Tigerman (45 page)

He realised that not long ago the idea would have seemed almost restful. He had not wanted to die – very much not – but the notion of being smoke, blowing over the island and chasing the wind, would have appealed to him in those strange endless days when he had been somehow absent from himself.

He placed his call to Kershaw, dropped hints about ‘possible non-allied East Asian involvement in the Mancreu theatre through proxies under cover of existing and legitimate false-flag water-based operations’ and hoped the intelligence analysts at NatProMan were creative enough and nervous enough to decide it was something to worry about. When they asked later, he thought, he could claim he had received information from a local source acquainted with activities in Mancreu’s shadow world – that would be Jack – and passed it on. If the tip was bad, well, that was informers for you.

Which meant he was as ready as he could be. Gear, diversion, storm, exit strategy. As long as Jack had good things to say about it all, even in a hurry.

Bad Jack, Bad Jack.

Jack is analogue.

Bad Jack. Jack Jack Jack. He muttered it over and over as he drove, glanced down at the paper in his hand. An address. A bad address, for Bad Jack.

The Hotel Vulcan.

The Vulcan was a big, empty slab of concrete like a parking structure, hard by an overhanging cliff. It had been intended as a bit of luxury, a stopover for the jet set. Break your cruise at the Vulcan. Party in absolute privacy, play in the casino, no paparazzi allowed. It had a James Bond look from back when Connery had had the role, as if it might at any moment unleash a space rocket into the atmosphere or gape to reveal a diamond raygun. And it was derelict, or supposed to be, because the money had run out almost before the thing was finished. A rockfall during one of Mancreu’s fiercer seismic events had sheered off one wall of the main structure – incidentally revealing that the contractors had not used specified materials and the whole thing was unsafe – making it into part of the island’s landscape as much as the empty chemical plant on the other side. In another place it would have been a spawning ground for Mancreu kids looking for somewhere to go crazy, but Beauville was filled with those and the Vulcan was genuinely inhospitable. So it was just there, like a backdrop.

There was a utility entrance halfway along the cliff road. When the Sergeant pressed his palm against it, the door swung open soundlessly. He made sure the mask was in place and went in. A light burned somewhere ahead, but the corridor was black.

You do love your underground hideouts, don’t you?

He felt the chill again, caught a flash of understanding as it surfaced in his mind. He reached for it. Corpse-white and alien, the idea slid away from him into the dark.

He went on.

The sound of his own breathing echoed, reassuringly vile, from the walls. He was careful, checking the path ahead for trips and plates, letting the sound and the airflow tell him there was no one sneaking up behind. The sharkpunch lay along his hand. But that wasn’t it. This wasn’t a trap. Not this.

He saw the monster again in his mind’s eye and let it flee, let the rhythm of his steps take him inside his own head.
What are you afraid of? Where’s the dance going, that you don’t want to be?

Tigerman, the boy, Jack and Sandrine. Kershaw and Dirac and the Fleet. Inoue, but she wasn’t in it, she was near it, through him and not. Raoul. Mancreu, Beauville and dead dogs. The dogs were bad, but this place was worse. He didn’t know why, knew that he should. The Vulcan. Vulcans.
Star Trek
. Romans. Gods . . . None of that. Sean Connery, that was the heart of the problem. Sean was bad news. Sean and Vulcan and the underground hideout. Jack, and the photograph in the cave: the boy and Shola. Pechorin and the killers and Sean Connery in his dinner jacket. The missile. There’s always a missile, always a ticking clock, always a double agent and a beautiful girl who needs saving. Pechorin released by Arno. Pechorin, who might be undercover.
I tell you another time
. Where had he got the heroin? If it wasn’t his, had he seized it? Stolen it? And the photograph of Shola along with it? How had he known about it? Someone had told him, had let him know. Jack, of course, Jack who knew everything, setting up Pechorin as his cat’s paw. Jack, who used everyone, who was everywhere, who saw everything.

Pechorin, and the cave, and the night which had forced him to be Tigerman in earnest.

Which he had enjoyed, and been terrified by, and which he had wisely put away because it was mad. But someone had made it news and the press had come.

But then he’d had to do it again when the Quads came and he took in the refugees – and where had the Quads come from, with their shiny bikes? Just like Shola’s killers, out of nowhere. And he’d been a hero right in front of those cameras, and Mancreu was in the news again, right now, when it was dying.

And now Sandrine needed saving and here he was again, because it let him be who he needed to be. But he had not exactly chosen it, had he, more been chosen
by
it. Tigerman thrust upon him, oh, yes. Reluctantly made a hero. Helped along, every step of the way, his paths made obvious and unambiguous by love, and need. Helped, or herded.

The corridor broadened into the lobby. The lobby of the Hotel Vulcan.

Vulcan and Sean Connery. James Bond and the space-rocket hotel.

Bad Jack’s home. His secret base.

Secret Vulcan base.

No. Not quite.

His secret volcano base.

Oh, please, no.

He stepped into the room, and knew he was right.

The lobby was a huge open space, and along the inner edges it was still very much itself, a little cracked: gold chandeliers and a huge pop art rendering of Marilyn Monroe singing for Kennedy printed onto one wall. The outer section was gone, and the huge plate of stone which had cut it away made a tolerable seal against the concrete and rebar. The space was neatly kept, and forty yards along a side. The furniture from the casino had been dragged here, so half of that was roulette tables. The light was from looped industrial working lamps. A thick trunk of cable ran out beneath the cliff and was probably spliced into Mancreu’s power grid out at the main road.

At the far end of this space was a bed, a work desk with a familiar old laptop, and a selection of bookshelves. Some of these were occupied by digital Betacam cassettes.
Yes, of course. The video from the cave. You made it, you put it out.
These days you could buy a transmitter on eBay, and they weren’t big.

And all across the carpet, some in random piles and others in perfect neat lines and grids, were comic books, and a dozen chairs and cushions and tables to read at.

He even told me. ‘Many floors underground in my secret volcano base. I drink brandy, wear a smoking jacket.’

The Sergeant took off his mask.

‘Hello, Jack,’ he said.

‘Hello, Lester,’ the boy replied.

It’s not a monster at all. It’s just the end of the world.

‘Is she out there?’ the Sergeant asked after they had stared at one another for a while. ‘Sandrine?’

‘No, of course not,’ the boy said. ‘She is back on the hillside. The town makes her crazy. Crazier. Everything is too big. Too loud. I sent the jeep, the woman. They sang to her and she went with them. It works sometimes.’

The Sergeant nodded.
Yes. I see.

‘She cannot,’ the boy began, and choked. He tried again. ‘She cannot be anywhere else. Do you understand? For her, this is the whole world. It is all she is. They cannot evacuate the island. She will still be here, even if we take her away. And in a camp, while they make forms and argue, she will die.’ His voice harshened. ‘And it is a lie! It is unnecessary. Worse, it is stupid. They say it will save the world but Inoue says it will not. I read her reports. All of them. It will not help and they will do it anyway because it is some stupid game! To make law and then hide from it and pretend that is good. And for this stupid game of law they will kill my mother. Throw her away like trash. Because they have no better answer than to explode her home.’

‘So what did you need me for?’

A flash of shame. ‘We were friends.’

‘I thought so.’

‘That is real! We were friends. But I needed magic. And you are magic.’

‘I’m just some bloke!’

The boy shook his head. ‘Not any more. Lester Ferris is a real hero.’

‘Bollocks. You did it all. You made it happen.’

The boy shook his head. ‘Some. I laid a path. But you were more, always. You made it real. The riots, the cave. And you saved my life. In Shola’s.’

‘And you finished the job.’

‘Yes.’ Not a hint of doubt.
Yes. I killed the men who would have killed me, who killed Shola.
‘I made it so that they would die. I let it be known that they were talking, and something must be done. That is how it is. Something must be done, and it is.’ He sighed.

‘I am Jack. Before, there was another Jack. I worked for that man, carried messages. I know everything because no one pays attention to me. I know how it works. Then he Left with his money and now there is me. I trade. I do business. No one can find Jack. I make silly voices down tubes. I am analogue. I am a shadow. Without Jack, nothing can happen. So they must deal with me. But someone did not want to. And they found me.’

‘Someone?’

The boy shrugged. ‘The Fleet. Someone. The photograph is me, not Shola. I am the target, the bullseye.’

‘Do you know who?’

The boy nodded. ‘Yes. It is the same, you see? Something had to be done, so it was done. I must die, so an attempt was made. That is the Fleet. There are no people. No one breaks the law! It is just what is necessary and very sad. Shola was collateral. Great shame. The island will burn and my mother will die. Very sad. Film at eleven, drinks and dips.

‘But Jack is Jack. In Jack’s world there are orders and people who give orders. It is personal. You want to know who? The Fleet. The Fleet killed Shola. And Jack does not forgive. So I will kill the Fleet. Shola was my friend and there was no reason . . .’ He blew air through his teeth in a hiss, tried again. ‘There was no reason for that! No reason at all, just stupid! Why would anyone—’ He swallowed. ‘You stopped it. You saved my life and I saw you and I knew. I knew everything then. I had another plan, before, but it was weak. Tigerman is full of win. Tigerman is everything.’

‘Tigerman is a joke. Here today, gone tomorrow. A madman in a funny hat.’

‘Not so. Tigerman is everyone. He fights crime! He walks through fire and saves the innocent. He burns up drugs. He stops riots.’

‘Your riots.’ Dog-killing, because it would upset the English in particular, and the BBC would have to cover it. And because Sandrine hated dogs, he realised, remembering the cobblestone and the mongrel. She was afraid of them, the way some people are afraid of spiders. Everything serves twice. Three times. Nothing is one thing. Everything is the story.

‘Not mine. Mancreu’s. You cannot make riots. Only make the possibility. You cannot control them. Real riots, real fire.’ The boy stretched out his hand for a moment. ‘Real Tigerman.’ He left the hand there for a moment as if he hoped the Sergeant would take it, but it did not come within reach. Then he straightened and drew his hand back. ‘And tonight he will expose the Fleet. He will show the world. Live on TV! We interrupt this programme! It will be known: this is what is done here, under the cloak of law! Made possible by the nice countries, in the name of the good people. This place is a convenience for killers and torturers and tax evaders and drug bankers, for scum of the earth. But Tigerman will not stand for it! He will not back down! Because he knows what is right.’

‘They’d blow my fucking head off!’

The boy nodded. ‘Yes. They would. Lester Ferris, the hero of Beauville many times over, killed by his own side for being a good man. Close-up pictures. Scandal! He gave his life for a cause, for a people who had made him their own. You see? That is a story! And there is continuity. There is shape. First the cave, then the footrace, now this. And then I would say you gave me something for if this happened, and I would read Inoue’s report. “Mancreu need not burn.” Tigerman’s last will and testament. “This mess was made to order. It is a lie from the beginning. The island need not burn, but if it
might
burn then it is an un-place and all the dirty deeds can be at home here.” Two weeks ago, no one would care. Today, from Tigerman? It is the greatest show on Earth! Now tell me they would carry on! Tell me they would dare, after Tunisia and Egypt and Libya, after Khaled Saeed and Mohamed Bouazizi! No. No. People would march around the world.
Tigerman for ever! For Mancreu!
They would. It is a great story. Everyone wants to touch that kind of story.’ He punched the air, then slumped. ‘Already there are shirts. Shirts, and a band in Kentucky. By tomorrow there will be dolls. In six months, a movie. And it would have been an Oscar winner, too.

‘I was going to buy my island with your death, you see. But now, not.’

The Sergeant dragged air into his lungs. He felt as if he was carrying the whole island on his chest. ‘Why not?’

The boy threw his hands in the air. ‘Because White Raoul tricked me! And then he tricked you! He is a wicked, deceitful old man who thinks he is wise, and now words have been spoken and it is impossible to unhear them!’ And then his voice caught, with emotion or puberty or a little of both, the Sergeant could not be sure. ‘
Why couldn’t you come before?
’

‘I’m here now.’

‘Too late.’

‘It doesn’t have to be.’

The boy nodded as if this was a perfect statement of despair. ‘I am a leaf on the wind,’ he intoned.

The Sergeant had no idea what this meant. He said so.

The boy looked at him as if he were a barbarian or an idiot. ‘Stay here. I will show you.’ He walked to the door through which the Sergeant had come in, and closed it behind him.

A few moments later the Sergeant realised he had locked it and taken the car.

His first reaction was a sort of weary resignation. He was, genuinely, not cut out to be a costumed hero. This proved it. You’d never see the pros in this situation. Batman would never have managed to get himself locked into a dilapidated hotel lobby while someone nicked his car, any more than Superman ever woke up and found that Lois Lane had sold naked pictures of his body to the tabloids. Not even the Blue Beetle had ever had to deal with that sort of crap. But here he was, and the person who had created him, the evil boy genius who was both his herodaddy and his nemesis, had turned the key and left him standing by a plastic fern like a pillock.