The Violent Century (33 page)

137.
LONDON
1936

The Old Man’s Rolls-Royce moves across London Bridge like a dream. Dusk, and the lights are coming alive everywhere; on the north side of the river the sun glints off the dome of St Paul’s and, on the Thames, a lonely barge moves majestically, laden with trash.

– Stop the car, please, Samuel, the Old Man says. The car stops on the bridge and the Old Man opens the door and steps out. After a moment of hesitation, Fogg follows. The air is cool outside, and he can smell the city, the mixture of automobile fumes and the stench of the Thames and the smell of restaurants opening for dinner on the South Bank and blossom from the trees lining the river and women’s perfumes and men’s cigars and horses’ sweat and manure. To the east he can see the docks, crowded with ships, with cargo, sailors, warehouses, porters, the wealth and breadth of Empire; and when he joins the Old Man against the railings of the bridge he can see Parliament House to the west. Hovering above the building is a mighty airship, the famous German-made LZ-class Graf Zeppelin, hydrogen keeping it afloat, its crew of thirty-six and its countless passengers, and its name in bold letters stretched across its rigid frame: the
Hindenburg
.

– Beautiful, isn’t she, the Old Man says, following the trajectory of Fogg’s eyes. He lays a fatherly hand on Fogg’s shoulder. What you are – what we are – cannot be undone, Henry, he says.

Fogg turns, raising his face in the setting sun to look at him. What does the Old Man see in his eyes, what hope, what trust, what can he make of this young changed man, what use can he be put to?

– The world is on the brink of war, the Old Man says.

The boy’s face registers confusion. Fogg looks at the city, the setting sun, the floating airship. The city is at peace. Tendrils of fog, but no more, rise timidly at his feet. War? he seems to silently say. How can it be?

– I wish I could tell you it is because of us, or the change, or man’s fear of the unknown, the Old Man says. Henry. Look at me.

This boy – this young man – does.

– We cannot stop this war but we can fight it, in the shadows, the Old Man says. You have a choice. We all have a choice. We can give in to the darkness, or we can fight it, and elect to try and make the world a slightly less terrible place than it is. Perhaps we’ll fail. If we succeed in what we do, no one would thank us. If we die, no one will remember us.

Fogg’s lips part. The sun almost disappears on the horizon, only its tip, its crown, visible still. From up here he can see the whole world, or what seems like the whole world. London. The seat of empire. The greatest and most powerful empire the world has ever known. And it is strange to him, it is exceedingly strange, to be standing here, with someone who knows his secret, who accepts him for what he is, a changed, a freak, this lone grocer’s boy from Kingston upon Thames. And suddenly Fogg grins, as though the Old Man has just told a joke, and he says, War? and he gestures at the city all around them, he says, I mean – like it’s the most ludicrous idea in the world, like something out of an illustrated storybook, he says – war?

The sun sets entirely. The sky, enormous over the city, is a battlefield of fiery reds and dying yellows, a blackness encroaching like a spider bite beyond, spreading out against the sky. The Old Man’s hands hold on to the rails, and he looks out, away from Fogg, his eyes look far away, seeing something only he can see.

– A world war, the Old Man quietly says.

138.
NORMANDY, FRANCE
1944

– Incoming!

Fogg and Mr Blur huddle in the trench, it is night and the temperature has dropped, it is freezing, but Fogg sweats inside his coat, the smell of unwashed bodies and fear and gunmetal, oil and blood stinging the nostrils, his fingernails are blunt but still somehow dirty underneath, there is a sense he would never be clean again, heaven becomes the memory of a hot shower—

The explosion rocks the ground and makes sand slide down the trench and the soldier manning the machine gun, a different one now, the other had been carted off by stretcher, to be bagged and tagged and, later, buried, and this new nameless gunner opens up a sudden frantic burst of bullets, screaming hysterically, They’re coming! They’re coming!

Mr Blur starts to laugh, there is something awful about the sound, Fogg’s hands are moist and his throat is constricted, there is a Dionysian madness that rises in him like wine fumes, it rises in all of them and perhaps it is the effect of some madness-inducing hidden Nazi Übermensch nearby, it would be comforting to think so, in any case; though it’s probably just war. They’re coming! the machine gunner screams again, gibbering as the bandoliers of bullets feed into the machine and are spat out, bullet separated from cartridge in a mechanical inevitability, like chicken and eggs, the machine gunner is foaming at the mouth, Fogg gets up, shouts, Stop, Stop – trying to think of the man’s name, what in Hell’s name was his
name
, while beside Fogg, Mr Blur is hugging himself, going into high speed, his special power, his features blurring as he rocks back and forth, back and forth faster than anyone should be able to go—

The machine gunner’s body rocks backwards, left and right his arms are moving, left and right as if he’s dancing, falling backwards like a swimmer through water, a neat hole through his helmet, his brain leaking out, down his face like tears; and his hands, as though in some final, mystified shrug, leave the handles of the machine gun, which falls silent—

Fogg runs forward but the machine gunner hits the ground faster than Fogg can get to him, and anyway he’s dead on impact. Fogg kneels by him but there’s no time, he looks up and indeed they
are
coming, there is a mad dash across a no-man’s-land between the German positions and their own, and Fogg stares in horror at these shambling living-dead, these uniformed skeletons marching across the battle field:

Bombs and shells explode around them, tossing them like dolls into the air. Machine-gun fire mows them down. Grenades pick them apart like pieces in a butcher’s diagram. And still they come, their eyes drugged by tiredness and war, by sheer exhaustion, and Fogg knows it is an end they seek, those who are coming, crossing the line: an end to the war, by one way or another.

And a chill grabs his heart, for they are coming directly towards
him
: towards the dugout shelter, where he and Mr Blur are now alone but for the corpse of that nameless gunner, may he rest in peace, forever and amen. In horror Fogg stares for one long moment at the approaching horde of Nazi living-dead, for so they seem to him, these soldiers, shambling and stumbling over the corpses of their brothers, a slow yet mad rush towards the Allied positions, so many of them, he cannot keep track of how many.

And as dread comes he realises they must move, they must act, and he cries out, Mr Blur!

And Mr Blur stops rocking, slows down to normal human speed, and looks up at Fogg with crazed eyes, with only the whites showing, and Fogg says, We have to get out of here, we can’t stop them! and, with desperation and fear, he echoes the nameless, dead gunner: They’re coming!

– I’ll stop them, Mr Blur says. He stretches to his full height, this small man, this Übermensch, this
friend
, and he pulls out a pistol, a huge polished-metal thing, and waves it, like an Old West gunslinger with a silver star over his breast, a sheriff come to cleanse the town, and he says, Leave them to me, Fogg. You get out. Advance backwards!

– Mr Blur, what are you doing—

– I said go, goddamn it! Mr Blur says, and turns his milky crazy eyes on Fogg and then he smiles, just like that, a normal smile in the midst of that horror, the living-dead advancing, these flightless lost boys, bombs falling and the dead gunner lying at their feet with his brain leaking out like spoiled Worcestershire sauce.

Then, before Fogg can cry out, there is that
blurring
in the air, that sudden bending of light, as Mr Blur accelerates into his unnatural – no, his changed, his super-human – speed, and he shoots off, up the dugout and into the no-man’s-land, almost invisible, he is travelling so fast, only his laughter can be heard and the sound of gunshots, twining together into a sort of song, a music …

– Mr Blur! Fogg cries, but even as he speaks he is advancing, as they say, backwards, and raising fog, raising fog like a storm to follow Mr Blur, to mask him, to blind the advancing Germans, but they do not see, they move without regard to maps or vision, but on blind instinct that says only
forward, forward
, and as Fogg climbs up from the dugout, as he turns to flee, just once he turns, like Lot’s wife or, perhaps, like Orpheus at Hades, or just like any person who would feel compelled to stop, and look back, and he sees Mr Blur, pausing in the midst of the advancing horde, slowing to normal, turning back, and his eyes find Fogg, and he smiles, and this is how Fogg always remembers him afterwards, how he stopped there and smiled, just before a random bullet found him and blew off his head.

139.
THE FARM, DEVON
1936

And sometimes in his dreams it doesn’t end that way. Sometimes in his dreams Fogg stands there, watching Mr Blur’s head blown off and the very earth and air rebel against the wrongness of it, against the bloodshed and the death, and he summons the fog, it rises all around him, Fogg a lonely figure on a mound of earth, shaping out of grey fog an enormous five-fingered hand that reaches past him, past the trench and to the no-man’s land, through the shambling hordes of desperado soldiers, the hand reaching out and grabbing, trying to take hold of Mr Blur, to drag him to safety, the vast hand reaching, futilely, until Fogg wakes up, sweating …

But this is nineteen thirty-six, the Farm, Devon, the sun shines down on the grassy field, bees hum amongst the flowers, the air feels thick and heavy with promise, with spring. The pupils are lined up in their khaki shorts, blue shirts, their white socks stretched up. Bending, fingertips to toes, stretching, one, two, one, two, Tank puffing, Oblivion cool, Mrs Tinkle surprisingly agile, Spit with her serious, intent face, Mr Blur moving too fast for the eye to see, Fogg just going through the motions, hard to summon fog in this sunny weather, a part of him craves city streets, dirty pools of water, the yellow light of street lamps, the sound of hooves on cobblestones, a flash of lightning. Sergeant Browning stands opposite them, his thick moustache quivering, a whistle around his neck, his face is red and he is screaming, You
will
be ready, you
will
be soldiers, if I have to kill you myself!

Fogg trying to touch his toes with his fingers and failing, feels the blood rushing to his head, it suffuses his cheeks and lips, he grunts and someone, no one knows who, exactly, farts loudly.

And they all, everyone loses discipline. Tank collapses on the grass with mammoth snorts of laughter and Mr Blur joins him, even Oblivion is smiling, Mrs Tinkle looks horrified but even Browning can’t hide, for just a moment, his smile; and Fogg, with relief, drops to the ground, and he’s giggling, he gasps, Tank, stop it, but he can’t stop, it builds up, this deep, this belly-deep laugh, and he rolls helplessly on the grass, laughing until his stomach muscles ache.

140.
THE OLD MAN’S OFFICE
the present

– And so we come to the final act, the Old Man says. Let’s see … He arranges the papers on his desk with an air of finality. You met Erich Bühler, codenamed Schneesturm, in the Soviet quarter. You failed to kill him. Instead, you struck a bargain. He was to take you to Klara Vomacht, codenamed Sommertag. Am I correct so far?

Fogg looks at the Old Man. Steals a glance at Oblivion. No way out, he thinks, resigned. And what does it matter, after all those years? And so: Yes, he says. You are correct.

– What happened then? the Old Man says. Gentler, now. A hunter soft-footing the last short distance to his target.

What happened then … Fogg looks down at his hands. Looks up, meets the Old Man’s old eyes. Everything started to go wrong as soon as we set out, Fogg says.

141.
BERLIN. THE SOVIET ZONE
1946

Walking away from Erich’s boarding house, Henry and Erich, Schleier
und
Schneesturm.
The night was full of shadows, Fogg says, it felt as though eyes were watching us as we walked. Everything was hazy, unreal.

– Do confine yourself to reporting on just what happened, Henry.

Fogg shrugs
—

Down the ruined alleyways of this part of Berlin, where once, not long ago, the opulent homes of high-ranking Nazi officers, their families and servants sat in splendour. The two of them pass the burnt shell of a Mercedes Benz 770K, the once-beautiful chassis a rusted skeleton, and Schneesturm pauses, places a hand over the ruined car, sadly: What a waste, he says. Fogg shrugs. Does not care much for cars, perhaps. Continues walking and Erich follows. Passing a street lamp that is still functioning. The butt of a cigarette, crushed by a heel some time back, lies on the ground. They continue onwards, two travellers through the fog, two white ghosts in the grey and the black, traversing a land of the dead.

We watch. The two men move ahead, the fog parting, there is a strange sort of sound, a scratching as of a vinyl disc being pulled against a needle, skipping grooves, and then a shimmer, and a sudden loss of perspective—

– Did you feel that? Fogg says. Uneasy.

– Like a scratched gramophone record, Schneesturm says. Shrugs. They continue walking in silence.

142.
THE OLD MAN’S OFFICE
the present

– A sound like a scratched gramophone record? the Old Man says sharply.

– At first I didn’t think anything of it, Fogg says.

143.
BERLIN. THE SOVIET ZONE
1946

Walking away from the boarding house, Schneesturm and Fogg, two shadows in a shadow Berlin, walking past a Mercedes Benz 770K, a once-beautiful car, now reduced to a burnt shell, Schneesturm shakes his head, sadly, Fogg frowns, how many of them are there, he thinks. Continue walking, through the narrow streets, past a street lamp miraculously working, Fogg looks down, sees the crushed butt of a cigarette, Fogg’s frown deepens, he opens his mouth to say something but doesn’t, they continue walking and Schneesturm begins to whistle, there is a strange scratching sound and they’re walking away from the boarding house, Schneesturm and Fogg, Erich
und
Henry, past a burnt skeletal car (but aren’t all cars, once burnt down, the same as each other?) and into thick fog, and a street lamp, still burning, and the butt of a cigarette on the ground and Fogg says, Stop!