“Twenty feet off site,” he heard Fiona say, very quietly, “and closing.”
81. ON SITE
I saw him,” Hollis said, not quite believing it herself. “I think Milgrim saw him too, but then he was gone.”
“I know,” said Garreth, “but we’re go now.”
Fiona’s drone hovered as Ajay and the man called Charlie reached the other three, who now stood waiting. Charlie put his hand on Ajay’s arm, stopping him. Ajay stood with his head lowered.
Now Foley led Chombo forward. Chombo squirmed, looking in every direction, and Hollis saw the black O of his mouth. Foley jabbed his hand into Chombo’s ribs.
Garreth touched the switchbox. “Hit him,” he said.
She saw Ajay blur, or teleport, across the space separating him from Foley. Whatever befell Foley, on Ajay’s arrival, was equally, invisibly fast, with Ajay seeming to have spun and grabbed Chombo before Foley had hit the grass.
Now Charlie, the short, fridge-shaped man with the plaid tam, was between those two and the man with the mullet.
She never saw the man’s knife, only the way he held his hand, as he closed with Charlie, and then she saw him fall, though Charlie seemed only to have stepped back. The man rolled, sprang up, almost as quickly as Ajay had pounced on Foley, lunged again, fell.
“Charlie tried to teach me that, once,” said Garreth, “but I couldn’t bring myself to be sufficiently superstitious.”
By now the man was on the ground again, without Charlie ever having seemed to touch him.
“Why does he keep falling?”
“Some kind of Ghurka feedback loop. But your Foley’s not getting up. Hope Ajay didn’t overdo it.”
Hollis glanced up, saw Milgrim’s screen. The gray-haired man. A rifle- “He has a gun-”
“Fiona,” he said, “shooter. Under the penguin. Now.”
Thumbing the wings to rotate, slowly, just briefly enough, in opposite directions, had brought the penguin around, but had presented Milgrim with the iconic silhouette of a Ruchnoy Pulemyot Kalashnikova, for which he’d instantly lost all English.
It lay across Gracie’s legs, metal shoulder-stock unfolded, as Gracie attached the curved magazine, a humble unit about which Milgrim, in his period of government employment, had known an absurd amount. The Russian for terminologies for every piece of machinery used to produce them: stampers and spot-welders and so many more. He’d noticed them ever since, on television screens, those magazines: ubiquitous objects in the world’s harsher places, never auguring good.
“Fuck,” from Fiona, beside him, just the least little plosive. Then: “On it.”
Gracie pulled something back, on the side of the rifle, released it, sat up and forward, bringing his knees up, settling the orthopedic-looking stock against his shoulder.
The penguin paddling down, it seemed, of its own accord, as Gracie leaned his cheek in. Barrel moving, slightly-
Jerking, as something dark and rectangular shot beneath it. Fiona’s drone.
Gracie looked up. Through the penguin, directly at Milgrim. Who must have done that awkward thing, though he could never remember it, the configuration she’d shown him in the cube.
Something smashed Gracie down, and sideways, out of his sniper’s posture, an idiot giant’s invisible hand, the penguin jerking simultaneously, image blurring. Milgrim never saw the wires at all, those fifteen feet of them, but he supposed they were very thin.
Gracie rolled on his back, convulsed as Milgrim fired the Taser again. “Galvanism,” the word recalled from high school biology. Gracie grabbed invisible strings. Milgrim tapped the screen again. Gracie jerked again, held on.
“Stop!” Fiona said. “Garreth says!”
“Why?”
“Stop!”
Milgrim raised both thumbs, obedient now, terrified that he’d done something irrevocable.
Gracie sat up, clawing at his neck, then gave the invisible string a vicious yank, blurring the image again.
And then the penguin was rising, slowly, away from him. Milgrim’s thumbs went to the wings. Nothing happened. He tried the tail, tried auto-swim. Nothing. Still rising. He saw Gracie stagger to his feet, sway, then run, out of frame, as the penguin, freed of its unaccustomed ballast of Taser, ascended of its own accord into the calm predawn air of the Thames Valley.
He thought he glimpsed the wheel of the London Eye, just as Fiona thrust her own iPhone in front of his.
83. PLEASE GO
What was that?” she asked.
“Milgrim,” he said, shaking his head, “Tasered Gracie. It’s a good thing I’m retiring. Milgrim just saved our bacon.”
“Milgrim had the Taser?”
“On his balloon. Hello? Darling?” To the headset now. “Get us over the car, please. And hurry, you’re running on fumes.”
“Who was Gracie trying to shoot?”
“Chombo first, I imagine. Do Big End the most harm that way. Either when he saw that we weren’t dealing in good faith, or because he’d planned to all along. Initially, I thought he might just play it straight, local rules, get Milgrim, make his point. Hoping he wouldn’t go the full American on us, in London, in a public place, dead of night. Mad, really. But Milgrim’s secret agent thinks it’s a midlife crisis. If he’d fired, the area would be knee-deep in police in another minute, and entirely the wrong kind. Which would actually put him where we want him, though then they’d likely have us too.”
“He’s an arms dealer. Didn’t you think he might have a gun?”
“Arms dealers are businessmen. Mild old gents, some of them. I knew there was cowboy potential”-he shrugged-“but hadn’t much way to cover it. Just a bodged-up little exploit.” He grinned. “But Milgrim jolted him, sufficient that he left without the gun. Imagine he wants space between it and himself now.” He raised a hand, head tilting, listening. “You didn’t. You did. Bugger.”
“What?”
“Ajay’s sprained his ankle. In a sandbox. Chombo’s run away.” He drew a deep breath, blew it slowly out. “You’re not seeing my machinations at their genius best, are you?”
Something slammed against the back of the truck. “Stay the fuck still!” commanded Heidi, her voice muffled but fully audible through the steel door and two canvas scrims.
Garreth looked back at Hollis. “She’s outside,” he said.
“I know. I didn’t want to interrupt you. Hoped she was just going for a pee.”
The long zip went up then, and Bobby Chombo was almost simultaneously injected through the fly, his face slick with tears. He fell on the aubergine floor, sobbing. Heidi’s head appeared near the top of the fly. “He’s the one, right?”
“I’ve never told you how very beautiful I find you, have I, Heidi?” said Garreth.
“Pissed his pants,” said Heidi.
“In good company, believe me,” said Garreth, shaking his head.
“Where’s Ajay?” Heidi asked, frowning.
“About to get a Ghurka-ride. Piggyback. He’s been wanting to get to know Charlie better.” He turned back to his screens.
Milgrim’s, Hollis saw, was blank, or rather, dimly Turneresque, faintest pink behind steel gray, the greenish hue gone now. But Fiona’s was very busy. Figures climbing into the black car.
“Go,” said Garreth to the car on the screen, with a little chivying gesture. “Please go.”
The car drove out of frame.
“I’m going to have to ask you all to step outside for a moment,” Garreth said.
“Why?” asked Heidi’s disembodied head.
“Because I need to do something very dirty,” he said, producing a phone like the one he’d used to take the American agent’s call, “and because I don’t want him”-with a nod in Chombo’s direction-“weeping in the background. Gives the wrong impression.”