“Me?”
“Of course. You’re an interesting chap, Tommy; there’ll be a lot of people to talk to. Bring a friend, if you’d like.” He handed me an engraved invitation, about the size of a postcard. “If you can’t make it, I’ll understand, but I’d love to see you there.”
8
W
EST OF
W
ŁADYSŁAW
was a great stretch of chalk downland almost as large as the Campus, a wonderful airy region of gentle grassy hills and valleys and clear, fast-running trout streams. A lot of the city’s upper classes had built themselves summer homes here, to escape from the urban heat. There were countless little villages and sheep farms and pubs and country hotels.
As its name suggested, Hemingsley-under-the-Hill clustered around the curving base of one of the hills, a scatter of olde worlde houses and cottages with rose bushes growing over the door and little weathervanes on the roof. Its railway station was spotless and decorated with displays of pot-plants that would have won prizes anywhere else but were just part of the way things were here.
Rafe had sent a carriage to collect us from the station, and George and I settled back as the driver flapped the reins and the horse set off at an unhurried walk down the neat gravel drive of the station and out onto what passed for a main road out here.
George was very tense, which I supposed was only natural. I said quietly to him, “You want to calm down, you know. We’re just going to a party.”
“Mm,” he said, which was more or less all he had said to me since we had left Władysław.
“You don’t even have to talk to him about Europe today,” I said. “Just say hello, get to know him. Enjoy yourself.”
“Mm,” he said again, and I gave up and enjoyed the ride.
The Steynes was about half an hour’s ride from the station, a big old country house with red-tiled roofs and dozens of chimneys overlooking hundreds of acres of gardens. The carriage took us down winding paths and over stone bridges across still rivers, and the house’s many mullioned windows caught the sunlight as we approached.
Rafe was there to receive his guests. He was dressed for the country: tan corduroy trousers, olive cord jacket, shirt with a sober cravat tucked into its neck. Beside him was a fragile-looking woman in a flowered dress.
“Tommy,” he said cheerfully as we drew up at the front of the house. “I’m so pleased you could make it. And is this your friend?”
“George Quinn,” George murmured, shaking his hand but avoiding looking him in the eye.
“And this is my wife, Angela,” Rafe told us, indicating the woman beside him. Angela looked about as uncomfortable as George did. She seemed very tired. Rafe ushered us into the house, through a succession of hallways, and into a big airy dining room full of people, and I felt my heart hitch in my chest.
I didn’t know any of the people here personally, but I recognised most of them. The ‘few friends’ Rafe had invited to his little party included what appeared to be the entire Committee of the Presiding Authority. I spotted the Chairman of the Directorate, a man named Brigham – whom I had never met but recognised from having him pointed out to me once by Michael – chatting with Ambrose Ruston, the President of the Community. For a few moments my mind went blank.
A white-jacketed waiter came up with a tray of glasses, and Rafe took two and handed them to us. “Champagne,” he said. “Krug, ’45. Vintage year.” He looked around the room, seemed to see someone, and said, “I just have to chat to somebody. Back in a moment. Don’t be shy; mingle.” And he set off through the party.
I sipped my champagne, which was very good, and looked at George, who looked as if he was about to be sick. I looked around the room again. These were the people who ruled the Community, the people who forbade its citizens from crossing the border into Europe but were happy enough to drink its Champagne and, if my guess about the canapés being brought round was correct, eat its caviar and pâté too. They were all at ease, chatting about... well, I had no idea. Their wives, partners, girlfriends, were all in summer dresses and carrying little handbags and they were all chatting among themselves too. The only people not talking were George and myself. Angela had not so much abandoned us as drifted imperceptibly away, and was now standing on the edge of a conversation between the Health Commissioner and someone I thought might have been something in Defence.
“This is ridiculous,” said George quietly.
“Mingle,” I said to him. “Try not to attract attention.” And I launched myself out into the party.
If you ignored the fact that the guests – with the exception of George and myself and the servants – were some of the most important people in the world, it was, I realised quite quickly, a rather dull party. There was no music, no exciting gossip to be overheard, no fights, no wild accusations, no drunkenness. It was just a bunch of bureaucrats and their partners having Champagne and nibbles and talking shop. I’d been to more exciting English Faculty cheese and wine parties.
I cruised the perimeter of the party, trying to look as if I belonged despite my cheap suit and grubby shirt and worn-down shoes. I listened in on a couple of conversations, exchanged a few polite nods with members of the ruling class, drank my Champagne, ate a few water biscuits smeared with pâté. At one point, I looked across the room and saw George speaking to Rafe. Rafe had a serious, attentive expression on his face and he was nodding slowly, then the crowd moved around again and I couldn’t see them.
The tall windows at the end of the dining room were open, and after a while I wandered outside onto a paved terrace lined with stone planters in the shape of Greek vases. There were a couple of stone benches carved with scrollwork, and I sat on one, lit a cigarette, and looked out over the garden. It was a garden in much the same way as London was a village. It seemed to go on as far as the eye could see, a pleasing arrangement of lawns and trees and bushes and fountains. The whole Community was like that, even the parts that had been allowed to grow wild. There was no magic here, no wizards or dragons or unicorns. It was just a country full of quiet people ruled by pencil-pushers. They lived for the
status quo
, the quiet life. They just wanted to be left alone. Europe had nothing to fear from them.
I finished my cigarette, looked around for somewhere to put it, then stubbed it out in one of the planters and pushed it into the soil so nobody would see it. I picked up my empty glass and went back inside.
Nothing in the dining room seemed to have changed. The polite chatter was still going on. I circulated for a while, looking for George, but he was nowhere to be seen. I moved around to the doors and looked out into the hallway. It was empty, but I could hear voices upstairs so, glass in hand, I went up the carpeted wooden staircase to the first floor and along the landing. The voices had stopped, but just along the landing I could see a door that was open, so I went along to it and poked my head round the frame.
The room was a little book-lined study. There was a small set of wooden library steps parked along one wall, a deeply-cushioned window-seat, and two big leather armchairs. George was sitting in one of the armchairs, pressing his hand to his chest and wincing as if the caviar and champagne had given him heartburn, but there was a little dribble of blood beneath his palm and he was dead.
I turned on my heel and walked, not quickly but not slowly either, back downstairs. I put my glass on a side table and made for the front door, but I heard voices approaching from a room to my left and I veered off down a corridor which led to a flight of stone steps which, in their turn, led to the kitchens. The kitchen staff all turned to look as I entered, but I smiled confidently and looked as if I knew where I was going and I went straight on and through a door at the other side.
The door led to another corridor, this one tiled in cream and maroon. I heard a commotion behind me and lengthened my stride. At the end of the corridor was a door that was half glass. I opened it and stepped outside, closed the door behind me, and trotted along the side of the house.
At the corner I paused long enough to peer around, and saw the terrace I had been sitting on earlier. No one seemed to be there, so I ran crouched-over around it, across the back of the house, to the other side, and something whined past me and cracked a cloud of stone dust off the wall at my shoulder. I broke into a flat-out run. There was a copse of trees about a hundred yards away, and I zigzagged across the grass towards it, hearing the crack of gunfire behind me and the snap of bullets missing me.
I’d almost made it when something burning hot went straight through my calf and I tumbled to the ground screaming. As I fell, I looked back and saw Rafe coming towards me with what looked like a European handgun. He came right up to where I was rolling in agony, pointed the gun down at me, and said, “Stupid,” and his head burst in a cloud of red and grey spray and he flopped to the grass beside me.
A soldier stepped from the screen of trees I had been running for. He was carrying a long-barrelled rifle with a bulky telescopic sight. Two more soldiers emerged behind him, then two more, then the garden seemed to be full of them.
The first soldier reached me and knelt down. “All right, are we, sir?” he asked calmly but without giving any sign that he was going to look kindly on jokes.
“I’ve been shot,” I told him.
“Oh, stop being such a baby,” said a voice. “It’s only a flesh wound.” Michael was wearing a mottled green military camouflage jacket and trousers. There was another man beside him, similarly decked-out but carrying a rifle.
“You can say that,” I told him. “It’s not your flesh.”
Michael and the other man drew level with me. Michael said by way of introduction, “Tommy Potter, Andrew Molson. Andrew Molson, Tommy Potter,” and I passed out.
“Y
OU FUCKER,
” I said. “No, not you,” I told the Army medic who was dressing my leg wound.
“Don’t glower,” said Michael. “It makes you look surly.”
The medic finished his work and stepped away, shoving instruments and bits of bloody bandage into his bag. It was, as Michael had so neatly diagnosed, a flesh wound, but that didn’t stop it hurting.
“You could have told me and saved us both a lot of trouble,” I said.
He shrugged. “It’s been a difficult time, for all of us.”
We were sitting in one of the upstairs bedrooms at The Steynes. Downstairs were the sounds of soldiers moving about, and difficult times beginning for at least half the Committee of the Presiding Authority, including the Chairman of the Directorate.
“Is this a coup?” I asked.
“Counter-coup,” said Michael. He thought about it. “Pre-emptive coup.”
“Are you the good guys or the bad guys?”
“Oh, we’re
all
good guys.”
I shifted my leg gingerly and looked at them. Michael was sitting opposite me in a small armchair. Andrew Molson was perched on a dressing-table stool. He was in his thirties, boyish and good-looking in a tousled sort of way. I didn’t recognise him, but he obviously recognised me and found it rather amusing. I said to him, “You don’t really look like a Biochemistry lecturer.”
He smiled. “Ah, but I am, Professor. I’m a bit rusty, but good enough to get by on the Campus.”
“My predecessor had his eye on you,” I said. “He knew who you were. So did the Dean of the Science Faculty. And his brother-in-law. You’re not so good.” Molson winked and poked his tongue out at me.
“I’m
very
cross with you, sunshine,” Michael told me. “Speaking of telling people things.”
I shrugged. “It’s been a difficult time, for all of us.”
The three of us sat there, looking at each other, waiting for someone to start telling the truth. Molson wasn’t going to do it, Michael wasn’t going to do it, and I wasn’t going to do it. We were going to sit here until the end of time, slaves to our profession, faintly embarrassed by it all.
Finally, I said, “Well, this is fun.”
“No it isn’t,” Michael said. “That wound must hurt like bloody hell.”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, it does.” I rubbed my face. “I know about the flu virus,” I told them. “I know you destroyed the Campus.”
“You don’t
know
either of those things,” Michael pointed out. “You’ve just assembled the available information into what seems to be a meaningful shape. At best, you’re making a
guess
.”
“A lot of intelligence work is like that,” I said. “In my experience.”
Molson looked at Michael, then at me. He said, “In about six months there will be a small ceremony in Władysław. The President of the EU, the English and French Prime Ministers, the Greater German Chancellor, assorted mucky-mucks, will all be there. They’ll sign something ceremonial. Then there will be a press conference which will be televised across Europe. After that, none of this will be important any more. And may God help us, because I have no idea what contact with the Europeans is going to do to us.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Negotiations have been going on for about five years,” said Michael. “It hasn’t been a universally popular decision.”
“It sounds to me as if you could use some expert help,” I told him.
“No,” he said. “
You
have had your fun. I like you, and I admire your professionalism, but I wouldn’t trust you as far as I could kick you. I should have you locked up and throw the key away.” He sighed. “What really happened in Dresden?”
“Exactly what I told you,” I said with a straight face.
“Mundt’s dead?”
“Mundt’s dead.”
He shook his head. “What do you want?”
I thought about it. “Four days’ head start?” I asked.
9
T
HE
U
NIVERSITY OF
Władysław – named, like the city itself, after the Polish engineer who had found his way into the Community in the Eighteenth Century and stayed to help build the Capital – was over on the West side of town, on a pleasant wooded campus dominated by two low hills. Curiosity had driven me out here once before, but the atmosphere had seemed far too eerie for me, and I hadn’t been back since then.