Dead Lions

by Mick Herron

  You’re—she enjoyed that syllable.

  “Diana …”

  “Roger.”

  “What do I do?”

  “Only one thing you can do,” she said, and told him what that was.

  They’d been talking for ten minutes, but nothing meaningful had been said. Arkady Pashkin was sticking to Big Picture topics: what was going on with the Euro, which way Germany would lean next time one of the partners needed bailing out, how much money Russia’s World Cup bid cost. Spider Webb had the air of a dinner party host waiting for a guest to shut up about their children.

  Marcus seemed more serene but was watchful, his attention divided evenly between Kyril and Piotr. Louisa remembered Min—she barely ever stopped remembering Min—and how he’d distrusted this pair on sight. Partly because that was his job, but partly because he was Min, and yearning for action. Her mouth filled, and she swallowed. Pashkin dragged the topic onto fuel prices, the ostensible reason for the meeting, but Webb still didn’t look happy. It wasn’t going the way he’d intended, Louisa thought. All he’s managed is I see and Oh yes. He planned this as a recruitment exercise, but he’s got no idea what he’s doing. And Arkady Pashkin had his own agenda, which seemed to consist of wasting time until …

  Until a high-pitched looping wail came from everywhere at once; above, below, from outside the doors. It didn’t pierce so much as throb, and its message was immediate and unmistakable. Leave now.

  Marcus turned to the huge windows as if to spot approaching danger. Webb got to his feet so suddenly his chair hit the floor. He said, “What’s that?” which Louisa decided was the stupidest question ever. Which didn’t stop her echoing it: “What’s happening?”

  Pashkin, still seated, said, “It sounds like the emergency we discussed yesterday.”

  “You knew about this.”

  Reaching into his briefcase, Pashkin produced a gun he handed to Piotr. “Yes,” he said. “I’m afraid I did.”

  The hangar looked bigger in the Skyhawk’s absence. The doors hung wide, and sunlight fleshed out its corners, drawing attention to everything that wasn’t there. Those bags of fertiliser headed this list. There was a faint spillage where they’d been, as if one of the bags had a rip in it, but that was all.

  Behind him, Yates said, “She went up earlier. I saw her go.”

  “I know.”

  “There’s something wrong, isn’t there? With the plane?”

  Except it wasn’t only in that one place—sinking to his knees, River scanned the floor from as low an angle as his battered frame would allow.

  Another jeep pulled up outside, and he could hear the clenched barking of an officer. New arseholes were being torn.

  Across the concrete, a faint trail of crumbly brown dust snaked away to the side door.

  He had the feeling he was on the end of a long piece of string. And the bastard at the other end kept tugging.

  Yates said, “If Kelly’s in danger …”

  He didn’t finish. But judging by his blood-streaked face, it would involve punching something until it turned to jelly.

  “What’s going on?”

  And here was the officer, in an officer’s uniform, a detail he seemed to think outweighed his being on civilian turf.

  River said to Yates, “You tell him,” and headed for the side door.

  “You! Stop right there!”

  But River was already outside, on the east wall of the hangar, with a view of the mesh fence bordering the MoD range; of the range itself, which was a bland expanse of overlapping greens; of a brim-full wheelie-bin chained to one of the fenceposts; and of a stack of bags of fertiliser, the topmost of which was split down one side. A gentle trickle had spilled onto the ground. River kicked the stack, but it remained solid and real.

  And then he had company.

  “You attacked my men,” he was told. “And they say you claim you’re with the secret service. Exactly what’s going on?”

  “I need a phone,” River said.

  Up in the skies and miles to the east, over London’s outer settlements—massed clusters of red and grey rooftops, connected by winding stripes of tree-bordered tarmac and interspersed with golf courses—Kelly Tropper could feel excitement building. This was no ordinary flight. It would have a different ending.

  As if to underline this, the radio was babbling. They should identify themselves immediately. If they were experiencing difficulties, they should state them now; failing which they should return to their filed route now, or face severe consequences.

  “What do you think that means? Severe consequences?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  Damien Butterfield said, “I thought we’d be closer before they noticed us.”

  “It’s okay. Tommy said this would happen.”

  “But he’s not here, is he?”

  This wasn’t worth replying to.

  Like the other flying club members, she and Damien had grown up together; the children of incomers, whose parents had moved from bigger, brasher places to pretty, vacant Upshott. An unfathomable decision, the children had agreed, and yet they too had all remained rooted there. For Kelly, it was the only way she could have access to the aeroplane, owned by Ray Hadley, but for which she and the others paid maintenance and rental fees. Sometimes she had wondered if there weren’t more to it than that; if it weren’t cowardice that had anchored her in her childhood village; a fear of failing in the big world. Though Tommy had told her—

  It was funny about Tommy; everyone thought he just sold apples from his bike, but he knew everyone in Upshott, and everything that happened there, as if he received reports from everyone—as if he were the centre of a web. You could always talk to Tommy, and he always knew what was going on in your life. This was true for her; true for her friends; true for her parents too. Her father never failed to chat with Tommy on the mornings he was outside the shop, or doing his rounds of the village, picking up the odd jobs that sustained him, though he disappeared mid-week, and nobody had ever found out where. Perhaps he had another village somewhere, where he lived a similar existence with a different cast, but Kelly had never discussed the idea with anyone, because you never did discuss Tommy Moult—he was everybody’s secret. So yes, it was funny about Tommy, but a kind of funny she’d long ceased to question; he was simply part of life in Upshott, and that was that.

  What Tommy had told her was, there were ways of proving your bravery to yourself, and making your mark on the big world. Many ways.

  It was hard, now, to remember whose idea this had been; her own, or Tommy Moult’s.

  Beside her, Damien Butterfield said, “Are we nearly there yet?” and laughed at his own joke.

  The radio squawked again, and Kelly Tropper laughed too, and turned it off.

  Somewhere to the north west two more planes took to the air: sleek, dark, dangerous and on the hunt.

  The taxi driver had kept up a relentless stream of invective about bloody marchers, who were achieving nothing except mucking hard-working cabbies about, and if anyone really wanted to know what to do about the banks—“Here’s fine,” said Ho.

  He threw a note at the driver, and jumped out into the path of Shirley Dander.

  “Sh-sh-i-i-i-it,” she managed, in a kind of elongated hiccup. Ho was pleased to observe she looked like crap.

  They were right by the forecourt of the Needle, through whose huge glass walls Ho could see a living breathing forest—but before he could comment on this, a barrage of sirens erupted, as if every car alarm in the City had been triggered at once.

  “What?”

  For a moment, Ho thought the rally had arrived—he could hear it not far off, a rumbling mobile chant like a rootless football match. But the types pouring into view from doorways all around were wearing suits and smart outfits: more marched against than marching. Through the Needle’s revolving doors they came too, appearing unsure as to their next move; pausing, most of them, to look back at the building they’d emerged from
, and then staring round as it became clear that whatever was happening was happening everywhere.

  Shirley was upright again. “ ’Kay. In we go.”

  Ho said, “But everyone’s coming out.”

  “Jesus wept—you’re aware you’re MI5, right?”

  “I’m mostly research,” he explained, but she was already shoving her way through the emerging crowds.

  The gun looked natural in Piotr’s fist, no more surprising than a coffee cup or beer bottle. He pointed it at Marcus. “Hands on the table.”

  Marcus laid his hands on the tabletop, palms down.

  “All of you.”

  Louisa complied.

  After a moment, Webb did the same. “Shit,” he said. Then, “Shit,” he said again.

  Pashkin snapped his briefcase shut. The alarm was still looping, so he raised his voice. “You’ll be locked in. Those doors, they’re pretty good. You’ll be best off waiting for help.”

  Webb said, “I thought we were—”

  “Shut up.”

  “—doing something here—”

  Kyril said, “You were. You were helping us out.”

  “Thought you couldn’t speak English,” Louisa said.

  Marcus said, “They’re not just going to lock us in.”

  “I know.”

  Kyril said something that made Piotr laugh.

  The alarm wailed on, swelling then diminishing. Other floors would be being evacuated; the lifts would have frozen, and the doors into the stairwells automatically unlocked, allowing access either way. Crowds would assemble at designated points outside, and names be checked off against lists held by security, or matched against the keycards currently in use. But no one on the seventy-seventh floor would appear on either of those lists. Their presence was off grid.

  Webb said, “Look, I don’t know what the alarm’s for, but I promise—”

  Piotr shot him.

  Seventy-seven storeys below, people trooped onto the streets; some wearing that fed-up look that comes with unwelcome interruption; others happily lighting unscheduled cigarettes; and all—once they realised that not only their own but every building in sight was evacuating—changing mood: standing still, looking skyward. All were used to drills and false alarms, but these happened one at a time. Now, everything was happening at once, and the grim possibilities took root and flowered. The City broke into a run. Its directions were various, but its intentions clear: to be somewhere else, immediately. And still people kept appearing, because the buildings were ten, fifteen, twenty storeys high, and each floor was packed with workers. Whether at desks, in meeting rooms, huddled round watercoolers or chatting in corridors, all were hearing the same thing: their building’s alarm, instructing them to leave. Those who paused to look from their windows saw scattering crowds below. This was not conducive to orderly evacuation. Jostling gave way to shoving. Ripples of panic became waves, and the voices of reason drowned in the swell.

  This didn’t happen everywhere, but it happened often. As the City warned its worker bees of a possible terrorist event, some of those bees turned on each other, and stung.

  Most of the resulting injuries, it was later calculated, happened in those buildings containing bankers. Well, bankers and lawyers. It was too close to call.

  Smoking again, Jackson Lamb slouched across a highwalk in the Barbican complex, heading for Slough House. Above him rose Shakespeare or Thomas More, he could never remember which tower was which, and ahead was a familiar bench. He’d fallen asleep on it once, clutching a cardboard coffee cup. When he’d woken, it held forty-two pence in small change.

  He sat on the bench now to finish his cigarette. Above and behind him loured the 1970s, wrought in glass and concrete; below him the middle ages, in the shape of St Giles Cripplegate, and to the east, the up-to-the-minute sound of sirens, which had been building for some while, but only now crashed through his absorbed state. A pair of fire engines blared along London Wall, followed by a police car. Lamb paused, fingers halfway to his lips. Another fire engine. Dropping the cigarette, he reached for his phone instead.

  Taverner, he thought. What have you done?

  Webb was thrown to the floor as a thin pink spray fritzed the air, then laid a pattern across the carpet. Marcus and Louisa dropped at the same moment, and a second shot carved a chunk from the tabletop, coughing up splinters. But there was no other shelter. They had a second, maybe less, before Piotr crouched and fired directly into their heads—panic blooming, Louisa looked to Marcus, who was ripping something from the underside of the table, something which fitted his hand as naturally as a coffee cup or beer bottle. He fired and someone screamed and a body hit the floor. Raised voices swore in Russian. Marcus scrambled up and fired again. The bullet hit closing doors.

  On the far side of the table, Kyril lay clutching his left leg, which was all messed up below the knee.

  Louisa pulled out her phone. Marcus ran for the doors, gun in hand. When he pulled them they gave just enough to reveal the U-lock threaded through the outer handles—another gift from Pashkin’s damned briefcase. He tugged again then leaped back as a bullet slammed into the doors from the other side.

  In the lobby, the alarm swirled. Beneath its noise, Marcus could make out the sound of the two men entering the stairwell at the end of the corridor.

  As the rally neared the City—its head winding round St Paul’s; its tail back beyond the viaduct—a new awareness rippled through it, a morphic resonance fuelled by Twitter, allowing its entire length to hear the rumours at once: that the City was collapsing, its buildings emptying. That the palaces of finance were crumbling at the mob’s approach. With this news came a change of mood, spilling over into aggressive triumphalism; the kind that wants to see its enemy spread on the pavement with its head split open. Fresh chanting broke out, louder than ever. The pace picked up. Though already, in counterpoint to the hints of victory, another tremor was wavering west: that the rug had been pulled, and danger lay ahead.

  At first sight, this took the form of official resistance.

  “Due to unforeseen circumstances, this rally has now been cancelled. You’re to turn and calmly make your way back towards Holborn where you’ll be able to disperse.”

  The black armoured units that until now had been discreet shadows had disgorged bulked-up shapes in shields and helmets, and barriers were blocking Cheapside. Somewhere behind them was a man with a loudhailer.

  “The streets ahead are closed. I repeat, the route is closed, and this rally is now cancelled.”

  The sound of sirens wafting from a distance underlined his words.

  For two minutes that stretched into four the head of the mob went no further, but swelled in size, filling the junction on the Cathedral’s eastern side. And still, up and down its length, messages were relayed, the way a worm communicates to itself the news of its own dicing. At intervals behind them, more tactical units were breaking the march up, rerouting groups into narrow streets and squares, and sealing their exits. Singing died and curdled into anger; tempers frayed and broke. Cats and dogs, witches and wizards, clung to their parents’ legs, while once-mild protestors sprayed spittle in the faces of unmoving policemen. Overhead, the whump-whump of helicopter blades throbbed in and out of hearing, sometimes drowning the shrill alarms from the City, sometimes becoming its rhythm section, while from the City itself a less organised procession fled the rumours of destruction, arriving in a rabble behind the police rows blocking Cheapside.

  “The streets ahead are closed, and this rally is cancelled.”

  The first bottle appeared in a low arc from the middle of the crowd. It spun neck over base, spraying liquid which might have been water, might have been piss, onto the heads of the policemen below, before shattering on the road. It was followed by others.

  And up and down the route of the march, tucked away inside what had been a mob, and was now a collection of smaller mobs, those who’d come with masks in their pockets recognised their cue and slipped them on. T
he time for breaking glass had arrived, and for torching cars, and throwing rocks.

  The first flames burst into being like early blossoms of spring: easily caught on the wind, and scattered for miles.

  “It’s a credible threat, Lamb.”

  “Credible? Some Sunday aeroplane’s going to crash into a City building—you sure about that?”

  “Sure enough not to take the risk.”

  “You’re gunna shoot it down?”

  “There are Harriers in the air. They’ll do what’s necessary.”

  “Over Central London?”

  “If that’s what it takes.”

  “Are you mad?”

  “Jackson, look. This—this is what we’ve worried about for years. This or something like it.”

  “What, a cut-price 9/11? You think a clapped-out Soviet spook would do this? Katinsky’s a Cold War survivor, not a New World Order barbarian, for Christ’s sake!”

  “And you think it’s a coincidence that Arkady Pashkin’s meeting—”

  “This is not about Pashkin, Taverner. If Moscow knew you and Webb had cooked up some scheme to recruit him, they wouldn’t do this. They’d wait till he got home and run him through a compactor.”

  “Lamb—”

  “We’ve been led here, every step. Killing Dickie Bow, laying a trail to Upshott, they’ve lit a damn flare path. Murdering Min Harper’s the only thing they’ve tried to keep wrapped. Whatever’s really going on, it’s not what we think. What’s happening at the Needle?”

  Taverner said, “We’ve alerted security. There are fire teams on the way.”

  Lamb said, “What happens when that building goes into lockdown?”

  In the flying club’s office, things had changed: the fridge remained, and the chairs; the old desk was still cluttered with paperwork, but the stack of cardboard boxes was a tumbled pyramid, and its plastic sheet lay crumpled on the floor. River dropped to one knee and foraged through the boxes. They’d contained paper, stacks of A4-sized sheets, several copies of which were stuck to the bottom of one. Both showed the same design.