The first words Seth managed to say since King’s Cross were, “‘A bit’?”
“Nobody was supposed to die,” Leo said angrily. “It’s me they want; I didn’t think they’d involve bystanders.”
“They?”
Leo shook his head. “I don’t know. Someone told me Central wants me dead, but I don’t believe that. They also told me Greater German counterintelligence wants me dead, and I find that easier to believe but I have no idea why because I haven’t done anything to make them angry. I just don’t know. I need to get back to the mainland, talk to people, try and make sense of this catastrophe.”
Seth made several attempts to parse all this, while they drove up through East Finchley and North Finchley, but none of the words seemed to fit together in his head. It was just noise.
He said. “Lewis. Angela.”
“Your friends? I’m genuinely sorry about that. If I could have stopped that, I would have.”
Seth started to fumble in his pockets for his phone. “Someone should tell Lewis’s parents…”
Leo reached out and took the phone from Seth’s hand, opened the driver’s side window, and dropped the phone out. Seth momentarily heard the faint sound of things breaking on the road, then it was gone.
“Sorry,” he said over Seth’s gasp of surprise. “No phone calls.”
Seth gaped at him for a few moments, and then he found himself hunched breathless against the passenger door, a pain in his jaw. There were scratches on Leo’s face, and a driver behind them angrily sounding his horn.
“Please don’t do that again,” Leo said. “Or at least try to wait until I’m not driving.”
“Who are you?” Seth yelled.
“I’m a Coureur,” Leo replied. “And I’m in a Situation. I mean you no harm. I need your help. We need each other’s help, actually, because they’re coming for you now as well.”
“Because of a legend?”
“Because it was a legend for me. I don’t know; I don’t understand any of it. They’ve already killed my brother.”
Another long silence in the car. They were in Barnet before Seth said, “The Germans.”
“I don’t know for sure that it is the Germans. I was told it is, and I was involved in something… strange in Berlin a little while ago, so it’s at least credible. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
Another long silence. The car drove through Barnet and Potters Bar and out into the Hertfordshire countryside.
Seth said, “I’m going to be sick again.”
Leo slowed the car, pulled over to the side of the road. Seth threw off his seatbelt, opened his door, and leapt out. He crashed straight through a hedge into the field beyond and kept going as fast as he could.
“Don’t be stupid!” he heard Leo call behind him. “You need my help. You won’t last more than a few days on your own.”
Seth caught his toe in a rut and fell full-length.
“Hey!” Leo called. “Where are you?”
“I’m here,” Seth called back. “I think I’ve broken my ankle.”
“IT’S ONLY A sprain,” Leo said.
“Well, that’s all right then,” said Seth. They were back in the car, way out in the sleeping unlit countryside now. He had no idea where they were, but he had a sense that they might have turned east at some point. “What happened to your brother?”
For a moment he thought Leo wasn’t going to answer at all. “They tried to get to me through my family,” Leo said finally. “My father was seriously hurt. My brother got in the way.”
“What about my family?”
Leo didn’t say anything.
“We have to help them,” Seth said.
“I know.” Leo shook his head.
“So?”
“So we’ll help them. First we need somewhere to rest.” He glanced over. “Am I going to have to tie you up or something?”
Seth thought about it. “Help my dad and my sister first. Then we’ll talk about it.”
THEY WOUND UP in a Travelodge on the outskirts of Bishops Stortford. Leo booked them into a twin room, bought support strapping and painkillers for Seth’s ankle from the motel’s shop, and they carried their bags inside.
With the door locked behind them, Leo took a little grey box not much larger than a book of matches from one of his tote-bags and stuck it on the jamb, near the top. Then he did the same with all the windows, even though they were on the fourth floor of the motel. Then he took his overcoat off and Seth finally got a clear look at the thing he had shot the gunman with. There was a little metal bottle strapped to his belt, and reinforced hoses running from it and down his arm to a bundle of copper tubes about six inches long, mounted on a sliding rail arrangement buckled around his forearm.
Leo saw him looking at the contraption. “I was in a hurry,” he said. “I got a blacksmith to put it together for me.”
In Coureur terminology, a blacksmith was an armourer. A mythological figure in Seth’s world. “What is it?”
Leo unstrapped the thing and put it on the table and looked sadly at it. “Flechette gun. Powered by compressed air. Lovely piece of work, at such short notice.” He glanced at Seth. “Can I trust you not to fiddle about with it when my back’s turned? There wasn’t time to put in a safety catch.”
Seth nodded.
“All right.” Leo unzipped another of his bags and took out a laptop and a packet of disposable phones. “Let’s see what we can do about your family, then.”
It took him over an hour of picking about on various websites and anonymised chatboards and making calls – one call per phone and then discarding it. Some of the calls sounded tense, others completely obscure. Seth used the room’s facilities to make them coffee and paced back and forth so much that Leo told him to sit down, which Seth answered with a heartfelt couple of expletives.
Finally, Leo sat back and closed the laptop.
“Is it okay?” Seth asked.
“We’ll know in a little while. The great thing about Les Coureurs is that it’s a completely compartmentalised organisation. Everyone’s used to getting anonymous orders and carrying them out, and half the time nobody knows why they’re doing what they’re doing. You just have to hack into that structure and so long as you know who to talk to and you have the right recognition strings no one ever questions their instructions.”
“Like me.”
Leo rubbed his eyes. “You, the stringer who passed you the job order. Just doing what you were told, because why shouldn’t you?” He blinked blearily at Seth. “It was such a low-level job. I honestly thought it would go without a hitch. I’m sorry.” He sighed. “What a fucking mess.”
“Why me?”
“Sorry? Oh. Just the luck of the draw, really. I had a list of about half a dozen people who could have done it. I didn’t want to use stringers; I wanted someone with experience, someone who’d do it right.”
“You should have split the job up into segments and given each one to a different person.”
“Yes, more anonymous that way, I know. But the more people know about something, the more chance there is of it coming to light. I decided it was best to give it to just one person.” Leo checked his watch – a cheaply-printed thing that looked as if it had come as a free gift with a pair of printed shoes. “Get some sleep. Nothing’s going to happen for a couple of hours.”
“You have to be kidding.”
“You must be exhausted. I know I am.”