Turquoiselle (13 page)

To
meet with Mr Croft, nevertheless, they went out a different way, via the fridge-freezer-door,
Carver getting by without much fuss, but the fat, very young man in shorts and a
loose white T-shirt, making a bit of a scene of it. “Why that bloody door has
to be bunged up by that bloody fridge beats me!” he snapped red-faced. Then
resumed the smiling pleasantries he had begun with. He was the guide who was to
conduct Carver “to Mr Croft’s section”.

“Hope
you slept well?”

“Sure,”
said Carver.

“Good,
good. That’s good.” (Was ‘good’
his
Word of the Day?) “Big old place, this.
Have you seen the sea?”

“Yes.”

“Fabulous
day. I mean to do a bit of cycling later. Wonderful weather for it. Do you cycle?”

“No.”

“Should,
you know. Bloody good for you.”

The
fat health expert had by then got them down a long doorless corridor, windowless
and neoned, and hung with pretty photographed images of trees and mountains,
and let them both into a steel lift. There were no markers as to the number of
floors but, seamless and almost silent, they went up past six. This ‘place’ was
tall then, or it was in parts.

They
emerged next in a second doorless corridor with long windows to the left. The
view was vast and soaring – rock edges, sea, sky, wheeling gulls with sun-gold
wings.

“Where
are we, here?” asked Carver quietly.

“Seventh
floor, old mate.”

“I
mean, the area. The district. The sea.”

“Yes,”
said the cyclist, enthused and beaming, ‘‘it’s fabulous, isn’t it? Beautiful
weather too.”

“England,”
said Carver. “Is it?”

But
they were through the corridor and the cyclist-guide was pressing buttons by a
tall shut metal door. “Just a sec, old son.”

And
the door slid open, and there was another person beam-beaming, a beaming girl
in a summer dress and long fair hair.

“Mr
Carver! Please come in. Thanks, Charlie. Take care.”

“Please
sit down, Carver. That chair is the one I’d recommend.”

He
– Croft – sat against the blinded, lighted window, and was in silhouette. An
old trick, clichéd, out of date, filmic, foolish. Effective. A big shape, a big
man, tall and broad-bodied, from flesh, bone or muscle, conceivably all three.
His voice put him at about forty, but of course that did not have to mean much.
He could be in his sixties, seventies even, if he was strong and vocally
trained. His hair, against the brilliant blind, looked like a piece, an actor’s
wig, convincing only on a stage. But here the glare might deceive. After all,
Carver found the sunlight irritated his vision, staring into it, or at the dark
mound of the man titled Mr Croft.

The
chair was all right. Not designed to make the sitter either luxuriously
comfortable or anything opposite. Another black mug of hot black coffee had
been set in front of Carver on the desk-like table, and a jug of water with ice
and a lemon slice and a polished glass in reaching distance, before the happy,
jolly girl had taken her leave.

It
was doubtless of no use to ask any questions as yet, if ever.

“Well,”
said Croft.

Not
an inquiry. Just a statement.

The
sides of Carver’s tongue were electric with the urge to speak, to
demand
.

He
did not. Only sat and stared at the actor against the light. And Carver’s eyes
pricked and began to water. Carver looked down.

And
there was Croft again, printed white on a blur of floating darkness.
Afterimage. Omnipresent.

Croft
shifted. A profile appeared, a large hooked nose and shaven jaw, a heavy-lidded
eye that glinted and then grew dark. By the description of the light, the wig
was iron.

“Today’s
a sunny day,” said Croft, “rare in England.”

(Is
he telling me that we are
not
in England, where such sunny days are
rare? Or that we
are
, and
so
the rarity?) “They say the climate’s changing, of course they do. Bang on and
on about it. Slightest unusual weather. Make us all worry, worry. Always all
our fault. But I can remember rainy summers and autumns just the same. And
waterlogged springs. Even you, probably, saw the same processions of dull grey
unwarm days when you were a kid. Snow in May. And not limited to the UK, all
across Europe.”

Carver
did not speak. It was not apparently, essential.

Croft
rose. Yes, about six foot three, and of a strongly developed, heavy frame.
Approximately two hundred and fifteen pounds. “Why not we go outside, have a
stroll in the grounds? What do you say, Car?”

It
was not the voice from the drugged darkness.

It
was not a voice Carver knew.

In
any case, neither the voice nor the man took any notice of Carver’s reaction,
even the chance of one. Croft, risen, strode towards the room’s second door,
and plainly Carver must get up and go with him. Carver did not prevaricate.
What point? He too rose and followed Croft, who opened the door by the previous
means of a pressed button-panel in the wall. The door undid itself into
another corridor, low-lit, featureless, windowless, and winding. It seemed to
take a few minutes to go along it and reach another door operating on buttons.
Which in turn undid itself into another lift. Down they flowed, five, six
floors – seven? The lift door gave on a dazzle of flooded white and burning
green and blue, drowning Carver’s eyes. A terrace, flagged. Stone steps with a
safe if ornamental stone handrail. The park – the
grounds – b
eyond, the savage tangles of unpruned
bushes and trees, the high-grassed upslopes, the radiance, and the salt-clear
smell of the sea from the far side of the house, and the gulls, borne over now
by some updraught, noiseless and floating. From the position of the sun, this
place had just gone by midday, in somewhere or other.

They walked up a
slope, but the trees were very thick, their trunks often wider than three or
four Crofts hugged together. The foliage was a static deluge of green fire. Or
was that a
yellow
leaf there? It
might indicate only damage, not a season. One did not see through the trees
anyway, to any other slope. The Russian train-carriage sheds were not visible.

“Ah,
here’s the bench. We’ll sit, shall we?”

They
sat, side by side, separated by an interval of about one metre, on the long
smooth stone seat. It had a flat and upright back, and arm rests at either end
in the shape of – what were they? Griffins, Carver thought. Yes, griffins, eagles’
heads and the bodies of lions. An impossibility, and not what they seemed.

Nowhere
in view was there any sign of a boundary, a wall or electrified fence. No
indication of anything significant, beyond the trees.

Croft
stretched, lazily, as if entirely at ease.

“Lovely
place, this. And wonderful weather.” (Would he now suggest they go cycling? He
did not.)

But
the big carven head, under its iron cap of real or unreal hair, smoothly
turned, and there were the two dark eyes, looking for his.

Carver
met them. His father had had eyes as dark as this, though of a different
colour. He himself, Carver thought, had eyes the same as Croft’s. (Cava.
Andreas Cava.)

“The
point is,” said Croft mildly, “I want you to relax, Car. I can see that may be
difficult for you at the moment. Understandably so. And in light of that, I
want to fill in a few of the empty boxes for you, explain how things are, here.
You’re safe, Car. Perfectly safe. Safer here, with us, than probably you have
been all these past – how many? Let’s see, it’s around eighteen to twenty years,
is it? I mean since when you got into that college out in the wilds of –
Suffolk
was it? Or West
Sussex... Slips my mind, but of course, you’ll remember it well. Rescued from
that daft secondary school – called after that bloody woman Vita Sackville-West,
I suppose. They started your training off there, at the
college
, bit by bit.
And then recruited you for the Service. Serve your country. Save your land.
Anti-any-and-all-others – even our beloved allies, the Godforsaken Yanks, if it
comes to it. An interesting job for a boy, a young man. Not boring. What is it Mantik’s
slang calls its own people? Life Long Enemies, that’s it, isn’t it, Car? L.L.E.
The L.L.E. of all the other oppressive and misguided regimes all over the
world, and of all their spies and vandals. The
Secret
Secret Service. That’s you. Rule Britannia.
And then you make one tiny little error, and Mantik puts on its dinner jacket
and gets ready to eat you up alive.”

Croft
stopped talking. He stared on into Carver’s eyes, which did not now have to
water, in the warm green thoughtfulness of the shade.

“You’re
saying this place has nothing to do with Mantik,” Carver said, flat, neutral.

“As
far from Mantik as the moon, Car. Much, much farther. From here, you can
see
the
moon
, now and then.”

Croft was
leaning back again, his jacket removed and slung over his arm of the bench, his
legs stretched out, crossed at the ankles. He might be anyone, taking a break,
enjoying the summer, or autumn Indian Summer, as perhaps it was. Certainly the
many scanning devices that would be discreetly planted around would pick up
that pose. And Carver’s
too
,
sitting still, tense and listening. There might be men as well, discreetly
planted around, armed and waiting for the chance that after all Carver decided to
run for it. But surely, lessoned as he had been at Mantik, he would never
attempt such a futile thing.

“Why
am I safe,” he said at last, “with you, if not with Mantik?”

“We,
Car, are the
corporation
that in turn
keeps an eye on
them
. Somebody has
to. I’m certain, if you consider it carefully, you can see the common sense of
such a back-up unit. So no, Car, nobody here is asking you to become – that
lovely Shakespearianesque word – a
traitor
. You’re still fully in British hands.
Just as you’re on British – English – soil.”

“Why
do you want me?”

“Why
did
Mantik
want you? Have
you never properly asked yourself that? No, you haven’t, you see. We don’t, do
we? We all already know we are special. That’s how we survive being
alive
. And thus, of
course
they would
single
you
out.”

“I’m
– I was an errand boy.”

“Jargon.
My dear Car, do you
really
think that was all they wanted from you?”

“It
was just about all I did.” (No point in lying, Carver thought. This set-up,
whatever it was, had evidently wrung out of him, with the drugs, the darkness,
all those Mantik matters they wanted. Though he had not known much. Maybe,
thinking him evasive... Had he even been fully tortured? He had no wounds, of
course, no pain, and no memories
of
such events. But
neither had he recalled the bathing, and cleaning of his teeth – yet it had
happened. Whatever they had wanted to happen had happened, But why – why did
these people, a surveillance team monitoring Mantik, rescue him – if rescue it
had been? Why did
they
want him at all?

“So
I’m special,” Carver said quietly. “Again, why?”

“Oh,
you’ll see in due course. Do you remember the woman called Silvia Dusa?”

“She’s
dead.”

“So
she is, but a while before that tragic occurrence, she contacted us. She
alerted us – to
you
. That was
her
mistake, you
see, Car. And yours was in not realising. Silvia had come over to us. She wasn’t
happy about Mantik’s plans. So Mantik set you both up, and then – shall I say
helped
her on her
terminal way in that public house. Just as they would have you, Carver,
somewhere or other. Also in due course. But that’s all over now. You’re safe.
You’re with us.”

“Where
are we?” said Carver. “England
where
?”

“Kent.
That’ll do for now.”

“
Who
are you?”