The Adjacent Page 7

  ‘Tell me what happened in London.’

  ‘On May 10, in the middle of the day, there was an unexplained event just to the south-west of Maida Vale. Mostly in Bayswater. Not an explosion, but it had the same sort of impact. For now it is being treated as a conventional weapon, because radiation readings are so low as to be unexceptional. And the damage was not the type of thing you expect after a nuke. But even so the damage was too great to have been caused by a conventional weapon. There’s still a mystery about what exactly it was.’

  ‘What were the casualties?’ he said, aghast at this appalling news.

  ‘Over a hundred thousand, at a minimum. The final figure could be as high as twice that, maybe more. It’s a version of the Hiroshima Effect: not only were people killed, but many of the records of their lives were also destroyed, and almost everyone who knew them was killed too. Everything was annihilated – that’s the word the press has been using. Annihilated. There were no human remains, so it’s a question of tracing relatives, or people who had friends or acquaintances at ground zero. The latest count was just over a hundred and twenty thousand people. They are described as missing, but not yet posted as dead. We suspect those figures will turn out to be the tip of the iceberg.’

  ‘I don’t understand how we never got to hear about this.’ From this perspective it was frankly unbelievable, but for many weeks at the field hospital their only contact with the outside world was the occasional airlift of supplies, brought in by MSF helicopters. Because of the dangers of ground fire, the choppers only came in at night and never landed. The drugs, medical supplies, food and water were either dropped or lowered, before the helicopters soared away again.

  And of course his mind was racing, trying to remember anyone he knew who might have been living in west London at that time.

  ‘I was in London two days ago.’ He told her what he had seen from the car, and she confirmed that the damaged zone was probably part of the affected area: Bayswater Road, a large part of Notting Hill, an area as far north as West Kilburn, almost as far as Maida Vale in the east. ‘I was taken to an apartment after that, somewhere near Islington. The only damage I saw there was caused by the storm.’

  ‘The explosion was contained. The charge was shaped in some way that none of the blast specialists can understand, let alone explain.’

  ‘What do you mean by contained?’

  ‘The blast area was restricted to defined limits. An exact triangle.’ She was looking steadily at him, to see his reaction. ‘It’s a regular triangle, straight-edged, not aligned to north and south.’

  Tarent closed his eyes, remembering the day in Anatolia.

  ‘That’s what happened to your wife, isn’t it?’

  Tarent said, ‘Why a triangle?’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘Is it exact?’

  ‘Was the crater you saw exact?’

  ‘And what is inside the triangle?’

  ‘Nothing. Everything has been destroyed. Annihilated.’

  ‘Who the hell could have done that?’ Tarent said.

  ‘We don’t know that, either.’

  ‘You said they had been caught.’

  ‘We never found out who they were working for, but there is some new intelligence material we’re working on. Our main concern at present is to maintain a defensive posture. We can’t let it happen again. All the security measures have been in place for about a month, at the highest level of preparedness – west London is more or less locked down. But what we are having to do now is to set up precautionary arrangements in case there’s another attack. That’s the answer to what I’m going to be doing in Hull.’

  Flo had stopped dressing herself. She sat on the side of the bed next to Tarent, resting a hand on his knee.

  She said, ‘Shall I stay with you for a while?’

  ‘Please.’

  He moved to the cubicle and used the toilet. Then he showered. When he went back into the room Flo had finished dressing. She sat on the side of the bed, her thick outer jacket resting on her lap. He sat down next to her. He was still stunned by the news. He realized the shock that must have run through the country, indeed throughout the world, and that what he was experiencing now was probably a lesser version. At the time it happened there would have been not just the shock, but extreme concern for anyone who was affected, fear that it might happen again, anger, resentment, worry –

  At least he had learned about it so long after the event that he knew there had not been a second outrage, or not yet. Or not one as big.

  He remembered the unexplained glimpse he had had, as the car slowed down and the men he was with spoke to one another with concern about the coming storm. Because he had not known what he was looking at, all he had gained in those two or three seconds was an impression: blackness, no visible wreckage, a violent levelling.

  Whenever there is a major terrorist attack, most people not directly involved take the news quietly: they learn about it through endless TV coverage, or through the internet, they keep their thoughts to themselves but inside they feel an imagined sharing of the experience: the confusion in the streets, the fright about what might be next, guilty relief that they themselves were not directly affected, wondering endlessly what had really happened. They listen to the accounts of witnesses, survivors, then come the experts, the politicians, the spokespeople, the protesters against government policy. Everything at the time of the attack would have been explained, described, yet would somehow still remain inexplicable. Four months after it happened it was already different: the event itself was clear, known, to some extent understood, but new mystery surrounded it. Even within four months, something as immensely shocking as this moves back into shared experience, history.

  Eventually Flo stood up, and said, ‘It’s time.’ He knew it was impossible for her to stay with him, but also he did not want to be alone. It was now long after midnight. She added, ‘Have you decided what to do tomorrow? Are you coming to Hull with me? I need to know.’

  ‘I’ll go to my debriefing,’ Tarent said. The idea of being a sort of sexual plaything for her, hanging around in a hotel bedroom in Hull while she consorted with executives, soldiers and princes, did not appeal. ‘I want to get home as soon as I can. Anyway, you have a country to run.’

  She did not react to that.

  ‘There’s a regular helicopter supply service between Warne’s Farm and the DSG compound in Hull,’ she said. ‘If your debriefing follows the usual format – the one the OOR uses for diplomats returning from overseas postings – it shouldn’t last more than a day or two. I have to be in Hull for at least four days. Want to give it a try? I want you there, you know.’

  ‘OK,’ he said, but his mind was already full of too many things. The liaison with Flo had not changed anything of his life, except briefly and temporarily. Suddenly it was over. He did not want her to leave.

  Now something extra had been added to his grief about Melanie: the guilt that he had fallen into bed with this woman. It was the first time he had been unfaithful to his wife, or so it unmistakably felt. Even so, he felt an urge to cling to Flo. There was no one else, and she wanted him. She said. His life ahead would be vacant, purposeless without her. He felt an overwhelming but irrational urge to keep her with him, or at least to postpone the moment when she walked out of the door. He had not known this feeling for years. A teenage crush, infatuation for a pretty girl in the town who had said she liked him. ‘So will I see you in the Mebsher tomorrow?’

  ‘You’ll see me.’

  ‘I want to be with you, Flo,’ he said. ‘Please stay.’

  ‘Goodnight, Tibor.’ She leaned towards him, offered herself for a chaste kiss.

  There was something else, something unfinished. As their brief kiss ended, and she began to turn away from him, he said, ‘Who was that man you asked me about? You said he was a Dutch scientist.’

  ‘His name was Thijs Rietveld, but he was not a scientist. Not in the sense you probably mean. He was an a
cademic, a theoretical physicist.’

  ‘And you say I met him?’

  ‘That’s what it says in your file.’

  ‘Must be a mistake. The name means nothing to me.’

  ‘That’s not what the file says. It was some time ago. But if you’ve forgotten—’

  ‘I just would never come across someone like that.’

  ‘All right.’ She was by the door, working the release. The LED on the lock turned green. ‘I can’t make you come to the DSG meeting with me, but when you’re finished at Warne’s Farm, come and see me. You were present when your wife was killed, you met Rietveld. To me that’s a link in a chain I’m trying to connect. Rietveld discovered adjacency. Does that mean anything to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s what we’re working on. And a bright light in the sky. What about that? Did you see that?’

  ‘Someone at the hospital said he saw one, just before the explosion.’

  ‘It’s another link, Tibor. We know about the bright lights, overhead at the point of the explosion, but we don’t know what they are. They’re not UFOs. They’re something to do with adjacency.’

  ‘I wasn’t the one who saw it.’

  ‘You were there. That’s enough.’ She pulled the door open. ‘Anyway, I want to see you again. You know where to find me.’

  ‘But how do I contact you if things go wrong?’ The door had closed. ‘You never even told me your surname,’ he said, into the silence.

  A shadow moved across the rumpled surface of the bed, a waving branch, leaves bending to the wind, caught in the thin shaft of light that angled in. She had left her fragrance behind, in the stuffy air of the room, on the bed sheet, in his thoughts. He should have known that her exit from his concerns would be as sudden as her entry into them: on her terms, for her needs. Shared, though. There she was, there she no longer was. He could still hear her footsteps outside, receding from him down the corridor. He was physically exhausted: the lurching travel, the talking, the sex, but he was alert and awake, unready for sleep. He went across to the window and cranked up the blind to let in more of the artificial light from outside. He pulled at the window catch and to his surprise, after being eased against the paint that had sealed it, the handle suddenly moved in his hand and the window could be opened. A delicious, icy draught curled in through the narrow aperture. Outside, a wind had sprung up, blustering coldly between the low buildings. It blew through the canopy of the trees, making the sound of leaves that Tarent had thought he might never hear again in his lifetime. He unexpectedly remembered moments of his childhood, of playing in woods where bluebells grew and where his mother waited, of another teen romance which had involved lengthy and earnest walks in the countryside, of a long holiday in the forests of northern Germany, all conducted to the background hiss and rustle of green broad leaves and a giving wind. He pressed his face to the cold glass, staring out beyond the floodlights at the high foliage of the trees, unlit from below but moving darkly against the sky. He felt the welcome chill of the draught on his neck and shoulders, thinking of cold days, dark nights, life’s past prospects. He tried to remember other things as they once had been, not so long ago and within his lifetime, but now that Flo had left him alone in his room all he could think of were the hot and deadly days in Anatolia, the despairing, endless heat, the treeless hills and the arid land, the noise of children crying, the intermittent boom of land-mines and the racket of arrogant gunfire, the broken, mutilated limbs, the sounds and smells of human death.

  PART 2

  La rue des bêtes

  1

  THE VISIONARY

  Le Havre was some way ahead but the ship cut its engines and slowed to a halt, heaving in the dark swell. I had left the noisy below-decks area after a difficult hour in the main saloon, surrounded by many seasick men, and trying to breathe the stuffy, smoke-thick air. I had just discovered that my rank, Lieutenant-Commander (Acting), came with privileges, one of which was that I could take refuge outside on this windy boat deck. It was late at night in a chill November and a stiff wind was blowing from the south-west, but I stood in the dark just outside the door, gratefully breathing the clean, cold air. Few of us on that ship were natural sailors, and the choppy sea had come as a disagreeable surprise. The mal de mer had not as such affected me, but the sights and sounds in the saloon were increasingly difficult to live with.

  I moved away from the door, feeling my way in the dark, holding on to a handrail. The only light on the deck was from a quarter moon, and that intermittently because thick clouds were racing along with the wind. I supposed that once there might have been seats or deck-chairs here for passengers, but all of them had been removed. The deck now was stacked with military equipment, which I had glimpsed by daylight in Folkestone, when we boarded: trucks, carts, large crates, unidentified pieces secured beneath tarpaulins. Even in the daytime it had been impossible to work out what most of the matériel might be. I fervently hoped that it was not ammunition.

  A fellow naval officer had warned me against leaving the saloons, but I was one of the few passengers who had the choice. I was a civilian, or a civilian officer, but the newly tailored uniform neither fit me properly nor suited me. I felt I was an impostor, that the men around me, especially the crew of this ship, would not be taken in by it.

  I worked my way forward to the prow of the ship, hoping that I might be able from there to glimpse the harbour, or at least something of the land. I was eager to leave the boat as soon as possible and start the next leg of the journey. The companionway I was groping my way along was stacked with packages and crates, and I barked my shins a couple of times. The quartermaster had issued me a greatcoat which I was now wearing, grateful for its deadweight feeling of comfort.

  There was nothing of the land of France to be seen forward of the ship so I made my way carefully down towards the stern, hoping for a final, dark glimpse of England. I had no idea when I might return, if ever. Again I clouted my shins. I encountered a set of steep metal steps, but I did not like the idea of clambering down them in the dark, not knowing what was beneath me. I paused at the top, thinking I might be able to see something of England from there. The breeze was blowing stiffly against the unprotected deck in that part of the ship, loaded with spots of rain or spray from the bitter-cold fetch of the English Channel. Never before had I left the shores of my native country, so thoughts of the likely dangers ahead were on my mind.

  I walked back slowly towards the bow of the ship, because I had noticed a place to stand where I would be at least partly out of the wind.

  The black-out on the ship was total, but my eyes were growing accustomed to seeing in the dim moonlight. When I found my way back someone else was standing where I had been, huddled like me in a large outer coat, appearing from his hunched stance to be just as cold and miserable as I was. He must have heard me coming, because as I walked up to him he extended a friendly hand to take mine.

  We shook hands in the dark, muttering conventional greetings. The words were swept away by the wind. I felt rather than heard our leather gloves squeaking against each other.

  ‘Have you any idea what’s going on?’ I said loudly. ‘Do you know why the ship has stopped?’

  He leaned towards me, lifting his face towards mine, raising his voice.

  ‘I heard some of the crew talking about another ship going down,’ he said. ‘It was outside the harbour at Dieppe. The captain told me it was thought to be a hospital ship. He said he and the other officers of the watch saw a flash in the east and heard an explosion.’ He paused, clearly appalled, as I was, at the consequences of that possibility. ‘The captain said he had been intending to divert to Dieppe, but had changed his mind.’

  ‘Was it a submarine? A U-boat?’

  ‘What else might it have been? A mine, possibly, but the approaches to the French Channel ports were swept recently. There are other ships in the area, so it might have been one of those that was sunk.’

  ‘A hospital shi
p! Good heavens.’ I was shocked by the news, the stark reminder yet again that we were involved in a desperate war. ‘I can’t imagine it. What a disaster that would be, if it were true.’

  ‘I know exactly how you feel.’

  ‘Is this your first time out of England since the war began?’ I said.

  ‘No, it’s my second. I was in France a few weeks ago, just briefly. What about you?’

  ‘My first time,’ I said.

  I fell silent for a moment, because when I accepted this commission I had been expressly warned not to discuss anything about it with anyone. The work in which I was going to be engaged was deemed to be of the highest secrecy, although until I reached my destination in France even I was not to know any advance details. For the last two weeks, as I prepared to leave home and tried to understand how I could conceivably make a worthwhile contribution to the war effort, I had developed an inner guard against talking. I was in my middle fifties, far too old to be of any use to the army or navy, or so I had thought, but my name had been put forward. The call of loyalty to my country in times of war made me feel I should have to respond.

  I sensed from his general bearing that my companion was the same sort of age as myself, and therefore not likely to be an officer on active duty. We stood together in awkward silence for a few more minutes, when suddenly we heard the ship’s telegraph and almost at once there was a burst of sparks and smoke from the stack. The great engine began to throb once more and a familiar vibration ran through the superstructure. From the saloons below there came the loud sound of ironic cheering as the troops realized the ship was getting under way again. They, like me, probably felt an irrational sense of greater safety, as if movement alone would protect us. While the ship was immobile I could never quite throw off the fear that a pack of German U-boats must be speeding towards us, lining up their torpedo tubes. Our ship was so small, over-loaded, thin-hulled, seeming to me vulnerable to almost anything while it floated on this troubled sea.