Dead Lions (39 page)

Nothing about her expression suggested she was joking.

The next
thwack
was followed by a
thunk
.

“Through,” said Marcus.

Louisa patted Kyril’s shattered leg again, and made for the door.

She’d never
flown in radio silence before, and it added an odd dimension to the morning, as if all this were taking place inside a dream, in which the bluntly familiar—the panel of instruments before her; the view of empty skies; Damien by her side—rubbed surfaces with the strange. London was gathering shape; coagulating into an uninterrupted mass of rooftop and road, its districts strung together by buses and cars.

Stacked behind them were masses of the leaflet she’d designed; the one that would tell the marchers what they were doing—stopping the city; smashing the banks. The details remained vague, but it was enough to be a part of the crusade. There was greed and avarice and corruption in the world, and probably always would be, but that was no excuse for not attempting to make a change …

“We should put the radio on,” Damien said. “It’s dangerous. It’s illegal.”

She said, “Don’t worry. We’re too low to be on anyone’s flight path.”

“I didn’t think we’d be so …”

“What do you think they’ll do, for Christ’s sake? Shoot us down? You think they’ll shoot us down?”

“Well no, but—”

“A few more minutes, we’ll be over the centre. They’ll see what we’re planning on doing, and yeah, they’ll escort us home and we’ll be arrested and fined and all that. We knew that before setting off. Grow some balls.”

But she could hear, beneath the hum of the Skyhawk’s engine, a bass note, a growl, a pair of growls, and in that instant a different future occurred to Kelly Tropper; one in which, instead of proving herself a radical daredevil, scattering her self-designed leaflets on the marching crowds below, she became an object lesson in the lengths to which a once-bitten nation might go to
protect itself. But that seemed so far-fetched, so at odds with the scenario she’d planned, that she was able to dismiss it, even as Damien began to babble louder, and with audible fear, that this wasn’t the good idea it had sounded back in the Downside Man; that maybe they weren’t invulnerable after all.

That last part, though, surely couldn’t be true, thought Kelly. And on they flew towards the heart of London, its buildings growing closer together now; its spaces further apart; even as the noises she could hear beneath her own plane’s hum grew louder, and took up more room, and swallowed everything else.

Tommy Moult
, or the man who used to be Tommy Moult, was in St Johnno’s graveyard, on the wooden bench dedicated to the recent memory of
Joe Morden, who loved this church
. This faced the church’s western wall; the side on which its bell tower stood, and through whose rose window the setting sun would warm the church’s interior with soft pink light. At the moment, it remained in shadow. Moult had lost his red cap, along with the sprigs of hair that had tufted from under it, and which had been as familiar a sight in the village as the hawthorn trees flanking the lych-gate. Bald, older-looking, he did not rise at River’s approach. He seemed lost in contemplation of the medieval church, around which earlier versions of Upshott had risen and fallen. In one hand he nursed an iPhone. The other, dangling over the arm of the bench, hid from view.

River said, “Busy morning.”

“Not round here.”

“You’re Nikolai Katinsky, aren’t you? Lamb told me about you.”

“Some of the time.”

“I guess that makes you Alexander Popov, too,” River said. “Or the man who invented him.”

Now Katinsky seemed interested. “You worked that out yourself?”

“Seems kind of obvious at this point,” River said. He sat on the bench, leaving a foot of space between them. “I mean, all these hoops you’ve had us jumping through. That’s not the work of a language school scam artist. Or even a cipher clerk.”

“Don’t knock cipher clerks,” Katinsky told him. “Like any other branch of the Civil Service, all the work’s done low on the food chain. Everyone else just has meetings.”

In the shadow of the tower he looked grey, and though his head was mostly smooth, bristle stubbled his chin and cheeks. This was grey too, as were his eyes, which looked like the covers placed on wells to prevent accidents: things falling in. Things climbing out.

“On 7/7,” River said, “London kept a stiff upper lip. It’s how we knew we’d won, no matter how many bodies we buried. But this morning, the whole damn City looks like day one of the Harvey Nicks’ sale.”

Katinsky waved his phone. “Yes. I’ve been watching.”

“That’s what all this was about?”

“Only incidentally. Your Mr. Pashkin—not his real name either, I’m afraid—he’s taking advantage of the chaos to relieve the Needle’s tenants of some of their assets.” Moult glanced at his phone again. “He hasn’t rung, though. It’s possible not everything’s gone according to plan.”

“His plan. Not yours.”

“We have different aims.”

“But you’re working together.”

“He has access to various things I needed. Andrei Chernitsky, for a start. Some years ago, Andrei and I abducted your friend Dickie Bow. I was building the Popov legend, and wanted one of your people to get a glimpse of him, though nobody so reliable their words would be trusted. When you’re making a scarecrow, you don’t do it in plain sight, you understand.”

“I get the picture.”

“Well, since then, like a regrettable number of former colleagues, Andrei has turned to private enterprise to earn his crust. In short, he was in the employ of one it’ll be simpler to keep calling Arkady Pashkin.”

“And you needed him to lay a trail Dickie Bow would follow.”

“Precisely. So Pashkin and I came to a mutually beneficial arrangement, which even now he’s reaping the benefit of. Or trying to. Like I say, he hasn’t rung.”

River shook his head. He ached all over, but underneath that a sense of wonderment pulsed. For the first time in his life, he was facing the enemy. Not his enemy, exactly, but his grandfather’s, and Jackson Lamb’s; he was putting a face to the history that previous spooks had battled with, and it was happening here, in a country churchyard, witnessed by the uninvolved dead.

He said, “And that’s it? You bring the City to a grinding halt for a morning, and that’s it? Christ, what a waste of effort. A few hand-wringing editorials and it’ll be forgotten.”

Katinsky laughed. “What’s your name? Your real name?”

River shook his head.

“No, I suppose not. You don’t have a cigarette, do you?”

“They’re bad for you.”

“Is that a sense of humour poking through? There’s hope for us yet.”

“That’s what this is to you? One big joke?”

“If you like,” Katinsky said. “So tell me. Do you want to hear the punchline?”

He must
be on the twentieth floor, Roderick Ho thought, chest heaving, breath thick with the taste of blood. At least the twentieth. He’d crashed through the lobby in Shirley Dander’s wake; had waved his ID at the lone security guard, who was sticking to his post though the City crumbled; had followed his pointing
finger to stairs that led forever up. And now he must be at least on the twentieth floor, and Shirley was out of sight. All he could hear was the crashing boom of the alarm, louder in the stairwell as it bounced off walls and skittered off the staircase, while he panted like a dog, on all fours, his forehead resting on the stair above. Drool unspooled from his lip. Everything was a blur. What was he doing this for?

Louisa and Marcus in trouble—didn’t care.

Pashkin not who he said he was—didn’t care.

Shirley Dander thinking him a wuss—didn’t care.

He should be back in his office, deep-sea diving on the web.

You’re aware you’re MI5, right?

Yeah: he didn’t care.

It occurred to him that the program he’d written to fake his work-pattern would have kicked in by now, and anyone checking up on him remotely would find him hard at work on the archive: sorting and saving, sorting and saving. If he’d had breath to spare, he’d have laughed. It was a shame he had no one to share the joke with because it was, after all, pretty funny.

What was her name: Shona? Shana? The chick from the gym he’d planned to meet, once he’d trashed her relationship. Except, he thought, he’d never do that, would he? Trash her relationship, yes; or at any rate, throw a virtual spanner into its works—he could handle that, no problem. But actually going up and talking to her? Never going to happen. And even if it did, how would he explain to her about the program he’d written to fake his work pattern?

Catherine Standish, on the other hand. She knew about it. And you know, Roddy had the feeling she actually found it pretty amusing.

And that’s what he was doing this for, come to think of it. He was here because she’d told him to be here. To help Louisa Guy and Marcus whatshisname.

Sighing, he hauled himself to his feet, and staggered up towards what must be the twenty-first floor

Though was in fact the twelfth.

Marcus went
through the fire doors low, arms outstretched, gun pointing ahead, then left, then right, then up. Nothing. He said, “Clear,” and Louisa followed him out of the stairwell. They were on the sixty-eighth, and the logo on the glass doors read
Rumble
in a streamlined font. There were lights on inside, but no one visible. The reception desk, in front of a huge repro of
A Bigger Splash
, was uncrewed. Marcus tried the door. It wouldn’t open.

“Maybe they locked it behind them.”

“They’re using plastic,” Marcus pointed out. He took a step back, braced himself, and kicked, to no effect. The noise this made was swallowed by the alarm. No one appeared inside the Rumble suite.

“Ideas?”

“Maybe they went through a wall.”

“Or maybe …”

Marcus raised an eyebrow.

Louisa said, “Maybe he was lying. What floor are the diamond people on?”

One breath
, two breath. One breath, two.

There was a City challenge, Shirley had seen a poster for it—you ran to the top flight of a ’scraper, then down, then ran to another one and did it again. It must be for charity, because it couldn’t be for fun. She wondered how many folk died halfway through.

Her legs were soup. A label on a fire-door read
32
. She’d seen nobody since the twentieth, when a dishevelled couple had burst into the well, asking, “Are we too late?” as if they’d missed the emergency. Shirley had pointed the way down, and carried on climbing.

And now she must be getting used to the constant wail of the damned alarm, fishtailing round the stairwell, because she was hearing other sounds too—some kind of explosion some minutes back: nothing you wanted to hear this high up.

She’d not been able to raise Louisa or Marcus, but had talked to Catherine, who’d told her the alarms were false; no terrorist bombs were expected … It had sounded like a bomb to her though, if a small one.

One breath after another, at least one of which was a sigh. Arkady Pashkin wasn’t who he said he was, and had two thugs in tow. Shirley had no weapon, but she’d put people on the floor with her bare hands before now. Come to think of it, that’s why she was in Slough House in the first place.

It didn’t matter that her legs were soup, or that she was less than halfway up. The City was coming apart, and that seemed to be Pashkin’s plan. So she wasn’t going to lie here panting while Guy and Longridge stopped it by themselves. Not if a ticket back to Regent’s Park was involved.

Grinding her teeth, she took the next flight.

From way above her, more noise. It might have been a gunshot.

The sixty-fifth
. de Koenig. The diamond merchant’s. Its outer room was kitted out on a desert theme, with silks hanging off the walls and a clutch of palms forming a centrepiece, though these had been bent and torn by the blast that had shaken the floor twelve storeys up. Smoke still hugged the ceiling, and any furniture not fixed into place was scattered against the right-hand side of the room. Midway along the facing wall a metal door hung off its hinges.

“They’re gone,” she said.

“Never assume.” Marcus went through the metal door the same way he’d entered the suite: every direction covered. Louisa followed.

It had been a secure room, lined with narrow deposit boxes, a good dozen of which had been blown open. From the floor glinted a shard of broken glass, which wasn’t broken glass, Louisa realised—Jesus, it was a diamond, the size of a fingernail.

And Piotr too, a chunk of his head removed by a bullet, and smeared on the nearest wall.

“Pashkin’s travelling light,” Marcus said.

“He must be on the stairs.”

“So let’s go.”

They ran for the stairwell again, but at the firedoor Louisa paused. “He could be on any floor.”

“He wants out. Once the scare’s over, it won’t be so easy.”

He had to bend into her ear to speak. The scare wasn’t over yet, though the alarm seemed to be winding down, as if running on a tired battery.