End of the World Blues

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

“I’m not—” Luc caught himself. “Of course I’m worried,” he said. “We’re falling out of the sky in a pod the size of a large table and we don’t seem to have an engine.” He looked at her. “We do have a Casimir coil, don’t we?”

  “No,” said Lady Neku, shaking her head. She’d have shaken it whatever the answer, but for once the truth was on her side. The pods were strictly one use only and that was down.

  “Oh fuck…” Luc’s voice was small.

  Come on, Lady Neku wanted to say. How can you miss it? Surely Luc had spotted Schloss Omga by now. It was that enormous castle crawling up the side of a mountain.

  “Luc,” she said, and when Luc stayed silent Lady Neku leaned over to touch his shoulder. It was rigid.

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Come on,” said Lady Neku. “You can tell me what’s really wrong.”

  Faded blue eyes turned towards her. A sky magnified by sadness and something else, something darker. “I’m afraid.”

  “Why?” asked Lady Neku, meaning, Why now, why here… God, she knew what she meant.

  “Because I was born afraid,” said Luc. “And I didn’t think it would happen like this.”

  “What?”

  “Death.” Luc shrugged. “She told me you’d try to kill me.” For someone talking about his own fate the boy seemed almost resigned. Afraid, but resigned, there was probably a term for it.

  “Who did?” Lady Neku demanded.

  “My mother, that’s why she refused to come. She doesn’t trust your family.” Luc shrugged again. “She told my father it was all a trick.” His broken smile was heartbreaking, and the really weird thing was that Luc obviously had no idea how heartbreaking. Nico would have been milking it his entire life.

  “We’re not going to die,” said Lady Neku. “And I’m certainly not here to kill you.”

  “But we’re out of control.” He gestured at the altimeter’s spinning needles. “You said it yourself, we’ve got no power unit.”

  “Luc!”

  He wasn’t listening.

  “It must be odd,” he said, a moment later. “You know, being able to back up and be more than one person. I find it tough enough just being myself.”

  “I’m just me.”

  “Yes,” said Luc. “But there’s another you back at High Strange. How did you agree which one should die?”

  “We’re not going to die!” shouted Lady Neku.

  “Of course we are. You can’t just fall out of the sky. Someone lied to you,” he said. “About not crashing.”

  “Luc,” said Lady Neku, grabbing the boy’s hand. “There’s only one of me and we’re not going to crash.” When Luc stayed silent, she gripped his fingers so hard he tried to pull them away. “I’ve made this drop ten times,” she said fiercely. “It’s going to be fine. The castle will catch us.”

  “What castle?”

  “That one,” she said, pointing down.

  It took seventeen minutes to fall from High Strange to earth. The pods had enough strength to survive the howling winds that turned Katchatka Segment’s lower atmosphere into a danger zone, after that it was simply a matter of sitting out the fall.

  Each of the families had owned a land base and an overworld back in the early days. These talked to each other, even when the families themselves refused to communicate. Lady Neku had been so surprised by this that she made Schloss Omga provide proof. A history lesson followed. The land bases talked to each other and to individual nodes on the filter, which was what Schloss Omga called the overworld mesh of Nawa-no-ukiyo.

  The glitch was not that the bases and nodes could talk to each other, it was that Lady Neku could talk directly to them, without needing to go through a major domo interface.

  “Neku…”

  “What?” she said, dragging her thoughts back to the pod.

  “We’re slowing.”

  “Of course we are.” Tapping the window Lady Neku woke it up again. “Look,” she said. “We’ve arrived.”

  Spread out below was a massive spiral that twisted to a blunt point, while a leathery fringe around its base locked the castle to rock. A thousand people had lived in its upper levels. Eight members of the Katchatka family, a hundred military modifies, and eight hundred and ninety-two fugees who provided service in return for shelter.

  “Wait,” Lady Neku instructed. “And watch.”

  So Luc stared intently at the shell below him. “That’s a Viviparus malleatus,” he said finally.

  “A what?”

  “A trapdoor snail. We’ve got them in our koi pond.” He glanced from Schloss Omga to the mountains on both sides and then at the altimeter dials in front of him, which had slowed to a lazy twirl. “It’s vast.”

  Lady Neku smiled. “Yes,” she said. “It is.” Looking across at Luc, she wondered if the boy realised she was still holding his hand.

  CHAPTER 46 — Saturday, 30 June

  Kit counted off the time by the bells from St. Dominic’s, a new church on the corner of Conde Street, in what had once been a carpet warehouse. After a single peal for quarter past two and a slightly longer peal for half past, the landlord of the Queen’s Head finally arrived to see what the stranger was doing at the back of his pub.

  Since the after-lunch staff had been stepping out for cigarette breaks on a regular basis and most had scowled at the sight of a stranger this was not unexpected.

  “Police business,” said Kit, barely bothering to take his eyes from a narrow passage back to the road. He must have sounded convincing because the landlord turned back, and whatever was said when he got inside, that was the end of the cigarette breaks.

  Motorbikes, rickshaws, taxis, and more white vans than Kit could count rolled down the road. The third time he saw the same shiny black Volvo, Kit left his hiding place and waited for its return at a pavement table on Conde Street.

  “Where have you been?”

  “Watching,” said Kit, although what he really wanted to say was, Just who the fuck is this?

  “Afternoon.” Flipping up her arm, an old woman angled it backwards to shake, while simultaneously pulling away from the curb.

  Amy shut her eyes.

  The driver’s grip was strong, though liver spots splattered her wrist like dung. Greying hair had been cut tight to her neck, and she wore heavy dark glasses to shade her eyes. “Brigadier Miles,” said the woman, introducing herself. “I gather someone thinks you’re Ben Flyte?”

  Kit nodded, catching her gaze in the rearview mirror.

  “You’re certain about that?”

  “Yes,” said Kit, “I’m certain.”

  “Interesting,” said the Brigadier, turning her attention back to the road. Hanging a quick left, the woman filtered right at the lights and checked her mirror; whatever she saw satisfied her.

  “Got a lighter?” she asked Kit.

  He shook his head.

  “Use this one,” she said, passing him something cheap and disposable, then followed it with a packet of Lucky Strikes. “I need a cigarette,” she added, when he just looked at her.

  By the time the Volvo had put Piccadilly behind them and the city’s open spaces had switched from Green Park on the left to Hyde Park on the right, the car was filled with smoke and Kit had worked out that the Suzuki up ahead and the Merc two vehicles behind were part of an escort.

  As the Suzuki peeled off, to be replaced almost instantly by a different bike, and the Merc fell back a place to allow another car in, before peeling off itself, he realised that at least four vehicles were shadowing this one and that a traffic helicopter overhead seemed to be paying close attention to their route.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “To have a quiet talk,” said Brigadier Miles, and left Kit wondering why Amy refused to meet his eye.

  “Used to be bigger,” the old woman announced, a while later.

  “What did?”

  “Those.” She pointed at plastic cows on a distant roof. “Used to be life size, only they k
ept causing crashes and had to be changed. Pity really.” Sliding down a side road, she took a roundabout rather too fast and roared back the way she’d come, leaving the cows a vanishing memory on the far side of a divided highway. “It’s about half an hour from here,” she said.

  “What is?”

  “Boxbridge…”

  A Lutyens copy of a small Elizabethan manor, Boxbridge House was built from red brick that had weathered to a shade of pink. Ivy softened its stark façade and its gravel had been raked to Zen-garden smoothness in front of the main door. It was the house that Seven Chimneys would love to be, and maybe would become if Kate O’Mally’s home survived long enough to avoid developers and find its own soul.

  But before Kit, the old woman, or Amy could reach Boxbridge they had to clear the gate house. Also designed by Edwin Lutyens, this featured a pantiled roof and a central arch under which visitors must pass. The gun slit cut into the arch was definitely not in Lutyens’s original plan, nor was the steel hut hidden beneath camouflage netting a hundred paces beyond.

  Dipping his head, a soldier with a sub-machine gun took a good look inside the Volvo, before nodding. “Madame,” he said.

  Brigadier Miles nodded back.

  Two more soldiers waited at the front door and both carried H& K assault weapons and wore body armour. Kit was beginning to understand why flack jackets had been such a topic of conversation.

  “Welcome to HQ Organised and Serious,” the Brigadier said.

  The entrance hall was panelled in oak and its floor was marble, not large slabs but tiny black and white tiles set into patterns that looked Greek. A corridor led off the hall and it was down this that Brigadier Miles led Kit, with Amy following behind.

  “My office,” the Brigadier said.

  A small library from the look of it. Cloth-bound books ringed all four walls in faded shades of red and blue. A dark and over-varnished Stag at Bay above the marble fireplace shed gilt like dandruff onto a mantelpiece below. A desk in the corner was buried under paperwork and old coffee cups. It looked too structured in its chaos to be entirely real.

  “Please take a seat.”

  Brigadier Miles indicated a wooden chair, so Kit chose a battered leather one instead, which was a mistake because it immediately put Kit lower than either of the others.

  The old woman sighed.

  “We have a problem,” she said. “One that you can help us solve.” Glancing towards a collection of files, Brigadier Miles considered something and then pulled a packet of cigarettes from her jacket pocket, lighting one with an ormolu desk lighter. “The police photographs are ugly,” she said, exhaling smoke at a nicotine-yellow ceiling. “So we’ll spare you those…”

  Amy nodded.

  “Let’s start at the top,” said the Brigadier. “Six months ago a corpse was found beside the M25. The body was male, aged somewhere between thirty and forty and had been badly mutilated. Its fingers were missing, someone had cut away the face and broken the lower jaw to make it easier to extract teeth. Scotland Yard tried for a DNA match but came up blank.”

  “Ben Flyte,” said Kit.

  “We think so. Actually,” said the Brigadier, “we know, because seven weeks ago Scotland Yard finally asked a member of Flyte’s family for DNA to help make a match. My problem is I thought he’d been killed by the man who telephoned you.”

  Kit looked up. “You know who that is?”

  “Oh yes,” said the Brigadier. “We know. And the fact he thinks Mr. Flyte is still alive is extremely convenient. Now, Inspector Avenden tells me this child is being held somewhere in South London, in a club—at least, so you believe. Do you want to tell me how you reached that conclusion?”

  Kit scowled at Amy.

  “What did you expect me to do?” she said.

  Raising her eyebrows, the Brigadier asked, “Is there anything about you two I should know?” It probably didn’t help that Kit and Amy shook their heads at exactly the same time.

  “Neku’s photograph was packed in pages from last week’s South London Gazette,” said Kit. “The Lambeth edition. The box in which it came originally contained Walkers Crisps, 144 packets. When I took the call I could hear music and the sound of crates being shifted…”

  “He’s good,” said the Brigadier.

  Amy’s smile was sour. “Yes, so I said.”

  “We run a program,” said Brigadier Miles. “It identifies someone who knows someone who knows someone we need to contact. It works by weighting age, location, schooling, and background and then assigning a score. Amy came out on top. So we borrowed her…”

  Kit blinked. “From the police?”

  Amy bit her lip. “From Ceausescu Towers. I’m a recruiter on the university milk run. ‘Come and work for Mi6, it’s not dangerous and the perks are great. Olympic size swimming pool, gym, discount shopping mall. Join us and you’ll never need to leave the office again.’”

  She didn’t sound too impressed by her job.

  “Why not just call me yourself?” asked Kit, looking at the Brigadier, who ground out her cigarette and immediately lit another. Her smile made Amy’s look positively sweet.

  “You’re a deserter,” she said. “A known link to the Yakuza. You returned to Britain alongside last season’s version of the Kray Twins. A woman the Sun has managed to turn into the UK’s most unlikely cultural icon. Just imagine your reaction if we’d called by Hogarth Mews suggesting a chat.”

  “So you sent Sergeant Samson instead?”

  “We’ll get to him in a minute. But first, would you like some tea or coffee?”

  “No,” said Kit, “I’d like to know what you’re doing about Neku.”

  “Nothing,” said the Brigadier.

  Kit stared at her.

  “We know your friend is still alive,” said Brigadier Miles. “And I’ve borrowed a pair of SBS to watch the club. If things look risky I’ll have them extract her.”

  “What are their chances of getting Neku out alive?”

  Beside him, Amy winced.

  “They’re the best,” the Brigadier said. “Statistically, the SBS extract more hostages with fewer casualties than any other European force. You really want that child in danger, I’ll have them withdraw.”

  He’d offended her.

  Damn it. Kit sat back in his chair. Walk with a man a hundred paces and he’ll tell you at least seven lies. “You know who Neku is, of course?” His voice was sharp enough to make both Brigadier Miles and Amy glance up.

  “Who?” demanded Amy.

  “Kate O’Mally’s granddaughter.”

  The Brigadier ground her cigarette against the bottom of a glass ashtray, until it was almost flat. “For real?”

  “Oh yes,” said Kit. “I can just see it,” he said. “If it all goes wrong. Kate O’Mally on the news, raging about her injured granddaughter and talking about how today’s authorities aren’t up to the job.”

  Amy looked slightly sick. “That’s why Mrs. O’Mally was in Tokyo?”

  “Of course,” said Kit, meeting her gaze. “She wanted to meet Neku.” It was all he could do not to cross his fingers behind his back.

  “But she’s…” Amy was about to say Japanese. Only she put one hand to her mouth instead. “Oh, fuck,” said Amy. “We all got it wrong, didn’t we? It wasn’t you at all. Neku is Josh’s kid.”

  Kit smiled. He’d been dealt the weakest hand of cards possible, only to discover what actually counted was the pattern on the back.

  CHAPTER 47 — Saturday, 30 June

  Lighting a cigarette, Brigadier Miles threw her dead lighter and now-empty packet into a metal bin, ignoring the noise this made. A cup of Earl Grey tea sat on a desk in front of her, beside two biscuits so dry they might as well be made from cardboard. She seemed to be waiting for something.

  After a while Kit realised it was his full attention.

  The basic rule seemed to be that the Brigadier ran the operation and Kit did what he was told. Since this involved being fitted with a body mic
and wheeling sixty kilograms of recently confiscated heroin into a lap dancing club owned by a murderous gangster, he was less than happy with the Brigadier’s take on this.

  “It’s not going to happen,” Kit said.

  “Why not?” The old woman sounded genuinely surprised.

  “Because I won’t do it.”

  Beyond the window a soldier mowed grass and beyond that a row of young oaks screened a high mesh fence, with rolls of razor wire along its top. A small Victorian folly behind the wire had been turned into a guard tower. Kit doubted very much if Boxbridge appeared on any of the official lists of government property or supported itself from a declared budget.

  “You don’t have much choice,” said Amy. “Given that Brigadier Miles is all that stands between you and arrest for desertion. The Ministry of Defence isn’t wild about people who run away.”

  “I didn’t run,” said Kit. “And they’ll be even less happy when I’ve talked to the press.”

  “No.” Brigadier Miles shook her head. “Don’t do that. The court will just double your sentence. I’ve seen it happen,” she added. “Help me and we’ll arrange an honourable discharge.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  “I talked to Whitehall this morning,” said the Brigadier. “Desertion in war is a capital offence.”

  Kit snorted. “That wasn’t a war,” he said. “It was three weeks of televised bullshit, followed by as many years of avoidable chaos. More of us got killed by our own side or accident than by Iraqis. The real casualties came after the conflict supposedly ended.”

  The Brigadier looked surprised. “I didn’t have you pegged as a pacifist.”

  “I’m not,” said Kit. “I just like my wars to have two sides and an adequate reason.” He was perched at the edge of his chair, fingers twisted so tight it felt like he might snap his own bones. Sit back, Kit told himself, but his body refused the command.

  “Madame,” said Amy, “do you think this is a good idea?”

  “No,” she said. “But he’s the only chance we’ve got, and short of blowing down the door, Kit’s our best way into the club. But if you want your doubts made formal, I’ll have them noted.”