Department 19: Zero Hour (15 page)

Jamie’s eyes widened. “I’m what, sir?”

“Take a look for yourself,” shouted Holmwood. “Christ, I should put you in a cell for this. I’ve had the bloody Chief of the General Staff on the phone, telling me the Prime Minister wants you court-martialled. I’ve got bloody politicians trying to tell me how to do my job, all thanks to you.”

The Interim Director hammered a series of commands into the terminal on his desk. The screen on the opposite wall of the room bloomed into life and Jamie turned towards it, panic creeping up his spine.

The news? The Prime Minster? A court martial? Jesus, what the hell is all this?

Holmwood opened a list of civilian broadcast channels, scrolled down to BBC NEWS 24, and hit ENTER. A rectangular window filled with a live feed of the news network, and Jamie gasped.

Playing in the centre of the screen was camera-phone footage of the Our Sister of Grace cemetery, where he and his squad had been barely five hours earlier. As he watched, the old vampire, a growling, shambling shape, sent Qiang spinning through the air, before the dark figure of Ellison fired her pistol, bringing him down. Jamie saw himself standing beside her, his MP7 in his hands, his purple visor turned towards the camera.

The footage was horribly, awfully clear.

“Shit,” he whispered.

Below the video, which appeared to be playing on a loop, the red and white news ticker scrolled relentlessly from right to left.

MOD DENIES EXISTENCE OF SECRET ANTI-VAMPIRE ORGANISATION | APPEARANCE OF ALLEGED MEMBERS MATCHES DESCRIPTION OF THE LATE KEVIN MCKENNA | CAMBRIDGE EMAIL FORWARDED MORE THAN FIFTY THOUSAND TIMES

“How did this happen, Lieutenant?” asked Holmwood. “How did you manage to screw up a simple Patrol Respond so badly?”

“I don’t know, sir,” said Jamie, his panicked mind racing with worst-case scenarios. “It was a routine Echelon intercept, four kids lighting fires and splashing blood around, trying to summon vampires. I warned them off and made them sign the OSA, but we were attacked by a vamp. One of them disappeared in the confusion, sir.”

“You didn’t look for him?” asked Turner.

“Of course we did,” said Jamie. “There was no sign of him. But he’d signed the OSA, so I ordered a police visit to his house and carried on with the operation. I had no idea he was filming us.”

“Well, he was,” said Holmwood, and pointed.

Jamie followed the Interim Director’s finger and felt his heart stop in his chest. On the wide screen, standing outside a large detached house with a man and woman who looked like the dictionary definition of suburban middle class, was Chris Hollison. He was wearing a smart blue shirt and his blond hair was neatly combed as he looked into the camera, EXCLUSIVE scrolling rapidly below him. At the bottom of the screen, the rest of the day’s headlines cycled past in turn; one item caught Jamie’s eye, even as horror at the sight of Chris Hollison flooded through him.

BREAK-IN AT BUCHAREST MUSEUM – AUTHORITIES REFUSE TO CONFIRM MOTIVE WAS THEFT

“Joining us now,” said the newsreader, “is the young man who shot the footage that we’re bringing to you exclusively tonight. Chris Hollison, can you hear me?”

There was a tiny delay, then the teenager nodded. “I can hear you,” he said.

“Chris, can you tell us how you came by these remarkable images?”

“Certainly,” said Hollison. “Some friends of mine and I were hanging out in the cemetery at Our Sister of Grace after school, but we lost track of time, so when we tried to go home the gates had been locked. We were going to climb the fence when the three people you can see in the video appeared and started threatening us.”

“Threatening you?” asked the newsreader.

Hollison nodded. “They claimed we had assaulted somebody, which was ridiculous. I asked who, and they wouldn’t tell me. Then one of them, the leader, pointed a gun at me and said we had to sign the Official Secrets Act.”

“I’m sorry?”

Hollison shook his head. “I know it sounds crazy,” he said. “It sounded crazy to me at the time. So I told my friends not to sign it, because we hadn’t done anything wrong and I know my rights, you know?”

“Right,” said the newsreader. “Did you get a look at the man who threatened you?”

“I don’t know if they were men or women,” said Hollison. “All three of their faces were covered by visors, like the ones riot police wear. Except these were purple.”

“Purple?”

“Purple,” said Hollison, firmly. “Like McKenna said.”

There was a pause. “You’re referring of course to the late Kevin McKenna, who published an editorial in which he claimed not only that vampires existed, but that the British government maintained a secret organisation that policed them. Do you believe that’s who you encountered tonight?”

“Yes,” said Hollison. “I think everything Kevin McKenna wrote was true. I watched them murder a man in cold blood, they threatened to bug my parents’ phones and emails, and told me and my friends that we were going to be followed and watched for the rest of our lives to make sure we never told anybody what we saw. But you don’t have to take my word for it. You can just watch the video.”

“Chris Hollison, thank you very much,” said the newsreader. “We’re going to have more on this story throughout the night—”

Cal Holmwood muted the screen and looked at Jamie, his eyes full of disappointment.

“That’s not what happened, sir,” said Jamie, his insides burning with fury at the way Chris Hollison had spun the evening’s events. “We didn’t murder anyone. We destroyed a vampire that had just
attacked
him, for God’s sake. And everything I said to him followed protocol.”

That’s not strictly true, is it?
whispered a voice in the back of his head, but he pushed it away.

“It doesn’t matter, Lieutenant,” said Turner, his voice as smooth and cold as ice. “What you just heard is the narrative that is being picked up by every newspaper and television station in the world. We cannot defend you without confirming that Kevin McKenna was telling the truth.”

“But the footage doesn’t show anything,” said Jamie, aware that his voice was rising with emotion. “There’s nothing that confirms vampires are real, or that anything he said was true.”

“It doesn’t matter,” repeated Turner.

There was a heavy moment of silence, in which Jamie’s outrage disappeared and was replaced by an awful, creeping dread.

This is really bad,
he told himself.
This is so much worse than I realised.

“Do you have anything to say for yourself, Lieutenant?” asked Cal Holmwood, the colour in his face at last beginning to fade.

“Only that losing Chris Hollison was my mistake,” Jamie said. “I want it clear that it was no fault of Ellison or Qiang. And that I’m sorry, sir.”

“I’ve heard that from you before, Lieutenant Carpenter,” said Holmwood. “I’m starting to get tired of it.”

Jamie didn’t respond.

“You will remain on the active roster, but only because I can’t afford to bench you,” continued Holmwood. “When all this is over, when we reach Zero Hour and whatever comes after it, you can expect to be asked to revisit your actions of today. Do I need to tell you how incredibly disappointed I am?”

Jamie shook his head, as a lump rose into his throat and settled there. “No, sir.”

“Fine. Then you may consider yourself dismissed. Get out of my sight.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Jamie, his voice little more than a croak. He turned away, noting the unchanged expression on Paul Turner’s face as he did so, and walked stiffly towards the door. When he rounded the corner of the main Level A corridor, he sagged against the grey wall, his hands on his knees, his eyes squeezed tightly shut.

Well done, you stupid, stupid boy. What if he means it this time? What if he court-martials you? You bloody deserve it.

Jamie couldn’t breathe. His chest felt like it was being constricted in a vice as he fought back the cyclone of rage and shame that was boiling inside him.

How many times has Paul Turner tried to warn you? How many times has he told you that you can’t just do whatever you want and expect to get away with it? How many times has he tried to save you from yourself?

“Shut up,” he whispered, dragging air into his lungs. “Shut up, just shut up.”

He knew, deep down, how tolerant Cal Holmwood, and Henry Seward before him, had been with him, how far they’d indulged him. But rather than being grateful, rather than learning from his mistakes and moving on, what had he done? Convinced himself he was invincible, that he would never receive anything more than a slap on the wrist. He had abused their faith in him, their trust, and this was where it had got him: on the verge of tears outside the Interim Director’s quarters, with his Blacklight career hanging by a thread.

Jamie lurched down the corridor towards the lift. As he pushed the call button, he said a silent prayer, asking a God he didn’t believe in to ensure that the lift was empty when it arrived, and waited.

The doors slid open with Jamie holding his breath in front of them. Mercifully, the metal box was empty.

Thank you.

He stepped inside, thumbed the button marked H, and leant against the wall as the lift began its descent.

When it slowed to a halt, Jamie was through the doors before they were even halfway open, walking unsteadily into the airlock that sealed the detention block. Gas billowed around him, the light turned green, and he was moving again, his footsteps echoing loudly, his gaze fixed on the last cell on the left.

With the last of his composure, Jamie walked out in front of the ultraviolet barrier that formed the fourth wall of his mother’s cell. She looked up at once, and the expression of concern on her face was enough to send him over the edge; he staggered through the barrier, his face collapsing into a mask of misery and shame, and began to cry. Marie Carpenter flew up off the sofa she had been lying on and wrapped her son in a hug that lifted him off his feet, but which felt to Jamie like the gentlest embrace in human history.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, her voice low and soothing. “Are you all right? Is someone hurt?”

“I did something stupid, Mum,” said Jamie, between sobs. “Something really stupid, and I’m in trouble.”

Jamie Carpenter took a seat at the far end of the long Ops Room table and found that he couldn’t meet Cal Holmwood’s eye.

Yesterday was yesterday,
he told himself, as he studied the surface of the desk.
Nothing you can do about it now. You just have to get on with today.

He had stayed with his mother for a long time the previous night. When his tears had stopped, he had been instantly ashamed of himself; it was appalling, a Blacklight Operator crying to his mum when something went wrong, and he had said so. His mother, who was a strong contender for the most patient person he had ever known, whose natural instinct, with the sad exception of Larissa, was to see the very best in everyone, had lost her temper with him for maybe only the seventh or eighth time in his life. Her eyes had flared red, and she had told him that he needed to stop thinking that he could handle whatever the world threw at him.

“You’re still just a boy,” she said. “You do a man’s job, and Holmwood and all the others treat you like one because that’s what they need you to be, but you’re
not
a man yet. I’m so proud of you, of all the things you’ve done, and if you tell me you’re ashamed of yourself again I’m going to get very cross with you. Do you hear me, Jamie?”

He had told her that he did, and she had hugged him so tightly that for a moment he couldn’t breathe. When she let him go, they had talked for almost an hour, about nothing in particular, the way they used to before the darkness had infiltrated their lives.

“Zero Hour Task Force called to order,” said the Interim Director. “All members present.”

Jamie knew that membership of the Task Force was a privilege, and it was one he didn’t take lightly; the group had been set up explicitly to deal with the prospect of the return of Dracula to his full, ungodly strength, and to develop and implement a strategy to try and prevent such an unthinkable horror. But while membership was a source of great pride, it was also an endlessly gruelling responsibility.