Turquoiselle (24 page)

Twenty-Three

She
had woken and was sitting on the floor. She looked clean and fresh, even her
lustrous hair – not like the piece caught outside on the tree – brushed. But she
dealt either in true physical transformation, or delusion. She could,
demonstrably, cope with all things, put anything personally physical right.
Probably she would not even need a toilet. It seemed not. She appeared at ease,
and did not mention any necessary excursion from the shed.

He had locked her in – to protect her? Maybe. He did not analyse
the fact. Coming back in and finding her, he left the door unlocked.

“They’ve gone,” she said, “yes?”

“They ran away. When I went out to them.”

“Yes. That could happen. Drawn near to you, or scared off. An
animal with a campfire.”

Carver did not ask her why, or deny what she said. That was over. He
crossed to the remainder of the food, took a roll with ham and began to eat it.
At this she too reached out and selected the last of the salad. She ate it with
her fingers.
There was nothing left to
drink.

He was not thirsty, the air was lush with moisture. She perhaps
did not need to drink. Or eat, come to that. She did such stuff only as
camouflage. Passing for human...

The flamboyantly ridiculous idea hopped about his brain, glad not
to be either challenged or confirmed.

He stood, leaning back on the shed wall. He finished the dry bread
and ham.

“Well,” he said. “What next, Silvia?”

She looked sidelong up at him.
So you have noticed
,
her look seemed to say.

“Or,” Carver said, unemphatic and banal, “I suppose you could
explain why you now look like her. Sound like her. Silvia Dusa, I mean. She’s
dead. You’re aware of that, you told me you were. So is this some sort of
memorial tribute? The way ordinary people might send a card, or leave a flower
or a teddy bear? Like that?”

“Or,” she said, “while you slept Anjeela Merville slunk out of
this shed, and Silvia Dusa took her place.”

“That’s a chance, certainly,” he said. “You looked this way when I
first saw you earlier this morning. So you two swapped over. But she’s still
dead. So I take it, Ms Dusa, you are a fucking corpse.” His tone was only
conversationally interested, as if to be civil.

Equally everyday she replied, “But how do you know Silvia Dusa is
dead, Car?”

“I saw her.” As he said it, surprising him – he had thought
himself past such an inevitable hurdle – a coldness sank through his brain and
spine.

“I believe, Car, you saw a
picture
of her. On a computer screen.”

“I saw the picture of her
dead
. She’d cut through the vein
of her left arm.”

“No. She
appeared
to have done so.”

“It wasn’t some make-up job – some cosmetic mock-up for a film
effect, CGI – it–” Carver broke off.

As the young woman rose and moved towards him, he retreated a
step. But his back was already to the wall.

Silvia Dusa rolled up her left sleeve, and held out her left
forearm.

“
Don’t
” he
said. His voice vibrated with fury and threat.

But she shook her head, a delicate party-girl quivering. And on
the creamy honey her skin now was, the vein in her arm seared up blue and
unzipped
itself with the swift ease of a party dress –

The blood ran. It was red. Red. It was red.

Then the blood stopped. The vein puckered, gaped, (emptied), a
river-bed in drought, blistered and ruined.

“I can cry at will. Bleed at will. I can do this, Car. And while I
do bleed, I can also apply an internal tourniquet to safeguard my life –
invisibly. Plus, if you wish, I can turn my face and body, every inch, to the
look-alike of a dead woman on a mortuary slab. I can reduce my breathing and
heart-rate to match. And I can hold that persona, that pose, for anything up to
thirteen minutes, while the authentication is accurately collected.”

Carver made a sound. He sprang forward. He took her by the throat,
with a killer’s clutch. Glaring into her face, her eyes – But here, with and in
her, someone
was
at
home. Oh yes. Behind the face and eyes of dead Silvia Dusa, a very living
creature watched him. Her eyes were black, gold, bronze. His hands turned to
putty and dropped from her. His legs gave way.
It was
she who caught him, eased him down. They kneeled together now on the floor. She
put both her arms – each of them alike, whole and unmarked – around him.

“Car,” she said. “Again, I am so sorry. But you have to know.
There’s only one way now, for any of us. Lies don’t help. Lies are over, at
least between
us
.”

Twenty-Four

One,
two of them, buzzing across the open sky, giant insects with firm grey bodies
and long tails and a windmill each of spinning wings above their backs. The
first chopper was bigger, heavier.

Carver stood out on the hillside, watching them circle, far above
the trees.

Below, once only, he saw what he guessed must be people running,
the way startled antelope or zebra might out on the African plains. No one else
was near, accept for the woman. She had stayed farther up the hill, beside the
sheds. In full daylight, a softly lambent late summer’s morning, nothing
looked particularly unusual here. Just the helicopters. And a quarter mile
off, through the vegetation, the black jagged stain over the up-and-down
building.

She had said, the woman, they should remain on the rise, and wait.
The new arrivals would deal with the rest of it. His work, her work, had been
accomplished.

(He thought he had asked her questions, as they kneeled together
in the shed and she held him in her arms. But, as before, very possibly he had
not. She must only have told him other – things, elucidating what she had
already said. There were bits of information seemingly pushed randomly into
compartments of his mind... Mantik and Croft’s outfit were rivals, Croft’s
people
not
the
guards that guarded the guards, but an undermining force set to spy on, corrupt
and ruin Mantik’s function of guardianship. Life-Long Enemies for sure. Yet
Croft’s force had not been active for the assistance of enemy foreign
governments, instead they operated on behalf of the more obscure
interior
interests – commercial, political, religious – inherent in the Free Democracy
of the sprawled British Composite – these words, Carver seemed to recall, the
woman who was now Silvia Dusa had stressed were not her own; she was quoting
them from the manuals of Mantik.)

The chugging helicopter rasp grew louder. The bigger one was
descending, shaking the air in chunks off its windmill blades. The smaller
aircraft stayed high, sedately going on in its repetitive circle.

(She had said also, he thought, that she had
had
to
appear to die. Her death would confirm Mantik’s enemies’ belief that she had
sold Mantik out. Meanwhile the other personality, Anjeela, had already been
partly established with Croft’s people. Sloughing her – by then ‘dead’ – Silvia-persona,
Anjeela was next absorbed into the stronghold by the sea. She was in reality to
be Carver’s back-up and liaison. (Or overseer.) And since she was a
shape-shifter
, of
course, of course, her disguise was absolute, no giveaway anywhere.)

Yes, the bigger chopper was going to land – Carver altered his
position – that solid flat roof, probably, there, and more towards the eastern
blocks of the building.

(And she had digressed briefly on what she could do, her
changing
–
surely she had spoken again of this? Comparing her ability to what happened anyway,
to anything that was born and went on living. The child expanding from baby to
adult, which adult might grow its hair or gain a tan, fatten or become thin –
eventually aging, backbone diminishing, flesh sagging, hair – long or short –
losing colour. And what
she
did, Silvia-Anjeela, that was just the same. Merely accomplished
faster. And they had, she said, none of their kind, (his, hers) at least those
of them who had been found out in their talents, no choice. There was nothing
to gain in struggling against such masters as Mantik. But they, she,
he
,
were more than valuable, they were priceless,
and
precious. They would be – providing they complied, obeyed – protected. But they
must grasp and accept both their powers and, with equal clarity, the
use
to
which all this would be put. That was their only hope. The three of them. She,
the other unknown man, and Carver.)

The chopper had landed, a locust-wasp of grey metal. Its rotor
blades were slowing, coming visible. Men were gliding out of its womb. Or
insectoid lava, they might from this distance be simply larvae –

The mission had gone to plan. All it needed now was a bucket and
mop to clean up the mess – They were pouring down the side of the building now,
touching earth, racing forward, outward, and in. About a hundred, one hundred
and twenty, men, Carver estimated .

How many of Croft’s people were still alive, or even physically
able? No need for an army to cope with what was left.

It would be very easy, perhaps, finally to mop them up. To stamp
on them.

(He could not care. But he had never got close to anyone. Not
Sara. None of the women. No men. Nor to himself. How prudent. His instinctive
and only protection.)

(She had held him in her arms there on the shed floor. Close as
her lover. But they were not lovers. Nothing. All this was nothing.)

About twenty more minutes passed during which vague veils of
shouting rose from below and, once only, the note of guns – improved by the
amphitheatre acoustics of the terrain. Then the other helicopter began
faultlessly to descend, sunlight smoothly passing over its carapace. Everything
was so simple.

Not
long after, one of the military units reached the top of the rise. They were
polite. In plain uncamouflaged ‘camouflage’, twelve dog soldiers panned out
around the sheds, coordinated as dancers, just as when they had swarmed up the
hill. Their leader saluted Silvia Dusa. (Carver was not surprised. Surprise was
over.)

“You’re well, ma’am?”

“We’re well,” she said. “However, there is a dead man in the
central shed.”

“Very good, ma’am.” The tall young officer turned and barked, and
five of the others sprang in against the shed. After staring through the
windows, two men immediately kicked in the middle door. No, it had not taken
very much to break it down. Splinters rained outward, scattering the light. Into
the shed the two soldiers glided, catlike and fast, the light now glinting on
their weapons.

A few invisibly abrasive yet mostly inexplicit sounds resulted.

One man came out.

“Dead as a turd,” he said, “sir.”

“That’s Peter Croft,” said Silvia Dusa.

“Yes, we reckoned so,” said the captain. He turned to Silvia, “Mr
Stuart thought that would be Croft’s way. He’s not the only one.”

Both soldiers had come out of the shed. One was talking via his ear-piece,
asking for a “bob” for a grade A corpse. The second man added, to nobody
particularly, “At least Crofty got it right.”

“Yes,” said the captain to Silvia. “Some of the others of ‘em
mucked it up good and fucking proper, ma’am.”

Presently he and three of his men escorted Silvia and Carver down
the rise and through the woods, back towards the lower grounds and the
building.

There
was a large room, perhaps used for conferences, or widescreen shows of planned
future events – a vast black screen was positioned at one end. The area had
been tidied up, made pristine.  Nor was there any smell of the burnt smoke
permeating, it seemed, the rest of the building. This room stank of perfumed
disinfectants. The sun beamed in at tall and currently blindless windows.
Outside, the green lawns were empty of anyone except the occasional unit of
dog troops patrolling, or standing in alert ease along the gravel drive. (A
single urn had survived. Just the flowers were torn out, and even those had now
been cleared away.)

Latham sat far up the room at the screen end, at a long table
surrounded by chairs. He was his normal self, or seemed to be, in a light suit
and silk tie, drinking coffee from a freshly-brewed pot. A couple of chairs
away sat another man, ample, unyoung, casual, slightly flushed. He was
contentedly drinking from a magnum bottle of red French wine which, as they
entered, he decanted for himself into a plastic coffee mug. For a moment Carver
could not identify him. Then he did. It was Alex Avondale, the sentimental old
glutton with the estate, in Scotland. He and Carver had had that dinner at
Rattles in London.
The night Carver went home so late and Donna went so
entirely mad.
(Or seemed to; she had already
been mad, of course, for years. Carver had done that to her. As to so many
others.)

Avondale smiled warmly at Carver and Silvia Dusa as they walked up
the pristine, disinfected room. Latham did not smile. But he had on his benign
and
porcine
face. At some point it would, as ever, alter to his
other
face, the lizard-like mask. Ah, now it did, as his eyes focussed on Carver. And
then the lizard recoiled again inside Latham. And in his most plummy tone, he
called, “Welcome, Carver, Silvia. Come and sit down. You’ve had a heavy night.”
And he half rose.

They sat. Silvia close to Latham, obliquely facing Avondale. Carver
did not sit.

“What will you have, Silvia?” Latham inquired.

“Coffee, thank you.”

Latham selected another white plastic beaker, filled it with
coffee, carefully pushed it over to her with a sachet of brown sugar. She
accepted both. He knew her taste in coffee, then. Or thought he did, and she
obliged.

“And Carver – coffee, yes?”

“No,” Carver said. 

He leaned across, took a beaker from the remaining stack, and
picking up Avondale’s wine bottle, poured the beaker full, about two glasses
worth. Carver, still standing, drank all the wine straight down. (It had an odd
flavour, from the plastic probably, the mellow flintiness sweetened wrongly.)
When the beaker was void, he refilled it about half way, and went with it along
the table to the farther end. There he sat. They had turned their heads to
watch him, and now resumed facing forward at each other.

As if nothing uncharacteristic had happened, Latham said, “You’ve
both done superlatively well. Jack Stuart said I should be sure to tell you how
impressed and appreciative he is. And how satisfied Mantik is. You’ll be in
line for some very splendid perks, when we all get back to base. Incidentally,
we should be able to leave here inside a few more hours. I regret any delay.
Can’t hurry things.”

“Why not?” Carver heard himself say.

And Latham showed him once again his reptile face, which only
slowly dissolved into goodwill.

It was Avondale who laughed, friendly and sympathetic.

“The impatience of youth. Don’t worry, Carver, we’ll make it. You’ll
see the lights of London long before the dark moves in.”

(Avondale, who had shaken his hand outside the restaurant, and
called him ‘son’. As Croft would do, before Croft blew his own brains out of
his skull.)

Carver swallowed more mouthfuls of the wine. Not many. Then put
down the beaker.

“What makes you think,” said Carver, “I’m going with you?”

Avondale smiled on and averted his gaze, as if to save Carver
humiliation.

Latham did not remove his attention. He said, “Because, Carver,
you have nowhere else to go.”

Carver said, “That didn’t stop Croft.”

Latham said, “It was you, Carver, who stopped Croft. As intended.
Yes. Obviously we have used you, ruthlessly. It was essential. Their nest here
was a danger to us, and to the security of the whole country. But no longer.
Your debut has been a total triumph. You’ll get used to your success. Everybody
does. Or... the ones that want to survive do so. What you have to get into your
head, Carver, is that you are completely safe with us–”

“That is what Croft said to me.”

“Naturally. But in the case of Mantik, it is
true
.
You
are
,
with us, entirely safe. And that is because we, at last, are entirely safe with
you
. We’ve
made ourselves so. You can’t hurt us. And we, Mr Avondale here and I, for
example, Ms Dusa, and all our other members, are now in that same fortunate
position. Oh yes, you could, just conceivably, harm any one of us with some
amateurish physical violence or other. But I don’t advise you to try. Because
without us, Car, you’re really on your
own
. Do you see yet? Do you? Anyone
else you will now almost certainly destroy utterly, from the brain outward. The
same way you destroyed every person working here, even those who had no direct
contact with you. But
we
are
immune
.” The tone, at last, not
jammy anymore, lizard voice of silver scales. The firm father with the hard
hand, though not blind drunk or crazy. Blind sane. “We are your only family
now, Car. Just as, in another way, we are, say, a family for Silvia. But in
your case, Car, additionally we’re the only solid refuge you can go to. We
didn’t cause your ability, Car, we didn’t
make
you. But we
developed
you. And there isn’t, now, any other cunt of a person or fuck of a place you
can run to that won’t end up just one more
here
, and one more Peter Croft.”