Europe at Midnight (23 page)

I looked around the restaurant. There was only one way in or out, but I wasn’t going anywhere. I was Tommy Potter from the Campus and I had finally made contact with my people. Why would I want to leave? I finished my Chicken Royale.

Finally, Lionel came back and sat down opposite me again. “Well,” he said. “I certainly didn’t expect
this
when I got up this morning.”

“There’s nowhere called Hopkins’ Halt on the Campus,” I told him. “Are you from the Community?”

He grimaced slightly, as if he had just been afflicted with a slight headache.
Narrative. Make them want things.

“There was a map,” I said. “In the safe.”

Lionel sighed. “Tustin was a friend. It was a long time ago and we trusted Europeans. Some of them, anyway. He found evidence of the Community, made contact, wanted to visit. We let him. He was supervised, but somehow he managed to take at least one photograph without us being aware of it.” He nodded at the book on the table. “He made an agreement not to speak with anyone about his visit, but he reneged on it. He published the book. A vanity publication with a print-run of just seventeen copies.” He smiled at the look on my face. “Mister Tustin’s finances couldn’t run to more. He couldn’t resist slipping in that photograph. The man had a huge ego; he couldn’t bear the idea of never telling the world his secret, even if the world didn’t understand what it was seeing.” He stopped smiling. “We traced and destroyed fifteen copies, and then all we could do was hope that the remaining two were lost forever. We had no idea one was in the Campus.”

I looked at him for a long time. Then I picked up the book and waved it at him. “There’s another one of these?”

He looked embarrassed. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. We don’t know.”

“What happened to Tustin?”

“Oh, Mr Tustin led a full and happy life eventually. With us.” He smiled at me again. “Now, what are we going to do with
you
?”

“I want to go home,” I told him.

“Of course you do.”

“There are weapons here we could use, retake the Campus from the Rebels.”

Lionel chuckled. “Just you and us?”

“If the map I saw is accurate, there are enough people in the Community to help.”

He nodded. “I’m afraid you’re missing some of the story, my friend. And in order to learn more of it, you’re going to have to talk to my superiors.”

“All right,” I said. “But first, get Alison to hospital. Then I’ll talk.”

R
OWLAND SENT ME
a postcard with a picture of Prague’s royal castle on the front, although I wasn’t stupid enough to think that he was still in Czechoslovakia – if he’d ever been there at all. The stamp was Austrian and it was postmarked Vienna. The postman had been uncertain about where to deliver it, the flat not being there anymore, so he had stuck it under a plant pot in the front garden. The message on the back was a scrawled and insincere wish-you-were-here.

“Wish he was here, more like,” Alison said when I showed her the card. “If I ever see him again...”

Privately, I thought Rowland would be lucky if he saw Christmas. My own continued health was by no means assured yet.

“Could you sort out these pillows?” she asked, squirming uncomfortably.

I got up. “Lean forward a second.” I plumped and rearranged the pillows behind her. “How’s that?”

She settled back and smiled. “Better. Thanks.”

I went over to the window. Her room had a nice view out across Dartmouth Park and westward across London into a misty uncertain distance.

I said, “I’m sorry you got hurt.”

She smiled. “That’s all right, Tommy. Defence of the Realm and all that. Did they buy it?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m an anomaly, something they weren’t expecting. They’re curious enough to want to know more.”

“You be careful,” she said.

I went over to the bed and we hugged awkwardly. “Tell Baines I’ll be in touch when I can.”

“Just take care,” she said. “You’re a nice man, but you’ve got a temper. I can see it in your eyes sometimes. You need to watch that.”

I chuckled. “You can talk.”

She held me at arms’ length and looked at my face for a while. “Godspeed, Tommy,” she said. “Let me know how it all turns out, if you can.”

I
STOOD OUTSIDE
the hospital for a while, smoking a cigarette and listening to the traffic toiling up Highgate Hill. Lionel had given me this one day of grace, to see Alison, say my goodbyes, but it was foolish to assume that I wasn’t being watched.

I finished my cigarette and walked down Highgate Hill towards Archway. It was a nice, fresh, breezy day, but not too cold.

At Archway, I got on a 134 bus. It wasn’t very busy, but just south of Kentish Town Station a lot of people got on.

As we moved spasmodically through the Camden traffic, a broad Mummerset accent said behind me, “How’s Ms Shand, Mister Potter?”

I didn’t bother to turn round. “She’s getting better.”

“Well,” said the voice, “let’s make sure she continues to get better, eh?”

“That would be nice.”

The voice chuckled. “Get off the bus at the next stop,” it said. “There will be a car waiting for you. I’ll see you later.”

I reached up to ring the bell. The bus stopped and I got off. As it pulled away I looked in the windows, but I couldn’t see whoever had spoken to me. A black car was parked just before the bus stop. A tall woman was standing beside it.

I walked towards them.

1

T
HE
C
OUREUR WAS
not impressed.

“No,” he said. “Absolutely not.”

“Why not?” asked Eleanor.

“Because it’s insane and it’s offensive and it’s suicide, frankly.”

We were sitting in the restaurant of a motorway service station outside a city named Leiden. I couldn’t remember ever seeing so much food in one place before. Eleanor had bought me what was described as an ‘open sandwich,’ which consisted of two slices of bread thickly spread with pâté and topped with various salad items which I could not recognise. She had contented herself with a cup of coffee. Charles had told me that Coureurs were smugglers, people traffickers, criminals expert in crossing Europe’s constantly-reconfiguring borders. He had made them sound rather romantic, but this one, who called himself Leo, seemed rather ordinary and workaday. He had a steak with fried potatoes, and a side salad that was wilting untouched in its bowl beside his plate.

“You’ll be well-paid,” Eleanor told him. “You know that.”

“For
Dresden
? Pft.” He was a short, stout, bearded man who appeared to be permanently cross. “I’ve been in this game a long time, actually, and there isn’t enough money in the world that would make me consider a Situation in Dresden.”

She sat back and looked across the table at him. “I was told Coureurs would take on any job.”

“I don’t know what prick told you that,” Leo said, tucking into his steak again. “We’re not crazy.”

Eleanor tipped her head to one side, a gesture I had come to recognise with a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach. “Has
anyone
ever had a Situation in Dresden?” she asked sweetly.

Leo waved his fork dismissively. “In the early days. When the wall was still going up and people inside started having second thoughts.” He sighed and looked at her. “Listen. The place is impregnable; there are only three ways in or out, and one of those involves helicopters. Everyone inside
wants
to be inside; it’s probably one of the wealthiest polities in Europe, why would they want to leave?”

“And yet someone managed to get a letter out,” Eleanor reminded him. “Without resorting to
Les Coureurs
.”

“Then maybe you should get
him
to jump you in.” He put his knife and fork down and pointed a blunt finger at her. “Jesus Christ, missy, I’d have to be out of my mind to try and jump someone
out
of there, let alone jump someone in and
then
out. Have you any idea?”

Leo had only just met Eleanor, so he was unfamiliar with her body language, but there was a thing she did when she was very, very angry. She became quite still and she smiled an odd little smile that you might almost think was sad, if you didn’t know her. She did both these things now, roughly around the point at which he called her ‘missy.’

“Is there, perhaps, any way in which you could find out how this person got a letter out of Dresden?” she asked calmly. “The fact that it exists at all suggests that someone entered and then left the city again.”

“You’ve seen this letter?” he asked.

“I have,” she said. “It doesn’t say how the correspondent was planning to contact my news agency, only that he had a story for us.”

Leo looked at her for a long time. “Okay,” he said finally. “Okay. I’ll try to find this out for you. But none of us is going in there. I want that understood right now.”

“That’s all we ask of you,” she told him. “Find out how the letter got out, and then we’re done.”

He nodded. “Okay, then.” He looked at me. “Don’t you talk?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“There’s a motel here,” Eleanor said. “We’ll book into a room and wait to hear from you.”

Leo looked doubtful. “This could take a while,” he mused.

She shrugged. “Then it takes a while.”

“And I might not even be able to find out. I’ve got contacts, but I’m not exactly State Security.”

“All we ask is that you try,” she told him. “You’ll be well rewarded.”

He thought about it for a few seconds, then nodded. “Okay. Give me three days. A week at most.”

“Thank you,” she said. “You have my phone number. Call me when you have something.”

“Okay.” He pushed his chair back and stood up. “Thank you for lunch.” And he walked away.

I watched him navigating his way across the crowded restaurant until he reached the doors, and when he had gone I said, “Are you going to kill him too?”

Eleanor nodded. “Eventually,” she said.

2

T
HEY HAD A
house in Highgate – not the one they had taken me and Alison to – and they kept me prisoner there for sixteen days while I was interrogated. There was never any pretence that, should I fail to convince them, I would leave there alive.

Initially, I saw three of them. There was a middle-aged man who called himself Charles, and a younger man named Simon. And then there was Eleanor, who I quickly came to understand was the most dangerous person I had ever met.

At our first session, she strode across to where I was sitting, struck me backhanded across the face with such force that I almost blacked out, and yelled, “
Liar
!”

She was tall and willowy, her long auburn hair pinned up in a bun at the back of her head, and she didn’t look capable of any kind of violence, which made it all the more shocking when she hit me again. This time I actually greyed-out for a moment.

“I’m not lying,” I mumbled through lips which were swollen, if not actually split.

“Fuck you!” she screamed, and hit me a third time. I tasted blood in my mouth. The most frightening thing was that her expression had never changed. She looked completely calm and in control of herself.

She turned and walked away towards the big windows at the end of the drawing room where my interrogations took place. Beyond the windows, I could see the gardens of the house dappled with afternoon sunlight, as inaccessible to me as the heart of the Galaxy.

“Tell me,” she said, without looking round.

“I’ve told Charles and Simon,” I said, wiping my lips and looking stupidly at the blood on my hand.

“You haven’t told me,” she said. “You have to tell me, or I’ll hit you again.”

I said, “I came here voluntarily.”

“And that makes you suspicious,” she said in that calm voice. “Just appearing out of nowhere and coming here
voluntarily
.”

The man who called himself Baines had given me a story to tell. What he called a
legend
. It was the story of a man of roughly the same age as me, who had been born and brought up in the Campus and had worked for the Old Board in some moderate capacity. Baines and I had called this man ‘Tommy Potter,’ a lowlife Doctor of Intelligence I had had the pleasure of arresting after the Fall. I was able to fill in bits of the legend, and together Baines and I had come up with something which we hoped would convince the émigré group working in London. It had seemed a reasonably watertight story to me, sitting in my room in the clinic, but now it felt fatally thin.

I said, “When the Rebels took over –”

She snorted. “If you’d been doing your job the Rebels wouldn’t have taken over.”

I shook my head, trying to clear it. “Do you want to hear this story or not?”

And that was when I discovered that it was a mistake to try and joke with Eleanor.

I
T WENT ON.
Charles was avuncular and Simon was a bit dim and overenthusiastic and needed things explaining to him several times, and we all understood that these were roles we were playing. Eleanor, though, wasn’t playing. Eleanor hit me. I couldn’t understand how she didn’t break her hands on my face. She had beautiful hands, so hard they might have been carved from wood. I had a suspicion that she was the one who was responsible for blowing up the flat in Kentish Town.