by Lance Parkin
Lechasseur grimaced, his discomfort making Amanda grin.
‘Simon’s wife knows already,’ the woman continued. ‘Of course she does – she may not admit it, but where does she think he is in the evenings, for heaven’s sake? She wouldn’t employ your services if she didn’t know. The irony. All those secrets, and you’re employed to find out something that barely qualifies as hidden.’
She flicked some ash towards a nearby ashtray.
‘I think it’s fair to say you’ve got what you came for,’ she said. It wasn’t a question, it was an invitation to leave. Lechasseur accepted it.
Lechasseur was followed from the moment he left Amanda’s flat.
Cheap novels and films talk about a sixth sense – the uncanny ability to know you’re being watched, followed, or that a man’s talking about you. Lechasseur knew more than most about that, but this time his method was more mundane: he could see the two of them.
It was the same men as last night. Did they want him to see them? They certainly weren’t making an effort to conceal themselves. Neither were they in any hurry to catch up with him. Lechasseur guessed they were trying to make a point. They knew where he was, they knew they could catch up with him any time they chose to.
They’d revealed something about themselves, though, and it intrigued Lechasseur. They were watching Amanda’s flat, not Simon Brown. This worried him. There was a simple explanation for all this, he knew that. They were policemen. They were investigating something. But Simon Brown’s role? Amanda’s role? Him? There were dozens of possibilities and permutations.
Emily was waiting for him at the café.
It was in the shadow of the British Museum, and was genteel and slightly old-fashioned, full of the clink of china and the hiss of kettles. The waiter led Lechasseur to Emily’s table, and she smiled when she saw him. They were the only customers here, but the waiters still managed to find things to do other than take Lechasseur’s order. Perhaps they hoped that Lechasseur and Emily could occupy themselves admiring the wood panelling, or the bone china. But he really needed his coffee, the first of the day, and it would be nice to eat some eggs.
The men who’d been following him had melted away; they’d not come into the place after him, but Lechasseur knew they’d be nearby.
Still, this was privacy.
‘Did you see him?’
‘I recognised him from the photo,’ she assured him. ‘Not that there’s much to recognise. He’s so bland.’
‘You followed him?’ Lechasseur asked.
‘Yes. Are you all right?’
Lechasseur realised he’d glanced over at the window. ‘Yeah. It’s nothing.’
‘I followed him. It was easier than I thought it would be. I almost followed him up the steps when he arrived at work.’
‘Where?’
‘Ministry of Defence.’
Lechasseur nodded. ‘I see.’ He thought about that for a moment.
‘He’s a security risk,’ Emily suggested.
‘Yeah.’
‘I don’t know what his responsibilities are, but... well, he’s a blackmail target. He could have all sorts of diplomatic secrets.’
‘I think that would be the Foreign Office,’ Lechasseur corrected her. ‘But you’re right about the blackmail. His department would deal with troop strengths and movements. He could work in procurement – that’s a big industry, a lot of money at stake.’
Emily was looking at him a little blankly. Some aspects of ordinary life – cooking, driving a car, eating in a café – came naturally to her. Others meant nothing to her. The strangest things – buying a train ticket, tuning a radio, even basic knowledge of the history and politics of the last hundred years.
‘What have you been up to?’ she asked him.
‘I went back to that flat in Bloomsbury. Met Brown’s... friend.’
‘A woman?’
‘Of course a woman. Her name’s Amanda.’
‘And what did you learn?’
Lechasseur wasn’t really sure how to answer that. ‘Not much,’ he concluded. ‘They’re definitely having an affair.’
Emily, always a little naive, looked disappointed.
‘She told me as much,’ Lechasseur broke it to her. ‘We talked for some time.’
‘So who is she?’
‘I have no idea,’ he admitted.
‘You said you talked. What did you talk about?’
Lechasseur struggled to remember. He remembered the long hair, the cigarette holder and its precarious relationship with the cigarette it held. He remembered being offered whisky at ten in the morning.
The waiter came over and took their order.
‘The A-bomb,’ he said, after he’d gone.
‘You were discussing atomic weapons? What on earth did you have to say on the subject?’
Lechasseur would have objected, but it was a fair comment.
‘You’re an expert?’ he asked, raising an eyebrow.
Emily frowned.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘I think...’ but the voice trailed off. ‘I mean, I know the principle of atomic fission, obviously.’
‘Obviously,’ Lechasseur echoed sarcastically.
‘You do,’ she insisted.
‘They’re big bombs, they can destroy whole cities. What else do you need to know?’
‘The science behind them...’
Lechasseur frowned. ‘Yeah, right.’ Lechasseur watched her carefully, but she was serious, and thought he was the one who was kidding. Bombs terrified him. Preyed on his mind. But he put that to one side for Emily’s sake. ‘Perhaps you can help. Amanda said there was a new logic. Those were her words. “A new and terrible logic”. Do you know what she meant?’
Emily smiled, a little uncertainly. ‘You don’t have to treat me like an idiot.’
This was the second conversation with a woman this morning that Lechasseur felt he’d lost control of.
‘War is easy, now,’ Emily continued. ‘Easy and far more destructive. The A-bombs that were dropped on Japan were the first, but they’re already far more powerful than that, and they’ll get more powerful still.’
‘But the logic of war hasn’t changed, has it?’
‘Yes. Because if everyone has A-bombs, no-one will dare start a war. You mass ten thousand tanks on your border, all your opponent has to do is drop one bomb, and your entire army has gone. So war isn’t about mobilising troops and moving armies, it’s about being able to drop your bomb.’
‘But only the Americans and Russians have them.’
‘Really?’ she looked shocked at the news.
‘You had me going there. How do you know all that, but not know who has the bombs?’
‘I – I don’t know.’
Their coffee arrived. Emily sipped at hers. ‘If the British had the A-bomb, which Ministry would look after it?’ she asked.
Lechasseur would have answered if they hadn’t heard the shot from outside.
Lechasseur used the door frame as cover, tried to get a good view.
‘Come back, sir,’ the waiter implored him once again. Emily was behind the waiter, silently agreeing. Their instincts were to get under cover. His was to observe.
‘We’re safe. I think.’
He tried to get a better view. The two men who’d been following him were behind their car, each hunched behind a tyre, where they got the most protection.
One of them was dead, Lechasseur was shocked to realise. A head shot.
This just didn’t happen in London. Even four years after a war, when every man in his twenties had been trained to fire a gun and many had made souvenirs of their service pistols, there just weren’t guns around. And people certainly didn’t fire them off in the street.
Another shot. This time, Lechasseur was able to see
where it came from.
A tall man, broad-shouldered and with a shaven head. He had a revolver, and was firing at another target. Two more men, cast from the same mould as the others. Had they been following him, too?
Not the most pressing question, because the shaven-headed man was in the very next doorway. He had his back to Lechasseur, and his attention was taken with the policemen. Lechasseur wasn’t in the line of fire.
‘What are you doing?’ Lechasseur heard Emily ask from right behind him.
He didn’t waste any time with the distraction: she was smart enough to stay out of the way. Nor did he worry about why the man was shooting. There was no good reason to fire a gun in the street, risking the lives of bystanders. Instead, Lechasseur just clamped his hands together and brought both fists down on the shaven-headed man’s skull.
The huge man reeled.
So did Lechasseur.
The contact with the man’s head... he’d seen something. Skies the colour of battleships, vast white pyramids imposed on the London skyline. The smell of old cabbage and diesel.
The blow should have knocked the man out. Hell, it could have killed him. He’d been hurt, but not stopped. Now he turned to face Lechasseur – looking more surprised than hurt – and he’d lashed out at him before Lechasseur had recovered.
The swipe wasn’t very well-aimed, but almost took his head off anyway. Lechasseur fell back, stumbling into Emily.
‘Get back,’ he said, surprised by how weak his voice sounded.
He lurched back at his attacker, punched him square in the face, followed it up with a blow to the stomach, then another.
The man spat defiance at him, thrust out his chin.
Lechasseur brought his head down over the man’s nose, breaking it and putting him out for the count.
Emily pulled Lechasseur out of the way as the man dropped to the ground like a felled tree.
The three surviving men were pounding over, stuffing their guns into their jackets.
‘Who is he?’ Emily asked.
‘I don’t know.’ The man lying on the ground in front of them was huge, wearing a cheap suit. His hair was brown, closely cropped. There was evidence of scarring on the back of his head.
‘Does he have the papers?’ one of the men asked.
‘A wallet?’ said one of the others.
The man who had first spoken quickly and efficiently searched through the fallen stranger’s clothes, but came up with nothing. He turned on one of his colleagues. ‘Empty. Looks like he had the chance to pass them on... and you were meant to be following him!’
Emily grabbed Lechasseur’s arm.
‘Where’s he from?’ she asked.
‘I wish I knew,’ Lechasseur replied.
And then they were standing in a field, and it was the middle of the night.
3
It was dark, colder even than an winter’s day, practically silent. Most importantly, it wasn’t where they had just been. This was the countryside, not London. They were standing in a field. She could just make out the trees; she thought she’d just heard an owl; the ground beneath her was mud, which yielded and sucked at her best shoes.
‘Honoré,’ Emily whispered.
He was reeling. Disorientated, like she was.
This was a ploughed field. She’d wondered for a second if it was one of the London parks. Leaving aside how they’d got here, or why it was suddenly night, that seemed almost plausible. But they didn’t plough up the lawns of the parks; they didn’t plant hedgerows. And even in the dead of night, the traffic noise never died away in London. There was always the sound of people, of cars, of trains. The horizon should have been glowing with all the street lights.
Emily was suddenly seized with the idea that this was Hammersmith Bridge, that this was her death. She twisted around, tried to escape it. But there was no river, let alone a bridge.
‘Honoré,’ she repeated.
He was clutching his head.
‘You’re dead,’ he told her.
‘I’m not,’ she said, a little redundantly. Then, more firmly. ‘No, I’m not.’
‘Saw your body,’ he growled, as if that settled it.
‘I’m talking to you. If I’m dead, how can I talk to you?’
‘You’re trying to trick me. Blurred vision. Drugged me.’
‘Listen, Honoré: if I’m dead, how could I be trying to trick you or drug you?’ And why, Emily thought, was she even trying to use logic in this situation?
‘Not you.’
‘What?’
He shrugged her off his sleeve and stumbled a couple of steps away.
‘Where are you going?’
‘We were in London.’ He said it with such conviction that Emily almost believed him. ‘It’s the day. I must be in London.’
Emily hesitated and looked around.
‘You can see we aren’t,’ she concluded.
‘Shut up!’ he called back at her. He was marching away. ‘We must be. We must be.’
Her shoes weren’t meant for this. She began picking her way after him. Her eyes were getting used to the darkness by now. Her coat was hanging up in the cafe, and it was cold. But it was a spring night, not a winter one. There were buds on the trees.
Which was a little disconcerting, because this was December. Even if they were in the Southern hemisphere, it would be high summer, not Spring. And this was unmistakably the English countryside; there were a hundred little clues that was the case, from the smell of grass in the air to the rows of hedges.
They needed to work out where they were, and they needed to work out why. But she needed Honoré to be a bit more coherent first.
He’d reached the edge of the field. There was some sort of track way. He’d paused there, like it was an impassable stream. There was a rumble; not so much the sound, more the transmission of the sound through the earth.
‘You hear that?’ he asked.
‘What is it?’
They both found themselves some cover as the vehicle approached. It just seemed like the sensible thing to do. It picked its way up the pathway, struggling a little. Emily looked over at Lechasseur, but could barely see him in the poor light. The vehicle didn’t have its lights on. The driver either had better eyesight than either of them, or knew his route well.
‘Tank,’ Lechasseur said under his breath.
‘It can’t be...’ But it was a tank, and it came right past them, so close that Emily could have reached out to touch it. It was painted a muddy brown, and clanked and hissed like an old steam train. There were symbols painted crudely on its side. All its hatches were tightly shut.
‘Army surplus,’ Emily said when it was past them. Lechasseur was still crouched down, checking no more were coming.
‘It wasn’t there. I could see right through it.’
‘What? It was a tank,’ she noted. ‘Things don’t get much more solid than that.’
He’d stepped onto the track, but gingerly, like he wasn’t sure where the ground was.
‘Honoré?’
He looked scared.
‘Calm down?’ she suggested.
He shuffled around. ‘Is this a road or just a track?’
‘Just a track. You were a soldier. What were those symbols? What make was the tank?’
‘British,’ he said. ‘It was a Churchill.’
‘It was in a state. What’s the expression? “Been through the wars”.’
‘No. Makes no sense.’
Emily rolled her eyes. ‘Which part of this does?’
‘You’re dead. Be quiet. Confusing me. Ghost tanks...’
‘Well... what do you think is happening?’
‘Normandy. I can’t still be in Normandy. But... what else... what... ?’ the voice trailed away, and she’d not heard him so broken.
&
nbsp; ‘Where you were wounded? Can you see anything?’
‘No. I can, but it makes no sense. I’m just as lost seeing like that. Perhaps I’m dead, too?’ he suggested.
Emily was a little taken aback. She thought about it for a moment. Bullets had been flying, that man had hit Honoré hard. Perhaps they’d been killed.
‘Not a bit of it,’ she said. ‘This is a place. There’s no afterlife. That’s all just superstition.’
Lechasseur looked at her properly for the first time. ‘It is?’
‘Yes,’ she told him, with authority.
‘Then... ?’ he left the question hang. ‘Why could I see through that tank?’
‘I don’t know. I couldn’t. But you’re the time sensitive. It must be something to do with that. We were in London,’ she agreed. ‘Now we are here. Somehow, we’ve been moved. We need to find out how.’
‘Where are we?’
‘We need to find out that as well.’
Lechasseur coughed. ‘Anything else?’
‘Can you answer either of those first two questions?’
‘No.’
‘Then any other questions can wait.’
They set off down the path, headed in the opposite direction to the tank. Emily asked Lechasseur to tell her about the vehicle.
Lechasseur looked at her. ‘You said other questions can wait.’
‘That’s the biggest clue we’ve had. Explain the tank, explain where we are.’
‘Russia,’ Lechasseur said.
‘Russia?’
‘When the German army advanced into Russia, they wiped out most of the tank divisions. The British sent tanks in. Arctic convoys. The Soviets drove old British tanks until they got their own factories back working.’
‘Were those markings Russian?’
‘No. And you can’t see through Russian tanks.’
‘Oh. But it makes sense – the Russians wouldn’t be able to maintain British tanks that well, would they? So that’s why it looks dilapidated.’
