‘What happens if the American public grab for those Bibles instead of their guns?’ she tried. ‘What happens if you don’t convince them, if they turn their back on you?’
‘I’ll be saddened. They’ll be sorry.’ Offensive and counter-offensive, stroke and masterstroke. Tobacco smoke billowed. ‘Forgive me, I must go. Schedules to keep, things to arrange, miracles to perform.’
‘South Africans to contact.’
Anger flushed and faded beneath the self-control. ‘That’s a nasty bruise you’ve got coming up there.’ He was not offering arnica. Robusto clamped in his teeth, Bell followed his Forrester and headed for the weakening periphery of light and the steel door beyond. He reached it and turned. ‘The South African’s busy dealing with your former husband.’
* * *
The UK
Tide change, the slap and draw of water on Maria Johanna’s sides reaching Kemp as a soft wallowing gurgle in the green retreat of his study-library. Every male needed a den. This was his, a leisure zone with the cross-decor of an ocean packet steamer and Pall Mall club, the lamps calming, chairs deep, the shelves lined with reference books and eclectic mix of well-travelled reading. If home were the boat, the deep-hued recess – with its portholes and klepto-collection of curiosities – was her heart. It was where he came to think, where he ducked to hide, holed up, when Krista left, when the weather turned. Memories and objects accumulated here; a wife and daughter had vanished from here.
The satellite channel was mute on the widescreen, the coffee cold, as he slouched in the recliner and talked by speaker-phone with the Colonel. Sitting comfortably. More so than Krista in captivity, if she were alive. The opposition had a habit of tying up loose ends, of silencing both critics and Federal Agents. It was how they maintained omertà, ensured momentum. Their attention to detail was commendable; he only hoped it would extend to him. They would have observed his return to London, would be scanning police frequencies, trawling their contacts, making preparations to prove a point, mount an operation. And back home, somewhere in South Africa, a grieving and bitter tycoon might give his assent and wait for news of implementation. It was up to Kemp to disappoint. A long shot, but one that aimed to remove a limb or take off the head. Disrupt the enemy’s intentions in London and it could undermine its activities, thwart its ambitions, in LA; achieve a tactical success in this theatre and strategic victory across a wider spectrum was in prospect. Or Aubyn St Clair was wrong: Denys Krige could be nothing more than an anguished father without axe or ability to grind any city into a racial quagmire. Then again, St Clair might be right, the millionaire businessman capable of exacting revenge on an epic scale, of lashing out in defence or offence. His South African emissary had escaped capture, yet the malign elves who aided his endeavour, who scampered around lighting the fires and murdering the illegal Somali immigrants, remained in play. They would show eventually. Either way, Krista was in peril, lost. Everyone was at a loss.
He listened to the Colonel, heard the German talk of the European dimension, of the far right groups hovering to alight on the shit thrown up by interracial conflict. Battle of the century, and few extremists wanted to miss it, to absent themselves from the chance to regale their grandchildren with tales from the frontline, the story of how the West was reworked, re-won. Tide change. He and the officers of MI5 had as much chance of rolling them back as reversing water flow beneath the grain-barge hull of the Maria Johanna. As much chance as Scotland Yard had in tracing a serial murderer who seemed to have gone to ground.
‘So, things are still critical, ja? Josh, at least we’re in business.’
The Colonel would always be in business. The only feature clean, swept, in his life was the comms link, and even that was being monitored by concerned kin at Thames House. Kemp tried the coffee, grimaced and set the mug down. ‘It’s just I’ve got a foot in America, the other in the UK, and my balls hanging somewhere in the middle. I can think of more comfortable positions.’
‘But none more challenging.’ A nicotine chuckle from the tower block in Dessau.
‘If you put it like that.’
‘Matters have come to a head.’ Matters were going tits-up. ‘Makes it easier to identify the farm-belt Führers, the fuckers behind the madness, the neo-Nazi disks and newsletters, the training camps, those who took Krista. We have a fight on our hands, friend, a global conflict.’
No doubt about it. And the adversary had the advantage, had initiated the firing sequence, set the fuse to the detonator, would rush to seize the aftermath. On the streets of the capital, the authorities went for the paramilitary approach – to reassure the people, themselves – believed that buzzwords and plastic bullets could corral opinion back onto the tightrope. Quite an act, devoid of a safety net. Operators from 14 Intelligence Company, the ‘Det’, the Army’s undercover surveillance unit, had been redeployed from Northern Ireland to watch known troublemakers and proto-terrorists; baton rounds were distributed like candy to hard-pressed police units. It was a little-known fact that anti-riot munitions used in Belfast were of a different order, a higher velocity, than those sold to overseas clients. If they could wind or bruise a Paddy, they were capable of dropping an average urban looter. All part of the government’s normalization procedure. It wanted to calm, to reassure. But things were far from normal, a chasm from reassuring. Outbursts of violence spluttered across the map, the A–Z of improvised cruelty and pathological lawlessness breaking out and breaking in to every facet of city life. Ethnic minicab drivers set alight, school playgrounds turned to tribal war zones, armed response units ambushed, society ruptured and bleeding from shopping mall to housing project. Perhaps it was acceleration of the inevitable, an indication of the future, of irreversible urban decline. Enter Josh Kemp – hard man, pacifier. Or merely the dummy.
‘Carnival is proceeding? In this climate? What is this – a consolation prize for anyone who hasn’t caused enough damage in the past three months?’
No answer. There was no answer.
‘It’ll be a magnet for every crazy fascist on the continent, for every black with a grudge and a rock to throw. Understand me?’
‘Perfectly, even in English.’
‘No joke, Josh.’ Frustration had replaced the rough jocularity. ‘Your authorities cannot be serious.’
‘They’re sure as hell scared.’ It was why they applied the gloss of stability over the glow of burning buildings. ‘Damned if they do, doomed if they don’t. Simply trying to please everyone.’
‘And pissing on them instead. They should be in the Bundestag.’
‘There’s a certain logic –’
‘Not to me,’ came the interruption. ‘I should know. I’ve worked for the losing team all my life.’
‘Your experience is noted. But advisers in high places believe floats and steel bands, music and marijuana, will contribute to the peace, illustrate the difference between us and the United States, London and LA. Argument goes there’s a need for festivity after what’s gone down.’
‘There’s no need for suicide.’
Kemp aimed, mimed, a shrug at the speaker. ‘When you’re at a loss, you turn to something radical.’
‘Convince the residents of Notting Hill when bad blood switches to their own blood. I tell you, Josh, there are safer ways to draw the poison, attract the enemy.’
‘Special Branch and Five are mounting raids right up to the wire; there’ll be more police and stewards than dancers.’
‘Cosmetic.’
He conceded graciously. ‘Yeah.’ The birth canal of most politicians, national or local, was alimentary. Unsurprising their decisions stank.
A sigh that crackled down the line. ‘Today, they bury their heads. Tomorrow they’ll be burying bodies.’
‘German or Chinese proverb?’
‘Universal. And it’s the truth. What’s the latest on America?’
‘Depressing.’ The situation warranted a second barrel. ‘Desperate.’
Azania had things sewn up, wired up; five buildings Downtown packed with explosives, fuel-air additives and several thousand hostages. If he got bored, annoyed, decided to sneeze, the place would blow. If he grew restless, suspicious, he could spray brickwork and human remains out to a radius of three miles. It commanded respect, demanded attention. There was a lot of heart and soul, enough spleen, to go around. The probing attacks along Wilshire, the wildfire runs through Koreatown, the headlong dash for the coast, had merely been feints as the Tigers consolidated. There they sat, an inflamed core of instability, a metaphor, a focus for division and hostility. That it was part of a greater plan, a stage in the process of decay and national evisceration, was not in doubt. The behaviour of the mainstream and slipstream, of the respectable or disaffected, the fellow militants, the response of the far right-far white, were less decipherable. A balancing act. Many argued the country was in freefall, had already slipped to terminal velocity. It would take Britain with it.
Kemp completed his summary. ‘The Forresters are a tight outfit. Feds haven’t got much from the two I bounced.’
‘Meine Ehre heisst Treue.’ My honour is loyalty. The old SS motto. Spoken like a true autocrat.
‘Discipline and esprit de corps. Distinguishes them from conventional madmen, the usual suspects. But we recognized that all along.’ It could either help or harm Krista. He preferred not to hazard a guess.
‘Their European cousins might be softer.’
