Nick Harkaway - Tigerman

They talked for ten more minutes, and then Jack said he would look into what was possible. The Sergeant got to his feet and went to the door. He looked back over his shoulder and realised that the pea jacket had been thrown over a mannequin. He went back and poked at it curiously. A narrow speaking tube emerged from the wall and lay in the dummy’s lap. He shrugged a Tigerman shrug, and turned on his heel. The coat billowed around his calves in ironic salute. It was almost fun.

When he went outside, there was a storm on the horizon: a great band of looming rain and lightning, two hours out at most.

IT HAPPENED SOMETIMES, and he had relied on that. No one would have questioned his meteorological fraud because it was a known risk, a pattern in the weather having to do with the Somali Current and the temperatures in the Persian Gulf. A monsoon wind calved from a bigger storm would spin off from Socotra and rebound south and east, then meet the wind blowing off the Indian Ocean and suddenly something like a cyclone blew up almost out of nowhere.

It happened. That was a given, indisputable. And it was happening now. He hoped Inoue was safely away, that she wasn’t flying into that. He saw her in his mind, drowning in the aisle of a tiny plane sucked down into the deep black water. Her fear. Her regret.

He shook his head inside the mask, growled and heard it echo down the empty street.

The Fleet would be preparing to move. Beneseffe would be scurrying to provide the ships with estimates and safe distances, dispositions and instructions. Exactly as planned. Except that everything was planned for tomorrow, and the thunderheads would not wait. What he had thought to fake was real, and jogging at his elbow, and he must keep up or be swept aside. Every plan was overtaken by events. Some few were overtaken before they had begun. He had chosen a plausible scenario to hide under, and here that scenario had come true. So. That was the world, and he was in it.

He snatched the mask from his face and ran for the Land Rover, heard the tyres screech as he hit the accelerator, and let himself reconsider the plan as he hurled the car up the hill.

There had been no time to seed paranoia in the Fleet captains. He weighed the pros and cons of a call to Kershaw quietly suggesting some outrageous betrayal, asking that Kershaw keep it under his hat until the Sergeant could confirm. The Chinese are coming to take North Africa for its oil . That would do. It was insane but not absurd. China was hungry for resources, had been buying rare earths and shale gas reserves everywhere. The American hawks would believe it. India and Pakistan had nightmares about Chinese expansion. The Chinese would know it wasn’t true but would worry about where it was coming from. The Europeans would try to cool things down, but individually each nation would be trying to gain advantage.

And telling Kershaw was like whispering in the ear of the Fleet, talking too loudly at the next table. Although it might conceivably start a war somewhere, which would be a crime on a level for which the Sergeant did not have a word.

The road was slick. He had to pull back from the urge to accelerate. Brighton House was seven minutes away, but it would be much longer if he went off the road. More haste, less speed. In his rear-view mirror, Beauville lay quiet against the sea and the hills. The warning howled in him, the bone-deep certainty: something is bad. Something is not as it should be.

I am holding the gun by its barrel.

He could feel the edges of it, knew it for a real thing. But until it was clear, he had to keep moving, keep advancing, because if he stopped now the window of opportunity would close — and the opportunity was there, he knew that, too.

Already the storm was ominously close. He needed to be in the water, sneaking between the ships. He needed to talk to Jack again, revise the plan. Half of him wanted to turn around and go back to the Grande, but the wiser part knew there would be no Jack. Jack did not hang around, could not afford to. Arafat, it was rumoured, had never slept twice in the same bed. Jack was more invisible, more cautious, in a smaller place and with a less loyal following. He was somewhere else by now, if he had ever been in the room at all. The speaking tube suggested that he had, but there might easily have been a radio on the other end.

Lester Ferris snarled and thumped the steering wheel. Everything was obvious. Nothing was simple. He was trying to hold it all together with his mind and his will but the pieces were not elastic and they were pulling away, coming apart in his fingers.

He had the gear, at least. He was getting through the armoury’s supplies, but he was nearly finished. God knew how he’d account for the wastage. The riots, perhaps, and some shipping errors. A timely fire. Opportunistic crooks among the refugees. Small potatoes for now. At worst, he’d just say he’d grown bored and tried the stuff out, offer to pay for it. It would be in character. So he had grenades, a couple of inflatables with outboards, remote detonators and flares for his diversion.

Which left Beneseffe. A bribe might be out of the question now, he might just have to go in there and stare him down. What if Beneseffe regarded his job as a sacred trust, or if he was more frightened of the Fleet than he was of Tigerman?

Will you make him afraid? And then trust him not to betray you when you have gone? Or will you tell him everything and hope he doesn’t sell you to Kershaw or Hasp?

Gravel crunched under the Land Rover’s wheels, and he put the handbrake on too hard, felt it complain and shudder, released the brake a little and ran for the door.

Inside the door he stopped cold. There was someone waiting for him, and it wasn’t the boy. He could tell from the feel of the place, the nature of the quiet. The refugees had moved to the far wings, and the house murmured with them, but his little space was still his own. None of them came here without asking. The boy did, but he was at home here and his presence was calm and unobtrusive. This was not him. It wasn’t soldiers, either, with an arrest warrant, or Kathy Hasp hoping for more indiscretions.

For one moment, the Sergeant thought it must be Jack, then he hoped it was Inoue, and then he was terrified it might be Inoue, because he would have to get rid of her or tell her everything and he could not get rid of her. Could not. If she was here she had chosen to miss her flight out, and something in him would not permit the vandalism in turning her away. It would — he was amazed and delighted to find — break his heart.

He had given himself most improvidently in these last weeks.

It was neither of them. He knew as soon as the other man moved. He could hear the breathing, the sigh of effort with each step.

White Raoul.

He was alone, and he had abandoned his crutch. Perhaps he no longer needed it, or perhaps for moments of great significance he rejected it. The Sergeant was amazed by the force of certainty that he carried. It was like meeting a general in your living room, an unexpected eminence too big for the space. He wondered how much courage it took for the man to stand there. The scrivener could tell the world, if he chose, who had made the Tigerman stele — and for whom. Was it courage or trust that let him stand there unafraid of the man who wore it and did mad things? Because surely men had been murdered for less dangerous knowledge.

There was no time for whatever this was, but the Sergeant was caught in it, and somehow it was of a piece, it was important.

‘I ain’t here to stop you, Honest,’ White Raoul said. ‘I think you’re crazy, but I ain’t going to tell you to stop. You done well enough, I guess.’