Edge (35 page)

    "Suzanne Duchesne has taught me something profound."

    Philip's eyes tightened. "What is that?"

    "It's not what you say, it's how you say it." Josh grinned. "Not to mention, where and when."

    "I so hope you're right. All right, let me show you what my people have ferreted out." Data blossomed on half a dozen wallscreens. "Here we have Tyndall Industries owning a hundred percent of this Nigerian facility, although you wouldn't know it from the stockholder list. It's all cutouts and proxies. You realise none of what they do breaks the local laws."

    "It'll still cause outrage here. All we have to do is get the data in front of people."

    "Well, that's the challenge, isn't it? Anyway, over here you can trace the interrelated–"

    A door clicked open, further down the hallway. Then the office door opened.

    "F-father?"

    "Richard!"

    They stepped toward each other, then stopped, as though held back by a force field. Behind Richard, Lexa frowned. Philip seemed unable to move.

    "Are you all right, son?"

    "Yes, Father. I was… I was very lucky."

    Then something broke as Philip stumbled forward first, Richard falling against his chest; and they were hugging each other, crying and not caring. Seeing Philip's tears, Josh finally decided he could like the man.

    Lexa led Josh into the hall, and closed the office door behind them.

    "Looks like you did good," said Lexa.

    "I just found him," said Josh. "Suzanne fixed him."

    "Ah, that'll be Dr Duchesne. You and her, you're together? It's the way you say her name."

    "Er, yeah."

    "Figures. All the good ones are taken." She shrugged her muscled shoulders. "Never mind."

    After a while, the office door opened. Philip came out, arm around Richard's shoulders.

    "I'm going to do some work, otherwise I'd be letting Mr Cumberland down. And we can't have that, can we, Richard?"

    "No."

    "You three go on, and I'll join you shortly."

    "OK. Father?"

    "What is it?"

    "My thing about blades…"

    "That doesn't matter. You're safe, and you're home."

    "But Josh taught me eskrimaga. I mean, he started to."

    Philip was puzzled.

    "Combat skills," said Lexa. "So, you want to carry on learning, Richard?"

    "Josh is staying here?"

    "Wouldn't that be nice." Lexa raised an eyebrow. "The answer's no, but why don't you all come see my bedroom?"

    "Without dinner first?" said Josh.

    Richard said "Josh has a girlfriend."

    "I figured." Lexa winked at him. "So, are you coming?"

    "I'll tag along, if I'm welcome." Philip glanced back at his office. "It'll keep for a few minutes."

    "Sure thing, boss."

    She led the way to a ground-level room that overlooked the rear lawns. There was a brass label on the door reading Estate Manager.

    "He got the sack." She grinned at Philip. "And I got a room upgrade. Come see."

    A huge office had been transformed into a morethan-bedroom. The bed itself was small, tucked against one wall. What made Josh smile was a vertical plasticand-ceramic cylinder, man-high and waist-wide, from which several stiff rods poked out, representing limbs. In China they were made of wood, a mainstay of wing chun fight training.

    On the bed were two rattan canes – escrima sticks – and a coiled skipping-rope. Under a chair stood a kettlebell.

    Josh tapped Richard's shoulder with a half fist. "Looks like you have a new trainer."

Richard looked at his father. So did Josh and Lexa.

    "You mean it's my choice?" Philip's voice was mild. "I'm happy if you do, and happy if you don't. All right?"

    "Thanks, Dad."

    Philip blinked. Perhaps it was the first time Richard had called him anything but Father.

    Josh felt a soft punch on his shoulder.

    "Like I said, soldier." Lexa leaned close. "You did good. Now go home to your girlfriend, before I show you my restraint holds."

    "Yeah. Take it easy."

    "You, too."

 

Josh stormed out of the Broomhall house, slamming the front door and muttering "Fuckin' arsehole…" clearly enough for spycams to pick up the image, if not the sound. Getting into his car, he yanked the driver's door shut, switched on the ignition while snapping his safety belt in, released the hand-brake simultaneously with flicking the car into drive, gunning it into a sharp, gravel-spraying turn, and accelerated for the gates.

    There, the security guys remained blank-faced while the gates opened; save for one man, standing in a surveillance blind spot by the hedge, who dropped Josh an exaggerated wink. Then Josh drove out onto the road, moving too fast, acting enraged though his mind was cold. He was already working on mission prep.

    Once on the motorway he drove more reasonably. Tapping his phone in its console slot, he queried vlogger sites.

    "Command: select keywords America, political situation, Brand, coup, secession. Command: spelling disambiguation, coup equals C-O-U-P. Command: display top ten, most viewed."

    He lowered the brightness on his heads-up as ten static panes showed low down on the windscreen. Then he tapped the console below the rightmost image.

    A shaven-headed man in what looked like an expensive suit, shirt and tie began to speak.

    
"In Samuel, King David says: 'He traineth my hands for
war, so that my arm may bend a bow of bronze.' The conflict
you have been training for is here. Too long have we put up
with Islamist jihadists, but at least they had the guts to declare
war, unlike the left-wing godless liberals who have weakened
this country for so long. Now we move to cleanse the Earth in
the final crusade, the triumph of–"

    Josh shut it off, changed lanes to slow down, then tapped below the next pane. Here the speaker was maybe twenty, his hair in braids, glancing off to one side every few seconds as he spoke.

    
"President Brand is threatening democracy, let's be clear on
that. You don't agree, tough, because the police will kick your
door down and drag you out as a threat to homeland security.
That means no trial, no lawyer, no limit to how long they–"

    He tapped that pane, also, to stillness. Then he wiped the display.

    "Hell. To. Handbasket. In, a, going. Make a sentence out of that."

    The phone chimed its do-not-understand tone.

    "End voice commands."

    After some twenty minutes driving in silence, he tapped again. Tony's image appeared, ghostly on the windscreen.

    "Hey, Tone."

    "Josh, my man. Are you OK?"

    "Always. Are you still in contact with Taffy C?"

    "Is he still alive?"

    "That'll be a no, then."

    "Actually, I think he's in London. I'm surprised you want to see him, though."

    "If you're talking about the time I interrupted him with three rent boys and a blindfolded donkey, I think he's forgiven me for that."

    "And I thought Vikram was the potty-mouth round here."

    "Call me back?"

    "After I've washed that image from my mind."

    "Cheers, mate."

    A car cut in front, and Josh braked, slowing right down. He shook his head, continuing at reduced speed; and it was only when the idiot turned off at the exit that a memory returned: dragging a hapless suicide jockey out of his car and throwing away the key.

    
All I needed was something important to work on.

    If the situation here were as bad as the not-so-United States, there would be nothing he could do about it. But for now, so long as general elections took place and public opinion mattered, he could spread the word about corruption in the prime minister's office, hopefully to more effect than some student vlogger trying to warn his fellow citizens about a near-silent coup among the upper echelons of government.

    Tony's image popped back up. "Park in Sainsbury's in Richmond, walk out here" – a secondary pane flicked into existence, showing a map – "and Big Tel's taxi will pick you up. RV is seventeen hundred."

    "Got it. Where's Taff?"

    "Centre of London, Shaftesbury Avenue. Tel has drop-off details."

    "OK. Thanks, Tony."

    "Give Taff a kiss from me."

    "Only if it's no tongues." He killed the comms.

He was in Richmond with nearly five hours to spare, so he parked as close to the great park as he could, changed his clothes in the car, and went running. The highlight was a magical face-to-face with three young deer, who watched him as he crept past, before continuing his run.

    A sponge bath at the back of the car – when there was no one around to watch – and he was back inside the vehicle, working with the heads-up, poring through the schematics and interface definitions that Matt had pulled from the Barbican.

    "You guys are paranoid," Josh said aloud. "I'm impressed. Unfortunately."

    Finally, he shut everything down, and drove to the supermarket for the rendezvous. At seventeen hundred hours and two seconds, he climbed into Big Tel's taxi cab.

    After the usual banter, he said: "You free for an op on the sixteenth? By free I mean available, because I'll pay you for it."

    "What do I get, like?" Tel manoeuvred the taxi out onto the road. "Straight fee or percentage?"

    "Your choice, pal."

    "Well, how much are you earning for this gig?"

    "Somewhere between zero and nothing."

    In the driver's mirror, Tel smiled. "If we're in the big leagues like that, then I'm in for five per cent."

    "You fool, you could have twisted my arm for twenty."

    "Uh-huh. We're talking heavy duty logistics, are we?"

    "Solo insertion, maybe some of Tony's crew for distraction purposes only. I'm working on the details. The infiltration is just me."

    Tel navigated a junction, then: "And exfiltration afterwards?"

    "Not needed."

    "I don't like the sound of that."

    "No, it's OK. If I do the job all right, I'll walk out on my own two feet."

    "And Plan B?" asked Tel.

    "I've reason to believe there'll be medics nearby. With luck, they might help me. Otherwise it's Plan D for dead, so it won't matter."

    "Hmm." Tel drove on for a bit, then: "So where's the location, boss?"

    "The Barbican."

    "The–? You know, the big final's there on the twentieth."

    "It is?" said Josh.

    "Yeah. But security will be tighter than a duck's rectum, so if anyone was going to like sneak inside, they'd want to lay up early."

    "I imagine so."

    "Maybe four days in advance."

    "Sounds good to me."

    "So long as they wasn't thinking of going up against, like, thirty of the country's best professional knife fighters, that would probably be all right."

    "Probably."

    "Not to mention," said Tel, "close-protection teams with guns galore, on account of the PM visiting and all."

    "Not to mention."

    "Well." Tel swerved into a side street, one of his famous shortcuts. "You remember Mad Jock, right? Legend of the Regiment?"

    "Sure."

    "Wait'll I tell people I've had Mad Josh riding in my cab."

    "Shit."

    "That's what they'll do when I tell 'em."

Just before seven, Josh climbed out of the cab on Shaftesbury Avenue, directly by a side door of the old red-brick theatre. Big Tel drove off, and a male member of the theatre staff, dressed in black, opened the door from inside, and nodded to Josh.

    "Alwyn is upstairs." The young man gestured to a narrow flight of wooden treads, darkened with age. "I'll lead the way."

    He pushed the door shut – it would only open from inside – then started up the stairs.

    "Don't you think this is a wonderful production?" he added. "It's the most fabulous I've worked on."

    "Say what?" Josh kept pace as they ascended.

    "
Nine Princes in Amber.
You must have seen it."

    "I'm not really into musicals."

    "But that's dreadful. Never mind."

    At the top of the fourth flight, they turned left, and passed into a huge, high-ceilinged room ringed with dressing-tables and clothes racks… and some three dozen actresses who were naked or near-naked, changing into costume, or applying make-up while their pert, bare breasts bounced with the motion.

    "Bloody hell."

    Josh had twice known paralysis in the face of lethal danger. This was not quite the same but – there was the most perfect female arse he had ever seen, bending over to pull up her voluminous skirt from the

floor. Awe and lust washed through him.

    "Oh, dear fellow, do come on."

    Looking back, Josh allowed himself to be led into a side room. When the door closed, hiding the beauties outside, he thought he might weep.

    "Alwyn, I've brought your friend."

    Blinking, Josh turned round. "Hey, Taff. How's it going?"

    Taff rolled his eyes, then shrugged to the young man. "I apologise for my philistine friend."

    "Oh, I find his rough edge rather a thrill. Or dare I say
alluring
?"