Rainbow Bridge (33 page)

‘Okay, officer, lead the way. Excuse me, Rox, catch you later.’

She led him across the Courtyard, and through a door in the tall hoarding that hid the façade of the South Wing. In a charred ground-floor corridor, smoke-stained and still daubed with Republic of Europe graffiti, grief suddenly choked him. Oh memories that have no home on earth, oh places where you can’t return. The policewoman pushed opened a door that was still on its hinges and stood back.

‘I’ll be outside, sir. I’ll knock if anyone comes.’

The heavy outer shutters must have been in place here when the fire raged. They’d been opened or removed since. In the dimness made by the hoardings outside he saw window-glass crossed by withered tape, filing cabinets overturned; trophy display cases empty. Broken screens, rifled drawers. He must be in Allie’s new office, which he’d never actually seen. The Second Chamber refit had been completed when he was under house arrest. They’d moved the red voicephone from the old Office upstairs. He looked at the handset for what seemed a long time before he picked it up. If the dishes were still on the roof, if the wiring in this wing was intact, the person on the other end would be speaking from Washington DC.

from a land lost as Atlantis

‘Hallo?’

‘Hi, Ax. Seems like you had a long walk, am I interrupting something?’

‘No, no.’ Ax sat down at the blackened desk, his blood thundering. ‘
Fred?
’

‘Can you talk, Ax? I’ve things to tell you.’

‘I’m good to talk.’

A deep sigh. ‘I think I can talk. D’you remember the one time you were in the Oval Office? When we did the national broadcast, after the LA quake and the A-team, and Fio and Sage refused to turn up? You said I should have the Civil Flag behind my desk, and I said, no, Old Glory is right, this is war, we are at war, against no human enemy. They’re about kill me, very soon.’

‘I remember. Fred, what happened to you? We know nothing—’

‘You’ll hear that I took my own life, or I stopped an assassin’s bullet. I hope it’s the latter, but scandalising my name isn’t going to worry the guys running this administration. Maybe you won’t hear anything. I’ll be gone, but Fred Eiffrich will serve out his term, smile on the tv, retire to his dude ranch. I sometimes thing that what Fiorinda dreaded has already happened and there’s nothing left but nightmare. It’s a strange world now. They were going to build another Neurobomb. I couldn’t allow that so I let the Chinese in. I thought, hell, at least I’ll have protection from the devils who screwed me over… I was wrong. I’ve been told the problem is the Chinese don’t trust me. How can they trust a guy who betrayed his own country?’

The voice was strained and low, but he knew it. A vanished reality tried to reform, a
profound
dislocation. Just a year ago Ax’s mighty ally had been gearing up for his second-term election, damaged by the same evil scandal that had engulfed Ax Preston and Sage Pender, and led to the Triumvirate’s house-arrest—

No, he thought, don’t do this to me.

‘You still there, Ax?

—Fred with a glass of bourbon between his hands, by the summer fireplace in the study at Bellevue, in the dying heat of evening, convincing me to come back.

‘I’m still here.’

‘And answering your phone. Remember when I sent you all those e-mails and you didn’t answer a single one? Got Sage to seal them up again and bounce ’em?’

‘I’d resigned.’

‘I knew you’d change sides,’ sighed the voice. ‘I left that door open for you, when we talked about China. You did the right thing.’

You warned me you might have to cut a deal, and I’d better go belly-up at once if that happened. I don’t know that I
changed sides
—

But it’s all over, all gone.

‘Yeah.’

‘You know what the Neurobomb is, Ax. You understand we’ve only had a taste of that literal hell. I saved the USA from damnation, the only way I knew how. And they call me an
opportunist
. That’s a slimy word. The best thing I ever did will get me set down as a coward and traitor, but that’s okay. I love my country. Love doesn’t win you glory, Ax. Love is not a victory march, no parade, love is hard.’

‘I know that.’

Who can refuse the dead, when they return? He’d have to hang onto this phone for as long as it took, or until the policewoman knocked—

‘I guess you do. Look, this is not a social call. I’ve been racking my brains for how I could prove this is really Fred Eiffrich, but anything can be faked, so just listen. You know Rufus O’Niall had a divorced wife and children, from a second marriage? After the liaison with Fiorinda’s mother and her sister? They lived in the Seychelles?’

‘Yes.’

‘She’s had them killed. The mother, the two teenagers and the youngest child, a girl eleven years old. The estate was a fortress, it was penetrated and the whole household massacred. Openly assassinated, my guys say, no attempt to disguise it, and the children’s heads taken. This happened within the last month.’

‘Okay,’ said Ax. ‘That’s…news.’

‘I remember the first time I paid attention to the rockstar Ché Guevara. You were speaking at the Flood Countries conference, about the USA. You backed it with Thucydides, verbatim, in the original, and then kindly translated for us.
Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a law of their nature wherever they can rule they will. This law was not made by us, and we are not the first who have acted upon it; we did but inherit it, and shall bequeath it to all time
… True words, fair judgment, and you loved the Classics: you got to me. So then—’

Silence. A hunted man, thousands of miles away, listened for pursuit.

‘I have to sign off. Say hi to the big guy for me. And Fiorinda, well, you know how I feel about your gallant lady. Keep her safe, if you can.’ A peremptory throat-clearing, and Fred was in the room with him, about to say something rash. ‘I’ll pray to Mary my Mother, and her Son the crucified, the servant king, that you guys come through. Will you pray for me, Ax?’

‘Yes.’

He listened for clicks and whirrs; of course he heard none. He set the handset in its cradle. Was that a voiceprint talking? I don’t think so. Athens has fallen, Rome’s majesty is in the dust. I think that was Fred Eiffrich, and I think he’s gone now… Took the children’s heads, oooh fuck. So it’s not over. He thought of a tiny baby girl and her mother back in Cornwall, and all the mysteries surrounding a person known as
Elder Sister
. But you don’t know how we’re placed, Fred (was that really you?). We didn’t tell you everything. The policewoman knocked. No one had come by, but she was uneasy. Mr Preston shouldn’t be out of sight for so long. He returned to the funerary rites. He was ashamed now of how he’d treated Rox, and wanted to give hir a kind word. It was too late, s/he’d left.

The Shield Ring

Diamonds and Rust

The dining room struck a chill, the polished pedestal table invoking family meals of choking solemnity: mother, father and daughter lost in the wastes of mahogany. The sideboard, the ranks of wine-glasses, the dead stillness. Chip and Fiorinda exchanged a shudder. There was something here they had fled from, on different trajectories, suburban Manchester, haunted Neasden; terrible hours of childhood. Cosoleth muttered, sensing her mother’s unease through baby dreams. Fiorinda rubbed her cheek against the baby’s head, now decorated by a fuzz of black curls, ssh, ssh—

‘I’ll take her out in the garden,’ offered Chip, undertone; with alacrity.

‘You will not. I
need
this baby.’

Sage was getting the worst of it. Dian Buckley’s father had monopolised him since they turned up at the door: giving out the life-story. Mid-rank professional golfer, second career in leisure management. Semi-retired with a consultancy now, getting by despite the obstacles the Occupation put in his way. It’s no joke living within twenty miles of Ground Zero. By Ground Zero Mr Buckley meant Rivermead. There was no softening towards the liberators in this house. Sage listened patiently. He’d dressed for the occasion—they were all dressed up—in a dark suit, with the new long jacket look that flattered his rangy height. A month in Cornwall had warmed his white skin, the Reich’s blue-eyed rock god returns. Then you see the difference, the changes, yes, it’s this mission but oh, he’s
older
—

Lance Buckley (they’d done the introductions, it was Lance and Mimi) talked as if he dared not stop. He needn’t have worried. Nobody was going to mention Dian’s fall from grace, how she’d served the Second Chamber regime; or criticise her personal way of dealing with the invasion. We’ve all been near enough to there, we’re here to remember our favoured mediababe. Mrs Buckley came in, bird-legs buckling, with a large gilt-framed tray, which she set across a corner of the table. He was tall and fit, she was a soft apple on fragile little stilts. ‘Excuse me serving you myself. It’s Teresa’s afternoon off.’

They sipped a scalding, greyish liquid Mimi called
real coffee
, and nibbled home-made biscuits that tasted of lard. Dian had come home on January the fifteenth, not having made it back to Rexborough for Christmas or New Year. ‘She was ill,’ said the mother. ‘She was
very
ill, I knew that at once. I put her to bed, I called the doctor. She said it was a viral pneumonia, but I could tell she was puzzled. I said does that mean hospitalisation.’

Mr Buckley—Lance—snorted, and shook his head.

‘Dr Pradesh said no, better keep her at home. I nursed her—’

‘
We
nursed her.’

‘Yes, love. We nursed her, and in a week she was dead.’

‘It’s suspicious,’ put in the father, grimly. ‘I call it suspicious, and I’m pursuing it. I will have justice. I don’t think they knew who they were playing with.’

‘You both knew about Dian’s relationship with Wang Xili, Mrs Buckley?’

‘Mimi, Mr Pender,’ she reminded him. ‘It’s Jemima, but I answer to Mimi. Oh yes. She’d told us the General was her boyfriend. We didn’t like it—’ She glanced at her husband. ‘But we knew she was lucky. Seemed to be lucky. She’d made some bad choices, but she’d got over it, and we respected that. She always wanted to get ahead, be at the forefront, whatever was happening. Our Dian was a survivor.’

‘She would
always
get ahead,’ repeated the father. ‘She followed the money.’

The visitors nodded, straight faces. Sage moved on.

‘And when she died—?’

A sudden pall fell over the best china, a darkness over the accolade of this personal visit from the Reich royalty, whom Dian had once counted as friends. ‘She died in her sleep,’ said Mimi, through stiff lips. ‘Not really sleep, it was a coma. We’d called an ambulance but they wouldn’t come, they wouldn’t take her.’

‘You have to notify a death,’ said the father. ‘I wish to God we hadn’t. I wish we hadn’t called the f—, the ambulance service.
That’s
how they knew.’

‘It can’t be helped,’ said Mimi, ‘don’t get upset, Lance.’

‘We should have buried her ourselves, beside Budgie… Budgie was her dog, she loved that dog. They were listening on our line. I should have known.’

‘They were here very quickly. They had papers, it was official. They took her away, they said it was a public health measure, an unknown strain. They took swabs from us, too. We couldn’t say no. We haven’t had any satisfaction since.’

‘I’m pursuing it. I’ll take it to the Court of Human Rights.’

The father was still fighting, they both knew there was no redress. Their daughter had come home sick from her position at the forefront, died in days from a mystery illness, the Chinese had taken her body away. End of story, as far as the 2
^nd
AMID army was concerned. But, very strangely, it was not the end of the story of what had happened in this house. Cosoleth the unpredictable opened her eyes, gazed around with gentle calm, murmured eh, eh, and turned her head to gum the edge of the baby sling. The visitors offered the silence that was all they could give—

‘Would you like us to see her room?’ asked Fiorinda at last.

‘If you would.’ Lance jumped up, trim and active sixty-something. They could guess how he would groom the garden, pursue his hobbies restlessly, while Mimi disappeared into her depleted kitchen; he would never have enough to do.

‘She was very ill,’ said Mimi, breathing a little quickly, as they went up the Crisis-shabby, achingly clean and pastel stairs. ‘So I put her to bed. Nothing had ever happened before, not a cold spot. The house was only ten years old when we moved in, thirty years ago. The land was arable before that, back to mediaeval times, Lance has looked it up. She brought something with her, that’s all we can think.’

The room was a shrine to which the goddess had often returned. There were elements of childhood, pony rosettes, an unexpected and touching collection of china fairies, a long-outdated music centre. But there were adult trophies too, awards, a wafer-thin 3D laptop on the desk, a bookcase where Dian’s own works fought for space with pop-culture reference and her school textbooks. The bed was full-sized, for tall Dian, the coverlet a fashion item; metallic indigo, with a woven pattern of wheels and stars. She still
lived
here, they thought. It was a shock, something they had never guessed about the great Dian Buckley, maker and breaker of rock gods.