Then she turned to the camera saying, ‘This charade is over.’
She tore off her own lapel mic, dumped it into the hands of the dazed-looking reporter and turned for a side door.
But the crowd had other ideas. A ripple of movement, a step here, a shuffle there, and the doorways were blocked. Frieda paused, head high, imperious as ever.
She grabbed back the mic. ‘I said, this is over.’ And, to the army guy, ‘Major? Clear the doorways.’
Someone yelled, ‘It’s not over till you tell us the truth!’
Then another, louder voice said, ‘I’ll tell you the truth.’
It was the minister, still wired up with a mic. He made his way out of the crowd and halfway up the steps.
Frieda was shaking her head at the reporter, but the cameras were still rolling and she was maybe wary of insulting a churchman. She walked down a couple of steps to be level with him and gave him a full-on stare as if to say, you can’t see the gun I’m holding to your head, but do not doubt that it is there.
The minister looked across the crowd. ‘We’re tired of war,’ he said.
The crowd stirred, some shrugged, tired of platitudes.
‘We’re hungry for peace.’
People murmured and a few shouted in agreement.
The minister turned to Frieda, ‘Director, you have told us that Moldam does not want peace. That we cannot help them.’ Then he turned back to the crowd, ‘My friends, the director is lying. In fact, she is responsible for planting this virus in Moldam. I accuse Director Kelleran of a war crime.’
Uproar.
Frieda yelled at her two sidekicks to seize the minister, but he walked back into the crowd and to get to him the agents would have had to abandon Lanya and me and Dash and the turncoat medic.
The crowd was yelling for the army guy to arrest Frieda, and he was ordering his four underlings to take control, but they didn’t have a chance unless they shot someone.
The cameras were still rolling.
Everyone who had a gun had drawn it and was aiming down into the crowd.
The minister tried calling for quiet but things just got louder so he shouted over the mayhem. ‘Stop! Listen to me! Listen! Three days ago I heard the director say she had ordered the virus release in Moldam! I heard her say how it was done! Please! Please be quiet!’
People shut up at last.
‘First things first,’ he said. ‘We must save Moldam!’
Someone started pushing towards the front of the crowd. Two people: Fyffe, who climbed the steps and came to stand with Lanya and Dash and me, and her mother, who held out her hand for the microphone that Lanya was holding. Sarah looked across the crowd, which was quiet, watching her, and then into the cameras and spoke to the city.
‘People seem to think I want retribution for my sons. This is not true. What good would that do? What I want is a future for my daughter.’ She looked at Fyffe and then at Thomas Hendry in the crowd. ‘And that means taking the vaccine to Moldam. You understand why? The only way to stop this disease is to stop it in Moldam. There is enough vaccine to do that. So let’s do that. We, all of us, have given too many of our children to this war.’
There was rustling and a rising tide of talk. Someone yelled, ‘We don’t know where it is—the vaccine!’
‘I do,’ said the turncoat medic.
Someone else yelled, ‘It’ll need an escort.’
And you knew, from the frisson in the air in that church that every one of those people would walk the vaccine to Moldam, and so would everyone outside in the square, and in Sentinel Square and in Sentian. They’d all do it. But it wouldn’t be enough.
Sarah Hendry knew that too. She turned to the army high-up who stood beside his soldiers, their guns still trained on the crowd. She didn’t speak. She didn’t need to.
He looked out at the crowd, then at all of us standing beside him, then at the cameras. And maybe he thought about the logic of what Sarah had said, and maybe he thought about the weight of numbers out there in the square and beyond, and maybe he thought about his own kids.
He gestured to his team and said, ‘Stand down.’
CHAPTER 40
There was total hush for a good ten seconds, as though everyone was astonished that we’d arrived at this moment. Then they all began talking at once. Fyffe flashed me a jubilant smile and went to her mother. Frieda turned back towards us with a look of utter disbelief on her face.
I breathed out shakily: all I could think was that no one had been shot.
Then Lanya’s hand gripped mine and I realised, first, that she was breathing as shakily as I was and second, that something mighty had just happened.
Frieda marched across to the army commander. ‘Major, what do you think you’re doing? You have your orders and they are certainly not to—’
‘My orders, Director, are to protect you and your team and to maintain order here.’
‘That’s right. And so—’
‘I’m placing you in protective custody.’ He looked around and called two of his people over.
‘Take Director Kelleran and her team to the crypt.’ He put a detaining hand on the shoulder of Frieda’s turncoat medic. ‘Except you,’ he said. ‘You, we need.’
Frieda drew herself up tall. ‘You have no authority to do this, Major.’
The emphasis was to remind him, I guess, that he was middle ranking at best. But he wasn’t subordinate to her, and she knew that.
He glanced across the crowd, which was still blocking all the doors and was starting to turn its attention from euphoric air punching and back slapping to what would happen next.
‘Director,’ he said. ‘Right now I can’t guarantee your safety in any other way.’
He nodded to his underlings and they swept her away, along with her five remaining agents, including Dash and Jono.
The major beckoned to my father. I wondered if the guy was itching to arrest this man who had been Cityside’s most wanted for so long.
Turns out, he was.
He called his remaining two grunts over and said, ‘Nikolai Stais, you’re under arrest.’
I shouted, ‘No!’ and started to move, but my father shot me a warning look and I backed off.
The major glanced at me, then turned to the crowd, put thumb and finger to his mouth and whistled hard.
Everyone shut up and looked at him. By my count, there were over three hundred people in that church, and more behind pillars and in the foyer. The major had the complete attention of every one of them: they were focused, hard eyed, not trusting him at all, but wanting to trust what was happening right now, wanting to reach through the space he’d opened up and grab this chance.
‘I’m clearing the church,’ he announced. ‘Everybody out!’
Nobody moved.
He drew breath, and I think he meant to say it again, louder, but he must have realised that these people weren’t going to move, however loudly and often he issued the command. They weren’t looking at the major now, anyway, they were looking at my father, who moved three steps to within quiet earshot of him. The
armed grunts followed, like moons dragged along in the pull of a planet.
My father spoke in a low voice to the major, who stared at the ground at first, then lifted his head and looked slowly across the crowd. He was like a man advancing on new territory, knowing it was laced with mines but feeling compelled to explore. When my father finished talking, the major hesitated for a long moment, then gave a sharp nod.
My father turned to the crowd. ‘Go,’ he said.
And, simple as that, people headed out into the square. The news team followed, lugging cameras and audio kit and trying to grab interviews on the run.
The Dry-dwellers stayed, so did the Hendrys. Lanya and I did too, and I could see Anna and Samuel in the foyer keeping an eye on what was happening in both church and square.
Fyffe drew the turncoat medic aside in that gentle way of hers. She looked concerned for him and reassuring and wholly trustworthy. She told him her name and got his. Then she took him into the gathering of Dry-dwellers and her parents and began to introduce him.
The major watched the crowd leave and seemed surprised that they’d gone so calmly and completely at a single word from my father. He gave a slight shake of his head and said to him, ‘You’re still under arrest.’
But my father wasn’t paying attention. He was listening to the others standing nearby. Fyffe had done good work with the turncoat medic: awed by the company he was suddenly keeping, he was spilling information about the location of the vaccines.
‘How will you transport them?’ called my father.
The medic looked around and stuttered, ‘Ah…er…’
‘A Hendry truck would do it,’ said my father.
Thomas and Sarah looked alarmed, but Fyffe said, ‘Yes! That’s a great idea!’
‘And an army escort would help,’ my father added.
The major almost laughed. ‘I’m not authorising that.’
Thomas Hendry looked at his daughter, who was lit up with excitement and commitment. He sighed.
‘You don’t have to, Major. We’ve decided what we’re going to do. You can choose to help, or not.’
‘With respect, sir, I can’t let you do that without authorisation from—’
‘Well, get it, man! We’re not waiting.’ Then the Hendrys and the Dry-dwellers, with the medic in tow, walked down the altar steps into the body of the church, and hurried away.
The major was in danger of being cut adrift; things were moving beyond his control, fast.
‘You still have me,’ said my father.
The major unclipped his comms unit and stared at it for a moment. I could see him wrestling with the bargain he was being offered: would the arrest of this wanted man be enough of a prize for his commanding officer to offset the action of escorting the vaccines across the river?
He clicked on the unit and walked away, talking into it urgently.
My father turned to Lanya and me. ‘Go with the Hendrys.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not leaving.’ I knew what they did to their big-name hostages. They murdered them.
‘Nik,’ he said, ‘You have to go. You’re part of this bargain.’
I looked at the grunts with their guns standing beside him, and at the major, still talking but watching us now.
‘What will you do?’ I asked.
‘What I can,’ said my father. ‘Don’t despair. Now, go.’ It wasn’t supposed to end like this. He was supposed to come over the river with us, Lanya and I would get the vaccine along with the rest of Moldam, and he would be the person who brokered the lasting peace.
Fyffe reappeared at the doors of the church to see, I guess, why we hadn’t gone with her yet.
Lanya nudged me gently. ‘They’re waiting for us.’
‘I know,’ I tried to say but my voice wasn’t working.
My father nodded and said, ‘Go on!’ but I was ambushed by the ache of losing him again. I couldn’t move or speak. Lanya took my hand and walked a few steps, and at last I went with her, down the aisle and out into brilliant sunlight and the turbulent, crowd-filled square.
CHAPTER 41
We took the vaccine to Moldam.
We brought it across the river in a couple of Hendry trucks escorted by a crowd of twenty thousand plus, and the army. The major had decided, or been told, to support the bargain in play. And we did need the army. At the very least we needed them to stand aside and let us pass.
And that’s what they did: they gave us safe passage over Curswall Bridge, although they did it in a stern-faced, we’ll-only-do-this-once kind of way.
When we reached the barbed-wire barricades on the Curswall boundary road, the major gave the soldiers guarding them new orders: roll up the wire, let the trucks pass. And in we went. But once we were through, they rolled the wire back into place.
When we stopped outside the infirmary on the parkland west of the shantytown, I turned to Lanya.
‘Made it. We actually made it.’
I jumped out and helped her down from the truck cab.
She swayed in my arms.
‘Nik,’ she said, ‘I’ve got a fever.’
CHAPTER 42
I sat at Levkova’s kitchen table and listened to the house shift and creak as the day started to hot up outside. Slanting morning sunlight picked out the sunken armchairs by the fireplace as though it was inviting me to slump into one of them, but the grate was grey with old ash and behind me the stove was cold. I’d come in from sitting on the front steps where I’d been people watching: kids were sloping off to school, barefoot and cheerful, a hawker was hauling his cart up the street with a song-like yell, stopping as women came out of their houses to buy vegetables, a fix-it guy was going door to door offering to patch up broken stuff. Moldam was back to normal, almost, although there was the small matter of having no bridge.
We’d made it in time, mostly. People had flocked to the infirmaries and makeshift dispensaries and stood in long, patient queues. Two weeks later the barbed wire was rolled up and carted away and the quarantine was lifted. A few people did get sick—some very young, some old or not too healthy. A few people died.
Levkova.
Sub-commander Tasia Levkova. The virus attacked her lungs and she died within just three days. I couldn’t get my head around it, how someone so staunch and fierce and downright commanding could succumb and be gone in a heartbeat.
Not all of those who died died fast. Some were dying slowly.
Lanya lay in an isolation ward fighting a raging fever, fighting the bruising that spread beneath her skin, fighting. They couldn’t tell me if she was winning.
And me? I didn’t get sick at all.
We buried Levkova in the hillside graveyard overlooking Moldam, the one where a rocket had gouged a trench in the earth the night they blew up the Mol.
We buried her with honour and great grief. I’d only known her half a year, but that was easily long enough to know what everyone standing at the graveside knew: that she was fearless and she was wise and, although she tried not to let on, she was kind too—why else was I now sitting in her house? When I’d first turned up in Moldam
she could have looked right past me with a not-my-problem stare, and she could have turfed me out at any time since. Instead, she fed me and gave me a roof to sleep under and she treated me like I mattered. It was Levkova who told me that my father was not dead. It was Levkova who brought us, despite our mutual suspicion, back together.
Now she was gone, and I was sitting in her kitchen missing her no-nonsense presence: she would have told me to quit chasing down worst-case scenarios about Lanya and my father and to go and be useful to someone.
I thought about going to the infirmary, but I’d hung around that place for two weeks and the staff were sick of the sight of me. Only Lanya’s parents were allowed in to see her. They were in a daze of anxiety—proud, but you could see them wondering why it had to be their daughter that turned hero.
I’d tried helping out on the hill; there was rubble to move and some half-destroyed buildings to demolish, but the organisers needed workers who could pay attention to bits of falling masonry and my brain was preoccupied, dealing ‘what if’ cards to myself. What if Lanya recovered but the disease blinded her? What if she was crippled and could never dance again? What if, what if.
What if she died?
And my father? We’d heard nothing.
I got up and went out into the little backyard in search of some sun on my back. Levkova’s five chickens came running up, so I fed them and went looking for eggs while they pottered about chuckling to themselves. Then I fired up the stove and was heating water for breakfast tea when Fyffe came in from working a night shift in the infirmary.
She kissed my cheek. ‘Hello.’
‘Hi,’ I said. ‘How was it? How is she?’
She sank into a chair and rubbed her hands over her face. ‘The same, the same. I wish I could tell you something different. Oh—but, in fact I can tell you this. Guess who turned up last night!’
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