by Andy Graham
“Rose,” Stella said as Emily hurried over. “Think of your son, think of my son, my husband. Of course there’s a point. Without family we have nothing. Isn’t that worth fighting for?”
“Or against, depending on who you’re related to,” Vena said brightly.
Stella glared at the older woman. Vena waved back.
“Rose, please, you can’t give up now.”
Rose Franklin revolved on the spot like she was on wheels.
“Give up? Who said anything about giving up? It would take a better person than me to realise that they had spent most of their life championing the wrong cause and switch directions.”
“But . . .”
“I fully intend to fight until the bitter end, Dr Swann. And I intend to save as many of my surviving sons as I can.”
“Sons?” An icy cold gripped Stella.
“You need to know that the man who has taken your family, the man who I fear Ray wants to kill, is his brother. The VP is his older brother by two years. I gave him up when he was not much more than a baby. His father was David Prothero. Brooke is pregnant with Ray’s child.” The words fell from her mouth as if Rose had been practising. She held up a slender finger, cutting off Stella’s spluttering protests. “I’m going to stop this internecine war. And if you want to help get the rest of your family back, I’ll take you with me.”
Vena materialised at Rose’s side. She held out the manila envelope.
The cobwebs of lines around Rose’s eyes hardened. “And this, if it is right, is going to help.”
“I think it is right,” Vena said. “It makes sense. It also explains why I didn’t have access to all my sister’s secrets.”
“What secrets?” Stella asked. “What are you two talking about?”
“I’ll tell you when we get to our destination. The other chopper is already on its way here.” Rose slid the paper into her pocket. She pointed to the weapons stacked against the wall. “Choose a weapon, Stella. Preferably one you’re more likely to hurt someone else with than yourself. We’re going to war.”
“I thought you were trying to stop your sons from killing each other, not kill them yourself.” Sons! she screamed inside her head.
“Who said anything about killing sons?” Rose stared out at the fisher gull who was screeching for peace or blood, or both, on the other tower. “I’ll start with settling scores and then see what other damage is needed.”
26
An Opening Gambit
The mobile screen skidded across the desk.
“You conniving bastard!”
One look told the VP everything he needed to know. A scientist with a wreath of grey hair like a tidemark stood in one corner of the image. A date flashed in another. A name, Karil, lit up a third. The rest of the screen was taken up by a man the VP assumed to be Karil. He was strapped into the eternally uncomfortable chair that was the wrong size for everyone. Karil’s face was contorted into a grimace of pain. Beads of sweat glistened on his forehead, tracking lines down between the scabs and scars that criss-crossed his scalp.
“Hello, Bethina,” the VP replied.
“Never mind hello, nor Chester’s accident, nor you turning the 13th Legion into your private army, I want to know what you think you’re doing? I told you to stop these experiments. You sent that man, that thing,” she stabbed a finger at the screen, “to hunt down Ray Franklin in the Weeping Woods. You went behind my back. You disobeyed a direct order. What next? Who’s next? Are you going to experiment on Ray Franklin? Dr Swann’s husband? The son?”
The president’s words lashed across the desk, any semblance of self-control lost. Her two dogs, those stinking flea-pit bodyguards of hers, snarled at him, teeth showing under black-red gums.
He gestured for his own bodyguards to stand down. Their rifles snapped to their sides, gripped in white-knuckled hands. He understood. Putting the dogs down would be one thing. Killing the president would take a very special type of person, someone with no morals, little empathy and, ideally, an empty bank account. Fortunately, he knew not one, but two such men.
“Are you going to answer me, or stare at nothing with that moon face on?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I didn’t realise we had a meeting scheduled for today. You haven’t been into my office since David Prothero’s unfortunate death. Another close acquaintance of yours who suffered a tragic accident.”
She slapped her hand down on the desk. His triangular desk sign jumped and clicked back down onto the metal surface.
“Chester’s not dead.”
“Lucky us.”
“No games with me, young man. Chester will outlive us all, I’m sure of that. As for David, his accident happened in your real office, not this underground facsimile of yours. Now answer my question.”
“You’ve been spying on me, haven’t you, Beth?”
One of her fingers strayed up to the mole on the end of her nose. He fought back a gloating smile. She was rattled, more so than he had envisaged.
“Since when does a vice president behave so to his superior?”
“Only politicians could answer a question with a question and claim it was a conversation.”
This time when she slammed her hand down onto the desk, the desk sign flipped and fell off the edge. It landed with its brass surface face up. “I am the chairman, I get the chair,” was inscribed into one side in sunken black letters.
“You are a child playing with razor blades,” she said. “You don’t understand what you’re doing. I’m prepared to tolerate the ghost flights, the extraordinary rendition of political opponents, the disappearances, the lies and the propaganda. They are a necessary part of any functioning government’s attempts to keep its people safe. But what you’re doing has gone too far. The experiments I can just about stomach. The dirty genetic bomb will not happen.”
“So you have been spying on me.”
“No more questions.”
“That wasn’t a question,” he replied.
“I receive reports from my departments. As do you. One of those reports outlined your plans. I was not spying on you.”
He toyed with the screen. Behind Karil, whose eyes shone with an ugly purple light, stood Benn-John, the ancient orderly. The VP could practically smell the man’s faded orange smock from here: urine and stale sweat. Benn-John was twisting one hand around the other, as if trying to make them identical copies rather than mirror images. Bethina sucked in more air, no doubt to berate the VP some more. He was getting bored.
“A citizen who tells a lie is lying,” he said. “A politician who tells a lie can claim they misspoke or remembered incorrectly. A politician’s family and financial affairs are a ‘private matter’, but a citizen’s are fair game for any politician aiming for smooth governance. Citizens spy on us, we make enquiries about them. The semantics of these issues are so much easier when it’s just them versus us, the zero point one percent versus the rest. I’m not sure what terminology I should use when people within government, within the same party, a mere slip of the tongue away from holding each other’s office, are discussing issues like this.”
Bethina laughed, soulless and harsh. “You are a lot further away from my office than a mere slip of the tongue.” She leant on his desk, hands spread wide. Her white shirt spilled open to expose the pale flesh at the base of her neck. The necklace she was wearing swung back and forth, batting at the material. “And you had best watch what you say next very carefully. You’ve been a crucial cog in my government. I would be sorry to lose someone with your brains and understanding of the game. I will not, however, sacrifice what I, what we, have worked for, merely for personal gain. Despite what the sheep think” — she paused, a shudder running through her body as if she were remembering something unpleasant — “not everything we do is designed to further our own ends at the expense of theirs.”
“I, for one, am happy with the lopsided seesaw of society.” Something tickled the back of his mind, a memory he couldn’t place. “
I think you spoke about this with David Prothero.”
Her eyes widened momentarily. “Your father,” she said — and the control was back.
The VP suppressed the nauseous feeling in his gut. He concentrated on recalling the video his aides had procured, Bethina and David verbally dancing around each other, the dull, bat-like lights of the Kickshaw reflecting back up into their faces from the waxed table. It was the night Ray Franklin had first met Dr Swann. He grasped back deeper, reaching unseen, mental fingers for the memories that swam away from him, and grabbed the tail of something that kicked and squirmed. The memory slotted into place.
“Playground economics.” He smiled, an action that merely exposed teeth rather than expressed any emotion. “Think of this as playground politics — hard to climb up the slide, easy to slip down it. I’m done climbing. I’m done with the seesaw, swings and the roundabout, too. You can throw a sandpit analogy in there if you want. But I’m the king of the castle and I’m staying here. And if you want to play with my bucket and spade, you got to ask real nice.”
“You’ve been spying on me.”
This time he couldn’t keep the gloat off his face. “I receive reports from my departments. As do you. One of those reports outlined your plans. I was not spying on you.”
The look she gave him cut through the insouciance he had forcibly wrapped himself in since she arrived. His gloating expression fled.
“I want everything you have on gwenium.” She stabbed her finger into his desk. “I want this ‘solution’ of yours and the dirty bomb accounted for, right down to the last digital paperclip. You will transfer all the documents, files, papers, ideas and thoughts to me. I will delete all of it. That kind of power is too much for anyone. I refuse to have my presidency and the people I rule tainted with this abomination. We will not go down in the history books as the people who created this bomb. It will open a rabbit warren of possibilities that will only lead to ruin. Furthermore, it would reduce the descendants of Ailan to a lifetime of apologies and guilt. If there were such a thing as heaven and hell, I swear the devil would look to the lord for help on this matter.”
“They were exiled. The previous government banned them. You were part of that particular ruling elite.”
“I did nothing.”
“Maybe that was the problem.”
Bethina’s eyes flared. “De Lette, the previous president, acting through his lackey Hamilton, banned religion, as you well know.”
“How heartless,” his voice dripped with pantomime sincerity, “to cast all those people adrift in a sea of moral indecision with no lifejacket.”
“The spiritual anchors that people lost were outweighed by the peace it brought from religious in-fighting. I don’t care if people feel less fulfilled on the inside if they’re productive, cooperative members of society on the outside.”
“Is that why you assist the Famulus in her ministrations?”
“I see the Ward as society’s safety valve.” Bethina was speaking clearly, concisely. She was riled. He knew it. “It is my way of keeping tabs on people first hand. How are the young women there, by the way?”
His pulse spiked. “What do you know?”
“More than I want to.”
“Meaning?
“Have any more of your sexual conquests been disappeared?”
“No comment.”
“Any more murdered? Raped and shaved from scalp to toenail?”
“I don’t know what you mean, ma’am”
“Convenient.”
“What are you saying?”
“We both know how much the public like a good kiss-and-tell story. We also know the dead can’t tell tales.” She nodded over her shoulder. “But they can.”
The guards’ expressions were studiously impassive. In other words, the two men were soaking up every word and gesture. These words and gestures would be traded with their colleagues for other gossip and contraband: spirits, tobacco and analgesics. (Soaks, weed and geese, AKA swag in legion slang.)
It was a little acknowledged fact that gender didn’t drive gossip, boredom did. Being a guard in such a high-security location was usually highly tedious. The president rounding on the VP like this could be traded for a pirate’s treasure trove of swag. This was not something that he appreciated.
A fleshy snapping sound snapped his head round.
“Do you understand me?”
He could feel a flush of heat in his cheeks, the tension rising in his forearms. “Did you just click your fingers at me?”
“I asked you a question. Do you understand me or shall I get these two armed fools of yours to mime it out for you?”
The pale skin just under her jawline beckoned to his fingers. He could make this all go away. The rumours would be harder to strangle. There would be a way. There was always a way. “I understand you.”
“Good.” She straightened her shirt. “I expect you to take care of things within the week. Stay seated, I’ll see myself out.”
She stalked to the door where the two Unsung blocked her path.
“Really?” One eyebrow rose. “Let’s think this through carefully, shall we, boys? Exactly whose path are you blocking?”
The muscle along the jaw of one flickered.
“Loyalty is a double-edged sword, gentlemen, be careful you don’t cut yourself on it. And you,” she tapped the chest armour of one, “need to scrub that yellow filth off your nails. If Field-Marshal Chester gets wind of you Unsung smoking, she’ll be conscious in seconds. Then she’ll rip your lungs out with a fish hook.”
The man’s cheeks flushed scarlet.
“A few mints wouldn’t hurt your breath, either. Maybe you can help yourself to the VP’s when he’s out of the room, like he does to your field-marshal’s spirits from her quarters in the Brick Cathedral.”
They stood to one side, and she was gone. The VP’s imperious wave of dismissal went unused.
His fingers twitched for the mint tin in his pocket. The guards’ faces were impassive once more, the dirty red flush in the cheeks of the closet smoker draining away. The VP laced his fingers behind his head and placed his feet on his desk, faking a calm that covered up the thunder in his chest.
“Go and clean yourselves up. I’ll let your breach of the rules slide. This time. But I don’t want to give anyone any reason to investigate the Unsung. You’re mine now.”
The men left, leaving the faint smell of embarrassment behind them.
Randall crossed to the battered drinks globe in one corner of the room, and pulled out a bottle. One unhealthy measure later, he was swilling the alcohol around his mouth, feeling his tongue crinkle and dry.
How could men as tough as nails be beaten into submission by what was effectively a female pensioner? The progressively harder layers of muscle and armour these men were cocooned in had been undone by nothing more than attitude and authority.
He hurled the glass into a corner. It burst into a rainbow of shards. A mop-bot scuttled out of the shadows to clean up the mess. Laudanum had gone too far this time. Making demands she should have known he would not meet, especially delivered in such a manner: embarrassing him in front of his men, who would spawn untold rumours. The rumours had to be killed. Opinion could be as powerful as bullets in the right hands. Chester needed finalising. Laudanum had to be stopped. Their alliance was over.
“What’s next? Who’s next?” he muttered. “That’s what you just asked me, Laudanum. You should have realised the answer is simple.”
He pulled his phone from his pocket. The number he wanted glowed back at him from the screen.
“Yes, sir?” a tinny voice said.
“Brennan, three problems. One: find a way of dealing with Chester, properly this time. Two: there are a few of your colleagues that we need to silence.” The VP gave him their names and ranks.
“For how long, sir?”
No why. No questions. Obedient and practical.
“For good.”
“I’ll get Seth to
do it, he’s into the whole brotherhood of betrayal.”
“Not too much, I hope.”
“No, sir. And the last issue?”
Words were easy to think, saying them was much harder, it made them real. If he said these words, there would be no going back. He, like the president’s exiled god, would also have to turn to the devil for help if it went wrong.
His tongue was dry.
He soaked it in more alcohol straight from the bottle.
“Sir?”
Breathed in.
“Sir? Are you OK?”
And breathed out.
“The president has overstepped her authority, Brennan. We need a permanent solution. Are you capable?”
There was the barest glimmer of a pause.
“Yes, sir.”
27
Loaded Dice
Beth stalked away from the VP’s office. Her skin tingled with goosebumps born of fear and excitement. She hadn’t realised she’d been apeing her old mentor’s style, taking a posture straight out of De Lette’s playbook, until she had referred to the citizens as sheep, one of his more endearing expressions. De Lette was dead of a heart attack that everyone had seen coming but him, and there was a delicious irony there. But that posture of his was as fresh now as it was then: leaning on the desk, arms spread, head jutting forwards. He’d done it the day he’d banished her only true love, the memory of which had never really left her lips or heart.
That day was an indelible stain on her memory. The showdown between Rick Franklin and Edward De Lette had led to her and Rick learning the truth behind the Silk Revolution. Then De Lette had tossed that bent coin to Rick as he was leaving. It had spun through the air like a broken sun, fragments of light skewering the shadows. Rick had been clutching the coin the last time she had seen him, moments before the guards had driven him to the mines.
She shivered, itching to feel the sun on her skin, to breathe in the woody air that surrounded her Folly Tree. That evening at the height of the Silk Revolution was shouting down the earlier memories of her and Rick: his stubble scratching the skin of her cheek and belly as he had kissed her sleepiness away in the morning, the faint smell of gun oil that had hung around him, no matter how often she had dragged him into the shower and scrubbed him clean. The one memory that was still as fresh as ice water was her choice to leave him. The only difference being the Rick in her memory now had bent coins for eyes.
