“Why can’t you see?” she said. “This is their fog.”
“Move them out,” Dedlock snarled before, all at once, Steerforth’s face sagged back into its familiar lines.
We stood and watched, transfixed in solemnly respectful silence, as the armored vehicle reversed out of Downing Street, turned laboriously and began to progress down Whitehall, creeping through the fog.
“You mustn’t let this happen!” Miss Morning said, jerking at my sleeve.
“What can I do?”
Perhaps I am retrospectively crediting myself with too much perspicacity but I was unable to shake the feeling that what we were watching was somehow less than real, that we were just spectators and that all of this was merely an illusion.
“Dedlock!” Miss Morning was almost shouting now. “Unless you finish this right now, people are going to start dying.”
In monumental indifference to the old woman’s warnings, the vehicle continued its stately progress down Whitehall. Bikes rode close by on either side. Dozens of guns were trained at it, ready to fire at the slightest sign of trouble.
It was then that we noticed something was wrong.
It began as a trickle, a thin line of red smoke, curling out from under the doors. I watched it grow larger, as though a fire had been lit within. Then great clouds of red smoke were pouring out, streaming into the fog, staining the night scarlet.
Dedlock bellowed in our ears: “What’s happening?”
“I see it!” Steerforth ran toward the van as it skidded to a halt, and the rest of us followed.
Dedlock: “What the hell’s going on?”
Miss Morning appeared by my side. “It’s happened already. They just couldn’t help themselves.”
The old man was screaming out his fury. “Mr. Lamb?”
“I don’t know,” I snapped. “I can’t make anything out in this fog.”
As we drew close to the vehicle, Steerforth opened the door and clambered inside. The fog made it impossible to be certain what had happened, although, of course, I think I already suspected. All of us did, I suppose.
At last we were close enough to see.
Jasper was talking to his master. “Its’ bad, sir. It’s really bad.”
I stared into the van and saw the truth of it. The vehicle was empty. The prisoners were gone. The Prefects had vanished in a puff of smoke.
Miss Morning turned away. “It’s finally happened,” she murmured, her voice shot through with bitterness. “The Domino Men are loose.”
Chapter 18
What happened next was chaos in its purest form.
Cries of panic and disbelief, Dedlock screaming in our ears, the rattle of weapons, the jabber of gunfire, the bellow of Steerforth’s commands as he screamed phrases so dismayingly hackneyed I thought I would only ever hear them on television. “Secure the perimeter!” “Go, go, go!” “Damn it, I want them alive!” And all around us, the ceaseless swirl of fog.
Mr. Jasper had turned the color of chalk. “How did they do it?” he asked. “How was it so easy?”
“It’s a game,” Miss Morning murmured, a grim kind of satisfaction in her voice, a melancholy I-told-you-so crouched behind each syllable. “It’s always been a game to them.”
Steerforth turned to the soldier who still stood, stricken with shock, by his side.
“Captain, give me a status report.”
In the palm of his right hand, the soldier clutched a PDA which displayed an electronic street map of Whitehall.
“They’re on the move, sir.” He stabbed a finger toward two smudges of black that were barreling across the screen. “They’re heading toward the roadblock.”
“Then we can still catch them.” We all heard it then in Steerforth’s voice — that awful Ahab mania. “I need twenty volunteers.”
The pit bull of the Directorate got his volunteers that night — more than he had asked for. All the killers who were there lined up before him — brawny men in khaki, the kind who’d been good at games at school, now trained to murder on the say-so of the state. The captain was amongst them and as he strode across to join the others he trust his screen into my hands. I began to protest but he pressed it toward me with such insistent vigor that I felt I had no choice but to accept. It made me uneasy, this piece of high technology which turned men’s lives into pixels and reduced mortality to a mouse click.
As Steerforth was yelping more orders, exhorting them to bring the Prefects back alive, Miss Morning was shaking her head. “What a waste,” she murmured. “And they all seemed like such nice young men.”
Steerforth must have heard because he spun around to face her. “They’re the best. They’ll run those bastards down. You have my word.”
“Those creatures are death incarnate, Mr. Steerforth. Take it from me — your men won’t stand a chance.”
The soldiers sprinted into the fog, and as I scrutinized the screen, I saw twenty spots of white hare after the Prefects’ trails of black.
“Oh dear, oh dear,” Miss Morning said pityingly. “When will you people learn?”
The next few minutes were a study in impotence. Powerlessly, we watched as the white chased the black. We watched as the two colors met somewhere at the very tip of Whitehall and we watched as, one by one, the splashes of white were extinguished.
“No…” Steerforth whispered.
“Boys will be boys,” Miss Morning murmured with what, under the circumstances, I suppose should count gallows humor.
Dedlock was shouting in our ears again. “Are they dead? Are they all dead?”
Jasper tried his best to calm the situation. “It would seem so, sir, yes.”
“Where are they now?”
I consulted the PDA. “Moving out of Whitehall. Heading toward Trafalgar Square.”
“Then find them!” “Dedlock screamed.
A vein twitched in Steerforth’s temple. “Please, sir…”
“What is it, Mr. Steerforth?”
Despite the arctic tinge of the night, the man was sweating prodigiously. “I’m afraid, sir.”
“Steerforth! We do not have time for your soul-searching!”
Jasper moved to the burly man’s side and placed a hand discreetly on his arm. “You’re Mr. Steerforth.” His voice was gentle but underscored by steel. “You’re the hero of the Directorate. There’s nothing you’re afraid of.”
At the time, I assumed that Jasper was doing his best to support a friend and colleague, trying to cajole him into action. Now I’m not convinced that there wasn’t some other, darker agenda at work.
The voice of the old man crackled in our ears. “Stop bleating! Do your job!”
Steerforth seemed to come to a decision. He straightened himself up, pushed back his shoulders and snapped a reply: “Yes, sir!” Turning to the few of us who were left, he said: “I’m going after them. Who’s with me? Who’s bloody with me?”
“Steerforth?” Dedlock snarled. “Bring me their heads!”
“Yes, sir!” And again, filled with the unfettered joy of hara-kiri: “Yes! Sir!”
As Steerforth pelted into the fog, Jasper and I started, reluctantly, to follow.
I have never claimed to be a hero and I’m happy to admit that I was absolutely terrified. It wasn’t long before we came across the first of the corpses, the body of the young captain, contorted in death, splayed out on the Whitehall street like a doll abandoned by children who play too rough. I almost tripped over him and, at the sight, swallowed back a sick-bag surge of nausea and despair.
“What is it?” Dedlock bellowed in my earpiece. “What can you see?”
“Casualties, sir,” said Jasper.
“Bad?”
“Couldn’t be much worse.”
We walked on in silence, respectful though full of fear, treading through the fog past the ranks of the fallen.
Somewhere out of the billowing banks of mist came the voice of Mr. Steerforth: “I’m at the roadblock, sir. Everyone’s dead.” There was a swell of hysteria in his voice. “Did you hear me?” Everybody’s dead.”
“Mr. Steerforth!” Dedlock barked in everybody’s ears. “Moderate your tone!”