The Ambassador (6 page)

The corpse was being stripped. In the grey indoor light it lay waxy and limp. At the small of the back was the partly healed scar, a purple crescent, over the kidney area. That had been the cause of it. And Ranjit was certain no permission had been given.

Suddenly a terrible misery flooded his soul. If he returned to duty and carried on as before, he would be perpetuating the system that had given rise to such wrong-doing. He was a trained soldier, allocated to the furthermost ends of the Union’s empire; he had believed implicitly in his role as a peace-keeper. Attending to the prison had not been in his original brief, but the shortage of staff willing to serve in this godforsaken spot had required it. So he had obeyed orders, as he always did.

Not any more.

A blindness seized him: a fury, a self-hatred and loathing the like of which he had never before experienced. With a choked cry he fled from the ward and, once outside, climbed into his hoverjeep and shoved it roughly into gear. It rose, shivered, and flew off, leaving a cloud of dusty particles in its wake.

And when he saw the wall ahead of him, he did not waver or turn aside, but opened the throttle as full as it would go, and prayed for forgiveness.

Lisa woke with a start, her eyes staring from their sockets, her heart pounding. What was that?

In the distance the faint unearthly scream lingered, the echo of a ghostly cry from somewhere across the ether.

Or perhaps it had been only in her mind.

She let her body flop back, quivering all over. The sheets were limp with sweat; she must have been tossing hotly for ages. She scrabbled to retain the distorted visions that, seconds before, had seethed in her head, but they were like dew in the dawn, barely visible and insubstantial, and slowly vanished.

A child; a baby. Nothing so strange about that. She had dreamed about babies before, and had tended to dismiss them as waking fantasies. But this baby had been beautiful: to begin with, at least. Fat and gurgly, with a toothless, gummy pink mouth and bright clear eyes. It had lifted its arms to her and gurgled, begging to be cuddled.

But as she had bent to kiss it, the baby had changed. The skin had broken and cracked, like old parchment. The eyes had filmed over; the mouth had become slack, with jagged teeth that brought up weals on its thin lips. The little hand, formerly so plump and innocent, had twisted into a set of claws. The child had become a monster.

With a sob Lisa fixing herself back into the pillows, face down. What had awakened her had no reality; it had stemmed from what used to be called a nightmare. It was solely her imagination. Such a thing had never happened. Nor could it, not these days.

Never.

Strether was settling in. He was becoming used to European manners, so much less effusive than Stateside, to the diminished size of helpings on his plate, to the ever-present security cameras, and to paperwork which, despite modern technology, threatened daily to overwhelm him. He suspected that it was provided to keep him busy, and thus trapped where his staff could contain him. It succeeded too well.

Yet the polite young employees at the embassy, all American nationals, were delightful. He wished he might get to know them a little better. Most were of an age to be the sons and daughters he had never had, and he felt comfortable with them. In a crisis they could be useful. He sensed that he could trust them absolutely, a feeling evinced by no European he had met so far.

As the staffer put the coffee tray on his desk Strether looked up and smiled. ‘Yes, Matt?’

Matt Brewer, Harvard and Princeton, Rhodes Scholar and college football star, was the same height as his chief but around twenty-five years younger and much fitter. Strether had instantly liked the youthful career officer with the trim American crew-cut, the jutting jaw and earnest manner.

‘Sir, I just wondered. It’s Friday. Some of the Chancery guys have tickets for the games this afternoon at White City. We were thinking. Would you like to join us?’

Strether grinned. ‘That’s kind of you.’ He indicated the folders. ‘I don’t need much excuse. Shifting paper mountains was never my favourite occupation.’

‘In that case, sir … Well, you’ve not seen much of the city yet, have you? I was planning before the match to visit the Portobello Road mall. The travel shop there has great offers. And I have to make our monthly trip to the recycling centre.’

‘Sure. So what time are you leaving?’

‘About eleven, sir.’

Strether checked the digital timepiece. ‘Fine. Meet you downstairs in half an hour.’

It was a balmy day. In the square outside trees were heavy with leaf and in full bloom, with drifts of pink blossom in the gutters. The temperature was already 25°C. Overhead a ’copter bus whirred, spanking smart in its red Virgin livery. A fastjet vapour trail described a feathery arc in the sky. Above the electric hum of traffic, songbirds were chirruping loudly. A flock of rooks, disturbed by a tooting horn, rose angrily from the treetops, then, grumbling and squawking, flapped back on to their shambolic nests.

A woman teetered by in a tightly cut tunic and hot pants with a befrizzed dog on a lead. As the animal moved to relieve itself, she nudged it to the pavement’s edge with her toe. Beneath its haunches the dog drain opened automatically. Before it closed again the animal’s backside was sprayed with a mildly antiseptic deodorant. The dog wagged its tail, wriggled its bottom and, with its mistress, trotted on.

Strether stood on the embassy steps. ‘Take the car or public transport?’

‘Let’s take the tube,’ Matt answered. He held a carrier bag in which rustled bulky foil-wrapped packages. ‘They prefer it here – when in Rome. You’ll have many occasions to travel in style, sir, but you should see how ordinary Europeans live.’

The two began to stroll towards Highgate tube entrance. The embassy had had to be moved, like every other important edifice in London (with the exception of the royal palaces) as the waters rose, to higher ground beyond Regent’s Park, near Hampstead Heath. The Thames barrage had been dismantled, once it could no longer cope with neap tides; that was around the year 2050, two decades beyond its expected lifespan. From then on, the risks of remaining in central London for those with a choice were simply too great.

The Northern tube line, the deepest, was abandoned without regret. Other sections of the underground railway liable to flooding were strengthened and pumps installed. A huge suspension bridge from Holborn Circus to Bermondsey, the Blair Memorial, opened on the centenary of the birth of the former European President. Otherwise, the cellars of Dickens’s London were left to night-dwellers and shadowy unfortunates.

In effect the capital had become two cities separated by a river a kilometre wide at Greenwich. The political and business communities had shifted
in toto
fifteen kilometres north, using Union grants to take their façades with them. The produce markets had been relocated sub-surface and were linked to docks and freight terminals by sterile conveyor. The opportunity had also been taken to abolish the Zoo. But while a time traveller would have recognised many familiar landmarks, he might have been disorientated by strange juxtapositions: the Bank of England faced Big Ben, Covent Garden nestled around Nelson’s column, and Westminster Abbey had been turned on its axis at the suggestion of the owners of Harrods – who had made a mighty contribution to the expense – to give their shoppers next door a better view.

Strether was struck by how clean the streets were. Hologram hoardings were neat, their messages witty and vivid. Verges were tidy, drains free of detritus. Street signs and lamps in blue and gold, the Union colours, were elegantly designed, with not a broken fixture in sight. He was still disturbed by the tiny cameras slung from every other post and puzzled, not for the first time, about what they might be looking for.

But it was impossible to feel down at heart. Trees at every five paces had primroses and hyacinths flourishing at their base – untouched by any vandalism, he noted with pleasure. He had expected the original London plane trees, whose peeling bark could survive in smoke, but was delighted at the more exotic varieties relishing the cleaner atmosphere, with glorious aromatic foliage in red and yellow. They were also value for money. It was cheaper to perfume the air by natural means than the old way via gratings at street corners. And more reliable, since operatives were forever forgetting to replace the empty capsules; and, during the interregnum, terrorists had filled every capsule in Milan, Luxembourg, London and other Union cities with artificial skunk smell, which put thousands in hospital. A safer alternative had been sought, and the gratings sealed.

London had once had a reputation as a dirty city. It had ranked with Naples, Marseilles or Moscow as a place of broken pavements, boarded-up shops, beggars with aggressive dogs, battered car lots masquerading as car parks, foul public conveniences, endless graffiti, red-light areas where wan-faced child prostitutes hovered, overflowing rubbish bins, smashed syringes, dead cats, live rats and a slatternly population that did not care or notice. ‘Inner city’ had then meant crime and squalor, especially at night, rather than entertainment, the avant-garde, glamour. The law-abiding moved out, the poorest were worst hit. Similar problems had afflicted American cities, such as New York and Chicago. Strether
liked historical novels and had recently finished a bloodcurdling effort entitled
Bonfire of the Vanities
set in a gruesomely unrecognisable New York of the 1980s. Of course, it was fiction; he doubted that such an exaggerated picture could ever have been true.

He could have believed it of London, a century earlier, but not today. Buckingham Palace might be shabby, but money was obviously being spent to keep the public environment in a most attractive condition. Since voters’ moods were influenced by their daily observations, the aim must be to keep them satisfied. As Strether moved with his young companion through the busy hum of the modern city, he saw that misery and filth, or hopelessness, were virtually impossible to imagine. The citizenry had a lot to be thankful for, and probably knew it.

As they turned a corner, a camera swivelled to follow them. Strether paused and pointed at it.

‘Matt, what in the devil’s name is that for?’

Matt looked around. ‘What, sir?’

‘The camera. They’re everywhere. Who’s watching us, and why?’

The lens was black and remote, hunched on its high lamp-post like a hungry crow. It stared straight down at them and had ceased moving when they halted.

‘Oh, those. You stop noticing after a while. Security. To keep the streets free from crime.’ Matt Brewer began to walk on, with the Ambassador trailing slightly and glancing back over his shoulder.

‘That sounds like a slogan, Matt,’ Strether admonished. ‘If it’s just for crime, why are they everywhere? Even inside Buckingham Palace? Dammit, they were gawping while we had lunch. Even there.’

‘I don’t know, sir.’ Matt sounded unhappy. ‘I’ve never been inside the Palace so I can’t comment. Been meaning to go on the tour but haven’t had time.’

‘It must take an army, to keep an eye on everyone,’ Strether mused, falling into step again. ‘One helluva job, that. A whole industry of watchers. Then what do they do with the information?’

Matt shrugged. ‘It doesn’t seem to bother the locals, sir. They don’t even notice and they never object. And it does seem effective – there
is
almost no street crime. The answer to any questions we’ve raised is, that those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear.’

Strether grunted. ‘Sounds like another slogan. But the guys behind the cameras: they’re hidden, aren’t they? What are they up to? What have
they
got to fear? It’s so darned sinister. Why aren’t there any identifications on the equipment, or explanations, or apologies? The only place which seems to be free of them is the public toilets.’

‘And that’s because of a specific Act of Parliament. To protect gays.’

‘Really?’ Strether raised an eyebrow.

‘Non-discrimination codes of the Union. It used to be common practice to entrap men when they were … cottaging, I think it’s called. But that was made illegal years ago. I guess if we wanted an entirely private conversation, sir, that’s where we’d have to go.’ Matt stared straight ahead, but Strether could see that the young man was discomforted and as baffled as himself.

The two walked on in pensive silence to the entrance to the tube.

The travelator slid them down into a noisier world: the low curved ceilings bounced back scraps of conversation, the click of entry machines, the clump of footwear even on the
sound-absorbing
floor, along with the hiss and whine of trains arriving and doors opening. Both men used their swipe cards to gain access to the passenger hall and entered their destination on a request board. In an instant a mild female voice told them to go to platform four where their unit would be arriving shortly.

Even at mid-morning the station was crowded. By far the largest group of travellers was elderly, some on sticks but most hale and hearty and talking loudly to each other. Later, at rush-hour, the station would be packed, even with a speedy service that cleared platforms every half-minute. Outdated work habits still survived. Despite the freedom to network from home, many employees preferred to travel to central units. Diurnal bio-rhythms were well attested, but their persistence was a surprise. Maybe mankind was simply a more gregarious species than early analysts had understood.

The younger passengers, Strether saw, were serious but not morose. Many were reading, their powerbooks opened in one hand or on laps, pixels winking. One or two were concentrating hard and tapping in information. A man nearby prodded his screen with an electronic pen, cursed softly and chewed a finger. Several were absorbed by the output from their cordless music plugs, nodding and swaying with faraway expressions. One woman cradled a dog in her smartly dressed arms and was cooing to it. Strether, closer now, noticed it was one of the new three-eared breeds and turned away in distaste.

Everyone looked healthy, though many were overweight. He pulled in his stomach, then forgot and relaxed. Idly he began to categorise the passengers. First the older men and women, none bowed and not particularly frail, third-agers out for a treat, or possibly part-time workers. There was a sprinkling of operatives, mostly in dungarees, many with that stocky build and swarthy skin he had noted first in Liverpool. Few carried powerbooks; those without music plugs appeared bored. Elegant females such as the dog owner turned and twisted to catch a glimpse of themselves, or watched the hologram adverts, mesmerised. Young functionaries in dark tunic suits stood purposefully with a hint of impatience; Matt Brewer could easily be one of these, an office holder with a good salary, excellent prospects and every hope of living to 120. A group of chattering foreigners surrounded their guide, from a Chinese genetic group but more likely Indonesian or Singaporean: to his shame, Strether could not tell. And odder figures caught his eye: a pair of gaudy hermaphrodites, leaning sleepily on each other, presumably heading home after a night’s work, unmolested and ignored. And three burly men, heads shaved and rednecked, who stood with feet turned out to accommodate massive thighs and whose navy fatigues proclaimed their attachment to the Rottweiler Security Company.

He commented briefly to Matt on the natural courtesy on display. When travellers brushed against each other, smiles would be exchanged or apologies or a soft word. Despite the Rottweilers, the sequined hermaphrodites and the twittering oldsters, this was self-evidently an orderly, gracious society.

The train arrived. The dog woman stepped on without waiting for passengers to alight, but she was the only one who did. In a moment the carriage had filled and the doors sighed shut. The ceiling ads briefly held Strether’s attention: back pain and ear-wax were on the increase in London, it seemed, while the unreconstructed aged were warned to take their
daily tablets against Alzheimer’s: ‘Don’t go dotty – take Izzy’s Interferon today!’ A buxom lovely told the world, ‘I’m Ulrika, call me’ and gave a vidphone number, 00 44 SEXYHOTFORU. A jolly giant wreathed in smiles urged the consumption of Schmeckel’s low-cholesterol bratwurst: ‘Eat as much as you like – I do!’ A clinic trumpeted: ‘Your choice of face! In and out in half an hour! Pout like Pamela, lips like –’

Matt nudged his boss. ‘We’re here. Notting Hill Gate. Doesn’t take long.’

They emerged into a bustling scene. Following a public campaign, nearby Kensington Gardens with its exquisite Dianist chapel had been protected by flood defences and pumps in subterranean caverns. Further north these were supplemented by efficient auxiliaries in the old catacombs beneath what had been Kensal Green cemetery and was now the New White City Stadium. As a result the Kensal and Kilburn areas were regarded as risk-free and had risen dramatically in value; the antique shops of Portobello Road, in a frosted-glass mall, flourished anew.