Survival

by Joe Craig

  Eva followed the direction of his stare and saw Miss Bennett approaching across the grass. She moved gracefully and with a slight sway in her hips. Eva was amazed she could walk so effortlessly fast in high heels. One side of her mouth was curled upwards in a half-smile and as she came closer a flash of sunshine caught the subtle green stripe in the weave of her pencil skirt.

  As she reached the Prime Minister’s car, they started talking – quickly and without waiting for each other to finish their sentences. Eva couldn’t quite make out their words, but it was obvious they didn’t agree about something. She opened her window a little further to catch their conversation.

  Mitchell tried to object. “What are you…?”

  “Shh!” Eva hissed. “Can’t you use some special skill to tell me what they’re saying?”

  Mitchell snorted a sarcastic laugh, but before he could reply, a loud click cut him off. The back door on the other side of the Prime Minister’s car opened. Eva and Mitchell both sat to attention and leaned forward. Out of the car stepped William Lee.

  His presence stopped Miss Bennett’s conversation dead. Ian Coates looked from Lee to Miss Bennett and back again. For a second, nobody said anything. Then the Prime Minister seemed to glance up at the sky before issuing an order that Eva could hear perfectly, though it meant nothing to her.

  “Mutam-ul-it. Make it ours.”

  Lee’s response cut through all the background noise.

  “I’ll send the Enforcer.”

  Eva turned to Mitchell and read in his expression that he was as mystified as she was. Within seconds, Miss Bennett was sliding in next to them.

  “What’s Mutam-ul-it?” Eva asked, not caring now that Miss Bennett would know she’d been eavesdropping. “And who’s the enforcer – what did he mean?”

  “He means we’ve got work to do,” Miss Bennett replied calmly. Then a darker expression came over her face. “He means we’re attacking the French.”

  05 NASU MISO

  Felix Muzbeke’s fingers trembled on the glass of the door. Usually he had no doubts about walking into a restaurant, but tonight he hesitated. His arm seemed frozen. He stared at his reflection: large brown eyes a little too far apart and a chaos of black frizz on his head. But in his mind he was seeing something else.

  He was remembering another glass door just like this one, nearly five thousand kilometres away in Chinatown, New York. And he could see the scene that he’d replayed in his imagination so many times. Hiding in the darkness when that long black car pulled up. The two huge men in black suits who’d calmly stepped out, grabbed his parents and forced them to the ground. His mother looking up from the pavement, signalling to him to escape.

  “It’s OK,” came a whisper from behind him, startling him out of his memories. “It’s not like Chinatown.” It was Georgie.

  Although he was a couple of years younger, these days Felix felt almost as close to Georgie Coates as he always had to her brother, Jimmy. And behind Georgie stood her mother, Helen. Both offered the same reassuring smile, lips pressed together, concern in their eyes.

  So Felix opened the door and entered one of the few remaining sushi restaurants in Soho, in Central London. There was a time when the place had been packed with them, when there would have been hundreds of people around to eat in them as well – tourists, locals, shop workers. But Felix and Georgie had never seen it in those days and tonight Brewer Street was deserted. The buildings twisted above them, Victorian and Georgian styles butting edges like brickwork pick ‘n’ mix.

  Before Georgie and Helen followed Felix in, they both instinctively glanced up and down the street. They all knew they were watched every moment by NJ7, either on camera or by field agents. Checking over her shoulder was an old habit for Helen and had become a new one for Georgie. A habit it was safer not to break.

  Just as Georgie stepped over the threshold of the restaurant, a man swept along the street so fast he was already past them. But Georgie heard the echo of his whisper:

  “Nasu Miso.”

  Nasu Miso? Georgie repeated the words in her head. Was it some kind of message, or just a foreigner saying “excuse me”? She watched the man’s silhouette marching away along the street. His body and head were both round – like a satsuma balanced on a melon.

  Her mother hurried her into the restaurant.

  It was only a small room, with a low bar and about thirty stools, all of them empty. A conveyor belt snaked its way through the place, carrying dozens of small dishes, each loaded with different morsels. Japanese waiters with crisp white coats and stern expressions hovered about, their arms behind their backs.

  “Three green teas, please,” announced Felix nervously, perching on the nearest stool.

  They all knew they weren’t there to have a meal. They just had to look like they were, for the sake of the NJ7 surveillance. Georgie knew they were all thinking about the same thing: whether the man they would be meeting could find Felix’s parents. He was from a French charity that specialised in tracking down people who had been made to disappear by the British Government. It all made Georgie feel sick, not hungry.

  She’d hardly sat down when her mother announced, “OK, let’s go.”

  “Wait,” Felix blurted. “Aren’t we…” He looked around at the waiters. They were all watching. Felix knew he couldn’t say anything, but his face was a picture of anxiety.

  “He’s just late,” Felix whispered. “We should wait. This could be the only way to—”

  Helen hushed him with a smile. She’d taken a single dish from the conveyor belt: chunks of aubergine in a gloopy-looking sauce, their purple skins glistening in the low lighting.

  Georgie glanced at the menu and scanned the pictures. There it was. “Nasu Miso,” she mumbled under her breath.

  “So let’s go,” Helen repeated softly. She slipped her fingers under the dish and pulled out the three cinema tickets that had been concealed there. “We don’t want to miss the trailers.”

  As Helen, Georgie and Felix took their seats in the centre row of the cinema, the opening credits were already finishing. A black and white title card announced that the film was called The Lady From Shanghai, then the actors started talking in American accents.

  “What sort of cinema is this?” Felix whispered. “How come they’re allowed to show American movies?”

  “Old films are OK,” Helen whispered back. “This was made in the 1940s.”

  Felix scrunched up his face, as if the images on the screen were giving off a bad smell.

  “They expect people to sit through a movie that’s older than me, not coloured in and about some Chinese woman? No wonder the place is empty.” He slumped down and started fiddling with the tattered velvet seat cover.

  In fact there were a few other people there – a solitary bald head in the front row that reflected the flickering light from the film and two girls a few years older than Georgie. Felix thought they were probably students and wondered whether they had boyfriends. He was so desperate to think about anything except the reason they were there that he forced himself to pay attention to the movie.

  Then came a sharp whisper from the row behind.

  “Don’t look round.”

  It was a man with a French accent. Felix and Georgie froze in their seats, but Felix couldn’t help very slowly trying to glance over his shoulder.

  “Enjoying the film?” snapped the man behind them. He leaned all the way forward, until Felix could smell the popcorn on his breath. Felix quickly turned back, before he’d caught a proper glimpse of the man. Helen didn’t turn round at all, even when she started speaking.

  “I assume you got my message?” Helen began.

  Felix felt his blood fizzing with excitement. Maybe the man already knew where his parents were. But his hopes died almost immediately.

  “A lot of people have disappeared since this Government came to power,” the man said. “My organisation is overstretched already. Every day we get new messages begging for help to
find family members, friends, teachers. Thousands of them. Anybody with any views this Government doesn’t approve of. Anybody who shows any kind of support for Christopher Viggo. They all disappear. What makes you think your case is so special?”

  “If there’s nothing special about our case why did you agree to meet us? Why take the risk?” countered Helen.

  “In your message you said you thought NJ7 might use your friends for some political purpose. That’s unusual. What did you mean? These people weren’t politicians. Were they public figures? Scientists perhaps?”

  “No.”

  “Then don’t waste my time.”

  Felix heard the man heave himself to his feet. He wanted to reach back and grab him, or shout out – anything to get the man to stay and help them. Then, to his shock, Helen Coates spun round and stated loudly: “I used to work for them.”

  The man slowly walked back to them. The bald man at the front of the cinema turned round and gave a loud “Shh!”.

  “For this boy’s parents you mean?” asked the French man, crouching again behind Helen’s seat.

  “No – for NJ7.” There was a pause, filled only by the voices from the film. “Many years ago. I was NJ7, but I left when…” She stopped, suddenly wary of her surroundings.

  “It’s OK,” the man reassured her. “This building still has walls lined with lead. It makes it difficult for them to listen in or to watch without having an agent inside.”

  “Well, that’s all.” Helen added no more details.

  “I see.” The man pondered for a moment and shovelled in a fistful of popcorn. “It makes sense now. Your method of communication, you demanding this meeting…”

  While the man considered everything, Felix couldn’t help peering round. He didn’t want to miss a single word. Now for the first time he got a proper look at their contact’s face: podgy and sullen, with a neat, blond moustache.

  Suddenly the moustache twitched. “Neil and Olivia Muzbeke could be more significant than I first thought,” the man announced.

  Felix shuddered slightly at the mention of his parents’ names. They are significant, he insisted in his head. “You’re going to help us?” he exclaimed, with a surge of energy. He could barely keep his voice to a whisper.

  The French man ignored him and spoke directly into Helen’s ear.

  “You said in your message they were taken in New York, so they could be at any one of dozens of British detention centres all over the world. But from what you’ve told me I don’t think they’ll be dead. Yet.”

  Felix felt a lump lurching up in his throat. He fought back tears.

  “If I need to contact you again?” asked Helen.

  “You’ll never see me again,” replied the French man. “But somebody will contact you.”

  He left them with instructions to stay until the end of the film and go straight home afterwards. Felix sat in the darkness thinking of nothing but his parents and how wonderful it must be to be French.

  06 WHITEOUT

  Jimmy opened his eyes. He was surrounded by a whiteness so intense that at first it hurt the backs of his eyes. He tried to look down at his body, but moving his head was awkward, as if it was being held in place by a surgical clamp. Every bit of his skin was prickling from the cold. It grew more acute the more awake he became, until it was the pain of a thousand stabs.

  The pounding of his heart and the flow of blood through his ears were the only sounds. Beyond that was unwavering silence. His slightest movement caused a low creak that was like a hurricane in comparison. What is that? he asked himself. Then he realised it was the noise of densely packed snow shifting.

  Only now did Jimmy remember the details of his crash and that he must be suspended in a snowdrift in the Pyrenees. Every sensation became less disturbing because he could explain it. But then he was attacked by another memory – the reason he was here in the first place. Britain is going to attack France. How long have I been unconscious? I have to warn the French. For all he knew he could be too late.

  Jimmy tried to raise his right hand to wipe his face, but the weight of snow packed in around him held it down. He jerked it free, sending a stab of agony through his ribcage.

  He struggled to think clearly. He didn’t even know which way was up. He spat out a globule of saliva. His mouth was so dry it took some effort. The spit dribbled up his cheek, then froze just below his eye.

  Great, he thought. I’m upside-down.

  At last he loosened enough of the snow around him and tumbled backwards, just managing to avoid landing on his head. It was only a short fall, but the impact doubled every pain in his body. He gripped the right side of his ribcage and let out a cry of agony that rang off the cliff faces and echoed back to him.

  The world was still almost completely white. Plumes of mist swirled around him, only parting for fleeting seconds to reveal glimpses of the mountain peaks. Massive rock formations, hundreds of times the size of Jimmy, poked their heads out of the whiteness to peer down at him, then disappeared again as if they’d seen enough.

  Apart from these flashes of clarity, Jimmy’s visibility was less than a couple of metres. His body had developed the ability to see in the dark far better than any normal person and he had used it to escape some nasty situations in the past. But this wasn’t darkness – it was the opposite. His night-vision wasn’t going to help him here.

  He glanced back and just made out the hole where he’d been stuck. Buried about half a metre into a wall of snow and ice was a cavity roughly the shape of Jimmy’s inverted body, with extra holes where he’d wriggled free.

  He struggled to his feet, still clutching his ribs. Without realising he was doing it, his palms were prodding around the bones. When he came to the origin of the worst pain he winced and let out another cry. Two cracked, he heard himself thinking. He knew his programming was evaluating his condition and keeping him alive. Without it he would certainly have frozen to death hours ago.

  He pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head and tried to calm down. He took several deep breaths, but every gulp of air chilled his gullet. Now he was out of the shelter of his snow hole, the wind brought the temperature plunging down. And Jimmy felt it threatening him. His shivering was brutal and uncontrollable. Then he looked down at his hands and knew that two cracked ribs were going to be the least of his problems. The ends of his fingers had turned yellow and white.

  Immediately Jimmy found himself marching away from his snow hole. Every step sent a severe stab of agony from his feet. He assumed they were turning the same colour as his fingers, but he didn’t have any choice but to keep going. He deliberately planted every pace more firmly, almost revelling in the torture, challenging his programming to lessen the anguish. It was the only way he could make himself carry on walking.

  Soon he developed a rhythm, then at last his programming swelled inside him. It felt as if he was growing an extra protective layer against the cold – almost like a fleece just underneath his skin. But still the wind bit into him, attacking every pore.

  The further he walked, the more the snow around him revealed blackened corners of debris, like spots on a Dalmatian. A few paces on he saw the wreckage. It was a mess of ashen detritus and twisted metal, hardly recognisable as a plane. It might have been invisible in the snow except for fragments of metal shimmering under the thin layer of frost and blackened, burnt-out corners flapping in the wind.

  Jimmy rushed forwards as fast as his body would allow. He crouched among the wreckage, desperate for some shelter, and dug around the ash and snow looking for anything that could help him. He tucked his hoodie into his trousers and scooped up armful after armful of ash from inside the body of the plane, stuffing it down his top for added insulation. Some he forced down his trouser legs too, until he felt like he was wearing a fat suit.

  His hands were virtually useless now. He had no sensation in them except throbbing agony and couldn’t flex his fingers. Nevertheless he forced them into the snow and shovelled.
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br />   The only recognisable piece of debris he pulled from the wreckage was a half burned, blackened, in-flight washbag. The cloth cover had protected its contents surprisingly well. Jimmy pulled out an eye-mask, a mini-toothbrush, a tiny tube of toothpaste and a shoehorn.

  With a rush in his veins, he snapped the shoehorn in two and used the elastic from the eye-mask to strap the pieces to the soles of his shoes. The upside-down curved shape would dig into the ice and give him vital extra grip.

  Then he snatched up the travel-size tube of toothpaste, squeezed it in his fist and forced the contents down his throat.

  Take all the energy you can get, he told himself. You’ve got some walking to do.

  The waves attacked the shoreline with such ferocity, it was as if the water was angry that it couldn’t reach any further. For all its might, it couldn’t change the fact that just a few metres away was the edge of the largest desert on Earth. This was the battle line where thousands of miles of water met thousands of miles of sand – the West Coast of Africa.

  On a mound overlooking the beach stood a single figure, lean and supple. She seemed to bend with the wind, not letting it bother her, and held a Zeiss-Ikon rangefinder steady at her eyes. Behind her trailed a stream of hair as black as her skin. Against the sand, her limbs stood out like charcoal twigs on snow.

  Suddenly her whole body stiffened at what she saw in her scopes.

  Through the thunder of the waves approached a ship so powerful and furious it looked like a salivating beast on its way to fight the whole of Africa single-handed. A Type 48 destroyer; 7500 tonnes of warship. She recognised the curious straight edges of the bridge section and the slim, arrow-like construction of the bow. From the centre rose a huge mast, which was more like an Egyptian monument. Radar balloons stuck out on either side and when the sun hit them they glinted like scowling eyes.