Part 46 (2/2)

”Yes, you are.” Tony saluted her. ”We bow down before you, oh great one.”

”Good. Just keep that adulation coming, minion, and we'll get on fine.”

On day thirteen, amid the greenery of Hampstead Heath, Suzanne ran five kilometres straight for the first time since schooldays. Back at her apartment, Josh used so-called pattern interrupts for rapid hypnotic inductions, dropping both Tony and Hannah into trance in less than a second.

”We're getting there,” Josh said.

”Yes, we are,” said Suzanne.

The fifteenth day was a nightmare for Josh, in contrast to everyone else, who performed superbly on the a.s.sault course.

”What's up?” asked Tony afterwards.

Suzanne said: ”He didn't come to bed last night. At all.”

”Josh?”

”Call me a geek.” Josh shrugged. ”I went through the subversion ware from start to finish, and re-edited the data archives. Philip came through with good stuff.”

Combining Philip Broomhall's corporate awareness with Josh's tech knowledge had paid dividends in triangulating on footage that neither the prime minister nor the Tyndalls would want the public to see.

”So it's going to make an impact?”

”Oh, yes.”

On day seventeen, they were in a converted Georgian house, surrounded by its own grounds, in the heart of Herefords.h.i.+re. It was a training facility, normally rented out to companies teaching management techniques; but occasionally the people who hired it were ex-Regiment, and the training that took place was light-years removed from anything an MBA would expect.

When a dark-clad figure grabbed Suzanne's shoulder from behind, she spun and slammed a palm-heel into a visor-protected chin, slammed a s.h.i.+n-kick into a padded thigh, and knocked the man down with a curving elbow strike.

”Nice,” said Josh.

Suzanne looked down at the half-p.r.o.ne man.

”Not now, Kato,” she said.

They spent the rest of the day either springing out on people to ambush them or else being the target, reacting to random attacks as they wandered through the building. She called it Clouseau training, a reference that Josh failed to catch, which meant an evening of watching old Pink Panther movies when the day's work was over.

Her viewing was interrupted by a call from Peter Hall, her client who had cancelled on the day she met Adam and later Philip Broomhall. Peter was distraught, and she calmed him down, taking him to a more resourceful neurophysiological state, able to cope with the sudden loss of his job that had triggered the reaction. By the end of it including a trance induction over the phone Peter had coping strategies in place. He would be ready for jobhunting tomorrow, while managing his emotions.

Finally, she closed down the call and looked at Josh, Tony, and Hannah.

”That wasn't just a wandering conversation, was it?” said Josh. ”We sort of appreciate how you did some of it, at least. Now we know the basics, that was a bit of a mastercla.s.s.”

Tony nodded, while Hannah said ”You rock, girl.”

”Thank you.”

On day twenty-two, in darkness, in front of the training house, Suzanne hugged the others farewell, Tony, Hannah, and the others she had met only five days before, Raj, Brummie, Ron, and Morio. Josh's way of saying goodbye was more in the way of wry smiles, punches to the upper arm or touching fists, and a final inventive insult that was returned in kind.

There were four cars, already packed with kit. Josh and Suzanne climbed into the first together, and drove off. The others would leave at intervals, dispersing rather than forming an obvious convoy. They would rendezvous tomorrow morning, coming together from different directions.

”Three days left,” said Suzanne. ”And yes, I know. We've got to get through tomorrow first.”

”Good job we're ready,” said Josh.

[ TWENTY-NINE ].

And so, the Barbican.

It was a jumble of architecture, a long promenade by a wholly artificial rectangular lake American visitors called it a pond; the locals thought it too big for that label with its own straight-edged waterfall to a lower level, leading to a pool that partly undercut one of the towers, which was supported on stilts.

On the promenade, under normal circ.u.mstances, chairs ringed parasol-covered tables for al fresco dining. Now, the area was covered with jagged-looking obstacles that looked like ma.s.sive fragments of shattered concrete, though they were rubberised and soft to the touch. Graffiti marked them: symbols of urban breakdown and destruction, props for the coming show.

In total there were three towers, including the one undercut by water, all of them filled with apartments overlooking the promenade-turned-urban arena. The building walls at one end formed a hollow curve, like some Circus Maximus of old. There, the apartments' silver-shuttered windows offered perfect views of the action to come, while keeping the residents far re moved from the real urban dangers beyond the estate's high walls.

In previous decades a music college had enjoyed premises on site; now that building was occupied by a blue-sky research campus owned by an Eastern European consortium, part of the Web 4.0 Initiative. It was just one more accidental by-product of the wealth pouring into Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, now that their natural uranium deposits were growing ever more valuable in the ongoing rush to throw up reactors as fast as possible. In contrast, the alternative programmes were years behind schedule and/or underfunded by billions, depending on who you asked.

Under other circ.u.mstances, Josh would have been tempted to break into the W4I labs, just to see what they were up to.

Silvery membranous sheets were draped shroud-like against walls and over awnings. In ambient daylight, they were translucent; but later, when the smartroof drew over the promenade arena, casting shade, the sheets would come alive with rippling, motile patterns of light, turning the post-apocalyptic setting into something eerie and modern. Background music would pulse throughout the estate. The same music that would form the backing for the webcast, with state of the art audio mixing.

Men and women in dark blazers and sharp-creased trousers were patrolling the grounds, the stairwells and colonnades and corridors, and the theatre complex that was the Barbican Centre at the heart of the estate. They paid no attention to the spyball cameras dotted everywhere; they did watch the cleaning staff and webvision roadies moving along the promenade among the props. This was despite the hoops everyone had already jumped through simply to come on site, three successive security checks, taking an hour in total.

For the most part the residents were staying away from the promenade, for the few days it formed a webvision set under construction. But some walked their dogs or strolled according to habit, and the security personnel were careful both to observe the walkers and keep their distance. The residents were rich or they would not be able to live here, and the security objective was to keep them safe, not annoy them.

By 9am, many residents had long departed to go to work, though others worked at home, while some several actors and at least one luxury-cla.s.s prost.i.tute would still be sleeping off the previous night's activities, ready for a late start to their working day. Few families with children lived here, because it was not that kind of place: it was for the go-getters, the well-off or those thirtysomethings who were too busy fighting in the corporate jungle to create for themselves an actual life.

Casual visitors, for the next few days, would be turned away with unswerving, implacable politeness. Some would walk outside the perimeter proper, taking in an external view of the jumbled, purplish architecture, all hard edges and curves, with neither the plentiful gla.s.s of more modern creations nor the gracefulness or playful details of cla.s.sical design. A few of the visitors might be envious, wis.h.i.+ng they could live so close to the City which is not the city, not London itself, but only the calculating financial centre with both the bustle and the heartlessness of Wall Street or the Beijing Bourse.

Most of their co-workers rode packed commuter trains to and from their air-conditioned offices that bore all the warmth of a locker room, and spent long days stressed by violation of their personal s.p.a.ce, by verbal sniping and turf wars fought over imaginary corporate territory. All the while, their workplace constraints forbade the physical movement or verbal release that might dissipate the built-up hormones of freeze-flight-fight that were crying on the strength of a four-billion-year evolutionary history for free expression.

Rats in a cage.

Outside the estate proper, the security firm had no presence, relying on normal police spycams to pick up anything suspicious. For today and tomorrow morning, that would remain sufficient. But tomorrow afternoon, and all through the big day itself, there would be extra security: uniformed and plainclothes officers, plus specialist close-protection units, working the streets in vehicles and on foot, and patrolling the skies in helicopters. When the prime minister ventured out from Fort Downing Street, this was the kind of coverage he required.

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