‘You got it.’
‘Broadcast units ready?’
‘As they’ll ever be.’
‘Who said live media never lies?’ General laughter, some hugs and high-fives, a gradual dispersal to the outlying rooms. ‘I wish you luck, brothers and sisters. We’re part of a greater cause.’
Some had already contributed, sacrificed their lives. It was one way to raise the stakes, to increase the value of the reward and the cost of failure. His Tiger had perished in London, had fallen in the line of duty and in a volley of shots that ricocheted from street to political establishment. A neat resolution, a multiplier effect. Tempo and groundswell grew. Inciting the complacent to act, the angry to react, required finesse, an occasional fatality. The black brother was down – it was the only detail demanded. In London and Los Angeles, throughout Britain and the United States, Azania’s people would seek vengeance for the slain. His units sat quiet as the Zulu impis had done, crouching low on their cow-hide shields in the grass and dead ground, stabbing assegais sharp and ready at their sides. With one shout, they would leap up, begin to advance. His Tigers were the vanguard. They could wash their spears in the blood of the enemy, drink from the split gallbladders of the vanquished.
‘Incoming!’
Confusion and shouts, the anarchic cacophony of a raid. LAPD never asked politely. Azania was depending on it. He stood immutable in the storm – his eyes open within the eye – the mansion engulfed by the multiple din of flash-bangs, battering rams and the forced entry of paramilitary weight. Screams, shots and the bitter taste of smoke and lachrymatories converged. He took it in, breathed deep. Pure satisfaction. A raid on a church minister was regrettable; a raid on a black preacher and politician with his kind of following was suicidal. He was seized, searched, cuffed and dragged towards an exit shrouded in banks of CS as dense as nitrogen cloud. Fresh air lay beyond, the oxygen of publicity. He began to sing a hymn, defiant and loud, was joined by others, a mass voice choir of protest. There was applause outside, then chants and cheers, the onlookers erupting into accompaniment. Unarmed, a teenager threw himself at an officer, and was beaten ferociously to the ground. A middle-aged woman ran to join the Reverend, and was knocked unconscious. There was pandemonium, the urgency, immediacy, of hand-held cameras, the rapidity of close-ups and cut-aways. Everything recorded. Put away your swords… Azania’s face was bleeding, the red rivulets splashing his white collar. An image of suffering, a picture ready for syndication. He called out to his people, was pulled away to the police carrier. The head ducked, the body disappeared. Signal given.
* * *
The UK
She had heard the child laugh at her, then the embarrassment of its parent. In every supermarket, every situation, the stares, the whispers, filtered to her consciousness. At least it was honest. There was little point, scant chance, in hiding her disfigurement. To disguise it would be to deny what happened to Hugh and Freddie, to her friends; to ignore it would be to forget. She could never do that, never forgive. Sophie – the freak. People could not help themselves; pity and voyeurism were part of the human condition. As was loathing. The pain of loss, of the operations, the skin grafts, had eaten her away, hollowed her out. Nothing left to give, nothing left to lose. Just emptiness, a detachment that allowed her to function, to keep apart, to pretend to those who cared that she was looking to the future, looking forward. With one eye. You seem so much better, they would murmur. If only they knew. You seem to be coping, they mumbled. If only they guessed. It was good that infants ran, that kids giggled nervously. She wanted them to understand loss, precariousness, wanted them to see their society reflected back in the bruising and livid scar tissue. This was their future, their country. It was cut up and violated before they even got there.
Lights green, but the traffic slowed. A tribe of seven coloured and baggy-panted youths had crossed in front, cowled, menacing, peering into car windows. Psychological warfare, nonchalant terrorism. Everyone’s scared of them. Words from the dinner party echoed in her brain. The voice could have been Hugh’s, might have belonged to Simon or Gregory. Too hard to tell; death played with memories. Citizens stayed mute in their cars, mute throughout the country, their heads bound, hands tied. A teenager broke off the wing-mirror of a Citroën, gave a clenched fist salute. Power to the streets. The driver sat still, avoided eye contact. Impotent rage, stifled pride, were an improvement on a beating. One had to expect, had to accept. This was urban living, the city in which Brixton was sited, the metropolis to which police were being emergency-bussed from across the country. A wing-mirror did not matter, hardly featured. Besides, insurance would pay. Sophie swallowed the scream, checked the central locking. They had no right, one part of her brain shouted. They have every right, another responded. The meek never inherited. Dry tears pricked in the corner of her single eye, bitterness welling. Things were happening, and few wished to be reminded. People dwelt yards from household rats and ignored the signs; people walked yards from filth and murder and side-stepped reality. She could no longer dodge, would no longer conceal.
Catford. It was not an area she had visited before, not an area she would care to visit again. A district of base estates and hungry eyes. Poverty was prioritized, money tipped into betting shops, amphetamines and satellite TV, penury pleaded while offspring multiplied. They could not help themselves, so helped themselves. Decay as a lifestyle choice. She had the address. It came after the message with the bouquet of flowers in hospital, after her telephone call and the meeting in a quiet Fulham pub. She appreciated their interest. They could read her thoughts, empathize with her agony; their goals were unambiguous. Where there was confusion, there was now clarity. She smiled, had not done so for a while. That was encouraging. The Security Services, the police, were unlikely to guess what was in train, where she was heading. She was merely the victim of crime, witness to a massacre. First the injury, and then the insult. Questioned and discarded. Already, she was out of the headlines, kept in an open file. There she would stay, forgotten, a footnote, as new stories gripped the nation and seized the front page. It was time she snatched it back.
The radio news had started. She turned up the volume, let the checklist of disorder, the litany of unpleasantness, fill the car, invade her mind. Rioting in Brixton, Camberwell Green and Peckham continued, provincial outbreaks catching and holding in Bristol and Birmingham. Civic pride in action. Politicians and police chiefs called for calm. They always did, always wrung their hands, apologized, made excuses where there were none. They were terrified of the underclass; the underclass were terrified of no one. Minority status entitled a man to pick up a knife, a bottle, a gun; allowed him to enter a house and a life, to gut a family, gave him the right to plead provocation, to stress alienation. She was not in that category, would not bother to plead. Sophie – the oddity – was perfectly calm. She rotated the wheel. An armed man had been shot dead by police marksmen. Good. Greater violence had ensued. Typical. Take the right at the fish and chip shop.
The radio announcer was monotone-grave, had floated into a new topic, the sudden and pestilential arrival of the racist Evolution computer supervirus. Its main theme: in pre-history, natural selection ensured that lesser species such as the Robusts or Neanderthals died out; in present times, state intervention, welfare, food stamps, Medicare, robbery, IHOPS and affirmative action ensured survival of the inferior branches. Bigotry at the touch of a keypad. Debate followed, down-the-line interviews with on-the-fence nobodies. Sophie shook her head. Imbeciles.
Wind threw up the summer dust, smearing the vicinity a subtler shade of grim. A child gambolled in dog shit, men with cash and cellphones headed for a bar, laid bets or collected unemployment benefit. Napoleon had been wrong. Britain was a nation of shoplifters. Drive past the pub. She scanned the frontage, took in the blacked-out, dirt-infected windows, the sly glances of locals with private lives and long records. They would keep their distance, would race shrieking from her if she smiled. Deformity had its advantages. She was the Joker, she was anyone who sought to avenge. Some might see her point of view. She wondered if Kemp, the MI5 officer who had visited her in hospital, would be among them. He had a strength to him, a wisdom that came from disappointment and bankrupt dreams, from loss. It was why they could talk, why she had almost responded to the compassion in his eyes, the battered virility of his face. Another time, they could have been friends; different conditions, she would not be driving to a ragged terrace of houses wedged in the cramped lee of a Catford tenement. Circumstances had changed from when she was a wife, a young mother, from when she was alive. She pulled over, easing the car into a bay adjacent to a Transit van and a heap of cannibalized auto parts. A radio was playing, a cat trotted across in welcome and pushed itself indulgently against her denims. Normality. What she intended was far from normal. Someone had to make a stand, drive home a point. Catharsis was needed.
* * *
It wouldn’t do, wouldn’t do at all. He sat in the café, picking at a slice of lemon cake, chasing crumbs of muddled thought around his brain. Pigeons crowded a toddler with a glutinous Danish in his hand; a gaggle of hormonal teenagers shrieked in play and foreplay from a rowing-boat on the lake. Not long before stub-peckers moved inexpertly between fleshy inner-city thighs, he brooded. Not long before he would find new distraction, create fresh incident to quell his disappointment. Damn it, his explosive package had been found, his grand summer statement reduced to the level of monosyllable in the unfolding story of London’s cataclysm. Buildings were burning from Brixton to Harlesden, looting was pandemic, shoot-outs echoing through council estates and shopping malls, and he held the current lowly status of interested observer. He broke off a piece of cake, pulped it and licked his fingers. A mother glared at him. You have no idea, lady, no idea. Far away on the Embankment, a siren whooped. The sound was a fixture as recognizable as black cabs, city buses, as accepted and acceptable as headless torsos wallowing in the Thames. He could do better than that. A marble-coated spaniel came and snuffled its way around his feet, truffle-hunting for scraps. It was the way police worked. He snapped his leg forward, kicked it in the head. Always surprise, always strike from the flank. The dog started, whimpered and fled, its owner engrossed in conversation, too busy to see. They were all too busy. He drank from the plastic bottle of mineral water, aware of being invisible, of being peripheral. A life in the day of Battersea Park. There was no reason why they should suspect. He could shear off a gardener’s ears, defecate from the roof of the boathouse, decorate the Peace Pagoda with body parts, mutilate the animals in the small zoo, go have a cappuccino. They still would not notice. Standards were definitely slipping. He would gatecrash the forum, interrupt the gossip, force them to wake up, sit up, to comprehend. A special needs youngster leered at him, its mouth pulled back above an ice-cream. I am available for children’s parties, he thought. It was a gift to make someone laugh. Smoke rose on the horizon. He could improve on the theme of polluting the atmosphere, plant more than a single bomb, create more havoc than multiculturalism could ever absorb. His aims were limitless. Watch, learn. The pigeons fluttered down again, were pecking at his mind.
* * *
The USA
Mary hummed gently to herself and swung the plastic bag. Sure she was poor, but the sun shone, the sea was close, and Miss Krista had given her work and found her more with friends along the street. Good times amid the bad. She and Jesus were more settled, her sister was receiving proper medical attention, and the cheque sent from Chicago by the grateful stranger she had saved would help slow any fall from unemployment to outright beggary. Jobs – already scarce – were drying up, the hustlers and unoccupied fighting and fretful beneath a recession and the August heat. Here, there was no such things as a soft landing, no such thing as a cute ending. Political overtones, ghetto undercurrents, laced every incident, covered the graffiti walls of South Central and the Hood. This was the backdrop. She had thought of rejecting the money, for there was pride, dignity, to consider. But there was also a baby son and hunger. She accepted the offer gratefully, easily. It was security she barely comprehended, a situation as confusing as the evening gunfire and morning reports. She would put her faith in God and optimism. It had worked before, had carried her from the sunken depression of the Delta to the sunlit despair of Los Angeles. And she was alive.
News travelled, rumours troubled. She had heard that the black agitator Reverend Azania had been arrested. Investigation ongoing, they said. Word had it a white conspiracy was underway, the next that a pre-emptive strike by African-Americans was planned. Madness everywhere. Anticipation created its own momentum, expectation its own fulfilment. She tried to understand, but the nuances of intolerance were beyond her scope. Why, when a fire started, it was black and white firefighters who charged in together to douse the flames; when America was threatened, it was black and white who stood as brothers, in common cause, and defended liberty. Some kind of freedom, the sort that made her block her ears at night, the sort that made her duck and scurry for natural cover as she crossed a street. Destructiveness was a mystery, disorder a riddle that played around her. She would teach Jesus to be law-abiding, to grow up responsible, compassionate, to respect the Lord and the blues. He would never join a gang, not her Jesus.
She strolled along the sidewalk, the warm ocean light infiltrating every aspect of Playa del Rey, chasing off shadows, opening her soul. Inland was behind her, the dark stain of Inglewood a mile off – perhaps a thousand – and invisible up Manchester Boulevard. She had left it for the morning, could wash it from her mind, travelling from a ghetto she hated to an enclave she cherished. A gannet threw wide its throat and rasped greedily from atop a wall. He was a regular on the barbecue circuit. She grinned at the bird, her face slipping to a frown as her gaze shifted to a car parked unobtrusively at the corner of her vision field. It had two occupants, both white, each in identical shades and short-sleeved clothing. They were watching – the street, her, the house of her employer. There was professionalism in the casualness, tangible menace in the hidden eyes, in the basic act of holding a Styrofoam cup to the lips, of eating a sandwich. A snapshot. Enough to register danger. She bit her lip, turned her head away in search of camouflage, to escape attention. It wasn’t working. They could see, even if she ran, even if she burrowed.
She felt the heat on her neck, the fear flushing in a sweat between her shoulder blades. Their energy was directed, pursued her. Her pace quickened. She could have reassured herself, scolded her imagination, but it would be a deceit. The men were real – for real – the dread they threw up a vestige of that quiet night in the Deep South when the demons came in clown robes and goatee masks to scare her from a state of sleep, frighten her from the state of Mississippi. Their kind were back; the arsenals and the kerosene crosses would be close to hand.
Blindly, she tottered to the front door, clumsily inserting the key and propelling her way through. She was inside, breathing hard, weaning herself from slow-burn panic to surface composure. Then she could think what to do, who to tell, decide where the balance lay between borderline madness and trusting her instincts. Close call.
‘Mary, I heard the door slam.’ Kemp was on the landing, preparing to descend. ‘You’re shaking. Are you okay? Have you been attacked?’
She was going to fake brave, intended to deny. It was so shaming to be spooked by post-traumatic stress, by the mere sight of a parked-up car. But the tears were flooding, drawn out by his concern and the osmosis effect of a comforting shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Kemp … I’m sorry.’
He led her through to the lounge, seated her gently, found a tissue and went to switch on the kettle. She had liked him from the moment he arrived as house-guest, colleague and sometime husband of Miss Krista. He carried insight, possessed the same humour, strength and sensitivity as his ex-wife. It was possibly why they married, probably why they split. But he was a good man, Mary assured herself between sniffs.
Kemp reappeared with a mug. ‘There’d be a nuclear explosion, and the Brits would still drink tea before dealing with it.’
She took it, her eyes drying in the steam. ‘Ah’m jus’ bein’ stupid, Mister Kemp. Simple Mississippi girl frightenin’ herself over nothin’.’
‘I doubt it. You want to tell me?’ His eyes were earnest, face serious. So she talked, apologetically at first, shyly, spoke of the state of her district, the state of the nation, the aura emanated by the men in the car, the psychic prickle-anxiety in her bones.
‘They intend evil,’ she stated flatly.
He nodded. ‘The future ain’t what it used to be.’
‘Ah ain’t sure there is no future no more.’ The sobs returned, choked off by self-control and a gulp of tea.
‘That’s what I thought when Emmy died.’ The little two-year-old girl who bopped around the room to ‘The Bare Necessities’, the six-year-old who made him the world’s biggest birthday card, the ten-year-old who adored dogs, horses and laughter, the teenager who loved life and had her brains shot out. It was why he was obligated to lessen the cruelty for others. ‘I was wrong. Totally wrong. We’ve simply got to be noisier about it.’
‘I didn’t think you’d believe me.’
He was trying the telephone, failing to contact Krista. A second call, this time to the Bureau. ‘Kemp. We could be dealing with a shadow at the house.’ He listened and replaced the handset. ‘Mary, if you believe it, I believe it. Do you feel like doing me a favour?’
Five minutes later, Mary was in the front yard sweeping. Ten minutes later, Kemp had exited the basement, lowered himself into the rear of the property below and crawled out to the beach. He carried a camera and firearm. A fast sprint, a leopard-clamber over fencing, and he was creeping from a blind-side towards the vehicle. Mary was clearly visible, under surveillance. She was doing well, brushing with a stout broom and heavy-duty determination. The enemy were deployed, harvesting for intelligence or shaping for a hit. It meant the location was high value; it meant Krista was prioritized, featured on the list. He closed in silently.
CHAPTER 13
The USA
The topography had not changed, LA held the same grid-dreariness, drab sameness of yesterday and the day before. But Krista might as well have clicked her shoes and been transported. It was a parallel, less recognizable universe, a city locked in a depression that preceded typhoon. She adjusted the Chevrolet’s air-conditioning and lit a cigarette. Fuck, FBI Special Agent Althouse smoking again. Too damn bad. She felt vulnerable, Godiva-naked, without Fletcher Wood or the calm British familiarity of her ex-husband Josh beside her. It was not a good time to be travelling alone or in a crowd, armed or unarmed, certainly a bad choice to be heading Downtown. The authorities – whites – were hardly popular with large sections of the community, less so since the public arrest of Reverend Al Azania. Thank God for the range practice. Regulars, professionals, government servants, were jumpy, staying away or in their offices, their watering-holes were dry, their bistros steel-shuttered and bunkered down to weather what was coming. A sense of crisis prevailed; sense itself was dissipating fast. And she was going for a face-to-face, a quality moment, with the sole individual who could stall or launch the insurrection. Command performance. Azania was orchestrating events, conducting everyone. Even she was dancing to his baton, had responded to his call. He wanted her there, had assigned a hidden role. Nice to be valued. The tobacco smoke tasted acrid, filtered through the trepidation lodged in her throat. She steered the car into Temple Street.
