The Ambassador (38 page)

‘I won’t. I can’t.’

The Sikh’s face was grave. ‘You must, Prince. I am sorry if I have misled you. It is the only way.’

‘But it’s
wrong
. My God, we castigate the regime for the cruel and crazy things they do. They have no respect for human values whatsoever. We should not – dare not – operate the same way. It would undermine our own position. It would destroy us.’

The two men were in the Milton Keynes bunker, Spartacus slumped in his battered chair, his face a furious scowl, Marius pacing about agitatedly. A powerbook winked on the untidy desk, phones rang in another office. It was hot: somebody had left the lights on through the night. Burning the midnight oil.

‘I used to think the same myself. Those are fine principles, Prince,’ the Sikh growled, ‘fine principles – but where do they get us? The Énarchy goes from strength to strength; the Prime Minister, their chosen puppet, will win the next election with a solid majority; the Prime Minister in waiting is virtually a mirror image, with identical slogans and philosophy. Meanwhile, our supporters are being butchered. Most citizens couldn’t give a damn either way. What alternative is there?’

‘Plenty of alternatives to direct action,’ Marius answered grimly. ‘You know my view. You may have changed your tune, but I haven’t. We have to kick-start the democratic process – we can’t rule ourselves out of it entirely. And the data gathering must continue, if we are ever to convince the outside world.’

‘
It’s not enough
.’ Spartacus caught and held Marius’s gaze, until the Prince broke away with an expletive. ‘Forgive me, Prince. You are our leader now. But a few extra computer files and a speech in the House of Lords aren’t going to make a scrap of difference. That’d suit the authorities. It would identify the dissenters nicely. You, in other words. They’d simply take a step back and secure their activities more tightly. And eliminate the upstream sources of information.’

‘Winston, you mean. And people like him.’

Spartacus did not need to respond. Both had been present as the severed head had been buried in the garden of the Stony Stratford cottage, with Martin, Winston’s partner, bent double in grief, his tearstained face more eloquent than words. They had tried to ignore the police officer who paused at the gate. The body had not been found.

‘Poor bugger. And a brave man.’ Marius drew himself up. ‘No direct action. Not yet. I still think we can make headway. With confrontation, by speaking to them direct. If the people in charge realise somebody’s on to their little game, they may well attempt to conceal it, as you say. Or they may decide the game’s not worth the candle. It’s a warning. And it’s an essential part of tackling them. Head on.’

‘You have something in mind, Prince? Or
Moses
, rather?’ Heavy sarcasm curdled the voice.

Marius sighed. ‘I don’t have much choice, I guess,’ he answered sombrely. ‘I have to see Lyndon Everidge. I’ve known him for years. He probably assumes I’m still one of them. He may not be aware of what’s going on.’

‘He’s in on it. He has to be. You’re wasting your time.’

‘Maybe. Anyway, I have to try. I
have
to. We’ve had too many deaths already. I don’t want any more. Understood?’

Spartacus paused, then shrugged. His brows, which had knitted together in a single angry slash across his forehead, separated. The debate was abandoned.

‘Well, if you must. We have prepared an information pack for him – details of crimes on record, and a few about which we can drop hints. To put him on his mettle.’

He rose and reached for a blue file-box on the cabinet behind. The contents seemed to satisfy him and he closed the box with a click.

‘You’ll be familiar with most of what’s inside, Prince. And I will bet you a dozen hot dinners, so is the Prime Minister.’

Marius stomped away, muttering furiously to himself. The Maglev back to the metropolis arrived quickly and he climbed on board. As the vehicle lifted effortlessly on its
linear-induction
motors and hummed to high speed he forced himself to relax.

The countryside beyond simmered in autumnal heat. The fields were brown and covered in stubble which was being ploughed in; burning and chemical eradication, the older methods of clearance, were both strictly forbidden. Winter wheat would be drilled as soon as possible. The few agricultural operatives visible wore cartwheel straw hats and wraparound shades against the glare. One burly man sat astride his trundling twenty-metre plough and rubbed sunblock on to his exposed arms.

Marius sipped a fizzy drink and brooded. Was he being too wise for his own good, and for the cause? Or too naive, or too cowardly? The possibility made him shrink back. An ill wind was blowing: it smelled of trouble and made him angry and fearful.

He tossed his head impatiently. Across the gangway, a heavy-set man with cropped sandy hair raised his eyelids, no more than a flicker, then returned to his powerbook. Marius’s own lay open but unseen on the table top before him, next to the file-box with his drink and an uneaten orange.

The appeal had to be made to the Prime Minister. Of course it did: Solidarity could not emerge into the light as anti-government revolutionaries unless every legitimate avenue had been explored. And it did not sit well with his role as an elected politician – even if merely in the House of Lords – to ignore these time-honoured processes. And yet, try as he might, he could not so easily parry the Sikh’s points.

He had dismissed Spartacus’s arguments too readily. The diplomat in him was attracted to compromise; the soldier in the Sikh possibly too tempted by a more militant approach.

Those initial discussions had been misleading. Spartacus had implied that the organisation was resolutely against militancy. Perhaps it had been meant sincerely – the sentiments had certainly been expressed with some warmth. The performance, genuine or otherwise, had been for the Prince’s benefit also: he would never have accepted the leadership of a mission committed to lethal means. The death of Winston had affected everyone in the Bunker, the Sikh more than most. But that was no explanation. It could only be an excuse to air opinions suppressed before, but which had since gained greater respectability. Faced with murder, murder became a weapon. Retaliation might bring safety. Or it might make everything fiendishly worse.

Had there been some jealousy? Despite his courtesy, a jaggedness had lurked behind the Sikh’s eyes as he had out-stared Marius. The blatancy of the challenge, its insolent undertone had made the Prince uncomfortable. The Sikh must have been in the inner cabal that had decided to approach him. Spartacus must have agreed: at his seniority, he would undoubtedly have had a veto. But it was not beyond imagination that the man might have dreamed the choice would fall on himself. Unfortunately for him, the idea was preposterous. Ranjit Singh Mahwala, with his squat muscled shoulders and beetle brows and brown skin, was not about to lead a protest movement centred in western Europe. Nor could he be its public face, not while tall blond NTs walked the earth, their etiolated physique the badge of authority everywhere.

But that glint in those black eyes, that flash of annoyance and sarcasm, had indicated more than rivalry. It had suggested a taste for violence.

Was violence the only answer? And if so, in what form? One thing was clear, at least to Marius: with limited numbers, many of whom were, as far as he knew, inexperienced civilians, an armed revolt was out of the question. They would be slaughtered, and their comrades with them.

Marius saw that his hands were shaking and he held them clasped out of sight. He had others to think of now, not least Lisa. Time might be short. The legal bonds with her must be tied as soon as possible; he badly needed to call her his wife.

He had no doubt, once he let his mind focus on it, that men like Sir Robin
Butler-Armstrong
, archetypal ice-cool bureaucrats, answerable only to themselves, would be utterly ruthless. Spartacus’s misgivings had to be met by a far more vigorous approach than simply chatting to the Prime Minister. In that the soldier was absolutely right.

Marius cursed himself for his limpness, and his own dearth of military experience. His preference for talk came in part from fear; his courage had never been tested. It did not take courage to sit through endless diplomatic dinners or put parliamentary questions in the politest terms to an elderly Lord Chancellor on a sleepy Wednesday afternoon. The prospect of open conflict, of laser guns and warfare, of spilled brains and screams of agony, made his stomach turn over.

The terror was not merely on others’ behalf, but on his own. He might tell himself that he would behave bravely, and if necessary, ultimately, die with dignity for a cause he believed in. He might
tell
himself that, but his palms went clammy. He was
scared
. He would admit it to no one but himself – and maybe Lisa. Since he had never been tried, there was no way of knowing: and every gram of his being strained for gentler, peaceable ways of settling the matter. Not violence. Not pain.

Moses, they wanted to call him. How totally inappropriate. The original Moses had indeed returned to the palace where he had been raised, and upbraided Pharaoh. And been laughed at, his mission rendered a joke. He had led a collection of freed slaves out of bondage and had been pursued by the wrathful King – Marius smiled to himself. He could not quite see why. Pharaoh might have done better to wave the rabble goodbye with a kindly gesture. Rather the way he himself would probably be fobbed off by Sir Lyndon Everidge.

Another image assailed him. Another peaceable man, who had felt Himself called, but who had begged the caller to take the burden from Him. Only in fasting and prayer at Golgotha had He come to accept his fate. Marius wriggled shamefacedly. He was not about
to compare himself with Christ. But the dilemma Christ had faced – the growing and terrifying obligation, the awful knowledge that the burden was unavoidable and that he had no choice but to accept whatever mayhem lay ahead – that the Prince could grasp. It made his heart skip a beat, then refuse to resume a normal rhythm.

As a distraction he played with his powerbook, scrolling up and down among the thousands of titles available. The flat plastic machine was his constant companion, as it was everyone else’s. He could download from satellite a hundred TV or radio channels or a movie or tape. He could read any of tens of thousands of books, depending on which library he subscribed to.

The title on the screen was enticing. Christabel Bielenberg,
The Past is Myself
. The synopsis outlined events in the mid-twentieth century. Her husband, a Hamburg lawyer, had been a friend of the officers who had plotted to kill Hitler in July 1944. Bielenberg was promptly interned in Ravensbrück concentration camp. His British-born wife, niece of Lord Beaverbrook, had volunteered to be interrogated herself.
We know nothing of politics
, she insisted guilelessly.
We are ignorant of plots
. Hour after hour she stuck to the line. Their stories tallied and he was released. Marius punched a few buttons and read on.

The bomb had been placed in an attaché case which the plotters, trusted cronies of the Führer, brought into a conference room and left behind. It exploded; four men were killed but its target was only slightly injured. Revenge was swift and extreme. Even as the conspirators announced that Hitler was dead, he was having them arrested. They perished after torture, strung up with piano wire. Their slow deaths were filmed for the Führer’s enjoyment.

I know nothing of plots, Marius mused to himself. I can hardly claim to be ignorant of politics. I’ve no idea whether I could cope with interrogation, let alone torture. I would be hopeless when it came to priming a bomb. Then he stopped short. Was that the ultimate? Did Spartacus harbour secret thoughts of an assassination? Surely not. It was unthinkable.

Marius swallowed. This was murky business. Given their frame of mind, and the hatred of the Énarques in the wake of Winston’s decapitation – and the unwavering distrust of some of Solidarity’s leftist members for his own background and moderation – he would not put it past some of the group, the hotheads, to try it.

He would not put it past a few of them to place a bomb in his case without telling him. The most effective assassin might be the man kept in the dark. And who might, in the aftermath, be regarded as expendable. Who might, in fact, have been brought in as a temporary measure: a conduit, a means of murder.

If murder were on the agenda, it might not be in the hands of a remote sniper taking a pot-shot during an official parade. It might be far closer to home. He would have to tread delicately. Some wouldn’t care if he, Prince Marius, went up in a puff of smoke.

His face grim, he switched off the powerbook and stared out of the window. The sandy-haired man nearby blinked once and settled back for a doze. Marius did not see the sun slide across the man’s cufflinks. Old-fashioned and heavy, they would reveal on close examination the head of a slavering dog.

Lisa ran her fingernail over the thin rod implanted under the skin of her inner upper arm. It had been freshly inserted soon after meeting Strether. So strong was her desire then for a fresh sexual partner, so prompt her response to his hints, that contraception had been the
necessary consequence. Since it was anathema to become pregnant and her physical signs showed positive fertility, a slow release implant had been the obvious answer.

Other women had their Fallopian tubes tied, or resorted to devices. In some areas of eastern Europe disease pockets survived and condoms were advised. Other women and those with children might donate their unwanted ovaries and unripe eggs. But Lisa had always felt instinctively that the day would come when those ova would be useful. And, selfish or otherwise, her own had a uniqueness she wished to preserve.

She had decided against a lifetime hormone implant. Those were aimed not at contraception but at preventing osteoporosis. Lisa pitied those women, and some men, who in the previous century had entered advanced age with crumbling bones, hip joints that could not bear their weight, ribs that cracked at a cough. As neck vertebrae disintegrated and upper backs rounded into humps, the change in appearance was stark. ‘Old people’ used to look different. But not any more.