The body was starting to smell.
Truth is, it wasn’t clear it was the body on the turn; the body was wrapped in cling film, which should be keeping it fresh, and there were other possible sources: Shin, for a start, and An, and Chris. The back of the van was a mobile oven, and it was days since any of them had showered. So it might be that Joon was blameless, the only one not contributing to the rancid atmosphere, but he was also the only one currently dead, so there was little chance he could evade blame.
As well as body odour, tension muddied the air.
Shin said, ‘There will be armed police.’
‘We do not know that,’ said An.
‘And helicopters.’
Again: ‘We do not know that.’
Danny nodded, to show An his agreement. Noticing this, Shin scowled.
But Shin had diminished overnight, and his presence carried no more weight than Joon’s. They no longer believed in him. Shin had yet to threaten to raise this in his precious daily report, but only, Danny thought, because he knew how weak it would make him appear. When Shin’s face crumpled in frustration or rage, he pretended it was the tightness of his collar enraging him, or the looseness of his belt, and he would fumble briefly at the supposed cause of offence. But in truth, it was Danny and An who were angering him; their having seen through his weakness and failure.
They had left Birmingham an hour ago, Chris at the wheel once more. Of all of them, Chris alone seemed unchanged by events; seemed happy to drive, to wait, to follow orders.
Shin said, ‘They know what we are capable of.’
An was down on his haunches, a position Danny found impossible to believe was comfortable in a moving vehicle, and was holding one of the assault rifles across his lap. One palm was laid flat across its trigger guard, and the barrel was pointing at the back door.
‘And they will be expecting us to make a move.’
An said, ‘But they cannot know where.’
He stroked the gun.
Shin tried again. ‘They will know the document we are following. Ho will have told them. We are no longer working in darkness.’
An said, ‘But Ho knows nothing of our actual plans. There is nothing he would be able to tell them.’
‘But maybe the girl …’ said Shin, and stopped.
The van went over a pothole: always potholes on the roads. The whole country was sliding into a pit, one small chunk at a time.
Danny said, ‘What did you say?’
‘Nothing. I said nothing.’
‘You said something about the girl.’
‘The girl knew nothing either. That is all I was going to say.’
Danny said, ‘The girl is dead.’
‘Yes,’ said Shin.
‘So why do you say she knew nothing?’
Shin said, ‘Because even if she were alive, it would not help them. That is all I meant.’
‘You said you killed her.’
‘I did.’
‘When you came out of her house, you told us she was dead, that you had ended her.’
‘Yes.’
‘But nobody else saw her body.’
‘I saw her body,’ said Shin.
Danny looked at An, waiting for him to reach the obvious conclusion: that Shin was lying. That Shin had betrayed them.
But An said nothing.
Shin said, ‘Why are you asking me these questions? Have you forgotten who is in charge?’
Nobody had forgotten who was in charge.
The heat in the van increased as sunlight took hold. In here for hours now, for days, and their old lives as lost as a snake’s sloughed skin. It was true, though, that they were no longer working in darkness; somewhere there would be doors being knocked upon, computer records shuffled, names and descriptions gathered in. But they only had one more thing to do, and all that mattered was that they do it.
Because they were soldiers. As a student in this strange world, Danny had been amazed at the words and antics of those who imagined their lives their own to do with what they would, never realising that everything they thought they desired had been imposed on them by forces greater than themselves. It was only in accepting those forces that true freedom could be found. Example: when he learned that the Supreme Leader had had his own uncle executed with an anti-aircraft gun, Danny understood that such a thing had been necessary to punish dissent. When he further learned that this story had been concocted by the Western media, Danny understood that the Supreme Leader was a gentle soul, vilified by his enemies. In neither of those different worlds was his faith in the Supreme Leader shaken.
As if he were reading Danny’s mind, An spoke. ‘It does not matter,’ he said. ‘They are expecting us, they are not. It makes no difference. We will fulfil this destiny.’
Then he reached up for the transistor radio that hung by a strap from a hook; a small, cheap, apparently indestructible device, that didn’t mind being slapped against the panel every time they took a corner or hit a bump. When he turned the knob, a news broadcast chirruped into life. The subject under discussion was the service that afternoon at Westminster Abbey, where there would be princes and politicians, the PM among them, and all of it taking place under the eyes of the world’s cameras.
