‘I’ll take you to him,’ I gasped, trying to give myself some breathing space. ‘It’s a little way out of town.’
The Goliath agent relaxed his grip and told me to get dressed. A few minutes later we were walking out of the hotel. My head was still sore and a dull pain thumped in my temples, but at least I was thinking more clearly. There was a small crowd ahead of me, and I was delighted to see it was the Mutlar family preparing to return to London. Daisy was arguing with her father and Mrs Mutlar was shaking her head wearily.
‘Gold-digger!’ I yelled.
Daisy and her father stopped arguing and looked at me as the Goliath men tried to steer me past. ‘What did you say!?’
‘You heard. I can’t think who the bigger tart is, your daughter or your wife.’
It had the desired effect. Mr Mutlar turned an odd shade of crimson and threw a fist in my direction. I ducked and the blow struck one of the Goliath men fairly and squarely on the jaw. I bolted for the carpark. A shot whistled over my shoulder; I jinked and stepped into the road as a big black military-style Ford motor car screeched to a halt.
‘Get in!’ shouted the driver. I didn’t need to be asked twice. I jumped in and the Ford sped off as two bullet holes appeared in the rear windshield. The car screeched around the corner and was soon out of range.
‘Thanks,’ I murmured. ‘Any later and I might have been worm food. Can you drop me at SpecOps HQ?’
The driver didn’t say anything; there was a glass partition between me and him and all of a sudden I had that out-of-the-frying-pan-and-into-the-fire feeling.
‘You can drop me anywhere,’ I said. He didn’t answer. I tried the door handles but they were locked. I thumped on the glass but he ignored me; we drove past the SpecOps building and headed off to the old town. He was driving fast, too. Twice he went through a red light and once he cut up a bus; I was thrown against the door as he flew around a corner, just missing a brewer’s dray.
‘Here, stop this car!’ I shouted, banging again on the glass partition. The driver simply accelerated, clipping another car as he took a corner a little too fast.
I pulled hard at the door handles and was about to use my heels against the window when the car abruptly screeched to a halt; I slid off the seat and collapsed in a heap in the footwell. The driver got out, opened the door for me and said:
‘There you go, missy, didn’t want you to be late. Colonel Phelps’s orders.’
‘Colonel Phelps?’ I stammered. The driver smiled and saluted briskly as the penny dropped. Phelps had said he would send a car for me to appear at his talk, and he had.
I looked out of the door. We had pulled up outside Swindon Town Hall, and a vast crowd of people were staring at me.
‘Hello, Thursday!’ said a familiar voice.
‘Lydia?’ I asked, caught off guard by the sudden change of events.
And so it was. But she wasn’t the only TV news reporter; there were six or seven of them with their cameras trained on me as I sat sprawled inelegantly in the footwell. I struggled to get out of the car.
‘This is Lydia Startright of the Toad News Network,’ said Lydia in her best reporter’s voice, ‘here with Thursday Next, the SpecOps agent responsible for saving JaneEyre. First let me congratulate you, Miss Next, on your successful reconstruction of the novel!’
‘What do you mean?’ I responded. ‘I loused it all up! I burned Thornfield to the ground and half maimed poor Mr Rochester!’
Miss Startright laughed.
‘In a recent survey ninety-nine out of a hundred readers who expressed a preference said they were delighted with the new ending. Jane and Rochester married! Isn’t that wonderful?
‘But the Bronte Federation—?’
‘Charlotte didn’t leave the book to them, Miss Next,’ said a man dressed in a linen suit who had a large blue Charlotte Bronte rosette stuck incongruously to his lapel.
‘The Federation are a bunch of stuffed shirts. Allow me to introduce myself. Walter Branwell, chairman of the federation splinter group “Bronte for the People”.’
He thrust out a hand for me to shake and grinned wildly as several people near by applauded. A battery of flashguns went off as a small girl handed me a bunch of flowers and another journalist asked me what sort of a person Rochester really was. The driver took my arm and guided me into the building.
‘Colonel Phelps is waiting for you, Miss Next,’ murmured the man in an affable tone. The crowds parted as I was led into a large hall that was filled to capacity. I blinked stupidly and looked around. There was an excited buzz, and as I walked down the main aisle I could hear people whispering my name. There was an improvised press box in the old orchestra pit in which a sea of pressmen from all the major networks were seated. The meeting at Swindon had become the focus of the grassroots feeling about the war; what was said here would be highly significant. I made my way to the stage, where two tables had been set up. The two sides to the argument were clearly delineated. Colonel Phelps was sitting beneath a large English flag; his table was heavily festooned with bunting and several pot plants, flip-over pads and stacks of leaflets for ready distribution. With him were mostly uniformed members of the armed forces who had seen service on the peninsula. All of them were willing to speak vociferously about the importance of the Crimea. One of the soldiers was even carrying the new plasma rifle.
At the other end of the stage was the ‘anti’ table. This too was liberally populated by veterans, but none of them wore uniforms. I recognised the two students from the airship park and my brother Joffy, who smiled and mouthed ‘Wotcha, Dooms!’ at me. The crowd hushed; they had heard I was going to attend and had been awaiting my arrival.
The cameras followed me as I approached the steps to the stage and walked calmly up. Phelps rose to meet me, but I walked on and sat down at the ‘anti’ table, taking the seat that one of the students had given up for me. Phelps was appalled; he went bright red, but checked himself when he saw that the cameras were watching his every move.
Lydia Startright had followed me on to the stage. She was there to adjudicate the meeting; it was she and Colonel Phelps who had insisted on waiting for me. Startright was glad they had; Phelps was not.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ announced Lydia grandly, ‘the negotiating table is empty at Budapest and the offensive lies waiting to happen. As a million troops face each other across no-man’s-land, we ask the question: What price the Crimea?’
Phelps got up to speak but I beat him to it.
‘I know it’s an old joke,’ I began, ‘but a simple anagram of “Crimea” is “A Crime”.’ I paused. ‘That’s the way I see it and I would defy anyone to say that it isn’t. Even Colonel Phelps over there would agree with me that it’s high time the Crimea was put to bed permanently.’
Colonel Phelps nodded.
‘Where the Colonel and I differ is my belief that Russia has the better claim to the territory.’
It was a controversial remark; Phelps’s supporters were well primed, and it took ten minutes to restore order. Startright quietened them all down and finally managed to get me to finish my point.
‘There was a good chance for all this nonsense to end barely two months ago. England and Russia were around the table, discussing terms for a complete withdrawal of all English troops.’
There was a hush. Phelps had leaned back in his chair and was watching me carefully.
‘But then along came the plasma rifle. Code name: Stonk.’
I looked down for a moment.
‘This Stonk was the key, the secret to a new offensive and the possible restart of the war that has—thank God—been relatively free of actual fighting these past eight years. But there’s a problem. The offensive has been built on air; despite all that has been said and done, the plasma rifle is a phoney—Stonk does not work!’