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—“
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.
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—”
“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.”
Nothing about her expression suggested she was joking.
The next
“Through,” said Marcus.
Louisa patted Kyril’s shattered leg again, and made for the door.
She’d never flown in radio silence before, and it added an odd dimension to the morning, as if all this were taking place inside a dream, in which the bluntly familiar—the panel of instruments before her; the view of empty skies; Damien by her side—rubbed surfaces with the strange. London was gathering shape; coagulating into an uninterrupted mass of rooftop and road, its districts strung together by buses and cars.
Stacked behind them were masses of the leaflet she’d designed; the one that would tell the marchers what they were doing—stopping the city; smashing the banks. The details remained vague, but it was enough to be a part of the crusade. There was greed and avarice and corruption in the world, and probably always would be, but that was no excuse for not attempting to make a change …
“We should put the radio on,” Damien said. “It’s dangerous. It’s illegal.”
She said, “Don’t worry. We’re too low to be on anyone’s flight path.”
“I didn’t think we’d be so …”
“What do you think they’ll do, for Christ’s sake? Shoot us down? You think they’ll shoot us down?”
“Well no, but—”
“A few more minutes, we’ll be over the centre. They’ll see what we’re planning on doing, and yeah, they’ll escort us home and we’ll be arrested and fined and all that. We knew that before setting off. Grow some balls.”
But she could hear, beneath the hum of the Skyhawk’s engine, a bass note, a growl, a pair of growls, and in that instant a different future occurred to Kelly Tropper; one in which, instead of proving herself a radical daredevil, scattering her self-designed leaflets on the marching crowds below, she became an object lesson in the lengths to which a once-bitten nation might go to protect itself. But that seemed so far-fetched, so at odds with the scenario she’d planned, that she was able to dismiss it, even as Damien began to babble louder, and with audible fear, that this wasn’t the good idea it had sounded back in the Downside Man; that maybe they weren’t invulnerable after all.
That last part, though, surely couldn’t be true, thought Kelly. And on they flew towards the heart of London, its buildings growing closer together now; its spaces further apart; even as the noises she could hear beneath her own plane’s hum grew louder, and took up more room, and swallowed everything else.
