Freedom Island (8 page)

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We cradled our guns, aware they signified not strength but weakness. So, bravery ran deep. Others would be mystified, would ridicule and hate us, but someone somewhere would understand, perhaps, that this was the first crack, the first sacking of Rome, the first doubting of the all-powerful unbeatable unquestionable moralistic tentacled monster: an indelible question mark to slouch in minds, to feed doubts, to spark criticism.
              We struggled with a tatty old map, having switched off the truck’s navigation to avoid revealing our location. It would be no surprise for an old vehicle like this to have electrical faults. Also, to avoid raising alarm, we used back roads the whole way: throwing us into the shambles of map-reading for the first time in our lives.
              Also for the first time, I was without my chip, which now nestled back on the farm beneath my brother’s skin. My umbilical cord to the Union had been severed: the chip dug out and replanted by an alcoholic country doctor with a shaky hand, who—a luxury for me alone, should soon be repeating the process in reverse. I now bore the same scar of treachery as the others.
              Beside me sat Jim, a squat Falstaff of a man: one had the impression his arms were longer than they should be, or that his trousers were up too high. He was a recent recruit; a timid middle-aged accountant. He had explained how he had come to feel ashamed, so dull,
so colourlessly ordinary. Dependent
. He had always been a somewhat nervous character, as he put it: a pessimist, cautious and predictable; scanning the newspaper for the tiniest hint of danger and taking the necessary precautionary measures. He had always been prepared for the worst; a food shortage, a terrible snow storm, a hurricane a nuclear meltdown an invasion…a divorce! But then they never happened, and the one thing he had not braced himself for in life was the nothingness, just acres of it stretching before him; the realisation that nothing was going to happen, ever. In his caution, he had shaved the pleasure from everything: those who’d visited his home reported perennial darkness and cold; the the very experience of poverty materialised by the fear of it. He had begged to be in on the action. Now, he caught my eye from time to time, staring at me blankly. Well, today he had left his tidy life behind.
              Opposite, sat Maggie: an experienced thirty-year old Essex girl with mascaraed eyes and chewing gum, and a maniacal thirst for violence against the state. According to rumour her mother was sent into Rehab when Maggie was a child, never to be seen again. Maggie spoke six European languages—not out of passion, but to be ready for the worst, and she had won a black belt in Krav Maga. She was magnificent. Compared to her, I was a fraud, and she looked at me now and then, as if to check I’d not lost my nerve.
              The truck trundled along the uneven roads, its old electric motor whining and wheezing and panting like a big old zoo animal ready to lie down and die. The transformer smell of burnt dust threatened failure at any moment, but the vehicle went doggedly on. The wheels squealed against the kerb as we rumbled through a small town. The street lights woke up as the sun slid over the horizon.
              We felt tired and terrified, seized by the fear of failure, the fear of capture, the fear that maybe what we were doing was pointless, or totally wrong. The Constitution had quietly removed the right to freedom of speech ‘disparaging Union symbols due to their role in collective belonging, their link to the authority of government and the Union’s guiding principle of shared sovereignty.’ We had taken that as our call to action.
              We hauled into a courtyard and ground to a halt on smashed cobbles. The whole place was in darkness even though it was only just after eight—the approach of winter made everywhere seem empty. The old house seemed forgotten, swallowed by the London suburbs, and as our driver descended from the cab we heard the sound of a heavy latch being drawn back. Four or five men, local resistance, wandered out, their faces unsmiling: rebels from different cells held an uncomfortable alliance, one of convenience, and these men were resentful that we were here planning an attack on their turf. They led us into a small room, its low ceiling supported by a network of blackened beams. On the table below, cold food and coffee waited as if for an absurd business convention. The terracotta floor was clean but worn and chipped, undulating beneath our feet. The fire radiated a homeliness and comfort at odds with the ambiance, its flames lurching and rising as the last men came in. It occurred to me that I should have been happy in a place like this, surrounded by family and history. My mind wandered to the old days back home in my family’s farmhouse, and to the calming joy of watching my father’s father, withered and fragile as a small bird, skinning rabbits—cutting their throats then down the gut and all those wonderful colours, the shiny red of the meat, the white grey green brown blue of the intestines, the brown of the liver and the cream of the skin.
              I looked around suspiciously; we all did. The Union had its friends everywhere; the less free people become, the more passionately they idealise their bondage and defend the status quo: feeding details to local civil servants—officious and sinister Gestapo-esque figures forever sniffing around for sparks of life to snuff out, or fabricating evidence to support a hunch. And in the end every rebel cell would be infiltrated, by them, by the blind believers, or by rebels who just didn’t have the stomach for it and who, surprising even themselves, would spill the beans at the first sign of trouble. But then there would be new rebels, and new cells, and as these strangers eyeing each other up and down knew all too well, that however much we disliked the idea, we had to work together.
              Finally the silence broke.
              ‘So you need our help?’
              Their leader, a Scot called Seamus, was tall and lean, he dressed, moved and spoke like a young man but his face wore the leathery legacy of smoking and alcohol, dark rings cut deep into his face beneath tired, honest eyes, and his hair was overgrown.
              Two feet behind loitered a short man sporting a jacket a size or so too big, hair clipped short and a thin straggly beard that, like his oversized swagger, tried to assert his manhood. He was the kind who would do anything for respect, from anyone; a man you could buy with compliments.
              Another was slim and lurching with the eyes of an operative, and the fourth had expensive spiky hair, designer clothes and a brave pair of glasses, all ruined by a nervous expression. Together they seemed amateurs. Clowns, even.
              ‘We need a local truck,’ I said, ‘an old one—less conspicuous, and a driver, someone who knows the vehicle, London and the suburbs . . . but who looks the part, and a man with a clean chip then a couple more who look like workers, to sit in the truck.’
              ‘We can do it,’ replied Seamus. ‘My chip is clean.’
              At this moment, I desperately wanted to give it all up, but my stomach held me firm with a wretched aching—the knowledge that if I ran away, I would regret it for the rest of my life.
              It was already dawn when we drew into the city centre, dropping people here and there. This kind of activity was normal in the early hours as labourers from the countryside came into town. That was how the Union seemed to like it—the country folk for the labour, the city for the Union.
              At the Interior Ministry entrance stood a proud security guard, his overweight body straining to get out—a retired soldier, perhaps. Seamus wheeled up on a bicycle, complete with sunglasses, helmet, skin-tight fluorescent cycling clothes and a rucksack with a sports-top water bottle in a side-pocket.
              ‘I have a letter to deliver . . .’ and he reeled off a name we’d found on the internet.
              Sporting nylon tie and communicator—an authority justified by a particularly stern expression, the guard looked at Seamus, who returned a respectful nod: and Seamus was through, marking his last day as an unmarked man.
              Meanwhile, in the square, Maggie, dressed as a nun—because the religious orders could roam chip-free—climbed the steps to the oak door of the silent church as though she had done it a thousand times before. She slid the key into the lock, praying there would be no-one the other side, that it would work. It had taken our man six months of artful worship for the chance to copy the key and everything now hinged on the place being empty long enough.
              I was lying heavy on the concrete atop the public library opposite, a silenced rifle resting in my hands to take care of Maggie if something went wrong, and sneakers on my feet ready to run. Seamus’s trusty rebel librarian waited below, then we had a man at each corner of the square—one of them Jim—avoiding the cameras, watching, reading their newspapers. As I looked down I saw the Civil Police in their blue anoraks, berets and combat trousers, eying up the tourists, stuffing their numb faces with snacks and drinks. Yes, Civil Police was the outfit you joined if your Upper father or alumni network didn’t get you a job: community service for the unemployable.
              Maggie walked the musty aisle, dwarfed by the extravagance, found the tiny door to the tower and made her way up round and around the stone spiral staircase, the heavy duffel bag over her shoulder. At the window on the first landing, she delicately set up the missile launcher, checked the sights, and again, then retreated, locking the door behind her.
              Seamus had barely left the Ministry and turned the corner when, with a shudder, the missile hit the Statue of Europa square in the left knee. He cycled on, doing his best to look inconspicuous in fluorescent Lycra, until he reached the truck. He jumped in, the others pulled down the tarpaulin and we were off, I dug out Jim’s chip, then Seamus’, flinging them on the tarmac. It had all gone so quickly, so smoothly, and already we were away, the motor wheezing its carcinogenic vapours.
              People filled with concern and morbid excitement scurried past us toward Europa, eying the ravaged old hag as she leaned wearily, her one remaining leg steadily losing its human shape, revealing the truth—nothing but steel and lies.
              We drove through a maze of back-streets and then country lanes until we reached Seamus’ men, then switched to a minibus. As we drove away the truck was being moved into some woods by the roadside, the little big man and the spiky one arguing with one another. Through the long journey that followed, the men were furiously inflating their roles as though their grandchildren were already present, the cranky clattering of the minibus providing the orchestra, and I was unable to get a moment’s sleep. Maggie sat alone and silent, at the front.
              Eventually we arrived at a farmhouse where we were to spend the night. We staggered in exhausted and fearful, an emotion that had gradually replaced elation as the day and tiredness had progressed, and we sat ourselves down heavily without invitation. The farmer’s pretty daughter stood silently in the doorway to a back room, too uncomfortable to enter yet too curious to leave. Her eyes were distant, her long hair floating on waves of static. Her eyes moved uncritically, even unemotionally, from one speaker to the next, recording without opinion. I noticed her upper lip quiver, almost imperceptibly, as though there was something she might say.
              The farmer, also silent, seemed a calm, measured man, heavy in his build and with a sun-scorched asymmetrical face. His grey hair was streaked orange by the same tobacco that stained his teeth and fingers: fingers worked into sausage-like stumps.
              Still saying nothing, he led us out to a barn we were to share with an uncountable number of chickens and a couple of young calves; the smell was quite imposing. The smell, perhaps, of treachery; of the new life I would have to learn to live with. The farmer’s wife brought out food and beer, and candles; the smell was forgotten and the flickering colours of the place amplified our hunger. The woman was stocky and ugly—again nothing like the daughter, and we ate to calm our minds until our stomachs ached, our skin prickled and our eyes bulged.
The letter bounced from department to department, subordinate to subordinate, then boss to boss at an accelerating rate until finally it landed before the Office of the Interior Minister, six days later in Brussels.
              The Interior Council stood in nervous silence, its members looking as though they’d just bowled out of a university debating society, seeking direction from their leader’s tiniest twitch. The Interior Minister, Gustav Haussmann, was calm and controlled—of course, it had been no surprise. Dealing with fanatical groups was a part of the job and he had experience of every kind of disaffected fool. To the more serious, he would offer governmental roles where they could ‘represent their views’, where the mundane day-to-day bureaucracy, together with money, would first neutralise them and then harness them (‘killing them with cream’, he would say). With his arm draped around their necks, his breath blowing in their ears, he would whisper how those who do not take from the system take from their families, and since they knew the alternative, this had indeed been the source of some of his best and most loyal managers—men and women otherwise wasted. And indeed, it was the very part of his job that amused him the most.
              There were always those, of course, too stubborn or too stupid, who he would leave to the creativity of the police, to Rehab, or to a public hanging—one way or another, he was effective. Haussmann’s pet toy was a lead-lined meeting room he affectionately called his Garden of Eden, to which he would invite problematic community leaders, political trouble-makers, to discuss their grievances and find ‘compromise’. The Achilles’ heel of all protesters, he reflected wistfully to himself, is their profound belief that they are right and can convince their opponent to change. After chatting a while he would leave the room which would then be bombarded by radiation, with no noticeable effect on the guest until some months later (as it was not an exact science), when they would be consumed by agonising cancer. Of course, they knew they’d been got, but they never knew how!