‘Try not to kill anyone,’ said Shining. ‘I include you in that, obviously.’
‘How kind.’
Grabbing another tile, wiggling it first to make sure it would hold, Toby stretched up so that he could see over the edge. The roof was empty, at least on the side that was facing the street.
‘If there’s anything on the far side I wouldn’t be able to see it from here,’ he shouted, ‘but as I’m not going up there, we’ll just have to take it as read.’
‘And as your superior I’m happy to sign off on that,’ said Shining, ‘so get back in here before my staff consists again of just me.’
Toby sat on the cross bar, turned around and lowered himself. After a brief, terrifying moment of hanging in space and being sickeningly aware of the fact, he managed to get his foot back onto the ledge and Shining pulled him inside.
‘Obviously,’ the old man said, ‘I’d have been only too happy to have climbed out there myself, but you seemed to want to prove yourself.’
‘Well, if you won’t let me do any of the magic stuff, I have to make myself useful somehow.’
Shining pulled out his phone and tapped on the screen. After a moment, the sound of the numbers station started playing from its small speaker.
‘Nine hundred and ninety nine, five, five, seven…’
‘Oman put an app on my phone that lets me listen to the broadcast,’ Shining explained. ‘He can be terribly clever about that sort of thing.’
‘It’s started counting down. It said one thousand yesterday.’
‘That’s rather ominous. I do hope we haven’t somehow set it off by coming here.’
‘I’d find that easier to believe if there was actually anything here. Wonder how quickly it’s counting?’
‘Nine hundred and ninety eight, five, five, seven, five, five, seven; nine hundred and ninety seven…’
‘I’ll time it,’ said Toby looking at his watch.
They both listened to the radio repeating the same numbers over and over until…
‘Nine hundred and ninety six, five, five, seven, five, five seven…’
‘Three minutes.’
‘Check it again, in case it’s not regular.’
Toby did so.
‘Nine hundred and ninety five, five, five, seven, five, five, seven…’
‘Same again, we drop a digit every three minutes.’
Toby pulled his phone from his pocket and opened a calculator app. ‘Which would mean we’d hit zero in…’ he tapped away on the screen, ‘just under fifty hours.’
Shining smiled. ‘How lovely. Nothing sharpens the attention quite like a countdown, does it?’
‘Counting down to what?’ Toby didn’t expect Shining to answer; it was more an expression of his own frustration.
Shining had wandered over to the open hatchway again. Something he saw through it made him gasp and run towards the stairs.
‘What?’ Toby asked, wincing at the prospect of the old man stumbling at any moment.
A little more carefully, Toby followed on behind. By the time he had cleared the rickety stairs, Shining was already at the front door and charging through it.
‘Damn him!’ Shining shouted, just as Toby caught up with him in the street outside.
‘What was it?’
‘I saw him again,’ said Shining, pacing up and down in frustration, ‘standing out here, looking up at me.’
This was the first time Toby had seen Shining lose even the slightest bit of self-control.
‘Saw who?’
‘Krishnin.’ Speaking that name deflated Shining. He stopped pacing and looked towards Toby. ‘Which probably sounds absurd.’
‘You always sound absurd. I’m getting used to that. You say you’ve seen him before – recently?’
‘Yesterday. That’s what set me thinking about this place. But I knew I couldn’t have… I couldn’t have.’
Toby shrugged. ‘Everything you say seems impossible to me. What makes this any more impossible than everything else?’
‘I saw him die!’ Shining insisted. ‘I killed him. My first. The first life I ever took.’
‘And now he’s back. That seems no more unlikely to me than alternative dimensions, invisible radios, Angels of Death and disappearing warehouses. Business as usual for Section 37, I’d have thought.’
Shining smiled. ‘Thank you. I appreciate you’re being supportive.’
‘I’m being honest. So a dead Russian’s back from the grave? Fine. If I can work with everything else I can work with that.’
Shining’s phone continued to squawk out the numbers station broadcast.
‘Nine hundred and ninety four, five, five, seven, five, five, seven.’
‘Turn that thing off for now would you?’ asked Toby. ‘Then tell me what it was that happened here between you and Krishnin. Then maybe we can decide what to do next?’
Shining nodded. ‘A plan.’ He reached for his phone.
‘Nine hundred and ninety three, five, five, sev—’
CHAPTER SIX: NOSTALGIA (2)
a) Farringdon Road, Clerkenwell, London, 20th December 1963
By the time I arrived back at Farringdon Road, O’Dale was getting impatient.
‘Thought you’d gone and got yourself shot,’ he said, appearing at the head of the stairs as I climbed up them. ‘Another half an hour and I’d have had to figure out how to send a secure message to the powers that be.’
‘I’m fine,’ I assured him, ‘but I appreciate your concern.’
‘Can’t file my invoice without you, can I?’ He gave a grunt that might have been a laugh; equally it might not. ‘Whatever you’ve been up to, it must have been more interesting than sitting around here. The Ruskies have barely opened their mouths to one another all morning.’
‘Then you might appreciate a little field trip I had planned for later on tonight.’
If the Colonel wasn’t going to allow me any more men, O’Dale was all I had. As much as it might go against protocol to leave the surveillance post unmanned, I was damned if I was going to walk into that warehouse on my own.
‘You always did extol the virtues of a trigger finger,’ I told him. ‘Meet me at the warehouse at one o’clock and bring your hardware with you.’
‘Late nights better pay extra,’ he said, jotting down the address as I dictated it to him. But the thought of a bit of action seemed to have put a discernible spring in his step as he went down the stairs and out of the house.
I settled down on the chair he had left warm and began to unwrap a set of sandwiches I’d picked up from a delicatessen. I ate to the sound of occasional footsteps and slammed doors from the surveillance speakers. While there was little in the way of conversation, the people were active enough.
I passed the afternoon reviewing the taped surveillance while also keeping an ear on current events. O’Dale had been right – there was nothing coming out of that house that was of any interest. It was so dull that at four o’clock I loaded up fresh tape in the recorders and lay on the bed, planning a quick nap that soon extended beyond my intention. I woke at eight, startled, ashamed and angry.
I made myself a coffee, checked the tapes in case I’d missed anything (I hadn’t) and then began to run over my plan for the night’s mission. It being an embarrassingly simple plan, this occupied me for all of ten minutes. I was stir crazy by the time the clock slouched towards midnight.
It sounded as if the residents across the road had gone to bed. There was no indication that they had left the building. One of them had shuffled his flatulent way past a microphone earlier. I hoped they were settled in for the night.