Gone Underground

by Phil Brett

  ‘There’s quite a few embassies there, and we don’t have long. She’s stuck in traffic right now, but I’d give her a couple of minutes and she’ll be smack in the middle of them.’

  ‘Maybe, but whatever doubts we have, hers will be multiplied ten-fold by hearing that. We don’t know how many supporters are in the area, and even then, how many have set alerts for party or NWC announcements. But then, nor does she.’

  I stroked my arm-band, maybe as a gesture of good luck, and then spoke again: ‘Transmit. Further instructions regarding the cream hybrid Lui Ping XLV sports car, registration 34 Oscar 23 India Lima. Supporters should attempt to use their vehicles to block its movement. As previously stated, the renegade Emily Messager is armed and dangerous. Supporters should not take action which will put themselves at risk, but anything which will block the roads should be done. Abandon cars, lorries, vans, bikes, anything. Transmit off.’

  She held onto the steering wheel as the front wheels skidded. Ahead, thank goodness, were firm roads. Her reply was concise. ‘Risky.’

  Seconds later, we crashed out of the park and onto a road. Most of the traffic was moving, albeit very slowly. But several drivers could be seen getting out their cars and running to the pavement. A cacophony of horns started to increase in strength, as the number of abandoned vehicles began to increase. It was still a minority who were heeding the call, but it was enough. The carcom messages were reporting that Messager had all but come to a halt.

  Cole chose the pavement for a driving lane, and with her horn on full, drove towards where Messager had last been seen. It was a catch 22: we didn’t want Messager to move too quickly, but if she stopped, she’d go on foot and we’d lose her. People were throwing themselves out of the way as Cole risked killing even more people than Messager had managed. It was only by pure luck that we hadn’t caused any fatalities so far, but this was pushing our stock of good fortune. We’d left our four-leaf clovers and rabbits' feet at home.

  Thankfully, for any winter walkers, we quickly returned to the road. Messager’s car was a matter of metres ahead. Worryingly, a comrade with a strong Welsh accent, using a string of expletives, had announced over the radio that he had just passed her car and it was empty.

  I took out my gun and checked the digital ammo count. It was low. Noticing that her personal Doc Holliday was low on ammo, Cole quickly reached into her inside pocket and threw a cartridge to me. ‘Here, you might need these.’

  It was whilst I was slotting it in that the car skidded to an abrupt halt. She had already opened the door by the time I had finished. Standing by the bonnet, we looked through the floating flakes to try to see her. I had expected to be forced to roam the streets, searching for a needle in a haystack but, luckily, this needle was the size of Cleopatra’s, because walking straight towards us, on the opposite side of the road, was none other than Emily Messager. She was heading to where the embassies were located. They just so happened to be behind us. But she wasn’t looking ahead, but in the opposite direction, to see if we were following her. She hadn’t expected us to go for a rally drive across Green Park.

  ‘Stay here,’ Cole commanded, before using a passing bus to cover her crossing the road. I dropped down and aimed the gun at Messager’s head. It looked like she had left her machine gun in the car because I could see no sign of it under her jacket. No doubt it would rather draw attention. After appearing to want to announce to the world that she was the leather clad apocalypse, she now wanted just look like a mature student.

  Cole had crouched down behind a Renault and was waiting for her. I dropped down.

  A minute later, and Messager was passing the concealed Cole. Cole jumped up. ‘Freeze!’ she yelled, with no sense of irony at all. Cole moved quickly, standing right in front of Messager. Her frozen breath must be touching her lips. ‘Emily Messager, I am arresting you in the name—’

  Jumping up, I had intended to be providing back-up. But, to my horror, I had emerged just in time to see Messager drop-kick Victoria in the arm. Cole managed to hold onto the gun, but the blow had been enough to shove the aim safely into mid-air. That gave Messager the opportunity to send a second kick into Cole’s stomach. Cole fell to the floor, which gave me a chance. I fired. And missed. The Renault’s windows shattered with the impact of my misdirected aim. Messager looked at me, then the gun and turned and fled.

  I crossed the road to find Cole getting to her feet.

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Yeah, fine. Just embarrassed. Christ, she’s quick. Come on!’

  Cole sprinted off. She was right. Messager was quick. She was running at speed down the road. We had stopped her from getting to her desired destination, but we were now in danger of losing her. Ahead, the road was a surreal maze of jammed vehicles, promenading locals and confused activists. It was like Oxford Street Christmas shopping on acid. I could see her slowing down. Messager was going to mingle. Before I followed, I had an idea and took out my phone. Whatever my reputation might be, communication rather than extermination was more me, and I felt happier having it in my hand, rather than a gun.

  It must only have been a couple of minutes later, but I managed to catch Cole up. She was angry and frantically looking for Messager in the crowd.

  ‘She could be anywhere!’

  ‘Maybe, but I’ve just announced to the world that all roads off this one have been sealed off. We know she’s listening and also that she's the careful type, so maybe she won’t risk finding out the truth of that.’

  ‘So that would leave—’ Cole turned and looked at the familiar red ring of the London Underground. Governments may fall and systems crash, but some things remained. There, standing in its red grandeur, was Green Park tube station. Indeed it would. A historic icon. But we still had a slight problem of which entrance she might have taken. Weaving in and out of the crowd, and annoying a fair few as we did, we got to the station.

  She was nowhere to be seen. Pointing at our badges, we grabbed everyone, asking if they'd seen her. None had, although a few knew what was happening. Several more thought we were just crazy. That is, until one elderly Romanian guy said he thought he’d seen someone matching her description hanging around the park entrance. We ran to the barrier and looked down.

  Yep, there she was. On the phone to someone and with her back to us.

  She might be a whiz-hot secret squirrel but she always seemed to be looking the wrong way. Cole pointed down at the bank of the award winning redesign. She wasn't admiring the conceptual theory underpinning it. Instead, she told me to go down it: that she’d go down the other. I looked at the incline. It looked like a ski-slope. Taking a deep breath, I climbed over the fence and edged downwards. Messager was facing the ticket office.

  Whether it was by agility, ace skill, great brogues or plain old luck, I don't know, but I kept my balance and was now as near as I dared.

  ‘I’d hang up if I was you!’ I snarled.

  She looked up and slid her hand inside her jacket to pull out her gun.

  A shot rang out. A lump of Emily Messager’s leather trousers flew off. Screaming, she fell on one knee. Her gun was in her hand, but it was limply hanging by her side.

  Cole stood on the other bank, both arms outstretched, gripping the reason for Messager’s position. ‘Don’t move!’ Cole ordered.

  Messager, now with her back to the ticket office, with blood seeping out from below her knee, was alternating between looking at me and Cole. Her face was solid in concentration. Only the slightest twitch of her cheek gave any clue that she was in agony. Although it was still pointing downwards, it had escaped nobodies’ notice that she still had her finger on the trigger.

  ‘Drop it, Emily. It’s over!’

  Grinding her molars, she attempted a scornful laugh, the type villains utter in James Bond movies, but it sounded too bitter and too much in pain to be menacing. If anything, she sounded desperate. ‘Why would I want to do that? I still could get one shot off.’

  ‘True, you might get o
ne of us, but the other would get you, so what’s the point? Nobody is going to thank you. Why, the very people you are risking your life for will simply disown you. You will sacrifice yourself for nothing.’

  ‘Oh, I could take my chance with Kalder not being a crack shot.’

  ‘I wouldn’t need to be, from this distance,’ I snapped, feeling rather insulted. I thought I was getting better at this. Meanwhile, I was trying hard to keep my balance and not fall on my arse.

  Cole tried to defuse the situation and softened her tone. ‘It’s over, Emily. I promise that you will be treated fairly, with a fair trial.’

  Her laugh lacked any humour or amusement at the situation, and finished with a snarl. ‘Yeah, and we know what happens when security operatives surrender to you. He pumps you full of bullets.’

  ‘But we’re not alone, are we?’

  Yet again, Emily Messager wasn’t looking the right way. I pointed behind her. She turned and saw the real threat wasn't mine or Victoria's aim, but something a whole lot more powerful.

  With linked arms, every NWC, party member, anarchist, trade unionist and radical that could be contacted at short notice had turned up and were standing there. Over a hundred of them stared at her, armed with nothing more than their solidarity. She looked back at us and then at them. A grimace twitched her cheek.

  A young woman, wrapped in a bomber jacket and a purple hijab, stepped forward. ‘Give it up, girl. You’re under arrest! On behalf of the National Workers’ Council, we arrest you for murder, espionage, sabotage and anti-revolutionary conduct. You have the right to a fair trial and full legal counsel.’

  Messager stared at her, but there had been a change. Alongside her blood, her resilience was dripping onto the snow. Her shoulder slumped and the determination went. Her head bowed.

  ‘It’s over, Emily,’ I said calmly.

  She nodded and dropped her gun to the floor. We ran over to her. Cole picked it up and slipped it into her pocket. I looked down onto the top of Messager’s still head. She was looking downwards, as if in prayer, her eyes burrowing into the ground, looking for answers or perhaps for salvation. But down wasn’t the direction to look. Hope was from the people who were now coming towards her.

  40. Buds

  Gazing out the office window, I could see the daffodils and tulips beginning to flower in an appropriately spring-like scene. The sun was shafting in and lighting up my immaculately clean desk. I straightened the photograph of Caroline and Lisa on a family holiday in Devon, mother and daughter laughing. Both standing by a pony.

  Across the room, the team were drinking down their final gulps of tea before the trial. We'd been waiting months for this, so expectation hung in the air like a net full of balloons suspended from the ceiling. Asher, sitting directly opposite me, with the superior view – and what’s more, a better chair – was going to be the first to give testimony against Emily Messager. He re-arranged his arm in the sling.

  We had amassed a considerable amount of evidence concerning her activities and had a strong case, so we were hopeful of a conviction. We had been less successful in getting any information actually from the woman herself. She had just confined her conversation to idle chatter; maintaining a quite brilliant defence strategy of treating the whole thing as if it was a social occasion.

  Asher hadn’t taken part in the interviews because of his injuries. I, too, had been quite preoccupied in healing a few of my own. Not in the physical medical sense, but nonetheless, they had been wounds which required healing. Using our success at unmasking Messager, I had persuaded Jackie Payne into personally representing me at my mental health assessment at the Anchorage. It had been a good choice, because Dr Brakus and colleagues had decided that I could be trusted out in the bright new world. So, for the last six weeks, I had been enjoying my home comforts, with Red purring with delight.

  It had been Roijin and Victoria, who were now sitting at the next desk taking final look at the 3D video footage, who had been chief the questioners of Messager on behalf of the workers’ republic.

  We had been told that the defence was going to make a big deal of their failure to get Messager to admit anything. Maybe that was why the two women looked nervous, although I had no idea why they should. After all, we had dozens of witnesses who could testify that Messager had opened fire with a machine gun. That little killing spree had reached a death toll of seven. So, even if we failed to get her for the murder of Olivia Harrison or Youssef Ali, we’d get her for that. But then, maybe I did understand – we wanted justice for Olivia and Youssef.

  I smiled at the large picture hanging above them. It had been Roijin's idea to put a framed print of Goya's The Third of May 1808 up in the office. To remind us of what we were fighting against, she had said. With much amusement, Asher and Victoria had agreed. They had even let me give them a little talk about it. It had been a good choice, not just in memory of Youssef Ali, but as Roijin had said, what our job was. I looked at the slaughtered men on the floor, the blood spilling everywhere, and the cowering others. Then, the man in the white shirt, arms aloft, from surrender or defiance. Our job was to hamper any attempt at forming the firing squad.

  This was to be the first public appearance of us as a group, and that mattered – which was why we were all slightly on edge.

  It was almost time.

  Cole switched off the computer screen and emptied her cup. Asher did likewise.

  ‘Ready, Pete?’ Roijin asked.

  I told her that I was, and got up, flashing a smile at Caroline and Lisa. ‘Who would have thought it?’ I said to myself.

  The phone went.

  ‘Leave it,’ Cole said, picking up her briefcase.

  I was going to, but leaving ringing phones had always been a problem for me. I would much rather answer them and be all bloody minded with the caller for forcing me to, than just leaving it.

  So I answered it. ‘Hello, NWC investigations. Pete Kalder, Political Support. How can we help you, comrade?’