Steal the Lightning

by Tim Lees

  No luck.

  “Would you like a receipt, sir?”

  “You know, I think I would.” I smiled sweetly. “Company property, and all. You understand?”

  We waited while he went to fetch his receipt book.

  “Come on, Chris. I thought you’d be looking round. You don’t often get to see a place like this, I bet.”

  “You’d be surprised the things I get to see.”

  Ghirelli came back with the receipt book. He wrote out my tab, signed it, and dropped my gear into a Ziploc baggie.

  “I’ll put them somewhere safe, sir.”

  “Yes,” I said. “You do that.”

  Chapter 42

  The Elder Ballington

  Like many British kids, I spent a fair part of my childhood trudging around stately homes. This was partly because my parents’ idea of a good time was to cover as much of the National Trust Guidebook as their two weeks’ summer break allowed each year. What they missed, school made up for, with a host of trips designed to foster the idea of “English heritage.” And it was no use pointing out that these gigantic mansions had precisely zero bearing on my heritage, nor that, if my ancestors had even come in sniffing distance of them, it would certainly have been via the tradesman’s entrance. This, it seemed, was what my homeland was about—big houses, castles, and posh chairs roped off so you couldn’t sit on them.

  The Great House on the Ballington Estate was more than that, of course. This was the Hollywood version, built on a scale almost unimaginable, and with a budget that would cripple several countries’ national economy. Here, there were no poky little doorways, meant for people half my size, no cramped back stairs and corridors where even as a kid I’d had to duck my head under the beams. The hallways stretched out, cavernous and echoing, given the sort of warm, shadowy lighting you’d expect in the bedroom of a declining invalid. There was a smell of wood polish and disinfectant, a whirr of ceiling fans.

  The walls were lined with animal heads.

  “Leopard,” said Eddie. “Wolf. Elk. Lion. Wildebeest. Or maybe buffalo. Brown bear . . .”

  “Looks like he wants his claw back.”

  “No, that guy was bigger. ’Way bigger. He’s in the East Wing.” He clapped a hand on my shoulder. “But you know the rush, doncha? The thrill of the hunt?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Feel it—way down here.” He clutched his groin. “Fight or flight, and flight’s not an option. Yeah?”

  “Well, not if you’re paying two grand for the privilege. I suppose not.”

  We had passed entirely through the south wing now, one side of the building to the other. Eddie threw open an outside door. The sunlight didn’t so much sweep down as barge in like a drunken lout. I blinked, I put a hand up to my eyes. The landscape here was different. No tourists, no gardens, no lush parklands. I saw a wide yard floored with pinkish gravel, some wooden fencing, then fields of an intense, almost acidic green. There were horses in the middle distance, proud, elegant beasts. A tractor dragging bales of hay, a little further back. But the real feature of interest was a very angry-looking man in tennis whites, striding towards us across the gravel. His face was red, emphasized by the whiteness of his clothes and the mop of orange hair that hung over his brow. His movements had the quick abruptness of a figure in a bad video game.

  Eddie said, “Uh-oh. Mood.” Out loud, he called, “Dad-o!” and grinned absurdly. You’d have thought he hadn’t seen the guy for years.

  Dad-o, whom I at once thought of as Edward the Elder, marched right up to me and planted himself about six inches away. His carrot-colored hair was level with my nose.

  That cannot be real, I thought.

  He was very broad, and he stood with his feet apart. His center of gravity was low. He looked solid, like a boxer. Sweat shone on his brow, and there was moisture in the creases round his eyes, clinging to the trimmed hairs of his upper lip. There were dark patches beneath his arms.

  “You’re Registry?” he said.

  “I’m part of it.”

  To Eddie, he said, “Tell Sanchez, rec room,” then pushed past me, into the House. Eddie and I fell in behind. Eddie spoke into a mobile phone: “Rec room, usual. Three of us. Yeah. Better be quick . . .”

  Behind his father’s back, he winked at me.

  There was something odd about Edward, something in his movements that grew more pronounced now we were indoors. He had a way of kicking out his legs. I’ve seen people with severe arthritis move in a similar manner, but this was different: sharp, abrupt. There was a curious disjunction here, as if each move, each step, were a thing all of itself, quite separate from what preceded or what followed it; as if each were being made for the first time.

  That takes too long to say, but I was conscious of it almost right away.

  The rec room was another movie set. It could have been the club where Holmes met Mycroft in a ’40s film, with its ancient leather armchairs, full-size snooker table, and the shadows hanging down like smoke. There were several tall tables placed around the room so that you could put your drink down while still standing, presumably intent upon your game. Windows halfway up the wall peeped out at ground level, through grass and shrubbery. It was like being in the trenches.

  “Sanchez!” bellowed Edward.

  “Hey, Dad. I’ll call him again.”

  But almost instantly, a slender, gray-haired man came through a side door carrying a tray of drinks. There were three large whiskey tumblers, each one packed with ice and filled with spirit; so strong that I could smell it from across the room.

  “About time.”

  Edward snorted, kicking at the floor like an irritable bull.

  On a tall table, Sanchez placed coasters and glasses. He was in and out in seconds, gliding with a dancer’s grace.

  We each took up our glasses. It seemed the moment for a toast, but no; Edward gulped, then watched me sip.

  “Local distillery,” he offered. “Kenton’s. Tell me what you think.”

  I rolled it round my mouth. A taste of smoke and spices—cinnamon, perhaps?

  “It’s good,” I said.

  “I own it.”

  “It’s very good.” Then, “Sorry to interrupt your game, by the way.”

  He shot me a look, thick yellow eyebrows slanting at me.

  “Tennis?” I said. “My girlfriend plays. I just assumed . . .”

  “Tennis.”

  He snapped the word out of the air.

  “I don’t play games, Mr. Copeland. I don’t have time for games.”

  “Ah. No.”

  “I was training.”

  Eddie-boy stood to the side, sipping quietly, a small smirk on his face.

  “I was training,” said his father, “the same way I train every day, the way that I’ve been training all my life.”

  I took a sip, nodded politely.

  “I was training,” he said, “to be President of the United States of America,” and his look was long and slow, eyes hooded like a fighter’s, trying to judge my strengths, my weaknesses—and where my loyalties might lie.

  The wall behind him rippled slightly, the old wood paneling seeming to twist and shiver for a second, as if something had just passed across my vision, something I couldn’t register, but only mark the way it bent the light around itself.

  Eddie raised his glass. “To the POTUS,” he announced.

  “The POTUS,” I said.

  Edward knocked his back in one.

  Then he refilled his glass.

  Chapter 43

  Transference of Forces

  “Think of the physical demands.” The elder Ballington thrust out his arm and flexed his wrist, turning his hand as if to demonstrate some new, miraculous machinery. “The physical demands are brutal, unremitting. Unbearable for any normal man.”

  “That certainly explains some things,” I said.

  “Diplomacy, financial acumen, a grasp of international affairs—what use, what Earthly goddam use, when the man himse
lf is weak, enfeebled, and too damn tired to do the job?

  “You look at me. Look at me now.” He pointed a finger, as if challenging me. “I am sixty-two years old. I could knock you through that wall. I am fitter than most people half my age. I am a billionaire ten times over. I own leisure, I own hotels, I own health care, housing and insurance. There is nothing you can tell me I do not already know.” He fixed me with a hard stare. “I abhor ingratitude,” he said.

  “I’m sure.”

  He had moved closer. He looked up at me from under his brows, the glare of a boxer psyching out an enemy.

  He said, “We did a favor for you. You were not responsive. I am asking you to put that right.”

  “I don’t know any favor.”

  He stared at me.

  I said, “There was a health scare. Maybe it was engineered, maybe not. Either way—”

  Eddie, behind him, shook his head, wagged his finger at me: no, no, no.

  Edward looked away. I was conscious of a deep vibration, as if somebody were drilling, somewhere in the house. It put my teeth on edge.

  I said, “Mr. Ballington. If you were responsible for that incident, I won’t deny, I took advantage of it. But we didn’t have a deal. I don’t owe you.”

  He turned his back on me. He seized a snooker cue from the rack, eyed the tip, then chalked it fiercely. The snooker table was already set; he dropped the cue ball in the D, sighted, and smacked it hard. The reds went scattering.

  “Kinetic energy. Do you know about kinetic energy, Mr. Copeland?”

  He wouldn’t look at me. I said, “A bit.”

  “You set a thing in motion. A movement here leads to a movement there. All business is the product of kinetic energy, and the transference of forces, one to another. Do you understand?”

  “I think so.”

  “No. No, you don’t.”

  He sighted down the cue again but this time, he didn’t take the shot. He said, “I believe the world is on the threshold of a great change.” He straightened up. Only now he turned to me again. His face was red. “That change is coming, if we will or no. This is the crucial thing. Like the Bible says: the old is swept away, the new is here.” He eyed the scattered balls, then picked one, placed his thumb and forefinger on top of it. “The question: can we ride the wave? Because the man who rides the wave will rule the world. No doubt of that.”

  He spun the ball. He took away his hand, and the ball rose slowly off the baize, still whirling. I could feel the air begin to quiver. I was hot, much hotter than I should have been.

  Like a magician, now, he passed his hand over the spinning ball. It moved faster. It rose another foot, till it was level with his eyes, bobbing there, in midair.

  “This,” he told me, “is a parlor trick. You see? It’s not what I demanded or was promised.” He watched the ball. It had begun to swing out from its first position, circling above the tabletop. Where it passed, the balls beneath began to nudge at one another, caught in the same aggressive force. Little shadows fluttered on the baize, the way that helicopter rotors make ripples on a lake.

  “I can’t abide betrayal, Copeland. I won’t stand for it.”

  With a sudden, rapid movement, he snatched the ball out of the air. He held it in his hand as if he could have ground it into dust between his fingers.

  Immediately, the room was still. The energy was still there—I could feel it, tingling—but for a moment, it was silent, and disarmed.

  Eddie, stepping in, said, “It’s just a little localized power surge, that’s all. We get a lot of it here on the lower floors.” He smiled nervously. “Don’t worry, it’s harmless.”

  “I wouldn’t bank on that,” I said.

  Edward put the ball back on the tabletop. I glanced at him, then went across and picked it up. It was hot—friction heat—but quite inert. I turned it over in my hand, resisting the urge to try spinning it myself; I’d already guessed that wouldn’t work.

  “We are looking for the same man, Copeland. A traitor, a betrayer. I was let down. I was betrayed. The question that I have for you is this: how do you intend to put it right?”

  “Me?”

  “We’re talking about a criminal and a liar. A man who walked into my home, who used the name of your organization,” he jabbed a finger at me, “made me promises, then failed to fulfill them, and who—”

  “Hang on, hang on. You’re saying he had Registry credentials?”

  “Of course he didn’t. If he’d done that I’d have his real name, not this stupid pseudonym.”

  I felt the tension in the room shoot up a notch.

  “I want him found, Copeland. I want him found, and brought to me. You understand?”

  I stepped away. I was tired of this. I told him, “Mr. Ballington, you need to go to the police. Or whoever usually finds people for you. We want this guy because we think he’s got some property that belongs to us. Though if he’s sold it on to you, well . . . I’d say you probably owe us, rather than the other way around. You want to think on that a while.”

  I’d half expected anger. Even wanted it, perhaps, just as a way to judge the power levels, and how closely they were tied in with his moods, his feelings. Yet now, he smiled, folded his arms, and looked at me as if he’d just noticed a cockroach on his shoe.

  I said, “I’d like to help here. In both our interests. But it may not go the way you want it to.”

  He snorted.

  I said, “If you can tell me how you came by it, for instance? How he got in touch with you? Can you . . . ?”

  “You know precisely how I came by it.”

  He was no longer looking at me.

  I said, “If you can give me details of the transaction. And the man himself. A description, or a photograph—”

  I thought I’d spoken mildly. But he snapped round, yelling now.

  “You know the fucking details! You fucking know!”

  He was six feet from me, yet I felt myself flinch back as from a blow.

  “Sir—”

  Dropping his voice, and speaking with a fierce precision, he said, “I want that man. I want to know his whereabouts. He will learn that no one breaks a promise to me. Not him, and not you, either.”

  The air was buzzing, a high, insect hum, a shivering that set my teeth on edge.

  I had made no promises, but I thought it best to nod.

  His face was dark. In the low light, it almost matched his hair.

  I said, “Your god isn’t contained.”

  “That’s not the problem.”

  “I’d say, whoever this guy is, he hasn’t got the know-how, or the gear. Either way, he’s dropped you in the shit.”

  “That,” he said again, “is not the problem.”

  I heard a clicking sound. It started slowly, then grew faster, like a hundred castanets all rattling away. The snooker balls were edging in a slow dance, shuddering across the tabletop, trembling together. Edward told me, “This is what I want from you. Listen now. I know you’re looking for him. All I ask is this: that when you find him, you call me. One phone call. Then you do whatever you want. Whatever. Have him shot, arrested, put in prison, I don’t care. But you call me first. You understand?”

  I said nothing.

  “Can you do that for me, Copeland?”

  “I . . . might. If I know enough to trace him.”

  He opened his mouth, raised his finger to me.

  There were three whiskey glasses. Two were on the tall table; the third, Eddie’s, balanced on a chair arm on the far side of the room.

  They broke. Simultaneously.

  Cracked, shattered, tumbled into pieces, ice and liquid spilling round them, dripping on the carpet.

  The bottle took a moment longer: broke with the slightest click, and dropped apart.

  “Fuck.”

  Edward swung about, looking this way and that, his fists clenched, his eyes blazing.

  Without a word, he flung open the door and stormed off.

  The buzzing die
d. The air grew quieter.

  Eddie issued orders into his phone, summoning a cleanup. To me, he said, “Give him a minute. Then we’ll find out where he’s gone.”

  I said, “It’s riding him.”

  “Oh, something’s riding him, all right. Come on. Let’s go get another drink.”

  Chapter 44

  A Bright, Bright Light Upon Our Future

  There was a power here, sharpening the air, putting a taste of metal in my mouth.

  It felt like a retrieval site. Like an active god.

  Yet just an hour before, and there’d been nothing.

  A reader might have picked it up. But no human senses. If I’d had to guess, then I’d have sworn the place was clean.

  It had escalated quickly.

  That was worrying.

  Now Eddie strolled around with all the ease of a protected child. He fetched another bottle from the cabinet. He chattered happily. He called out, “Dad-o! Dad-o!” and he grinned at me, beckoning me on. But for me, the place had changed. Even the fabric of it seemed in doubt. I didn’t trust the walls, I didn’t trust the furniture. Everything that once seemed solid, comfortable, now felt treacherous, uncertain. I wanted to test every floorboard, every stair, before I stepped on it. As if the house might all at once dissolve around me, one more fiction in a litany of madness.

  “Dad-o! Where ya hiding, man?”

  Temperatures were way too high. I heard the AC creaking, roaring, trying to keep up.

  “These surges,” I said. “Are they regular? How often? More frequent now, or not?”

  Eddie just spread his hands. “Relax,” he said. “It’s no big deal. Guy gets steamed up, twenty minutes later, and he’s calm again. Happens all the time.”

  “And let me guess. Each time’s a wee bit worse, right?”

  “Hey, I don’t keep score—”

  “But it was different, say, a month back?”

  “A month, yeah, sure. A month’s a long time.”

  “And a week ago. I bet it’s worse than a week ago, too. Yeah?”

  He didn’t answer that.

  We finally found Dad-o on an upper floor, slumped down in an armchair, staring out across the grounds. A bottle and a glass stood on the table next to him. His carrot-colored hair was disarrayed, his belly sagged over his pants. He watched me sideways out of one eye, like a toad examining a fly.