She was having second thoughts about having left Webb on his own. Or not even on his own: the other Russian was there too. Also in pain, though that was of less consequence to her.
“Where’s Pashkin now?”
“On his way down, I imagine. With Marcus in hot pursuit.”
“I hope he’s careful.”
“I hope he kills the bastard.”
“I hope the bastard doesn’t kill him first. Or the others.”
Roderick Ho and Shirley Dander were on the scene too.
“It’s chaos out there, Louisa. God knows when you’ll see reinforcements.”
“We need medics first.”
“I’ll get a chopper sent.”
“Oh, shit,” said Louisa.
The roof.
“ZT/53235,” said River. “That’s where you’re from.”
“No legend worth the name springs from virgin soil. I gave Popov my own past, yes.”
“So you … you must have been a child.”
“Hard to believe, isn’t it? But apparently I carry the memory within.” He grimaced. “It wasn’t a healthy town to be born in. Even before you burned it to the ground.”
“Your own government destroyed it,” River said. “Because they thought there was a spy there. But there wasn’t. There never was. The town was destroyed for no reason.”
“There are always reasons,” the Russian said. “The spy wasn’t real, but the evidence was. That’s how the mirror world works, Walker. Your service wasn’t able to plant a spy there because security was too tight. So it did the next best thing, and planted evidence to suggest a spy. So the government did what governments do, and destroyed the town. What your Service would now call a result. Back then, they called it a victory.”
“It was all a long time ago,” said River, as if that meant anything now, or ever had.
“I came from a place that epitomised the Soviet world in English eyes,” said Katinsky. “And it was destroyed by fire. So here I am, in a place that epitomises England to the rest of the world. Tell me. What happens next?”
River moved at exactly the moment Katinsky revealed what his right hand held, and River pulled back but not fast enough. Katinsky caught his elbow with the Taser, and the force of the voltage threw him onto the path.
Katinsky stood. “I told you Pashkin had various things I needed. Where do you think I got this from?” Bending, he zapped River again. Sparks burst and the world swam red and black. “A source of plastic explosives was another. Being a career criminal opens all sorts of doors. Knows no borders, you might say.”
“There was no bomb,” River managed to squeak.
“No. The plane was a decoy, for Pashkin’s benefit. The plastic’s still here. All around us.”
He meant the gravestones, River thought dizzily.
Then: No.
He meant the whole village.
Katinsky said, “Each of the cicadas has enough to create one large bomb. And each has been told where to plant it. It’s the instruction they’ve been waiting for for years. Now they know why they were dispatched to Upshott. It was to be in place to destroy an enemy.”
“You’re mad. They won’t have done it.”
“I gave them everything,” he said. “Their identities, their start in life. And for more than twenty years they’ve been waiting, Walker. Waiting for the call that will activate them. That’s what cicadas do. They wake up and sing.”
“Even if they’ve planted these bombs. What good will it do?”
“I told you. It will redress a balance. And demonstrate that history never forgives.”
“You’re absolutely fucking insane.”
“You’re not so confident, then? That they won’t do it?”
River had been hoarding strength. All that energy that fizzed through his body, all of it that hadn’t been dissipated by the longest night of his life, was being summoned, and in a second he’d leap to his feet. Strange that he still felt fluid and helpless. “They’re not who you think. Not any more. They’ve been here too long.”
“We’ll see.” He held up the iPhone. “I’ll do a ring-round.”
“You’re going to ask them?”
Katinsky laughed and took a step back. “No, boy,” he said. “I’ll talk to the bombs. What, you think they’re attached to a fuse? They detonate remotely. Like this.”
He pressed numbers.
Webb was breathing, and his eyelids fluttered as Louisa bent over him. “Don’t die,” she said. He didn’t react. “Prick,” she added. He didn’t react to that, either.
Kyril wasn’t there. He’d handily left a trail of blood, though.
Still panting, she followed it. He’d made for the stairwell, but had gone up, not down. It must have been slow progress, judging by the blood. And came to an end two landings up, where he lay slumped against the wall, his face twisted into an agonized scribble.
“Making a run for it?”
“Bitch.”
It was a scratchy whisper. It didn’t seem likely he’d be shouting any warnings.
“He’s on the roof, isn’t he? You’ve got a chopper coming.”
But Kyril rolled his eyes and said no more.
He carried no weapon. If Pashkin was up there, she’d be a sitting duck. So she went through the last door carefully, or tried to. But the wind caught it and slammed it open.
Three hundred metres above London’s streets, there was a fair lick of breeze.
