Rainbow Bridge (20 page)

No longer a lung-infected crock, practically ready for the decathlon, he hauled himself up the ladder, spat out the rifle bullet, handed it to Ax and began to scrub himself with the parka: desperate to be dry, to get some protection over his aching, freezing flesh.

‘What denomination is it?’

‘NATO.’

‘Narrows it down, tuh. What kinda NATO? Is it old, is it new? Is it strange?’

‘It’s Russian, and it’s brand-new.’

‘Bad news. Could it be from a garage sale?’

‘The Feds will sell anything. But this is, I suspect, a box-fresh hollow-tipped 6.65mm RCAR round. Designer ballistics, nano-guided stopping power, mashes up the enemy’s insides a treat, weirdly fantastic accuracy, fantastic range.’

‘Impressive. D’you still carry all that stuff in your head?’

‘Sort of, but I think you’d remember this one yourself. It’s marked on the base: it’s the ammo for the AK-74.’

The battlefield ‘secret’ weapon, much feared, launched by the Russian Federation in the same year as Ax’s disastrous second stint as President.

Sage finished scrubbing and dressing, gave up trying with the overall zip at half mast, and came to sit by Ax against the tunnel wall. He took the deadly little beauty clumsily in one hand, the pencil light in the other, and confirmed Ax’s report. The cold seemed to bite deeper, big blunt teeth clamped on his bones…

“It’s always the trouble you don’t expect. Shit, but then you see it was obvious. If the Chinese have insurgents, the Feds will soon be along to help out.”

‘I
know
what this is,’ said Ax. ‘This is privateers. They’re not working for the government of the Russian Federation, no, no, no. They just have access to the same weapons as the armed forces, what can you do, it’s a grey market—’

‘You got something against Russians, Ax?’

‘No…’ Ax slipped the bullet and torch into his pockets, and stared ahead of him, muscle knotted at his jaw. ‘Nor personally, not really. How much down there?’

‘I counted ten cases. No telling how many caches, here and elsewhere.’

‘Or how long they’ve been there. Let’s get the hatch back in place. I’m going to see Mr Tucker. Now.’

‘
Hey!
’

‘You have delusions of being my bodyguard, but you are not.’ Ax fastened up that stubborn zip, ah, my big cat, owe you so much, wrecked your life and you never reproach me. ‘Look, this is Warren Fen, model farm: we are with the fucking Chinese army. Tucker wants to talk, I know he does, the way he handled himself. I’ll be fine, you are freezing to death, what will I do if you get sick again?’

‘I s-should have let you do the diving.’

‘Yeah, well too late. Tell Fiorinda I’ll be back really soon.’

He traced Mr Tucker without difficulty, at the drinking club to which he and Sage had been invited. The venue was in a Learning Resource Centre: locked after curfew, but you knocked, and the night watchman let you in if you were okay. He knocked, he was admitted, and directed to the meeting room. The bus driver was there, with his mate Ed, eight other men, and no women. Ages from twenty-something to fifty-something, ethnic origins, at a visual guess, Fenland, Pakistan, Afro-Caribbean and one Desperanto: all of them looking guilty as sin.

Ax took a glass of rot-gut, and told them what he thought of them.

He had a slight, dizzying idea of what this meant to the men sitting looking at him. He didn’t know but he expected most of them had been in the stadium, and never underestimate the rock god effect, even diluted to family entertainment. They lived in Warren Fen, a house the Reich built, and here was Ax Preston, a pacifist Ax, but well able to talk the talk. You damned fools. You dog-stupid, pig-ignorant damned fools. And chapter and verse. But though he was calculating, from moment to moment he didn’t give a fuck. He was angry enough to raise blisters on the air.

They were like children, so repentant they were distressed to the point of wet eyes, although as far as he could tell they were none of them drunk. Ax started to calm down, which meant he started to review what he’d just been saying: inevitably there were things he wished he hadn’t, but fuck it, they won’t remember, people don’t, this kind of situation: and if they do, too bad. This was a job that had to be done. Rage leaving him, he told them he could see how resistance had seemed like the right option, in Anglia. They were naturally independent buggers, and the camps were here. He didn’t say a single positive word about the Chinese, he gave them only the idea that he might be able to negotiate a way out. No promises. Just hope. Another round of rotgut was poured, this time in great relief of mind. The Learning Resource Centre cat had been asleep on one of the chairs. It woke, stretched, stalked around, and came and curled itself on the skirt of Ax’s parka.

The talk became dialogue, winding down to laughter. Ax was thinking that Anglia was a tinderbox full of cannon fodder. He could turn these men, they’d already made the wild leap of imagination it took to realise that calling in the Feds was a BAD IDEA. But if the Triumvirate could do the same in every camp (and bearing in mind blokes like this will sing along with tears in their eyes, and five minutes later they haven’t a fuck of a clue what the song was), the task was still
impossible—

Swear to God, Ax, it was none of our doing.

We’re small fry, we just knew the stuff was down there.

They told him things, no longer in a spirit of personal confession, they thought he ought to know. As they’d thought he ought to know about the Russians. The cat’s warm, impersonal presence was very comforting, like someone holding his hand, and he thought it was time to leave. He should leave now.

He said he would go, looked at the sleeping cat: transferred the contents of the parka’s pockets to his overalls and shrugged out of it. Goodnights all round. Someone, not Tucker, escorted him to the doors of the building and keyed him out. He walked fast, at random; eventually found himself leaning against a floor-length window, staring at a garden. Should I have got their names? Didn’t try, too bad. The sky was thick and starless but there were nightlights in the shrubbery. He could see the guesthouse, across a lawn where mature trees had been preserved. Someone was walking towards him, a figure that seemed familiar, but puzzling. It was the Daoist nun. She carried a small lantern, a glowing red cylinder on a string or a chain. She saw him, and came over.

‘We are breaking curfew, Mr Preston. A winter garden is beautiful at night, I intended to explain I was not planning to leave this courtyard. What’s your excuse?’

‘Drinking club.’ It was hard to keep his teeth from chattering.

‘Good heavens, where’s your coat? It’s freezing out here.’

‘Left it indoors,
jiejie,
’ said Ax, making a futile attempt to turn up the collar of the overalls. ‘I had to do a bit of theatre in there, over something. There was a cat, it had fallen asleep on my coat, I c-couldn’t disturb it, wrong message.’

Maybe he was making assumptions, speaking to her like that, but he’d seen the way she related to Norman (and the heavy glow of those ‘missionaries’). Whoever she was, she was not out of the loop. Anyway he felt like cutting the crap. You know who I am, I’m a collaborator, renegade native, working for your side.

‘Ah.’ The nun laughed, softly. ‘What shall we call this situation, where a tiger becomes a rat-catcher, and a wolf is forced to retrain as a sheepdog?’

‘Civilisation.’ Ax took out his crumpled cigarettes, ‘Er, do you mind?’

‘Yes I do,’ she said, sternly. ‘Cannabis is medicine for the spirit, those things are pure poison. Goodnight, friend Mohammad; peace and blessings.’

He smoked half a fag, defiantly, letting her clear, and returned to the room in the guesthouse. It was warm in there. Fiorinda and Sage sat in lamplight, on the wide bed. She was holding Sage’s crooked hands to her breast to warm them, a very ancient gesture. He joined them, and pushed the hair back from his temples. Their room was spacious and simple, gold-stained bentwood furniture and willow-pattern hangings, walls in grey and cloudy green. Was it listening?

‘Can we talk, is it okay?’

‘We can talk,’ said Sage. ‘Fuck it, this is our house.’

Surveillance is a metal bar in your mouth, it gets existential, you can
never
relax. You can bear it, but you just have to let yourself off sometimes—

‘What happened?’ breathed Fiorinda.

‘I told them they were damned fools, and they agreed with me. Turns out Tucker wasn’t acting on his own, the cell was with him. The arms caches have been here for months, intended for an offensive against the Second Chamber. They’re campers, not good at dates, but definitely since long before the invasion.’

‘
Fuck
.’

‘Yeah… Seems like the Chinese interrupted other plans. That’s the easy part. They told me something else. Richard and Corny didn’t like it when they found out about the Feds. They’ve been court-martialled, and condemned to die slow. They’re being held in a coffin-cell, at a place called Rainbow Bridge.’

He had the feeling that he had been away from them, further than the day he’d gone to Reading. Where was I just now? I was out of their arms. He wanted to say
where’s Min?
But Min was in London, staying with Sage’s dad, along with Marlon. Silver and Pearl were with the Few. Another fragile little world had broken—

He looked up, wondering why they seemed to be struck dumb.

‘It’s a camp in Suffolk. I’d never heard of it. But you have?’

‘Rainbow Bridge is where Norman is taking us next,’ said Fiorinda.

Ax was struck dumb himself. ‘What happened to Issit Farm?’ he asked at last.

‘We don’t know, but Rainbow Bridge has a health certificate from the Unoccupied Zone Intelligence Office. There’s no recalcitrant activity there.’

‘Oh, really? Same as Warren Fen had none?’

‘But there’s a wild rumpus going on,’ said Fiorinda. ‘The lunatics have taken over the asylum, Norman thinks it sounds
wonderful
.’

If two gangsters come offering protection, which of them do you pay off? Simple arithmetic. But leave aside the overwhelming might of China, they were Crisis Europeans. They feared the Russian Feds as they feared the plague.

‘You think we should report to Norman?’ asked Sage.

Ax shook his head. He believed he had a handle on the Peace Tour now.

‘Norman would like to convince us he’s making this up as he goes along; he can’t be. He has orders to take us to Rainbow Bridge. I’m guessing that means the Unoccupied Intelligence Office has the place filed as another Warren Fen: a marginal seat where the actives, or sympathisers, will talk, and we might make a difference—’

Ax took out the rifle bullet, and examined it thoughtfully.

Fiorinda and Sage had been afraid Ax wouldn’t be able to stand the level of surveillance. He had a horror of
always being watched
that dated from the year he’d spent as a hostage in the jungle. But since he’d come back from that trip to Reading he’d been far more like the Ax they’d known in Dissolution Summer, the man who had convinced them the impossible was possible. Tonight he was the old Ax, completely: cool and certain, eyes on the prize.

‘No, we don’t report. This is where we stop being collaborators, and start working for the common good on our own terms. The guns are real, the rest could be a fairytale. Let’s say nothing, go to Rainbow Bridge, and see what we find.’

Norman sent for them twice, around midnight. He was looking at his rushes and would value their opinion. They returned their apologies.

The Water Margin

Norman’s personal orderly rapped on their door before light, and brusquely told them to prepare for an early start. They breakfasted with Joe in the guesthouse dining room: hemp-seed studded cereal, shrivelled blackberries and rehydrated skim milk; dried tomatoes and the rolled patties of rabbit-mince known as ‘campy eggs’. Dandelion coffee. Around ten, Norman appeared in a scruffy dressing gown, hungover. He announced he was off to have a bath, and to get his hair dressed.

‘My bowels,’ he complained, ‘are behaving very strangely.’

The Triumvirate retired under the covers, leaving Joe to fend for himself. Fiorinda could not get online (surprise!), but she found Rainbow Bridge in her cached VI registry. Founded in Fergal Kearney’s reign, built in a defunct out of town shopping centre, associated with an equally defunct village called Eyot. Named by the inmates, who had a reputation as party animals in camp-world. On the Waveney, moated, hard to reach in winter except by water or helicopter, twenty klicks or so from the Suffolk coast—

‘Ouch. That’s a
long
way from here, in modern money.’

‘Wonder how they’ll get us there if the waterways freeze?’

The tablet screen glimmered in their cave of blankets: Ax and Fiorinda noticed that Sage had withdrawn from them and lay curled on his side, brooding.

‘Are you okay, big cat?’

‘I’m fine… What if this turns violent on us? Do we have a policy on that?’

Now that’s a question.

‘I’ll pick up a weapon,’ said Ax at last. ‘If that’s what you mean. If I have to.’