World War Moo (10 page)

His grandfather raised an eyebrow in what may have been a gesture of approval. “I concur.”

“You can send the people you hired to look for Mum's body, right?”

“Alas, no. They got killed before they could get out again. It was all very messy. That's why I stuck to air-based surveillance afterward until I could be sure your mum was alive. However, I happen to know some other gentlemen who may be prepared to undertake such a mission for the right kind of money.”

“What sort of gentlemen?”

“They're a mixed bunch, led by a very capable South African chap. I used them when I was having a slight problem with a West African president who wouldn't cooperate with my plans for expanding my coffee plantations.”

“You mean lawyers? How's that going to help? Are they going to parachute in with their black umbrellas and smuggle Mum out in a giant briefcase?”

His grandfather twiddled his moustache. Geldof was still getting used to his signals, so he wasn't sure whether it was an evil genius twiddle or an awkward confession twiddle. It was only when his grandfather gave the chops a final twang and bared his white and even false teeth that Geldof figured it was the former. “You have a lot to learn, my boy. I mean mercenaries.”

Geldof's mouth dropped open. “You organized a coup?”

“I wouldn't say ‘organized.' ‘Funded' would be more apposite.”

“Isn't that illegal?”

“Not if you don't get caught. Some would call it immoral. I console myself with the fact that he was a very bad man that nobody missed when he was deposed. I must hasten to add he wasn't killed. It was all relatively bloodless.”

“Relative to what?”

Grandfather Carstairs looked at Geldof, his eyes devoid of any remorse. “Relative to other coups in which more people died.”

This man, whose blood flowed through Geldof's veins, had killed in the name of profit. Now Geldof understood why his mum had been such a relentless campaigner: her father was a heartless blackguard. Geldof hid his disgust behind a large swig of iced tea, pretending to grimace at the tartness. Now was not the time to reveal how he felt. It was clear that he needed his grandfather and the men he could command to see his mum again. He couldn't let emotion get in the way—although his automatic moral outrage revealed just how much of his mum's teachings had seeped through his defenses. He felt a burst of closeness to the maddening woman that only increased his desire to see her again.

“Can you call them?” he said.

“They prefer to do business face-to-face,” his grandfather said, apparently unaware of Geldof's reaction. “It's a trust and don't-get-caught-talking-over-the-phone thing.”

“So you'll have to go see them?”

“No,” his grandfather said, his eyes crinkling. “You will.”

Geldof almost laughed. “Me? What do I know about negotiating with mercenaries?”

His grandfather leaned forward and slapped the table. His voice became low and hard. “When I was your age, I was well on my way to earning my first million. You, on the other hand, mooch around this villa on my dollar feeling sorry for yourself. It's time to earn your keep.”

“But…”

“No buts. You are my sole male heir, and I want you to take over my business one day. I need to know you're up to the job. Are you?”

And there, finally, was the expectation. Admittedly, being asked to prove himself by hiring a team of mercenaries wasn't the same as attending business school, but it amounted to much the same thing. Geldof swallowed his desire to tell this horrendous old man where to stick it. His mum—unexpectedly, amazingly, and wonderfully alive—was still in peril. Regardless of his resistance to becoming a business tycoon and his growing disdain for his grandfather, he needed to play along until she was free. “I think so.”

“Don't think. Know. To succeed, you're going to have to deal with some bad men, and these men are just about as bad as they come. I need to know that you will do whatever it takes to get the job done. The job in this case is saving your mother's life.”

Geldof forced himself to meet his grandfather's unwavering gaze, imagining the moment when he would unflinchingly kiss his mum's wounds and make it all better. “Where do I need to go?”

The old man leaned back, reverting to what Geldof now understood was a studied, and very misleading, image of a fragile old man. “Nairobi.”

After a moment's silence, Geldof said, “Sorry, where's that exactly?”

His grandfather sighed. “Given your name, I would have thought you would know. Africa. Kenya, to be precise. I'll see if I can set the meeting up for a few days from now. We need to move fast. It's looking increasingly like they're going to finally get around to bombing Britain, and I'd hate for something to happen to her now that we've found her.”

As his grandfather called his assistant over and instructed him to set up a meeting and book tickets, Geldof walked to the edge of the balcony, keeping his back to the table so his face would not betray him. Once he'd hired the men to get his mum out, he was done here. His grandfather was right that he'd been floating and feeling sorry for himself. This turn of events had broken his paralysis. There was no way he was going to follow in the footsteps of such a man, and staying on in the villa would give the impression that was what he wanted to do. Plus, he was pretty sure his mum would refuse to come here and see her father again. Once Fanny was out of Britain, another disappearing act would definitely be in order.

 

9

Tony stared pensively out of the window as the black Mercedes purred along Oxford Street. Many of the store fronts were still boarded up from the broken-window shopping—Amira's euphemistic phrase for looting—that went on during the initial orgy of violence, while those that had reopened were closed for the night. There was no point in staying open late when you had nothing much to sell and not much of a market to sell to. The depressingly quiet street represented another policy failure. Tony had lifted the curfew after coming into power, knowing that to have any hope of restoring normalcy he needed to create space for people to get on with a semblance of everyday life. Forcing everyone to hole up after dark, particularly when night fell early during the recently ended winter, only created a greater atmosphere of claustrophobic hopelessness and reinforced the belief that the country was knackered. However, few felt comfortable enough to venture out in the darkness, which provided cover for the criminal element. Only a smattering of people wandered past, stopping to linger at storefronts that displayed goods rendered unaffordable by hyperinflation: even the cheap stores were charging thirty quid for a pair of wafer-thin socks now they didn't have access to their foreign sweatshops.

Amira, whom he was dropping off along with Frank, screeched and pulled him out of his thoughts. He clutched the armrest and looked out the window for the source of her alarm. They'd been attacked before—usually by criminals so seduced by the thought of the riches within the sleek vehicle that they didn't notice the armed escort until it was too late. Something else had prompted Amira's response, however. She tapped the driver's shoulder to get his attention. “Pull over.” Crooked teeth burst from between her smiling lips. “Kebabs.”

The car pulled up alongside a large metal drum set up on the junction with Regent Street. Flames flickered through ragged holes punched in the metal, and smoke rose from a barbeque grill placed over the top. Amira rolled down the window. The smell of charring meat wafted in.

“Hello, Ruth,” Amira said. “Long time, no see.”

“Not been much to sell,” the vendor, a thin-faced woman bundled up against the cold, said.

“Well, you're here now, praise the gods. What's tonight's mystery meat?”

“Guess.”

Amira took a deep sniff. “Pigeon?”

“Nah. Pigeon ran out ages ago. The dopey little sods are too easy to catch. Just chuck a few bread crumbs and bag 'em with a big net.”

“Cat, then.”

“With the Cats Protection League Militant Wing on the prowl? Anybody who so much as looks at a moggy the wrong way is likely to get thumped with a brolly.”

“Dog.”

“Either too trusting, and so already eaten, or too aggressive. A few of my mates have lost fingers.”

“Squirrel?”

“All done, too, I'm afraid. They were a pain in the arse to sell anyway. All that bushy hair kept getting stuck in the meat. Customers thought they were pubes. Anyway, you're getting warmer. Definitely rodenty.”

“Rat?”

“Bingo!”

Tony grimaced as Amira pulled out her purse and ordered two kebabs. “What?” she said. “If you've ever eaten a fast-food burger or a chicken nugget you've probably had a lot worse.”

“Beaks and arseholes,” said Frank, who'd nodded off after taking one of his pills but now seemed to have perked up. “I'll have one as well.”

“Exactly,” Amira said. “Anyway, beggars can't be choosers.”

She had a point. The madness reached its peak during harvest season, which meant crops had rotted in the fields. Nor was there any way to import food: the days of sun-dried tomatoes, olives, and couscous were long gone. They couldn't even fish the seas, as boats were shredded before they got to the fishing grounds. Pretty much everybody was dependent on food aid, which the helicopters couldn't deliver fast enough to fill every hungry belly. To bridge the gap, traders such as this woman had sprung up to sell the meat of those pets and urban animals too slow to realize humans were no longer so reticent to eat creatures once considered either too cute or too covered in lice. But the supply of animals was growing thin, and the lice themselves—as well as beetles, cockroaches, and any other creepy crawlies that could be scooped up—would probably be considered a good source of protein before long. Farmers could soon begin planting what seeds they had salted away, but Tony wasn't sure people could hold out for the months it would take the crops to grow. Yes, the initial attempted exodus that saw boats and planes full of infected blown apart had died off in the face of the impenetrable cordon and a public appeal from Tony asking people to stay put in order not to goad the world further. That would change as hunger grew. It wouldn't matter that their motivation was only survival; they would flee, they would be shredded on their makeshift rafts, and the new migration would undoubtedly prompt Britain's cleansing—if it hadn't already happened by then.

Amira handed over a freshly minted thousand-pound note and got her change. They sat in silence as the car rolled off again, the only sound that of teeth mashing up stringy rat meat. After a few minutes of chewing, Amira nudged Tony in the ribs and brought up the subject he'd been hoping to avoid. “You aren't really considering Glen's plan, are you? The man's a loony.”

Tony had thought of little else since he adjourned the meeting amid chaotic scenes, with his advisors split down the middle on whether to support or oppose the bloody missile. It was barbaric and insane, Tony knew, but he also couldn't deny it held a certain twisted logic. He had a duty to his people to at least consider it. However, he didn't want Amira to know what he was thinking. She'd probably try to choke him to death with the remains of her kebab. Calling on the ancient political skill of artful dodging, and hoping Amira wouldn't do a Paxman on him, Tony put the onus back on her. “If you can think of something else, I'm all ears.”

“It's the same thing as the
Facebook
page with the kids. As Stalin said, ‘A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.' We need to keep trying to humanize this. Let them know we're still people. Restore Internet access and mobile communications. Let everybody get their stories out.”

“I can't do that,” Tony said. “It's bad enough now with all these sneaky sods using satellite connections to talk to journalists. We'd have even less control. It would just make things worse.”

“How can it be worse?
YouTube
is full of the videos people shot on their mobile phones when everybody was killing each other. That's what the world is watching: Brits as bloodthirsty monsters. We managed to make Hannibal Lecter seem like Mary Poppins. We can't persuade anybody we can be trusted if that's all they see.”

“Fine, but look at the news stories now. They're all about how angry we still are and what a shambles the country is. Then it's crazy homemade shit from Blood of Christ promising to murder everyone. We open it up and we'll get more of that.”

“And we'll also get videos of people doing everyday boring stuff. Killer zombies don't post videos of themselves doing crap cover versions of Bruno Mars songs or twerking in the fruit and veg aisle at Tesco.”

“They can see us doing normal stuff on the BBC.”

“Come on, that looks like obvious propaganda.”

“Aren't you supposed to be a spin doctor? You know we need to manage the story. Anyway, it isn't just them looking in. It's us looking out. If we give everyone Internet access, they'll see for themselves that the world wants us dead. They'll panic. Which means they'll start trying to get out again. Which will just make it more likely we'll be attacked.”

“Fine. If it's more propaganda you want, let's do something with this,” Amira said, pulling out the leaflet about the resistance movement. “I know it's thin, but we can use it. If we find them, I could make a film showing there are people who can control the virus and are helping others to fight it. It'll buy us some time to explore other options.”

Tony was at the point where he wasn't so much clutching at straws as trying to catch drifting filaments of spiderweb with chopsticks, as evidenced by allowing Tim to carry out his mad scientist operations and giving serious thought to Glen's suggestion. He turned to Frank. “What do you think?”