Europe in Autumn

by Dave Hutchinson

  This turned out to be a piece of cake. Angry, tired, and suffering the after-effects of the sedative, it was all he could do to clamber out of bed, drag himself to the lavatory, allow his body to do something indescribable, and drag himself back to bed. Also, no one tried to interrogate him. Dizzy and nauseous and suffering an almost literally stunning migraine, he watched young English people approach him, inquire anxiously how he was feeling, dab at him with damp towels, and then withdraw. An older gentleman who spoke Swedish in a voice which seemed to boom in from another dimension appeared from time to time and shone a light into his eyes, which hurt beyond human imagination, and gave him injections, following which the world withdrew beyond a howling black-and-white kaleidoscope animation and he experienced periods of absence which he later thought might have been sleep.

  As far as sticking to his resolution went, the first day was an outstanding success. It lasted, so far as he could tell, a little short of a million years.

  ON THE MORNING of the second day, he opened his eyes and found himself lying in the most comfortable bed he had ever encountered. It was the kind of bed that a person would have to be bodily picked up and carried away from just in order to get up in the morning. But it paled in comparison to the pillows his head rested on, stuffed with down to such precisely-calibrated firmness that they could only have been the end-result of centuries of research. He was covered with crisply-laundered cotton sheets, topped by an old-fashioned quilt. He felt warm and safe and perfectly relaxed. Whatever else had happened to him, he had clearly fallen into the hands of people who took sleep seriously, and it was difficult to hate such people.

  He lay there for a long while staring up at the ceiling, which was high and painted a cream colour. In the centre of the ceiling a complex floral rose executed in plaster dropped a cable from which hung a four-branched light fitting in what looked like tarnished brass. Nice. Understated. A little old-fashioned. Not fussy.

  Unwillingly, because if he was to be honest with himself he would much rather have spent the rest of his life lying there with his head supported by those marvellous pillows, he sat up in the bed and looked at the room.

  And it wasn’t bad. Not very large, decorated in a Baltic rococo revival style he remembered from a magazine article he’d read a few years ago. Two of the walls had large windows, and between them stood the clean pale-wood lines of various pieces of furniture – wardrobes, dressing tables, chests of drawers, cabinets. The wallpaper, which only a few hours ago had seemed so outlandishly garish that he’d thought in a rare lucid moment that it had been put there specifically to drive him out of his mind, was actually a rather muted and thoroughly decent Regency stripe. The door to the en suite facilities, which yesterday had seemed as far away as Proxima Centauri, stood ajar just a few steps from the bed across the rug-covered floorboards.

  From his sitting position, he saw a dressing gown draped across the foot of the bed. This seemed like an invitation, so he swung his legs out of the bed and put his feet down and they landed in a pair of slippers which had been placed in exactly the correct spot. The slippers were in the moccasin style, soft leather lined with what appeared to be sheepskin, stitched together with brightly-coloured thread, and the moment his feet hit them he never ever wanted to take them off again. He sat there for a while on the edge of the bed, wiggling his toes in the miraculous slippers. He was, he realised somewhat belatedly, wearing cotton pyjamas.

  He stood up and felt a little light-headed for a moment, but it passed. He picked up the dressing gown and looked at it. It was navy blue, with a monogram on its breast pocket. After examining the monogram for some minutes, he decided it consisted of a design composed of every single letter of the alphabet, picked out in gold thread and surmounted by an heraldic animal he was unfamiliar with. He put the dressing gown on, did up its belt, put his hands in the pockets.

  In hostile territory, always assume you’re under surveillance. No need to skulk about, then. He walked across to the nearest window, pulled the curtain and the net curtain behind it aside, and looked out. The window looked down into the courtyard of an anonymous five-storey building. It was a big courtyard, and it was covered with a fresh fall of snow. Right in the middle someone had built a snowman, complete with a broom and a carrot for a nose. The snowman was wearing a black top hat.

  Rudi craned his neck. All he could see was rows of windows in the other wings of the building, all identically net-curtained. Doors at ground level. Aerials on the roofs.

  He let the curtains fall and started to explore the room. One door led to a small kitchen. Microwave, induction hob, kettle, fridge-freezer. In the fridge were bottles of water with labels in Finnish, packages of cooked sliced meat, a pack of unsmoked back bacon, a block of unsalted butter, six eggs, a litre of semi-skimmed milk, a bag of prewashed salad. In the freezer were neatly-wrapped and labelled packs of beef, pork and lamb, several bags of beef mince, a tub of chocolate Häagen Dazs. A cupboard beside the sink revealed a wire basket full of onions, carrots, potatoes. Another revealed a bin containing four different kinds of loaf. Mugs and cups and saucers. Paper packets of flour, plain and self-raising. Packages of tea and coffee and sugar. An unopened bottle of sunflower oil, an unopened bottle of olive oil. Some of those little packs of chocolate biscuits you got in hotels. Packets of stock cubes – beef, lamb, pork and vegetable. A spice rack on the wall with little jars of spices dangling from it, all their seals unbroken. Acrylic salt and pepper grinders. Pots and pans, utensils. He stood for a few moments looking at a knife-block the size of a small rucksack, from which protruded the handles of what appeared to be one of every kind of cook’s knife ever made. He took one out and weighed it in his hand. Sabatier. Not the way to treat it, putting it in a block. He slid it back into its slot and checked the kitchen bin, which contained nothing but a plastic bin-liner.

  Back in the main room, he stood with his hands in the pockets of the dressing gown and blew out his cheeks. He went into the bathroom, half expecting chaos and disorder, but everything was neat and clean, no sign of the terrible things his body had recently been doing there. Nicely tiled in pale blue. Toilet, bidet, washbasin, shower, all in white. Wrapped soaps and unopened bottles of shampoo, all with Finnish labels. Toothspray and brush still sealed in crinkly plastic beside the washbasin, alongside two similarly-sealed glass tumblers and a can of shaving gel and a package of plastic razors. Cupboard under the sink with spare toilet rolls on one shelf, cleaning materials on the one beneath. He looked at himself in the mirror over the washbasin and he looked not so bad, really, considering. A little pale, maybe. There was a tiny little red mark on his cheek where one of Ash’s men had shot him with what he presumed was a soluble crystal of sedative. He ruffled his hair and went back into the bedroom.

  Cupboards. A wardrobe containing nothing but empty hangers and a couple of those little scented cloth sachets that are supposed to deter moths. A desk with drawers containing ballpoint pens and tablets of unheaded good-quality notepaper. Opening the door of one of the cupboards revealed a state-of-the-art entertainment centre, gestural interface, onboard base of thousands of albums and movies. He waved up the main menu, looked at the options, shut it down again and put his hands in his pockets and looked around the room.

  All of which, obviously, was intended to make him feel safe and calm and happy. Which it did, and not just in the obvious way. As much as anything, the room was a message. It told him the people who had abducted him were not without resources. It told him they were professional. It told him they had done their homework – they’d given him the means to do his own cooking. It told him how lucky he was not to have woken up chained to a radiator in a derelict flat in one of the many bad parts of Warsaw. It told him that if the people who had abducted him had wanted him to wake up chained to a radiator in a derelict flat in a bad part of Warsaw, that was where he would have woken up.

  It did not, of course, tell him who the hell they were. Just claiming to represent the English government did n
ot make it so.

  There was a discreet knock at the door. Rudi turned at the sound, and when he didn’t say anything the knock sounded again. Obviously, they knew he was up and about, but they were determined to be polite. He said, “Hello?”

  He didn’t hear a key turn in the lock. The door opened and a young woman wheeled a trolley covered with a grey sheet into the room. She had auburn hair tucked up in a bun and an outdoorsy flush to her cheeks. She was wearing a long fawn corduroy skirt and a white blouse clasped at the throat with a silver brooch in the shape of a little owl. She was smiling sunnily.

  “Morning,” she said breezily. “How are we feeling today?”

  Rudi hurriedly ran through the options, loaded his English with an Estonian accent and his body language with as much outrage and confusion as he could, and said, “Who are you? Where am I? What are you doing with me?”

  The woman just kept smiling and wheeled the trolley into the middle of the room, where she removed the sheet. On the top was a small soup tureen, a bowl and a spoon. On the shelf underneath were some cloth packages.

  “You must be hungry, you poor thing,” she said. “We thought you’d like some chicken soup.”

  “Who are you?” he said again. “What is this place? What do you want?”

  “Oh, you don’t need to worry about any of those things,” she said cheerfully as she ladled soup into the bowl and carried it over to a table by one of the windows. The soup smelled wonderful, but Rudi stayed where he was.

  “I don’t want soup,” he said. “I want to know what’s going on. Why am I being kept prisoner here? Who are you?”

  “You can call me Jane, if you like,” she said. She turned from the table. “You should eat, you know. Keep your strength up.”

  “I’m not hungry,” he said, although he was.

  “You can cook something for yourself, of course,” said Jane. “We just thought you’d prefer something made for you this morning.”

  Rudi took a deep breath. “Who are you?” he yelled. “What is happening?”

  Jane looked so sad that Rudi immediately felt guilty for shouting at her. She looked as if she was about to burst into tears. “Look, if you don’t want the soup...” Her bottom lip actually trembled.

  Rudi sighed. “Yes. Yes, I want the soup. Thank you. Sorry.”

  Her smile brightened a little, as if someone had turned an invisible rheostat up a degree or so. “That’s the way,” she said, in a subdued-sounding voice.

  “I want to know what’s happening to me,” he said more calmly.

  “Of course you do. And someone will be in to tell you soon. I promise.” She moved away from the table and went past him to the door, giving him a wide berth as she did so and not meeting his eyes. “There are some clean clothes on the trolley,” she added. “I’ll be in later to clear the soup things away.” And she let herself out.

  After she had gone, Rudi stood for a while where he was in the middle of the room, trying to parse what had just happened. He seemed to have been completely disarmed by a teary English girl. He wondered whether he was still drugged.

  He went to the door and tried to open it, but the handle wouldn’t turn, though he hadn’t heard it being locked. He sighed and went over to the table, picked up the spoon, and looked at the bowl of chicken soup. It was clear and golden, with just a sheen of fat on the surface, and tiny fragments of carrot and swede and celeriac floating in it. He dipped the spoon into it and lifted it to his lips. It was the best chicken soup he had ever tasted. Possibly the best chicken soup that had ever been made. He sat down and started to eat.

  THE CLOTHES TURNED out to be a beautifully-cut pair of jeans, boxer shorts, socks, a plain black T-shirt, and a light-grey fleece that zipped up the front. They were the best-fitting clothes he had ever worn, and that was starting to become irritating. A part of his mind was delirious with pleasure at all this fantastic stuff. Another part was annoyed by the thought that while he was unconscious someone must have poked and prodded and measured him in order to outfit him this well. Another part was actually quite angry, now he thought about it, to be so transparently manipulated. And even more angry to discover how easily he could be bought by a comfortable bed.

  He ate the entire tureen of soup with several thick slices of rye bread. It crossed his mind, halfway through the third bowl, that the soup might be drugged, but by then it was too late and he considered the possibility of being drugged worth it just to eat this marvellous soup. When it was finished, he dressed. Then he wandered around the suite again.

  At the entertainment centre, he waved up the interface again and went through the most common hacks he could remember. They would be expecting him to do this, so there was no point not bothering. None of the hacks worked. None of them confirmed his location; none of them allowed him to phone or email or SMS or tweet out. None of them allowed him to post on any bulletin board or social network.

  He gave up and tried the news. There was what appeared to be local rolling news, and yes, it did appear to be in Finnish. Although there were also American, French, Italian, German, Spanish and British channels, and none of them seemed to have been assigned a priority.

  He sketched a menu ring in the air in front of him, put his finger through it, pulled down, and on the screen a white infosheet dropped down with a list of options, all in English. He pointed at ‘Internet’ and Google came up as the homepage, along with a keyboard representation. He cocked his hands in front of him and air-typed ‘Palmse.’

  There were reports – not very many and mostly on Estonian news sites – of the riot at the Conference Centre. The Government were presenting it as a bunch of proto-separatist thugs smashing up the Conference Centre as an act of defiance against Tallinn. A few bloggers – citizen news gatherers, in modern coinage – were posting their suspicions that the ‘proto-separatist thugs’ had actually been bussed into Palmse by the Government to break up the meeting. One, who called himself ironrabbit – Rudi was fairly sure it was a young man – even said he had interviewed one of the rioters, who had told him they had been paid for their efforts that evening. Ironrabbit hadn’t posted anything since then.

  As leader of the proto-separatists, his father featured quite heavily, at least in the local news stories. They all got his age wrong and one spelled his surname incorrectly. He was in hospital with serious but not life-threatening injuries. Of Ivari, not a word. Rudi checked the park’s website, but the news section hadn’t been updated for over a month. He googled Ivari’s name. Nothing but a few pages of old photographs of his brother with various celebrities in the Park, pointing into a mythical distance and looking intrepid. He looked at the photographs for a while. Then he closed everything down and went and stood at one of the windows. It had started to snow again.

  BY THE THIRD day, he was bored.

  It was all very well shouting at young English people and demanding answers and being difficult, but the whole act just bounced right off them. They were so painfully polite that he felt bad about offending them. Some of the girls became teary. It was utterly surreal, and in the end quite pointless.

  Finally, he said to Jane, who had come to the suite to inquire whether he needed anything, “All right. I am a Coureur. I would like to speak with a representative of my organisation. A man named Kaunas, if at all possible.”

  She didn’t reply, other than with her usual pleasantries, but an hour later a response arrived, in the serene, pudgy, septuagenarian shape of a gentleman who introduced himself as Gibbon and who settled himself into one of the armchairs in Rudi’s suite, unzipped one of those old-fashioned leather document folders, extracted an antique fountain pen, and blinked at him.

  “I want to leave,” Rudi told him when the preparations were complete.

  Gibbon shook his head sadly. “I’m afraid we have information that your life is in danger,” he said regretfully.

  “From whom?”

  Gibbon consulted the documents in the folder. “Certain factions within Greater Ge
rman counterintelligence,” he said, running the butt of his pen down the list. “The Estonian government. Coureur Central.”

  “I beg your pardon?” said Rudi, feeling a chill down his back despite knowing that this was almost certainly part of a provocation.

  Gibbon raised his eyebrows and returned the butt of the pen to its previous position. “Yes.” He looked calmly at Rudi. “We have rather good intelligence that your own people want to kill you. I’m afraid we don’t know why.”

  “That’s impossible,” Rudi said, trying and failing to imagine something so heinous that Central would want to kill one of their own.

  “It is rather good intelligence,” Gibbon told him again.

  “Where does it come from?”

  Gibbon sighed and scratched his head. “Yes, well, we always give our sources away to complete strangers,” he said with some sarcasm. He clipped his pen to the documents in the case and folded his hands across his ample belly. “The fact is, there are very few safe places for you right now, and one of them is with us.”

  Rudi looked at him for a few moments. “Is business so slow these days that English Intelligence is carrying out individual rescues?” he asked.

  Gibbon laughed as though he found this genuinely funny. “Oh, goodness gracious me no,” he said, shaking his head. “Although it’s a good thought, it really is.”

  “So, assuming we accept this fantasy story you’ve just told me, you obviously want something from me.”

  “Presumably,” agreed Gibbon, still chuckling at the idea of MI6 riding around the globe like a knight on a white charger.

  “‘Presumably?’”

  Gibbon shifted in his chair. “May I be frank with you?”

  “It would make a pleasant change, yes.”

  “My station was tasked with facilitating the insertion of Major Ash’s team into Estonia and their extraction of yourself. We were tasked with looking after you until you’d recovered sufficiently to travel.”