Dead Lions (38 page)

This didn’t happen everywhere, but it happened often. As the City warned its worker bees of a possible terrorist event, some of those bees turned on each other, and stung.

Most of the resulting injuries, it was later calculated, happened in those buildings containing bankers. Well, bankers and lawyers. It was too close to call.

Smoking again
, Jackson Lamb slouched across a highwalk in the Barbican complex, heading for Slough House. Above him rose Shakespeare or Thomas More, he could never remember which tower was which, and ahead was a familiar bench. He’d fallen asleep on it once, clutching a cardboard coffee cup. When he’d woken, it held forty-two pence in small change.

He sat on the bench now to finish his cigarette. Above and behind him loured the 1970s, wrought in glass and concrete; below him the middle ages, in the shape of St Giles Cripplegate, and to the east, the up-to-the-minute sound of sirens, which had been building for some while, but only now crashed through his absorbed state. A pair of fire engines blared along London Wall, followed by a police car. Lamb paused, fingers halfway to his lips.
Another fire engine. Dropping the cigarette, he reached for his phone instead.

Taverner, he thought. What have you done?

Webb was
thrown to the floor as a thin pink spray fritzed the air, then laid a pattern across the carpet. Marcus and Louisa dropped at the same moment, and a second shot carved a chunk from the tabletop, coughing up splinters. But there was no other shelter. They had a second, maybe less, before Piotr crouched and fired directly into their heads—panic blooming, Louisa looked to Marcus, who was ripping something from the underside of the table, something which fitted his hand as naturally as a coffee cup or beer bottle. He fired and someone screamed and a body hit the floor. Raised voices swore in Russian. Marcus scrambled up and fired again. The bullet hit closing doors.

On the far side of the table, Kyril lay clutching his left leg, which was all messed up below the knee.

Louisa pulled out her phone. Marcus ran for the doors, gun in hand. When he pulled them they gave just enough to reveal the U-lock threaded through the outer handles—another gift from Pashkin’s damned briefcase. He tugged again then leaped back as a bullet slammed into the doors from the other side.

In the lobby, the alarm swirled. Beneath its noise, Marcus could make out the sound of the two men entering the stairwell at the end of the corridor.

As the
rally neared the City—its head winding round St Paul’s; its tail back beyond the viaduct—a new awareness rippled through it, a morphic resonance fuelled by Twitter, allowing its entire length to hear the rumours at once: that the City was collapsing, its buildings emptying. That the palaces of finance were crumbling at the mob’s approach. With this news came a change of mood, spilling over into aggressive triumphalism; the kind that
wants to see its enemy spread on the pavement with its head split open. Fresh chanting broke out, louder than ever. The pace picked up. Though already, in counterpoint to the hints of victory, another tremor was wavering west: that the rug had been pulled, and danger lay ahead.

At first sight, this took the form of official resistance.

“Due to unforeseen circumstances, this rally has now been cancelled. You’re to turn and calmly make your way back towards Holborn where you’ll be able to disperse.”

The black armoured units that until now had been discreet shadows had disgorged bulked-up shapes in shields and helmets, and barriers were blocking Cheapside. Somewhere behind them was a man with a loudhailer.

“The streets ahead are closed. I repeat, the route is closed, and this rally is now cancelled.”

The sound of sirens wafting from a distance underlined his words.

For two minutes that stretched into four the head of the mob went no further, but swelled in size, filling the junction on the Cathedral’s eastern side. And still, up and down its length, messages were relayed, the way a worm communicates to itself the news of its own dicing. At intervals behind them, more tactical units were breaking the march up, rerouting groups into narrow streets and squares, and sealing their exits. Singing died and curdled into anger; tempers frayed and broke. Cats and dogs, witches and wizards, clung to their parents’ legs, while once-mild protestors sprayed spittle in the faces of unmoving policemen. Overhead, the
whump-whump
of helicopter blades throbbed in and out of hearing, sometimes drowning the shrill alarms from the City, sometimes becoming its rhythm section, while from the City itself a less organised procession fled the rumours of destruction, arriving in a rabble behind the police rows blocking Cheapside.

“The streets ahead are closed, and this rally is cancelled.”

The first bottle appeared in a low arc from the middle of the crowd. It spun neck over base, spraying liquid which might have been water, might have been piss, onto the heads of the policemen below, before shattering on the road. It was followed by others.

And up and down the route of the march, tucked away inside what had been a mob, and was now a collection of smaller mobs, those who’d come with masks in their pockets recognised their cue and slipped them on. The time for breaking glass had arrived, and for torching cars, and throwing rocks.

The first flames burst into being like early blossoms of spring: easily caught on the wind, and scattered for miles.

“It’s a
credible threat, Lamb.”

“Credible? Some Sunday aeroplane’s going to crash into a City building—you sure about that?”

“Sure enough not to take the risk.”

“You’re gunna shoot it down?”

“There are Harriers in the air. They’ll do what’s necessary.”

“Over Central London?”

“If that’s what it takes.”

“Are you mad?”

“Jackson, look. This—this is what we’ve worried about for years. This or something like it.”

“What, a cut-price 9/11? You think a clapped-out Soviet spook would do this? Katinsky’s a Cold War survivor, not a New World Order barbarian, for Christ’s sake!”

“And you think it’s a coincidence that Arkady Pashkin’s meeting—”

“This is not about Pashkin, Taverner. If Moscow knew you and Webb had cooked up some scheme to recruit him, they wouldn’t do this. They’d wait till he got home and run him through a compactor.”

“Lamb—”

“We’ve been led here, every step. Killing Dickie Bow, laying a trail to Upshott, they’ve lit a damn flare path. Murdering Min Harper’s the only thing they’ve tried to keep wrapped. Whatever’s really going on, it’s not what we think. What’s happening at the Needle?”

Taverner said, “We’ve alerted security. There are fire teams on the way.”

Lamb said, “What happens when that building goes into lockdown?”

In the
flying club’s office, things had changed: the fridge remained, and the chairs; the old desk was still cluttered with paperwork, but the stack of cardboard boxes was a tumbled pyramid, and its plastic sheet lay crumpled on the floor. River dropped to one knee and foraged through the boxes. They’d contained paper, stacks of A4-sized sheets, several copies of which were stuck to the bottom of one. Both showed the same design.

Griff Yates burst in, panting. His face was still streaked with blood, but in his hand he had a phone. “I borrowed this.”

River grabbed it, his thumb pressing numbers before his brain could process them. “Catherine? It’s not a bomb.”

For a moment, she didn’t reply.

“Catherine? I said—”

“So what is it, then?”

“Did you sound an alert?”

“River … You called a Code September.”

“That’s not even a—”

“I know what it’s not. But I know what it means. So I told the Park. What’s going on, River?”

“What did the Park do?”

“Put the City on terror alert. Imminent danger.”

“Oh Jesus!”

“High buildings are being evacuated, especially the Needle, because of the Russian thing. River, talk to me.”

“There’s no bomb. The plane’s not … It’s not a terror attack.” He looked at the papers in his hand. They were reproductions of the same image: a stylised city landscape, its tallest skyscraper struck by jagged lightning. Along the foot of each page ran the words
STOP THE CITY
. “They’re leafleting the demo.”

“They’re bloody
what
?”

“Leaflets, Catherine. They’re dropping leaflets on the rally. But somebody, somebody wanted us to think there was a bomb. The terror alert, that’s the whole point. The evacuation.”

“The Needle,” she said.

Louisa had
no signal. Nor did Marcus. The microphone-shaped device on the table was gone; taken by Pashkin and Piotr, but still nearby, and blocking their phones.

She checked Webb. The bullet had hit him in the chest, but he was alive, for now. Shallow breaths bubbled out of him, and whistled back in. She did what she could, which wasn’t much, then turned to Marcus, who was standing over Kyril.

“You put that there yesterday?”

The gun, she meant. But how else could it have got there? Taped to the table’s underside.

“Fixing the odds,” Marcus said. “I don’t wander into situations blind. Not with hostiles.”

Kyril was conscious and moaning; a dull counterpoint to the alarm’s shrill wail. Louisa put her hand on his wounded leg. “This hurt?”

He swore in Russian.

“Yeah yeah. You don’t speak English. This hurt?” She pressed harder.

“Jesus bitch you fuck!”

“That’ll be a yes. What’s going on?”

Marcus left her for the kitchen.

“They’ve left you behind. You think they’re coming back?”

“Bastards,” he said. He might have been talking about his absent comrades.

“Where’ve they gone?”

“Downstairs …”

From the kitchen, she heard breaking glass. Marcus reappeared with the fireaxe in his hand.

Louisa turned back to Kyril. “Downstairs,” she said, and understanding dawned. “Rumble? Their new iPhone? That’s what this is about? You’re stealing a fucking prototype?”

Marcus swung the axe, and the doors shuddered.

She put her hand on the fallen man’s wound once more. “Before he gets through that,” she said, “you’re going to tell me why Min died.”

Outside was
warm spring air and a drift of pollen. The irritated officer had heard enough to know that whatever was happening was bigger than a trespass on MoD land, and was currently on his phone, establishing the level of national alert. Griff Yates was washing his face somewhere. And nearby, at forlorn attention by the jeep, stood one of the two soldiers they’d had their altercation with.

River showed his Service card again. “I need to be somewhere.”

“Yeah, right.”

“And you’ll need a friend once this morning’s done,” River added, thinking
So will I
. “Get me back to the village in the next two minutes, and you’ll have one.”

“You’re James Bond, are you?”

“We use the same gym.”

“Huh …”

A bird of prey wheeled overhead, loudly mewing.

“What the hell. Get in. Quick.”

River used the two-minute journey to speak to Catherine again. “Have they called the Harriers off?”

“I don’t know, River.” There was an unaccustomed tremor to her voice. “I’ve called the Park, but—are you anywhere near a TV?”

“Not exactly.”

“All hell’s breaking loose in the City. Half the world’s trying to get out, and the rally’s trying to get in—Jesus, River … That was us.”

Me, he thought.

He said, “And they told me I’d never top King’s Cross,” but a tight knot of dread had formed in his stomach.

“And you’re sure now, are you? The plane’s not heading for the Needle?”

“We’ve been played, Catherine. Me, Lamb, everyone. You don’t need to send a plane into a building to cause chaos. You just have to make us think it’s going to happen.”

“There’s more to it. That Russian, Pashkin? He’s not real.”

“So who?”

“Don’t know yet. Louisa’s phone’s dead. So’s Marcus’s. But Ho’s on his way there now. With Shirley.”

“It’s all part of the same thing,” said River. “Must be. Don’t let them shoot that plane down. Catherine. The pilot’s been played, just like us.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

River slapped the jeep’s roof in frustration. “Here,” he said. “Here.”

Church end, Yates had said. That’s where Tommy Moult had been. The church end of the high street.

The jeep crunched to a halt by St John of the Cross’s lychgate, and River left it at a run.

As Marcus
swung the axe a crunch shook the floor, and Louisa shrieked—“
Jesus
, was that you?”

He paused, the axe inch-deep in the door. “Plastic,” he said, and pulled the axehead free.

Plastic. She looked at Kyril. “That’s the plan? The building goes into terror-mode, and you bust into Rumble with plastic explosives?”

“Millions,” he said, through gritted teeth.

“It’d have to be. No one goes to this effort for petty cash.”

Another dull crunch from below. They were blowing open doors down there, and it wouldn’t take them long. Then all they’d have to do was head for ground level and slip away with the crowds. No one would check off their exit, because no one had signed them in. There’d be a car waiting, and one less to share the proceeds with.

Thwack!
went the axe, and splinters flew.

She kicked Kyril. “Min saw him, didn’t he?”

The Russian groaned. “My leg. I need doctor.”

“Min saw Pashkin, or whoever he really is. When he was supposed to be in Moscow being a fucking oil baron. Except he wasn’t, he was in a dosshouse on the Edgware Road, because the Ambassador’s a little pricey when you don’t need to be there, isn’t it? When you’re not really a fucking oil baron, just a fucking thief. And that’s why Min died.”

“Didn’t mean it to happen. We were having a drink, that’s all—gah! My leg—”

Thwack!

“Tell you what, Kyril. Once I’ve put your scumbag friends in a box, I’ll come back and see what I can do about your leg, yeah?” She leaned in close. “We’ve got a fucking axe, after all.”