milling as we approached, lounging, smoking, drinking, laughing loud. Their efforts to claim the street were so overt they might as well have been pissing musk. All but one were men. All eyed us. Words were spoken and most of them ambled into the building, leaving a few by the door. In leather, denim, one despite the cold in a muscle top his physiology deserved, staring at us. Bodybuilder, several men with cropped hair, one affecting an antique Besź-aristo cut like a fussy mullet. He leaned on a baseball bat—not a Besź sport but just plausible enough that he could not be done for Possessing Weapon with Intent. One man muttered to Haircut, spoke rapidly on a cell phone, clicked it shut. There were not many passersby. All there were of course were Besź, so they could and did stare at us and the TC crew, though most then looked away.
“You ready for this?” I said.
“Fuck off, boss,” Corwi muttered back. The bat holder swung it as if idly.
A few metres from the reception committee I said loudly into my radio: “At TC headquarters, four-eleven GyedarStrász, as planned. Check-in in an hour. Code alert. Ready backup.” I thumbed the radio off quickly before the operator had the chance to audibly respond along the lines of What on earth are you on about, Borlú?
The big man: “Help you, Officer?” One of his comrades looked Corwi up and down and made a kiss-kiss noise that might be the chirrup of a bird.
“Yes, we’re coming in to ask a few questions.”
“I don’t think so.” Haircut smiled, but it was Muscles doing the talking.
“We really are, you know.”
“Not so much.” This was the man who had made the call, a blond suede-headed man, pushing in front of his big acquaintance. “Got Entry and Search papers? No? Then you will not be coming in.”
I shifted. “If you’ve got nothing to hide, why keep us out?” Corwi said. “We’ve some questions …” but Muscles and Haircut were laughing.
“Please,” Haircut said. He shook his head. “Please. Who do you think you’re talking to?”
The close-shorn man gestured him to shut up. “We’re done here,” he said.
“What do you know about Byela Mar?” I said. They looked without recognition, or uncertain. “Mahalia Geary.” That time they knew the name. The telephoner made anah noise; Haircut whispered to the big man.
“Geary,” Bodybuilder said. “We read the papers.” He shrugged, que sera . “Yes. A lesson in the dangers of certain behaviours?”
“How so?” I leaned against the doorjamb companionably, forcing Mullet to back up a step or two. He muttered again to his friend. I could not hear what.
“No one’s condoning attacks, but Miss Geary” —the man with the phone said the name with exaggerated American accent, and stood between us and all the others—“had form and a reputation among patriots. We’d not heard from her for a while, true. Hoped she might have gained some perspective. Seems not.” He shrugged. “If you denigrate Besźel, it’ll come back to bite you.”