“I don’t see any fresh burials,” she said. “The place looks full. How come you get to be buried here?”
In the corner of her vision, Paul blinked. She knew he could see the path and the surrounding stones through her eyes, and she felt an unexpected prickle of sympathy, supposing that it couldn’t be an easy thing to attend your own funeral.
“My grandparents were sort of rich,” he said. “We have a family plot. As I’m the only surviving heir, I guess I get to be buried in it.”
Ahead, towards the rear of the cemetery, they found a loose knot of people standing around a casket. Maybe half a dozen in all, including the priest.
“We’re late,” Paul said.
Victoria stopped walking. She recognised two of the people as distant, estranged relatives of Paul: distant cousins she hadn’t seen since the wedding. They frowned at her, clearly less than thrilled by her presence.
She ignored them, fixing her attention on the coffin. She tried to imagine Paul’s body lying inside that plain wooden box — not the phantom in her eye, but the real Paul, the one she’d loved so hard, and then lost.
“Are you okay?” Paul asked.
She shook her head. How could she be, with her husband lying hollow-skulled beneath that lid? However convincing the simulation in her head might be, the real man had gone. Her eyes stung like paper cuts. She opened and closed her fists, fighting down an urge to tear open the box and beg him to wake up.
After what seemed an eternity, the priest closed his little black book, and the small congregation watched in silence as the pallbearers lowered the coffin into the earth.
The priest threw a handful of soil onto the lid.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” He made the sign of the cross.
The mourners turned away and began to break into groups. They rubbed their hands together. Their breath steamed. Someone made a joke.
Victoria stood silently, looking at the grave, hating them all.
“I’m sorry,” Paul said.
She wiped her eyes with gloved fingers.
“What for?”
“For your loss.”
A train clattered past, wheels screeching as it pulled into the Tube station at West Brompton. Further to the north, a triple-hulled skyliner chugged over Earl’s Court, the winter sun glinting off its brass fittings and carbon fibre bodywork.
“It’s your loss, too.”
“I know.”
Paul fell silent. Victoria looked down at her hands. She didn’t know what else to do or say. When she finally looked up, she saw a woman staring at her from the far side of the hole in the ground. The woman was somewhere in her late forties. She wore a long, elegant coat with fur around the collar and cuffs, and a small pillbox hat with a wisp of black veil. As she walked around the lip of the grave, the shins of her leather boots kicked the hem of her coat.
“Do you know her?”
Paul glanced up from his reverie.
“It’s Lois.”
“Who’s Lois?”
“We worked together in Paris. I wonder what she’s doing here?”
“I think we’re about to find out.”
The woman approached, and stopped a few paces away.
“Victoria?”
“Yes?”
The woman seemed relieved. She stepped forward and offered a gloved hand.
“My name’s Lois Lapointe. I worked with your late husband. I’m so sorry about what happened.”
“Thank you.”
Another train whined into the station. Victoria heard the bong of a platform announcement.
“Do you mind if I walk out with you?”
“Not at all.” Victoria turned and began strolling back towards the gate. Lois Lapointe fell into step beside her.
“I recognised you from a picture Paul kept on his desk,” she said.
“Have you come all the way from Paris?”
“I have.” Lois put a gloved hand on Victoria’s sleeve. “There is something I must tell you. Something very important.” She gestured to a wooden bench at the side of the gravel path. “Can we sit?”
Victoria hesitated.
“Can’t we talk somewhere warmer? I could buy you a coffee?”
The grip on her sleeve tightened.
“Please,” Lois urged. “I don’t have much time. I know why your husband was murdered.” She glanced nervously at the surrounding stones. “And I think I might be next.”
CHAPTER TEN
SPACE SHUTTLE STACK
M
EROVECH READ TO
the end of the last printed page. Then slowly, he placed it face-down on the table with the others.
“Bad news?”
Ack-Ack Macaque sat opposite, on an old wooden chair, wrapped in a ratty towelling dressing gown that Merovech had found for him.
“My whole life is a lie.”
The monkey stuck its bottom jaw forward.
“You too, huh?”
Merovech scowled. “I’m serious.”
“So am I.” Ack-Ack Macaque reached under the gown’s hem and caught hold of his tail. He started to groom the hair at its tip.
“It’s not easy for me, you know. One moment I’m fighting the Second World War, the next I’m somewhere in France and you tell me it’s 2059.”
Merovech tapped the papers on the table in front of him.
“You don’t understand.”
“That’s for shit-damn sure!”
“No. My mother. She’s been lying to me. All this time, all these years.”
Ack-Ack Macaque stopped grooming his tail.
“You want to trade problems? I’ll trade. Believe me, I’ll trade.”
Merovech put a hand to his head. His world felt ready to crash around him in ruins.
“Please. Just give me a minute. I need to think.”
The monkey glared at him.
“Well, when you’re all done ‘thinking’, perhaps you could explain to me how I got here?”
“We rescued you.”
“Rescued?”
Merovech scratched his cheek, annoyed at the distraction. “You were in a laboratory. We broke in and got you out.”
“A Nazi laboratory?”
“What? No. No, you have to forget all that. The Nazis and the war, none of that really happened. It was all a game, all make believe.”
“A
game
?”
“A computer game. You know what a computer is, right?”
“Like an adding machine?”
“Yes, exactly. Like an extremely complex adding machine. You were plugged into one, and it created this whole game world around you.”
Ack-Ack Macaque stuck a finger into his right nostril. He had a root around, then pulled the finger out and examined the end thoughtfully.
“Why would they do that?”
“As I said, it was a game. People played against you.”
“So, I was like a puppet?”
Merovech shrugged.
“Yeah, I guess you could look at it that way.”
The monkey was silent for a little while. Then he said, “Suppose all that’s true. Just tell me one thing.”
“What?”
“Whose ass do I have to kick?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, who do I have to kill for putting me in that game? All this time, I thought it was real. All those deaths... Just tell me. Was it you?”
Merovech held up his hands.
“No. We’re the ones who got you out, remember? We rescued you.”
“Rescued me from who?”
“From Céleste.”
“Who the fuck is Céleste when she’s at home?”
Merovech turned over the stack of papers before him. He tapped the company logo at the top of the first page.
“Céleste Technologies. They’re a corporation. A multi-national group of companies.”
“And you rescued me from them?”
“Yes, sort of.”
“What do you mean, sort of?”
“Well.” Merovech scratched his cheek again. He needed a shave. “The thing is, it’s my mother’s company.”
“Your mother’s?” Ack-Ack Macaque sat back with a scowl.
“If it’s any consolation, she’s been lying to me as well.”
“You poor baby.”
“I’m serious. All my life, she’s been using me. Not telling me the truth.”
“So you rescued me to piss her off?”
“Something like that.”
Merovech rolled his eyes at the absurdity of it all. Here he was trying to pour his heart out to a monkey, but the monkey had troubles of its own. Suddenly, he felt very young, and very alone.
They were silent for a few minutes, both lost in their own woes. Then Ack-Ack Macaque bent forward across the table. “You know what we need, Merovech?”
Merovech gave up. He shrugged.
“What?”
A hairy palm slapped the wood hard enough to raise dust.
“Booze! And lots of it!”
With a maniacal laugh, the monkey sprang from his chair and began rooting through the kitchen cabinets, chattering to himself. Tins fell and rolled across the flagstones. Crockery clacked; cutlery clashed.
Merovech heard Julie’s bare feet on the wooden stairs, and turned as she pulled aside the curtain. Wrapped in a grey towel, she looked pale and skinny, with her eyeliner smudged and her hair flattened on one side, where she’d been lying on it.
“’
Allo
,” she said.
Merovech felt his heart quicken. Most of the girls he met in the course of his duties were prim and elegant, with perfect complexions and finishing school manners. They liked riding horses. They wore diamond necklaces and expensive designer gowns, and their smiles lit up the pages of society magazines.
Julie was different. Born and raised in the suburbs of Paris, the only thing she rode was the Metro. She had none of the poise and daintiness of the girls he was used to; but even rumpled and hollow-eyed, she made him feel warm and breathless.
His first instinct was to reach for her, but something stopped him. He looked at his hands. What if he touched her and she flinched away? Now that she knew the truth about him, how could he expect her feelings not to have changed? He turned to the embers smouldering in the hearth.
“I read the file.”
She frowned. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t know.”
She took a couple of steps in his direction, then stopped, unsure. She gave the monkey a wary look.
“What is it doing?”
“Looking for a drink.”
Merovech clenched his fists and thought of his apartment in Paris: the pristine tiled kitchen; the wardrobe of designer clothes; and the shelves and shelves of books about the city, its culture and history. He longed to be back there, in his sanctuary. He wanted to close the door and shut out the world, lose himself in one of the slender novels by Hemingway or Fitzgerald. His bedroom window had a view up Montmartre to the white spires of the Sacré Cœur. At dawn on a crisp autumn morning, the basilica’s calcite stone seemed to glow impossibly white and, with its trio of bullet-shaped domes, and a lingering mist at its base, the whole structure would remind him of a space shuttle stack, primed and ready to hurl itself like a fist at the morning sky.
He hugged himself, trying to soak up warmth from the fire. How had everything gone so wrong, so fast? Right now, he knew his security team would be ransacking his apartment for clues to his whereabouts. And after last night’s break-in, they’d also be looking for Frank and Julie.
“Damn.” He put his fist to his lips. “Where’s Frank?”
Julie took a step back. Her gaze flickered to the front door, then away.
“He is gone.”
“Is he coming back?”
“I do not think so.” She ran angry fingers through tangled purple hair. “Why do you ask?”
Merovech strode to the window. He could see the lane leading across the fields to the main road. No sign of Frank.
“The police will be looking for him. And not just the police, the secret service too. If they find him, they’ll find us.”
Julie bit her lip.
“Frank would never rat us out.”
Merovech walked over and took her by the shoulders.
“I was a Marine,” he said. “I’m trained to withstand interrogation. And do you know what they taught me? Everybody cracks, sooner or later. Everybody.”
Julie squirmed in his grip.
“They would not torture him.”
He let her go. “Of course they would. They’ve lost the heir to the throne, for Christ’s sake. That’s an embarrassment they’ll do whatever it takes to rectify.”
Julie rubbed her shoulders, where his hands had squeezed her flesh.
“Then why not hand yourself in? What can they do to you? They cannot send you to jail.”
Merovech glanced down at the papers on the worn wooden table.
“I think they’ve done enough to me already.” He picked up the file and the loose pages, and dropped them into the grate, where he watched them crisp and shrivel.
“Then what are you going to do?”
Without taking his eyes from the fire, he leaned an arm on the chimney breast.
“I don’t know.”
On the other side of the kitchen, a plate smashed on the stone floor. White chips skittered across the flagstones. Ack-Ack Macaque crawled out from the bottom of a pine dresser and pulled himself upright.
“You need answers, son.”
At the sound of his voice, Julie jerked in surprise. The monkey ignored her. He regarded Merovech with one-eyed dispassion, expression unreadable.
“I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of being someone else’s puppet. Someone’s been messing with both of us, and I say we get out of here, and go pound the shit out of them.”
Merovech bridled.
“You’re talking about my mother?”
Ack-Ack Macaque bent his hairy hand into the shape of a gun, and drew an imaginary bead on Merovech’s forehead.
“Bingo.”
“You think we should confront her?”
The monkey sprang onto the table.
“You know her better than I do. What do
you
think?”
Slowly, Merovech wiped his hand across his mouth.
“No,” he said at length, “I’ve got a better idea. Those papers mention Doctor Nguyen. I remember him. He’s a gelware specialist. He probably worked on both of us. He lives down in Chartres. That’s not too far from here. We should go and see him, and see what he knows.”
Ack-Ack Macaque bunched his fists. His knuckles were like rows of walnuts.
“Yeah, let’s do that. Let’s go find the fucker, and
make
him talk.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
FUZZY BOUNDARY