Havoc (13 page)

‘Why not?' He sat on the bed. ‘The guy's dead, right?'

I nearly thumped him. I would have if he hadn't been stooped over with the gunshot
wound. I grabbed the collar of the jacket and hissed in his ear, ‘Put it down.'

‘Hey! Take it easy—injured person here. Sorry and all that. I didn't know him, did
I.' He dropped it on the bed and let it slide onto the floor, then he smoothed his
hair in the mirror and gave me a cool stare.

‘You know what they say about you over the river? Can't rile him, they say. Never
loses it, they say. But look at you now.' He flicked open his fingers like a mini
explosion.

‘Shut up. Get dressed.'

I picked up the jacket and hung it up, then chucked a shirt at him. In the end, we
settled on jeans, T-shirts and a couple of Lou's expensive cotton shirts. Also a
dark jacket for me and a denim one for Sandor. We looked smart and unremarkable,
which was exactly how we needed to look.

Lanya, on the other hand, looked amazing. Fyffe had given her some black jeans and
a creamy white T-shirt with a wide neck. Also some silver beads and a short, bright
green coat.

‘There,' said Fyffe. ‘That's better. No one's going to ask you for ID looking like
that.'

Lanya gave Fyffe the small Southside bow. ‘Thank you. So much.'

They both turned to Sandor and me. ‘Tidy,' said Fyffe. ‘You'll pass. Now, Sandor
comes with me in the car.'

Sandor looked stunned. ‘You have a car!'

She almost smiled. ‘A small one.'

‘A car!' he crowed.

We took the lift down to the garage where a little green two-seater gleamed in the
shadows. Sandor was instantly in love.

‘It's new,' I said.

Fyffe nodded. ‘It's Dad, trying to say thank you for all the time I've spent looking
after Mum up at the Hills.'

We eased Sandor into the front seat, and Fyffe said to me, ‘If you're looking for
your father, try Sentian. That's supposed to be where the One City people are. But
there'll be soldiers there. If you're back here before five o'clock I can let you
in before Dad gets home.'

I said, ‘Do you want us to come back?'

She looked at me at last. ‘I want a lot of things, and most of them I'm not going
to get. Yes, I want you to come back.' She got in the car and drove off with Sandor.

Lanya and I walked across Clouden Street into the cool shadows of the alleyway opposite.
Lanya said, ‘You don't like to argue with your friends. Why didn't you tell
her you
saved Nomu's life?'

‘What's she going to say? “Why did you bother?”'

‘Why are you so sure an exchange would go wrong?'

‘I'm not. It might go fantastically, perfectly right with happy endings all round.'

‘Hey,' she stopped. ‘Take a breath. This is me you're talking to.'

I kicked a tin can and watched it bounce to the end of the alley and out into bright
sunshine.

‘You're right,' I said. ‘Arguing with friends is dire.'

We walked on, and she said, ‘So, don't. Work out a better way.'

‘What better way? Here's this gift that could break the lockdown, and all we have
to do is threaten to kill someone to get it. Terrific. Do you trust any of the people
in charge to manage an exchange without somebody getting killed? Even our lot? Especially
our lot.'

‘Then we don't ask them,' she said. ‘We ask her.'

I stopped.

‘She owes you, Nik. What if we go back and ask her to help us? To agree to come back
but only once the lockdown is lifted.' She raised an eyebrow. ‘What's the matter?
I think it's a good idea.'

‘A good idea?' I said. ‘It's a freakin' genius idea. You are officially in charge
from now on.'

She grinned and we walked on. She said, ‘We can't exactly row back in broad daylight
and talk to her, and we
still need to find the One City people and tell them about
Frieda's undercover agent. Let's go to Sentian.'

‘Sentian it is,' I said.

‘Good.' She slowed to inspect a line of
Break the Breken!
posters: someone had gone
down the line turning
Breken
into
Banks
on every one. Beneath those was another set
demanding that people
Report Breken Crimes!
but the people with paint had other ideas
and most of those now said
Report Banking Crimes!
A few had been amended to
Support
Breken Crimes!
and one at the end, inevitably, now said
Support Banking Crimes!

Lanya ran her finger along them. ‘Someone's had fun. Why are you so interested in
the people who are leaving for the Dry?'

‘Why do you think they're leaving?'

She raised an eyebrow. ‘Not for business opportunities? You think Frieda's told
them to get out while Operation Havoc creates some unpleasantness over the river?'

‘Or they've told her that they're off for a bit and could she deal with the pest
problem while they're away.'

I looked around, trying to work out where we were. The alleys were a lot grimier
than I remembered: no one had emptied the overflowing skips and rubbish had blown
about and ended up piled in stinking corners and soggy underfoot.

‘Let's go this way,' I said.

We travelled a zigzag of alleyways and short streets until we came to an intersection
leading into Sentinel Parade. To go further was to step into sunlight and scrutiny:
even if the cc-eyes had been vandalised everywhere else, here they would be working.
We had to cross the Parade to get to Sentian.

‘Main Street, Cityside,' I said.

‘Oh!' Lanya looked up and down the Parade. ‘This is what I thought the city would
be like.'

The Parade's tall glass-fronted buildings framed a strip of blue sky that stretched
from Sentinel Bridge all the way to Watch Hill. At pavement level, sandwich bars
and cafes, flower shops, chemists and discreet, up-market money lenders were busy
with their Saturday customers. Above that, the buildings shone, not with sunlight,
but with huge flickering advertisements. A ribbon of breaking news ran along the
bottom of each one.

I pointed over the road to a dark little side street like the one we were standing
in. ‘That's where we're heading.'

‘In a minute,' she said. ‘I want to look.'

She was wide eyed, drinking it all in, and even I was feeling the strangeness of
it, like this was a whole other planet from the one Moldam was on. Lanya nodded up
at the ads moving on the buildings. ‘What are they saying? They want you to buy things.
What things? I don't understand them.'

‘Drugs, mainly,' I said. ‘Pills for everything. Pills for
being worried, pills for
being fat, pills for getting old.'

She watched a few, engrossed. ‘These pills have great side effects,' she said. ‘They
give you many friends and make you rich and beautiful.'

Just then, floating above the street noise, the bells of St John's struck two o'clock
and every ad cut to a blue background followed by the fade-in of the silver crest
of Security and Intelligence. It looked like a blue and silver banner being unfurled
down each side of the Parade. People stopped and looked up at it, as though they
had suddenly become robots waiting for instructions to be beamed at them from on
high.

The first thing we saw was a two-storey tall picture of Nomu together with an announcement
of a memorial service for her at St John's in three days time.

The next thing we saw was a picture of my father.

CHAPTER 17

I read the news ribbon running along the bottom of the image. Lanya nudged me. ‘It's
too fast. What does it say?'

‘Wanted,' I said.

‘Obviously.'

‘Former—' I stopped and frowned at it.

‘For what? For murder?'

‘Close. Former army strategist—'

‘Oh!'

‘Former army strategist turned extremist, Nikolai Stais, is wanted for crimes against
the City. Stais, the secretive head of extremist group One City, is believed to
have ordered the destruction of Moldam Bridge—'

‘What?'

‘—in One City's latest attempt to destroy the peace process. Stais is armed and dangerous
and should not be approached. Reward offered, et cetera…'

‘Wow!' said Lanya. ‘Some story!'

‘Cityside remains committed to the peace process.'

‘Oh, really?'

I stared up at my father's face until it was replaced by someone else on the wanted
list. Where was he? And could any of that be true? Secretive! Tell me about it.

Lanya said, ‘That makes no sense at all.'

I turned back to her. ‘It doesn't have to make sense. But it means he's not going
to be hanging around on some street corner in Sentian waiting for us to find him.'

No one was hanging around on any street corners in Sentian. The place was crawling
with army. Trucks blocked Bridge Street so we navigated the sidestreets instead,
hunting for signs of One City people and slipping sideways into alleys and doorways
when soldiers marched by, which was often. There didn't seem much for them to do—most
of the little shops and cafés were dark, with CLOSED signs on their doors—but I guess
they were there to send a message: Sentian is occupied.

And not only occupied. Also under notice of demolition.

We stopped in front of Brown's and the Bard, a couple of antique bookshops nestled
side by side in Caravall Lane off Bridge Street. My old home-away-from-school in
the city. Inside each bookshop were three ramshackle storeys of tiny rooms and creaking
staircases, dimly lit by narrow
windows and yellow lamplight and lovingly packed
with books: second-hand, third-hand, hundredth-hand books. The interiors of both
shops were unlit now, and wide red stickers were plastered across their front windows
announcing their imminent destruction. All the way up the lane it was the same story:
the whole block was coming down.

The lane was empty of soldiers so I put my nose to the window of Brown's and squinted
into the gloomy interior.

‘These shops have been here for a hundred years,' I said. ‘They can't just pull them
down. I gotta see if he's in there. Wait here a sec.'

‘Who? What are you doing? Nik!'

I shot round the side of Brown's, tried the gate but it was locked so I climbed up
and over it. Lanya threw Fyffe's green coat over the top and followed.

I knocked on the back door, calling, ‘Mr Corman? Are you in there? Mr Corman!'

There was movement inside. The sound of footsteps. The door was opened a crack and
then wider by an old man: a very upright old man, with grey hair, immaculate, and
a suit about fifty years out of date but immaculate also. Mr Corman, proprietor of
Brown's and the Bard.

He opened the door wide and opened his arms too. ‘Nikolai! Come in! Come in!'

A few minutes later, Lanya and I sat in his office among teetering stacks of paper—Mr
Corman spurned
electronic versions of almost everything—and while he made tar-black
coffee on his little gas stove I told Lanya about his two shops.

‘They're like church to some people,' I said. ‘You attend at least once a week, you
keep silence while you're here and you leave feeling like your soul is…I don't know…quiet,
calm, something like that.'

‘And would you be one of these people?' she asked.

‘I have spent a few hours here.'

‘Many hours,' said Mr Corman. ‘Many hours, well spent. In better days.' He put tiny
cups of coffee in front of us, ‘But now—' He gestured out the office door towards
the red-stickered front window. ‘Now we are in harm's way, as you see.'

‘Why are they doing this?' asked Lanya.

‘A rats' nest of extremists, young woman. This is what they say. Sentian has become
a rats' nest of extremists. And how have we earned this description? By asking for
some basic rights. An end to the military rule of our city. Free elections of a civic
authority. A news channel free from political interference. Peacetalks with Southside.
This is all. But this is extremist in the eyes of the authorities.'

‘Are you part of the group called One City?' she asked.

He sipped his coffee and didn't answer.

‘Do you know where Nik's father is?'

He smiled and placed his cup carefully on its tiny
saucer. ‘Ah, the notorious Commander
Stais. I have met him. Some weeks—perhaps eight weeks—ago. He came here, scoping
the terrain, I believe that's what it is called, and I said to him, I knew a boy
once with your name.'

Lanya glanced at me.

‘What did he say?' she asked.

Mr Corman gave that almost shrug of his that, like his accent, we used to make fun
of at school but secretly wished we could perfect—a gesture of shoulders and eyebrows
that was all world-weariness and sophistication.

‘I think he did not know what to say. He asked me what books you read. I said, “But
you must ask him yourself!”'

That didn't seem a wildly likely thing to happen.

‘Have you seen him since then?' I asked.

He shook his head and held up a long, crooked finger. ‘I will tell you this.' He
looked at us with great seriousness. ‘You should leave Sentian—'

Furious pounding on the front door startled us. Mr Corman stood up but motioned us
to stay put. ‘I will see. You must stay.'

More pounding.

‘Stay!' he said again.

He went out and closed the office door, but I jumped up and opened it a crack to
peer though. ‘Soldiers,' I whispered to Lanya. ‘Two of them.' Words were exchanged,
then one of the soldiers marched in past Mr Corman,
swept a whole lot of books off
a table and planted a some kind of notice there. When they'd gone, with a mighty
slam of the door, Mr Corman ripped the notice into tiny bits. We helped him pick
up the books. ‘They come most days,' he said. ‘They wish to intimidate, that is all.'