Invisible Armies (20 page)

    She doesn't want to risk anything further. But she has to. "I love you, but we shouldn't do this."
    "I'll tell you what," Laurent says after a long moment. "We will do this. But if it doesn't work as planned, if anything goes awry, then you and I will follow your instincts, give up and move to New York."
    "We won't be going anywhere if we get caught," she says harshly. "Except jail and the front page."
   He nods. "Yes. But we have to give them this one last chance, this one last risk. We owe them that much."
    She doesn't want to. But it sounds so reasonable. She nods helplessly.
* * *
    A bomb, Danielle learns, consists of four elements. The case that contains it; in this instance, a gleaming metal suitcase. The secondary explosive, which makes up most of the bomb's bulk and power. Here, fuel oil and the common fertilizer ammonium nitrate, mixed to the consistency of mud, cut to the size of bricks, and baked in an ordinary oven until it feels like bread. Touch a match to secondary explosive, and it will puff into flame so quickly your eyebrows are unlikely to survive the encounter, but it will not explode; only an shockwave from some initiating explosion can detonate it.
   This detonation is the job of the primary explosive, which Laurent assures them can also be made with the spoils of a shopping trip to a supermarket and a hardware store, but in this bomb consists of industrial blasting caps supplied by the foundation, triggered by twelve volts of DC power. The blasting caps are connected to the last element, the trigger. Bombs can be triggered remotely, by cell phones; automatically, by cheap alarm clocks; by motion, with the aid of a mercury switch; or directly, by simply completing an electrical circuit, hopefully from a considerable distance. There can be a fifth element; shrapnel, ball bearings or nails packed around the secondary explosive, designed to shred any soft material – such as human beings – unfortunate enough to be close to the device when it goes off. But this bomb includes no shrapnel. There would be no point. It is not intended to ever explode.
   Laurent orders Angus, Estelle, and Danielle out of the garage while he attaches the trigger. In order to be convincing, the bomb has to look potentially lethal, as if the trigger was erroneously connected. Laurent wants as few people as possible around during final assembly, in case of a slip of the hand. Danielle waits on the street outside the garage, located beneath a railway line in an industrial area of south London, watching for oncoming trains. If one appears, they are instructed to shout and warn Laurent before it rattles overhead and causes his entire workplace to shake dangerously. Other than that risk she is not worried for Laurent. He has built the device with such confidence, such total lack of fear, that the odds of his hands slipping seem like those of a Tour de France winner falling off his bicycle on a dry, flat road. One thing she has learned in the last hour is that successful bomb making is more about steady hands and confidence than any elaborate chemistry or engineering. If anything it is frighteningly easy.
   Laurent appears in the grimy brick doorway a few moments later, smiling. "Fini!" he calls out. "Safe as houses. Come in."
    The open suitcase looks like it has been filled with childrens' mud cakes, into which two small discs have been pressed. These blasting caps, which look like ceramic rather than high explosive, are connected via two sets of wires to a cheap alarm clock taped to the secondary explosive with duct tape. It looks completely amateurish, like some sort of high-school science experiment.
    "If it exploded," she asks, "what would it do?"
    Laurent considers a moment. "We'd get smeared all over the walls. But the walls wouldn't be there, this place is made of brick, they'd fly fifty metres. Probably open a thirty-foot hole in the railway line."
    "Just from that?" Estelle asks.
    "Just from this." Laurent closes the briefcase. "Let's go make our delivery."
    "Need a hand?" Angus asks.
    Laurent shrugs. "It's not too bad." He hoists the briefcase. All the others flinch.
    "Don't worry," he says, smiling. "It's not dangerous. I've wired it so it looks like the real thing, but you could hit this with a sledgehammer and it wouldn't go off."
    "If you say so," Estelle says, unconvinced.
    Laurent lets go of the bomb. It slams into the ground with a loud metallic clunk. Danielle gasps; Angus twitches; Estelle cries out.
    "Satisfied?" he asks.
    "Prat," Angus mutters.
    "Now you won't be afraid of it on the way over," Laurent says./p>

* * *
    Assembling the bomb was easy. Depositing it at Kishkinda's London offices, and calling it to the attention of the media, is more challenging. A single overlooked hair can provide the police with DNA evidence. London is full of thousands of closed-circuit cameras; they would certainly be captured on camera en route to Terre, and if their car is ever associated with the bomb, the police might track down such footage, or witnesses might remember them. Phone calls made from a land line to alert the media and authorities to the bomb's presence can be easily traced to a specific location if from a land line, and a fairly small region if a cell phone, and cameras and witnesses at those sites are also a concern. Danielle has never appreciated how many pitfalls modern criminals face.
   Criminals and terrorists. She realizes, en route to the suitcase's destination, that 'terrorist' is, somehow, exactly what she has become. Their reluctance to use extreme violence does not exclude them from the label. Their objective is to terrorize Terre's management.
   Terre's office is in Hammersmith, but their destination is on the other side of the city; a deserted building on a quiet street in north London with no onlooking cameras. Angus parks their Vauxhall with tinted windows, another exhibit of the foundation's largesse, across the street. Laurent carries the suitcase to the steps outside the building and leaves it there. Danielle watches him, trembling nervously. If anyone sees her in the next thirty seconds, she will likely be jailed for life.
   Laurent comes back towards the car, walking with exaggerated jauntiness; she emerges and joins him on the sidewalk; and they walk away. Danielle reminds herself to look casual, forgettable. There is no one on in sight but she is icily sure some old biddy is watching them from behind a window. Her heart thunders in her chest. Her legs feel fluttery, she is certain she is walking with visible weakness. She is sick with fear.
   "No more," she says breathlessly. "I can't do this any more. Never again. This is the last time. I'm sorry. I just can't. No more."
   Laurent nods. "I agree."
   "Why us? Why did we have to go walking? Why do we have to make the phone calls? It's safe for them. They're in the car. They just have to sit and make sure it happens. Why did you say we would do it?"
   "It's sensible. I'm sorry. His dreadlocks, her purple hair, they would stand out. We have a better chance of going unnoticed."
   Danielle relaxes a tiny bit when they have gone a few blocks. She may still be doomed, but if so, at least it has already happened, the awful waiting is over. Laurent takes out his cell phone. Purchased for cash days ago, untraceable. He dials a number and waits briefly.
   "A-1 Courier Service?" he asks, hamming up his French accent. "Yes. I'd like a courier to come pick up a package. The recipient's name is Terre PLC, 26 Paddenswick Road, London W6 0UB." He gives the address of the deserted house they just left. "The name of the sender is the Kishkinda Liberation Front. Yes. Thank you."
    He turns off the phone and puts it away.
    She looks at him. "Kishkinda Liberation Front?"
    He shrugs. "A little insouciance. We can almost skip phoning in the official bomb threat. The police will figure it out from that alone. It will leak to the newspapers, the City will go haywire, their stock will plummet. All from those three little words. And one bomb."
    "Let's just go," she says.
   Then there comes an intensely bright flicker of light behind them. For a fraction of a second Danielle mistakes it for a camera flash.

Chapter  
23 

<   The noise and shockwave hit like a wall falling on them, the air itself pulsates, not like regular noise, but a force tearing at her ears. She doesn't hear anything after that, doesn't hear the sounds of buildings crumbling, cars flung into one another like childrens' toys, alarm sirens. The shockwave forces Danielle onto her knees. What she remembers most is seeing it ripple down the street like a gust of wind. The shockwave moves at six hundred miles an hour, the speed of sound, it takes only a fraction of a second to pass through her line of sight, but she swears afterwards that she saw the storm front of the explosion advance like a hurtling wave, shattering windows all the way down the street.
   It actually takes a few seconds, stunned, deafened, and on her scraped knees, for her to associate what just happened with the bomb they built earlier today.
   Laurent helps her to her feet, takes her hand, leads her on, walking away from the blast. His shirt is torn and there is blood on his arm from some kind of shrapnel. Danielle follows him robotically, in shock, unable to think, her legs marching by themselves. The world is soundless, as if someone pushed the global MUTE button. They pass ambulances and police cars racing the other way, sirens flashing. They keep walking. Her knees hurt. She looks down and sees they are bloody, the kneecaps have been scraped off her jeans. The world seems to be moving too fast around them, she doesn't have time to react to any sensory stimuli. People, old people and mothers mostly, are standing out in the streets or in their front gardens, talking to one another with concerned expressions, on their cell phones, looking back past Danielle and Laurent. A couple of them approach, meaning to help, but Laurent waves them off and they keep walking. They mustn't be noticed, mustn't be remembered, mustn't be caught. Danielle knows this but can barely remember why. A crackling buzz in her mind, overwhelmingly loud, drowns out all attempts at coherent thought.
   She isn't sure how far they've walked when she begins to emerge from her cocoon of shock. Miles, she thinks. Her feet ache. So does her head. Her skinned knees have clotted over but bloodstains dangle like tongues on the shins of her torn jeans. Her ears ring as if she carries a fire alarm with her, but at the edge of her hearing she can hear the noises of the city, traffic, pedestrian chatter. They are in a more built-up area now, a busy street with a few stores, a Boots pharmacy, a newsagent, a post office, a café. A red double-decker bus passes. The people all around act as if nothing has changed, as if the world has not ended. She tugs on Laurent's hand to make him stop and turn to face her.
   "I need to sit down," she says. She knows from the vibrations in her throat that she is speaking loudly, but she can barely hear herself.
   He nods. They enter the café. The furnishings are cheap uncomfortable plastic, the plates and cutlery old and chipped, the stink of grease pervasive, the service malevolent, the décor nonexistent, but it seems like a sanctuary. They order bacon sandwiches and cups of tea. The fat old woman behind the counter gives them a sharp untrusting look, but Danielle suspects she does that with everyone. It is a great relief to sit on the plastic chairs. The sandwiches taste like ashes.
   "Maybe they –" she begins, and then stops. She can't think of a maybe.
   Laurent shakes his head violently. "Not here."
   She nods. It doesn't matter. Angus and Estelle must be dead. Danielle cannot even imagine how they might have survived the blast. The thought seems curiously unreal, as if it is not they who died, just their characters in a video game, Angus and Estelle can select
New Game
and pop back into this world untouched any time they like.
* * *
    Only minutes after returning to the apartment Danielle realizes she has no recollection of how they got there, of any time between the café and now. Laurent goes straight to the shower without saying a word. She slumps onto the couch in front of the television. After a moment, not allowing herself to think about it, she takes the remote turns on Teletext, the BBC's archaic pre-Internet system of textual news updates. The crude white letters on a black screen are like time travelling back to the 1980s. The lead story is BOMB IN NORTH LONDON – FIVE DEAD.
    She can't bring herself to select the story and read more. She clicks the television off. She vaguely knows she should cry, tear out her hair, wear sackcloth and ashes, but it all still feels so unreal. And besides her hair isn't long enough to tear. For some reason this thought produces a ghostly smile which immediately prompts a stab of horrible, unspeakable guilt. Danielle tells herself that she just participated in the accidental murder of five people, including two good friends. It sounds ridiculous. She is very tired. She decides to go to sleep. In her heart she really believes that when she wakes up all this will somehow be over, erased, forgotten like a nightmare.
    For a moment when she wakes she doesn't remember what happened. Then it hits her and she moans as if struck, curls into a fetal ball, unable to deal with the enormity of it all. Her whole body is shot through with icy shivers. Her mind keeps recoiling from the idea and then returning to it again, as if picking at a scab. Breathing hard, she sits up. Laurent is sitting in a chair, staring dully at her. She rushes past him to the bathroom and throws up. Eventually she takes a shower. It doesn't make her feel clean. She scrubs angrily at her skinned knees, making them sting like fire.  When she comes out, wrapped in a towel,  Laurent does not seem to have moved, but there is a newspaper on the bed front of him, the Evening Standard. BOMB KILLS FIVE is the headline.
    She sits on the bed and reads. The dead have already been identified. Angus, Estelle, an old woman, a young mother and her infant daughter. Danielle cries out loudly when she reads that last. Seventeen others were wounded but are expected to recover. The article calls Angus and Estelle 'anarchists with a history of violence.'
   "We probably shouldn't be here," Laurent says. His voice is devoid of life. "I don't think Estelle booked this place in her real name. But even so. They might be able to find it."
   "What happened? How could this happen?"
   "I guess I fucked up. Maybe, when I dropped it on the ground, to prove how safe it was –"
   Then, incredibly, Laurent begins to giggle.
   "Laurent," Danielle says, when the giggling continues. "Stop it. Stop it!" She stands up and shakes him. His laughter deepens, his whole body shakes, tears begin to roll down his cheeks. Frightened, Danielle takes a step back and slaps him hard.
   The laughter stops like she flicked a switch. He stares at her with red eyes. "Thanks. I needed that. I'm sorry. I don't know where that came from."
   "Don't do it again." She feels like the ground has dropped away to a steep angle. The one thing she had thought was bedrock was Laurent's stability.
   "I won't," he promises.
   The telephone begins to ring. Both of them jump, then stare at the phone as if it too might explode.
   "I'll get it," she says. Maybe it is the police. She almost hopes so. At least this would be over. She deserves to be captured. She deserves to be jailed. They both do.
   "This is Philip," a hoarse voice says, "What the
fuck
is going on?"
* * *
    "This is not a setback," Philip says. "This is fucking
catastrophic
. The police connected the bomb to Kishkinda. The papers are full of speculation that Angus and Estelle didn't act alone, they had no history of bombs. They're looking for you. And us."
    They are again in the foundation's rented boardroom near Green Park. Somehow a day and a night has passed, somehow time has not stopped. Danielle's night was spent in endless non-sleep, dipping into the pool of unconsciousness for only minutes at a time, then waking and nervously expecting a knock on the door, the police have come, they tracked their phone calls, or their walk down the street away from the bomb, or the manufacturer of the metal suitcase, or their intrusion into the Paris offices. Each time Danielle woke she thought of Angus and Estelle, the new mother and the infant girl, and howled softly with anguish. Beside her, Laurent slept soundly.
    "Five people dead, including Angus and Estelle," Philip continues. "Seventeen wounded. Millions of pounds of damage. Every police officer in London trying to track the bomb. And Paris as well, now they found the bugs you planted. The purpose of this meeting is to officially inform you that the foundation is temporarily disbanding. We strongly suggest you leave the country. If you are arrested, and to be honest at this point we conside this quite likely, I very strongly suggest you do not breath a word about us. We have friends and ears in unlikely places high and low. Ministers' offices and prison cells. We can't afford to have our existence investigated and testified to. We will not be destroyed by your colossal mistake. We will ensure our invisibility. By any means necessary. Do I make myself perfectly clear?"
    "Transparent," Laurent says.
    Danielle nods.
    Philip takes a deep breath and forces himself to relax. His face sags and suddenly he looks old and weak. "Go home, both of you," he says. "Go back to America."
* * *
    Danielle bursts out crying in the middle of yoga class that afternoon. She shouldn't have gone to class at all, she should have stayed hidden in their flat, but she thought if she went and pushed herself as hard as she could, to the edge of her endurance, she might achieve amnesia. It didn't work. She has to be helped out of the room. She takes a long shower in the change room and manages to keep her tears in when she leaves the building, at least until she is out in the Primrose Hill sunshine. It is a thirty-minute walk back to the flat. She cries all the way. At an intersection halfway there, she is nearly struck by a car, and after leaping to safety, she almost wishes she hadn't.
* * *
    "They're going to catch us, aren't they?" Danielle asks the next day, sitting in her chair, staring down at the street outside, clogged with London traffic and pedestrians. A curdled haze of cloud hangs over the city.
    "Not likely. We'll be gone tomorrow."
    "Running away isn't going to help. Everyone in the world is looking for us."
    "How will they find us?" Laurent asks.
    "I don't know. Something. Some little clue."
    "No." His voice is assured, steady; there is no sign that yesterday's crazy giggle fit ever happened. "You know why most criminals are caught? Because they're stupid. Or they panic under pressure and make flagrant errors. Don't believe what you see on television. TV police win because it's what people want to see. The truth is most police, even the elite, even the FBI and MI6, aren't as bright and well-trained as they'd have you believe. Smart people who don't panic can run rings around them. You wouldn't believe the damage a single determined, competent person could wreak on a country like this, if one of us really tried. They won't catch us. They count on mistakes. We didn't make any."
    "You made a pretty fucking big one, didn't you?"
    "Yes," Laurent says. "I did. And in wars mistakes kill people. And I'm sorry for them. I'm terribly sorry. If I could trade my life for theirs I would. But I can't. Neither can you. So stop acting like you want to be caught. You think they should catch us, don't you? You think we deserve it."
    "Don't we?"
    "No. Our intentions were pure. Our objectives were noble."
    Danielle half-laughs. "Pure. Noble. We killed people. Have you read about the ones who lived? One of them will never walk again."
    "What can I say?" Laurent asks. "It's horrific. It's no more horrific than what's happened to the brain-damaged children in Kishkinda, or the ones who will never walk, or Jayalitha and her children. Remember what you told me about making mistakes? You move on. We will move on to New York. We will heal. It will be slow, it will be painful, but I promise, we will heal. And it wasn't you. It was me. It was my mistake. I'm the killer. You did nothing wrong, you have no responsibility."
    "I could have stopped you. Or left you."
    She lets the last sentence hang in the air.
    "Don't leave me," he says, confidence suddenly drained from his voice. "Please. Not now. Please. If you've ever believed anything I've said, believe this. You're the only woman I've ever met who might save me."
    She turns and looks at him. "Save you from what?"
    "Myself," he says. "Come with me to New York. Please. We'll put all this behind us. It will all be over, all of it, forever. I swear."
* * *
    Laurent has gone out for a long walk when the phone in their flat rings. Danielle stares at it a long time, lets the doubled rings of the British telephone fill the empty space of the room a half-dozen times, knowing in the cold center of her heart that the caller bears bad news. She fears the unknown so badly she can hardly bear to make it known. But she forces herself to answer.
    "Danielle?" A familiar voice, but one she is too distraught to immediately place. "Is Laurent there?"
    "Who is this?"/p>