Havoc

by Higgins, Jane

  You’d think that if the fighting was sending the place to the dogs they’d grab a ceasefire when we offered one. But no—‘We don’t negotiate,’ Frieda had said.

  The market was shoulder-to-shoulder busy, so we moved slowly, avoiding the outskirts because there were soldiers wandering about there, toting guns and watching for trouble and troublemakers. Sandor headed off towards the food stall and I called after him, ‘Hey! The bag.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ he said. He slung it from his shoulder to the ground and considered it. ‘What are you two up to? You don’t get this till you tell me.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ said Lanya. ‘Nothing you’re going to be interested in, anyway.’

  He smiled. ‘I’ll be the judge of that.’ He hefted the bag back on his shoulder. ‘I think I’ll hang around for a while, see what happens.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ I said. We made our way towards the church steps wanting three-sixty vision because there wasn’t just my father to look for, but also the soldiers on the perimeter and anyone else who, maybe literally, smelled a rat.

  We got to the steps, and Lanya said, ‘He should be here by now.’

  ‘Might be inside,’ I said. ‘I’ll go and look.’

  ‘Be careful,’ said Lanya.

  ‘Careful of what?’ asked Sandor.

  I climbed the steps to the porch and stopped in the shelter of a column to look across the crowd. I stood there for as long as I dared, thinking that if he was down there and on the lookout he might spot me, but then I got nervous about the soldiers and ducked inside.

  The marble interior breathed silence. I hurried down one side aisle then the other, peering into the small chapels and around the gigantic columns that held up the roof. Last time I was here was the night Southside had launched the first offensive in the uprising. The place had been buzzing with people who’d fled their homes. They’d piled their belongings on pews and in the side chapels and stood about arguing and worrying and waiting in vain for the army or the police or the emergency services to arrive. Now the building was empty and echoing. I reached the door of the crypt. This was where we’d camped—Dash and Jono, Fyffe and Sol, and me—before heading off on our disasterous attempt to take Sol and Fy home.

  Heart thumping, I turned the handle and pulled the door open, hoping, praying even, that my father would be there and I could tell him what Frieda had told us, and he would know what to do: that it might be as easy as that.

  Someone was there. Down the steps standing in the shadows by the altar. But it wasn’t my father. And, no, it wasn’t going to be easy after all.

  ‘Dash,’ I said, and my voice stuck in my throat. Everything was wrong with this picture.

  ‘Hello, Nik.’

  She came to the foot of the steps and looked up at me, smiling the Dash smile—so familiar that my heart almost lifted. Her short fair hair gleamed in the half-light, her eyes were dark in her shadowed face, and she stood as straight as ever in her black security-agent uniform. Behind her three candles burned in front of the altar icon, making its gold leaf flicker and shine. She saw me glance at them.

  ‘I lit them for Lou and Bella and Sol,’ she said.

  I backed away, thinking, ‘Run! RUN!’ and at last my feet obeyed.

  Dash called out ‘No! Wait!’ and I heard her racing up the steps behind me. ‘Stop! Or I’ll shoot!’

  I skidded to a halt. Looked back. I was staring down the barrel of her gun.

  ‘Seriously?’ I said. ‘You lit candles for Lou and Bella and Sol, and now you’re gonna shoot me?’

  She reset her grip on the gun and gave me her concentrated blue stare. ‘I have things to tell you.’ She answered someone in her ear piece. ‘Yes, he’s here. Any sign of the father? Right, will do.’ Then, to me, ‘There are things you need to know. About your mother. Who she was. What happened to her.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, backing away. ‘Like I’m gonna fall for that.’

  The gun didn’t waver.

  ‘Come on, Dash, you’re not going to shoot me.’

  I was almost certain of that.

  I turned and ran.

  She yelled after me, ‘She worked for us, Nik! She was an agent!’

  I charged out the door, yelling, ‘Go!’ to Lanya and Sandor who were standing at the bottom of the church steps. Sandor stared up at me in wide-eyed confusion but Lanya grabbed the canvas bag off his shoulder, pulled it open and upended it. The rats shot out under tables and feet. Then there was screaming and panic and fury everywhere.

  Under the cover of chaos we took off.

  We pushed a path through the market crowd and out into the maze of alleyways surrounding St John’s. I was making for Skinners Lane where the cc-eyes were usually out of action, vandalised as a matter of pride by the local kids and as a matter of business by the local dealers in contraband and illegal highs. We swung into the lane at speed, stopped halfway down it beside an overflowing rubbish skip and collapsed, breathing hard.

  ‘What the hell?’ demanded Sandor. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Lanya.

  ‘Dash,’ I said. ‘In the crypt.’

  I stopped, remembering her blue eyes and her gun. And what she’d said about my mother. I parked that.

  ‘They must have intercepted Levkova’s message. They were expecting my father to show. I don’t know why he didn’t—maybe he thought it looked like a trap.’

  ‘What d’you mean a trap?’ said Sandor. ‘A trap for who? C’mon! Tell me what’s going on!’

  ‘Shut up!’ said Lanya. She turned to me. ‘What now? How do we find him?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘We have to think.’

  We sat there sucking in air, trying to pretend that this wasn’t a deadend. On the other side of the alley a whole line of Have you seen Nomu? posters competed with graffiti and other posters demanding, Break the Breken! Got Information? Support Your City and Call It In!

  Sandor eyed the posters. ‘They sure want her back.’

  I was trying to think. What did it mean that my father hadn’t shown? Dash and her team had been expecting to pick him up, which meant they had intercepted our comms—no surprises there—but it also meant that he was on their hit list. Which was good, in a way: if it meant he wasn’t their informer. Unless he was, and Dash was trying to make me believe that he wasn’t. I put my head in my hands—this stuff could turn you paranoid and send you down the rabbit hole at speed.

  Lanya said, ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘You can count me out, for a start,’ said Sandor, standing up. ‘You people have things to do. I dunno what they are, but you can leave me out of them. I’m off. Got a city to see.’

  And maybe a reward to cash in, I thought.

  He stepped out into the alley and came face to face with the wrong end of a gun. An agent. One of Dash’s team, almost certainly.

  The agent yelled at Sandor, ‘You! Hands in the air!’ He edged around the skip, gun raised, aiming straight at Sandor’s head. ‘And you.’ He nodded at Lanya and me. ‘Get up. Slowly.’

  We stood up carefully. The gun
was like Dash’s, but this one was not attached to a person I knew and more or less trusted. The man holding it was narrow faced with flat dark hair and a uniform as black and as sleek as his gun.

  He smiled. ‘Got you. Easy as that. Rats in a trap. Keep your hands in the air! Right. You and you.’ He pointed the gun at Sandor then Lanya. ‘Turn around. Face that wall. Do it!’

  I watched Sandor hesitate. His own gun was in his jacket pocket, within reach, but it was no match for the heavy-duty piece trained on us. If he even looked like going for it, he’d be dead before he got a hand to it. He turned and faced the wall, leaned on it, peered back over his shoulder. Lanya did the same. The agent drew a steady bead on Sandor. Ice formed in my gut and crept through my veins. I could rush the guy, but he was too far away. At least one of them would be dead whole seconds before I got there. On the plus side, he hadn’t called for backup or reported his position; maybe the lane was a comms black spot.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Who do you want? You want me? I’ll go with you. Forget about them.’

  The agent’s eyes flicked between the wall where Sandor and Lanya stood, and me. ‘Kneel down,’ he said. ‘Fucking kneel down or one of them’s dead! I mean it!’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ Kneeling down under a gun is a scary thing: you can’t move anywhere fast, you can only look up at the gun and the hand holding it and the finger on its trigger.

  ‘You do what I tell you, right?’ he said. ‘Do what I tell you, and only what I tell you, you hear me?’ He smiled over the gun. ‘Or this happens.’

  He shot Sandor.

  CHAPTER 13

  I yelled and he fired again, above Lanya’s head. I spun back to her. She’d collapsed, screaming and weeping hysterically beside Sandor’s slumped body.

  The agent fixed the gun on me. His eyes narrowed and his teeth showed in a grin. ‘See? That was so easy I might do it again. I mean what I say—you remember that. Now, you and the girl are coming with me. Get up.’

  I stood up and went to Lanya who was still crying like crazy beside Sandor. But Lanya and hysterics didn’t go together. I cleared the line between her and the agent, wondering if she’d found Sandor’s gun. She looked up at me dry eyed.

  Then her hand shot out, her knife whipped through the air and lodged deep in the agent’s thigh.

  He went down with a scream—many short screams in fact.

  I ran to him, kicked him hard in the ribs and wrestled away the gun. He was yelling for backup so I kicked him again and ripped out his earpiece. The gun was heavy and smooth and my hands shook holding it. Keeping it trained on him, I walked backwards to Sandor and Lanya.

  Sandor was lying horribly still, blood soaking his jacket. Then he groaned. A sweet, sweet sound.

  ‘He’s alive,’ breathed Lanya.

  She lifted his shirt and grimaced at what she saw. She pulled the scarf from her hair and pressed it against his side. He yelped.

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ she said. ‘You have to hold it here. Press hard. Come on, Sandor. Press!’

  The agent was still squealing and gasping, trying to pull the knife out and watching to see what I would do with his gun. I looked up and down the alley: agents usually work in pairs. We had to hurry.

  ‘We gotta get out of here,’ I said. ‘Sandor? We have to move. Can you walk?’

  ‘He’s too heavy for me,’ said Lanya.

  The agent was yelling, ‘You’ll be sorry, you’ll be so sorry, you’ll be so fuckin’ sorry! Help! Somebody! Agent down! Help!’

  ‘Shut up!’ I said, and walked towards him, still aiming the gun at him.

  He went quiet, watching me.

  I said, ‘You shot my friend. Why don’t I shoot you.’

  ‘I…’ he gasped. ‘I…No!…But…’

  I pointed the gun at his head. His eyes went wide. I said, ‘Tell me about Operation Havoc.’

  ‘What?’ He squinted up at me. ‘Havoc? I don’t know. They don’t tell us. I’ve only got Clearance Level One. I’ve never heard of it, I don’t know what it is, I don’t know, I—’

  ‘Nik!’ called Lanya. ‘We have to get out of here before his buddies turn up. Give me the gun and you take Sandor.’ She took it from me and stood staring down the barrel at the agent.

  He was breathing heavily, almost whimpering, but he managed to get his sneer back. ‘You wouldn’t dare, little girl.’

  ‘No?’ she said, in Anglo. ‘I want my knife back.’

  The sneer vanished.

  I helped Sandor stand, and hung his arm round my shoulders.

  He gasped and screwed up his face but nodded, ‘Okay. Go.’

  ‘You go,’ said Lanya, still watching the man over the gun. ‘I’ll wait here to give you a start. Wait—tell me where you’re going.’

  ‘I know a place,’ I said. ‘It’s not far.’ We were speaking Breken, hoping the agent wouldn’t understand.

  ‘Get moving then,’ she said. ‘Give me some instructions and I’ll join you in a minute.’

  I whispered in her ear and she nodded.

  ‘Don’t wait long,’ I said.

  ‘So go!’ she said. ‘Hurry!’

  I hauled Sandor away.

  ‘Not far’ was three blocks down through Sentinel by way of dingy, cramped alleyways where, in pre-curfew days, the backdoors of theatres used to spill actors and bands into the night to join other partygoers in the tiny pubs and clubs that were the nightlife of Sentinel. It seemed to take forever to go those three blocks because I was pretty much carrying Sandor and I had to keep stopping for him to rest and get his breath, and I was desperate the whole time to hear Lanya’s steps running up behind us. It had started to rain. Blotches darkened the cobbles and sent up that dusty summer rain smell. We were going to get soaked, but at least it soon became impossible to tell what was rain and what was blood on our clothes.

  We came to the end of Bow Lane and I said, ‘We’re here. We have to wait for Lanya.’

  Sandor leaned on the side of a building and I thought about leaving him there and racing back for Lanya, but he kept sliding sideways so I stood holding him up and counted seconds.

  At last there she was, tearing down the alley and stopping grim faced but bright eyed beside us.

  ‘Did they come for him?’ I asked.

  ‘Not yet.’ She looked at the gun. ‘I’d rather have my knife than this, but I wasn’t going to try and get it back.’ She walked over to a big metal rubbish skip and hid the gun behind it, kicking extra rubbish into place beside it.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Where are we?’

  The lane opened onto Clouden Street, one block back from the river. Over the road from where we stood was a row of centuries-old riverside mansions that had had buckets of money poured into restoring them. They were four storeys high, of clean white stone with tall windows and balconies and steps flanked by sculpted trees and wrought-iron fences leading up to weighty doors.

  Lanya gave a low whistle.

  ‘That one,’ I said. ‘Number 11. The Hendrys’ townhouse.’

  She stared at me. ‘Are you insane?’

 
‘They’re not here. Come on, help me get Sandor up the steps.’

  ‘How do you know they’re not here?’

  ‘They never come to town in summer—it’s too hot. Plus, they’d think it was too dangerous to be in range of Southside rockets right now. And, even if someone is there, we have to stop Sandor bleeding and short of fronting up at a hospital, which will fast become a trip to the Marsh, this is the only way.’ I looked at her. ‘Got a better idea?’

  She shook her head. ‘But still…’

  Sandor tried a grin and said, ‘If you’re gonna die, do it in style.’

  ‘You’re not gonna die, Sandor,’ I said.

  The rain was sheeting down and the street was deserted. Thunder clouds darkened the sky across the river and rumbled as if huge guns were firing from Southside.

  We struggled across the road and up the steps of Number 11. Lanya looked at the massive door in front of us and the sign on the wall, Monitored Security—Armed Response.

  ‘See this?’ she said.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Here, help Sandor.’

  ‘And you can get in here without alarms lighting up all over the place and people arriving waving guns and shooting?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is mad,’ she said. ‘We need a medic—’

  ‘Shh. Concentrating.’ I was loading the backup pass-code into the keypad because I didn’t want to go through the whole gamut of guessing shortcut codes and getting them wrong and alerting someone somewhere that a break-in was in progress. The backup was thirty-two characters long and would default to a screaming siren if I got it wrong twice. Lou had shown it to me. He wasn’t supposed to know it, and I certainly wasn’t. But that was Lou for you: generous to a fault and anything for an easy life as long as it was hilarious. Creeping into the townhouse for a weekend of luxury when his parents were up north was frequently hilarious.