Angelmaker (86 page)

“Don’t push it,” Polly Cradle mutters as Titwhistle claps her in irons. The Warden in Chief leans away from her in alarm. “Wildcat! Witch! Be along with you! Wait? Where is the ghastly dog? Tell me it’s been incinerated! No? Blast. Well, he’s under arrest, too. And the rest of you felonious scoundrels should also consider yourselves charged with conspiracy, fortunately I have brought a bus, yes, over there, you will wish to shackle yourselves with the leg irons provided …”

It takes a few minutes, but very shortly, Joe’s entire company is aboard the black prison bus with tinted windows, and the men of the Legacy Board drive them away.

“Mercer,” Polly Cradle says, as the bus ducks down into a garage and everyone hurriedly disembarks, to travel home by other means, “that was utterly ridiculous.”

Mercer Cradle beams.

The day after, when the proper course of government has been resumed and—though dented by the spectacle—the institutions of law and order are once more working to their often impenetrable ends, a man in an old-fashioned flight suit stands in front of a Lancaster bomber. At a little after ten a.m., he hears the sound of an approaching engine and turns his head. A maroon Rolls-Royce, paint job somewhat marred by evidence of a recent gun battle and some species of explosion, comes to a halt a few yards off, and from it emerge a man and a woman. The pilot’s pudgy face loses its look of wariness and breaks into a broad smile.

“What ho! You’ve been busy,” the chairman of St. Andrews says.

“Yes,” Joe Spork replies, “I suppose we have.”

“I brought you a spare pair of socks. And some for the lady. Turns out I had a few extra in the cupboard. Thought after all that affray and arrest and such, you might need some.”

The ugliest canary yellow Argyles in the world.

“Thank you. That’s … that’s very kind.”

“And this is your girlfriend?”

“His lover,” Polly Cradle says firmly, “with emphasis on the love part. I have decided.”

“Oh, well,” the chairman says. “Congratulations! And this is the cargo?”

“Yes, that’s all of it.”

“I can’t help noticing that you seem to have a stuffed pug there.”

Bastion opens one eye and growls. The chairman recoils rapidly. Polly grins. “He likes you,” she says.

“Should I be concerned?”

“Very.”

“And these are bits of … it … I suppose?”

“Yes,” Joe says. “We didn’t think it was safe to leave them behind.”

“No. Absolutely not. Bloody idiots in government’ll have chaps crawling all over them with magnifying lenses trying to do it all again, but better. Arseholes, the lot of them. Nice plane you’ve stolen, by the way, how did you find the time?”

“I subcontracted.”

“Very good. Delegation. Excellent. Incidentally, you still seem to be rather wanted. I thought that would all go away. Not as if we didn’t know the truth, there at the end, is it?” The chairman shudders.

“No. But as soon as that was gone, the damage control started. I’m … convenient.”

“Well, your plummy friend has sorted a registration for us—nefarious little runt. Fond of long words, too. I rather liked him.”

“My brother,” Polly Cradle says.

“Poor you. You must be very proud. He’s not with you?”

“He’s meeting us out there.”

“Of course. Well, where are we bound?”

Joe Spork passes him a piece of paper with a line of numbers.

The chairman quirks his eyebrows. Somehow, this is a little disappointing. “Beach holiday?”

“Actually, we’re meeting some friends and going onward from there.”

“Really? By boat, then.”

“Submarine,” Polly Cradle tells him. The chairman looks at Joe Spork, not quite believing, and sees confirmation in the brief, feral gleam in his eyes.

A slow smile spreads across the pudgy face. “Well,” the chairman says, “that’s more like it.”

A few moments later, the Lancaster cuts a path eastwards, and fades from view.

Without my wife, Clare, this book would make a great deal less sense. Her grip on story and her finely-tuned drivel detector are assets no writer should be without—but I’m not sharing. Find your own.

My agent, Patrick Walsh, is a sort of portable, personable eye of the storm. Rumour has it he trains tigers in his spare time and can bend steel with only the power of his mind. I shouldn’t be in the least surprised; with a team like that, anything’s possible.

Edward Kastenmeier at Knopf and Jason Arthur at William Heinemann practiced the dark arts of the editor upon me, deployed the Blacksmith’s Word to push me in the right direction and occasionally the Rosetta Stone to understand me. This book, or perhaps its author, required some kicking around—but the end product is the story I wanted to tell. There’s no greater pleasure than being well-edited. (Yes, all right, that’s a lie. But: aside from the obvious exceptions, there’s no greater pleasure.)

Jason Booher’s gorgeous U.S. cover designs arrived unexpectedly on a rather grim day in early 2011 and made me feel the whole thing was real and wonderful. Glenn O’Neill’s effulgent U.K. jacket was unveiled a few months later, and it’s honestly impossible to pick a winner.

John D. Sahr of the University of Washington was kind enough to advise me casually on matters relating to supercooled water and submarines. I promptly ignored the realities in the name of good storymaking. Thanks are due to John anyway, and to his legal advisor, Grape the Labrador Retriever.

Ginger & White provided tea, and a place to sit. Sometimes that’s all you need.

I grew up in a house of stories, and some of those stories were tales of crooks and criminality. Some of them were of derring-do. All of
them were amazing. To everyone who sat at our table and took the time to spin a tale for a small, serious child: thank you.

My daughter, Clemency, was born during the edit, weighing approximately the same as the manuscript and considerably more demanding. Her tiny footprints are all over my life, and
Angelmaker
—in the case of pages 92, 307, and 513, quite literally. Thank you, little bear.

Nick Harkaway was born in Cornwall in 1972. He is the author of one previous novel
,
The Gone-Away World.
He lives in London with his wife and daughter
.