The Coureur appeared to be at a loss for words.
“I won’t apologise for what happened to you in Poznań,” the Swimmer continued. “That would be an insult to your intelligence. There was something I needed at the Consulate, and you were a means to obtaining it.”
“You utter bastard,” said the Coureur. “They nearly killed me.”
“It was a chance I needed to take. It was nothing personal.”
“You set up this jump too, didn’t you. Off-piste. For him.” He gestured at the Kapitan.
“My sister’s boy. Little Florian. She married an Austrian. A bad lot. He gave me shelter when I was in need; it was the least I could do to try and help him. Tell me, why has it taken you fifteen months to get here? I taught you better than that.”
The Coureur stared at the burned man in the tank. He said, “I was in New Potsdam. I got a crash message for a new Situation. I was supposed to meet up with a partner. When I found him he’d been murdered. I went to ground and things have been going very wrong for me ever since. Is this all to do with you?”
“And it’s taken you this long to find out what the Situation was? I really am disappointed.”
“Fabio, you prick, I’ve been running all over Europe. I’ve been kidnapped. My brother’s been killed. My life has been destroyed. Is this all to do with you?”
“I took three proofs from the Consulate,” said the Swimmer. “Florian knows where they are. He’ll give you the key. Use them as you see fit. Powerful people want these things, want to know how to use them, want to stop them being used. I place them in your hands. Now go. Take Florian with you; he’s a criminal little shit with the morals of a slime mould but he’s still family.”
“No,” said the Coureur. “No. I’m not moving from this stool until you explain this to me.”
“No explanations,” said the Swimmer. “You wouldn’t believe me. You have to see it for yourself.”
“See what? What do I have to see? Who did this to you?”
“Central wanted the proofs. They wanted to stop them falling into the wrong hands. I wouldn’t tell them where they were.”
“Wrong hands? Whose?”
“Yours, for one. Now go.”
The Coureur glared at him, then tipped his head slightly to one side. His eyes unfocused and he seemed to be listening. Then he said, to no one in particular, “All right, we’re coming out.” He looked at the Kapitan. “Your little bum-boy’s decided to make a move in broad daylight.”
Despite himself, the Kapitan had to smile. “Fucker,” he murmured.
The Coureur stood up and started to fasten the front of his stealth-suit. “What about you?” he asked the Swimmer.
Again, that awful laughing noise. “I don’t have any future left. Word will get around if I turn up in any hospital in Europe and I’ll have an ‘accident.’ Florian’s people have done their best, but I’m on the edge of multiple organ failure. They can’t help me much longer. Go.”
The Coureur looked round the room and said, “Jesus Maria, Fabio.”
“Go,” said the synthesised voice. “Just go.”
The Coureur seemed to come to a decision. He grabbed the Kapitan and urged him over to the door. “You. I want this key he was talking about, and I want to know where these proofs are.”
“In my office.”
“Right. Let’s get them and get out of here.”
THEY STOPPED FOR a few moments in the Kapitan’s office, where he unlocked his safe and took out an envelope and handed it to the Coureur. The Coureur stowed it in a pocket of his suit and then they were out again, running down corridors full of people panicking at the Revisionist attack. The Kapitan shouted some orders, tried to calm things down as he passed, but it did no good. “He has a tank!” someone shouted as they went by.
Instead of going down, they went up. Up endless flights of stairs, ascending into quieter and quieter parts of the building. At one point there was an almighty bang and the whole building seemed to shake dust off itself and the Kapitan found himself on his hands and knees, the Coureur dragging him back to his feet and urging him on through the stinking dusty corridors.
And then they were at the top of one final flight of stairs and the Coureur was throwing open a door onto a patch of late afternoon sky and they were on the colossal flat roof of the building.
“Seth!” the Coureur shouted over the sound of small-arms fire from far below on the Parade Ground, and a patch of air alongside a pile of boxes and metal bottles shimmered and became another stealth-suited figure.
They ran over to the figure, who pulled back its hood to reveal the anxious face of a young black man. “These people are not normal,” he said.
“Football fans,” said the Coureur. “Don’t know why they couldn’t just have got themselves lives.” He grabbed the Kapitan and planted him front and centre. “Get this piece of shit out of here.”
The second Coureur began buckling nylon straps all over the Kapitan. Then he snapped a harness to the straps. “What are you going to do?” he asked.
“I’ll meet you as arranged,” said the first Coureur. “I have to collect something first.”
“Right.” The second Coureur opened one of the boxes on the roof at his feet and snapped several lengths of line to his stealth suit. Then he stepped right up to the Kapitan and fastened their harnesses together so that they were face to face just inches apart. He grinned. “I understand you’re a right-wing racist bastard.”
The building shook again, and a wall of smoke billowed up from the side closest to the Parade Ground. “You two will have plenty of time to get to know each other,” said the first Coureur. “But we ought to get out of here.”
“Okey dokey,” said the second Coureur, and he pulled a cord and three of the boxes exploded as the balloons inside them suddenly inflated. He looked into the Kapitan’s eyes and beamed. “Run, you fucker,” he said quietly. And together, awkwardly, the big balloons above them tugging them up on their toes, they ran sideways towards the far edge of the roof as the first Coureur was still strapping himself into a harness.
At the very last moment a gust caught the balloons and swept them up into the sky, and for a few seconds, before their combined weight took over and began to drag the balloons in a slow arc that would eventually deposit them on the other side of the Landwehrkanal and safety, the Kapitan could see into the Parade Ground. Hundreds of people were fighting there. Hundreds more were lying on the ground, very still. And yes, Xavier did have a tank. Clever boy.
IT WAS THE same locker.
Rudi paused and looked at the number printed on the key given to him by Fabio’s nephew. Thirty-eight. He tried to remember the number of the locker he had looked into the last time he was at Zoo Station, and found that he could not. But it was the same one. He knew it was. There were no coincidences any longer; he was in the hands of what was, basically, a malicious God.
You cheeky bastard, Fabio…
He was also attracting attention, standing here like an idiot. He put the card into its slot and opened the door.
He half-expected to see Leo’s head, mummified and shrunken but still with that surprised expression on its face, but instead there was only Fabio’s burnbox, a calfskin-covered attaché case which would incinerate its contents at the first sign of unauthorised tampering. He grabbed the handle, pulled it out of the locker, swung the door closed, and limped out across the concourse.
At every step he expected to be shot, or stabbed, or mugged, or arrested. None of those things happened.