Sean Gabb: The Break

Jennifer stepped from the lift into a main area that was just as she’d left it. If she could see a digital countdown in her mind’s eye, no one else seemed yet to have noticed the wrecking of the project that had brought this complex together. There was a crowd by one of the mainframe terminals. Two men were reading against each other from sheets of listing paper. A third was trying to make sense of this as he typed in strings of code. One of Hooper’s people had taken over an unused desk. He had an old telephone receiver cradled under his left ear, and, nodding every few seconds with evident relief, was taking notes. One of the guards stopped to look at them. They were Outsiders, and without anyone in charge of them. She smiled and spoke English, and pointed at the badge pinned to her tunic. Not replying, he continued about his other business.

Michael was alive and recovering almost by the second. Robert was a hero. Her mother had been flat wrong about Radleigh. Her parents were alive . She stilled the rising of her spirits, and thought of Radleigh. She wished he hadn’t stayed behind, to make sure nothing changed before the other Hooper turned to a wafer thin pool of slime. Hooper and Rockville deserved all that was coming to them. Ditto Sweeting—or perhaps he was a special case: science is science, after all. She checked herself again. Had her mother been genuine in her dislike of Radleigh? Jennifer never had. Or was she already reshaping the past in light of the present?

“This is not the time or place for historical revisionism,” she said firmly to another of the guards. He nodded, and the sound of her English drew his hand away from where it had come to rest above his holster. Better to think how to get out of here. That remained as vague in her head as when she’d pressed the top button in the lift.

She took a couple of files from a cardboard box that had been left under a table. This was a trick her father had told her about from his brief spell in the Civil Service: Bored? Fancy a walk? Carry a stack of files with you. It works every time . So it might now. “Keep behind me and try not to speak,” she said in Latin. Robert nodded and stepped away from Michael, who, so long as it didn’t involve running away, seemed able to move by himself. They set off towards the exit. Jennifer looked briefly down as they skirted the railed gap in the floor. Still holding up their cards, still silent, the oilman and the Prime Minister might not have moved since she’d first seen them. Another of Hooper’s people caught up with them, and overtook in a self-important bustle. He glanced back at the oddly clothed trio—but the sight of the badges, and of those files, settled any tendency to suspicion.

Sweeting had mentioned a goods lift. That made sense. The way they’d come in didn’t allow movement of large objects, or in bulk. The goods lift was being readied for a transfer of material from that American warehouse to the armed forces. Normal routine there might be out of order. It was the obvious place for a getaway. All Jennifer needed was to find where it was.

Teapot in hand again, Jessup stepped from behind one of the computers. He looked at them and raised his eyebrows. “So Basil has done it!” he said softly in Latin. He transferred the teapot to his left hand and gave a concerned look at Michael, who was looking ready again to fall asleep if he stopped moving.

“Come with us,” Jennifer whispered. “This whole place will blow up in about half an hour.”

He smiled and looked about. “I thought he was more out of his mind than your father,” he said in English. He put his teapot on the floor and stood up straight. “But he has closed the Gateway. Who is the double you left downstairs with him?”

“Hooper.”

Jessup nodded. “That will have pleased him more than you can know.” He raised his voice. “The ending of a work glorifies the work,” he said in Latin.

“We need to get to the goods lift,” Jennifer said.

Tarquin laughed behind her. “Going somewhere, are we?” he asked in Greek. Jennifer turned. He stood with three guards, their pistols at the ready. He shifted his weight to one leg. “ Finis opus coronat , eh?” “We’ll see about that!” He spoke to one of the guards: “Any trouble, shoot the girl first, and then the Norman. The boy belongs to Hooper.”

“The Gateway is closed,” Jennifer said in Latin. She looked for words that would make sense in the language. How, without giving the game away in English, to say that everything for a mile in any direction was about to become a ball of incandescent gas?

Tarquin saved her the trouble. “You’re a lying bitch!” he said in English, hate blazing from his face. He switched into Latin. “The boy is going back for use as charcoal in Hooper’s furnace. You’ll stand there till he’s raked out as ash. Then I’ll kill you with my own hands.” He turned to the biggest of the guards. “Take them in charge,” he said, back in English.

Jessup coughed politely. “If you look in my breast pocket,” he said to the man, “you’ll find a warrant card that proves I’m an officer of the State Security Bureau.” A few seconds more, and all three armed men were busy saluting. The big one laid a warning arm on Tarquin’s shoulder. “Lock him into one of the offices,” Jessup ordered. “I’ll seek instructions from the Home Secretary herself over his punishment.” He took off his spectacles. He folded them away. He pointed at the big man. “Escort these three agents from the complex. Tell anyone who asks that they’re on business for the SSB.”

Jennifer stared at a man suddenly taller and more confident than the dreamy scholar Michael had described. If this whole narrative was some kind of incomplete jigsaw puzzle, she’d found another piece. Or she’d found a piece and didn’t know where it went. “Aren’t you coming with us?” she gabbled in Latin.

He smiled sadly. “You wouldn’t have me leave Basil all alone down there? Besides, my running days are long past—in every sense.” He stared at the teapot. “Do light a candle for me in the Great Church, Michael.”

He looked at Tarquin. “Go quietly, my dear fellow. We’ve never spoken, but I did much admire your thesis on the cult of Antinous in fourth century Egypt. Such a pity you’ll never get any closer to your sources.”

Jennifer waited till they were all out of sight. “Come on,” she said to Robert. “We’re losing time.” They set off again, now at a brisk pace, for the only exit they knew. Still, nothing seemed to have changed. She was beyond making sense of the equipment, or of the army of men in white who tended it. But, if incomprehensible, the computers continued radiating assurance, and the men fussed happily with questioning and directing them. Jennifer had put her files down. There was no need now of any cover story. The guard was on a mission for the SSB. Self-importance stamped on his face, he’d not be stopped or questioned.

Within minutes, they were by the glass door. “You’ll need to open it for us,” Jennifer said to the guard.

He shrugged. “Not my job, that,” he said with a nod at the unattended security desk. He looked suddenly round. “Here, what’s all that noise?” There was a commotion far within the complex. He walked back a few yards, to try for a better view. Jennifer’s stomach went cold. Had Jessup’s ruse failed? Had he changed his mind ?

“We could try this.” Robert held up Wapping’s forearm, and waved it as if it were a magic wand. Jennifer looked round. Lucky for them, the guard still had his back turned. She told herself not to shudder, and took the limb into her own hands. Cold and immobile as a piece of butcher’s meat, it was surprisingly heavy. She held the implanted microchip a few inches from the sensor panel. A red light began to flash. But the door remained shut.