Ack-Ack Macaque (14 page)

Victoria blew into her hands. The cargo hold wasn’t insulated. The air felt colder in here than it had elsewhere, and she was glad of her thick coat.

“So,” she said. “Are you going to talk?”

Her prisoner gave a haughty sniff. She’d bound his wrists with a plastic cable tie. His shoulders were hunched against the cold and, standing on the metal deck, he kept shifting from one shoeless foot to another.

They were alone. The Commodore had been called to the bridge, to oversee the
Tereshkova
’s scheduled departure from Heathrow.

“You killed my husband.” The words were tight in her throat. The Smiling Man gave a shrug.

“I’ve killed a lot of people.”

From Victoria’s viewpoint, Paul’s digital ghost seemed to hover at Berg’s shoulder, giving the illusion that the victim and his murderer were standing side-by-side.

“Ugly bleeder, ain’t he?”

She suppressed a smile at the churlishness in Paul’s voice, although she had to concede that he did have a point. Berg’s attenuated limbs and tapering face had a reptilian, almost birdlike cast, as if he’d been put together using the fossilised bones of an excavated, predatory dinosaur.

“He certainly is.”

Cassius Berg glanced at her.

“I beg your pardon?”

Victoria ran a gloved hand over the bristles of her shaven head. Without her long hair to cover it, the ridge of scar tissue at her temple, and the various cranial jacks implanted along its length, stood out. Touching it made her feel ugly and lopsided.

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

In her head, she heard Paul say, “What’s the matter with the skin of his face?”

“I’m not sure.” She took a step closer to the Smiling Man, and examined the papery vellum stretched across his cheeks. “A stroke or surgery, perhaps. Maybe a graft of some sort?”

“You mean he’s wearing someone else’s face?”

“It’s possible.” She stepped back again, out of reach. “Disgusting, but possible.”

For the first time, she saw signs of agitation on her prisoner’s face. A muscle twitched beneath his left eye. A crease appeared in the skin between his brows.

“Who are you talking to?”

“My husband.”

Berg’s head twitched. “That’s impossible. Your husband’s dead.”

“So you
do
remember killing him?”

Berg drew himself up to his full height. “I remember killing him
and
tearing out his brain, soul-catcher and all.” He sounded angry. Victoria pressed her lips together, swallowing back her distaste.

“Then how come,” she tapped the side of her head, “he’s in here, speaking to me, right now?”

The furrow between Berg’s eyebrows grew deeper. Suspicious eyes searched her face.

“What you have to decide,” Victoria continued, “is whether I’m concussed and delusional, or whether I really do have an angry murder victim in my head, telling me what to do.” She pulled the quarterstaff from her pocket. “Either way, you’re in a whole lot of trouble.”

The Smiling Man drew back.

“You can’t hurt me.”

Victoria flicked the staff out to its full extent.

“Are you sure?”

She took a step closer. In her eye, Paul chewed the knuckle of his left index finger, his face a picture of grim expectation.

“Where do you want me to hit him first?” she asked.

Berg took another step back and stopped. The cargo doors were behind him. He had nowhere left to go.

The door controls hung on the wall to Victoria’s right. Green button to open, red to shut. Holding the staff in one hand, she reached out.

“Last chance,” she said. Her finger pressed the green button. The cargo doors gave a metallic groan and peeled apart, opening like the petals of a flower.

Berg stood silhouetted against the light. The
Tereshkova
’s engines were pushing it up and away from Heathrow’s cargo terminal. They were already at what must have been a thousand feet. Victoria saw hotels and roads sliding beneath them. Tiny cars.

“Now talk,” she called, raising her voice above the rush of the wind.

Berg looked down at the landscape passing below.

“I’m backed-up,” he said, with only the slightest trace of hesitation. “If I fall, my friends will find me. I
will
live again.”

Victoria brought the staff to bear, ready to give him a shove.

“Are you willing to bet your life on that? We’re a long way up, and I’m not sure your soul-catcher will survive an impact from this height.” She gave a theatrical shrug. “But if you’re so sure, you might as well jump, because unless you tell me what I want to know, it’s your only way out.”

She felt her heart banging in her chest. The words coming from her lips felt strange, as if they belonged to somebody a lot tougher than she was, and she drew strength from them. Berg’s heels were now inches from the edge of the deck, and she felt electrified. All it would take to kill him would be one strike from the end of her staff. One little push.

Their eyes met, and held.

Berg seemed to be trying to read her face, searching for any hint of a bluff. She glared at him, determined not to blink or look away.

Finally, after what seemed a small, eye-watering eternity, she saw something break in his posture. He looked back at the airport falling astern, and his shoulders fell. His chest seemed to sag in on itself.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. I’ll talk.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

BLOWING SMOKE RINGS AT THE STARS

D
OCTOR
N
GUYEN LIVED
in a detached house on the outskirts of Chartres, a cathedral town ninety kilometres south-west of Paris. Merovech parked the boxy old Citroën van on the opposite side of the street. He killed the ignition and the engine rattled away to silence.

“This is it.”

According to the clock on the dashboard, the time was eleven-thirty. The road was quiet. The cheery yellow glows in the windows of the whitewashed neighbouring houses spoke of home and hearth and family; but the lights were off in Nguyen’s place.

Merovech turned in his seat.

“Perhaps you should stay here,” he said.

From the back of the van, Ack-Ack Macaque regarded him with a baleful eye.

“That suits me fine.”

Merovech faced Julie.

“Are you coming?”

“Do you want me to?”

He looked across at the darkened house. The upstairs shutters were open but the curtains were drawn. No sign of life at all.

“I don’t know. Perhaps you’d better wait here.” He got out, breath steaming in the night air. Stars poked through clouds stained orange with reflected town light and, a few houses down, a dog barked in a yard.

“I won’t be long,” he said. He hurried across to the far kerb and up the short path to Nguyen’s front door, where he paused.

In his memory, Doctor Nguyen was a short, stern man in black hospital scrubs, with a stethoscope forever slung around his neck. If the documents he’d read were to be believed, Nguyen and his team had
done
things to him. Surgical things.

He felt his heart quicken. All those times he’d been given anaesthetic for routine operations — tonsils, appendix, wisdom teeth — they’d taken the opportunity to stuff more and more gelware into his head.

He raised his fist to pound the door. He didn’t care if Nguyen was asleep, he wanted answers. He wanted to haul the old buzzard out of bed and confront him; let him know how
betrayed
he felt. But, even as he pulled back his hand, he noticed that the door was ajar: resting against its frame, but not completely closed. The catch had not engaged. He could open it with a push.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

The voice came from the side of the house. Merovech took a step back, fists raised.

“Who’s there?”

“A friend.”

A young girl stepped from behind the whitewashed wall of the house. She wore a fur-lined jacket several sizes too large for her skinny frame, a leather flying cap, and a pair of aviator goggles, which she’d pushed up onto her forehead.

“Prince Merovech, I presume?” Her accent was Scottish, which seemed incongruous here, in the sleeping suburbs of a small French town. “Is the monkey with you?”

“I’m here to see Doctor Nguyen.”

The girl gave a little shake of her head. She looked somehow familiar. “Nguyen’s dead. Murdered. I found him this morning, and I’ve been waiting for you ever since.”

“Who are you?”

The girl stepped back.

“I’m here to help.” She retrieved a sizeable holdall from behind the wall. “Now please, if you have the monkey, I need to see him.”

Merovech shrugged. He led her back across the road to the van and opened the back doors. Inside, Ack-Ack Macaque crouched against the back of the driver’s seat, fangs bared as if expecting trouble. When he saw the girl, he jerked upright and blinked his solitary eye.

“Morris?”

She touched two fingers to her brow in salute.

“What-ho, skipper.”

M
EROVECH DROVE UNTIL
he found a place where they could pull onto the verge in the shadow of some trees. Beyond the trees, ploughed fields stretched away to the horizon. He got out and walked a few metres down the road, his hands deep in the pockets of his red hoodie. Julie called after him but he ignored her. He needed a few moments to calm the turmoil in his head.

Forty-eight hours ago, his life had made sense. Now, almost nothing did. And he couldn’t go back. There was no reset button. He felt much as he had after the helicopter crash—dazed and numb, with this horrible, sick feeling that something huge and irreversible had happened to him. Something no amount of privilege or royalty could ever undo.

He looked up at the stars, trying to connect the dots, trying to find meaning in their random scatter. The air smelled of ploughed earth and damp, wet leaves.

When he turned to look back at the van, he saw Julie’s silhouette stood by the passenger door, arms folded, watching him.

Had it really been only three weeks since their first meeting, in Paris?

He’d been on his way back from a Norwegian bar in the business district, where he’d been enjoying an evening of akevitt and pickled herring with some of his classmates. He’d been there at the invitation of the proprietor, an ambitious young Norwegian politico. Norway had been part of the burgeoning United Kingdom since 1959, and its assimilation had encouraged the other Scandinavian nations to signup to the newly-formed European Commonwealth—the first step in a process that led eventually to the 1982 Gothenburg Treaty, and the implementation of the United European Commonwealth’s single market.

Merovech and his friends had all been half-drunk on the akevitt, and reeked of fish and onions. For fun, they’d dared themselves to take the Metro home from the restaurant. It was their idea of an adventure. Luckily, the train wasn’t crowded, and they found plenty of room to sit.

Obviously, Merovech’s presence caused something of a stir among the other passengers. Phone cameras clicked and whirred, but his bodyguard, Izolda, kept anyone from bothering him directly. She was a former Olympic wrestler, and had the kind of stare that could stop grown men in their tracks.

A purple-haired girl occupied the seat across the aisle, and Merovech thought he recognised her. Was she a fellow student? He was sure he’d seen her around the campus, but each time he tried to catch her eye, she looked away.

She’s gorgeous, he thought. But not in an obvious way. There was nothing self-conscious or artificial about her. She wasn’t dressed to impress anyone.

He watched her all the way to his stop.

When they pulled in and the doors opened, Izolda hustled him out onto the platform.

He glanced back at the girl, trying to fix her face in his memory, wanting to remember her in the morning. As he did so, she pressed her hand up against the window. She’d scrawled her mobile phone number across her palm in purple lipstick.

“Call me,” she mouthed.

The train started to move. He whipped out his SincPhone and, walking to keep pace with the window, punched her number into the keypad with his thumb. If he’d been thinking clearly, he would have used his phone to take a photo of the number. As it was, he got the last digit just as he reached the end of the platform.

The train pulled away from him, pushing itself into the tunnel, faster and faster. The wind of it ruffled his hair. He lifted the phone to his ear. She let it ring twice before she answered.

“Do you want to get a coffee?” she said.

W
HEN
M
EROVECH GOT
back to the van, the other three were standing in the pool of light cast by its headlamps. Morris had her holdall open and was rummaging through the contents. Ack-Ack Macaque now wore her fleece-lined jacket and aviator goggles, and puffed away on a huge cigar. The smoke smelled sticky and rank in the clear night air. As Merovech approached, they stopped talking and turned to him.

“Are you okay?” Julie looked concerned. Merovech walked over and gave her a hug. She was soft and reassuring in his arms, and he clung to her the way that in the South Atlantic, he’d clung to the ropes of the life raft.

“Thank you.”

For a moment, she seemed nonplussed. Then she put a hand to the back of his neck.

“
De rien.
”

He pulled back, holding her at arm’s length.

“I mean it. I’m sorry about what I said before. I know why you’re here. And believe me, I’m glad you are.”

He took her hand, and turned to face Morris and the scowling monkey.

“Okay,” he said to the girl, “let’s start with you.”

Mindy stopped rooting around in her holdall and rose to her feet. She wore a green v-neck sweater and skinny black jeans. Having given the oversized flying jacket to Ack-Ack Macaque, she seemed somehow smaller.

“I was just explaining to your friend that my real name’s not Morris, your royal highness. In real life, people call me K8.” She held out a hand. Merovech didn’t take it.

“Kate?”

“No, kay-eight. Letter kay followed by numeral eight.”