Toploader Page 16

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The driver of Driscoll’s cart was a toothless young man with dull eyes and a massive goiter. He wore what was left of a double-breasted pinstripe suit, now buttonless, with two loops of twine to hold it closed against the chill. It seemed to Driscoll that his driver was also slow or deranged in some way; asked to drive to the scene of the big air strike that had killed lots of people—Driscoll was in a sense working undercover now and trimmed his sails accordingly—the driver had slowly scratched his bottom and asked, “Which one?” He seemed to have trouble swallowing and spit after each stumbling phrase.

  Driscoll had never traveled by donkey cart before, and the trip from the border was one he would already like to forget. The last time he had been in Hilltown, years before, he had been a guest of the army, then still in formal occupation. In those days, before blockade and bombardment had become acceptable tools of indirect administration, the streets had still been paved more or less and the municipality had enough diesel and spare parts to collect the rubbish and pump the sewage. Now heaps of rubble and rotting food scraps stood on every corner, each with its shifting corona of flies. The wind, gusting from behind the cart, carried the stink of the sewage lake a mile to the north. What must it be like, Driscoll wondered in horrid fascination, to actually stand on the banks of that square-mile sink of shit? How would it feel to fall into it? Rivulets of raw sewage trickled down the gutters on either side of the road, past bombed-out stores and workshops. He felt himself starting to gag and lifted his eyes from the ground. Here and there, rubble had been shoveled back to clear the thoroughfare, and militant flags fluttered from each mountain of debris, as if claiming responsibility. From the pavements, where pavements existed, pedestrians glanced sideways at the well-dressed foreigner, showing flashes of quickly stifled curiosity, almost of hope, clownish in their thriftshop coats and their shuffling plastic-soled shoes, before letting their eyes drop again. Only the children—who did not yet know that they were less than alive and ought to behave accordingly—intruded frankly on Driscoll’s existence. Filthy, taunting boys swarmed after his cart from every muddy junction.

  “Hey, mister!” shouted a skinny, bug-eyed little brute, trotting effortlessly by his side. “Hey, mister! That’s a fine big helmet you have on you there! Any chance of a go of your big helmet?”

  The other urchins laughed and whooped, nudging each other and pointing at Driscoll’s flushing face. He fixed his gaze between the donkey’s twitching ears. The bug-eyed kid scampered out in front of the cart, backpedaling, and addressed him again.

  “Hey, mister! Are you a reporter? Do you want to see some dead bodies? If you give me ten euros, I can show you some. Just give me the money now, and I’ll go and arrange it, eh?”

  The others giggled knowingly. One reached up and tapped Driscoll’s knee. “Please, mister,” he whispered. “Just give me one euro, eh? I won’t tell anyone. Just one euro, please?”

  His eyes still fixed to the front, Driscoll leaned sideways to murmur to his driver: “Can’t you make this cart go any faster?”

  The driver shrugged and flicked his whip. The donkey shivered once at its touch and then, without changing its gait or troubling to lift its tail, released a stream of yellow liquid dung down its withered haunches. The sweet stench flooded Driscoll’s nostrils. He closed his eyes and cringed. What was wrong with these people? Was their hatred and ignorance really so all-consuming that they would choose to endure such a fetid, hopeless existence rather than abjure their wrong-minded criminal delusions? Perhaps blood and shit really were their natural humors; perhaps those who had walled them up here were right when they hinted at that.

  The children were making chicken noises at him. Driscoll considered the sky. The sun was higher: the day must surely be warmer by now. Stiffly, he took off his helmet and flak jacket and returned them to their bag, which he clamped firmly between his feet on the floor of the cart. Beneath the jacket, his blue shirt had turned white with the sweat from his journey.

  They turned a corner into a quiet side street, and the boys lost interest and turned back whence they’d come. Swishing the diarrhea from its tail, the donkey came to the edge of a trash-strewn field overlooked by skeletal apartment blocks. The winter sun shone through glassless windows and shattered walls.

  Driscoll recognized this landscape: it had been burned into his memory the night before by repeated viewings on Captain Smith’s computer. There was the treeless wasteland, there were the uneven goalposts, there the mangled cars and pitted buildings. And there, in the foreground, only fifty yards away, was the infamous bank of dirt and gravel, scene of the dumbshow he had come to unmask.

  “Wait here,” Driscoll told the driver. The donkey made a halfhearted effort to kick him as he passed its heels, then tore at some weeds in the gutter.

  Driscoll scrabbled up the dirt bank and peered into the crater at the top. It was lined with stinking, slimy soot and surrounded by a penumbra of carbonized dirt and gravel. Here and there lay scorched pieces of green plastic circuit board marked with fragments of code. Driscoll picked up a piece and looked more closely. The letters on it read “J2 FINS & PS UMBILICAL.” He smiled grimly to himself as he tossed it away into a clump of weeds. You had to hand it to the terrorists: they were nothing if not thorough.

  Looking around, he noticed a kite flying high above the soccer field, its string slanting down behind a wrecked truck. Scrambling down the bank, Driscoll threaded his way through heaps of ordure, rounded the truck, and came to the end of the string; it was clutched in the hand of a twelve-year-old boy who was frowning up at his kite with total concentration. He barely glanced around as Driscoll stepped up to him.

  “Flying a kite, eh?” said Driscoll, smiling down at the boy. The kid glanced at him again but said nothing. He was a wizened homunculus with dark, darting eyes. His green cotton jacket had faded with age, and the kite string cut pink and white tracks in the skin of his hand. Driscoll tried again.

  “So, uh, son . . . do you come here often?”

  A look of faint alarm appeared on the child’s face. “What do you mean?” he squeaked. He began to wind in the kite, wrapping the string around a square wooden frame that served as a spool.

  “Well, I mean, were you here yesterday, for instance, when the explosions happened?”

  “No.” The boy scowled. “My mother wouldn’t let me out yesterday because of the tanks. That’s why I missed it. It would have been cool.”

  “Cool?” Driscoll took the notebook from his pocket. “Surely that’s a funny way to describe what supposedly happened here yesterday.”

  The kid gave Driscoll a “how stupid are you?” look. “It was totally cool!” he insisted. “The guys were making explosions with cleaning fluid and aluminum foil. It’s a trick, but I don’t know how they did it—I was trying at home last night until my mother caught me, but I couldn’t get it to work. There must be a knack to it.”

  Driscoll felt his pulse quicken. “You’re saying that they faked explosions here yesterday?”

  The kid rolled his eyes. “Of course! They were playing a game, and some TV guy was filming them.”

  “Wow!” Driscoll licked his dry lips. “Listen, son, what’s your name?”

  “Cole Harrah.”

  “How would I spell that, Cole?”

  “Anyway you like, mister.” The boy backed away from him, still reeling in the string, then grabbed his kite and prepared to flee. Driscoll put a hand on his shoulder to detain him.

  “Listen, Cole,” he wheedled, “I really must have you on camera. Nobody has to know about it—we could go behind that bank of dirt over there, just the two of us. I’ll pay you well if you’ll do it with me.”

  The child blanched and ripped his shoulder free. “Get your hands off me, you filthy pervert!” he squealed, and dodged away through the wreckage.

  Driscoll watched him go, aghast. What had gone wrong? Was there something amiss with his interview technique? He was, he had to admit to himse
lf, unused to dealing directly with such plebeian elements. Dear God, had he blown his exclusive by failing to nail the boy’s story on camera? Perhaps not entirely; he still had his notes of the conversation. And he had the child’s name, too, and could use it if he wanted; the boy had foolishly omitted to specify in advance that they were talking off the record. But did that give him enough material to back up his story, enough so he could leave? This place was giving him the creeps—all these distracted, shambling people in dirty ragged clothes, deficient in morals and vitamins, with their swarming feral children and their stinking open drains. It was time he got out while the going was good, before he was rumbled. But no, goddamn it, he didn’t have enough yet, not quite. There was still the Toploader story. And he did have one more lead to follow . . . .

  Driscoll dodged another kick from the donkey.

  “Could you take me to this address?” he demanded, showing his notebook to the driver. “It should be very close.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Flora’s alarm clock nagged her back to wakefulness. Evil memories jostled for place on the pillow before her, against the cracked white plaster of the wall. She heaved herself into a sitting position, wincing at the pain in her face and her ribs, her feet already reaching for the cold concrete floor.

  Ten o’clock, she told herself viciously. She had already given her enemies—Cobra, the little soldier, whoever else might be lurking out there—hours in which to turn up at the apartment and ruin her game. Her feet found her slippers in their usual place, neatly set at the side of the bed, yet they could not slide into them. Looking down, she saw that she was still fully dressed, sneakers and all, in the clothes—now filthy and bloodstained— she had put on the previous morning.

  The door of Gabriel’s bedroom was open. Moving as quietly as she could, Flora stepped into the room and opened the wardrobe opposite the bed. She had been saving Jake’s clothes for when Gabriel would be big enough for them; the pilot, she judged, was a little taller and somewhat heavier than her dead brother, but in a pinch his clothes would do.

  She took a pair of jeans from a shelf and a T-shirt and an old woolen sweater and laid them softly on the foot of the bed. The pilot would need socks and, she reluctantly supposed, underwear too. They were kept in a drawer at the foot of the wardrobe, and despite her efforts to remain silent, the drawer squeaked loudly as she pulled it. A head emerged from under a pillow.

  “Hello,” said the pilot groggily. His voice sounded loud in the bare concrete room, its walls softened only by a picture of a soccer team. Pale squares higher up the walls showed where Jake’s militant posters had once been tacked.

  “Hello,” said Flora, not looking at him. “Did you put your clothes in that laundry bag I gave you?”

  The pilot rubbed his eyes and sat up in the bed. He seemed to be naked. “I did what you told me. The bag’s in that basket, hidden under the other clothes.”

  “Good.” She wrapped some underpants and a clean T-shirt into a towel and tossed them onto the bed. “What size shoe do you wear?”

  “Eleven.” The pilot, she saw from the corner of her eye, was looking at the ancient PC that sat on a wheeled desk at the foot of the bed. Tony’s manual lay on the keyboard where she had left it the night before.

  “Megaware Flight Simulator 2001,” he marveled. “That’s a real classic, that game. I used to play that all the time.”

  She ignored him, picking through Jake’s shoes.

  “That game’s impossible to get now legally,” he went on. “It was the last flight simulator game to include the World Trade Center in its 3D model of Manhattan. They had to take it off the market after the attacks so as not to upset people.”

  Flora picked up a pair of shoes and shook them, frowning. The pilot tried again. “We used to play it a lot when I was in training.”

  Flora dropped the jeans on the bed and began looking for a jacket. When she spoke, she didn’t look at him. “Why were you playing an old game like that? Surely you’d have had access to professional simulators.”

  “Oh, sure,” said the pilot, and looked away from her. “It was just a kind of retro thing we were into.”

  Sweat trickled into Moon’s eyes, and his hand felt slick on the joystick. Blinking, he hurled his lumbering 767 into the prescribed sequence of high-speed maneuvers: first an Immelmann turn, then a split S, and finally a victory roll, pulling straight and level again just as the nose of his aircraft hit the South Tower, impacting at exactly the right speed and angle for its flaming debris to pepper and ignite the North Tower as well.

  There was a silence, and then voices behind him began to whoop and call “Sssstttrike!” Moon shotgunned another can of beer as unit tradition demanded, and then the chief instructor slapped him on the back and pinned his new drone wings to his collar, and eager hands pulled him away from the old PC so that another cadet could take his turn . . . .

  The girl was picking through another drawer. “You’d better wash before you get dressed,” she said.

  “Why do you play that old game?” he asked her. “Is it the only one you can get in here?”

  “No.” She turned to look at him. “That also happens to be the only flight simulator game in which the Embargoed Zone has its own airport—the game went on sale just before your engineers finished the wall and blew up our runways. When I play it, I can take off from my own home and fly to Paris or New York or Beijing just like a normal person. And then if I feel like it, I can fly back home again.”

  She jerked her finger at a pair of sneakers in the bottom of the wardrobe. “These are only ten-and-a-halfs, so you should probably wear your own sneakers. They’re covered in puke, but they’re civilian. And you can have that green jacket, the one on the back of the door.” She prepared to leave the room. “The bathroom is the next door along. There’s a plastic bucket beside the shower stall, about half full of water. You pour the water over yourself with the scoop you’ll find floating in the bucket. But leave some water for me—it’s expensive. There’s soap in there too and some towels. When you’re dressed again, meet me in the hall. We have to go outside and take your picture.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I need to take a picture that proves that you’re okay and shows where you are. Then I can try and find a way to send the picture to your bosses so we can get you out of here.”

  “I thought you didn’t have any contact with the other side.”

  “I know someone who does. A journalist. We’ll have to find him, though, which means going to the city on foot. We should be okay so long as you don’t talk to anybody.” A thought occurred to her. “So if we do get stopped, you’re going to have to pretend to be simple.”

  “What?”

  “You’re my mentally disabled big brother. And please don’t argue—it’s the best idea I can think of right now.”

  Moon had never washed himself with cold water before. When the ordeal was over, he felt wide awake and cold and very small. The girl was waiting in the hall with an ancient digital camera almost as big as her hand.

  “Come on,” she said, and led him outside. “We have to be quick, before someone tries to talk to us.” Moon stepped gingerly out of the vestibule and into the baleful light of day. The sun was bright overhead but had yet to warm the street. He had forgotten the jacket, and the wind blew fresh through his clothes. A few people straggled up and down the street, paying no attention to Moon and the girl. A drone bumbled high overhead, and Moon jerked his head back to search for it.

  “Wow,” he said. “Where is it? I’ve never seen one from this perspective. I wonder who’s flying—”

  “Shut up and look at the ground!” the girl hissed at him. “Nobody looks up at the sky here! People think the drones can recognize them.”

  “They can. But I want them to see me—then they can come and get me.”

  “That’s not the point! You’ll stand out like a sore thumb, gawking there like that. People will think there’s something wrong with you.”<
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  “There is. I’m simple, remember?”

  “Shut up and stand over there, in front of that Land Rover.”

  She pointed toward a patch of street blackened by a recent fire. The mangled remains of a jeep had been pushed to one side of the road, and a few little boys were picking through clumps of charred debris.

  “What happened to that?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” She raised the camera. “Look at me, please.” She clicked her camera, frowned at the viewing screen, and lowered it again. “Now back inside. I have to wash and change, and then we can get out of here.”

  Flora left the pilot in the kitchen while she collected some clean clothes and went into the bathroom. With the door locked, she sat on the lid of the disused toilet, sealed with yards of duct tape to keep in the rats, and took the captain’s cell phone and battery from her pocket. The phone had a camera of its own, but she couldn’t have used it in front of the pilot; if he had found out that she had her own means of communication he would simply have taken it from her and made his own arrangements.

  She slipped the memory card out of her camera and paused for a moment, steeling herself: this would have to be done as quickly as possible. Once ready, she reconnected the battery to the cell phone and switched on its power. Humming with frustration, she watched the phone slowly boot itself up and connect to a civilian network on the other side of the wall. Then she inserted the camera’s memory card into the phone’s slot. It was years since she’d held a working cell phone, and this one had an unfamiliar operating system, so it took her three eternal minutes to work out how to attach the photograph to a text message. That done, she assigned the message to the captain’s speed dial number and pressed “Send.” As soon as it was gone, she released the breath she had been holding and dismantled the phone again.

  The weight of the previous twenty-four hours bore down on her now. When she stood up again, she staggered, caught herself, then stripped her clothes off and stepped into the shower stall. She would treat herself to a proper wash this time, no scrimping on water. As she poured scoop after scoop over herself, the cold cleanness revived her, her hair wet down her back. Then she looked at the floor and saw the mingled blood of Adam and Gabriel and Tony running thinly down her legs. It pooled on the tiles and seeped away down the drain.