End of the World Blues

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

  Amy shook her head.

  “We need the owner to admit he’s dealing drugs,” said Brigadier Miles, stubbing out her cigarette. “Without that we’re helpless. You have to get him on tape.”

  “Why not just bug the place?” asked Kit.

  “It’s swept, the phone lines tested for central station taps. He’s got fooler loops on every window and wall. Even if he didn’t, the bloody music is so loud we’d have trouble isolating speech to a standard acceptable in courts.” Brigadier Miles sounded more irritated than angry. “It’s got to be taped in situ.”

  “All I want,” said Kit, “is Neku out of there.”

  “You don’t care about someone dealing heroin?”

  Kit shook his head.

  “We’re still your best bet,” said Amy. “The Brigadier knows this man. He’s never left a witness alive in his life. That’s why he’s still jetting round Europe and she’s here talking to you.”

  Shutting his eyes, Kit tried to work things through. Four dice, a hundred throws, surely he had to hit four sixes soon?

  What should I do?

  “If you don’t know,” said the Brigadier, “I can’t tell you.”

  So Kit told her about his history of wrong calls. He really didn’t mean to, it just happened. He started with the difference between an M24 weapons system and the earlier M21; both being bolt action, five shots in the magazine and one in the chamber.

  The M24 came with a choice of sights, a night scope, and the one he’d been issued, the basic 10x42 Leupold M3A, with adjustment dials for elevation, focus, and wind. Kit’s voice was so matter of fact he could have been discussing the man mowing the lawns outside.

  “There are only a few things I’m good at,” said Kit, “and running a bar and hitting targets top the list. I can take out a man’s brain stem at five hundred paces, while he’s still scratching his balls. Take out a child’s too…”

  “A child?”

  Kit nodded, then described his tenth kill. Exactly half way down his second clip, ten hits in three days and not a shot wasted. A burning truck, with a boy at the wheel and the clown-faced corpse of a small girl beside him. Clown faced because fire does that, it pulls back the face into a rictus grin.

  He talked about the flames, the acrid smoke that hugged itself to a dip in the dunes and closed his throat. How a two-man patrol had found him blackened and voiceless, trying to pull corpses from the truck. It wasn’t their fault they thought he was Iraqi.

  “Were they British?” Amy asked.

  Kit shook his head.

  “American?” The Brigadier sounded worried.

  “Not that either,” said Kit. “I don’t know what they were…” He shrugged. “Azeri, maybe; perhaps Georgian.” Kit felt ashamed, as if he should have known the nationality of the soldiers he killed.

  Brigadier Miles sighed. “Could have been worse,” she said. “Much worse. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were Iraqi. In fact, I’m sure they were. Almost captured by Iraqis,” said the old woman, trying the words aloud. “Sent home, cracked up, went missing. Sounds convincing to me.”

  Outside the window the mowing of the lawn had finally finished. Someone had brought fresh tea and biscuits and left them on the Brigadier’s desk. All of the cups had been used and one sat empty next to Kit’s hand, so he guessed he must have drunk it.

  “We’ll get Neku back for you,” promised Amy.

  “All you have to do,” said Brigadier Miles, “is trust us.”

  The first photograph showed a thin man in his early thirties. Curling black hair fell over the high collar of a leather coat that was cut like the jacket of a suit. He looked vaguely Arab, maybe southern European. “This,” said Amy, “is Armand de Valois.”

  “French?”

  “Originally Russian,” the Brigadier said. “Well…half Russian. His father was Sergei Akhyrov, a Colonel in the Red Army. His mother came from Chechnya. She was the one who named him Armed.”

  “I thought—”

  “He changed it,” the Brigadier said. “And that wasn’t all.” Fanning out three photographs, she pushed them across the desk. “This is Armand in Bucharest, in Berlin, and in Paris…”

  It was easy to see the progression, because it involved more than just clothes or the cost of Armand’s haircut, though these changed as well. His eyes got less wild, his smile more confident. Somewhere between Berlin and Paris he had rhinoplasty and his lips became fuller. The change was subtle, but it was definitely there.

  “American surgeon,” said Brigadier Miles.

  “De Valois flew to the US?”

  “Too risky. The surgeon came to him. Armand switched nationalities around this time. He’s currently using a passport issued in Rome and we’ve checked, it’s genuine.”

  “Really?” asked Amy.

  “His notario had the right proofs. A Parisian birth certificate, marriage papers from Milan showing his mother was French and his father Sicilian. Also evidence of land holdings near Palermo, once owned by a great-grandfather. It’s easy enough, particularly in Italy.”

  “I know drug smuggling was big business,” Kit said, “but this is still…” He swallowed the rest of that sentence because he’d just realised the obvious. “This isn’t about drugs, is it?”

  The Lutyens mansion, with its rolls of discreetly coloured razor wire, all those soldiers wandering around in flack jackets. He’d been right about the size of the budget and wrong about where it was aimed. What commanded this kind of money? What was the world’s biggest growth industry on both sides of the fence…

  “He’s a terrorist,” Kit said.

  Amy looked up from a photograph.

  “This isn’t about heroin,” said Kit. “At least, not directly.” Reaching for the folder, he fanned its contents across the untidy desk. At least fifty shots of Armand de Valois in a dozen different countries. Hair-style and clothes changed, but the man and the woman at his side remained the same. In some de Valois smoked and in others he held a brandy glass. In one, the woman was absent and de Valois wore an astrakhan hat and smoked a small cigar through a very long ivory holder. The office block behind him was ugly, half derelict, and brutal enough to speak of decades of Soviet planning.

  “Grozny,” said Brigadier Miles, lighting up a cigarette of her own. “Before Russia flattened it for the second time. He was buying plastic explosives.”

  “Why don’t you just arrest him?”

  “We lack sufficient proof.”

  “Then kill him.”

  “It’s been tried,” said the Brigadier. “About eight months ago. On a section of the B1 between Tegel and Tempelhof…Airports in Berlin,” she added, seeing Kit’s face. “A motorcyclist and pillion, both Colombian. They killed his driver, his bodyguard, and his son. Armand let it be known that he was also dead.”

  “Which was when Ben Flyte’s troubles began,” Amy said. “He failed to pay for a consignment of heroin, thinking Armand wouldn’t be around to collect the debt.”

  “Only Armand was alive,” said Brigadier Miles. “Busily arranging the death of an entire Colombian drug family, right down to the family pets. Those are photographs you definitely don’t want to see.”

  “Why not just do the job yourselves?”

  “That’s been suggested,” said the Brigadier. “Unfortunately the Attorney General takes the view that as it’s been suggested we can’t do it. Apparently, had we just done it, that would be entirely different.”

  “Then sub-contract the job to someone else.”

  “Don’t think we haven’t considered it,” she said. “Unfortunately life is not that simple. Moscow have decided Mr. de Valois might make a good next President for Chechnya, and Russia is our friend.”

  “And the Americans?”

  “Reserving judgement,” said Brigadier Miles, sounding tired. “As are the French. Which still leaves us with today’s problem.”

  “Why?” asked Kit, looking at the women opposite. One reminded him, in some weird way, of an olde
r, better-dressed version of Kate O’Mally. The other had trouble meeting his eyes.

  Amy scowled. “What do you mean, why?”

  “Why would a man like de Valois waste time with this? I mean, what’s one missing consignment of drugs to a future President?”

  “Ah,” said the Brigadier. She glanced at Amy, as if about to say something and then changed her mind. What she wanted to say, Kit reckoned, was this friend of yours is less stupid than I thought.

  “You noticed the woman?” asked Brigadier Miles.

  Kit nodded.

  “Ivana de Valois. Ambitious, ruthless, and highly intelligent. Currently sulking in Bucharest. Armand and his wife share the first two of those qualities, but not the third.”

  “I’m sorry?” Kit said.

  “She’s the brains,” said the Brigadier. “Ivana is currently waiting for Armand to realise that.”

  “Which is why she’s in Bucharest?”

  “Plus the kid’s death caused a rift,” said Amy, shuffling papers until she found the sheet she wanted. “Mr. de Valois demanded that the boy accompany him to Berlin. Ivana warned her husband it was dangerous.”

  “It’s been five months since they talked.” Sitting back, the Brigadier lit another cigarette and stared at the ceiling. When she glanced down again, Brigadier Miles was smiling. “Every fuck up he makes is worse than the previous one. Although few come close to flying into London to collect on a debt that Ivana would sub-contract to a local vor v zakonye without even bothering to think about it.”

  “What are the drugs worth?” asked Kit.

  “About a hundred thousand Kalashnikovs, three ex-Soviet tanks, or more plastic explosives than you could load into a long wheel base Cherokee Jeep.”

  “A million five street value,” said Amy.

  “Forget street value,” the Brigadier said. “You might as well multiply it by three and say that’s the amount of crime you’d need to commit to get that level of profit…it’s an old argument,” she added, seeing Kit’s expression. “I use wholesale only and that’s about £14,000 per kilo.”

  “So little?”

  The Brigadier’s grin was sour. “The weather’s good and our friends in Kandahar grow little else.”

  “And bodyguards,” said Kit. “How many has de Valois got?”

  Amy laughed. “None,” she said. “Immigration arrested two this morning on their way to work. The third was arrested when Mr. de Valois sent him to find out what happened to the first two. He’s reduced to using locals.”

  CHAPTER 48 — Sunday, 1 July

  Kit was given a suite to himself. It was beautiful, with high ceilings and long windows that looked out over immaculately trimmed and mowed lawns. The kind of lawns where ghosts probably still played croquet.

  The bed was high and rickety and creaked when he rolled over in his sleep. Or what would have passed for sleep, had Kit been able to sink deeper behind his eyes. For the first time he could remember, he spent a night beneath sheets, blankets, and an old-fashioned eiderdown.

  Peacocks woke him, which was when Kit realised he’d slept after all. Shrill and awkward and slightly insane, their cry cut through an open window and welcomed Kit to another Sunday, one unlike any other.

  A bathroom to one side offered a tub deep enough to take a family, and taps that looked original. A mirror above the basin was foxed and speckled so badly that shaving was reduced to a chase to find his own reflection.

  He pissed, shaved, bathed, and dressed.

  Kit was tying his shoes when a soldier came to unlock his door.

  The morning was spent going over the Brigadier’s plans, until the church bells struck thirteen, and Kit deducted one from the total to reach the real time. Lunch was sandwiches in the garden. Kit was given an hour or so to read the Sunday papers, while Amy and Brigadier Miles talked intently, then it was back to the Volvo and Amy refusing to meet Kit’s eye.

  The call came when Kit was between Boxbridge and the outskirts of London. He sat in the back, next to Amy, who cradled a silver suitcase stuffed with something unspecified. Amy and Kit had been doing their best not to bang hips every time the Volvo changed lanes or jinked from one road onto another.

  “Does she always drive like this?”

  Amy said nothing and neither did the Brigadier, although the old woman’s smile got a little tighter.

  “Phone,” said Amy, a mile or two later.

  “Yeah.” His Nokia had been buzzing for a while. That was how Kit had it set, go straight to vibrate, ring after thirty seconds and skip video function unless otherwise told.

  “It’s me,” he said.

  “We’ve got someone who wants to talk to you.”

  A burst of Japanese blasted from its tiny speaker, Neku’s words slung into one long howl as if trying to cram in as many words as possible before the inevitable happened and someone ripped the phone from her hands.

  “You see,” said de Valois. “She’s unharmed, for the moment.”

  “Put her back on,” demanded Kit.

  “Say please.”

  Kit took a deep breath. “Please let me talk to the kid.”

  De Valois laughed. “Keep it short.”

  “There’s only three of them,” said Neku in Japanese. “The others vanished yesterday. Bring me a gun…”

  “Neku!”

  “I’m serious,” she said.

  The Brigadier had turned off her radio and both she and Amy were listening intently to Kit’s end of the conversation.

  “Enough,” said the voice. “Now tell me what the girl was saying.”

  “That she’s okay and I should do exactly what you say.”

  “I’m delighted to hear that,” said Armand de Valois. “Now, which do I get? My money or the return of my merchandise?”

  “Your goods,” said Kit.

  “Excellent.” Armand de Valois’s praise came in a drawl that Kit hated, along with its owner. It went with the floppy haircut and expensive suits, the dark glasses and the chunky gold identity bracelet. “Although,” said de Valois, “I’m surprised I had to contact you. We’ve been expecting your call.”

  “I’ve been busy…reclaiming your consignment,” Kit added, in case de Valois decided this was an insult. Nothing he’d heard about the Chechen suggested he took insults lightly.

  “But you’ve got it?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “And where are you now?”

  In an unmarked car with a geriatric ex-Army chief and a spook so memorable I can barely recall the first time we met, or forget the last. Where the fuck do you think I am?

  “On a bus,” said Kit.

  Armand chuckled. “On a bus,” he said. “With my missing consignment. How English.” The line went dead, leaving Kit to the rumbling echo of traffic on London’s South Circular.

  “Where are we headed now?” Kit demanded.

  Eyes met his in the rearview mirror. “To the club,” said Brigadier Miles.

  “What, directly?”

  She shook her head. “We need to stop on the way. Change cars and prep you for the meeting. Nothing difficult.”

  Having swung the Volvo into a supermarket car park, next to a roundabout just off the South Circular, Brigadier Miles walked away without looking back or removing her keys from the ignition. And as Amy indicated that Kit should wheel the silver case towards a crosswalk, a young woman pushed a trolley up to the Volvo and began bundling shopping bags onto the backseat.

  “Here we go,” said the Brigadier, as an old SUV pulled up by a crossing. “Meet Maxim, my deputy.”

  A large Jewish man with a full beard and cap welcomed them into his car. In the back, right in the middle of the seat, sat a small boy playing Death Ice V on the in-car console. He moved up grudgingly to allow Kit, Amy, and her case into the car. The Brigadier sat up front, shuffling receipts she took from her purse.

  “Expenses?” asked Maxim.

  The old woman nodded.

  “Do them every month,” he said. “It’s ea
sier. Alternatively, save them up, but don’t expect sympathy.” Changing down a gear, Maxim chugged the SUV out into the evening traffic and wound towards a road block. The nod he gave the soldiers got the car through the check point with no problems.

  “Where do you want me to drop you?”

  “The Cut.”

  It was one of those soft Sunday evenings that felt as if it belonged only in memory, when a settling sun puts the world very slightly out of focus. The children who crowded the street corners wore hoodies despite the heat and hunched around their own toughness, but they greeted each other with nods, and bobbed hidden heads to the music that flowed from open windows.

  The kid in the car kept playing his game, Maxim smiling every time the boy twisted his handheld controller frantically, trying to make his sled corner faster.

  “What are you thinking?” Amy asked Kit.

  “About Neku.”

  “Me too,” said Amy, then blushed. Kit was still trying to work out why, when he realised that both Maxim and the Brigadier were watching from their mirrors.

  The Cut turned out to be behind the main station at Waterloo, and their destination a nondescript flat above an Indian newsagents, with walk-up stairs and bars over all the windows.

  “See you in a minute,” Maxim told Brigadier Miles.

  The kid said nothing. Just got back into the car.

  A table in the main room held local maps for South London and a manila folder full of forms that the Brigadier spent at least fifteen minutes signing.

  “What’s all that?” asked Kit.

  “Paperwork,” Amy told him.

  “Yes,” he said. “Obviously. What kind?”

  Amy’s gaze slid to a shelf of cheap paperbacks and old magazines. A novel at the end seemed to hold particular fascination. She was wondering whether to tell him, or maybe she was just hoping he’d forget the question.

  “Well?” he demanded.

  “She’s taking responsibility if it goes wrong. You know, if the Brigadier’s plan fails and…”

  “I get killed,” said Kit, finishing Amy’s sentence for her.

  Amy nodded a little too fast.

  Not just me, Kit decided. Neku too.