Christopher Evans

OMEGA

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INTRODUCTION

Omega opens with a shock; a literally explosive start to a story set in two worlds. Our narrator, Owen Meredith, is the victim of the bombing in our cosy, contemporary London. He’s the producer of Battlegrounds, a CGI television series recreating old battles, and a very popular programme. Recovering in hospital he begins to learn that his personal world is not the world he remembers.

At the same time Major Owain Maredudd, in a brilliantly drawn wartime London of the 21st century, is also the victim of an explosion. But this time the source of the attack is a mystery. How eerie to have the whole of Soho a militarily guarded “forbidden zone”. Nelson’s Column topped by a gold eagle rampant!

But of course, we are in Chris Evans’s territory. The confusion and interaction of alternatives that Chris always does so well; here, with this new novel, and in past tales.

Chris is excellent at evoking a constant atmosphere of mystery, of uncertainty. Everything is clear—but is everything as it seems? As the two worlds run in parallel, the mysteries are different but oddly reflective of each other. We are constantly asking how the characters are being manipulated, and to what extent the reader is too.

And when Owen and Owain start becoming aware of each others’ worlds, we are in for a mind-game to take the breath away.

Both men are examples of a character trait that Chris does well: the displaced man, characters in search of their true ground. Perhaps this is how the author himself felt when he left a valley in Wales for the cold sprawl of London. Perhaps it is not. In any event, it’s a theme that often crops up in Chris’s work.

And displacement is at the heart of Omega in several forms; and “Omega” itself is at the heart of it.

Chris Evans writes slowly and carefully and it shows in the incredible detail. He is also very strong on character. Though Owen and Owain are the same man, he shows the similarities in character as human and the differences caused by their individual situations. And the same goes for the women in the book. Chris is very strong on female characterisation. They inform his stories with power and insight.

Omega is very much a story of relationships, from love, to authority; from brothers, to deception. But the most intriguing relationship in Omega is that between Owen and Owain, as each man becomes aware of the other.

The dark world of Major Owain Maredudd that Chris explores is packed with facts and references, political and military. It’s tempting to redraw the political map of the world based on this section, the different alliances, the different war zones—America encroaching on Australian Pacific territory, statues of Field Marshal Montgomery celebrating his landings along the Baltic in 1943! Owen, in this world, would have a field day with his tv programme! The astonishingly vivid sequence set in Russia, in Major Owain’s war-torn continent, certainly takes Owen to a battleground.

Omega is a story of dark, deep, sometimes desolate but always hopeful alternatives. We run our lives alongside the “what might have been”. We run those lives with compassion. And with humour. And with the persistence of love. Omega is two stories, both very human, both addressing the harsh realities of a world of this age and this time: one recognisable, the other sinister. We are invited to sympathise with both sides.

I met Chris thirty years ago and we found we had much in common in our attitude and desires for what we wished to achieve from our writing, even though we were very different writers. We were both published at the time by Faber and Faber. His first novel was Capella’s Golden Eyes. In the early and middle 80s we enjoyed a little “time off”, co-editing a writer’s magazine (Focus)and three volumes of stories, Other Edens, which featured early work by some now well-known authors in the field.

But importantly, Chris went on to write The Insider—a, story of alien occupation in the most invasive of ways—and In Limbo. In Limbo, a story concerning “Carpenter”, a man in care after a nervous breakdown, contains some of Chris’s funniest and most personal writing in the second of its three sections. Intensely political though much of his work is, he is also a very wry observer with a great sense of humour. In Omega, for instance, Owen’s historian father is described as having a “prodigious appetite for disapproval. He had a special distaste for what he called ‘fantasists’—historians who did not stick scrupulously to the facts but were prepared to speculate on alternative outcomes.”

After In Limbo, Chris produced a collection of related short stories entitled Chimeras. Again, they are set in a world we can recognise but which is not our own world. They deal with the process of creation, of invention, of the desire to fashion beauty in a place where beauty is both ubiquitous and yet absent. They are Chris’s take on the way we live in two worlds: that y ie real and that of the imagined—the creative process, another theme that fascinates him. Art, in these tales, is conjured out of the air: “creations deliberately fashioned with an excess of ambition so that they dissolved away within minutes of their emergence, leaving nothing but dust behind.” An eloquent comment on the ephemeral nature of “art for art’s sake”? And yet, in another tale, an artist of genuine talent is described as claiming that “becoming an artist had given meaning to his life. He wanted to leave behind something lasting. When he had difficulties with a creation, he would pause… focusing his imagination.” He would become as a “locked door.”

Imagination is fleeting, but it can leave dust or reality.

Chris spent his childhood in South Wales. Hard work, respect for family, the courage to challenge authority informs his writing, the mood of his writing, the passion of his writing; and indeed, the politics of his writing. In his 1993 novel Aztec Century he takes a huge chance by setting up a Britain as it might have been if taken over by a fascist state; but he twists the tale to make the conquering forces the Aztecs, in a world where the Spanish had failed to conquer them and the Aztec kingdom has become all powerful. By so doing he doesn’t just set two political regimes into conflict and contrast, as happened in the middle 20th Century; he deals with the confrontation of belief systems and the role and respect of two hierarchical societies, the brutality of such societies, where the notion of sacrifice is played for everything that “sacrifice” means.

I read a proof of Omega whilst on vacation. It was hot. Everything around me was lazy with ease. In the villa, I read a book that was dark and compelling, and which punched holes in the society that we have become. It is a story of two worlds, two men who are the same man, two lives that are entangled across a strange barrier. Chris often argues through fiction for an understanding of the way we live in a dual reality. Omega opens many doors, and there are scenes that are shocking in their truth and in their brutality. What Omega does very precisely, and very much for the time in which it is being published, is ask the big question about how we cope with our lives, how we deal with the dark, or the bright, that is in the lives of others; how we trust. And the question is both an alpha and an omega question.

Robert Holdstock

September 2007

PROLOGUE

I woke up in the back of an ambulance. Two men in short-sleeved shirts were standing over me.

“I’m sure I’ve seen him before” one said.

The other one leaned closer. “What’s your name?”

For some reason I grinned. It probably looked cheesy.

“Owen,” I mouthed. “Owen Meredith.”

I wasn’t sure whether the words had actually come out.

A gold Christmas-tree star hung from the roof, swaying with the movement of the vehicle. I tried to remember what had happened. An explosion. I’d been knocked over. The ambulance’s siren was wailing.

The man who had loosened my tie was asking me other questions, but I couldn’t hear him properly. Pain was blossoming in my head. Everything began to fade.

It was Lyneth who had insisted we take the girls Christmas shopping in the West End. We’d set off early, taking the train so that Sara and Bethany, seven and five, could peer excitedly at the industrial estates and wrecked car graveyards that lined the approaches to London Bridge station.

We spent a couple of hours in Covent Garden, where there were jugglers and mime artists to keep the children entertained, before lunching in the Piazza. Then it was on to Regent Street, Lyneth already having accumulated three carrier bags of presents by strategic strikes on selected stores while I shepherded the girls away from ice cream stalls and street vendors selling helium balloons of Winnie the Pooh and Harry Potter.

As Lyneth led the way down Regent Street I felt myself beginning to flag. We were headed for Hamley’s, where the girls had been promised an audience with Santa Claus. The pavements were thick with uncompromising shoppers. I clung on tightly to Bethany’s hand as we wove through the crowds, dodging buggies and squalling toddlers, pulling up sharply at intersections where traffic lurched out of side streets the moment the lights changed.

At the entrance to the store Lyneth stopped and marshalled us. She looked, if anything, fresher than when we had set out that morning, her bobbed blonde hair sprinkled with drizzle, her cheeks rosy, her eyes filled with the gleam of a good morning’s work already done, targets met, everything still on schedule. We’d met at school and had first gone out together when we were sixteen. Half a lifetime ago. So long a companionship only heightens those moments when you look at someone and see if not a stranger then someone whose familiarity is in itself strange.

Of course I can’t honestly say I thought anything of the sort at that moment. I remember only her standing there in her navy gabardine coat, putting her shopping bags down to wipe Bethany’s nose before straightening.

“Listen” she said to me in the considerate-yet-purposeful tone she always adopted when making a concession, “why don’t I take the girls inside while you pop off for half an hour and get something for Rees? A sweater or something.”

Rees was my brother, always a problem to buy for.

I grinned. “An hour would be better.”

She gave me a firm look. “Forty-five minutes at most. It’s going to be heaving in there.”

“OK. I’ll see you at the grotto.”

“There isn’t one. He does the rounds.”

“Then how will I find you?”

“Mobile, silly.”

This was Sara, always quick off the mark, just like her mother. I poked my tongue out at her and she responded in kind.

“Make sure you switch it on,” Lyneth said.

“Will do.” We had one each of course, so Lyneth could co-ordinate our movements in situations like this. She was always doing battle with my timekeeping and organisation.

I watched her take the girls inside before crossing the road at a red light and heading down a side street for a swift drink to restore myself.

I stood at the bar of a pub whose name I can’t remember, sipping a half. In the mirror I could see three men in their twenties sitting at a table. One of them was staring at me. Cropped hair, lots of muscles, a bit fearsome looking. He said something to the others and began making gestures in my direction. They looked blank. Before I knew it, he was at my side.

“You did that series, right?”

His accent was cod-cockney: grafted on, like a studied attempt at de-refinement. He was in his early twenties, a silver ring in one ear, his tight ribbed polo neck showing evidence of bodybuilding.

I nodded amiably.

“Battlezones, yeah?”

“Battlegrounds”

He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe it. “Those tank battles, man. Awesome.”

His lips were pursed in approval. I made appreciative noises.

“That Tiger tank—where was it? Same place as that submarine.”

“Kursk.”

“The way you took us inside, showed us what it was really like. The graphics were A-1. And that tank commander, he was a real hero. Six kills! He survive the war?”

“He wasn’t a real person. We generated the character from a variety of original sources.”

“You felt as if you were really in there, you know? All the controls, the bumping and hustle. You could almost smell the sweat and ammunition!”

“We wanted to make it as realistic as possible.”

“There going to be a PC game or anything? I’ve got Steel Storm and Red Star Rising, but I liked the intimacy, you know?”

I wondered how to reply to this.

“Excellent idea,” I told him. “I’ll talk to my brother. He’s the computer wizard.”

“You’d rake it in. What about another series?”

“It’s in the planning stage.”

“Yeah?” He plainly wanted to know more.

“We’ll be focusing on more recent conflicts—the Falklands, the Gulf, Bosnia, possibly Iraq.”

“You travel there? All those places? North Africa and stuff?”

“Some,” I said vaguely.

“I’m in the T.A. myself. Hitched a ride on a Challenger on Salisbury Plain one time.”

“Oh? Was it fun?”

“Nearly fucking choked from the exhaust fumes. Those things can really motor.”

I kept smiling, now a bit uncertain of the exact nature of his enthusiasm.

“Best thing I’ve seen on the box in years,” he announced.

“That’s great to hear.”

He was offering his hand. I took it and shook. His grip was firm and muscular, and he pumped my arm as if he was sending me off on a suicide mission.

“When’s it out on DVD?”

“In the spring. Lots of background info on how we did the simulations.”

“I’ll look out for it. You really opened my eyes.”

He returned to his table.

It was hard not to look in the mirror, to watch him enthuse to his friends. At the same time I’d learned to be wary of the enthusiasms of militaristic types. It wasn’t often that I was recognised and it still surprised me whenever it happened.

Battlegrounds had been broadcast in the autumn on Channel 5. The series had been given plenty of pre-publicity emphasising the use of state-of-the-art computer animation to give tactical and strategic overviews as well as more intimate portraits of the actual experiences of individual soldiers in major battles. Although it had been designed to appeal to a wide audience the scale of its success exceeded everyone’s expectations.

Battlezones. Now that was a title worth considering for the new series. It had a suitable ring of modernity to it.

I swallowed the last of my beer and departed with a mannered wave to the three men.

Five minutes later I slipped into Racing Green and emerged with a heathery V-neck. It was unlikely Rees would ever wear it, his style tending more to sweatshirts and ancient denims, but Lyneth had a mission to civilise him. Rees was a talented software designer specialising in graphical interfaces, and we’d employed him during the making of the series, so for once he wasn’t short of cash. But his personal life was a mess and he was presently living alone in a Peckham bedsit. Lyneth had invited him to spend Christmas Day with us. I doubted he would actually show up.

I spotted a gap in the traffic and sprinted across the road. Two things happened, one after the other. The mobile in my pocket started trilling and I instinctively paused to pull it free. An instant later there was an enormous bang that picked me up and hurled me backwards.

My head hit something—it may have been the body of a car—and I felt a blaze of enveloping pain. I saw the entire front of Hamley’s bulging outwards, dust blossoming and debris cascading down on the swarming street. Darkness swallowed me up.

What followed were snippets of disconnected impressions: the persistent squeaking of a trolley wheel as I was bundled down a corridor; Christmas greetings cards pinned around the frame of a notice board; distant voices blurring in and out of earshot; a taste of stale blood on my bloated tongue. The pain in my head was so intense that it dwarfed everything else, even my fleeting thoughts of Lyneth and the girls. I kept passing out and resurfacing before eventually settling into a more prolonged period of unconsciousness. When I finally woke again I was in another world entirely.

PART ONE

ALTERED STATES

ONE

The room was painted a duck-egg green. I lay in a dim light, in a wrought iron bed that was not a modern fashionable type but one of authentic age. My head was raised on a series of pillows with starchy covers. There was the smell of something sooty.

I risked a slight movement of the head, and felt a wave of pain worse than any headache. But it ebbed and I was able to inch myself up from the pillow.

A crimson patchwork quilt lay across the bed. Beyond the foot of the bed was a mirrored dresser on which a tasselled table lamp gave off a dull orange glow. The room looked utilitarian, but the furniture gave it a cosy feel. A computer sat on a drop-leaf table beside the door. It was not switched on, and someone had hung a crocheted doily over its screen. Next to the dresser an area of wall had been hacked out to make a fireplace where coals were burning low in a cast iron grate. Its bricked-in surrounds were crudely finished.

Had I been taken out of hospital? If so, to where? The room was quite unfamiliar to me, though in my drowsy state this didn’t bother me unduly.

The door opened, casting a swathe of brighter light into the room. A squat middle aged woman in a floral dress and black cardigan entered. She came to the bed and, seeing that I was awake, said, “There is water here for your thirst.”

She spoke gruffly, her English heavily accented. I tried to speak, failed.

She filled a tumbler from a glass pitcher on the bedside table, put one hand behind my back and sat me upright. Blood swirled in my head. When my vision cleared I saw that she was holding the tumbler in front of my mouth. She was stocky and swarthy and smelt of mothballs and stale sweat. Her dark eyes regarded me incuriously from what I found myself thinking was a peasant’s face.

I gulped like a child, the water dribbling down my chin. Finally she laid me back on the pillow and swabbed my chin with a scrap of cloth from her cardigan pocket.

“There, there,” she said, giving a gap-toothed smile. “That will be better, yes?”

For a long time after she was gone I just lay there, registering the unfamiliar surroundings with a kind of bleary curiosity. I began to make small movements, growing bolder when none provoked a renewed spasm of head pain. I threw back the covers. Swung my feet down to the floor. Slowly, very slowly, levered myself up until I was standing.

A dull throbbing in the head, nothing more. I glimpsed my nakedness in the mirror as I crossed the room to the window. I began cranking a handle to raise the blind.

Outside it was dark. No street lamps shone and there were no lights in any of the windows of the shadowy buildings visible across a snow-covered square. They were squat concrete fortresses of slit windows and angular walls, their roofs topped with radar dishes, artillery and missile emplacements. I knew them to be just the surface structures of an extensive underground complex housing all the administrative functions of the state. This was Westminster, the heart of a London I’d never seen before.

And I was in one such building myself, several floors above ground. A fleeting memory came of flying low over the city at night: I’d looked down on the coiled milky band of the frozen Thames, with dark lines of roads and clusters of buildings stretching away on either side. There were extensive areas of mottled whiteness between them. The city’s broken panorama was like a study in monochrome, a photographic negative of something that was familiar yet unfamiliar.

A dim reflection faced me in the window glass. It wasn’t me—not quite. A slimmer, harder-edged version of myself, with cropped hair and a more upright stance. An alter ego, staring back like a not-quite-identical twin.

I heard footsteps outside the room, felt my legs beginning to give way. Somehow I managed to get back to the bed, burying myself under the quilt, letting sleep wash over me like a benedicon.

TWO

All that night I dreamt that I kept waking to find myself lying in a modern hospital room, a monitor blinking off to my left. I was propped up under crisp cotton sheets, left alone in the suffocating sterile warmth. It was a fever sleep filled with confusion. At various times I saw two quite distinct women. The first, seated beside the door in the hospital room, was the same age as myself, dark auburn hair framing a sensuous and intelligent face. I couldn’t recall her name, though I knew we had once been lovers. At other times I was back in the green room, attended by a younger woman, sallow skinned and gamin, her black hair tied back in a ponytail. When I woke fully again I was in the wrought iron bed and a man in a white coat was standing beside me.

“Good morning,” he said. “Would you like some breakfast?”

A noise escaped my throat, something between a cough and a clearing of the throat.

“What time is it?”

This was an odd question under the circumstances, but it hadn’t really come from me. The voice was different from my own, huskier, with a stronger Welsh accent.

“Just after eight,” he said. “I’d suggest something light. Some cereal or toast. I’m Tyler, by the way. Sir Gruffydd consigned you to my tender mercies.”

He meant my other self’s uncle. I had an image of a florid, white-haired man in his seventies. A field marshal with a long record of service. His name was spelt in the Welsh fashion—I knew this without knowing how.

“Am I all right?” I heard myself ask.

“You were lucky,” Tyler said. “It’s probably just mild concussion and a few scratches. You should be up and about in a day or two.”

“Was it a bomb?”

“Not my pigeon.” He pulled down one of my eyelids and peered perfunctorily at it. I could smell the nicotine on his yellowed fingers. He was middle-aged, brisk in manner, a horseshoe of greying hair fringing his bald skull. He wore a taupe-coloured shirt and tie under his white coat.

“Any headaches or grogginess?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Other symptoms?”

“Like what?”

“Sleep disturbances? Nausea? Nightmares?”

“No. Nothing.”

This was said brusquely, a determined rejection of any admission that might be construed as personal weakness. It wasn’t me talking: it was my other self.

“Good,” Tyler said. “We’ll rest you up for twenty-four hours, put you on light duties for a couple of weeks.”

“I’m only just back from overseas. I’d rather be occupied.”

“Up to you. But don’t overdo it. Now—breakfast. What’s it to be?”

I realised that I had no appetite—or rather my counterpart had none.

“I never eat breakfast,” I heard him say. “A glass of orange juice would do, if there’s any.”

I sensed a craving for some freshly squeezed juice, like that available during his recent trip to Brazil, sharp and sweet and thick with pulp. There was little chance of it here.

“We’ll see what we can do. I take it you remember everything that happened?”

A sudden panic at this. He was blank. Then he remembered a blinding soundless flash, his car being consumed by it, though he was not inside it. He was hurled over as the shock wave hit him. A further memory of crawling through rubble before hands took him, helping him up into the back of a white van with the shield and crossed swords emblem of the Security Police.

“Of course,” he said. “There was an—”

Tyler put his hand up sharply. “Don’t tell me. Need to know basis. Wait till you see Sir Gruffydd.”

He checked my pulse, asked to see my tongue. It felt coated.

“I do believe you’ll live,” he announced at last. “Make sure you eat something. I’ll pop in tomorrow morning and give you a final once over. All right?”

“Yes.”

With this, he left.

I felt like a spy perched in someone else’s head, an invisible spectator to thoughts and speech and actions that came from within me yet did not belong to me. I was cohabiting, but with no knowledge of the life I had here except what I could glean from my counterpart’s reactions. The explosion that had injured him was not the one I remembered.

As soon as Tyler was gone, I got out of bed—or rather my other self did so. Still naked, he crossed to the mirror on the dressing table.

A cut above the right eyebrow was already healing, and there was no other sign of injury. He had a similar complexion and was about the same height and age as myself, though distinctly leaner. He staot the his reflection for a long time with an expression of mild consternation. It was like looking at a close relative, a brother, perhaps, yet he was someone I had never seen before. A thick growth of stubble did not disguise the pockmarks that covered his face from brow to chin. I assumed he had suffered badly from acne, though his thoughts remained resolutely closed to me at that moment. When he put a hand up to the mirror I saw crescents of grime under his fingernails and felt the cool smoothness of the glass.

An adjoining door opened on a narrow bathroom. It was unheated and chilly. The brass showerhead that sprouted from the white-tiled wall looked antiquated and encrusted with hard-water deposits. When he turned the tap there was a creaking noise, followed by a delay before tea-coloured water began spurting out. It soon cleared, though it remained tepid. To my alarm he twisted the lever to cold before climbing under it. The chill made him gasp with a mixture of shock and exhilaration that I felt myself just as keenly.

The soap was a mustard-yellow brick that stank of coal tar. He lathered himself vigorously, especially his groin and armpits. His body was wiry, with not a hint of spare flesh. I had the queasy feeling of being an involuntary witness to the intimate actions of a stranger. At the same time I was fascinated by the contrast between his habits and my own. I was used to hot showers in a heated bathroom. I’d fold a soft towelling robe around myself, whereas he began to rub himself down with a stiff off-white bath towel redolent of carbolic.

After this, still naked, he shaved, using a bristle brush, a stick of shaving soap and a single-bladed steel razor that sat on the shelf. There were other toiletries in plain white packaging. It was years since I had wet-shaved, and never with such a primitive razor. He was diligent, lathering thoroughly, stretching and contorting his pitted face as he slid the razor over it, paying scrupulous attention to the crevices under his nostrils and the line of his sideboards. There was several days’ growth to remove, and he made a great ceremony of it.

His eyes were a deeper brown than mine, his nose narrower, hair cropped in a short-back-and-sides that made no concessions to style. Abdominal muscles rippled as he did a series of stretching exercises in front of the mirror, taking deep breaths and exhalations. He had none of my incipient middle-aged flab.

His clothing had been draped over the back of an armchair in the bedroom—an army uniform in a greyish khaki. The jacket had shoulder patches showing the Union flag below a sky-blue diamond with a single five-pointed star in gold. It signified a major’s rank.

I knew this only because he knew it: the uniform was otherwise unfamiliar, and certainly not that of the present British Army. Under the chair were matt-black leather boots, fleece-lined. The closure strips had attachments resembling Velcro. A padded thigh-length combat jacket in pale winter-camouflage colours hung on the back of the door.

He donned his vest and underpants. Everything had been freshly laundered. I knew that he was intending to dress and go out, but suddenly he felt weak and sat down on the bed.

A tumbler of orange juice had been put on the bedside table while he was showering. He picked it up and drained it. The juice was thin and from a can; but it took the sour taste from his mouth. He rose again and went into the bathroom to brush his teeth.

The toiletries were his own: a bag bearing the initials O.M. sat on the shelf. I knew instantly his name was the same as mine. A plain white tube had FLUORIDE stencilled along it in black. The toothpaste tasted like mashed minted chalk, but he even scrubbed his tongue, probing so deeply I was amazed he didn’t gag.

As we emerged from the bathroom the woman entered. She was plainly surprised to find us out of our bed and in our underwear.

“What is this?” she said in her accented English. “No getting up yet! Back to bed.”

His inclination was to ignore her, but he couldn’t deny the weakness he felt.

“You will land us in bad trouble!” the woman said, scuttling forward and taking him by the elbow. “No getting up today. You must rest. Plenty of resting.”

He let her lead him back to the bed, though he insisted on getting into it himself. She tucked him in as one might do a child, though he noticed that never once did she look directly at him.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

“Here,” she said, folding under the bottom edges of the quilt. “I live here.”

“I mean originally.”

She gave no answer, still busy with the sheets.

“Are you Polish?”

She made a noise that sounded like an expletive, and left without another word.

THREE

The white hospital room. I was back. Through the window I could see dingy clouds scudding across a blue sky.

There was no sensation of transition. I had simply switched in an instant from one place to another. From another mind and body back to my own.

Unable to raise myself from the pillow, I felt both dull-witted and incredulous. I couldn’t begin to imagine what was happening to me.

I heard a rustling sound, managed to turn my head a little.

Tanya was sitting at the side of the bed.

Tanya! She was the auburn-haired woman I had dreamt was watching over me. Once, in our university days, we had been lovers.

She was wearing reading glasses, a hardback on her lap. Under her brown suede coat shewore a print silk skirt with calf-length boots. Her hair, cropped as a student, was now free-flowing to her shoulders but still the deep red-brown it had always been. She looked prosperous, but not showily so. Her very presence at my bedside meant something dreadful had happened.

Lyneth and the girls had been injured in the explosion, or worse. Tanya wouldn’t have been here otherwise. I had no family apart from my errant brother and my father, who was in a nursing home. Perhaps they’d been unable to contact Rees, who had a habit of dropping out of sight. Somehow Tanya must have heard the news and come to my bedside to be there when I woke. It had to be serious: of her own choice Lyneth wouldn’t have allowed Tanya anywhere near me.

Sara and Bethany. My mind rebelled at the very idea that anything could have happened to them. Perhaps they were all in intensive care, somewhere in the very same hospital, mere wards away. They would be clinging on to life, surviving as I’d survived. Or perhaps the girls had suffered minor injuries and were being tended by Lyneth while I recuperated.

I tried calling out to Tanya, demanding to know what had become of them. But nothing would emerge. Here, unlike in the other world, I had a distinct and proper sense of my own physicality; but my body was refusing to cooperate.

Could it have been a terrorist attack? A suicide bomber, even? Or something as banal as a leaky gas main? How many people had been caught up in the explosion? How many were dead?

My thoughts raced like pond skaters over the surface of these questions, but whatever drugs I’d been given muted my reactions to a dreamy bewilderment.

Tanya turned a page of her book. I willed her to look up, to notice I was awake. This wasn’t happening. I couldn’t allow it to have happened.

“So,” said a gruff male voice, “you’ve been playing with fire again, eh?”

My uncle was short and stocky, with a genial expression on his rubicund face. His epaulettes and scarlet gorget collars bore the insignia of his rank, gold oakleaf embroidery enclosing wreathed batons, a lion rampant within its ring of stars. He pulled a chair up to my bedside and gently pushed me back when I tried to sit up.

“No, no, just lie there,” he said. “The doctor tells me you need to have a good rest, so let’s not have any standing on ceremony.”

I had the immediate sense that he was speaking in another language, lilting and glottal. Apart from a smattering of French, English was the only language I knew, yet I understood him perfectly.

He put my hand between his own, grasping it firmly, his eyes becoming a little glazed. A man of sentiment, despite his status. Protective of family members.

“I was worried we might have lost you,” he said. “A bad business, Owen. A bad business, indeed.”

He pronounced the name O-wine—the Welsh way, I realised. It was the language he was speaking. Presumably it would be written Owain. Yet I, born in Swansea but raised both there and in Oxford, had never learned it.

“Second time around,” I heard myself say, also in Welsh. “Someone up there must like me.”

The field marshal released my hand. “It’s no joking matter, my boy.”

I looked at him through Owain’s eyes with a certain degree of awe: Sir Gruffydd Maredudd, the commander-in-chief of the Alliance armed forces in the United Kingdom and head of the Joint Governing Council, the body that had superseded a defunct Parliament in the conduct of the nation’s affairs. At the same time I knew that in my own life I had never had an uncle by that name, let alone an ennobled senior military commander.

“What exactly was it?” Owain asked. “A missile?”

“What do you remember?”

Owain thought about it. His mind was empty.

“Take your time,” his uncle said firmly. “Tell me everything you remember.”

He made a renewed effort to recall the details. Slowly they began to come.

He had just flown back from a three-week information-gathering mission to South America. His clearest memory was of the snow-camouflaged Bentley that had been waiting for him at Northolt, its driver a talkative Jamaican émigré called Maurice who had fled the American occupation of the Caribbean in the late ’fifties. Cheerful and patriotic, he had served in the old Royal Navy for twenty years. He lived in the Docklands and was looking forward to a family gathering at Christmas.

There was little traffic in central London apart from the usual convoys and patrols. At Oxford Circus an enterprising Sikh trader was selling straggly Christmas trees to the checkpoint guards. Regent Street itself was closed to civilian vehicles, but staff cars were invariably allowed the benefit of the shortcut.

As the barrier was raised for them, Maurice asked Owain if he could pull over and buy a tree. Owain had no objections: he saw an opportunity to stretch his legs after twelve hours of being cooped in various forms of transport.

They drove through and parked in the middle of the empty road. Taking his briefcase, Owain wandered down the street while Maurice returned to the checkpoint to barter with the trader.

Around Owain there was nothing but silence and abandonment. He was surrounded by the shells of once-thriving commercial outlets. On the western side they had been emptied and bricked-up; on the eastern side only reduced façades remained like the half-ruined outer keep of a castle. The entire area of Soho beyond had long been off-limits to civilians, sealed off and plastered with biohazard signs after an anthrax attack thirty years before. His mother had brought him here as a six-year-old to see the Christmas lights and watch a special broadcast from the troops in Persia, where his father was serving. He’d searched the assembled faces in vain for a glimpse of him.

An almost subliminal hum was coming from somewhere. It grew in volume, like the approach of an insect.

“Major!”

He turned and saw Maurice hurrying back to the car, triumphantly flourishing a stunted and bedraggled tree. The hum rose in volume and frequency, ceasing an instant before a flood of white light surged through the gaping windows and balconies of the façade, swamping everything and sending him reeling.

“It was like a massive flare,” he told his uncle. “There was no noise.”

It felt like a confession, an admission of guilt.

“What possessed you to go down there in the first place?”

He thought that he’d already explained it. “I was thinking about mother.”

The field marshal gave a grunt of consideration and undisguised sadness. Owain’s mother had died with other family members when the water supply at their estate in Brecon was contaminated with cholera. Easter 1984. Owain and his brother Rhys only escaped because they were still in boarding school in Aberystwyth. It turned out that the well on the estate had been infected with chlorine-resistant bacteria by religious disarmamentarians who were subsequently shot for their pains.

Their father was serving overseas at the time, while his uncle, newly promoted, had been summoned to London because the Soviets had launched a new offensive in the east. To minimise the risk of infection, he and Rhys were only allowed to view the bodies from behind a glass screen before they were cremated. Now their father too was long gone, leaving just the three of them.

“The driver,” Owain said. “Is he dead?”

Sir Gruffydd shook his head. “Knocked over. Shaken up like you.”

“It came out of Soho,” he said.

“Derelict ground, fortunately.”

“What was it?”

His uncle shrugged. “The CIF unit that went in reckon it was a big incendiary, nineteen-seventies vintage. Been lying there for donkey’s years. Could have gone off at any time.”

The CIF were the Counter Insurgency Forces, always sent in if sabotage was suspected. Owain remained puzzled. “I didn’t hear any explosion. Just a rising whine, almost like a jet engine. And a big flash of light.”

Sir Gruffydd didn’t look surprised. “You never hear the one that has your name on it. You were fortunate it didn’t kill you.”

There was something in his uncle’s tone that made Owain wonder if he was withholding harsh facts. Or perhaps it was sheer relief.

“Were there any casualties?”

“Indian chap. Street frontage above the old station collapsed on him. Apparently the epicentre was right behind it.”

Owain couldn’t work it out. “That would have been north of me. It felt like the flash came from due east.”

The field marshal looked unconvinced. “I got the report this morning. Very thorough in these matters, Legister’s legionnaires.”

He was referring to Carl Legister, the Secretary of State for Inland Security. Legister was responsible for anti-terrorism and civilian order on the home front, in charge of both the Security Police and their quasi-military offshoot.

“I don’t understand,” Owain persisted. “It was so bright. One big flash.”

“Maybe it had a magnesium fuse,” his uncle said with the merest hint of impatience. “Maybe it was a white phosphorus charge.”

The mention of phosphorus instinctively made Owain think of his pockmarked face. There was also another more powerful memory that he immediately quashed. It was something to do with his service on the eastern front. He had ended up being invalided home the previous spring.

His continued scepticism must have shown because his uncle said, “It’s dead ground, Owain. Who would want to target it with a missile? We’ve not had a strike on London in over a decade. Count your blessings. You were fortunate it wasn’t anything nuclear or biological. They’ve given you a clean bill of health on that score. Nothing nasty lurking in the system. Physically speaking.”

The last two words were significant. Owain knew his uncle was still concerned he might be suffering after-effects from his combat experience.

“Don’t let it gnaw at you,” the old man admonished. “Trauma makes it easy to misremember the details. You’re still recuperating, and at least you’ve got youth on your side. Wait until you’re my age. Without my valet I’d have a job finding my shoes in the morning.”

His uncle plainly wanted to get off the subject. Perhaps it was what he’d been told: just an old bomb. Owain made himself smile.

“What happened to my report?” he asked.

“Your briefcase was recovered undamaged. I read it over a mug of cocoa last night. You did a thorough job.”

The generals had sent him to neutral Brazil, where he’d met Alliance agents and liaised with various representatives of the US armed forces. His instructions had been to glean more information about American intentions in the central Asian and Pacific theatres. But an air of guarded reticence had dominated all his meetings with his opposite numbers in the US armed forces: nothing was being volunteered. While there was no suggestion that the Americans were preparing renewed offensives on the Northern Indian or Chinese fronts, Owain felt a distinct chill in the diplomatic air. In his report he’d concluded that the laissez-faire approach that had served both sides so well for half a century was now being strained by the overlap of respective spheres of influence.

The strange thing was that the tour already felt remote, like something he’d done years ago. His uncle’s almost offhand reaction to his report made him wonder how much importance he actually attached to it.

“Was the driver on your staff?” Owain asked.

His uncle nodded. “One of our regulars. Very reliable. They discharged him after a couple of days. In time to cut the turkey. I had one sent him specially.”

“Christmas is over?” Owain said. “How long have I been here?”

“Only a few days. We had you in the Berlin Memorial to begin with.”

It was the main military hospital in the capital. Owain’s shock mirrored my own. I wondered if he could sense my presence. He gave no sign of it.

“In hospital?” he said.

“They didn’t tell you? You were in a coma for the first forty-eight hours. Then you woke up raving until they tranquillised you. You were out of it for ten days. We had you transferred here when the crisis passed.”

He was in the surface apartments of the War Office. No wonder the old man was concerned that he might have been hallucinating. “I don’t remember any of that.”

“We had to be sure you hadn’t picked up something, but there were no indications. Just a nasty knock to the head.”

The time between the explosion and the final waking was a complete blank. I knew that a similar period must have passed in my own world.

“Tyler’s a good man,” his uncle said. “He thinks you’re over the worst.”

“I’m fine,” Owain assured him. “A little weak at the knees, that’s all.”

“That’s only to be expected. You don’t look too bad for a mongrel.”

The usual actionate tease about his mother, who had been English. He had only the fondest memories of her, but had been devoted to his father, who’d died in Palestine when Owain was sixteen. Not that he’d seen much of him during those years: his father had served overseas even before he was born and was rarely home on leave. Owain and his brother had been raised on his uncle’s estates in mid-Wales, learning Welsh during the vogue for encouraging regional cultural identity. They had even de-anglicised their names. It proved just a fad, but the language was useful for conducting private conversations since few other people spoke it.

“I’d like to return to my duties as soon as possible,” he announced.

The field marshal looked stern. “I’m sure you would.”

“Sir, I’m fine.”

“Of course you are. But you’re going to wait until the plasters come off.”

Owain didn’t demur; he felt weaker than he had actually admitted.

“Well, my boy,” Sir Gruffydd said, rising, “can’t sit here chatting all day. You know the drill.”

“I appreciate you coming, sir.”

His uncle squeezed his shoulder affectionately. “You’ve had another narrow escape, Owain. Third time might not be so lucky. Go easy on yourself. That’s an order!”

FOUR

A muddled memory of my own life:

I was sitting in a small viewing theatre, watching a preview of the first episode of Battlegrounds. We’d made eight programmes in all, the aim being to recreate the soldiers’ experience of the major land campaigns in Europe and North Africa. For over a year I’d travelled widely, ranging from Norway to Normandy, Libya to Latvia and beyond. The split screen showed me in a T-shirt and jeans, walking a tranquil stretch of desert, backdropped by a computer simulation of German infantry men in a sandy dug-out, under bombardment from the barrage that had opened the final battle of El Alamein.

Lyneth and both the girls were with me. Sara sat cross-legged, watching with wide-eyed seriousness her father up there on the screen. It was the first time any of them had seen the programmes, and I remember feeling peevish towards Lyneth, who spent the entire hour with Bethany huddled on her lap while she flipped through picture books to keep her occupied. Ever the practical one, she’d even brought a small pencil torch for the purpose. I had hoped that at last she would show some interest in my work and acknowledge my achievements. This was, after all, my finest hour. But she kept her head down as she read the books to Bethany in a secretive whisper.

The faint glow of the torch highlighted her flawless complexion and the intense concentration she was putting into the task. She didn’t look up once to sh my small moment of glory. I felt a surge of irritation and affection in equal measure. I wanted to snatch the book from her hands and demand she pay me some attention. I wanted to turn the lights on so that everyone else could see what an excellent mother she was.

The dream was vivid, even though it was the merest snapshot, a true reflection of my ambivalent feelings. But a malignant fantasy intruded and my father was sitting there, the serious professional historian who was gazing at the screen with open contempt.

I surfaced in the wrought iron bed. Back in the body of my other self, Major Owain Maredudd, he of the ravaged face and guarded thoughts. He had lurched upright as though rising from a nightmare.

His body was filmed with sweat, the sheets tacky against him. A pale wintry light seeped through the open curtains. The room was filled with the emphatic ticking of a carriage clock. It had been placed on the dresser and showed two-fifteen.

Owain went into the bathroom. He took another cold shower, which again I endured with far less fortitude than he. After vigorously rubbing himself dry, he began to dress.

I tried to will myself back to my own world. This time I couldn’t sense the undercurrents of his thoughts and memories. He’d shut down, as though in reaction to whatever dream had disturbed him, and was narrowly focused on the here-and-now. I felt mentally press-ganged, hemmed in. But I couldn’t escape.

He stood before the mirror, buttoning his tunic to the neck, checking that he looked presentable. His eyes were shadowed and he hadn’t fully recovered his strength; but I could feel his determination to leave the room. He picked up a leather wallet and flipped it open, staring at his ID card as if he needed to verify his own existence.

He tucked the wallet away and retrieved his belt from the bedpost. It held a canvas-holstered hand pistol which he did not remove, though I gleaned that it was a 9mm Walther APS with a twenty-round magazine, standard Alliance Army issue.

A padded jacket hung on the back of the door. It was lightweight, the fabric waterproofed, closures sealed with what here were called dryads, for dry adhesive strips. There were gloves in one pocket, a furlined hat with earflaps in the other.

A carpeted corridor led to a landing where a swarthy female MP was on duty, her black hair tucked up under her forage cap. Owain knew her by sight if not by name.

“Sir?” she said uncertainly.

“I’m going downstairs,” he told her. “Stretch my legs.”

He went past without saying anything further, taking the stairs at a brisk pace but holding on to the handrail.

The stairs debouched on a broad marble hallway that had been partitioned so that it could function as offices. The place was a bustle of clerical activity. An oriental woman sat at a desk piled with box fs; a boy barely out of adolescence was clattering away on a bulky manual typewriter, pausing to scrutinise a document through thick-lensed spectacles.

Owain walked swiftly through the centre of the workspace, almost colliding with a Nilotic man who was talking loudly down a telephone. I gleaned that electronic communications had been severely disrupted for several months, though the thought was quickly stifled.

A pair of steel doors gave access to one of the stairwells. He went down two floors to the lower ground floor, where the vehicle ports were located. But someone was waiting for him on the landing.

“Good morning, major,” she said. “Up and about already?”

She was a dark-haired woman in her mid-forties. Lieutenant-Colonel Giselle Vigoroux, his uncle’s military secretary, a permanent member of his personal staff. Evidently the MP had phoned down, and good for her.

“I was bored,” he said. “How long can you lie in bed when there’s nothing wrong with you? I needed a breath of air, a little drive.”

She smiled at him in a knowing way. She wore her hair short but in a stylish cut which made her cap no more than an accessory to it. Despite the uniform there was always something casually elegant about her.

The pager on her belt started bleeping. Gently she drew him in through the open doors of the service lift. The doors slid shut.

Owain was nervous of lifts but determined not to show it. They were descending into the subterranean heart of the complex. Most of the building above ground was given over to routine administrative tasks; all the important activity was carried out deep enough down to be proof against enemy attack.

Finally the lift stopped and the doors trundled open, admitting a waft of warm, stale air. A short corridor led to another pair of doors. There were signs on them saying AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY in a dozen different languages. Giselle slid her ID card into a slot and pressed digits on a keypad. The doors parted, releasing a wave of even warmer air.

“Your uncle’s not here at the moment,” she told him as she led him through.

“I wasn’t aware that I’d need his permission to go out.”

“I was told you were still convalescing.”

“Does that make me a prisoner here?”

He was pushing it, he knew, and with a woman he liked and who was extremely good at her job. She merely laughed.

“Are you fit enough to go driving?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t be asking if I wasn’t.”

They had entered a room with metal walkways surrounding a large central well. Attentive staff sat before monitor screens, while above them animated maps showed swathes of eastern Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific islands in electric primary colours. The displays were constantly changing as if searching for a static equilibrium but never finding one. Here, deep below ground, the equipment was securely shielded from the electromagnetic interference that plagued surface transmissions.

“You’ll have to excuse me a moment,” Giselle said, and promptly disappeared down one of the walkways.

The large well below was dominated by a softly-lit area with dark banks of machines arranged around it. I knew from Owain that this was AEGIS, the automated tactical and strategic defence network that had been used by the Alliance to direct their military operations for the past quarter of a century. It was part of a network linked to sites in Paris, Hamburg and elsewhere. The Russians had their own equivalent, as did the Americans. All three had been seriously reduced in their operational efficiency following a catastrophic breakdown of the satellite systems on which so much of their data gathering depended. Or so it was said.

One of the TV screens was showing footage of the Chancellor touring the vast concrete fortifications of New Jerusalem. A handsome middle-aged man in his customary dark suit, he was an electronic composite designed twenty years before as a permanent figurehead of the Alliance, immune to assassination, disease and ageing. The Silicon Chancellor, they called him, and he was held in greater affection than any of his flesh-and-blood predecessors.

Giselle returned and led him out of the room. Owain was grateful for the relative coolness of the concrete corridor as they walked back to the lift doors. She presented him with a set of keys.

“There’s a Land Rover out the back,” she said. “Canvas-topped. Make sure you’re back indoors before curfew.”

The lift doors were already open.

“Don’t do anything foolish,” Giselle added. “You know he’s worried about you.”

She meant his uncle. “I’m fine,” he said adamantly. “I just need to remind myself that there’s a world out there. Tell Sir Gruffydd I’m available for duty whenever he needs me.”

“Before dark,” she reminded him. “Otherwise my neck will be on the chopping block.”

My own instinct was to retort that the British preference was for hanging, but Owain wasn’t prone to such frivolities.

He was greatly tempted to take the stairs back up to the surface but knew it would be a foolish exertion in his present feeble state. He entered the lift.

As I stared at his smeared image in the polished steel wall of the lift I could sense his unease. To me he looked the perfetinldier; he had been raised to it from an early age. Yet he was filled with vague, restless insecurities, not least the nagging anxiety that the lift might at any moment fail and send him plummeting.

His relief was palpable when we emerged at the basement level. We passed down another concrete corridor and went through a storage area with crates piled high on cantilevered shelves. At its far end was a pair of clear plastic doors stuck with black-and-yellow striped tape for the benefit of forklift drivers.

The warehouse was quiet and deserted apart from two elderly men who were crouched around a paraffin stove, sipping a golden brown liquid from glass cups.

“Tea or whisky?” Owain called, surprised at his own levity, which had in fact been prompted by my own instinct to say something.

The men looked back at him with blank incomprehension. I relished a mild sense of victory in my brief display of presence, though I sensed Owain stiffening his control again with a feeling of having spoken out of turn. He viewed the comment as a lax outburst, a mild breach of decorum; he had no inkling I was the originator.

Beyond the doors was an extensive parking space for staff cars and All-Terrain Vehicles. Impacted snow crunched under Owain’s boots as he crossed to a sentry box where two MPs sat, playing cards. They rose and saluted.

He jangled his keys, having already spotted the Land Rover. One of the men waved him on. They’d been expecting him. No doubt Giselle had phoned through.

The vehicle was a left-hand drive of some vintage, the dashboard old-fashioned with its flick switches and analogue dials. He turned the key and the engine chuntered into life. Without delay he drove up the slip road and out onto Whitehall, driving on the right-hand side of the road.

The civilian traffic was sparse, a few long-serving trucks and vans rather than cars. An old double-decker bus went by, ferrying civilians. Its windows were missing and the flaking red paint on its coachwork was almost indistinguishable from the extensive areas of rust. It was followed by a taxicab hand-painted in white and grey, grilles encasing its side windows. A senior officer and a young woman were sitting in the back seat.

Owain drove slowly, in no great hurry. Knots of soldiers and civilians were gathered around the soup kitchens lining the approach to Trafalgar Square, steam billowing from big urns. They looked surprisingly cheerful and were busy bartering food items and medical supplies. A line of people waited at a bus stop, its pole mounted in a concrete-filled drum. The civilians wore all manner of hats and layer on layer of hand-me-down clothing. Most were clutching bulging bags of vegetables and firewood. Dirty snow had been piled on either side of the thoroughfare, barricading buildings with metal shuttered windows. Sandbags and barbed wire framed doorways and forecourts.

Overhead the sky was a marbled grey. Darkness was already beginning to gather. Owain switched on the jeep’s heating. He turned into Trafalgar Square, circling it in an anticlockwise direction. In place of Nelsons Column stood a weathered golden statue of an eagle rampant. The rest of the site had been levelled and was a parking space for snow ploughs and security police wagons. A Cougar battle tank sat in the colonnade of the National Gallery, pigeons perched on its 120mm gun barrel, its slab-faced armour zebra-striped. Soldiers and MPs manned checkpoints all around the square.

Owain drove on. There were frequent gaps in the street frontages that held nothing but snow-covered rubble. In places the dereliction was extensive. I saw no evidence of what I might have recognised as modern commercial architecture, no sleek high-rises of brick and glass, nothing that looked as if it had been constructed for any purpose other than to withstand a prolonged siege.

Halfway up the Haymarket Owain came to a checkpoint and was directed to pull over. He showed his ID card to an MP. It resembled a credit card, with profile and frontal head shots, a magnetic strip on its rear. The MP told him that if he was headed north he would have to go along Piccadilly and up Park Lane since both Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road were presently closed to traffic. Effectively sealing off all the Soho margins, he thought.

“I’m headed west,” he said, the lie making his pulse surge.

He turned left into Jermyn Street, took a right, and found himself driving straight towards a full-blown roadblock. Temporary signs indicated a left turn only, which would force him west along Piccadilly, away from his intended destination. Instead he drove straight up to the razor-wire barrier.

Ahead of him hoardings around Piccadilly Circus carried patriotic posters featuring images of citizens and soldiers clone in a style that reminded me of Soviet heroic realism. One showed a multiracial group surrounded by a swirl of national flags and a scroll declaring: BROTHERS-IN-ARMS! Among the flags was a red, gold and black banner, its central band surmounted by a black Teutonic cross.

One of the soldiers from the roadblock approached the car. They were CIF men, equipped with Sterling submachine guns and snug hooded winter-camouflage body suits. This one held a senior guard’s rank, equivalent to a sergeant.

Owain surrendered his ID card. The guardsman swiped it through a hand-held scanner before frowning as if it wasn’t working. Or as if it didn’t check out.

“Can I ask where you’re going, sir?”

Owain decided to be direct. “I’d like to take a look at the bomb site.”

The man squinted at him, his eyes shadowed under the cowled brim of his helmet. “And which one would that be, sir?”

He had an Ulster accent; Owain had done a six-month tour of duty there while still an NCO. Suppressing extreme Catholic and Loyalist groups opposed to the Ecumenical Irish Republic.

“Soho,” he replied.

“I have no information on any bomb site, sir.”

“There was an explosion. A few days ago. I mean, a few days before Christmas.”

The man looked studiously blank. “I know nothing about that, sir. I’m afraid the area’s off-limits.”

He was scrupulously formal. Owain knew he wasn’t going to get anywhere unless he raised the stakes.

“Listen,” he said, “I was in Regent Street when it went off. Let me speak to someone.”

The guardsman’s face didn’t change. There were half a dozen of his colleagues at the barricade, all watching.

“Field Marshal Maredudd sent me over,” Owain said. “I’ve come straight from the War Office.”

Another glance at the scanner screen. “As far as I can see, there’s nothing here relating to site access.”

Owain essayed a shrug. “We didn’t imagine it would be a problem. Would I have driven up here otherwise?”

Once again the guardsman scrutinised him against the picture on his ID. “I’m sorry, colonel—”

“It’s major” he said. “Major Owain Maredudd. If I was a spy or a saboteur, you don’t really think I’d fall for that one, do you? Do you want my serial number and my mother’s maiden name?”

The guardsman had the grace to smile.

“Pull in over there,” he said, pointing to an area of waste ground on the corner of Piccadilly. “Oh, and sir?”

“Yes?”

“You might want to switch on your lights.”

A hard-topped truck and a Rapier armoured car were already parked on the waste ground, the latter standing with its view slits shuttered but its engine idling. Owain spun the Land Rover around and reversed into a space.

A blue haze of cigarette smoke was issuing from one of the vents in the armoured car. The guard had gone across to a female superior standing beside a long cargo lorry that was parked right across the entrance to Regent Street. Owain saw the woman look towards him before taking his ID and climbing into the back of the lorry. Cables were trailing from its rear into an open manhole on the pavement.

Owain waited, stamping his feet on the powdery snow, stretching his shoulder and neck muscles. A big RAF helicopter went by, the red-and-blue decal on its midsection enclosed by a circle of yellow stars. None of the personnel on the ground looked up as it went past.

The cles. opter was an Euro Avionics HT-11, I gleaned from Owain, popularly known as the Fishtail for its forked rear end. It was used as a vehicle and troop carrier, and Owain had flown in one many times, especially while on the eastern front. I had a brief image of him driving down a ramp from the belly of such a craft into a cold predawn darkness.

The woman emerged from the trailer. Her head was swaddled in a grey fur hat, the earflaps hanging loose in the wind.

“Good evening, major,” she said. “A raw day to be out and about.”

“Indeed,” Owain replied.

“Perhaps you’d like to sit in your vehicle.”

Was this a suggestion or an order? She had a unit leader’s patches, was roughly the same rank as him. But with jurisdiction. Owain decided not to make an issue of it. He climbed back into the Land Rover and wound down the window. He’d left its engine running.

“I’m here half the night myself,” she went on, turning his ID in her mittened hands. Owain was sure she had already checked it with the database. “The graveyard shift. Much rather be curled up in front of the TV with a mug of something hot.”

Owain was trying to place her accent. South African or Rhodesian, he decided; he didn’t bother to ask.

She was still holding on to his card. Owain drummed his gloved fingers on the steering wheel. He was beginning to regret having made his intentions explicit.

She reached in and extracted his wallet from the dashboard pouch. Removing a mitten, she replaced the card in the wallet.

“Well then,” she said, handing it back through the window, “everything appears to be in order. But it’s not going to be possible to visit the site.”

Owain was striving hard to control his impatience. “I just wanted to see what damage it caused. My driver and I were nearly killed. Check it for yourself if you don’t believe me.” He was certain she had already done so. “I’m only just out of convalescence.”

“You have my sympathies. But I’m afraid no one’s being allowed in without authorisation.”

“Look,” Owen said, “I’m Sir Gruffydd Maredudd’s adjutant. Do I really have to go back to the WO and get his signature?”

“That would be entirely appropriate. You would also need to make sure you’re suitably dressed. There’s a concern that the explosion might have stirred up toxins. My orders are to keep everyone out unless they have security clearance. You will appreciate that they have to be applied without exception.”

This was at odds with what his uncle had t

Owain inhaled sharply. I could feel his fury mounting, and his struggle to control it. It was an emotion unfamiliar to me, or at least long forgotten.

He rammed the gear lever into first. The woman stepped back.

“Lights on, major,” she reminded him. “I wouldn’t want to hear that you’d had an accident.”

Owain drove away, heading straight down Piccadilly. The night fog was already rolling up from the river. This decided him. Out of sight of the roadblock he turned sharply right into an unmanned intersection, driving parallel with Regent Street into Saville Row.

The district was lined with mouldering tenement blocks. The central area of London had suffered from repeated aerial attack over the last half-century and much of it was now depopulated. The buildings, raised hastily on bomb sites in the nineteen sixties, had long been abandoned, the factory workers dispersed to rural sites.

He turned into a side street, into a dead end. Big coils of razor wire had been piled against a breezeblock wall about ten metres high. Above the old yellow-and-black biohazard signs were new ones showing anti-personnel mine symbols. A stark warning in English, French and German said: ENTRY FORBIDDEN: INTRUDERS WILL BE SHOT

I could feel Owain’s powerful urge to investigate, regardless of any dangers. He switched off the Land Rover’s lights but left the engine running. I wanted him to stop, but my anxiety counted for nothing, wasn’t even registered. What would happen to me if he were killed?

The tenement blocks were all sealed off, their doors and windows long bricked up. Owain skirted the barrier cautiously. The razor wire had been laid in haste, thrown down almost casually against the base of the wall, the new signs hammered in with masonry nails. Flattening himself against the wall, he managed to slip past the wire without getting snagged.

The wall itself was at least twenty years old. There were gaps in the pointing, and hardened cement had oozed out like cream from a sponge cake. In one corner, ice from an overflow pipe had piled up, reducing the height by half.

Purposefully Owain began to root around in the snow. Amongst the broken bricks and the rotting cement bags was a pallet of unused blocks, abandoned and forgotten. He withdrew an army knife from his belt and cut off lengths of plastic packing strips before knotting them together into a crude lasso.

The overflow pipe projected from beneath the guttering on the corner of the tenement wall. He managed to hook the noose over it at his second attempt. He tugged several times; it held. Confident that his gloves would prevent the strips from cutting into his hands, he began hauling himself up.

All this was conducted with total concentration on the task. He had a more practical bent than me and was also much fitter. Despite not being fully recovered from the bomb blast, he scaled the wall effortlessly and perched on its lip.

He was just high enough to peer across the deserted street and over the broken frontages into the Soho wasteland. The fog was rapidly thickening, making visibility intermittent. But parts of the area were lit with fuzzy halos of arc-lamp light, and he was able to see the outlines of bulldozers and other earth-shifting equipment. They were moving about amid a tangled, lumpy landscape.

The drone of their engines carried to him. He glimpsed a lorry piled high with debris, driving away into the fog. A few figures were discernible too—men who looked as if they were wearing hardhats and coveralls rather than decontamination suits. Some were directing dump trucks; others were hitching rides on open-topped ATVs. The noise of a mini avalanche reached him as another unseen lorry received its load. Squinting harder he saw that the mounds comprised mountains of earth in which were embedded the broken outlines of heavy machinery parts.

The area was supposed to have been cleared years ago, but it looked as if it had suffered saturation bombing, everything churned up and mangled beyond recognition. He cursed the fact that he didn’t have binoculars and could only rely on murky impressions. But what was certain was that this was no decontamination team: on the contrary, as much of the ground was being turned over as possible.

A wave of giddiness swept over him. We almost went plummeting down. Another sound reached us: that of an approaching helicopter.

Again Owain cursed himself for leaving the Land Rover’s engine running: if it was a patrol craft it would be carrying heat sensors that could locate the vehicle.

He scrambled down the wall, sliding off the ice but landing safely. Edging past the razor wire, he stopped for a moment and listened. The helicopter sound was receding. He glimpsed it in the near distance, banking. It was going to come back his way.

He jumped into the Land Rover and reversed down the street, back into Saville Row. He headed south, only switching his lights on again as he made a westwards turn along Piccadilly.

I was amazed at his calmness, but his hands began to tremble. He peeled off his gloves and gripped the steering wheel tightly, his entire body swimming with a nervous exhaustion.

A vehicle was approaching from the opposite direction, its headlights blazing. It went past him without slowing, an old Army Saxon APC, reconditioned for Security Police use with a rear-mounted machine gun.

At Hyde Park Corner a street market was shutting up for the night. The area around it had been levelled. Owain turned south, winding down the window. We passed what had once been Buckingham Palace Gardens but was now snow-choked allotments that extended into Belgravia. The palace itself had been bulldozed half a century before following a direct enemy hit, the royal family reduced to a handful of survivors who were shipped overseas for safekeeping and were now dispersed around southern Africa and the American-occupied Caribbean. Their departure had only added more legitimacy to the new military government, wch already had its counterparts on the Continent. Fifty years later it was still in charge.

Owain went through a dense pocket of fog. He was driving too quickly. A T-junction materialised without warning. Mentally I lunged, attempting to wrench the wheel around. Brakes screeched, and a wall loomed in front of us.

FIVE

Two male nurses were lifting me into a wheelchair. One of them folded a blanket over my lap. I was pushed to a window and left alone.

Darkness had fallen, but I had a good view out over a rectangle of lawn with two wings of the building on either side. A modern redbrick hospital with row upon row of windows, cars going by on the road beyond.

I tried to lift myself out of the wheelchair, grasping the window ledge and levering myself up. I almost managed to straighten but the giddiness returned. I let go, for fear it might sweep me up and send me spiralling back into that shadow-world.

I lay half-twisted in the chair, my head filled with the pulse of my blood. Someone helped me sit up properly. Tanya.

Her renewed presence, and the sombre look on her face, made me think again that Lyneth and the girls must be dead.

I began raving at her, demanding to know what had happened. But again nothing emerged: I remained as limp and mute as a stuffed toy.

It had to be the medication. Or was I semi-paralysed? Brain-damaged? No, it was neither of these, I was certain. At least not in the conventional sense.

Tanya drew up a chair facing me and sat down. She wore the same brown suede coat as before, looked quite artlessly alluring. But although she sat only a few feet away from me, she might as well have been on the Moon because the rolling, sloshing sounds I could hear were coming from her. She was talking to me but I couldn’t make out a single word.

This went on for some time. What did I look like to her? A zombie? A drooling idiot? What was she trying to tell me? Something about Lyneth and the girls? She didn’t exactly look devastated, more concerned. This encouraged me. I was certain I’d seen only the front of the building collapsing in the explosion. Lyneth and the girls might have been at the back of the store. Possibly they had been injured by flying debris.

Suddenly I had an image of myself standing on sodden grass, watching as a coffin was lowered into a hole in the ground that had been cut square to accommodate more than one. I had no idea whether or not this was a true memory since I couldn’t actually remember anything else apart from Tanya’s previous visit to my bedside. But if Lyneth and the girls were dead they would probably have been buried by now.

No. It didn’t make sense. How could I have attended a funeral when I was still hospitalised and couldn’t even get out of bed without help? Tanya didn’t look pained enough. I had the impression she was more worried about me.

What had caused the explosion? Possibly she was telling me, but I was quite unable to comprehend anything. The idea that anyone would deliberately target a toy store was so repulsive it beggared belief.

I felt such a confusion of emotions. In embarrassment I managed to turn my head and look out the window again. The lawn below became a road, the redbrick hospital the metal-ribbed flanks of a bridge across which I was driving, my knuckles oozing lymph. Then I was back in the wheelchair again.

Tanya leaned forward to wipe my cheeks with a handkerchief that smelt of her perfume. She’d worn it as long as I’d known her, though I couldn’t recall its name. She scrutinised me in silence. This was unreal. Somehow I had to get a grip on things.

Tanya dragged her chair closer and took hold of my hands. She was talking again, and I could tell from her expression that she was insisting that I concentrate. Nothing she said made any sense. The sound of her voice grew higher pitched, became a buzzing that I thought was going to make my head explode.

At this point she did something astonishing. She leaned forward and planted a kiss on my lips.

It was a gentle but unreserved kiss. She hadn’t kissed me like that in years, since our salad days at university when everything had been new and we couldn’t keep our hands off one another.

She drew back and looked closely at me. I couldn’t imagine what she was thinking.

SIX

Owain had produced a torch and was climbing a stairway that zigzagged up the outside of the building.

He emerged on to a broad balcony with a view to the west. The building lay on the south bank near Westminster Bridge, itself an unfamiliar utilitarian structure of girders and thick wooden beams. In the darkness across the frozen river I could see the huddled fortresses of the state. They looked like a latter-day version of an ancient temple complex, but dedicated to their own hermetic ceremonies rather than the lofty aspirations of worship. A deserted park of sinuous walkways and barren trees occupied the site of the Houses of Parliament.

I tried to wrench myself free of him, to hurl myself back to my own world. It was another unwilled and unanticipated transition, a seamless shift from the warm aftermath of Tanya’s kiss to the bitter-cold outside air. I didn’t want to be there. I wanted my own life, as fraught with confusion and uncertainty as it was. How else was I going to find out what had actually happened?

But in this other world I was little more than a phantom in Owain’s mind. I had no physical leverage and couldn’t budge myself. Owain wasn’t aware of my strivings—indeed he still gave no sign of being aware of my presence at all. And I found that I couldn’t in this instance influence his actions in the slightest: he was firmly in command of himself.

Owain had parked the Land Rover in the bays below ground. There was a dent in the wing on the passenger side from the collision with the wall. No one had witnessed the accident, and his only injury was skinned knuckles. Somehow he had managed to drive home without further incident.

His door was painted an anonymous military green. The building, popularly known as the Brass Barracks, had been erected in the nineteen eighties, purpose-built for visiting diplomats and dignitaries. But the effective collapse of civilian politics meant that it had become quarters for administrative officers based in central London. Each apartment suite had its own balcony and was generally arranged to maximise privacy. Which suited Owain perfectly.

The door was double locked, the keys hidden in a niche above the lintel. From the outside the place looked drearily functional, but when he stepped inside and turned the lights on I saw a carpeted corridor that gave out into a spacious kitchen. Doors on either side hung ajar, showing a bedroom, bathroom and lounge. It was big enough to house a small family.

The place was bitterly cold, the air stale; it hadn’t been occupied since Owain’s departure for Rio a month before. The lounge was sparsely furnished with an armchair, a sofa and a television that sat on an old-fashioned sideboard. Owain promptly pulled down the blackout blind over the frost-glazed window.

Again I tried to liberate myself by mentally swooning, hoping that I would literally pass out of his consciousness. It didn’t work. The only noticeable effect was that Owain gave the mildest of shudders and turned around to confirm that no one had crept behind him.

Did he sense me at last? No, there was nothing in his mind to suggest this. I had the impression that he was always to a degree on mental guard, ready to anticipate the unexpected. He’d been trained that way.

But though powerless, I was not entirely passive. I shared his sensory experiences and could access associated memories. Perhaps my urge to orientate myself and make sense of my situation meant that I was actively stimulating them.

Owain entered the kitchen and flicked a switch on the wall. After a moment I heard the laboured thrumming of the heating system. From a cupboard he produced a medicine box, extracting a bottle of surgical spirit and a wad of cotton wool. He swabbed his grazed knuckles, relishing the stinging as though only pain could take him beyond himself. Again I tried to black him out. He steadied himself, clenching his fists, digging his fingernails into his palms. His heart vaulted in his chest as the doorbell buzzed.

He moved cautiously up the corridor and peered through the spy hole. A young dark haired woman was standing there, her head poking out of the upturned collar of a voluminous black fur coat.

I recognised her immediately: she was the other woman from my dreams, the urchin beauty who had been standing by the wrought-iron bed. Owain swiftly opened the door.

She grinned at him. Her cheeks were flushed from the cold.

“Marisa,” he said, smiling.

Somewhat to his surprise, she flung her arms around him, pressing her cheek against his. She was of medium height and slimly built, the ridge of her shoulder blades prominent under his tentative fingertips. The familiar citrus-musk scent of Apropos filled his nostrils: he remembered the name because she had told him it was a Chanel perfume that had long ceased to be publicly available.

He pulled back. “Were you waiting for me?”

She nodded.

“How long?”

“One hour, maybe two. I sat in the car.”

“Alone?”

“Of course. Did you think I would ask Carl to drive me?”

Her husband, Carl Legister.

“That’s dangerous, Marisa. Especially after dark. Anyone could have come along.”

“I kept a pistol warm in the glove compartment.”

Was she teasing him? Her accented English always made it hard to judge.

He ushered her inside, locking the door behind them.

“I can only stay one hour,” she announced. “Two at most. I wanted to see how you were.”

“You came to my bedside.”

“In the middle of the night like a thief,” she said gleefully. “No one else saw me.” She made a funny face. “There was a fat woman fast asleep on a chair. Her mouth was open and she was snooring.”

“Snoring,” he corrected gently.

She was of exotic Austrian and Anglo-Lebanese ancestry, and had lived most of her life overseas, her father having been a much-travelled Alliance diplomat. Owain had met her at a reception six months before and the two of them, both feeling isolated among the throng of notables, had struck up a rapport that had grown more thrilling with each subsequent clandestine meeting.

“It was risky,” he remarked. “How on earth did you get in there?”

A conspiratorial grin. “Giselle.”

“You told her you wanted to see me?”

“I told her we were good friends. She understood and arranged everything so I could come at night when no one important wasaround. It was all very confidential.”

He wondered how anonymous such a visit could have been; but nothing could be done about it now.

“I missed you,” she said with emphasis, “and when I heard you had nearly been killed of course I had to see for myself.” She grinned again. “You looked very peaceful and handsome when you were asleep. Like Prince Charming.”

The flattery pleased him, though he didn’t show it. She had always been free in expressing her feelings.

“How did you find out?” he asked.

“I heard Carl speaking to your uncle on the telephone.”

Legister was the only civilian on the JGC. According to official sources, he had rescued Marisa from enslavement in the aftermath of the North African insurrection six years before. According to Marisa herself, the truth was somewhat different. Only seventeen at the time, she had been taken hostage and held in the southern Sahara by a renegade group of Aryan supremacists, who’d exiled themselves beyond Alliance territory after the passing of the racial emancipation laws. A captive for three months, she was finally liberated by Italian special forces and delivered to Alliance headquarters in Alexandria. Legister had been on a fact-finding mission there at the time. Thirty years her elder and hitherto a bachelor, he’d had a chaplain marry them in a hastily convened ceremony before bringing her back to London.

All this came to me in a matter of instants. Whenever he met Marisa, Owain was always very conscious of her past. I had a sense that he sought within it a clue to her future.

“I left a message,” Marisa said, going over to the telephone and pressing the Play button.

There was a moment of silence, followed by a series of electronic hisses and whooshes.

“I didn’t know you spoke static,” Owain said with a ponderous lack of humour.

She took his hand to lead him into the kitchen. He winced as she touched the raw skin of his knuckles.

“More damage,” she said.

“It’s nothing. I slipped.”

Her gaze was direct. “You are telling me porkies.”

“It’s icy out there.”

She let it go. “Do you know what they call a pig who works in the secret service?”

Only the glimmer of mischief in her eyes alerted him to the fact that she intended a joke.

“Go on.”< ><p>

“A pork spy!”

It was a child’s joke, but her laughter invited collaboration. She took a foreigner’s delight in the quirks of the English language, which was only one of several that she spoke.

Owain felt an unsettling brew of emotions. He himself had never married. His fiancée had abandoned him shortly before their wedding, leaving London to join her family on holiday in Venezuela, whereupon they deliberately sailed into US waters and were interned by the Americans. She’d sent him a note on perfumed paper to say that she wanted a better life.

Eight years ago. Caroline. These days whenever he thought of her it was merely as a deserter to her country rather than their marriage. There had been no one else until Marisa came along. But she was a married woman, even though his impression was that she had been duped into it by an older man taking advantage of her vulnerability. It was his own sense of honour and self-preservation that prevented him from even declaring let alone acting on his feelings. It was quite possible that Legister knew she was here.

“You must take more care,” she told him seriously. “They said you were lucky not to be killed. It was a bomb.”

He wasn’t sure whether this was a question or a statement.

“Of some sort,” he replied. “They’re still investigating. I don’t remember much.”

This, of course, was a lie; but he didn’t want to involve her in complications. Yet she might be able to help.

“What did your husband say?”

“Carl? He never speaks to me about official matters.”

“I thought you said he was talking to my uncle about it.”

“Only that there had been an incident. I heard him mention your name.”

“Apparently his men are doing the investigating. I’m surprised they’re involved.”

“Do you think he would explain things to me? I am only his little wife.”

She said this with resigned amusement rather than rancour.

“My driver,” he remarked. “His name was Maurice. Jamaican originally. They told me he was OK, but it would be nice to know.”

“Is it not possible to contact him?”

He couldn’t risk asking his uncle or Giselle, and it was unlikely he would be allowed access to personnel details without raising suspicions.

“It’s not encouraged,” he told her. “You know how these things work. But I’d just like to be sure, unofficially, you understand?”

He disliked being less than straightforward with her, but there was something slippery about the whole business; and Marisa was no fool. Staff details would surely be accessible at her husband’s ministry. Drivers were unlikely to have a high security classification.

“Of course I will do this for you,” she said. “With the uttermost discretion.”

She was grinning, pleased that she could help. “I’m so glad you’re safe,” she went on. “I missed you badly when you were away. You’re the only one who makes me feel I can be myself.”

Her candour unsettled him because the sentiments she expressed were so desirable.

“So how is Carl?” he asked.

“I hardly see him,” she replied. “Every day he is gone before dawn. Every day there are meetings, conferences, and I never know whether he will be home or not. Always at six in the evening he rings, often to tell me he will be late and I am not to stay awake for him.” She gave an exasperated sigh and said, “Am I bad to say I would prefer it that way except that sometimes it is hard to occupy my days?”

But she did keep herself busy. He knew she helped out at a local surgery, as well as doling out Red Cross parcels at refugee centres. She was also charged with exercising Legister’s pair of wolfhounds. Her evenings were spent watching Hollywood movies, many of which were now banned from public viewing following the deterioration in relations between the Alliance and the USA. They would meet up whenever their schedules and the vagaries of the telephone system permitted; she invariably phoned him from a call box to arrange the rendezvous. Of course it was furtive—that was part of the thrill. But anyone keeping an eye on them would have no evidence that they were doing anything more than innocently enjoying one another’s company.

Until now. It was the first time she had come to his apartment. He wasn’t sure quite what to do next. His shyness was quite in contrast to my own nature, which was more outgoing. The blinds were drawn on the windows so no one could peek in. I would have risked a kiss.

Marisa took off her fur coat. Without it she looked diminished, her slim body sleeved in a knee-length black dress. She wore sturdy furlined leather boots, hand-made by the look of them. Legister had never denied her material luxuries.

She rummaged in the deep inner pocket of her coat and produced a package wrapped in silver foil.

“A present,” she said, leading him into the kitchen.

She filled the kettle and put it on one of the gas rings before opening the package and holding it under his nose.

It was, as he’d suspected, fresh-ground coffee. He inhaled its pungent aroma gratefully.

“Costa Rican,” she told him. “I stole it from Carl’s special supply.”

He found a box of England’s Glory and lit the ring under the kettle.

“I bought you Belgian chocolates,” he announced. “They’re probably splattered all over Regent Street.”

“It was a kind thought. I am touchéd.”

He laughed, certain that this was a pun rather than another mispronunciation.

There had been good coffee aplenty available in Brazil, but he’d wanted to get her something overtly luxurious. And consumable. But such gestures didn’t come naturally to him, with the result that he’d flown halfway around the world and come back with chocolates she could have acquired herself through her husband. He’d picked them up during a stopover at Conakry Airport, selecting a big scarlet box with a gold ribbon. A little too ostentatious, really; as if he were buying a gift for a lover.

She opened the fridge and grimaced at its emptiness.

“I’ve been away,” he said unnecessarily. “There’s only powdered milk.”

She darted back into the living room, returning with a silver hip flask.

“Whisky?” Owain said. “Cream.”

“You certainly are well prepared.”

“A little celebration to welcome you back. Since you do not care for alcohol, I thought this would suffice. I missed you, Owain.”

She pronounced his name 0-wayne, which despite himself he found charming and intimate, her private name for him.

Yet he remained reticent. I had a strong feeling that it was something more than a simple matter of shyness or discretion. Clearly Marisa was attracted to him and was free in expressing her feelings by look and touch. But the very idea of greater intimacy attracted and dismayed Owain in equal measure, for reasons that remained inaccessible to me.

The kettle had started to sing. Marisa rinsed two army-issue mugs while humming a tune he didn’t recognise. Owain found some sugar and carried mugs and spoons through into the living room. Marisa joined him on the sofa, putting the cafetière down on the coffee table. He’d never used it since he’d occupied his quarters here the previous spring.

“You must tell me about your trip,” she said. “Not the military work. What places did you see?”

“Not much to tell. Most of it involved meetings in stuffy rooms.”

“Rio. Is it really beautiful there?”

There were times when her youth showed through. Or perhaps it was just a wilful determination to discuss matters that didn’t involve the war.

“I didn’t get out much,” he said, declining to tell her about the riots and epidemics, the squalor of the favelas. Neutrality bred its own discontents.

“You didn’t even visit the beach, dip your toes into the ocean?”

“Forgot my swimsuit.”

She screwed up her nose. “You should have found time, Owain. Life is short.”

In fact he’d spent most of the tour in the company of a Portuguese multilinguist called Carmela, a swarthy beauty who’d been sent along as his subordinate. She’d travelled practically everywhere with him, sitting in as a secretary-cum-translator on all his discussions. They’d been billeted next door to one another and he’d had the impression she would have made herself available if he’d desired. But he’d never risked compromising himself.

“What is it?” Marisa said. “You are smiling.”

“Nothing.”

But he felt virtuous, like a faithful husband.

His weariness descended again as Marisa poured out the coffees and talked of the wolfhounds. They usually met in St James’s Park when she was out walking the dogs. No doubt Legister had her shadowed for security reasons. No doubt he knew of their liaison. This hadn’t concerned him unduly while they met in public places. But now she was here, in his private domain.

He took his coffee from her, holding it to his nose, inhaling its fragrance. A sip, its delicious sugared warmth spreading through him.

“Look at you,” Marisa said. “You are a mess.”

She said it affectionately. I would have smiled and even winked at her; but not Owain.

“It must be late,” he remarked.

“Soon I will go, and you can sleep.”

“I should ride home with you. In case you’re stopped.”

“Ridiculous! It is no distance. I have my identification, and they will see who I am. Besides, you are like the cat has dragged you home. You need someone to look after you, Owain.”

“Are you volunteering?”

She laughed out loud, as though he had told a vulgar joke. Owain blushed, mortified by his own boldness, though it had in fact been prompted by me. I sensed him stiffening his control.

Outside a night patrol helicopter went by. Owain idly wondered if it was the same one that had sent him fleeing like a subversive less than an hour before. He swallowed a yawn. The coffee had done nothing to drown his exhaustion.

“Lay your head on my lap,” Marisa said. “I will stroke it until you fall asleep. Then I will go.”

Somewhat self-consciously he did so. He felt the warmth of her slender thighs across the back of his head, her splayed fingers tracing slow paths across his scalp. Sensing an opportunity to escape, I willed him to relax.

Despite himself he began to bathe in sensation; it was years since anyone had touched him in this way. Marisa was humming again, the same elusive melody.

Rain on the window. It was night and I was alone in my room. Slowly I rolled over. Tanya was long gone, a folded newspaper on her chair.

I couldn’t gauge how long it had been since I had departed from Owain. It might have been a matter of seconds or hours. Everything was jumbled, fragmented.

Determinedly I resisted the impulse to ponder Owain’s situation, to dwell on his encounter with Marisa. It was too seductive, in more ways than one. Instead I managed to reach out and grab the newspaper.

It was the Guardian. I had to squint in the dim light but I was perfectly able to see that there was no reference on the front page to anything involving a terrorist outrage or any other kind of disruption in Regent Street. I’d woken with a new uncertainty that I’d actually seen any explosion at all. Had I merely imagined the store frontage disintegrating?

Laboriously I worked my way through the newspaper, inspecting every story. There was nothing, no mention of it anywhere.

By the time I’d reached the sports section my head was pounding but my spirits had begun to soar. An explosion in the middle of the capital? Even weeks later there would have been some reference to it, had it occurred. Which meant that it couldn’t have done.

I slumped back on the pillow, grinning with a giddy sense of relief. Though I still couldn’t explain Lyneth’s absence, at least I knew she was still alive. The girls too. I could survive the wrenching dislocations to my counterpart’s world in this knowledge. Let them come. Let them come. Nothing could daunt me as long as my family was safe.

I might have dozed: I might simply have been drifting in the shallows of sleep. But at some point I experienced a great surge of arousal which brought me to full alertness. As I lay there, sharing with Owain the same confused feeling of having been capsized from sleep, I was sway the tidal surges of a nightmare in which he had relived an episode from his recent past.

Though it came as a torrent of images and incidents, fraught with all sorts of threatening emotions, in the aftermath I could only make sense of it by reassembling it as a narrative.

SEVEN

An engine roar, a bumpy ride. Owain driving along a frozen mud track that meandered across a pockmarked wasteland. Four other men in the Spectre, including his commander, Major van Oost, who sat in the co-driver’s seat and kept yelling at him to slow down.

Dropped by Fishtail at dawn, they were deep within the No-Go Zone that stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea. They’d been sent in to check out satellite evidence of heavy vehicle movements near Minsk. The city itself was just a name on a map: it had been obliterated during the limited nuclear exchanges of the nineteen fifties.

An abrasive babble over the satellite link as the major received the latest update from CommandCom in Leipzig. A remote-imaging satellite had picked up possible exhaust heat signatures in their target area. They were to proceed with extreme caution.

Everyone bulky in the new NBC snowsuits with hoods that enveloped their helmets; respirators hung at their necks. The squad was part of the multinational Special Operations Corps, the cream of a rigorous selection programme.

They descended a frozen gully and made a steep ascent. The Spectre coped effortlessly with the incline. The vehicle’s bolt-on panels meant that it could be adapted to a variety of combat roles.

Near the brow of the ridge, with the display flashing an urgent red to indicate their proximity to the target, van Oost ordered Owain to pull over.

The major was already zipping up his respirator. A blast of snowy air swept into the cabin as he clambered out. Owain caught a stench of frozen mud and rotten vegetation before he fitted his own mask. It was early March, the temperature outside ten below zero, the sky oppressively grey.

Like a slim-line polar bear with a crooked black snout, van Oost scrambled through the snow. On the brow of the ridge he unhooked his binoculars and pressed them against his eyepieces. At this point the familiar hiss of Owen’s satellite link died, as did the dashboard screen.

Silence, expectation, nothing. The men in the back making brittle jokes behind their respirators, Sabrioglu saying that they’d forgotten to put a coin in the meter, Benkis telling Vassall that he should climb up on the roof and thump the dish with a hammer. Vassall, a corporal, stonily silent at first, then warning that rebel groups could rig up signal jammers from little more than an UHF generator and a plastic pipe wrapped with copper wire.

The major returned, unzipping his mask as soon as he was inside.

“Looks like an old army base,” he told e blast oone. “It’s surrounded by trees so I can’t get a good view. But something tells me it’s active.”

“The link’s just gone down,” Owain informed him.

Van Oost peered at the blank screen and nibbled on his damp moustache. He was a sandy-haired man with a lived-in face that made him look ten years older than he was.

“Fuck it,” he said at last. “All right, everybody out. Maybe one of you has better eyes than me.”

Securely packaged in his suit, Owain followed the others through the snow. The latest issue automatic rifles were slung over their backs: Heckler & Koch PF-1s that fired 4.7mm caseless cartridges. Already Owain’s head was filling up with a swampy smog of recycled breath and acrid sterilising vapours.

The NGZ had been relatively quiet for the past decade. Evacuated by both sides in the late eighties when Alliance counter-offensives left vast areas polluted, it had become a buffer zone and a barren sanctuary for all sorts of outcast groups.

Beyond the rise was a compact area of pinewoods with a rectangle cut out of its middle. Owain’s binoculars revealed a large complex with roads leading into it from the south and east. Flat-topped buildings were arranged around what looked like a parade ground.

“What do you think, captain?” van Oost asked him.

“Hard to say. I’d guess a base. But there’s no sign it’s being used.”

“Look further east.”

Owain shifted his field of vision, following the easterly road through the trees. The extensive plain beyond the whiteness was overlaid with darker rectilinear areas.

“See them?” the major prompted.

“I see something.”

“Something’s been assembled there.”

“How about we launch a drone to take a closer look?” Owain suggested.

“The link’s out,” said another voice. Vassall.

“We can do it by line-of-sight,” Owain said. “Guide it in from the wagon. The terrain’s favourable.”

From the ridge the ground sloped straight down towards the base. It was the perfect vantage point for an overfly.

“We bring the wagon up far enough to deploy the dish. Should be plain sailing.”

Vassall made a sceptical sound. “Assuming some sharp-eyed guard down there doesn’t notice the wagon sitting up here in plain sight.”

The major rounded on him. “When I want your opinion, corporal, I’ll ask for it. And expect it to be constructive.” He turned back to Owain. “Fetch the wagon.”

The radio dish was mounted in a cavity at the rear of the vehicle. Owain reversed the Spectre up the slope until its back end rose above the ridge. He deployed the dish, angling it until it was pointing towards the base.

Vassall opened a metal case on the snow. Inside were six finger-length chrome cylinders. He removed one and unfolded its silver wings before setting it down on a flat rock.

The drones, miniature reconnaissance aircraft with head-mounted cameras, resembled robotic dragonflies. They were powered by lithium batteries in their abdomens.

Vassall tapped instructions into the case’s keyboard. It screen flashed on. The corporal looked up at van Oost.

“Get on with it,” the major told him sharply.

The drone’s wings began vibrating, giving off a low electronic buzz. It lurched into the air and veered off towards the base.

Owain, hanging out the wagon’s window, swung back into his seat and flipped up a flat screen from the dashboard.

The image from the drone’s camera was grainy and monochrome, but it was a clearer picture than they’d get from the case’s diminutive screen. Owain gave a thumbs-up to the others on the ridge.

Van Oost joined him in the cabin. He’d unzipped his mask again and Owain did likewise to make conversation easier.

The drone was closing rapidly on the base, its flight steadying as Vassall got the measure of the wind.

Benkis and Sabrioglu were perched on the ridge, keeping an eye on the roads out of the base in case their radio signals were detected. The Spectre’s exhaust was also pluming into the air above the ridge. An alert sentry armed with an IR scanner might pick it up if they were unlucky.

Vassall took the drone at altitude over the perimeter wall. There were no sentry posts, though it was indeed an old military base, square utilitarian flats lining a road edged with skeletal deciduous trees. Smoke was rising from a chimney on one of the blocks.

The screen showed a building that was evidently an arms store, red-and-white drums stacked against its walls. A trio of men were standing outside it. Vassall took the drone down for a closer look.

Two of the men were smoking cigarettes, the third swigging liquor from a bottle. They wore a mishmash of flak jackets, coveralls and recycled headwear. Automatic rifles and bandoleers were slung over their shoulders, their belts hung with grenes and stuffed with pistols in an exorbitant display of firepower.

Van Oost started yelling at Vassall to keep the drone at a safe height and downwind of the men. The corporal was a late addition to the team, sent in just twenty-four hours before they flew east. A standoffish sense of self-importance meant that he had not endeared himself to anyone, least of all the major.

“What do you think?” van Oost asked Owain.

“They look like irregulars,” he replied. “Maybe they’ve taken over the place as temporary winter quarters.

The drone picked up a scattering of their laughter and an exchange in a language that sounded Slavic to Owain’s ears. Van Oost called Benkis back to the wagon, asking if he could identify it.

“Lithuanian,” Benkis said instantly. “With a little Russian and German mixed in.”

The major squinted at him. “Are you sure?”

Benkis gave a dry laugh under his mask. “They always cluck like turkeys, and this lot are worse than most.”

Benkis was Latvian, a large-framed, hearty man, unfailingly cheerful. As a child he’d escaped on one of the last boats out of Klaipeda before it fell to the Red Army in their 1984 offensive. That had been the nadir of the fortunes of the Alliance, when Berlin was obliterated, the Ukraine lost and the front rolled back to the Oder.

“What are they saying?” van Oost asked the big man.

“I’m going to disappoint you,” Benkis replied. “They’re talking about the joys of drink and the delights of loose women. Of course I’m putting it a little more politely than they are.”

The men were wearing various badges with insignia that not even Sabrioglu, their expert on partisan formations, could identify. This wasn’t surprising. Within the zone allegiances were constantly shifting between motley groups that might be made up of regionalists, ultra-nationalists and outright thugs.

Van Oost directed Vassall to take the drone up over the line of apartment blocks. Suddenly Owain was gawping at the screen.

The plain beyond the base was swathed with sheets of winter camouflage netting. There were mounded shapes underneath it, rank upon rank of them.

Vassall took the drone in low. At close quarters, just discernible under the netting, were phalanxes of tanks, self-propelled assault guns and infantry combat vehicles.

“What do you make of it?” van Oost asked him.

Owain was studying their shapes through the netting. “T-92s, AMXs, even a few Snow Tigers. They’ve really been scourig the scrap heaps.”

“I’m talking about the quantity, not the vintage. Have you ever seen so much armour in one place? Outside of a regular army?”

He hadn’t, of course. The armed bands within the zone rarely mustered more than a dozen vehicles, while their obsession with speed and manoeuvrability meant that they disdained heavy equipment, especially tanks.

The drone was now showing field guns and rocket launchers under the netting. Also trucks and heavy transporters.

“Chevrolets,” Owain said. “Chrysler Trojans. Late ’nineties models, by the look of them.”

The major shouted to Vassall to begin photographing. Of course the Americans had for decades bolstered the Red Army with supplies of trucks and support vehicles, but it was years since anything had been seen this far west. And these had to be recent supplies.

Vassall did a series of close-range shots before flying the drone higher to obtain a panoramic view. Although the actual picture on the screen was less than perfect, the processed photographs from the drone’s on-board image-bank would give good resolution.

The wind had strengthened and the men on the ridge were dusted with snow that was pluming up the incline, drowning the entire world in white haze. Here the winter often extended into April or May, whereupon much of the landscape became a radiation-and toxin-soaked quagmire with the spring thaw. Rasputitsa, the Russians called it: the roadless season.

The dashboard clock showed that they had been in the field for two hours. The original plan was to have CommandCom arrange helicopter pick-up as soon as they accomplished their mission. With the link down, they faced a long drive out of the zone and might need to scavenge extra fuel.

The drone withdrew back over the apartment area, where suddenly there were many more men emerging from the buildings. Without waiting for van Oost’s instructions, Vassall reduced its altitude to take a closer look.

“Fool,” the major muttered. “We’re upwind.”

He jerked his head out the cabin door and shouted to the corporal to pull up. But it was already too late. A squat man wearing an antique leather pilot’s helmet suddenly pointed straight up at the camera.

Vassall accelerated the drone away. There was the cracking sound of small arms’ fire as it raced towards the perimeter wall. It jerked and began flying in an erratic path up and over the wall.

One of the wings had been damaged: that much was obvious from the roll of the craft as it took in woodland, sky, woodland again. Vassall was battling to keep it in the air. At one point the picture whirled completely out of focus, as if it were somersaulting. Then it was back on course again, but with its altitude dropping.

“I see it,” Sabrioglu shouted, peering through binoculars.

Owain followed van Oost out to the ridge. He heard Sabrioglu mutter something in Turkish before saying: “It’s going to come down in the trees.”

Vassall was on his knees in front of the case screen, frantically toggling.

“A down draught took it,” he said.

“Get it higher,” van Oost told him. “If we lose it you’re in shit to your eyeballs.”

“Can’t we make do with what we’ve got?”

The major didn’t dignify this with a reply. He wanted the image-bank from the drone so that they could go home with visual evidence that was absolutely unambiguous.

Vassall furiously tapped buttons on his keypad. The drone cleared the forest and flew towards the incline, still dropping. It was going to crash straight into the ground.

“Cut the power,” the major said calmly. “Try for a soft landing.”

Vassall did as he was ordered. The drone fell, the screen picture yawing and jolting before it stabilised again. A dark line of snow obscured half of it, the rest showing ashen sky.

“It’s down in one piece,” Vassall said redundantly.

“Right,” said van Oost. “So just stroll down there and pick it up, there’s a good fellow.”

Vassall looked at him anxiously. His freckled face was flushed.

“I was given express orders to remain with the vehicle at all times. Sir.”

The corporal had been sent in to provide extra technical support, but it was obvious he wasn’t a team player. Neither did he have a sense of humour.

“You prick,” van Oost said. He told Benkis and Sabrioglu to prepare for the descent.

“Stay here with the wagon,” he instructed Owain. “Vassall will launch another drone while we’re down there and do an overfly at altitude. Make sure he keeps it high. Get some panoramic shots, and then bring it home.”

“Why another fly-over?”

The major looked at him as if the question was stupid. “In case we don’t make it back, captain. If we get into trouble you take the wagon out of here, understand?”

Vassall was already launching the second drone. Owain crouched on the bro the ridge as the men descended in loping, sideways strides, the major leading, his automatic tucked under one arm. Owain heard a familiar heart-wrenching screech. The slope exploded, snowy turf and earth flying over the brow.

Vassall had returned to the wagon, leaving the laptop unattended. Its screen showed the drone already flying over the base.

Owain raised his head over the ridge. There was no sign of van Oost and the others through the haze and smoke. Another shell erupted close to the first.

Keeping low, Owain used the toggle to send the drone in a wide arc over the plain, photographing at five-second intervals. The outlines of the tanks and trucks were clearly visible through the netting. He took a series of photographs and gave the drone the return command.

Still the incline was clotted with dirty white smoke. Nothing was visible.

Owain backtracked on elbows and knees before hoisting himself up into the Spectre’s doorway. Vassall was sitting at a workstation he’d unfolded from a compartment behind the driver’s seat. Hood and mask thrown off, he was furiously typing instructions into a keyboard. Data streams were rushing across the screen, line upon line of letters and numbers that were meaningless to Owain.

“What are you doing?” Owain shouted. “We need you out here!”

Vassall didn’t answer but glanced at the main screen on the dashboard. The link was still out, but the screen was active again, showing a panorama of the base and the plain. There was an explosion nearby, and Owain was pelted with debris.

He leapt down and elbowed his way back to the brow of the ridge. The laptop was overturned, its screen smashed.

There was the sound of small-arms fire, among it the familiar chittering of PF-1s. They soon fell silent.

Vassall had angled the radar dish so that it was now pointing straight up. The wind had dropped but the smoke was thinning. Owain found his binoculars, managed to hold them steady. Tracked vehicles were coming out of the woods, clusters of men perched on them, firing indiscriminately. One, two bodies lay sprawled on the incline. He couldn’t locate the third.

A pulse of brilliant white light split the murky sky. It was like an intense burst of sheet lightning, swiftly gone but leaving him blinded for a few instants. The ground beneath his feet surged forward in such a massive lurch he was almost hurled over the incline. There was an enormous ripping explosion, as if the air itself had been torn in two. Seconds later a shockwave hit him.

EIGHT

He lay there in the snow, trying to blink back his sight as the thundering and rumbling went on. The very earth kept on heaving, while clouds of snow roiled in pulses of wind. It continued for several minutes before everything eventually became still.

eight="0em" width="13" align="justify">As his vision slowly cleared, Owain rolled over and crawled back to the brow of the incline.

He looked down on a seething torrent of cloud and smoke. A personnel carrier had stalled on the slope, and men lay flattened all around it. Behind them was nothing but elemental rage, a cold billowing cloud that he was certain was a nuclear explosion. The base and the plain beyond it were gone, consumed. Yet he could see no mushroom cloud.

There was a noise behind him. Vassall was clambering out of the Spectre.

The corporal shouted something, but the words were drowned in a spasm of gunfire. Owain saw him do a spastic pirouette that sent him tumbling into the snow.

He lay face up beside the Spectre, dead eyes staring at the sky. There was a bloody hole at the base of his neck. No pulse there.

Owain backed away, risking another glance down the ridge. A whirling storm of snow was sweeping up the slope, enveloping everything.

The instant it hit him he could feel it stinging his face—but with fire rather than ice. It clung to his suit and began searing holes through it.

He bounded for the wagon, unable to see clearly, finally finding the open door. As he was climbing in, something grabbed the leg of his suit.

Vassall had raised himself to his knees. He closed both hands around Owain’s ankle. His eyes were rolled up in their sockets, the blank white gaze somehow fixed on Owain’s face. He was dead, an animated corpse.

“Save me,” he burbled, the hole in his neck dilating, blood oozing out of his mouth with each word. “Take me with you.”

Owain was seized with revulsion and incredulity.

He kicked the corporal in the chest, sending him tumbling, and slammed the door shut.

Through the window Owain saw Vassall raise himself to his feet with jerky movements, heedless of the stinging snow that was assailing him. Owain scrambled into the driver’s seat. As he was putting the engine in gear Vassall heaved himself up and pressed his face to the window.

“Help me,” he mouthed, smearing redness across the glass.

Owain accelerated away at speed. For a while Vassall clung on, pleading with Owain from outside the window, his words lost in the engine’s roar. They hit a hollow and snow fountained up over the windscreen. Owain flicked the wipers on and kept driving. When he dared to look again the corporal was gone.

He drove madly through the blizzard, ploughing across terrain that made the Spectre buck and veer, climbing inclines and descending slopes with frantic abandon, wrenching the wagon through its gears. His face was still burning, and when he glanced in the miror he saw that it was covered with festering pinpoint burns. The body of the Spectre appeared undamaged by whatever was in the snow.

It had to be a new enemy weapon. There were rumours of experimental devices that used microscopic machines. Perhaps they had seeded the snowstorm with mini-incendiaries or engineered particles that would penetrate flesh and clothing.

The land levelled and he drove straight across it as fast as he was able. With the navigation systems out of action there was no way of telling whether he was driving in the right direction. The wagon bumped and pitched, throwing him around in his seat. There was a mechanical bang, and the right-hand side of the Spectre dropped away. Owain was catapulted forward, his head smashing against the dashboard.

It took all his willpower not to pass out. At length he raised his head and managed to lever himself up.

The blizzard had stopped and he saw that the Spectre was lying at a forty-five degree angle, a corner of the windscreen buried in snow. Its engine was still running, though all the electronics on the dashboard were dead.

He clambered out through the co-driver’s door. The cold air was like a balm on his face. It felt washed and sterilised.

The Spectre had gone down into an old bomb crater and lay in a pool of muddy slush, exhausts still billowing, a single red light flashing on its rear. The heat from its underside had melted enough of the snow for him to see that it would be impossible to reverse it out.

He skirted the wagon, half expecting to find Vassall still clinging there, grim and dogged even in death. But there was no sign of the corporal.

Overhead, the clouds had rolled away and the sun was shining in the palest of blue skies. It felt like months since had had last seen it, and the sight made him want to cry.

Nearby a line of birch and pine backdropped a ramshackle cluster of wooden huts, long abandoned and half buried by the blizzard. The snow lay over everything like some enormous flag of truce, nature’s response to the ravages of men, an effortless obliteration of all their works. Nothing moved, and the silence was so profound it was clamorous.

His face had started to burn again. Suddenly he was kneeling in the snow, scooping it up and slapping it against his cheeks, bathing himself in the whiteness.

He heard a familiar rumbling. It grew in volume as he raised himself to his feet, the ground beneath him rippling, snow cascading from the trees, inundating the derelict hamlet.

Everything was shaking and heaving, his teeth chattering in his mouth. He fell face down in the snow and tried to cling to it, to hold on like a man perched on the very skin of the earth, about to be torn off it in its final cataclysm.

When he came to, it was twilight. He was being hauled on a stretcher through a glittering haze towards a Fishtail that sat with its belly open, i rotors whirling. Men were calling to one another in German, and a tractor truck was going up into the belly of the helicopter, the wrecked Spectre on its trailer. Before he passed out again he felt a fleeting sense of amazement that against all his certainties he had been saved.

Owain was still lying on the sofa in his living room. A woollen blanket slithered from his lap to the floor. Marisa must have covered him up before she left, hours ago.

I knew I hadn’t directly experienced his dream: he had already woken before I shared his fraught memories of the mission. It had all happened over nine months before, but Owain had relived it many times since. To him, the nightmare had the absolute stamp of authority. There were crucial features of it that he had never told anyone.

Owain was agitated; he couldn’t keep his thoughts from me. More than ever I wanted to be free of him but I couldn’t will myself away. He had eventually woken to find himself in a military hospital in Hamburg, confined to bed and with his face bandaged. He’d spent a month in solitary convalescence, attended by a parade of bedside visitors that had included combat counsellors and personnel from the intelligence services.

They told him he was the only one of the team to survive and that he was lucky to be alive. Despite the loss of life, the mission had been more of a success than he might have imagined, though of course they weren’t permitted to go into details. Owain was in turn as cooperative as he could be, though circumspectly so. He recounted everything he could remember of what had happened, omitting only any mention of Vassall’s ghoulish resurrection. As a military man, he knew it was never prudent to talk of things that could not be objectified.

He repeated his story numerous times, to both medical and military people. Their responses varied from the curious to quizzical, especially when he spoke of the burning effects of the snow, which had left clusters of sores across the whole of his face. They wouldn’t confirm or deny that nuclear weapons had been used to obliterate the base: all the major powers had observed an unofficial moratorium on their use for over a decade. But he was assured that he had suffered no radiation exposure. This puzzled him because the assurances appeared so patently genuine.

Towards the end of his convalescence his uncle unexpectedly visited him. Sir Gruffydd was jovial and fulsomely relieved that he had survived. They conversed in familial Welsh, as in their domestic fireside chats of his youth. The field marshal was quick to reassure Owain that he had not been a victim of some nefarious new enemy weapon. There had been no microscopic particles embedded in the blizzard that had struck him: instead he’d been hit by the blast of an old-fashioned phosphorus fragmentation mortar shell. He was fortunate to have escaped being blinded.

His uncle praised his resilience in getting away; he had it on good authority that the rebel group they’d encountered had almost certainly used nerve-gas agents. Possibly he had been exposed to them, which was why they were keeping him under observation for a little while. Did Owain have anything to report that might suggest such an exposure? Anything he recalled that he hadn’t yet mentioned? The field marshal’s tone was gentle and unthreatening. Without prejudice to yourself, my boy. Owain considered before shaking his head and insisting that he was fine.

Shortly before his discharge from hospital, his uncle visited again. He told Owain that he’d made a good recovery and that everyone was pleased with his progress. However the medical experts considered it prudent that he be taken off frontline combat duties for a spell. It was standard procedure, no reflection on his calibre as a soldier. In fact, he was being promoted to major in recognition of his services. To ensure a thorough convalescence Sir Gruffydd had arranged a posting to his staff in London.

Owain was both relieved and humbled. Though he knew it was irrational, his predominating emotion was a sense of failure, a feeling that he had abandoned van Oost and the others, had fled from the field like a coward. It shamed him to contrast himself with his father, who had been awarded the Valour Cross for his part in the defence of Istanbul. His father was a war hero, whereas Owain had a growing conviction that he himself would never be a frontline soldier again.

NINE

The fog was gone, dawn a bruised light seeping through mottled cloud. Decades of warfare had led to pollution and ionisation of the upper atmosphere so that the skies were seldom truly dark by night or free of murkiness by day.

Owain walked briskly along the riverbank, where ice-locked freighters and barges lay abandoned until the spring thaw. In recent years winters had become long and bitter, summers short and torrid.

He entered a large park that was empty apart from the verdigrised statues that flanked its paths. They were life-sized representations of military men, generals and admirals and air marshals, their heads and shoulders crusted with bird droppings. I scrutinized their faces and names as we passed but recognised none. The snow-bracketed plinths held inscriptions celebrating achievements that meant nothing to me, covering campaigns that ranged from West Africa to the Arctic Circle over more than half a century.

I managed to get Owain to pause beside a statue I finally did recognise. It was a bronze of Field Marshal Montgomery, cited for his achievements in leading amphibious landings along the Baltic coast in December 1943. From Owain I gleaned that Montgomery’s divisions had bolstered those of the German Army Group North threatened by a Soviet winter offensive.

Britain had entered the war on the German side; France, too. Hitler had died in a plane crash soon after the invasion of the Soviet Union began. Peace terms were arranged following an anti-Nazi coup in Berlin—peace and a withdrawal from occupied territories in the west in exchange for military assistance in the east. Sixty years later the successors of the Wehrmacht and the Red Army had fought themselves to a standstill.

There was a loud crack overhead and a jet swept past at low altitude. It was gone as quickly as it had come. I had no idea why Owain had come here from his bed, except perhaps to escape his own memories. Now he was stirring, and I found myself being pushed into the hinterland of his mind as he reasserted himself. He’d found a scrap of paper in the pocket of his coat. Marisa had written that she would be exercising the dogs in St James’s Park at noon the following day. It was the last thing I saw before Owain swamped me so completely that I was extinguished.

TEN

My father used to say that military history was the refuge of scoundrels, a judgment that was typically sweeping. He had a special distaste for what he called “fantasists”—historians who did not stick scrupulously to the facts but were prepared to speculate on alternative outcomes. He always had a prodigious appetite for disapproval, and I’m certain he despised my career path. He himself was a distinguished though not uncontroversial historian who had made his name with a study of the interwar years, published before Rees and I were born. He’d married my mother, Magda, when he was forty. She was sixteen years younger, the daughter of a former German army officer, a widower who had immigrated to England in 1951. She died in a car crash when I was six.

My father was one of those men who aspired to old age as though youth was intrinsically disreputable. During the academic year we lived in a house near Balliol College, where he had a professorship. The rest of the time we made our home in the village of Bishopston, outside Swansea. This was where I’d first met Lyneth. Our romance, if you could call it that, always had an air of being a leisure-time activity, with treks to secluded coves and chaste kissing on the gorse-and-bramble heaths.

My father kept near-identical studies in both places for his work. I remember once, when I was about eight, finding the heavy oaken door ajar. I can’t recall whether we were in Oxford or Swansea, but the same rules applied: neither Rees nor I were allowed inside except on his express instructions. On that particular day I just couldn’t resist: I wandered in.

The room was filled with dark bookcases and antique furniture. It smelt musty and male. Half drawn curtains shaded everything. I didn’t dare put on the light.

My father always worked in longhand at a pedestal desk, a lanky man perched on the edge of his office chair, scribbling notes and scrutinising documents with his reading glasses gleaming in the lamplight. Grey-haired and meticulous in his habits, he was old to me even then.

I clambered up into his chair and peered at the unfathomable piles of paper there. I tried to mimic his posture, but as I did so the chair began to roll out from under me. I grabbed the desk, upsetting a pile of papers, which scattered on the floor.

I did my frantic best to tidy them and put them back on the desk in a semblance of order; but I knew my efforts would be futile. I crept out of the room and closed the door, saying nothing to Mrs Bayliss, our housekeeper. When my father returned home that evening it was only a matter of minutes before he emerged from his study and began demanding to know who had been interfering with his documents.

I owned up immediately, making a determinedly cheerful attempt to explain how I’d tidied everything up. He just stared down at me in a controlled fury, and when I was finished his bony fingers encircled my wrist and he propelled me into the study, closing the door behind him and turning the key in the lock. Wwereut saying a word, he snatched a slipper from under the desk—a buff tartan slipper that to me had hitherto symbolised indolent adult comfort. He bent me over his crooked legs and proceeded to slap my trousered bottom a precise and emphatic ten times.

He didn’t speak once, not even when he thrust me blubbering out the door. Nor was the incident ever spoken of again.

I was lying on a trolley, being wheeled into a room that looked like an operating theatre. Two nurses hoisted me and laid me face-up on another surface. Slowly it began to move forward towards some kind of metal tunnel just big enough to accommodate my body. I could hear the drone of the motor, sense its vibrations. I had the panicky idea that I was a corpse about to be deposited down the chute of a crematorium. They’d pop me into the tube, tip it up and I’d slide to oblivion.

In I went, moving deeper down until only my head protruded. It stopped.

A female Asian doctor loomed over me. She was smiling and appeared to be saying something comforting. It came to me that I was wearing one of those hospital gowns, an absurdly comforting thought. If they were going to dispose of me, surely I would have been naked.

“Wait,” I yelled. “Where’s my wife? Where are my children?”

I couldn’t hear anything emerge; but the doctor turned towards me.

“Hamley’s,” I said passionately. “Has anything happened to it?” I had awoken with a renewed anxiety that perhaps the store had been destroyed, that Lyneth and the girls were dead.

“An explosion,” I persisted. “Are they alive?”

I felt as if I was talking at the top of my voice. The doctor looked a little perplexed. It was plain she couldn’t hear me. I was still locked in; probably not even my lips were moving.

“Try to relax,” she told me. “There really is nothing to be concerned about.”

Easy for you to say, I thought; you’re not the one who keeps lurching between worlds. I was unable to control or even anticipate the transitions. The latest episode had been by far the most intensive, as though Owain’s life was exerting an increasingly seductive pull.

I could see my face in a slanted mirror just inches away. Everything looked normal: no cuts or bruises, all my hair in place. I managed to grin at myself—a small but defiant upturn of the lips. For some reason I started thinking about my mother. I had few memories of her apart from her death. Another thing my father never talked about.

I was moving again, being drawn right inside the tube. I closed my eyes, trying to summon my mother’s face and failing. Rees had driven himself crazy in later years with the conviction that she had deliberately killed herself and that our father was to blame.

ELEVEN

The sun shone low on my face above a line of terraced houses. I was sitting in the hospital grounds in my wheelchair, wrapped in a blanket. The flowerbeds were filled with red-stemmed dogwood, the earth around them freshly turned over. There was frost on the grasswhere it was still in shade. Tanya was coming along the path from an ice-cream van parked beyond the railings. She was carrying two cones.

“Look,” she said, pointing to a little cluster of white flowers on the grass.

“Snowdrops,” I heard myself say.

She nodded as if I’d just answered the jackpot question on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”

I had the impression she’d been working hard to lift me out of my stupor. She handed me a cone and sat down beside me on a bench. A swish of nylon as she crossed her legs, a whiff of scented leather.

The sky overhead was cloudless, that porcelain winter blue. I had to look down for fear I might swoon into it.

“What were we talking about?” I asked.

“It wasn’t exactly a conversation,” she told me through a mouthful of ice cream. “I’ve been doing all the gabbing and you’ve been giving the occasional grunt.”

It dawned on me that this must be the first time since the explosion that I had spoken and definitely been heard. I’d made some sort of breakthrough. At last I was able to communicate.

“Where’s Lyneth?” I asked immediately. “Where are the girls?”

Tanya went motionless. Something changed in her eyes. She looked as if I had just slapped her.

Immediately I felt a crushing sense of having committed a terrible faux pas; but I had no idea why.

“She’s in Australia,” I heard her say carefully.

“Australia?”

There was a pained expression on her face. Or was it pity?

“Are the girls with her?”

Now her discomfort was obvious.

“Owain,” she began, at the same time as I said, “Are they all right?”

For a very long moment nothing at all happened. Tanya kept looking steadily at me. All sorts of thoughts were swirling around behind her eyes, but I couldn’t imagine what they were. She gave a funny sort of nod, andI knew that somehow I had insulted or confused or disappointed her.

And now a blistering embarrassment swamped me, without me having any context for it. I’d forgotten something. Something crucial.

In that moment I was possessed by an overwhelming urge to protect myself and salvage the situation. And I could only do this by withdrawing, by not asking blundering questions that might reveal the extent of my memory loss and confusion. Things were out of kilter, but not in the way I’d first imagined.

“You don’t remember what happened?” Tanya was asking gently.

Lyneth was in Australia. So, presumably, were the girls. Therefore they were safe, not dead.

“Bear with me,” I managed to say. “It’s all a bit of a muddle.”

I saw that she was holding her breath. Slowly she exhaled.

“Well,” she said finally, “you’re speaking. Putting sentences together. It’s progress, O.”

She always called me that. No one else did. I had to stay with her, deal with the here and now. Be more circumspect in finding out what I needed to know.

“Look lively,” she said with reference to the cone. “Lick.”

I caught a trickle with my tongue. “I don’t even remember you arriving.”

“No? The helicopter made a hell of a racket when it landed.”

She spoke with a breezy candour that I knew was typical of her. For a moment I almost took her seriously.

“Or you wheeling me out here,” I persisted. “It’s blank. As if I’ve only just woken up.”

She took this on board without qualm. I think she was relieved that the conversation had moved on from the subject of Lyneth and the children. And I felt safer, less exposed, too.

“Hardly surprising, is it? You were knocked down.”

“I was?”

“Black cab. You just stopped in the middle of the road, he said.”

This made sense, even though I hadn’t seen anything coming. I considered and finally said: “I did hear this big bang.”

“You’re lucky you weren’t killed. Everyone’s amazed you didn’t break any bones. Bit of a crack on the head, though.”

I k another lick. “Nothing else?”

“Isn’t that enough to be getting on with?”

“I just wondered. Was anyone else hurt?”

“The cabbie’s dignity, I should imagine. Bruised ego. Or maybe you triggered a fit of apoplexy. Not hot on wayward pedestrians, are they?”

No explosion, then. But it still didn’t make sense. If Lyneth was in Australia, how could she and the girls have been with me in Regent Street?

Panic crawled through me again, though I fought hard not to let it show. What Tanya was telling me didn’t mesh with my memories. Did I have something wrong?

Before I could say anything further Tanya reached out and steered my hand towards my mouth.

Her fingers were cold but I welcomed their touch. My cone had a chocolate flake poking out of it. Tanya and I had once eaten a choc-ice together, starting at either end and finishing with a sticky melted ice-cream kiss. But that had been years ago.

The cone tasted of nothing except a cold sweetness. Tanya showed great patience as I slurped and munched like a toddler. It wasn’t that I was being deliberately difficult but simply that my co-ordination was poor, my thought processes tortuously slow.

“He’s an opportunist.” Tanya was saying with reference to the ice-cream seller. “Doing a roaring trade.”

There was a queue of half a dozen people beside the van, most of them adults. The sunshine was bringing people out of their houses, like subterranean creatures stirred from their burrows.

A young man in running shoes and jog pants strode down the path, the sleeve of his fleece rolled back, his arm in plaster. Two nurses were smoking cigarettes next to a big galvanised trashcan. Steam plumed from an aluminium chimney on one of the hospital annexes. For the first time since the accident I felt that I was connected, however loosely, to the real world.

“Don’t tell the doctors,” I remarked.

“About what?”

“My—fogginess. Otherwise I might never get out of here.”

“It’s just a hospital, O. They need to make sure there’s nothing they’ve missed.”

Her level of concern didn’t marry with any deaths. It was as if everything that had happened was no more than a serious inconvenience rather than something truly awful. Either that, or she was incredibly skilled at keeping things from me.

I couldn’t fathom it. Why were Lyneth and the girls in Australia? When had they gone? It must have been before my accident, surely?

Tanya took the soggy remains of the cone from me and swabbed my face with a lemon-scented moist tissue. She gave me another for my hands.

Then Geoff appeared, navy-suited, jangling car keys.

“Ready to roll?” he asked.

“I think we are,” Tanya replied.

Geoff walked to the back of the wheelchair. “OK, Owen,” he said to me, “let’s be having you.” And he pushed me forward.

A dark green Renault Scenic was parked in one of the bays. Between the two of them they managed to haul me into the back and fold up the chair. It was Geoff who belted me in. His crisp white shirt and spotted burgundy tie told me he must have come straight from work, was perhaps taking a few hours to help his wife with their mutual friend who was obviously in a bad way. I felt like a charity case.

The Scenic was quite new, a dusting of crisp crumbs in the folds of one seat. Did they use it, I wondered, for weekend trips to the country or just the local supermarket? They must have had plenty of disposable income. Tanya was a successful science journalist, while Geoff was a consultant at the Maudsley Hospital, with a lucrative private practice as well. He cheerfully worked long and unsociable hours. They had no children. Tanya couldn’t have any.

I heard Geoff asking Tanya if she wanted to drive, and her replying that she was happy for him to do so. Tanya climbed in beside him but made a point of reaching back to squeeze my hand. I felt absurdly grateful.

Vaguely I heard them talking as we drove along. Something about Christmas. They spoke as if it was weeks ago. Which of course it was. Just as in Owain Maredudd’s world.

So Lyneth and the girls hadn’t come to visit me because they were in Australia. As far as I knew, there had been no cards either, nothing to say they were on their way home. I had a vague notion that Lyneth might have a sister or cousin who lived outside Sydney. A suspicion that she and the girls had left just before Christmas, that perhaps I was supposed to join them later. What if I had muddled two separate visits to Regent Street, one in which all four of us had gone together, and a later one in which I was alone and had had the accident? Perhaps no one had been able to contact them since; perhaps they were on an extended trip to the outback or somewhere, still blissfully unaware that I’d nearly been killed.

That didn’t make sense, either. Tanya would have referred to it. Which left the unpleasant possibility that there had been some sort of serious rift between us. I just couldn’t remember. My urge to know was tempered by an equally fierce determination to find out for myself rather than risk asking Tanya. Because I did know this: Tanya had once been Lyneth’s deadliest rival.

“All right?”

She’s looking around at me.

I nodded reassuringly. It occurred to me that I hadn’t even asked where we were going. Or had I? Tanya had told me before we set out but I hadn’t absorbed it. It was an excursion, I was sure of that, a little respite from my hospital bed.

I had put her on the spot by asking her about Lyneth and the girls. The topic of children, in particular, was a sensitive one for her. Then again perhaps she and Geoff were deliberately hiding something. But what?

I had no idea. It distressed me to think that Tanya might ever be less than candid with me. We’d met during my final year at UCL, at an extra-mural class entitled “Apocalypse Now and Then: The Turbulent Twentieth Century”. I chose it partly because of the provocative title but also because it was being run by an academic rival of my father’s whom he was never able to speak of without loathing.

As it turned out the course was less stimulating than I’d hoped. Our professor, a doughty Marxist historian, couldn’t persuade us that the self-evident implosion of Communist states was merely a blip in the decline of capitalism and the rise of a politicised working class. Far more interesting was the retreat to the pub after the lecture that became a ritual for a small group of us. Tanya, a final-year student like me, travelled to the class on a vintage Lambretta motor scooter. She wore leathers and was doing a degree in astrophysics. As well as being attractive and intelligent she was also exotic, claiming that she lived with her Russian grandmother in a house in Balham. Though I was still dating Lyneth in Swansea, it wasn’t long before I asked her out. She turned me down three times before finally giving in.

TWELVE

Tanya and Geoff were wheeling me around a park. There were the usual dormant flowerbeds, the smell of leaf mould, water dribbling across tarmac paths. Geoff walked ahead, as though discreetly observing a requisite privacy between us. I found this odd, though not unwelcome. They had always been an unlikely couple, but I’m hardly unbiased.

We stopped at a lake, where children were tossing scraps of bread at avid Canada geese. There was a small island in the middle on which herons were roosting like motionless emaciated hermits. I tried to stir myself but my thoughts were like treacle. It was hugely frustrating. Why had they brought me here? Why didn’t I know what the hell had happened to me?

Tanya put a hand on my shoulder while Geoff paused to scan the treetops before saying something about parrots.

Blah, blah, I thought, though I knew he was only doing his best to normalise the situation. Still as kind-hearted as ever, though physically much changed from our university days. Gone were the beard and the bulk he’d carried, along with the saggy corduroy trousers and chunky cable sweaters. He’d been captivated by Tanya from the start, though of course I hadn’t realised it. I’d shared a flat with him in my final year. He was studying medicine but chiefly interested at the time in concocting potent beers and other alcoholic drinks in the house’s capacious cellar.

Most Sundays Tanya would take me home to have tea with her grandmother, who was indeed a Russian national called Tatiana. She’d anglicised her surname from Petrova to Peters. A stocky steel-haired woman, bent over with arthritis but still vigorous, she spoke English with an emphatic eccentricity that suggested she had originally learned it from books. Whenever I visited I found her welcoming, despite her disconcerting habit of calling me “Odin”.

My visits were generally brief, and I suppose I couldn’t have spent much more than a total of six hours in the old woman’s company. Yet she has always loomed larger in my imagination than this. Conscious of my own mother’s origins, I was intrigued by the mysteries surrounding her past, in particular how she had made the transition from the wartime Soviet Union to quiet suburban retirement in south London.

From the outset Tanya warned me not to say anything about my grandfather’s background or to ask Tatiana about the war years. On the one occasion I broached the latter subject she simply waved her hand at me and said, “That was so long ago. I have neglected most of it”. Tanya herself knew only that her grandmother had been a young woman working at a university in the Ukraine when the German invasion began and that she’d somehow ended the war in the West. Over the years Tatiana had occasionally volunteered information about her later life but the details often varied. She claimed to have married an English brigadier who’d brought her to London at the war’s end; or that her husband had been a wealthy businessman, a lawyer, and even that she’d been engaged to a member of the aristocracy who’d abandoned her when she became pregnant.

None of these stories could be verified because the old woman kept no memorabilia beyond family photographs taken in England. However Tanya had once found an old book amongst the rafters in the attic: a pre-war German edition of A Tale of Two Cities, annotated in English in her grandmother’s hand. She suspected that the old woman was reasonably fluent in German as well as English, though she would never admit to it. There were also once-yearly telephone calls from a posh and elderly-sounding gentleman called Lionel, always on her birthday. Tanya had no idea what they signified because Tatiana always shooed her from the room.

On the living-room sideboard was a black-and-white photograph of Tanya’s mother, Irina. It showed an attractive young woman in a ’sixties floral dress. She’d been born in 1947 and the old woman invariably dismissed her as hopelessly irresponsible. She had left home and lived “with the hippies” in the late ’sixties before finally returning eight months’ pregnant with Tanya, whom she’d named Zelyna, meaning Star. She’d died within days of Tanya’s birth—of malnutrition, according to the old woman, who considered this more scandalous than anything else. There had never been any trace of Tanya’s father, while Tanya herself had officially been christened with a diminutive of her grandmother’s name. A Church of England ceremony, Tatiana told me proudly, as though nothing could have been more authoritative.

I’ll admit that I found the comparisons and contrasts in our respective backgrounds part of Tanya’s allure. In the case of my own grandfather, who had died a decade before I was born, there was ample documentation of his life to the extent that my father had been able to write a memoir based on his wartime diaries that he’d acquired from my mother. Though I hadn’t read it, I knew that it had generated sufficient publicity to be published in a mass-market paperback edition under the title In the Eye of the Storm. It was this book that unhinged Rees.

At the time I was much too concerned with establishing my own independence to acknowledge any of my father’s published work. But Tanya and I had family histories that mirrored one another, reinforcing my romantic conviction that we had been destined to meet. It never ceased to amaze me that she ended up marrying Geoff.

Here he was now, hurrying back from the bridge over the lake: slimmed down, clean-shaven, respectably affluent in his tailored suit and polished black brogues. He righted the wheelchair, looking a little concerned. I’d been put on one of the park benches, Tanya swabbing my muddy palm. I must have fallen over, though I had no memory of it.

Nearby a terrier was yapping at the geese. Tanya crouched next to me and said, “It’s all right, it’s all right,” while stroking my hand. Geoff looked a little anxious. It occurred to me that perhaps they thought I was making a noise, though of course this was absurd. And yet I was agitated. I’d seen something. Couldn’t think what.

They hauled me back into the chair and wheeled me away. Everything started to haze over. I tried to shake myself back to full alertness because I didn’t want it to happen. All I could hear was footsteps, the sound of boots crunching on snow.

THIRTEEN

Owain stood beside a park bench. Marisa was coming down the path, tugging on leads to restrain her husband’s wolfhounds.

The park was their favourite meeting place, at once public and private because it was seldom used, especially in winter. Marisa unleashed the dogs, which went bounding off into the snow but stayed within sight. She hurried forward, approaching him open-armed so that he had no alternative but to embrace her.

She drew back and regarded him before saying, “You look very elegant, Major Maredudd.”

He was wearing dress uniform under his jacket, his tunic brass-buttoned and gold braided, scarlet piping on his trousers.

“There’s a service in St Paul’s,” he told her. “I can’t stay long.”

“Ah. A shame. But you came.”

She tucked her arm through his and they wandered down the path. The still, icy air was filled with the thinnest of mists. All sounds were muffled. They moved through the bare white landscape like ghosts.

Marisa was talking, telling him she hadn’t seen Carl for two days. Abruptly I was back with Tanya, being helped into the passenger seat of a small car. Tanya belted me in and folded the blanket across mp. I flipped again.

“Slow down,” Marisa was telling Owain with gentle admonishment. “This is a stroll, not a march.”

He relaxed his pace. One of the dogs loped up, a ragged tennis ball in its mouth. Owain levered it out and flung it away, both dogs bolting after it.

“I have found out what you asked,” Marisa said.

Owain stood poised, awaiting the dogs’ return. He didn’t say anything.

“Your Maurice. His family name is Clarkson. He is the only one who fits your bill.”

Owain eyed her. “And?”

“He has been sent to North Africa. On New Year’s Day.”

Tanya was pushing something into my mouth. A mint humbug that released its sweet vapours as I rolled it over with my tongue.

“A six-month posting,” Marisa told him. She produced a slip of paper from the folds of her fur coat.

The dogs bounded around him. Legister had christened them Scylla and Charybdis, though Marisa referred to them as Lili and Mimi. Owain hurled the stick into a tangled patch of brambles and ruins.

The paper gave details of the posting, including the information that Maurice still had support staff security clearance but was being reassigned to Recuperative Duties. The whole family had been transferred to the Alliance headquarters in Tunis, where he would be put into the governor’s pool of drivers.

“It was all I could find,” Marisa told him. “Perhaps you could send a letter?”

Maurice’s old address in the Isle of Dogs was listed. The transfer had plainly been arranged in haste; but at least there was something on record. He hadn’t simply vanished.

“I appreciate it,” he said to Marisa. “I hope it didn’t cause you difficulty.”

She shook her head emphatically. “Owain, I would do anything for you.”

An air-raid siren. I jolted.

“Sssh,” Tanya said gently, squeezing my hand.

The noise grew louder, and a police car overtook us before executing a sharp left turn.

She waited until the noise had started to diminish before moving off again.

“I’m OK,” I told her, though this was patently untrue.

height="0em" width="13" align="justify">“Stay calm. We won’t be long.”

Her face was so close to mine I could have kissed her. My heart was racing. What on earth was wrong with me? Why did I keep coming and going?

“Did I have a fit?”

She shook her head. I could tell that for once she was finding it difficult to be jolly.

“Have I disgraced myself?”

“You fell out of your chair. Next time you need to give us some warning before you try to go walkabout.”

I had no memory of it myself. “Nothing else?”

She opened and closed her mouth. Didn’t know what to say. Or she did, but didn’t know how to put it. She was keeping something from me.

What had happened to the Scenic? And where was Geoff? Perhaps he’d had to get back to work. Perhaps they’d decided that enough was enough. No doubt both of them were in on it. They might even be drugging me to keep me docile while keeping up a ludicrous pretence that everything was normal.

I wanted to rage at her, to demand the truth. At the same time I felt that everything was incredibly fragile at that moment, poised on the brink of something truly destabilising. After all, neither Tanya nor Geoff was responsible for Owain. Perhaps I really was losing my mind, and if I started ranting about Lyneth and the girls that would only be confirmation of it. I’d be incarcerated again, kept under permanent scrutiny, until they found out what was wrong. I couldn’t risk this. I needed to be at liberty to find out things for myself.

Tanya let go of my hand. She couldn’t disguise the disappointment in her face.

However had I ended up marrying Lyneth rather than her? It was a mystery to me still. Even while I was dating both of them as a student I’d been confused about my feelings: but at least I’d been in full possession of the facts. And I’d had Geoff to sound off to: him of all people.

I didn’t actually have sex with Lyneth until the Easter holidays of my final year at UCL. I think she offered it as a concession, perhaps sensing that I was semi-detached. I’d stopped using condoms with Tanya when she told me that there was no chance of her getting pregnant: a teenage uterine infection had scarred her oviducts and left her infertile. My reaction to this was predictably shallow: I saw it as grisly in detail but fortuitous in effect since it allowed us greater sexual licence. But when Lyneth saw me produce a packet of Durex she frowned and asked whether I was seeing anyone else. I assured her I’d been carrying them for months in the hope of this moment.

We made fumbling love on her lilac quilted eiderdown. She was much more inhibited than Tanya, hesitant and even quizzical, peering up at me with serious eyes throughout as though assessing the pros and cons of t wo her something quite new. And I was a complete amateur again. I briefly lost my erection in the middle of it, and afterwards we discovered that the condom had slipped off inside her before I’d ejaculated. Lyneth shut herself in the bathroom to retrieve it.

Of course I told Geoff all about it when I returned to London. He was never judgmental, I’ll give him that: in fact he couldn’t have been nobler. He made a point of assuring me that he felt honour-bound to say nothing of my indiscretions to Tanya before announcing that he considered Tanya the most extraordinary young woman he’d ever met and that if I stepped aside he intended to begin his own courtship of her.

Tanya turned into the hospital car park. She said something to me, but I didn’t catch it. Suddenly I remembered why I had panicked in the park. I’d looked up and seen Geoff standing on the bridge a little distance away. There was a woman and two children close by. They must have been strangers, just passing between us, but for an instant I’d thought that they were Lyneth and the girls. I’d tried to wave, to get up and run to them. And had fallen. When I looked up again they were gone. And I was raving.

FOURTEEN

A military convoy went by, trucks and trailers hauling light artillery, the guns’ snouts muzzled. Owain drove on, passing an elderly Levantine woman in black robes who was diligently sweeping the pavement outside a redbrick mosque.

I was veering between floods of my own memories and Owain’s life. Almost by rote I tried to will myself back to Tanya, but it was halfhearted. For once I was relieved to escape my own turmoil, and intrigued to know where Owain was going.

He turned the Land Rover down a broad street. In the near distance the rusting cranes of Millwall Docks could be seen over the tops of shoebox apartment blocks, rank upon rank of them, raised during the 1960s and ’70s to house the influx of refugees from the Caribbean and the Middle East. Their breezeblock and concrete facades were dilapidated and sometimes bomb-damaged, reinforcing rods poking out of broken beams, shattered rooms laid bare to the elements. The roadsides were dotted with gutted vehicles, while sagging power lines had been jury-rigged to any available eminence. Despite this, the area had an air of colourful defiance. Walls were daubed and over-daubed with ancient posters, insignia and exhortations in Arabic, Turkish, Greek, all of which suggested a determined vibrancy, an insistence on sheer existence.

There were few people on the streets, and those in evidence halted and watched with a protective stillness as we drove past. To Owain, it was a little like entering a disputed frontier zone. This had long been a non-European settlement area, many of its inhabitants originally employed as merchant navy auxiliaries before emancipation allowed their conscription into the armed forces. With the docks no longer functional for half the year they were largely left to their own devices.

Owain pulled up outside a Victorian apartment building that looked as if it had once been something municipal. He checked the address on his sheet of paper and switched off the engine.

Neat ranks of black refuse sacks were stacked like body bags on both sides of the steps leading up to the front entrance. The apartment was located on the ground floor. Owain crossed a bare foyer and rapped on the door. Music was playing somewhere, tinny but energetic, a hectic oriental reel.

The place smelled of bleach and rancid drain water. Behind the thick glass of the door’s window hung a faded union flag in the Jamaican colours of green, yellow and black. Ten summers before the Civil Affairs Ministry had instituted a vogue for such ethnic adoptions in order to boost immigrant morale, along with parades and organised celebrations of multicultural life. It had proved popular while the weather remained good.

Owain knocked again. There was no reply. He hadn’t expected any, but it always paid to check.

He went outside and clambered up on the sacks to peer in the front window. Blackout curtains were drawn, but through a crack he could see that the room had been emptied.

He heard footsteps, and a dark-skinned man in his thirties came out of the main entrance, hobbling down the steps. He wore an old flak jacket zipped to the neck and a tank commander’s cap, its padded ear flaps dangling.

“The Clarksons,” Owain said to him. “Any idea where they might be?”

The man almost came to attention.

“Gone,” he said after a moment. “Major, sir.”

He was stick-thin, hollow-cheeked, some of his front teeth missing. An ex-serviceman, probably invalided out.

“Know when?” Owain asked.

“Just after midnight. New Year’s Eve.”

“That’s pretty precise. See them go, did you?”

“Heard it to start with. A big CHAP with a trailer for their stuff. They were out and gone in an hour.”

CHAP was shorthand for a Chariot All-Purpose vehicle, a workhorse transporter. “Did they say where?”

“Nobody knew anything in advance. Maybe not even them. But the younger boys were ripe for it, I can tell you that. Made enough racket to wake the whole street.”

“They were shouting?”

“Whooping with delight.”

“So it wasn’t a forced evacuation?”

The man was starting to look wary. “I’m just telling you what I saw. We were all taking a look, thinking maybe Santa was making a late delivery.”

There was a silence before the man said, “Is it a wedding?”

He was obviously referring to Owain’s uniform.

“Something like that. You didn’t see or hear anything else?”

A shake of the head.

“He was a friend of mine,” Owain said.

“Santa?”

Owain made the sound of a laugh. “Maurice.”

The man looked doubtful. He looked as if he was waiting to be dismissed.

FIFTEEN

I was standing in front of a mirror in navy pyjamas, rinsing my hands at the sink. A male nurse waited at the doorway, in charge of my wheelchair.

“What time is it?” I asked him.

“Quarter past three,” he said without looking at his watch.

I was losing time as well as space. How long ago had Tanya delivered me back to the hospital?

I dried my hands with a paper towel. The nurse looked impatient and bored. He was young, with a wispy moustache.

“Any news from my wife?” I asked him, as casually as possible.

“Your brother phoned,” he announced, as if he’d only just remembered it. “Said he’d drop in.”

The news didn’t exactly thrill me. Rees wasn’t the easiest of customers, brother or no.

I took a few steps, thinking that I might be able to walk out of there. But my legs had little strength in them and I barely made the chair. As I struggled into a sitting position I thought I heard singing.

“Did he say when?” I asked.

“Wasn’t me who took the call.”

He was already wheeling me off. I could almost smell his indifference.

I thought of the woman I’d seen in the park. Too tall to be Lyneth, though for a moment she had looked familiar. And the children so bundled up in trousers and hooded jackets they might have been either sex. Yet hope had surged in me. And it was still, in some fashion, alive.

There was a faint background chorus from somewhere. At least I was managing a few steps. It was a stt. I’d been in the TV room for the past hour, watching the news. He was taking me back there. I’d sat through a report about high street sales during and after Christmas that had made no mention whatsoever of any disaster in Regent Street. It was the final confirmation I needed that nothing had happened there apart from my own accident.

I could hear a congregation singing a hymn as we approached the TV room. Was it Sunday? Would I have to sit through “Songs of Praise”? I tried to ask these questions aloud, but nothing came out. I was slipping away again.

A church choir in a big cathedral. It was packed with military men and women in ceremonial uniform—army, navy and air force. The vaulted space echoed with the hymn: “Oh God Our Help in Ages Past”.

Owain stood at the back of the cathedral, mouthing the words but not actually making any sound. The rest of the congregation sang lustily, wholeheartedly.

Finally the hymn ended and everyone fell silent as a senior clergyman rose to address everyone. He looked withered with age, swamped beneath his mitre and ceremonial robes.

From Owain I understood that he was the Cardinal-Archbishop of Canterbury and Westminster, the chief prelate of the United Ecumenical Church in Britain. The walls of the cathedral were hung with national flags and naval ensigns, an array of ceremonial colour and heraldry. Behind the altar there was a memorial to the fallen, a huge bronze scroll topped by the Alliance eagle rampant, glittering in the candlelight. Owain’s uncle leant on his stick in the front row, other dignitaries beside him, listening to the funeral oration for a group of senior naval officers whose ship had sunk under mysterious circumstances off Dakar.

Owain was standing alone near the entrance, respectful of the ceremony but unmoved by its religious content. Many people, especially those of his uncle’s generation, were still strong believers, but he had long lost what little faith he’d once possessed. When he was confident that no one was looking, he slipped outside.

The men on duty were huddling in the lee of staff cars. A raw easterly was blowing, stirring up the fresh snow. Sandbag walls framed a narrow entrance to the west porch of the cathedral. Only its dome made it recognisable as the St Paul’s I knew: the west front towers were gone and the flanks of the building had been reinforced with concrete buttresses.

I got Owain to pull on his jacket as he hurried down the steps. He crossed to a skeletal observation tower on the opposite side of the churchyard. A vertical ladder was the only means to the top. Swiftly he began to climb. His gloves were folded inside his jacket pocket but he did not take them out, despite the fact that the metal handgrips were so cold they almost stuck to his skin.

The two SP guards on duty at the top of the post were startled by his sudden appearance. Both wore ribbed balaclavas under their helmets. Seeing his uniform and rank they brought their mittened hands up in an uncertain salute.

“Can we help you, sir?” one of them said.

“Just came up for a look,” Owain replied. “Everything all right?”

“All’s quiet, sir.”

He walked to a corner and peered south towards the footbridge across the river. It was busy with pedestrian traffic, civilians coming and going, wheeling handcarts piled with winter provisions. Dark smoke was streaming out of the truncated chimney of the Bankside power station, giving the illusion that it was a great ship travelling at speed.

Owain turned back to the guards. The corporal had a pair of binoculars tucked into his belt.

“Lend me those,” Owain said to him.

The corporal handed them over. Both men looked somewhat nervous, as if they weren’t sure whether this was an inspection. Owain felt distinctly overdressed for the occasion. Yet he was purposeful. I didn’t try to intervene in any way: I knew why he had come here.

He took the binoculars and made a show of scanning the south bank of the river before swinging them slowly west.

The observation tower was tall enough so that he could see over the tops of buildings out to the west until the winter haze blurred everything. The gentle curve of Regent Street was visible, while in front of it was nothing but a flat barren expanse of snow-dusted ground.

There was no activity in the area as far as could be seen—no earth-movers or busy teams of men, no mounds of churned earth and mangled metal. Everything had been cleared, levelled. As if nothing had ever gone on there.

But he could see dark smears marking the roads in the vicinity: evidence of recent muddy traffic, the trucks and lorries that had carted everything away. What did it mean? He had no answer yet at the same time felt that he should know. Or that someone who did should tell him.

The scene lunged at him as if on fast-forward, and recoiled. A surge of dark nausea overtook him.

I held him fast, letting the gut-wrenching sensation pass, willing him not to fall. It was similar to what he had experienced on his mission in the east, a sense that the world itself had buckled momentarily like a punctured bladder.

For an instant I was back in hospital, staring at a gardening programme, sipping tepid milky tea.

“Sir? Is everything all right?”

Owain’s hands were trembling. The expected view was restored. He held the binoculars out to the corporal.

He began descending as quickly as he had climbed. Halfway down he almost lost a foothold but managed to cling on. Again I had to brace him. His heart was racing in his chest. He breathed steadily until all his panic had subsided, until he had convinced himself that he had exerienced nothing more than a particularly violent spasm of vertigo.

The sound of another hymn was carrying from the cathedral: “Nearer My God to Thee”.

Giselle Vigoroux was standing beside his uncle’s Daimler, her overcoat collar turned up. She gave him a curious smile and said, “Taking the air, major?”

Owain managed a nod, continuing to walk towards the cathedral steps. “Needed to stretch my legs.”

She didn’t say anything in reply, though he wondered what she was thinking. Nothing had been said about his late delivery of the Land Rover or the dent in its side following his flight from the bombsite; to the contrary, the vehicle had been assigned to him for his personal use. Nor had anyone raised any fuss about his unannounced decision to resume the occupancy of his apartment. Perhaps they were simply giving him a little leeway, keeping the pressure off. Technically he was still convalescing, so that would make sense. But he needed to be more careful and considered in his actions. He didn’t want to be thought of as a security risk.

He slipped back inside the cathedral. The memorial service was reaching its climax, piped organ music swelling stridently. The coffins draped in Union and Alliance flags were slowly rising on an automated dais. Forty-two gold stars made up the circle on the Alliance flag, each one representing a recognised constituent state within its borders at the height of its dominion. The number hadn’t changed throughout Owain’s lifetime, despite the fact that at least a dozen of the countries had either ceased to exist or now lay beyond its territorial control.

The transition from the outside chill to the crowded heat of the cathedral interior disorientated him. He was still wearing his jacket and sweat was springing out all over him. The hymn had transmogrified into some sort of Hallelujah chorus with an angelic counterpoint. Everyone was rapt and respectful—everyone except Owain, who felt himself drowning in its otherworldly crescendo.

SIXTEEN

There was a movement at the foot of the bed. I saw the silhouette of a hunched figure in the half-light.

A shuffle around the room, picking up my chart, inspecting the Get Well cards on the bedside table, slurping water from my plastic tumbler.

Brighter light flooded the room as the door was opened. The ginger-haired ward sister.

“How did you get in here?” she demanded to know.

The figure straightened, his features now clear.

“He’s sleeping.”

“How did you get in here?”

Silence. Finally: “I’m his brother.”

She stood half in and half out of the room, holding the door open.

“It’s late. You can’t just walk in here.”

“I came to see how he was.”

A glance in my direction. “At eleven-thirty in the night?”

“Is it?”

“Visiting hours are over.”

“One of the nurses said it was all right.”

“Did she indeed?”

“It was a he.”

A brief silence. “I’m afraid you shouldn’t be here.”

“I wasn’t going to wake him.”

“Better let him sleep, in that case. You can always come again another time.”

“Come again?” Rees echoed in a hard-of-hearing cartoon voice.

He looked his usual dishevelled self, hair tousled, a grubby windcheater hanging from his slouched shoulders.

“What did you say your name was?” the sister asked carefully.

“Rank Hovis McDougall,” Rees replied and gave a broken laugh.

This was an old joke he’d derived from the initials of his full name—Rees Hywel Meredith.

The sister peered out into the corridor, obviously looking for assistance. With slow rhythmic precision Rees began to sigh heavily, as if he were mentally reciting a calming mantra.

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” the sister said.

“Is he coming out of this?”

“What?”

“I was wondering. Will he get better?”

Another glance down the corridor. “He’s making progress. But he needs to rest.”

Rees produced something from a pocket of his windcheater. The sister shrank back as he came forward but she took it from him when he offered it to her.

“That’s me and Owen,” he told her. “And our mother. She’s dead now.”

It was a strip of photographs, dog-eared at its corners. I knew it would be the one that had been taken in a photo booth during a day trip to Porthcawl when Rees was nine. Four near-identical shots, all three heads crammed together, frantically grinning. He always carried it with him.

“See?” he said as though vindicated, plucking it from her uncertain fingers.

He returned to my bedside and looked down at me. I narrowed my eyes to slits, not wanting him to know I was awake. He didn’t notice anything. He was staring at me yet not seeing me, with the air of being haunted not so much by my condition as by the effect it might have on him. Rees had his own problems and frequently turned those of others into crises of his own.

“I really must insist,” the sister said.

“No problem,” Rees told her. He glanced at me one more time and said, “I’ll be back,” in his best Arnold Schwarzenegger manner, before slouching out.

The sister came briefly to my bedside. I closed my eyes again, tried to look as tranquil and undisturbed as possible. After a few moments she exited.

Presently I heard voices in the corridor—the sister speaking angrily, a male voice defensively. I couldn’t make out the words but the man didn’t sound like Rees. Soon two more nurses appeared at my bedside, checking everything around me, tucking me securely in. There was more conversation in the corridor, dwindling away. And at length silence.

I lay there, fully awake, marooned in my bed. The night-time hospital quiet invaded the room, bringing with it a perverse sense that while nothing untoward was happening on the ward its very tranquillity made some new nocturnal emergency imminent. I had the growing urge to scream, just to jolt something into action.

Had Rees been escorted off the premises? How did he get in in the first place? Lax security, or simply through the force of his singular personality? And how long had he been at my bedside before I’d awoken? It was typical of him to come at some unsociable hour, but I could easily imagine him inveigling the confidence of a sympathetic nurse by insisting on seeing me in that innocent yet adamant manner that would brook no denial.

Rees was three years younger than me, a cheerful child who had become more withdrawn in adolescence. I’d just finished my finals when my father phoned to say he had been hospitalised. He’d been found wandering the streets near Swansea jail in the middle of the night, dehydrated and malnourished. It turned out he’d scarcely eaten in over a week.

For weeks after his release from hospital he remained fragile and uncommunicative. There was talk of a thyroid imbalance, of anaemia-induced depression, of possible drug abuse. My father put the episode down to exam pressure at school, even though Rees had been found less than a mile from the spot where our mother had died. Slowly, throughout the summer, his condition improved, but his illness ultimately triggered my eventual split with Tanya. To beginit I kept in touch with her by daily telephone calls. We’d planned to go travelling in Europe later that summer. Typically I hadn’t bothered to consider how I would square this with a similar promise to Lyneth.

In those days I lived too narrowly in the present: with me it was always proximity that made the heart grow fonder. And Lyneth wasn’t merely on hand; she was also a big help with Rees. She drove a little Fiesta that proved useful in taking him out on recuperative drives around the Gower. She made herself very available to him—so much so that the two of us only spent time alone together on prim shopping trips or visits to the cinema. Sex was very much off the agenda. But one afternoon in the Tesco car park she told me that she’d missed her period in May, followed by a heavy one the next month that she suspected was a miscarriage.

This was said without any hint of reproach or even expectation; she might have been informing me about a decision to buy apples rather than pears. Her matter-of-factness had the odd effect of making me feel I couldn’t possibly abandon her for Tanya. She was selfless, self-disciplined, and considerate of others—all the things I’d decided I was not.

I kept Tanya waiting throughout the summer, fobbing her off with excuses that my father was away until finally she phoned to say that she was taking the ferry to Ostende at the end of September. By now she must have guessed I wasn’t going to accompany her, especially since I’d discouraged her from visiting me in Swansea. I remember asking her if she intended going alone. She told me that she’d rather have me with her. I let a silence extend before saying that I didn’t think it was going to be possible.

There was a background hubbub of noise from her end of the line; she’d been working behind the bar in one of the local pubs since her finals. She asked if I couldn’t manage a few weeks.

My silence felt like a dereliction of emotional duty. I had the impression that she switched the receiver from one ear to another before asking me if that was it, if I’d decided “between me and her”.

I made to protest my innocence but suddenly I was convinced that Geoff must have said something. When I made the accusation she just laughed and said she’d known from the start and had wondered if I would ever get around to telling her. She told me that I had her phone number and address if I wanted to get in touch. Then she hung up.

I should have rung back immediately but instead I waited a week. Tatiana answered and informed me that Tanya had already gone to Europe, would be away until the New Year. She was travelling around. There was no forwarding address.

I’d got a two-one for my degree: Tanya, I learned later, a first. My father announced that he was taking me out for a celebratory meal. A few days before he did so, I was playing cards with Rees when Rees informed me that mother had killed herself.

Swallowing my surprise and unease I asked him why he thought this. He replied that he’d read the book Father had written. The one about her father. Our grandfather. He’d destroyed him, turned him into a monster. And M mo never been able to live with that. Which was why she’d done herself in.

I skim-read his copy of the book before Father took me out. That Saturday we drove to Oxford, to a gentleman’s club in the heart of the city. I was still a little unbalanced from reading the book. To this day I don’t believe that Mother committed suicide, but I’d certainly detected a savagery in my father’s unstinting portrait of my grandfather’s wartime years. Before I knew it, I’d blurted out what Rees had said to me.

My father took it in his stride. In one of his rare expansive moods, he almost laughed at the suggestion. My dear boy, he said to me in his most patronising manner, Rees is scarcely in a position to form balanced judgements, particularly about matters pertaining to his family; he’s not in complete possession of his faculties.

I knew only that our mother had died in a head-on collision with a lorry on the outskirts of Swansea. My father told me that the lorry driver, who escaped unscathed, claimed that the car had simply veered across the dual carriageway into his path. Neither the brakes nor the steering appeared to have been faulty, and there was no evidence that mother had suffered anything like a heart attack or a seizure. But it was raining heavily at the time and possibly she had hit a patch of standing water and simply lost control. Failing this, she might have sneezed violently or suffered a blackout or even a sudden unbearable cramp in a leg. A random instant of misfortune that had proved fatal. We would never know for certain, but everyone agreed that something like this must have happened. Everyone except Rees.

According to my father, history would be tantamount to book-keeping if it didn’t seek the causes and meanings of events; but he refused to entertain any psychological speculation about Mother’s death. He did, however, say that he considered mental illness to be largely genetic: it was like a neural time bomb waiting to go off, and no one should be blamed for its eruption. If Magda had for some unfathomable reason killed herself—a proposition he was by no means endorsing—it would be reasonable to suppose that Rees had inherited his own instability from her side of the family. He was confident that I had the more robust constitution of his own bloodline and with sufficient effort would go on to achieve whatever I wished in my chosen career.

PART TWO

BROTHERS IN ARMS

SEVENTEEN

Owain was doing bare-chested exercises at his open balcony window. Outside fog blanketed everything. The television in the living room was on, showing a sky thick with Woden assault helicopters.

Owain ran hard on the spot, pounding the carpeted floor, while soldiers in gas masks and jungle camouflage came swarming out of landing craft onto a tropical beach. Melodramatic music accompanied the action. I understood that this was a patriotic movie, a recent release set in the 1980s and produced by the Cinema Véritié studios in Cannes. It was plain to me that both the hardware and the figures, though superficially realistic, were digital images. It was, in effect, a computer-generated cartoon.

Owain wasn’t really concentrating on the action. He kept running as if in flight from something, his exercising not merely a means of keeping fit but also of banishing both thought and memory. Yet he couldn’t escape them. They were as insinuating as the fog.

He flung himself to the floor and began doing press-ups. I could feel the tendons tighten in his arms and neck. I tried to stop him but was completely ineffectual. On the television screen a battle was raging and soldiers yelled stilted phrases at one another. More explosions, exchanges of gunfire, the music swooning into a maudlin tenderness as one of the principals lay dying.

Lying on his back, hands locked behind his head, Owain began to twist and turn, to push his head towards his knees. I found the rigour and relentlessness of his movements wearying. Machine-gun fire issued from the jungle, and there were glimpses of the enemy’s blacked-up faces—or at least their fanatical eyes: they lacked any distinct racial characteristics. I was sitting on my hospital bed in a shirt, jeans and black shoes. I flexed my toes in them, preparing to stand.

Owain kept rocking and jerking until his breaths came deep and hot. Finally he switched off the set before slumping back and closing his eyes, blood pulsing at his temples.

The ticking of the mantelpiece clock infiltrated the silence. Slowly the sweat began to cool on his body, while the dankness of the outside air became palpable. Owain didn’t move and his mind remained almost resolutely blank, attuned only to the extended rhythms of his body.

Tanya walked in and started talking to me while rummaging in her shoulder bag. She wore a denim jacket over a navy roll-necked sweater. One of my overcoats lay on the bed.

Owain was at his sink, swallowing water from a pewter stein. A souvenir from his time in East Prussia. He’d also served in North Africa and Aden before his transfer to the Special Operations Corps. Steadily rising through the ranks, just like his father had done. An efficient, dependable soldier destined to go far, to emulate him. And now it was all turning to ashes.

Springing to his feet, he closed the windows. He disliked fog. It reduced the world, closed everything in. If you couldn’t see something it was all too easy to imagine that it no longer existed. He’d first thought that as a boy. Things happened when you weren’t around. People were killed, houses sealed off, you never saw them again. All you saw was a box in which dummy versions of them lay. Too much of life had to be taken on trust.

I was plodding down a hospital corridor, the overcoat draped over my arm, Tanya holding my elbow. We were leaving. They’d set me free!

His uncle’s Daimler, driving across an open space through a sleety blizzard. Sir Gruffydd and a stout man in tweeds sitting in the back, the field marshal bemoaning the loss of the old British Army regiments following the consolidation of the Alliance armed forces in the 1980s. The other man replying that it was inevitable, given manpower losses and the spersal of forces on the fronts. He was Sir Henry Knowlton, the Secretary of State for Defence.

The car’s heater was turned up full, filling the confined space with the smell of warm leather and menthol from Knowlton’s impregnated handkerchief. He had a head cold. Technically he was the other civilian member of the JGC alongside Carl Legister, but he had formerly been an air marshal. An old friend of his uncle’s, pleased that the RAF had retained a degree of independence as well as its old name. Both had been ennobled by the last civilian government, mere months before the JGC took over.

Through the sleet I could see a Shrike jump jet squatting on the runway. It was ready for take-off, its engines frenziedly whining. The car’s driver was Giselle Vigoroux. Owain had a sense of being contained within the closest thing he had to a family.

Another car, a nimble Yaris, something rockabilly on the radio, the scent of Tanya’s perfume. She swung us around a corner, trailing a BT van. Grassy spaces on one side, a dowdy garage on the other, bargain cars parked on its cramped forecourt. The line of traffic came slowly to a halt. Up ahead was a set of lights.

A phone started burbling. It was sitting in a holder below the dashboard. Tanya didn’t pick it up. She never did when driving. How did I know that? I knew it because we’d continued to see one another secretly over the years. Geoff once phoned while we were together in the car. She pulled over into a lay-by to take the call. We were en route to a pub and I sat there, feeling nothing at all, while she told him she would be home by seven for dinner.

All we’d ever done on those clandestine meetings was talk. Though we seldom discussed the past or the doings of our respective partners, we always found more than enough to say. A couple of hours every few months, mostly in public places: restaurants, museums, art galleries. Rationed time, both of us very adult about it, though for me it was never enough.

The phone went silent. I checked it. No message had been left. It was another mobile number. Tanya thought it might be someone ringing to confirm an engagement. Nothing that couldn’t wait.

I felt punch-drunk, careening between Owain’s life and insistent recollections of my own past that I urgently needed to recapture. I couldn’t stop any of them.

After Tanya had left for Europe I’d immersed myself in looking after Rees and found myself increasingly entangled with Lyneth. She gave me driving lessons and often invited both of us to dinner at her parents’ house. They were pleasant professional people with none of my father’s prickliness. I think Rees found it comforting. Then postcards from Tanya started to arrive. She was in Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, Aachen and Cologne. Her messages were cheery but brief, concentrating on snapshot descriptions of the places she was visiting. As the months went by her progress across Europe began to describe a political as well as geographical trajectory: Berlin, Dresden, Prague, Wroclaw, Krakow, Warsaw. The postcards varied from conventional city landmark scenes to pictures of red light districts, punk bars, busts of Stalin painted pink or decorated with Mickey Mouse ears.

Rees and I spent the Christmas holidays in Florida with Lyneth and her family. A few weeks later a brown envelope arrived. Inside was a hand-made card, a photograph stuck to its front. It showed Tanya standing in the snow, backdropped by the onion domes of St Basil’s Cathedral. She was holding a big placard on which she had scrawled in red: Seasons Greetings from Red Square, Love, T. In her fur hat and boots she looked small and alone, dwarfed by the wintry grandeur of the place. At the time it never occurred to me to wonder who had taken the photograph.

I passed my driving test. Rees recovered sufficiently to enrol on a computer programming course in Swansea. Despite his illness he’d done well in his ‘A’ Levels and would depart for Bristol University the following autumn. My father was back in Oxford and I had a temporary job through his auspices with a BBC Wales documentary team that was investigating industrial decline in the Gwent and Rhondda valleys. Throughout the early months of the year I accompanied them, helping out with everything from fetching sandwiches to location scouting. Eventually I ended up in Cardiff, assisting with studio editing.

As spring advanced I missed Tanya more keenly than ever. There had been no further word from her since Christmas. Certain that she was now back in England, I mustered the courage to phone. It was Tatiana who answered. She was away again, I was told. Again? She’d returned for the New Year, before more travelling. To the East. No, she didn’t say when she would be coming home.

Tatiana was not unfriendly, but it was obvious she knew that Tanya and I were no longer an item. I tried calling Geoff a number of times. Finally it was answered by a student. Geoff had gone away, was renting out the house for a year.

I was convinced that Tanya had probably phoned while I was in Florida, but my father claimed there had been no calls. Soon afterwards another photograph arrived. It showed Tanya and Geoff standing outside what looked like a sports stadium. Geoff was wearing a puffy pleated jacket and a big grin. He had his arm around Tanya’s shoulder. On the back Tanya had scribbled a message to say that they were touring the Ukraine and that she hoped things were going better for me at home. It was signed with her initial but no endearment. A postscript said: “Tried the chicken. Nothing special.” From this I gleaned that the photograph had been taken in Kiev.

I’d been outflanked, and it was no more than I deserved. I became prey to all sorts of grubby jealous fantasies. At this point the plug was abruptly pulled on the documentary and I was out of a job. I informed Lyneth that I intended to return to London to find work. She startled me by saying that she would come too. In the event, it was the following autumn before we found a place to live, by which time Tatiana was dead and Tanya half a world away.

EIGHTEEN

Breaded chicken and chips. It was garnished with token salad items, a few lettuce leaves, a sliver of cucumber, a tomato segment. Tanya had a vegetable lasagne. We were sitting at a table in a pub, next to a window overlooking a deserted flagstone patio with trestle tables.

Try as I might, I had no control over my translations to and from Owain’s world. It was vital Tanya suspected nothing of this seesawing; she’d have me back in hospital before I knew it.

“Want to eat outside?” she asked.

It was smoky and hot in the pub, and the place was bustling. I thought I recognised it but my memory wouldn’t cooperate. What were we doing here?

“O?”

“No,” I said. “It’s fine.”

I contemplated my plate of food. I contemplated Australia. The notion of Lyneth having a sister who lived there was persistent. Had we had a row before Christmas so that she had taken the girls away? Perhaps she had deliberately isolated herself from contact. Had I done something so awful she wouldn’t have anything further to do with me, hospitalised or not? Was that why Tanya had looked anxious when I mentioned her name?

I wasn’t going to ask her. I was still under scrutiny.

“Do you know where my mobile is?” I asked.

Tanya swabbed her lips with a serviette. “I assume it was lost in the accident.”

Very convenient. All my phone numbers were listed on it. My old address book was long gone. I couldn’t remember Lyneth’s mobile number, or even that of our home. I had no idea of our address either, only that it was in south London. Couldn’t picture the house. My efforts to do so only filled me with a suffocating panic. How much longer was this going to go on?

“O?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t worry. We can get you a new one.”

I couldn’t allow my agitation to show. I still wasn’t sure whether these speculations of mine were in fact true. But they would explain Lyneth’s absence. What had I done? Something so hurtful that she could never forgive me? Something physically hurtful, even?

No, I was certain I could never have harmed her. So what had we rowed about? Something to do with Tanya? Was this why she was here and not Lyneth? Why couldn’t I remember with any certainty? Surely it couldn’t just be my medication?

The urge to ask was more than counterbalanced by the feeling that some rickety mental edifice would come crashing down. I couldn’t risk it yet. But if Lyneth had taken the girls away, my memory of the four of us together in Regent Street immediately before the accident had to be false. As false as the fleeting belief that I had later stood at their gravesides.

The pub’s hubbub washed over me. I speared a chip, heard the throosbing of a domestic hot water geyser. It was mounted on the wall above the sink. I n so bare windowless room, ranks of white china cups and saucers washed and upended on the stainless steel draining board.

I heaved myself back.

“Catch up?” Tanya said.

I looked at her with incomprehension, at last nodded. She used her teeth to tear open the sachet, passed it carefully to me. I squirted the sauce over my chips. It effortlessly suggested blood. I reached for my drink and gulped a big mouthful, the ice cubes clacking against my teeth. Lime and soda. I’d always disliked lime. A mosquito whine filled my ears. Owain carried a tray of cakes and biscuits into the conference hall. The long room was windowless and stuffy, thick with an acrid haze of cigarette and pipe smoke. Low-slung overhead lights made glazed pools on the polished mahogany surface of a big table. Around it were seated two dozen figures, most of them men, most in uniform. Sheets of paper, empty cups and wineglasses sat on blotters, ignored in the angry exchange that was taking place.

“It’s intolerable,” a man in a dark blue uniform was saying in Italianate French. “You cannot expect us to police the entire Mediterranean when we do not have enough fuel for our ships. It is asking the impossible!”

“That’s no fault of mine!” responded another man, equally irately. He was burly and olive-complexioned, possibly Egyptian. “Until the contamination issues are settled my hands are tied.”

Both men were on their feet, glaring at one another across the table. The burly man wore desert khaki and the insignia of the quartermaster general’s office.

“Gentlemen,” said a third man, rising from his seat, “must we shout at one another? Urgent priority has already been given to remedying the situation. I understand that supplies of shielding equipment and new turbine housings for all major frontline vessels are already being undertaken, is that not so?”

This, Owain knew, was Marshal Coquelin, the French C-in-C of Strategic Operations. He directed this question at an anonymous-looking woman in a herringbone trouser suit. She gave a brisk nod.

“Deliveries are expected?” he prompted.

“Some have already been made. The Clemenceau, Moltke and Ark Royal battle groups are being refitted even as we speak.”

“And the time scale?”

“For capital ships, by the end of the month to the Mediterranean and Baltic fleets. Before April for the Atlantic fleets.”

“Excellent. That should enable you to get your ships to where they need to be, yes, admiral?”

The admiral did not exactly look satisfied but he subsided into his seat, as did the thickset man.

“Ah,” said Coquelin, as if he had only just registered Owain’s arrival, “an appropriate time to take a break, wouldn’t you agree?”

A braided kepi sat on the desk in front of him, a relic of the old French army uniform. It was obvious to Owain that the discussion had centred on problems with fuel supplies that had arisen now that wells in the Mesopotamian oilfields were being tapped that contained high levels of gamma emitters. Every ship bigger than a minesweeper in the Alliance fleet would have to have its engine room modified so that it could use the radioactive fuel. No doubt the tanker crews would be expected to make their own safety arrangements.

Coquelin fell into muted conversation with Owain’s uncle, who was seated to his right. He was the head of the French military government and hence a member of the thirty-person Chiefs of State Committee that directed the Alliance’s military and political affairs. On his other side sat the elderly Reichmarschall Schmidt, one of his counterparts and the representative of the German General Staff. He looked half-asleep. Further down the table was Carl Legister.

Owain ventured only the occasional glance in his direction. He was convinced that Legister was watching him as he arranged crockery on the table. A slim, fastidious-looking man, he wore a black suit and a high-collared white shirt buttoned up but without a tie. It lent him an ascetic air. He sat bolt upright, staring straight ahead through contact lenses that accentuated his penetrating eyes.

I kept myself in the background. This was a high-level meeting, and I needed to be as discreet as Owain was being wary.

When Owain came to his uncle’s shoulder, Sir Gruffydd helped himself to three chocolate-coated biscuits from the tray. Another aide was dispensing tea and coffee.

“Sir,” Owain said with an unaccustomed degree of public boldness, speaking in English, “I was asked to remind you of your insulin levels.”

“Damn cheek,” Sir Gruffydd said, though not unkindly. He returned one of the biscuits to the tray and said, “Two sugars in my coffee.”

His uncle suffered from late-onset diabetes. Giselle had earlier supplied him with a little cylinder of sweeteners. He clicked two into the general’s cup.

“Impudence!” the old man said theatrically. “Generaloberst, this is my nephew. What do you make of his insubordination?”

He was talking to the tall man sitting opposite him. Owain saw that it was none other than Wilhelm Blaskowitz, the C-in-C of the armies in eastern Europe.

Blaskowitz was a lean man in his early sixties who sat as stiff-backed in his chair as Carl Legister. Owain nearly blurted out that he had served under him while on the eastern front and that he was esteemed by his men. But such gushing would have been inappropriate as well as foreign to his nature.

Owain moved slowly upble, picking up snatches of conversation. A Spanish general was speaking in broken German to a Czech colleague, discussing refugee problems. A Free French Canadian commander was doubting that the Australians would be able to maintain their neutrality in the face of American encroachments in the Pacific. A Swiss air marshal was complaining that his pilots had been reduced to flying thirty year-old Valkyries and Henschels because disruptions in satellite signalling made state-of-the-art warplanes vulnerable to crashing. Henry Knowlton was scoffing at suggestions that this breakdown had actually been initiated by AEGIS itself in order to destabilise the prevailing period of truce.

Owain lingered, intrigued but sometimes missing the subtleties of the discussion, which was in brisk French. For months there had been gossip that the strategic network had become self-governing and now sought to control the conduct of military operations for its own nefarious ends. The Swiss commander even considered it conceivable that AEGIS was actually working in concert with the American SENTINEL and Russian PHALANX systems, as well as those operated by the Chinese and lesser power blocs. G in AEGIS now meant Gestalt, a global artificial intelligence whose aims superseded those of the humans it had been structured to serve.

It wasn’t the first time Owain had encountered the suggestion that AEGIS might have evolved a directed sentience of its own, though he was surprised to hear it aired at such a high-level meeting. But Knowlton remained airily adamant there was no basis for such a claim.

Owain returned to the kitchen to fetch a fresh pot of coffee. As he came back through the door, Legister raised a finger and beckoned him over.

“Black coffee,” he said.

Owain filled his cup. His hands were surprisingly steady.

“Major Maredudd, isn’t it?” Legister said.

It was a statement. They had met on several occasions, though Owain had never been formally introduced.

“I gather from your uncle that you recently had a narrow escape,” he remarked. “Some business in the West End?”

What was he supposed to say to this?

“An old incendiary went off,” he replied.

“Really?”

Surely Legister would know all the details. Was he fishing for more? Or was this the opportunity for Owain to confess that he met Marisa regularly? To stress as well that their friendship was a purely innocent one?

He couldn’t bring himself to admit it. Hated to imagine the two of them even sharing the same space.

“And are we fully recovered?” Legister prompted.

Owain gave the curtest of nods. “Sir.”

“You must tell me about it. I would be interested in the details.”

He had a reptilian stillness, making only minimal movements. It was impossible to imagine what Marisa was like in his company, what she made of their marriage. They tended to steer away from the subject. It was far too dangerous.

“Biscuit?” Owain said, offering a plate.

Legister put a palm up. “They tell me you were lucky to survive.”

“The report I was carrying was salvaged.”

A stupid thing to say, and Legister was suitably unimpressed. “Oh, good soldier,” he said in a tone too weary for contempt. “Must make sure the paperwork isn’t lost, mustn’t we?”

There was a burst of coughing at the other end of the table. His uncle, beckoning to him, hauling himself to his feet. Owain set the tray down and hurried to his side.

“Get me outside, boy,” he managed to say.

Owain shepherded him through the door and into the kitchen.

“Water,” Sir Gruffydd instructed, half pushing him away, still coughing.

His cheeks were the colour of damsons, his lips flecked with biscuit crumbs. He leant on a table while Owain put a tumbler under the cold water tap.

The field marshal took the glass from him and drained it in one. Removing a handkerchief, he swabbed his lips. He breathed in deeply, didn’t cough again. Already his colour was returning to normal.

“Narrow escape,” he said to Owain in Welsh. “I think you can leave it to us now. I expect you’d like to get some air, yes?”

Owain was surprised by this. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Wouldn’t say so otherwise. We’ll be winding up soon. Take yourself off. It’s an order, Owain.”

NINETEEN

The elevator carried Owain up four, five, six, seven floors. Until now I hadn’t realised he was underground.

The surface hall of the building was thick with security personnel, most of them women. He walked out blinking into the wan late afternoon light, relieved to be released from the fetid smokiness of the conference room.

Beyond the anti-aircraft and missile batteries a long rectangular frozen lake was spread out in front of him, lined on both sides with bare upright poplars. A breeze fnfesouth had raised the temperature unexpectedly. It was almost balmy.

On the balcony were stalls selling drinks and pastries, their cherry-striped awnings incongruously festive in the greyness. The prospect of warmer weather had tempted staff outdoors. They were largely women, a few of Arab or African descent, huddling in their greatcoats over hot drinks.

Everyone was talking in French. Only now did I become aware that we were no longer in London but rather the Alliance’s western continental headquarters in Versailles. Owain had flown out with his uncle for the chiefs of state conference.

He paid an extortionate price for a double espresso, which came with a small chocolate wafer wrapped in silver foil. The coffee was intensely bitter, the chocolate flavourless and gritty, a triumph of style over substance. He gazed out over the ashen parkland, frustrated that he was not able to pursue his investigations into what had happened to him in Regent Street.

“Do you mind if we join you?

It was Giselle Vigoroux. And standing at her shoulder was Marisa.

She wore her black fur coat and smiled uncertainly at him. Giselle was holding two cappuccinos and Owain immediately rose to seat them. It was three days since he had last seen Marisa.

Giselle did not allow any awkward hiatus to develop, immediately remarking that the majority of staff at the headquarters was female and asking Owain’s opinion on the desirability of enlisting women into frontline combat units.

Owain shrugged. Privately he considered the prospect a recipe for indiscipline and a rapid decline in combat efficiency. But he said, “It might work, as long as it’s done on a voluntary basis. And I think you’d need to keep the sexes separate.”

“Indeed?” Giselle said. “What, all-female armies?”

“Just within units. Say on a battalion level. Otherwise there could be complications.”

Giselle took a sip of her coffee.

“I take it you’re in favour,” I made Owain say.

“To the contrary. I am against it. Unless you replace men entirely, from bottom to top. In that way we might see a more rational conduct to our military efforts. Who knows, we might even decide to stop fighting altogether.”

There was a hint of provocation in her voice. He didn’t know how serious she was being. I tried to speak through him again, to ask if she favoured an unconditional truce; but Owain wasn’t having any of it.

Giselle put down her cup and rose. “You must excuse me for a few moments.”

As soon as she was gone, Marisaid, “I wanted to let you know I would be here. But there was no opportunity.”

“I didn’t know myself until we landed,” Owain replied.

“Carl told me yesterday. To give me time to pack a suitcase.”

Owain wondered if this was the only reason. Perhaps Legister was checking his own internal security.

“He’s suspicious of us, Marisa.”

She merely shrugged. “He knows we are friends. I told him we meet.”

“You told him?”

“When he spoke of you the other day. I thought it better to say we sometimes meet. That way the air is clear.”

This was a highly optimistic assumption to him. “He didn’t want to know why you hadn’t mentioned it before?”

“He asked me if we were lovers.”

Owain hadn’t anticipated this, though it was perfectly logical. He had a jittery sense of his privacy having been violated.

“He was very calm about it. As if he was asking about the menu for dinner. I told him we were simply friends. That my days were long and poor in companionship. That I had done nothing to compromise myself.”

It scarcely sounded like an unconditional assertion of her fidelity. “What did he say?”

“He raised no objections.”

“None at all?”

“He said that providing your intentions were as innocent as mine he saw no reason to prescribe future meetings.”

“Proscribe.”

“Yes. That word. He speaks like a lawyer, Owain, even to me. Nothing I do can touch him.”

He was certain the marriage was sexless, though it was not something they had ever discussed directly. It was hard to imagine Marisa submitting even to an embrace.

“We are to spend some time together when the conference is over. We will travel, see some sights.”

She made the prospect sound less than appealing, and Owain himself didn’t relish it. Was he becoming possessive of her? Perhaps he should stop it now, before they compromised one another. But it wasn’t what he wanted.

She was staring at something over his shoulder. Hastily swallowing theast of her coffee, she stood up.

Her husband was coming out of the building with Giselle.

Owain also rose, feeling like a lover caught in the middle of a tryst. Giselle looked as if she was deliberately trying to delay Legister by talking to him—about Sir Gruffydd, it became clear as they drew closer. Legister was listening but he kept his eyes on Marisa. He wore a dark overcoat and a black astrakhan hat. Owain heard Giselle assure him that his concerns about the field marshal’s health were exaggerated.

“Good morning, my dear,” Legister said to Marisa in a businesslike tone. “I trust you slept well.”

“Very well, thank you,” she replied.

“We are having a short break from our deliberations. I thought a walk might be refreshing.”

“Of course. That would be nice.”

“We’ll take the path around the lake. Get some blood into your cheeks. Did you eat breakfast?”

He addressed her as though checking the duties of a subordinate. She nodded, looking cowed. When Legister offered his arm, she stepped forward and took it.

“Stay clear of the woods,” Giselle advised.

Legister patted the pockets of his overcoat before removing a pair of black leather gloves. Without looking at Owain he added, “I believe your uncle is also surfacing for air, major.”

He walked off, taking Marisa with him as if she were a captive.

Owain watched them descend the steps, two dark figures in the snow, Marisa a head shorter.

“Thank you for arranging our meeting,” Owain said stiffly to Giselle.

“I did nothing of the kind,” she replied, but archly. “A lovely young woman. I do believe she’s rather fond of you.”

My own curiosity was intense and I impelled Owain to ask: “How long has he known about us?”

She was surprised by his bluntness. “The secretary of state? Almost certainly from the start.”

There was only amusement in her voice.

“It’s perfectly innocent,” he insisted. “We’re just friends.”

Giselle’s smile was both knowing and noncommittal.

Again I made Owain ask: “Isn’t there a risk? To your own position, apart from anything else. For colluding. He could have us all arrested if he wanted to.”

“Even if it’s as innocent as you say?”

“He may not know that. If I was in his position I’d assume the worst.”

“Perhaps it doesn’t matter to him.”

“Marisa’s his wife.”

Giselle looked thoughtful. I had the impression she was contemplating Owain’s motivations rather than Legister’s.

“You have heard the expression ‘a trophy wife’?” she asked.

Owain nodded.

“Perhaps there is something of that in their marriage. After all, Marisa wants for nothing.”

“She’s unhappy.”

“Possibly so. But perhaps we should not fault him for that. They are a generation removed from one another. He has many responsibilities, and not all of us are animated by—what shall we say?—cris de coeur. I think perhaps the minister’s concerns are necessarily not those of most other men.”

I saw my uncle emerging from the building. With him was Colonel-General Blaskowitz.

My uncle had his walking stick but he moved laboriously, as though hindered by his bulky greatcoat. The generaloberst wore a peaked hat and an old-fashioned field-grey double-breasted overcoat. It was padded but its basic design had changed little in over sixty years. To me Blaskowitz might easily have been a Nazi officer emerging from a high-level meeting with the Führer himself.

“The generaloberst and I are going to take a little constitutional,” Sir Gruffydd said to Giselle in English. “Any recommendations?”

“The secretary of state and his wife are walking around the lake,” she said pointedly. “If you would prefer a more open view I suggest the Monument.”

She indicated a direction at right angles to the lake, where a broad treeless avenue stretched a short distance to a set of steps that led up to an obelisk.

“Excellent,” the field marshal said. “Owain, you’d better come with us in case I go weak at the knees.”

They set off, the generaloberst initially walking at a brisk pace that he swiftly had to moderate to allow Sir Gruffydd to keep up. Owain hung back, certain that they wanted to talk privately. But his uncle kept calling him forward.

“…a decade of little more than local skirmishes,” Blaskowitz was saying in German, “we’d almost slaughtered one another into peace. Now the destabilisation of our remote systems has introduced renewed uncertainties on all sides. A vacuum of information, into which seeps every sort of speculation, chief of which is this business about AEGIS—”

“No basis for it,” Sir Gruffydd interrupted. “The systems aren’t advanced enough. It’s not possible.”

“We still have no adequate explanation for the breakdown,” Blaskowitz pointed out. “Meanwhile the men at the front are growing increasingly nervous.”

The generaloberst spoke with a Prussian accent. Owain thought he caught the words “Erdbeben” and “Donnerschlag”—”earthquake” and “thunderclap”. Were they discussing impending operations? Somehow he thought not. Blaskowitz was referring to something that had already happened. Something that was worrying his men.

“Combat troops are always superstitious,” Sir Gruffydd retorted. “Especially when everything’s quiet. Breeds time for the demons of the imagination to make mischief.”

“They talk of Armageddon machines, of death rays and of course the ultimate omega weapon. Some of my senior commanders have even expressed the view that the Russians might already be testing such a device.”

“Surely you don’t believe those mouldy chestnuts?”

Owain’s uncle had spoken in English, to Blaskowitz’s incomprehension. He switched back to German: “For as long as I can remember there’s always been some new wonder weapon just waiting in the wings to win the war for whatever side devises it first. Fantasies of wish fulfilment, if you ask me. We’d be mad to give them credence.”

“Perhaps so. But we face the prospect not only of continuing guerrilla warfare within our own territories but the possibility of renewed engagements with the Russians and perhaps even the Americans. These would be no trivial affairs.”

“They have their own problems,” the field marshal countered. “Bogged down in south-east Asia and over-extended in the Pacific.”

They began to climb the steps to the monument, his uncle labouring but refusing assistance. When they reached the top, Owain sat him down on a bench underneath the monument. It was an edifice of dark marble, its base a bulky representation of a crouched Europa, lifting the obelisk to the sky. It had been raised a decade before in commemoration of all those who had fallen in half a century of war.

“Do you realise that we have less than a million men on the eastern front?” Blaskowitz was saying. “And under half a million around our southern borders? There are insufficient conscripts to replace our losses. This is a matter of demographic record. The truce is beginning to crumble, and without satellite links any future clashes will inevitably mean a return to the kind of warfare of old with heavy losses of personnel. Instead of slowly bleeding to death, we will haemorrhage.”

Sir Gruffydd peered at him over the top of his stick. “So what are you suggesting?”

“We declare an unconditional cease-fire along all our borders and invite all our enemies to do the same. It is our moral God-given duty.”

Only coming from a soldier as distinguished as the colonel-general could such a suggestion have had any credibility. Blaskowitz had commanded the armies in the east for ten years. He had reduced their reliance on the monolithic army groups of old by pioneering the use of emergency action formations comprising mobile units that could speedily be dispatched to hotspots. This had helped stabilise the front. It remained a mystery to many of his men that he had not yet received an overdue promotion to field marshal.

“It’s not so easily done,” Sir Gruffydd said. “Some might see it as tantamount to surrendering.”

“And those who advocated it guilty of treason?”

Owain’s uncle made a scornful sound.

“Only a madman would question your loyalty,” he assured Blaskowitz. “It’s more a question of what such a declaration might signify. It could lead disaffected groups within our own territories to come wriggling out like worms in a bud, demanding autonomy, independence, God knows what!”

“I am not suggesting a capitulation. We would consolidate agreed borders and focus our energies on establishing and maintaining order within our dominions while rebuilding a civilised civilian society. It did once exist, you know. Europe was renowned for it.”

Blaskowitz’s face betrayed no smile. Years of the harshest responsibility had made his eyelids and jowls sag. He came from a military family of consequence. His grandfather, a field marshal who had commanded Army Group Centre in the post-Hitler period, had eventually been appointed C-in-C of the Wehrmacht. He had suppressed pro-Nazi elements within the armed forces and facilitated the integration of French and British units. Later he had been instrumental in the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The generaloberst, a maternal descendant, had reverted to his grandfather’s family name while still a young man.

Uncomfortable at the feeling that he was eavesdropping on matters too elevated for his rank, Owain walked around the base of the monument. He had once visited its equivalent in Hampton Court. As Europa had been sculpted to embody Marianne here, at home it was the personification of Britannia. Both monuments stood on eminences, surveying the stately contours of past glories. Both had an air of daunting grandeur best appreciated from afar.

Sir Gruffydd was calling him.

“Help me up, my boy.”

Owain raised the old man to his feet.

“I have confided in you, field marshal,” Blaskowitz was saying, “because I believe you are a man who understands that human welfare must sometimes take precedence over short-term military advantage. Our enemies are not demons. There must be those among them who have arrived at a similar view. Sooner or later, someone has to take the initiative.”

Owain’s uncle was silent for a moment. Before he could reply there came from the direction of the lake the sound of a gunshot.

TWENTY

A narrow white-painted bedroom. I was pacing around a single bed, listening to a cassette recording of Sara and Bethany singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”.

The recording had been made a year or two before—I couldn’t exactly remember when. Lyneth had left me, taking the girls, some time ago. Last summer, perhaps. I still couldn’t imagine why, though I was convinced it had nothing to do with Tanya. I’d been living alone—where? In our house, I was positive, though no details of it would come. Lyneth had taken the girls away, gone first to Swansea to stay with her mother. And thence to Australia. Old South Wales to New South Wales. A trial separation that had turned into an extended, possibly permanent one.

Was this true? I didn’t honestly know.

I was in the spare bedroom of Tanya and Geoff’s house. They’d brought me here when I was released from hospital. Days ago. I’d had an extended period of mental abstraction. In fact, my episodes of lucidity were the exception rather than the norm.

The machine fell silent. I recognised the black carryall sitting on top of the pine wardrobe. Opening the wardrobe doors I saw that Tanya had stacked it with clothing that she must have fetched from my house. Everything neatly arranged on hangers. Enough for several days or more.

Frantically I went through the pockets of coats and trousers and jeans; rummaged in the drawer units where she d placed my underwear, even investigated the zippered compartments of the carryall. I found only crumpled tissues and spare buttons in plastic sachets. No keys or driving licence or credit cards or photographs, not so much as an old shopping list. There was only the cassette, which Tanya must have brought from the house as a memento of the girls. Had I asked for it?

“O?”

Tanya, calling up the stairs.

“Yes?”

“You OK up there?”

I replaced the carryall on top of the wardrobe. The room was a mess. “I’ll be down in a moment.”

I tidied everything as well as I could and went out. Four other rooms gave off the landing: the bathroom, Tanya’s study, herf coats anGeoff’s bedroom and another room next to it that was locked.

I descended the carpeted stairs. I was wearing black slip-ons, a grey sweater and the navy corduroys that Lyneth had bought one birthday several years ago. I’d never liked the trousers because they were too baggy. Had Tanya dressed me? No, I was perfectly capable of doing so myself. But I didn’t usually wear shoes around the house.

Tanya was in the kitchen, flipping through a recipe book. She looked very

domestic, a Bart Simpson pinafore draped around her, her hair loosely tied up.

“Have you seen my wallet and keys?”

“They’re safe,” she told me. “You’re not allowed them until you’re better. Doctor’s orders.”

She said this with a degree of jauntiness, but there was a sliver of steel there too. Were they worried I might get the urge to go driving or embark on a spending spree?

Snapshot memories began returning. Walking up the cinder driveway to her 1930s semi-detached, Geoff beaming at me from the porch, the door wide open. Sitting in the bath with the water up to my neck and making a sober assessment of how easy it would be for me to drown. Accompanying Tanya to a big supermarket, all gleaming lights and stacked produce, the incessant bleep bleeping of the checkout machines as we waited in the queue, our trolley stacked with kitchen rolls, salad vegetables, a string bag of oranges. A dream of Lyneth, eighteen years old again, pulling on my arm as she marched me through a department store filled with debris and broken mannequins. She was shouting to me that she had to find a red chiffon scarf while I kept looking around for a toilet. A sales assistant was standing at one of the counters. At first I thought she was a mannequin too because plaster dust had coated her. She smiled at us and told me she was my mother. I’d wet the bed. Tanya had had to clean me up in the bathroom.

“Hell’s bells,” I said aloud.

Tanya looked up. “What?”

“How long have I been out of hospital?”

“Three days.”

“I feel as if I’ve only just got here.”

She didn’t look bothered. “You’ve been out of it. ‘Flu or something. Spent most of the time with your head in a newspaper or dozing.”

‘Flu? I didn’t believe it. They were drugging me, keeping me docile. I had a vague recollection of spending hours reading any paper I could lay my hands on. Looking for some indication of a disturbance in Regent Street just before Christmas. There was none. I had read everything else too: business, sports, holidays—I was completely indiscriminate. It was all I could manage.

I went out to the conservatory at the back of the house, feeling a similar sense of frustration to Owain. I had to break free. Everything was becoming more intense, in Owain’s life as much as my own. I realised that a part of me didn’t want to lose my connection with him, at least not yet. There had to be a reason why we had become linked.

I’d been sitting in an armchair in front of a window overlooking the garden. A brick patio gave out onto a lawn with neglected flowerbeds. Everything had a weary winter look, not least the green garden chairs that were stacked in one corner and held little pools of blackened leaves.

A coffee-table book sat on the armchair—a pictorial history of the twentieth century. I must have been browsing through it. The text was pretty elementary, the photographs stock.

The doorbell chimed. I heard someone talking in the distance. In French. I almost swooned but recovered myself, held that other world at bay.

Tanya entered with two other people, a man and a woman. She found them chairs, seated them opposite me.

The man was familiar, though I struggled to recall his name. He was the same age as me, wheat-haired, energetic in his movements, already talking enthusiastically. His companion was an equally blonde woman, her eyes a startling green. Contact lenses, I realised, telling myself not to stare.

Adrian. Adrian Lister, my producer. We’d had a long working association, and it was he who had commissioned Battlegrounds. As he talked, I knew he was discussing the next series. He spoke with his usual gesticulations, periodically sweeping the hair back from his eyes. His partner was his girlfriend, Rachel. She sat with her legs slightly splayed to accommodate the neat but emphatic bulge at her midriff. She was six months pregnant. We’d had an impromptu party at the studio to celebrate.

Every so often, a pause or a change in Adrian’s tone would provoke me into making some response, though I had no idea what I was saying. But Adrian appeared satisfied with my replies, at least to the extent that he continued conversing with his customary vigour. Rachel, by contrast, was silent and looked rather uncomfortable. I didn’t know her well but it was obvious that for her the visit was an ordeal.

No doubt Adrian had been eager to see me. I’d always envied his energy, and it was entirely typical that he should focus on practical matters relating to our work. But I was battling to shut out other intrusions, intermittent but persistent. A vehicle door slammed, someone spat, there were snatches of male laughter, the smell of warm engine oil—all from afar. Tanya lingered in the background, monitoring everything, looking wonderful. My protector or my warden?

Eventually Adrian and Rachel got up and departed. I heard them talking in the hallway, voices muted, confidential. The murmuring grew in volume, became a clearer conversation, though of a different sort.

TWENTY-ONE

A small dining able was set for dinner. Field Marshal Maredudd shepherded someone into the room.

Owain’s brother, Rhys.

I could feel Owain stiffen at the sight of him.

Rhys looked fleshier and considerably more prosperous than my own brother. He was dressed in a navy cashmere overcoat with a paisley silk scarf rucked in at his neck. He eyed Owain rather guardedly as he tugged off his leather gloves.

“Well,” Sir Gruffydd said, “aren’t you going to say hello to one another?”

Owain stepped forward and absurdly offered his hand.

Rhys looked at it. Awkwardly he shook, dropping a glove.

“Well, well,” Owain said with a distinct absence of feeling. “This is a surprise.”

“Not an unpleasant one, I hope,” his brother replied tentatively.

His grip was flaccid, the flesh of his hands soft, a thick ring on one finger. He smelt of expensive aftershave.

Owain released his hand and turned away while his brother retrieved his glove. Giselle Vigoroux was also present, standing with her back to an open fire.

Sir Gruffydd introduced Rhys to her. Or rather, re-introduced her: they had obviously met before. Owain had gone rigid with tension. He hadn’t seen his brother in over a year.

Rhys removed his overcoat and handed it to one of the housemaids. He wore tailored herringbone trousers and a burgundy roll-neck sweater that looked as if it was cashmere. Owain noted this with a feeling of angry disgust.

His feelings towards his brother were starkly different from mine towards Rees. Though the atmosphere was tense, I decided not to try to escape. I would lie low and just observe until I had a better understanding of the family dynamics at work here.

The dining table was just big enough to accommodate the four of them. They were in a private house in a Parisian suburb, a walled garden visible in the twilight beyond the window. A maid brought out a savoury tart scattered with rosemary leaves. She cut it into quarters, set it on their plates. A dark-complexioned woman, possibly Greek. Giselle opened a dusty bottle of red wine and filled their glasses.

“To families,” the field marshal said, raising his. “In the end, they’re all we have.”

The wine was good; the best Owain had tasted in many years. Though he’d forsworn alcohol for some years, he let it linger in his mouth until Rhys made a point of identifying it as a rare French claret.

Even Owain knew that the bottle had to be at least twenty years o The French wine industry had been ruined by biowar and climate shift. When Rhys began boasting that he had recently drunk some excellent reds from the Moroccan and Algerian provinces, Owain felt nothing but contempt.

“Rhys has been in Geneva,” the field marshal informed Owain in an obvious attempt to draw him into the conversation.

“That a fact?” said Owain. “Sanatorium?”

No response to this apart from a reluctant, wary smile.

“Your brother was asking after you, weren’t you, Owain? So I thought we’d dig you out of hiding.”

Nothing could have been further from the truth. Rhys was a boffin, a backroom boy who had done stints in Scandinavia and continental Europe but had been chiefly based at ASPIC, the Alliance Signals Priority Intelligence Centre in Dungeness. Five years ago the site had been obliterated when an old nuclear missile buried in the marshes was accidentally set off during redevelopment work. Luckily for Rhys he had been on convalescent leave at the time. There were hints that he had suffered some sort of nervous collapse. To Owain, who was serving in the east, this was final confirmation of his brother’s lack of backbone. Ever since there had been minimal communication and they avoided seeing one another.

“So,” Owain said, determined to draw him out, “they’ve sent you into the thick of it, have they?”

Rhys looked puzzled. “Sorry?”

“Geneva. Big SIGINT centre, isn’t there? Right in the heart of things.”

“Just for a month,” Rhys replied self-consciously. “I’m based in East Anglia.”

Orford Ness. Owain knew as much already from Sir Gruffydd. It was where the ASPIC operations had been relocated following the loss of the Dungeness facility. A dedicated railway line had meant that Rhys was able to visit London more frequently. Since his own relocation, Owain had felt a certain sense of relish in continuing to ignore his brother’s existence.

He wondered if their uncle had said anything to Rhys about his own spell in hospital over Christmas. Hard to imagine he hadn’t, and typical of Rhys to make no reference to it.

The tart was some kind of chickpea and cheese confection. Owain ate only a portion, whereas Rhys scooped his down as if he was ravenous. He kept fiddling with his signet ring. It was gold, worn on the little finger of his right hand.

“Get married, did you?” Owain said in Welsh, and with heavy sarcasm.

Rhys was able to avoid replying as his plate was removed and a casserole dish

brought to the table.

There hadn’t always been such a distance between them. As children they had

been close, and they had both undertaken officer training at Sandhurst. But while Owain was serving in North Africa Rhys had been suspended from the academy, in murky circumstances involving two other cadets and plenty of sexual innuendo. Their uncle would never refer to it. Later he had re-emerged as an intelligence operative, work to which his talents were more suited, according to the field marshal.

The casserole comprised whole onions, carrots and little cubes of pale meat.

Green beans and mashed potatoes accompanied it. While their plates were being loaded, Giselle started asking his brother how he had enjoyed Geneva.

“I didn’t see much of it,” Rhys told her, swallowing more wine. “Underground it looked and smelt the same as anywhere else.”

Owain waved a second dollop of mashed potatoes aside. “It was a perfectly reasonable question,” he said. “There’s no need to be so damn churlish.”

Rhys looked surprised. “Sorry,” he said to Giselle. “No offence meant.”

“None taken,” she assured him.

“I’ve spent so much time below stairs I think I’ve forgotten how to make proper dinner-table conversation.”

“Below stairs” was backroom jargon for “underground”. Rhys’s easy use of the phrase irritated him.

“Sounds like he could do with a surface posting,” he said to the field marshal in Welsh. “Of course we’d need to make sure it isn’t anywhere where there might be bullets flying.”

The old man gave him an admonitory stare. In English he said, “I didn’t bring you to my table to bicker.”

Rhys just continued shovelling food into his mouth. My own instincts were to impose a more conciliatory manner on Owain, if only because his hostility unsettled me. But Owain was too irritated by his brother’s presence to be chastened.

It was Sir Gruffydd and Giselle who carried the conversation as they ate, the old man talking about an opera he intended to see in the city before he left. Something by Wagner. When the talk turned to the prospect of taking a winter break, Rhys offered the opinion that the Canary Islands were still reasonably unspoilt and relatively warm.

“Been there yourself?” Owain asked, trying to keep the edge out of his voice.

Rhys shook his head. “Someone I work with told me. I haven’t taken a holiday in years.”

“Poor ” Owain retorted. “Still, there are other consolations. Salary good, is it? Looks like you get the pick of the PPs.”

Rhys didn’t reply. PP stood for Priority Provision, stores whose merchandise was unavailable to the general public. Owain ignored another glare from his uncle.” And at least you’re not in the firing line,” he persisted.

“Neither are you.”

I could feel Owain’s face flushing with embarrassment and rage. His brother had spoken diffidently but Owain could not have been more sensitive about the issue.

“Not out of choice,” he said hotly. “I’d be there now if I could.”

“I know,” Rhys said.

“At least I’ve served. Put my life on the line.”

Rhys looked down at his plate. “I didn’t mean anything.”

Owain reverted to Welsh: “You’ve got a fucking cheek, saying that to me.”

“Enough!” Sir Gruffydd shouted, lurching to his feet. “If you can’t be civil to one another, then close your mouths or get out of my sight!”

He was truly angry this time. Angry and, Owain realised, exhausted. He supported himself by resting both knuckles on the table.

“I’m sorry,” Owain said in Welsh. “Please forgive me.”

“It’s not me you ought to be apologising to,” the field marshal said, sticking resolutely to English. “Damn it all, Owain!”

Owain pushed back his chair and stood up, letting his napkin fall. One of the housemaids was hovering in the doorway with a tray of desserts. Owain pushed past her as he hurried out.

A short corridor took him to the front door. The guard on duty opened it and he stumbled outside.

I was as relieved as he was to be outside. The earlier thaw had given way to a renewed chill. Frost glittered on the steps, while overhead the sky was already darkening, even though it was no later than three-thirty. His uncle had always taken dinner in the afternoon, a custom which he claimed improved digestion and warded off nightmares.

Owain descended the steps and stood on the path. The house was of modest proportions, but surrounded by sturdy stone walls. Guards manned the front gates, smoking cigarettes and warming their hands on the slanted nose of an Echelon APC. A black Citroen staff car sat on the driveway, muddy slush now hardening to ice around its wheels. The old man must have had Rhys ferried in for the occasion. He set great store in family ties, the more so since his own direct bloodline had been extinguished. And Owainhad spoiled it all. But, try as he might, he couldn’t feel charitable towards Rhys. Why should he grow plump and pampered on the sacrifices of others?

Behind him the door opened again. His uncle came shuffling out.

“What on earth’s the matter with you?” he asked, more incomprehension than anger in his tone.

“I’m sorry,” Owain said again, taking care to stick to English. “I know you wanted it to be—” he tried to find a phrase—“like old times.”

The field marshal leant on his stick. “I don’t understand why there’s this bitterness between you, Owain. Care to enlighten me?”

How could he explain without saying that he considered Rhys a coward whose personal life he found repulsive?

“We’ve nothing in common,” he said.

“You used to be as thick as thieves.”

“That was a long time ago, sir.”

“He’s your brother. Doesn’t that count for something?”

“We live in different worlds. I can’t find it in me to respect what little I know of his.”

The field marshal shook his head. “You’re too hard on him, my boy. There’s a lot he’s not in a position to talk about. Not all of us are cut out to be men of action.”

“I can’t believe that his—activities have always been a credit to the family and in particular to your position, sir.”

Sir Gruffydd made a dismissive noise. “Which of us are free of peccadilloes, eh? Turn over any stone and you’ll find things crawling about underneath. It’s only human nature, after all.”

“That’s a very generous consideration, sir.”

“Set rank aside for a moment. This is a family gathering. Rhys is all you have apart from me. And I’m not always going to be around.”

His breathing was laboured in the sharp air. Owain said, “Is there something I should know, sir?”

The field marshal wasn’t looking at him. “We live in challenging times, Owain. There might come a day when you’ll need one another, when the ties of blood are the only thing you can be certain of. Could be sooner than later.”

He didn’t elaborate. Owain was unsure what to say, though he was conscious that Rhys and his uncle were his sole surviving relatives. When the o marsha was gone—then what?

Frustrated with taking a back seat, I made Owain blurt: “Are you dying?”

His uncle at first looked surprised. He gave a humourless laugh. “Aren’t we all?”

Owain squirmed with embarrassment: he couldn’t fathom what had possessed him to say this. In a sense it was cruel of me, but his uncle didn’t show the least sign of being offended. And there was a limit to my tolerance of Owain’s reticence.

I had also wanted to see if he finally knew I was there. But he viewed my interventions as maverick outbursts of his own.

“My dinner’s getting cold,” Sir Gruffydd said, going inside. “Clear your head and get back to the dinner table. Where you belong.”

Still feeling mortified, Owain walked around to the garden at the rear of the house. The walls obscured views of everything except the lowering sky. They were in Croissy, but it might have been anywhere.

Only the muted drone of the Echelon’s engine disturbed the silence. The garden was featureless, devoid of shrubbery. Its lawn had been swept and diminutive goalposts set up at either end. Near the centre spot several identical birds were rooting around, searching for something to eat.

“Redwings,” a voice said softly at his shoulder.

Rhys had come up behind him.

“Northern thrushes,” his brother went on. “Once upon a time they were rarely seen this far south.”

The usual irritation blossomed in Owain, swamping any feelings of shame. His brother had always been a pedant, always ready to flaunt his store of useless facts.

Owain turned slowly to face him. Rhys had only just come outside but already he was shivering, his hands clasped across his chest.

“What do you want?” Owain asked.

“I think we need to talk.”

“I’ve nothing left to say to you.”

“Perhaps you just need to listen.”

“To what? More empty boasting?”

Already his voice was raised again. Already Rhys was recoiling from it. I tried to calm him. They were saved from further embarrassment when Giselle appeared in the rear doorway and informed Owain that there was a telephone call for him.

The phone was in the lobby, an ancient shiny black Bakelite affair whose handset felt lead-weighted.

He put the receiver to his ear. There was the whoosh of static and below this a drowned, barely audible voice saying something in a querying tone.

Owain waited a moment to see if the interference would clear. The door to the dining room was ajar, his uncle and Giselle back at the table, talking quietly. Rhys passed by, not looking at him, closing the door as he rejoined the others.

Still the interference continued. It conveyed a sense of vastness and disorder, spreading out over the entire world like an electronic ocean into which he could quite easily be washed away. Amongst the turbulence there suddenly surfaced something that bore his name.

He stared at the mouthpiece, said into it: “Marisa?”

TWENTY-TWO

“…consider yourself lucky… might take a little time… anything you wanted to talk about…”

It was a familiar male voice, casual yet somehow earnest, conversational but with a purpose.

I looked around. Geoff was beside me in a green waxed jacket, a tweed cap on his head. We were walking around a small lake on a common, Tanya some distance ahead in a wine-coloured parka.

It was a blustery afternoon, the wind cold as it came off the water. Nearby someone was flying a boxy scarlet-and-blue kite. Wimbledon Common. We had just come out of a pub where I’d eaten knuckle of lamb with mash and root vegetables: snug in the alcove near an open fire, Geoff and Tanya and me.

“The thing is, you’re bound to feel disorientated for a while. Don’t try to rush things.”

He spoke in a soft, reasonable tone without making eye contact. This was him in his professional capacity, perhaps hoping to tease something out of me. Or keep me lulled.

Under his jacket he wore a Fair Isle sweater in earthy, autumnal colours. Heathery woollen trousers were tucked into green Welling-tons. It was just perfect. Easy to imagine him walking the fields of a family estate with a shotgun draped over one arm. But his family weren’t really landed and he disapproved of blood sports.

By contrast Tanya was in black leggings, her hair flowing free. I suppose what had drawn her to him was Geoff’s seriousness of purpose, his steadfastness and honesty. In the long term they were qualities more durable than passion.

There was so much I had to do, so much to find out. But the pressing conviction remained that I needed to make sense of my own recent history, be certain I had everything in place. And Tanya was somehow central to this.

After receiving the photograph from Kiev, I didn’t hear anything from her for three months. I assumed she was still travelling. Then one day t a message on my father’s answer phone. Tatiana had died suddenly and was being cremated the following Monday. Tanya gave the time and place, said that it would be good to see me if I could make it.

I rang her number several times but there was no reply. I told Lyneth that I was going to London to scout for suitable living places. She didn’t understand why it was suddenly so urgent, but I insisted it couldn’t wait. I added that I might stay the night with Geoff, whom I’d mentioned to her before.

The service was being held in the local crematorium. Toting my overnight bag, I arrived late and found perhaps two dozen people in the chapel. I’d never imagined Tatiana would have had that many mourners. Tanya was at the front in a sober skirt and jacket. Beside her, in a dark suit, was a beardless Geoff.

Of course I shouldn’t have been surprised, but my own vanity undermined me. To see them together in such a formal setting was far more significant than on a mere holiday snap.

After the service I loitered outside, watching Tanya accept condolences from elderly well-heeled men. One by one they were led away to smart executive cars by middle-aged companions who were presumably their sons and daughters.

Finally Tanya stood alone. I went straight over and gave her a hug.

Tatiana had had a heart attack two days before what was probably her seventy-fifth birthday. Tanya had found her sitting slumped on the toilet with a copy of Hello on her lap, open on an article about Princess Diana.

I didn’t know you were back, was the only thing I could think of saying. Since June, she replied.

The cars were driving away. Tanya told me they were old colleagues, civil servants, most of them. They’d worked with Tatiana in the post-war years, in administration, they said. How did they know about the funeral? She reminded me of the yearly birthday phone calls from Lionel. Tanya had given him the news.

A silver Carina pulled up. Geoff was at the wheel. He greeted me heartily. Tanya climbed into the front passenger seat and asked if I was coming back to the house. I slung my bag into the back.

I didn’t allow much of a silence, remarking that it must have been a pleasant surprise to see so many mourners. Tanya said that they’d all been warm about her grandmother but uninformative about the precise nature of their working relationship. Lionel himself hadn’t been able to attend: he was ill, but had sent flowers and a card.

I asked about their travels. Tanya told me that over Christmas her grandmother had let slip that she had been living in Kharkov, in the eastern Ukraine, “when the Germans came”. She wouldn’t elaborate but was miffed that it hadn’t been on their autumn agenda. So she and Geoff had spent a few days there that spring.

Naturally I wanted to know more, but we’d reached the house and floral tributes from the service were waiting for us, some m neigh-bours who’d plainly been fond of the old woman. We decorated the living room, piling bouquets on sideboards and armchairs, hanging wreaths from the mantelpiece and around mirrors so that it looked almost festive.

We sat out in the back garden, just the three of us, sipping fizzy wine and munching corn chips. Tanya asked after my brother, and I also talked about my experiences with the abortive documentary. We didn’t so much skirt around any other details of my home life as tacitly declare them off limits.

At some point Geoff announced that he had a few errands to run. Tanya’s lack of surprise told me that this was a tactical move planned beforehand in the event of my appearance. Geoff even fetched my bag from the car and set it down at my feet.

As soon as he had gone, Tanya indicated my bag and asked if I was planning on staying the night.

I immediately plunged into a hectic confessional, beginning by saying that I’d told Lyneth I might be staying overnight at Geoff’s. I was conscious that I’d never mentioned her name to Tanya before, but I hurried on, telling her that it was true that we’d been going out since our schooldays but it was nothing passionate, that I’d stayed with her out of loyalty. I should have told her from the start but I was afraid it might spoil what we had. And what I still wanted.

Tanya regarded me gravely before saying that she’d had enough emotional upheaval for one day and did I want to see some holiday snaps?

I should have known that with Tanya these would not prove conventional tourist photographs. In fact the pictures, which showed a drab post-war Soviet city indistinguishable from many others, were far less interesting than the narrative that accompanied them.

Tatiana’s claim that she had been living in Kharkov “when the Germans came” proved ripe with all sorts of possibilities. The city, the fourth largest in the USSR, had been a centre of tank and tractor production and hence an important target for the invading Wehrmacht. The Germans first captured it in October 1941 and instituted a brutal regime in which opportunistic Ukrainian nationals were employed to police the local population. Always close to the front line and of strategic importance to both sides, Kharkov remained under military rather than Nazi administration. Briefly recaptured by the Russians fifteen months later, it was lost again within a month before the German army finally quit the city in August 1943. By this time the population had plummeted, with many of its women and young men deported west to serve the German war effort. Many others had died of starvation during the winter months when all available food was appropriated by its occupiers.

What there was no longer any means of knowing was how long Tatiana had actually spent in the city during this period—a question that was crucial to her ultimate fate. As a Russian national she would probably have been hated by the native Ukrainians, while as a university worker she would have been categorised as an intellectual by the Germans and shot. Had she remained in the city, she could only have survived by somehow making herself useful to the occupiers—but would have suffered the consequences with the return of the Red Army. Even enforced collaboration would not have saved her, given that liberated Soviet prisoners-of-war were routinely executed or shipped to the gulags.

Tanya showed me an old postcard of a building that she’d bought from a street trader who’d told her it was once the Gestapo headquarters in the city. Why such a building would be commemorated on a postcard was beyond both of us, but the old man had claimed that he was once imprisoned there. When the city was reoccupied by Soviet forces, the same building and its basement torture chambers had been used by the NKVD, the Soviet secret police, who added letterboxes so that liberated citizens could post denunciations of traitors.

Tanya had found no wartime trace of her grandmother. There was no way of knowing if she had used the same name in those days. Even if she had, it was a long time ago, and Petrova was as common a surname in Russia as Smith was in England.

Somehow Tatiana had not only survived but also ended up in the West. Tanya considered it unlikely that she had been in Kharkov when the Red Army recaptured it. Her knowledge of German might have meant that she was used by the occupiers for interrogations of captured Soviet officers. Or she could simply have been put aboard a slave train and sent west to become a captive worker for the Reich. If she had ended up in the British or American zones of occupation, she may have been employed as a translator by the Allied armies of occupation. Later she might have been granted special status and been dispatched to London, where her experience would have continued to be of considerable use during the Cold War.

There was another, rather more personal, scenario that I did not discuss with Tanya. As a young woman in 1941 it was highly likely that Tatiana had had the same striking good looks as her granddaughter. I could easily imagine her attracting the interest of a senior German officer who may well have continued his patronage throughout all the military upheavals that ensued. Such a man could have found her safe passage to the west at any time. She could have survived by the sheer good fortune of being a beauty.

The possibilities were numerous, and Tanya and I explored them with increasing relish as the afternoon shaded into evening and we sat together in the garlanded room. We even contemplated writing a fictionalised biography based on our speculations. There was nothing ghoulish in this: it was driven more by a sense of wanting to memorialise Tatiana’s doubtless remarkable story in some way.

Because of the absence of documentary evidence the true story of Tatiana’s life was always to remain an enigma. Though I often fantasised that one day Tanya would discover some crucial piece of evidence, or that one of her grandmother’s elusive civil service colleagues—if that’s what they really were—would re-establish contact with her, it never happened. The closed book of Tatiana’s life, with all its potential for drama, remained a slim domestic volume, crucial chapters missing, gone forever. It was much the same, I realised, for my own grandfather. He would never have the opportunity to answer the implicit charges that my father had brought against him in The Eye of the Storm.

A sheepdog came bounding out of nowhere and waded into the shallow water of the pond to retrieve a red ball. It clambered out, shaking itself, spraying Geoff with water.

I heard Tanya laughing. She was on the opposite side of the lake and waved to us with a mittened hand. There was a little cluster of young children nearby, shepherded by a woman in a navy coat and floral headscarf. Tanya tossed a stray ball back at them. One of the boys kicked it back in her direction. Two of the girls ran after it, squealing. Someone was making groaning noises.

“Owen?” said Geoff.

It was me. I made myself stop.

“It’s all right,” I said. “Felt a little nauseous.”

I made him walk on, my back the children. He kept asking if I was OK. I kept insisting I was. My stomach was churning. My head felt like it was going to implode.

He led me gently by the elbow. I was grateful for the contact, for his solidity. He was one of those lucky people with no rough edges, immune to the grubby sort of insecurities that afflict most of us from time to time. He hadn’t returned to Tanya’s house after the cremation for over two hours, by which time I’d told Tanya that I planned to move back to London chiefly to be close to her again. Tanya gave a small laugh at this and said, With Lyneth. She asked if we would like to rent the house while she was away. She was going to need reliable tenants. Away? I said. She was off to California, to Berkeley, to do a PhD. Geoff was accompanying her. He had an internship at a hospital in San Francisco. They were leaving at the end of the month.

In desperation I asked her to write to me so that we could stay in touch. She invoked Lyneth: Wouldn’t she find it odd? I insisted I didn’t care, that whatever happened I couldn’t bear the thought of not being any part of her life again.

She took pity on me, promising that she’d let me know how she was getting on, would send any mail to my father’s address in Bishopston, in a plain brown envelope to avoid embarrassment. This was, of course, a joke, but for me it was no laughing matter.

“Dad! Dad!”

The girls were calling me. I looked around. There was nothing. Tears were oozing out of my eyes.

“Come on,” Geoff said gently. “Nearly there.”

He led me towards the road, where the Scenic was waiting. Didn’t he deserve Tanya far more than me? Wasn’t I, even now, more preoccupied with my private yearnings for Tanya than the whereabouts of my own family? Though I no longer believed them dead, their absence was like a form of bereavement. I could visualise myself in Hamley’s. Sara inspecting the jigsaws and board games, Bethany in the pink and purple realms of fairy-tale Barbie. That had been the previous Christmas, the last one we’d spent together. I was alone in Regent Street when I’d had the accident. Just like Owain.

Tanya came up and swabbed my nose with a tissue. I could smell the sheepskin leather of her mittens, feel the wool brush againsmy chin. She tucked her arm forcibly through mine and kept me walking. Geoff went ahead, hurrying towards the Renault.

When he’d returned to Tatiana’s house it was with a Chinese takeaway for three. I’d been drinking steadily and kept doing so while we ate, conversing on autopilot as we talked about old times, sticking resolutely to our student days. At some point Tanya announced that she didn’t want to spend the night alone, would make up beds for both of us. Neither of us wanted to sleep in Tatiana’s bedroom, thus neatly sparing Tanya any dilemma of who would be closest to her. I arranged armchair cushions on the living room floor, while Geoff bedded down next door on the front room sofa.

And that was how I spent my last night with her: in a room full of dead flowers, feeling as if I was already worlds away. Next morning they drove me to Paddington station. Geoff took himself off again to allow Tanya and me a last few minutes alone. It’s you I should be with, I blurted, but she just laughed and said I didn’t know what I wanted. It would be three years before I saw her again.

TWENTY-THREE

The sound of laughter again. Only this time it was Marisa. She was hauling me to my feet, wobbling as her skates shifted about on the ice.

I managed to find my footing. Marisa was bundled up in a black outfit with furlined collars and cuffs. She looked like the young heroine from a Hollywood version of a Tolstoyan epic, her hair tucked under a domed hat.

Both of us were breathing hard, puffing vapour. A few other skaters were in action on the ice, most of them staying close to the tumbled remains of the stone bridge that jutted out from the bank. They were all military personnel, young men and woman enjoying a brief liberation from their duties. The boundaries of the “rink” had been demarcated with striped yellow-and-black hazard tape pinned to the ice with chunks of masonry.

The frozen Seine was dusted with fresh snow that had fallen overnight, its whiteness etched with the lines and arcs of the other skaters. On its far side a fire had been lit under the bridge’s broken overhang. A ragtag group of dark figures was gathered around it, roasting small carcasses on skewers, thin smoke rising slowly and forming a hazy blue layer in the windless air.

Marisa’s face was so close to mine that I could feel the heat of her breath on my cheek. I became conscious that it was Owain, not me. He and Marisa held one another at the waist, still unsteady on their feet, Marisa laughing. Neither of them were practised skaters and both had taken several tumbles.

It was a moment when it would have been easy for Owain to kiss her, though of course he did not. Gingerly they made their way back to the bank, where an ice mobile was parked on the shoreline. Marisa had picked him up in it at their rendezvous earlier that morning, a vintage Skoda she’d temporarily requisitioned from a refitting shop. She’d never driven one before but somehow they’d managed to survive a hair-raising trip along the river, dodging ice-locked boats and refuse spills that would lie there until the spring thaw. Owain could still taste the craft’s sooty exhaust.

They surrendered their skates to an old woman huddled in a booth and climbed the embankment steps to a prefabricated building that housed a restaurant. It was one of the few independent establishments that still served a three-course meal, run by an enterprising Laotian family who specialised in seafood but would rustle up a steak for those customers who wouldn’t question the meat’s provenance.

The restaurant was deserted, and they were given a window table on the balcony overlooking the river. The balcony was enclosed but there was no heating, and Marisa used a serviette to swab the condensation from the window. They watched the refugees and homeless around the fire on the opposite shore. Uniformly clad in clothing blackened by grime and smoke, wearing wraparound hats of every description, the men, women and children waited in turn for their portions. Another company of the army of the dispossessed.

“What do you think they’re cooking?” Marisa said to Owain.

“I’d rather not know.”

“It feels obscene to be dining here when they’re scavenging for scraps.”

“It’s not our doing. And we have to eat, just as they do.”

She still looked troubled, though it surprised him. It was a common enough sight.

“We can always leave,” he said.

She shook her head. “What difference would it make?”

They ordered a fish soup. Marisa said something in French to the waiter that Owain didn’t catch. She handed over a hundred euromark note and told him she didn’t want change.

“Very generous,” Owain remarked.

She tucked her purse away. “Carl gives me plenty. I always have more than I can spend.”

“So where is he at the moment?”

She sighed. “Another meeting. We leave tomorrow morning.”

She’d rung to tell him that today would be their last chance to meet.

“Any idea where he’s taking you?” Owain asked.

“Carl would not go anywhere without importance, even for leisure. He said it would be somewhere warm, though I think it will turn out to be another working holiday. I’ll have to fence for myself.”

“Fend.”

“Fence. Nowhere is safe when you are a woman on your own.”

She said this without self-pity.

“Perhaps he’ll lend you his Radom.”

Legister’s Polish handgun: a twenty-centimetre combat pistol that he had used to shoot a feral mastiff when he and Marisa were walking around Versailles. Owain was one of the first to reach them and see the corpse. A single 9mm shot, just below one eye, the dog lying in the snow with its head in a comma of blood. According to Marisa the creature had loped out from behind a tree as they were passing. Legister pulled the pistol from his overcoat and despatched it with a single shot.

A big tureen arrived, brimming with dumplings and flakes of greyish fish. Wedges of coarse brown bread accompanied it, still warm from the oven. It was far more than the two of them could eat. They filled their bowls and ate in silence, Marisa sipping rose from a half bottle, Owain with an untouched glass of Vichy water.

The stew was heavily spiced, the fish indeterminate but tasty enough. An odd air of solemnity had descended over the table, in marked contrast to their earlier frivolity. There was a sense that they had somehow reached a climax to their gaiety too early. Both of them stared out the window. The skaters were all gone but the people under the bridge remained, now huddled around the guttering fire.

Marisa didn’t finish her bowl, and Owain had no appetite for a refill. She asked him if he had had enough. When he nodded, she took a napkin and lifted the tureen off the table. It was still three-quarters full.

“Marisa—” he began, knowing what she intended.

She shook her head, shutting off any objection, and began to manoeuvre the tureen towards the fire escape. Owain had no alternative but to take one of the handles and help her carry it down. They set it down on one of the bridge’s fallen stones.

Marisa began calling to the people across the river in French, telling them that there was a portion of free stew for anyone who could find a container for it.

Within no time a crowd had formed, thrusting plastic bowls, broken cups and tobacco tins at her. Their eyes looked large and white and infinitely needy. They stank of sewage, smoke and pulverised masonry. Their filthy condition blurred all distinctions of nationality, though pleading voices were raised in a variety of languages. Some were obviously diseased but Marisa showed no qualms in serving them. They ranged in age from the elderly who could barely stand upright to children too young to walk who clung to the necks of adults—adults who disregarded their very presence as they jostled forward and begged for their portions.

And more of them were coming. Figures were appearing from the ruins on the far bank, surmounting crests of rubble, scrambling down the embankment, slithering across the ice in their haste to join the throng. Marisa was heroically doling out portions, one ladleful per person, but she couldn’t keep up. The growing crowd pressed in more strongly, more vehemently, squabbles breaking out as the etiquette of the queue fragmented in the face of inishing reserves.

Despite their desperation, not a single person in the crowd attempted to manhandle Marisa; they were afraid to touch her, afraid to risk rejection. Nevertheless, it was obvious to Owain that the situation was swiftly becoming unmanageable. In French, he shouted to the crowd to get back, form an orderly line. But it was far too late for this and no one would budge.

The tureen was almost empty. Owain drew his Walther and shouted that there was no more food, that they should disperse. But while nervous faces turned towards the sound of his anger, still no one was prepared to withdraw.

I was trying to stop him firing over their heads when I heard a deep-throated barking. The restaurant proprietor came down the steps, followed by two younger men. One was carrying a rifle, the other restraining a black Labrador on a chain leash that was already barking fiercely.

The noise and sight of the dog finally galvanised the crowd. As swiftly as they had come, they began to melt away, leaving only a few die-hards at the very front of the queue.

One of them was a slender young man with an avid face who pushed an upturned helmet at Marisa over the heads of others. It was a GRP Alliance army helmet, stripped of its internal webbing.

Fury welled up in Owain. Before Marisa could ladle the last of the stew into it, he stepped forward and knocked the helmet out of the man’s hands. He pushed him back so hard he went sprawling.

The man lay still for a moment before heaving himself up and attempting to recover the helmet. Owain kicked his hand away. He brandished his pistol and the man scrambled away. I had to focus so intensely on keeping his rage in check that I was quite unable to discern what had actually provoked it.

Owain retrieved the helmet. The restaurant owner approached Marisa and began gesticulating wildly and jabbering in broken French. Owain couldn’t understand most of it. He heard Marisa reply that since she had paid a good price for the stew it was hers to dispose of as she pleased.

Owain stepped between them

“This is an unfortunate misunderstanding of no great importance,” he said in French. “Let’s content ourselves with the fact that there has been no injury or damage, and therefore no need for continued unpleasantness. We are finished here. I suggest we all get back to our business without further fuss.”

Still holding the helmet, Owain walked Marisa across the ice towards the snow mobile. She kept glancing at him curiously.

“I’ll drive us back,” he said.

“Why did you hit him?”

His behaviour had clearly disturbed her as much as me. Still Owain gave nothing away. He climbed into the driver’s seat.

“Why, Owain?”

“Because he’d jumped the queue.”

She didn’t move. “No. That wasn’t it.”

He hadn’t wanted to explain. But he owed it her. Turning the helmet in his hands he pointed to two small holes at the front.

“See these? Rivet holes. For a badge, the circlet of stars. Probably levered off and sold.”

Marisa looked blank.

“They don’t make them like this any more. To reduce production costs, they starting leaving the badges off. This has to be at least twenty years old.” He showed her the dark interior, criss-crossed with paler strips where the padding had been. “Glass reinforced plastic with a carbon fibre lining. An officer’s helmet, rank of colonel at least.”

It was obvious the significance of this still eluded her.

“Don’t you see?” Owain said vehemently. “It couldn’t have been his. He had no business having it.”

TWENTY-FOUR

Tanya. A black-and-white photograph on the inside flap of the dust jacket. It was a side-lit shot of her sitting at a desk, staring off-picture at something, looking both glamorous and intellectual, the epitome of the seriously sexy science writer.

The cover of the book carried her name, Tanya Z Peters, and the title, The Paradox Realm, in bilious green and tangerine lettering. It was a popularisation of quantum physics, its cover a lurid swirl of electric pastels.

Tanya hated the cover because it suggested a sherbety confection of easily digestible facts aimed at the casual reader. In fact it was a book about a difficult and non-intuitive subject, aimed at a scientifically literate audience. I’d read it soon after it appeared and still found much of it bewildering.

Her other titles were on display in a glass-fronted bookcase of her study. The first was Elemental Fired, a book on stellar nucleosynthesis that had been published when she was still in her twenties. Others had followed on subjects as diverse as genetic engineering and the greenhouse effect. She was a regular contributor to Radio 4 and the Discovery Channel, and she also taught a course on the social impact of scientific developments for the Open University.

Her study was quite unlike my father’s: a light, airy place, its window overlooking the garden. There were modern prints on the wall, a bronze samovar, a set of Russian dolls arranged along the mantelpiece. Trophies of her travels.

I put the book back on the shelf, saw a copy of Battlegrounds. The book had been ghosted by a freelancer but was based on e wres transcripts that I had written. It seemed a fake in comparison to Tanya’s, not truly a product of my own efforts.

I felt a powerful urge to bolt from the house, go running and never come back until I’d found out where I was supposed to be.

A toilet flushed and a door opened. Geoff came in.

He wore a navy suit and his only concession to informality was that the top button on his shirt was undone and his striped tie loosened. I wondered if he had just popped home for a couple of hours, was taking time out to give me a bit of psychological counselling.

As though rehearsed, we resumed our seats in armchairs opposite one another. “So,” he said, smiling. “Where were we?”

“You were asking me if I was still having problems with my concentration,” I said, surprised that I had remembered it.

He nodded earnestly. “And?”

“And what?”

This threw him.

I grinned and said, “Joke.”

Geoff mustered a smile of his own, though it wasn’t particularly convincing.

“I’m finding it hard to retain anything,” I said, giving him what he wanted. “Though I know you’ve just been for a pee.”

He looked at me carefully, trying to figure out whether I was still joking or not. Very straightforward, Geoff: no side to the man whatsoever. I’d always imagined it would be a disadvantage in his profession, but evidently not. Unless he was a Supreme Master of subterfuge.

“Believe me,” I insisted, “it’s a major achievement.”

Slow, repeated nods, his gaze on me all the while, inviting some further comment. I started thinking about Owain and the sudden rage that had enveloped him over the helmet. He’d seen it as a form of sacrilege, a filthy grasping civilian in unlawful possession of precious military equipment. But there was even more to it than this.

“Any difficulties sleeping?” Geoff prompted.

I made a noise like a laugh. “Staying awake’s the big problem.”

“But no headaches?”

“Not as such.”

He waited. I felt obliged to give him more.

“Just a vague buzzing sometimes. Especially when people are talking to me. It gs into a kind of auditory blur. I lose track.”

He didn’t pick up on this. “Any giddiness or nausea?”

“No. Nothing like that.” Which wasn’t totally true. “I just don’t feel with it.”

This was putting it mildly, but I certainly had no intention of telling him about where I really went when I wasn’t “with it”. He’d have me pegged as psychotic or brain-damaged in no time at all. Which I supposed was a distinct possibility. Except that it didn’t feel like that. It didn’t feel like that at all. It felt real.

“Well,” Geoff said again, “there was no indication of any organic damage. But, as you know, Tanya feels you’re still not quite yourself.”

I didn’t know, but it was scarcely surprising.

“We could send you back for more tests. Just to be sure there’s nothing we’ve missed.”

“Ah.” I wasn’t keen. “You think the old neural spark plugs may be misfiring.”

His laugh was far too hearty. “I don’t think it’s very likely. My own suspicion is that you’re still in the recuperative phase. But sometimes there can be hidden trauma.”

Of course there was trauma, I thought. Aside from my lurches into Owain’s existence I still didn’t know where my family was, or why they’d left. I had a sudden image of a terraced Victorian house with a burgundy door and a white-painted wooden fence. I knew at once it was where Lyneth and I had lived. A compact two-bedroom place with a long narrow garden, the girls in bunk beds in the rear bedroom. Down the hill from Blackheath not far from Lewisham station. I’d put up a pair of swings at the bottom of the garden one summer. We’d been trying to decide whether to have a loft conversion or simply move out. Lyneth favoured going back to Wales, whereas I was keen to stay in London because my career was flourishing. But we hadn’t fallen out over that.

Somewhere in the house another door opened and I heard a burst of music—a swirling, soulful tune, with a lyric like a holiday commercial.

Geoff was waiting for me to say something. He gave every appearance of being relaxed and patient, but he’d crossed his legs and was wiggling his right foot.

Good old Geoff: never a brusque word to say to anyone. His three years in California had left no mark on him: he was still the perfect English gentleman.

He was talking to me again, but I let the words roll past.

By the time he and Tanya had returned to London they were already a couple. I knew this from the postcards Tanya sent every few months—pictures of quirky Americana following visits to Las Vegas, Yosemite, Beverl Hills, Salt Lake City. They always carried brief messages detailing humorous incidents but few personal details.

As promised, the postcards always came in brown envelopes, my name and address written in anonymous neat capitals. My father diligently observed my instructions to keep them safe until I visited rather than post them on to me in Brockley, where Lyneth and I had bought a flat. She was doing teacher training while I had been taken on by a small independent production company that made educational videos for schools and colleges—twenty-five-minute pieces on British history and the geography of the islands. I began as a researcher but soon progressed to organising location shoots, staging re-enactments, writing scripts and doing voice-overs.

I’d imagined that Lyneth wouldn’t thrive in London, but she met another woman from south Wales at the local library who ran coffee mornings and a nursery group. Lyneth swiftly became involved, being especially invaluable for babysitting duties since she was the only one of the group with no children of her own.

This was a looming issue, along with familial pressure to get married. Our sex life was regular enough if unspectacular. For two years we jollied along amicably, though occasionally I’d find myself looking at her and wondering what she saw in me, and what I was doing with her.

That November Lyneth announced that she was pregnant. By mutual agreement I’d continued using condoms, and inevitably there had been accidents with slippage and haste. They happened so infrequently I’d ceased to take account of them and even Lyneth, who demonstrated perfect recall for such instances, couldn’t specify this particular occasion. Perhaps it had just split. Perhaps there had been a leakage. Perhaps, it occurred to me much later, she’d actually contrived it out of sheer impatience.

It was obvious she wanted the baby. My feelings were more mixed but the alternatives were far too ugly. Apart from anything else I felt that I owed it her.

Sara was born shortly after Lyneth obtained her B.Ed. and shortly before Geoff and Tanya returned from California. We’d married by then, in a church near her family home. Her parents were thrilled. Even my father raised a smile. Rhys was my best man. He made a near-incomprehensible speech in which he likened us to the n-p junction of a transistor.

I realised I was laughing. Geoff was sitting there, looking quite perplexed.

“Sorry,” I said. “I was thinking about something else.”

The door opened and Tanya poked her head into the room.

“Everything all right?”

Her hair was tied back, a pencil propped behind one ear, her reading glasses hanging from her neck.

“Wonderful,” I said, deadpan.

Tanya glanced at Geoff before giving me a look that I read as sympathet to my plight in the specific sense of having to accommodate Geoff’s professional interest in it. In that moment it was easy to imagine that he was the visitor and I the resident, that Tanya and I somehow still had the closer relationship, despite the formalities of marriage and cohabitation. I felt quite blithe.

TWENTY-FIVE

Morning prayers.

It was a small chapel—or rather a room furnished as one. Field Marshal Maredudd and Giselle Vigoroux sat with their heads bowed in the front rank of chairs as a chaplain gave the usual thanks for their blessings and asked that true believers everywhere be allowed to stay in God’s grace.

Most of the desk chairs packed into the room were filled with personnel. Owain was sitting alone at the back, waiting for the service to end. The chaplain stood in front of a gilt cross set on a small covered table. A picture of a haloed Jesus hung on the wall above it. He floated above a landscape in which the wretched and needy worshipped at his feet, accepting the shining spiritual bounty that flowed in golden rays from his outstretched hands.

His uncle always made him attend the services when they were together, judging his declared atheism irrelevant to the requisite observance. Maintaining ritual, he would declare, was vital to a healthy spirituality, irrespective of belief. Without God, he often added, the whole damn thing was meaningless. Owain found it hard to disagree with this.

His uncle had been raised a Methodist, but now most Christians in the country, and in western Europe at large, belonged to the officially sanctioned United Ecumenical Church, which embraced everyone from Catholics to Nonconformists. The flexibility of its creed suited the diminished availability of both congregations and places of worship.

Now the chaplain was espousing the righteousness of their cause and asserting his belief that with God’s help they would ultimately prevail against all the forces of darkness that sought to overwhelm them. He made a point of stressing that he did not identify those forces with specific races or religions: all beliefs were tolerated and valued within the Alliance borders through the enlightened assimilation of refugees and liberated populations. Far from being exclusive, the Church sought to embrace everyone in a holy community of civilised values they were forever determined to protect.

The small multinational congregation murmured its “amens” at appropriate points. I found myself wondering if any of them were Moslems, Hindus or Sikhs. If any were, they would have found little in the chaplain’s words to offend their religious sensibilities. The expressed allegiance transcended both faith and nationality. It was rooted in an unspecified yet pervasive sense of protected territoriality, one based on values that were essentially military. The enemy was simply the spiritual barbarians outside the walls of the city.

Only Owain showed any stirrings of dissent. He had cast his mind far beyond the confines of the room, to distant places beyond the frontiers where others were worshipping: Confucians and Shintoists in far-eastern temples; the Orthodox congregations of the old Soviet sates and dissenting émigré Greeks; Jews in their Diaspora; Pagans and Animists in the nether regions of the world; Evangelicals, Mormons and the Christian fundamentalists of the American Bible Belt—all consumed with their own particular brand of righteousness, all possessed of their own spiritual certainties and the shining moral imperatives that flowed from them. Antagonistic to those who did not share their beliefs.

Owain knew that such thoughts were vaguely seditious—but only if he ever expressed them. Which he had no intention of doing. As the service ended he sprang up and opened the door, almost standing to attention as his uncle came out first, Giselle following.

“Don’t forget to collect the hymn books,” the field marshal said to him with a gruff laugh as he shuffled off down the corridor, tapping his stick almost jauntily as he went.

“He’s not going to need you this morning,” Giselle told him. “Probably not for the rest of the day.” She handed him a two-way radio. “I’ll contact you if you’re wanted.”

They were in a secluded mansion near Catterick with protected short-range communications. His uncle had a series of meetings with strategic planning groups, who had various war-game scenarios to present to him. They had flown in by Shrike early that morning from London.

Owain checked his watch. It was not yet eight o’clock.

“Anything you’d like me to do?” he asked.

Giselle shook her head. “Relax. Go and get some breakfast. There’s quite a good menu—by English standards.”

I tried to make him say something, but he was perfectly controlled, letting nothing untoward out. It was as if he rationalised my presence merely as an occasional tendency towards careless thoughts and actions, a slightly wayward aspect of his personality which he was determined to resist.

He followed the signs downstairs to the canteen. The smell of bacon greeted him, drenching his mouth. The chalked menu was also advertising fresh farm eggs, greenhouse tomatoes and Assam tea. I sensed him still holding himself under strict control; I could observe but not participate in any way.

He ordered a full English breakfast. The place was already crowded, mostly with naval staff. At a table in one corner sat a small group of raddled young women, migrants by the look of them, tarted up in fake leather, clinging skirts and dark stockings. Sipping drinks and smoking cigarettes, they jabbered at one another in heavily accented English. The youngest looked barely pubescent.

Owain carried his tray to the opposite side of the room, occupying a stool at a ledge near the serving counter. It faced a mirror, which began to ripple like water. He focused on his food: bacon, eggs and tomato with a thick triangle of fried bread. Three spoonfuls of sugar in his tea.

It was hot in the canteen, and the drone of conversation from the other tales was like a murmuring in his head. His stomach felt both hollow and bloated. He kept eating, forcing the food into his mouth, washing it down with the tea. There were other servicemen he’d recognised when he’d entered but he couldn’t contemplate the idea of small talk and brittle bonhomie.

His head was throbbing. He looked up, and I saw myself, my tongue poking out.

I squeezed my eyes shut, opened them again. My tongue was a healthy pink at its edges but yellowish-grey at its centre. A pale sea-blue room surrounded me. It stayed.

There was a toothbrush in my hand. I used it to scrub my tongue until I gagged.

A few deep breaths. Still here. I looked down at the blister pack of tablets on the window ledge above the sink. Small red ones, anticonvulsives, anti-psychotics, antidepressants—I couldn’t remember which. To be taken after meals, with water or a hot drink.

I pressed out two but dropped them down the toilet. There was a bottle containing white tablets. Again I removed a pair and consigned them to the same place. And flushed, watching the water swirl and foam with pine-scented cleanser, before putting the pack and bottle back in the overhead cupboard.

I’d been doing this for days, I remembered: morning and night.

Tanya’s bathroom, a bright clean space of gleaming chrome, white porcelain, aquamarine tiles. I was standing naked, just out of the shower, a navy towel at my feet. There was a disposable razor on the washbasin—one of Tanya’s. I’d been about to use it, despite the fact that my own electric razor sat in full view on the window sill. It was years since I’d last wet-shaved.

I looked in the mirror. Owain was gazing over the shoulder of his own reflection. One of the young women was close by. Eighteen or nineteen, with peroxide hair, dark eye make-up, lipstick like a silvery bruise. She was clad in a tight black skirt and a khaki combat jacket. Slavic, by the look of her, probably with a limited grasp of English, a stock vocabulary of come-hither phrases.

Owain looked past her to the others at the table. They were laughing, appeared to be enjoying one another’s company. The Soft Division, soldiers called them; the Pink Brigades. They could absorb any thrust, frontal assaults or rearguard actions. They were experts at close-quarter engagements.

The blonde woman’s face was ash-pale with lack of sleep. Doubtless she had a quota to fulfil. There would be rooms set aside for them, perhaps even an anonymous customer log. Payment according to results.

Owain stumbled off his stool and went in search of the nearest men’s room. They unnerved him, these whores, even though he knew they were powerless. He’d served with men on the front who’d ruined such creatures in a single brutal encounter; men who would only take women in the teeth of their opposition; men who liked an audience, who preferred minors or mutilation. Under circumstances where there was no prospect of sanction, any appetite could be satisfied.

He’d had his own opportunities, of course. Once, while doing a routine sweep of houses in a Polish village near the NGZ, he and his men had come upon a young woman who’d tried to attack them with a knife. A real vixen whom he’d only managed to subdue by pinning her down on a bed. When he looked around his men were withdrawing, laughing, saying that they’d give him ten minutes.

The woman lay beneath him, her handsome face still full of a defiance that suggested she was determined to survive anything he could do to her. This aroused him, as did her continued angry silence as he tore open her clothes. She would submit to him, her expression said, but he would never conquer her. Terms that he considered more than acceptable.

But when it came to it, he couldn’t perform. It wasn’t long after Caroline had left, and something had shut down. Physically nothing would stir, despite his ardour, despite all his frantic strivings. Eventually she began to laugh at him—a scornful, heartless laugh, devoid of redemption for either of them. He put his pistol to the side of her head, his other hand around her throat. Almost fired. But she’d gone silent and was looking at him with terrified eyes. Eventually she started to make gagging noises. He tore his hand away, fired a single shot into the wall just above her head and stormed out, flooded with rage and shame.

Ever since he’d avoided the danger, embracing chastity as a form of purification. He had even, despite all his usual instincts, confessed to Marisa soon after they met that he was incapable of physical arousal. The admission was a form of intimacy that liberated both of them not so much from temptation itself as from its necessary consequences. He was free to enjoy her company without the risk of compromising himself.

I could sense Owain writhing at these thoughts, wanting to banish them to the deepest recesses of his mind. They were a fact of his life that he preferred to remain implicit and guarded from the attentions of others. It was another reason why he was drawn to Marisa: she had accepted his condition from the outset, seeing it as noble. But he was also shamed and angered by it.

In the men’s room an NCO in shirtsleeves was washing his hands at the sink. He looked vaguely familiar, greeted Owain cheerfully. Owain fled into one of the cubicles, locking the door behind him.

His nausea had subsided and yet he still felt sick. He closed his eyes, willing himself to be calm.

For a while there was only the sound of his breathing. I became aware of a knocking, a steady tapping on the door.

“Are you all right in there?”

More knocking. I unlocked the door and opened it.

“Aren’t you ready yet?” Tanya said in a tone of faint exasperation.

I was still naked, the towel clutched at my midriff.

“Ready for what?”

“We’re going out. Did you forget?”

Completely, though I wasn’t about to admit it. “I was thinking about trying a wet shave.”

The white plastic razor was in my hand.

“I wouldn’t advise it,” she said, gently lifting it from my fingers. “I use it for my legs. And my bikini line.”

TWENTY-SIX

We ascended from the shooting gallery, Owain flexing his fingers to restore circulation. He’d spent most of the morning inside its subterranean halls, with their ersatz landscapes and every kind of weapon from the latest pistols to hand-held rocket launchers. He’d flamed tanks, brought down helicopters, planted a missile straight through the slit eye of an enemy bunker and watched it erupt in freeze-motion like an unfurling blossom. Hidden from the light, the artifice of the machines worked perfectly. The surrogate action had done much to restore his spirits.

The complex was well equipped, with a swimming pool, fitness suites and viewing theatres showing the latest Cinema Vérité releases. Owain retraced his path to the chapel room, and found it filled with a small but raucous audience who were watching jerky video footage on the screen that had been set up at its front. It showed a portly middle-aged man, who was obviously known to them, frantically mounting a much younger woman in a pink ballerina’s tutu who had draped herself across a gymnasium vaulting horse. She was looking knowingly at what might have been a hidden camera with a crafted expression in which outrage and amusement were intermixed. There were bursts of hilarity and encouragement from the watchers.

Owain descended the stairs and went outside. He walked down through formal gardens of pruned rose bushes and stunted shrubs, past ranks of greenhouses, workshops, stables. Migrant workers were using besoms to brush the snow off the fairways and greens of a golf course. A quartet of senior officers was already teeing up at the first hole.

It was a surprisingly bright morning, the clouds like mother-of-pearl. He found himself in woodland, next to a glittering stream. He’d come out without an overcoat but the freezing air was invigorating. He followed the stream through the woodland until eventually the trees thinned and he came out on heath land where a tall triple-layered fence marked the edge of the estate.

There were distant bursts of gunfire. Surmounting the hill, he saw beyond the fence a small group of riders pursuing a darting creature over the white landscape: feline, with mottled grey flanks, like an arctic leopard. It was a werecat, a breed originally engineered as a potential plague carrier but released into the wild for sport. The riders, all women, sat in pairs on the broad backs of their horses, the pillions brandishing automatic rifles. They swiftly vanished between the folds of the hill.

The fence was electrified, enclosing a tank trap and, according to the signs, landmines. The ground dropped away sharply, was almost a cradown which he might easily plunge. He looked skywards, searching for the bright smear of the sun. Suddenly he felt adrift again, almost disembodied. If he let himself fall, who would ever find him?

“So?” Tanya said. “What did you think?”

We were coming out of a cinema in Leicester Square. Already it was getting dark.

I looked blankly at her. I couldn’t remember a single thing about the movie. Not one thing.

She gave a short laugh.

“What?” I said.

“You were sitting so still I had to keep nudging you to check you were awake.”

She tucked her arm through mine and led me off. Inwardly I was still reeling. What would happen to me if Owain died? Would my connection with his world be severed? Or would I be extinguished too? It was a very real possibility, given my increasingly visceral identification with him. I was also unnerved by the revelation about his sexuality and its murky undercurrents. The more I found out about him, the more he alarmed me.

We wandered across the square. It was filled with neon and bustle, people hurrying in all directions, wolfing burgers, talking on mobiles. It was the first time I’d been in central London since the explosion. Regent Street wasn’t too far away, a few minutes walk at most. Fortunately we were going in the opposite direction.

“Are you hungry?” Tanya asked. “We ought to eat. There probably won’t be much this evening apart from vol-au-vents and carrot sticks.”

She yanked me through a forecourt of empty tables. “By the way, who’s Marisa?”

I jolted. “What?”

“You said her name at one point. While you were dozing.”

A trilling noise. Tanya unzipped her shoulder bag and rummaged inside. It would probably be Geoff calling. I felt as if I had been rescued.

Something squawked. It startled him. A second or two passed before he realised it was the radio in his pocket.

Owain pulled it free. He was walking along a two-lane road, keeping up a brisk pace to banish the chill of the day. He’d followed the line of the perimeter fence and must have almost completed a circuit of the estate. He couldn’t imagine where all the time had gone. Now, with night rapidly falling, he had no idea where he was.

A crackle. “Owain?” Giselle’s voice.

“Yes?”

“Where are you?”

“Out walking.”

“We need you here. A.s.a.p., please.”

He could hear an uncharacteristic anxiety in her voice.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“The field marshal. He’s collapsed. Just get yourself back here, OK?”

He asked what had happened, but she’d already cut the connection. Owain thrust the radio into his pocket and broke into a jog, heading towards where he thought the nearest road would be.

Soon afterwards he heard an engine sound. A squat Centaur ATV appeared from behind rusty mounds of rhododendron.

Owain stood in the middle of the road, waving his arms. The Centaur pulled up. It had army markings, a young khaki-bereted head poking out of its top. A corporal.

“I need a lift back to the house,” Owain called.

The corporal squinted at him through the gloom. “Can I ask what you’re doing out here, sir?”

“Bird watching,” Owain said aggressively, leaping up on to a wheel arch. “This is an emergency. Get moving!”

It took less than a minute to reach the mansion. Slivers of golden light were leaking out of its shuttered windows.

His uncle had been put to bed in one of the upstairs rooms. Giselle was at his side, as was another man whom Owain recognised. A portable television sat next to the bed, but Sir Gruffydd lay with his eyes closed, breathing shallowly, the colour drained from his face.

“He collapsed an hour after lunch,” Giselle told him.

“What happened? Is it his heart?”

Giselle shook her head. “We think he ate something that disagreed with him. They’ve just pumped his stomach.”

Strands of curly white hair were stuck to his forehead. The corners of his lips were cracked and crusted with dried blood.

I made Owain ask: “Was he poisoned?”

“Unlikely,” said the doctor. It was Tyler, the man who’d attended him after Regent Street. “Though if you ask me the chef wants shooting.”

“Mussels,” Giselle said. “He had a big dish. I warned him they didn’t smell right.”

Tyler turned to a nurse. “Where’s the damned monitor?”

“It’s on its way,” she told him. “They’re having to bring it up from the gyms.”

“Is he going to be OK?” Owain asked.

“He’ll be on his back for a day or two,” Tyler said. “Should sleep now till morning at least. We’ll keep an eye on things. Make sure he doesn’t do anything for twenty-four hours. Complete bed rest, eh?”

He was addressing Giselle. “I’ll lock him in if I have to,” she assured him.

“Get rid of the TV. No news reports, bulletins, paperwork. Nothing that’s likely to raise his blood pressure.”

The television was showing brief campaign scenes, intercut with the smouldering ruins of an aeroplane in a field of snow and broken pines. It was the BBC’s restricted access channel. The sound had been turned off, but the caption read: CinC & CofS DIE IN POMERANIAN CRASH.

“What’s that about?” Owain asked Giselle.

“He insisted on watching,” she said wearily. “A Dornier carrying some senior commanders came down near Kolberg this morning. Engine failure.”

The picture switched, showing the Chancellor delivering a tribute. He was in his office, backdropped by the flags of state, looking suitably grave but in command of the situation. His image had been refined over the years to maximise his appeal to a diverse audience.

Owain’s uncle made a growling sound and subsided. The picture had now cut from the Chancellor to that of the two principal victims of the crash. I recognised one of the faces instantly.

Generaloberst Blaskowitz.

I swirled the white wine in my glass. Two young men were talking to me, one about war-gaming, another about his collection of replica model tanks.

The room was hot and crowded, subterranean, with bare brick walls and arches. A crypt, possibly. People stood in clusters, holding their complimentary drinks, chatting earnestly. A few spilled bowls of dry-roast peanuts remained on side tables. At a bustling bar two attractive young women in black dresses were doling out wine and bottles of Becks. A poster hung on one pillar showed a shield with runes severed vertically by a lightning bolt.

A publisher’s party to mark the launch of a new book. I’d been invited months before, had been persuaded by Tanya to attend. Where was she? I scanned the heads, failed to spot her. Now one of the young men was talking about the SAS and how they would be a brilliant subject for a series. Both of them had ardent faces. Both of them were obviously thrilled to be talking to me. I kept making affirmative noises that encouraged they hecontinue.

Nobody in the place looked older than fifty. The book was something about the Waffen-SS, I remembered. They were always among the most popular of wartime subjects for military enthusiasts. The Leibstandarte, Das Reich, Totenkopf, Wiking. A mantra of storm troopers, the elite of the Wehrmacht, always shown with their hulking Tigers, invariably smashing enemy formations, racing to plug gaps in the German lines, conducting desperate heroic counterattacks. And all the while butchering and burning and raping and maiming. For the good of the cause. The Triumph of the Will.

At that moment I felt complicit. I felt my father at my shoulder, asking me what I was doing here, demanding to know when was I going to treat history with the respect it deserved.

Unfair, I thought. As ever, his judgements were too severe.

The two young men were waiting for me to say something. I excused myself, slipping away through the crowd towards a darker corner where few people were lingering, nodding to anyone who spoke my name or said hello but not risking eye contact, keeping my head down.

I retreated as far as I could into the shadows, still wondering where Tanya was. There were few women in the place, but plenty of leather jackets, short haircuts and thick-soled boots. The two publicity girls who were serving at the bar stood out. Both were blonde, like perfect examples of young Aryan womanhood. Both thoroughly enjoying the attentions of those they were serving.

“So there you are,” said a voice. “I thought you’d gone AWOL.”

Adrian. He looked a little drunk.

“I’m in hiding,” I said. “Watching the detectives.”

“They’re so cute,” he countered. “Especially that pair.”

Inevitably he was indicating the two publicity girls.

“Not much competition,” I said. “How’s Rachel?”

“Sorry we ever started, if you want my opinion.”

“On the baby?”

“On everything. I couldn’t persuade her to come.”

“I’m not surprised. Hot and smoky.”

He wasn’t really listening, was peering through the crowd, looking for someone.

“Have you seen the book?” he asked.

“I’ve seen the poster.”

“I’s tat. Honestly, Owen. Like someone’s ransacked a private collection of photographs and stuck some text around them. I bet it’ll sell like hot cakes.”

It was Adrian’s theory that the renewed interest in the second world war arose from the collapse of ideologies in the modern world, the absence of the very polarities so manifest during Hitler’s time—left against right, democracy against totalitarianism, a clear sense that evil regimes had to be destroyed. I doubted it was that simple, given the fascination with some of the least savoury aspects of the war. There was something more ceremonial and expressive of darker yearnings about it.

Weariness was descending on me. How much had I drunk? I couldn’t remember. I wasn’t even sure exactly when I had re-emerged from my counterpart’s world; while the transitions to it were often abrupt, the return to my real life was sometimes more disjointed, a spluttering into full consciousness. Owain’s situation was becoming more intriguing, harder to resist. This time I hadn’t even tried to break free. Had his uncle been poisoned? Had Blaskowitz been murdered? What would Owain have made of this gathering of celebrants to a war that in his own world had never ended?

Adrian was now talking to a dark-haired woman who I knew was an editor from a publishing house; she also looked as if she was seeking sanctuary. I slunk away again, trying to remember how long I’d been here, how much longer I would need to stay.

A little cluster of people was standing around a man who was presumably the author. He wore jeans and a sports jacket, looked like an academic. I didn’t know him. Among the group was a silver-haired man who was possibly the only person in the room to have actually been alive when the war was taking place. What did this signify? Everything, or nothing at all?

“Gordon Bennett,” said an exasperated voice.

It was Tanya, emerging out of the morass.

“I’m not sure I’m cut out for this,” she said to me. “There’s this chap who wants to take me home and show me his collection of insignia.”

“You should be so lucky. Do you want to leave?”

She nodded eagerly, swallowing the last of her orange juice. “You need to say any goodbyes?”

Adrian was in huddled conversation with the editor. For Rachel’s sake, I hoped that they were discussing work rather than pleasure.

“Nope,” I said. “Swift tactical withdrawal.”

PART THREE

LOOPING THE LOOP

TWENTY-SEVEN

An antique dresser stood underneath the window in the narrow room. The blackout blind was kept permanently pulled down so that no one could look in. Owain didn’t switch on the light but left the door open to the dusky illumination from the hallway.

The room was decorated in faded pink with a bells-and-ribbons motif under the picture rail. A young girl’s bedroom that he’d had neither the time nor inclination to redecorate since moving in.

He’d covered one wall of the room with press cuttings and album photographs of his father. Another held old regiment and rank badges that he’d collected as a child, while his father was still alive; the pips and crowns were arranged in order, showing his father’s steady progression up the military hierarchy. In the dresser drawers was some of the equipment he’d used: gloves, poncho, a hand gun, knife, even an early-issue NBC respirator that still gave off its stink of charcoal-impregnated rubber. Neatly folded in the bottom drawer was the temperate combat dress he’d actually worn before his transfer to the Middle East. Owain had tried it on. It fitted him perfectly, as did the old midnight-blue beret, redundant after the consolidation of the Alliance armed forces.

Finally, in the topmost drawer, were the most valuable memorabilia of all: his father’s letters, sent over the years from overseas postings. At least one a month for ten years until his father’s death, many of them still in their original envelopes bearing the exotic stamps his father had insisted were to be used rather than army franking.

The letters mostly contained snapshot descriptions of locales and army life with the occasional paternal musings intended to be self-improving to the impressionable minds of his young sons. Subtly they stressed the virtues of self-discipline and a sense of duty that should be based on a clear appreciation of the facts rather than a blind following of the rules. For the youthful Owain the letters represented a nurturing wisdom made more potent by distance.

From the living room Owain fetched the helmet he’d brought back from France. He’d paid a fair sum to have it restored. The webbing had been adjusted to his own head size, but he didn’t put it on. Instead he laid it on the dresser next to the last photograph to have been taken of his father, a matter of weeks before his death.

The photograph showed a Jerusalem room with windows open on a balcony. His father was sitting at a table in the foreground, one hand resting across a map, gazing up at the camera, the VC he had won in Istanbul visible on the breast of his uniform. He held a major general’s rank, was one of the youngest in the entire army to do so. His eyes looked bright and steadfast, his mouth slightly upturned in something that was not quite a smile but more an expression of benign tolerance for the intrusion of the photographer. Behind him in the near distance was a pale street frontage whose dark vacant windows carried the suggestion that only its façade remained.

Once, soon after his posting to the Middle East, he’d brought Owain and Rhys out for a brief holiday, a year after their mother had died. One morning he took them on an emergency flight to a place near the Turkish border where archaeologists had been investigating early evidence of agriculture. The site had been razed, re team having been slaughtered by militia vying for control of the region. Watching from a distance, Owain still remembered him looking down into the grain store pits the team had excavated and where their bodies had been dumped in the aftermath. He was rigid with despair.

His father had been a rock to him in those days, something fixed and immutable. Yet he, too, was gone within two years. Apparently he’d been sending regular reports warning of the dangers in the region, where Christian, Jewish and Muslim groups were acquiring ever-increasing stores of arms to fight one another while the Alliance was focused on stabilising the eastern European front. The Palestinian Federation was in turmoil, the Caucasus a breeding ground for renegade groups of zealots and ultra-nationalists, Mesopotamia a lawless zone where Alliance control had broken down through lack of resources.

Despite this, there had been no warning that an attack was coming, let alone a nuclear one. The spasm had occurred over three days, a series of strikes throughout the Middle East, on oilfields, waterways and military headquarters. Extensive areas of the Mediterranean littoral and the Euphrates-Tigris basin had been laid waste; radioactive hotspots stretched from Aleppo to Abadan. Perhaps five million people had died in the immediate aftermath, among them a hundred thousand Alliance troops.

Jerusalem had been hit on the third day, the only urban area to be directly targeted. His father was in the centre of the city, supervising the dispersal of forces, trying to get everyone out.

The Convulsion, as it came to be called, had brought an abrupt halt to hostilities in the east along with vehement Russian denials of any involvement. The crudeness and low megatonnage of the devices pointed to a captured or black market arms store; their trajectories suggested an origin in the disputed territories of the Caucasus and Kurdistan. Retaliatory strikes reduced the entire area to a radioactive wilderness. Regional warlords who had been implicated in the attacks were all declared dead. But for Owain it came far too late: his father was already less than ashes.

Owain heard a movement outside. The window faced out on the balcony, but there was no access beyond it. He retreated from the room, locking the door behind him and slipping the key into his trouser pocket. Now he could hear footsteps just outside his door.

He switched off the hall light and fetched his pistol before positioning himself in the bathroom doorway where he had a clear view down the hall.

His heart was racing with something that might have been excitement. I felt no urge to do anything to interfere; he was far better equipped to deal with any threat.

Into the silence came the sound of someone urinating outside. Owain crept forward and eased the front door open, steeling himself against the shock of the cold night air.

A fur-hatted figure hunched up in a bulky overcoat was copiously relieving himself close to the balcony edge. Owain waited for him to finish. He moved quickly forward, grabbing him by the scruff of his coat with his left hand while bringing his right across his chest and wedging the barrel of the pistol under his jawbone.

The man gave a combination of a shriek and a gurgle as he was hauled back towards Owain’s open door.

Owain dragged him inside and let go. The man sprawled, losing his hat while he fumbled to zip himself up. Expensive navy trousers. Handmade black shoes and a padded barathea overcoat. Black lamb’s-wool lining inside the hat.

“God in heaven!” said Rhys. “You almost made me wet myself.”

“You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you,” Owain told him. “Go creeping around in the dark without announcing yourself and you’re asking for trouble.”

Rhys removed a handkerchief from his coat pocket and began swabbing himself down. He was still sitting on the floor. Owain made no move to help him up.

“Suddenly I was urgent,” Rhys said. He looked and sounded a little drunk. “Besides, I didn’t know you were in.”

Patently a lie. Owain closed the door and bolted it.

His brother climbed to his feet and inspected the scuffed heels of his shoes.

“What do you want?” Owain demanded to know.

Rhys looked warily at him. “I’m in London for a spell. Thought I’d look you up.”

“What’s wrong with the telephone?”

“I heard that Uncle was taken ill. I’ve been to see him.”

The field marshal was still in convalescence. Owain had only seen him once in the last forty-eight hours, and that briefly, while he was sleeping. Though no longer confined to bed, he was apparently still weak and obliged to delegate his duties to others. All the evidence suggested that the food poisoning was a simple mistake, a result of negligence rather than design. But Owain wasn’t convinced; he wasn’t convinced at all.

“So,” he said, “you went to his sick bed. Pleased to see you, was he?”

“I think he appreciated it.”

“And then you came here.”

“I thought you might like some company.”

“That’s a lie.”

Rhys just looked at him with an air of helplessness.

“Where are you staying?” Owain asked suspiciously.

“The Windsor. Waterloo Place. t I’d invite you out to dinner. Unless you have other plans.”

Owain walked into the living room. “Uncle suggest it, did he?”

His brother followed him through. “As a matter of fact, no. After the last fiasco I think he’s given up.”

Rhys had left the house in Paris while Owain was taking the call from Marisa. Sir Gruffydd had told Owain that he’d gone because he didn’t feel welcome. And nothing, as far as Owain was concerned, had changed.

“I think we need to talk,” Rhys persisted. “All I’m asking is for a few hours of your time.”

“I’ve told you before—I’ve nothing to say to you.”

His brother came up close and, before Owain could recoil, whispered: “I know about Regent Street, Owain. And I think I know why.”

“Geoff sends his apologies,” Tanya was saying, her voice carrying from the kitchen. “Something’s cropped up at work.”

A delicious smell of roasting lamb filled the dining room. Earlier I’d been out in the garden, trying to salvage usable leaves from the stringy mass of mint in the herb border. I’d peeled parsnips, scrubbed new potatoes, fetched a couple of bottles of rose from the store in the garage.

Tanya went upstairs. The radio was playing in the kitchen: someone was talking about markets and share prices. I moved around the dining table, laying down cutlery. Four places had been set.

Tanya returned, undoing the straps of her apron. Long neck arching out of a black scoop top, a peachy fuzz on its nape. But she looked distracted, even peevish.

She was holding the brass letter opener. It was shaped like a cavalry sword.

“Have you been trying to get into my writing desk?”

“What?”

“I found this in the lock.”

I just gaped at her.

“You weren’t exactly subtle. You left it jammed in there. What were you after?”

I had absolutely no recollection of doing so. But who else could it have been? Certainly Geoff wouldn’t have wanted to raid his own wife’s bureau, and definitely not as clumsily as Tanya implied.

“Owen?”

My full name. A measure of annoyance. And who could blame her?

font size="3">“What were you after?” she repeated.

I shook my head helplessly.

“If you want something, you only have to ask. Was it your keys and wallet?”

Now I had another brief memory, of trying to access her computer. But I didn’t know the password, hadn’t been able to log on. I recalled it as though I’d been sleepwalking.

“I’m not trying to stop you from doing things,” Tanya was saying. “But I can’t have you skulking around like a burglar. Doing needless damage.”

What had I been after? A means of escape? Two days had passed. What had I been doing in that time?

“Did you need money? Were you planning on going out?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

There was a degree of anger in her voice, but far stronger was her desire for a simple explanation. I couldn’t satisfy her because I had no answers.

“I can’t remember,” I said, angry with myself. “It’s ridiculous. I don’t know what could have possessed me.”

But this wasn’t true. I had more than an inkling.

Tanya unhooked her apron and tossed it on the worktop. “I’m going to take a bath.”

“You’ve got to believe me,” I said, but couldn’t then explain just what it was I wanted her to believe.

Two days had passed. I’d been back at the hospital with Tanya on both of them, doing a lot of sitting around in between various neurological tests that had exhausted me. No Owain in that time, I was certain, just Tanya tending to me. She was feeling the strain. Which wasn’t surprising.

“Anything I can do?” I called up the stairs.

“It’s all under control. Take a look at the meat if I’m not out in twenty minutes. Otherwise, just behave yourself. Stay away from the knives and forks.”

I heard the bathroom door close, the key turn in the lock.

I couldn’t bring myself to face up to what must be happening. It was too threatening, too frightening to contemplate. I had to stay calm, be as mentally strong as possible. Root myself in the here and now as firmly as I could.

I went back into the dining room and began fiddling with the napkins in the wineglasses. I squared and re-squared the place mats, mad"3">Twor adjustments to the chairs. On the mantelpiece there was a photograph of Tanya’s wedding day. I refused to scrutinise it, registering only the flowing but unfussy cream dress, the slimmer-than-ever figure in a navy suit, church ivy framing them.

Tanya and Geoff had married within six months of returning from California. Tanya sold her grandmother’s house and they bought a venerable place in Twickenham. To me, the sales marked the end of our student era, but at least they were now living relatively close. There was the prospect of seeing Tanya more frequently.

Shortly before they returned Tanya sent a postcard congratulating us on Sara’s birth. I don’t know how she found out. The card contained no hint that they might soon be returning to the UK. But one Saturday morning the phone rang and it was Tanya’s voice at the other end of the line, telling me they were home, that they themselves were getting married in the New Year.

I still remember vividly the circumstances of the call. I was reading the colour supplement in an armchair right next to the phone. When I picked it up and said my name, the response was: Guess who?

Of course I recognised her instantly, despite the faint American lilt to her accent. At some point Lyneth came in from the garden and sat down on the sofa opposite me. She looked on with interest, a pair of secateurs in her hand, as Tanya and I brought our respective lives up to date. We kept it brief but ended with Tanya promising she would call again soon. We should get together and she hoped very much that we would come to the wedding.

I told Lyneth that I’d been talking to an old friend from university whom I hadn’t seen in over three years. Without rancour or suspicion she asked me if it was the same woman I’d been seeing as a student.

The phone in the hall was ringing. I picked it up, said, “Hello?”

A silence, followed by a fumbling, as if the receiver had been dropped. Finally a voice said, “Yo, bro.”

“Rees?”

“The one and only. We still on for tonight?”

I didn’t know what he was talking about. It occurred to me that Tanya must have invited him to dinner. That was why the table had been set for four. But because I wasn’t certain, and because I wanted to avoid embarrassment I said, “What time did she say?”

“Seven.”

Rees sounded quite definite. Which was a relief in more than one sense.

“Seven it is,” I told him.

“Better get my skates on. Might be bringing someone else.”

“What?”

He had already hung up.

I tried to ring him back but the line was engaged. He was often hard to contact on the phone; he had no mobile and spent hours on the internet when he wasn’t deliberately leaving the phone off the hook.

I couldn’t recall whether I’d seen him since the hospital visit. I thought not. It was impossible to guess what his current state of mind might be. There were times when he could be perfectly normal, times when he flipped between sanity and the skewed world of his illness.

When had he and Tanya first met? Certainly not during my university days. Or in the years afterwards when we’d seen one another clandestinely. Perhaps they’d met at the hospital. And now she was inviting him to her home. To help me, no doubt.

A few months after Tanya’s return the four of us finally met up at a restaurant. Tanya was wearing her hair in an unfamiliar pageboy bob, while Geoff had shed two stone and was dressed in chinos and a button-down shirt so that he looked five years younger. Unsurprisingly they were both Americanised, though lightly so.

The atmosphere was friendly enough on the surface, but with an undertone of tension, much of it emanating from Lyneth. She was scrupulously polite but cool in her responses to Tanya’s queries about Sara, whom Lyneth had insisted on bringing and who remained asleep in her buggy throughout. Geoff was his usual jovial self, which eased matters. Some of the talk inevitably focused on their wedding preparations, and Geoff startled me by asking me to be his best man. I hedged, feeling like a churl.

When we were leaving I managed to get a moment alone with Tanya in the car park. You know I’m still in love with you, don’t you? I blurted. She just laughed and told me to be careful to get Lyneth and Sara home safely.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to bring myself to attend the wedding, let alone be Geoff’s best man. I contrived circumstances that gave me a get-out clause: I was in Normandy with a film crew, doing location work for a feature about William the Conqueror. I pretended that it had been arranged months in advance, whereas I had actually pressed for the slot only after I knew the date of the wedding.

Afterwards Tanya sent us a card to say: Sorry you couldn’t make it. On the front was the Klimt print “The Kiss”

TWENTY-EIGHT

Rhys turned the Mercedes into a military parking space on the western side of Aldwych. As they were getting out, a couple of security police materialised, both of them women. Rhys was ready with his ID card, which Owain knew would have Special Access status, allowing him to leave the vehicle almost anywhere he wished. Owain was embarrassed by his brother’s ostentation as he attempted banter with the women, joking that he would pay them a retainer if they kept an eye on the vehicle while he was away.

The car, a compact two-seater Kobold imported from Germany, was a twenty-year-old sports model that was no longer in production.Titanium alloy bodywork, leather upholstery, tinted windows—a symbol of conspicuous consumption.

They walked along the Strand, where illuminated restaurants, hotels and bars existed like garish expressions of a world immune to war. The streets were busy with well-heeled people, the privileged and the opportunists who always thrived, no matter how bad conditions were. Restaurant windows gave glimpses of senior commanders entertaining glamorous young women, Priority Provision stores sat snug behind metal shutters, and discreet doorways gave access to exclusive clubs where all sorts of pleasures were available. The Ritz, closed after a salmonella outbreak, was in darkness, but a Future Youth clinic occupied its forecourt, its neon signs urging passers-by to donate eggs and sperm towards the nation’s heritage. On this street, with official sanction, the blackout did not receive even a token observance.

What was he doing here? He had no alternative, he knew. If Rhys had information that might be of use to him, it was essential he extracted it.

His brother led him up the spiral stairs of a restaurant called the Viceroy on the corner of Trafalgar Square. The ground floor of the place was packed with diners, but an upstairs room held only a handful of people. Rhys was greeted without fuss by a maître d’hôel who knew him, and they were promptly led to a table at a window overlooking the square.

Their overcoats were taken, Owain surrendering his self-consciously, hating this enforced participation in his brother’s world, with its snobbery, exclusiveness and indifference to the sufferings of the majority. It was like being in enemy territory.

As if sensing his distaste, Rhys said, “I wouldn’t want you to think I make a habit of eating at these sort of places. I thought it might be a little treat. Uncle says you’ve had a difficult time.”

A bottle of wine appeared, in a silver cooler. The waiter was an elderly man. Before Owain could say anything his brother requested water for him. They were in a little alcove, out of earshot of everyone else. Rhys poured himself a large glass of wine. It was a golden-green.

“You said you knew something,” Owain remarked, unable to keep his impatience in check. “About the explosion.”

His brother nodded sagely. “More in the nature of a discharge than an explosion.”

“What does that mean?”

Rhys took a mouthful of wine. The waiter shuffled back to the table with a dark blue bottle. Water that sparkled as it was poured into his glass. Not what he’d wanted. But he wasn’t going to risk any distraction by insisting on a jug and tumbler.

Rhys waited until the man had hobbled away.

“What do you remember about the Minsk operation?” he asked.

Owain tried to keep his face free from any expressione a surprise. He didn’t want to give his brother the satisfaction.

“You know the one I mean,” Rhys said confidently. “You were the only one to come out of it alive, isn’t that so?”

All his brother’s usual awkwardness was gone. He was only ever self-effacing in their uncle’s company, always playing the dutiful, compliant nephew. Owain had a dawning sensation of the ground having shifted between them. He’d made a tactical mistake in letting his brother dictate the terms of their evening. Here, on his own territory, Rhys was suddenly confident, in full command of the situation.

“Did Uncle tell you?” Owain asked.

Rhys shook his head superciliously, though not necessarily in denial. “It’s my business to know these things. We monitor communications at ASPIC, remember? Among other things.”

Now the menu arrived. The efficiency of the service was beginning to anger Owain. He could do nothing but wait as his brother went through a little ritual of asking for more information about some ok the courses on offer. Owain ordered what was listed as Game Saucission with Creamed Potatoes, pointing to the item but ostentatiously asking for “Sausage and Mash”.

“You’re not going to have a starter?” Rhys enquired.

“Soup,” Owain said. “Whatever’s available.”

He told himself that he had to remain calm, patient. Rhys wasn’t exactly toying with him but was plainly enjoying the power he temporarily held by the promise of disclosure. Had they been anywhere else, Owain would have had him up against a wall by now, wringing his neck until he squawked.

“So,” Rhys said when the waiter had departed again, “what were we saying?”

He was refilling his glass. Owain’s resolve vanished as swiftly as he had made it. He leaned across the table and grabbed Rhys’s wrist, squeezing.

“Do you think I’m going to make frivolous dinner table conversation with you about a mission in which four men were killed and I got this?” He jabbed a finger at his pockmarked face. “Do you, Rhys? Do you?”

“You’re hurting me.”

“I’ll slit your fucking throat if I have to, brother or not, unless you start telling me what you know.”

Owain spoke in a fierce whisper. No one at the other tables was paying them the slightest bit of attention. The violence of his words, which matched the strength of his feelings, shocked me. Even so I couldn’t discern whether he seriously meant the threat. I considered and dismissed the idea of trying to intervene. Something important was brewing here.

Owain released his brother’s hand. Rhys, plainly shaken, said, “It wasn’t a bomb.” He began flexing his wrist. “Nothing to do with any munitions, at least not in the traditional sense. We think of it as a discharge. A release of potential energy.”

His face was perfectly serious. He swallowed more wine.

“We?” Owain said.

“What do you remember about the original mission? To the No-Go Zone?”

Owain didn’t want to talk about it. Especially to Rhys.

“Why are you asking me?” he said angrily. “Haven’t you seen the files?”

“It’s important you tell me yourself. Your medical reports suggest you were exposed to CNS agents that might have induced some form of aphasia and possibly selective amnesia.”

It was like a violation of his privacy. His simpering brother, making backroom judgements on his condition. Owain despised the idea that his experiences on the mission could be reduced to a series of impersonal medical syndromes.

“I gave a full report,” he insisted, though he knew it wasn’t true. “I told them everything.”

“What was the purpose of the mission?”

“To take a look at a base where covert activity was suspected.”

“Was that all?”

Owain made himself think about it. “We were field-testing new equipment.”

“What equipment exactly? “

“Does it matter? It’s the sort of thing that goes on all the time.”

“Indulge me, Owain.”

Owain watched him refill his glass.

“A new APC,” he said. “Weapons, radar and landmine detection systems.”

“Nothing else?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“There was a new boy with you. A Corporal John Vassall.”

Owain was unlikely to forget, though he’d never consciously registered the corporal’s first name.

“He was attached at the last minute,” he said.

“Do you remember why?”

“He was a remote operations specialist.”

Rhys looked encouraged. “And?”

“And what?”

“I’m interested in his extra speciality.”

Owain tried to think. Nothing would come except the image of Vassall with his face pressed to the Spectre’s window, white-eyed, his bloody mouth imploring.

“He was sent in specially, Owain. To test the device. You and your commander were fully briefed.”

Owain didn’t know what he was talking about. He had no recollection of himself and van Oost sharing any secret knowledge. But he did remember Vassall at the workstation, pulses of data flowing across the screen. Something he’d never spoken of; something no one had explained.

“What device?”

“You really don’t remember?” Rhys said with a mixture of incredulity and amusement.

Owain wanted to slap him. Rhys saw it and sat back.

“The system that’s finally going to make mincemeat of all opposition?”

Rhys made it sound frivolous, almost a joke.

Owain’s soup arrived. Minestrone, or something resembling it. Rhys had a fancy arrangement of frilly mushrooms around a dollop of greenish puree.

“You say I knew,” he remarked to Rhys when the waiter was gone.

His brother nodded, already eating.

“So why can’t I remember?”

Rhys shrugged. “You tell me. Battlefield trauma? The agents you inhaled? Wilful ignorance?” He forked a mushroom. “You still haven’t told me what happened out there.”

Owain considered. Considered whether to tell him everything or nothing at all.

“There was some sort of eruption,” he said finally. “It was like an earth tremor. The entire ground moved. It knocked me over. At the same time we were being shelled. Earth and shrapnel flying everywhere. The rest of the men were gone, dead. I didn’t hang around.”

His brother had paused to listen. Now he resumed eating.

His movements were delice and precise; he made frequent use of his napkin to swab food or wine from his lips. Owain breathed steadily, waiting.

“What device?” he finally asked again.

Rhys eyed him with scepticism. As if coming to a decision, he picked up the menu card and cleared a space in front of him. After glancing around to check that no one else was looking, he proceeded to fold the card.

Owain watched as he brought its top and bottom edges together and pressed the two end creases flat. He raised both flaps and pushed them down until they sat flat on the tabletop and the central section of the card bulged up. He began to slide both flaps in towards each other so that the dome in the middle became increasingly rounded. He continued narrowing the distance between the folded edges, finally pushing both creases together.

“Voilà!” he said.

In three dimensions the two closed edges shut off a cylinder with the cross section of an inverted teardrop. Rhys held it up so that Owain viewed it edgewise.

“Omega,” Rhys said softly.

TWENTY-NINE

Rhys had the smug air of a conjuror who had just successfully completed a trick.

“Of course on the ground it actually works the other way around,” he told Owain.

He turned the card over and held it up at both edges so that the central section sagged a little. Checking that no one was watching them, he asked Owain to dust some pepper into the middle.

Owain’s patience was rapidly evaporating again.

“Listen,” Rhys said, “I’m only doing this because you claim you can’t remember anything. I’m trying to get you to understand.”

Owain hefted the pepper mill and gave it a vigorous twist, speckling the hollow.

“Those,” Rhys said, referring to the dark grains, “are enemy forces.” Again he glanced around to ensure that no one else was looking. “Which side do you want to be advancing from—left or right?”

“Does it matter?”

“No. The principle’s the same in either direction. Assume you’re attacking from your left.” Rhys tapped his right thumb on the appropriate flap. “Enemy divisions are directly in your line of advance. Naturally you want them out of the way. CommandCom agrees to Omega activation at the target area. It’s a remote weapon, its power transferred via a satellite. The system is initiated. This happens.”

Again he slid both end flaps together so that their folded edges met. The central section had now been warped from sight.

“Gone,” Rhys said. “Taken out.”

Owain tried to match the demonstration to what he had witnessed from the ridge. Tried and failed.

“Not just your enemy,” Rhys was saying, “but the whole section of terrain they’re occupying. You continue your advance not only with them out of the way but also with your lines shortened. And without a single man or piece of equipment having been sacrificed.”

The waiter appeared again to remove their dishes. Owain hadn’t even tasted his soup. He waved it away.

Rhys refilled his glass and asked the waiter for another bottle of wine. He had slipped the folded card onto his lap at the man’s approach.

Owain contemplated all the light leaking out of the unshielded windows of the restaurant. In the square below a Stalwart APC was slowly patrolling under the starless night.

“It’s done by satellite, you said.”

Rhys shook his head. “The business end’s at home. Here. The satellite’s just the relay. We call the process T.”

“T?”

“T-E-E,” Rhys spelled out. “Short for Topographical Enfolding and Excision. You understand that I’m not at liberty to go into all the gory technical details.”

“We were field-testing it?”

After a moment Rhys nodded slowly. “Are you telling me you still don’t remember?”

Owain was too incredulous to be angry. He was being asked to deny the validity of his own experience, to bolt on a memory and submit himself to a fantastical truth that carried no more weight of evidence than his private certainties. And who better to demand this leap of faith than his own brother?

“The larger the area taken out,” Rhys was telling him, “the deeper the cut, so you have to be prudent.” He gave a conspiratorial chuckle. “We thought of suggesting that the code for activation should be Time for TEE’ but it was decided that our continental cousins wouldn’t get the joke.”

You smug provincial bastard, Owain thought.

“We?”

“Well, the team who developed it. A mongrel bunch, but a lot of them Brits. Not surprising, given that the whole thing evolved here.”

Brits. That smarmy, good-or-nothing appellation. Was Rhys doing it deliberately to enrage him?

He forced himself to drink some water. “And you were in the thick of it?”

Rhys smoothed out the menu card and set it aside.

“More an administrator than a boffin,” he said. “But, yes, I played my part.”

To Owain he now looked bloated with his own fatuous sense of self-importance. Deluded beyond measure.

“A phenomenal amount of power must be needed.”

“You don’t know the half of it. And it isn’t like shutting a door. What goes out must come in again.”

“Meaning?”

“Backflash. Like the exhaust from an engine. Action and reaction. You take the topography out, you have to accommodate it somewhere else, otherwise it’s going to coming squirting out where you least want it. Like a big fart at a formal dinner.”

His laugh invited Owain to do the same. Owain remained stony-faced.

“That proved the biggest problem,” Rhys went on. “Finding a way of channelling it. Apart from anything else, uncontrolled emissions would have made it too obvious to everyone else what we have.”

Their main courses arrived, along with a fresh bottle of wine for Rhys. Owain was almost tempted to risk a glass himself, or ask the waiter for a vodka. It was years since he’d had one. But it was vital he remained clear-headed.

“So,” he said very carefully, taking the sprig of parsley off his creamed potatoes, “was our mission successful?”

“The results were most impressive. Of course we knew they would be. We’d already done our own domestic test-runs. But nothing like seeing its effect at a distance, under real combat conditions. Very convenient, too, that almost no one survived.”

Owain looked up. “We were all meant to die?”

“It wasn’t planned that way. But you’d be so close to the enfolding zone we had no means of predicting the outcome. There are those who take the view that it might have been better if none of you came back. From their perspective, the fewer people who know about it, the better. Wouldn’t want loose tongues flapping, would we?”

Rhys was speaking in a sober fashion, but the very fluency of his words made Owain’s rage boil up again. Only someone who had never experienced battle could discuss death so abstractly. To people like Rhys soldiers’ lives had only a tactical or strategic value: they had no human dimension.

">Their ize="3">I willed him to remain calm. His emotions were more volatile than ever.

“None of this explains what happened to me in Regent Street,” he said.

His brother forked a diminutive kidney into his mouth, chewed, swallowed, swabbed.

“That,” he said at last, “is a little more difficult. Or perhaps I should say speculative.” He looked out the window, down into the square. Presently he said, “Remember the old song ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’?”

Owain was still simmering. I made a renewed effort to impose a regular, calming rhythm on his breathing.

“In and out the City Road,” Rhys sang in a low voice. “In and out of the Eagle.”

Once more he laughed. Owain saw that he was staring at the gilded monument at the centre of the Square.

“It’s an emergency exit, of course. For all the staff under Whitehall and the old Parliament buildings. One of several. Do you know how far the underground complex stretches?”

Owain had a renewed urge to throttle him.

“It’s pretty extensive,” he managed to say.

“They’re always adding to it. Perhaps one day it’ll be big enough to house the entire surviving population. Our enemies might have the same idea. We’ll all be troglodytes, still lobbing everything in our arsenals at one another, burrowing deeper and deeper holes into the earth to protect ourselves.”

He found the notion amusing. Owain was suddenly concerned that he was losing coherence.

“What point are you making?”

His brother looked blearily at him. “There was an R&D section. Under Soho. One of the places where some early work was done on a prototype of the device. A kind of pilot plant, if you like.” He smiled to himself. “In those days I don’t suppose anyone realised how potentially dangerous it might be, otherwise they wouldn’t have sited it so close to the heart of things. Must never put all the most important people at risk, must we?”

He took another mouthful of wine, appeared to lose himself in his own thoughts.

“So?” Owain prompted.

Rhys blinked and regained focus. “Problems with backflash started to emerge. Blow-outs. At the time we didn’t know how to control them. In the confined space they were caught up in a kind of geographical Moebius loop, splurges of displaced topography squirting out every time a prototype was used, no matter where they originated from. They’re all linked, you see, routed through AEGIS.”

“AEGIS is controlling them?”

Rhys shook his head emphatically. “It’s just the railway lines. Don’t believe that stuff about it being the network controller. Convenient smokescreen. Believe me, it’s no more than an electronic idiot savant.”

Rhys leaned across the table, red-faced, intense, all pretence of detachment gone now. “Anyway, the site was shut down, sealed off from the rest of the complex. But the loop’s still there. It’s almost run down but we still get the occasional belches. Aftershocks, if you like. We send the dispersal teams in straight afterwards to clear up the place. Have to get the stuff away to stop it piling up. When you were in the vicinity, there wasn’t anything scheduled. That’s why the road was open. Our best thinking is that somehow your very presence actually triggered a backflash.”

Owain had understood very little of this. His brother’s growing intensity was in inverse proportion to his lucidity.

“You were on the very edge of the excision on the front,” he said. “We think that somehow you were still carrying a residual charge of what I can best describe as spatial entropy. A bit like a bare live wire, or one end of a bar magnet. Bring it up close to another pole, and—whammo!”

An insane grin was on Rhys’s face now. As if he had just delivered a message of apocalyptic good cheer.

“Whatever happened, you must have discharged yourself. We know you returned there, and that nothing happened the second time. You’re safe now. You don’t know how lucky you are.”

He lolloped more wine into his glass. Slurped half of it down.

“What happened to my driver?” Owain asked. “Did you get rid of him?”

Rhys tried to pretend puzzlement; then relented.

“Wasn’t he transferred overseas?”

“That’s the official story. What’s the truth?”

“I don’t understand. Are you asking me if he was a security risk? If so, the answer’s no. He just saw a flash. From his point of view it was just an old incendiary going off. No reason to suspect otherwise.”

“So why get rid of him?”

“Personnel are transferred all the time. There’s nothing unusual in that.”

“Isn’t there? He was happy in London. He didn’t say anything about wanting a transfer. Why are you lying to me, Rhys?”

Rhys looked around. Owain’s voice had been rsed. A few heads had turned in their direction. Rhys waited until they resumed their own conversations.

“Owain,” he said quietly, “I’m trying to help you. We couldn’t be sure what you might remember after the backflash. Or what you might say. Safer to get people out of the way. They could be tainted by knowledge you might inadvertently share with them.”

“Really?” Owain said, insulted at the notion.

“There are holes in your memory. False echoes. We’ve been trying to give you leeway, let you come to your senses, but it can’t go on indefinitely.”

Owain couldn’t contain his anger any longer. “There’s only one person at this table who’s fantasising! What sort of game is this, Rhys? What do you really want? “

Again he’d raised his voice. I could do nothing to calm him. We were beginning to attract dedicated attention.

“You’ll have to excuse me for a few minutes,” Rhys said, rising from his seat and dropping his napkin on it. He veered between tables before disappearing down a corridor signposted to the men’s room.

The pulse at Owain’s temple was racing. A couple of people were still peering in his direction. He stared them down. His mind was a swirl of outrage and incredulity.

The sheer preposterousness of it all astounded him. Yet Rhys did have inside knowledge and had been able to answer Owain’s objections—at least in the sense of maintaining a self-consistent story. So self-consistent that it smacked of the most intricate fabrication. Or perhaps he truly believed it. Perhaps it was a paranoid delusion, designed to bolster his own sense of status.

I was fascinated, quite in thrall to his turbulent feelings and the frantic thoughts they engendered. Rhys had been in Geneva. Maybe it had been on recuperative leave. Maybe he’d cracked up again, had spent his time ferreting out facts that he could fit into his fantasy. And clever that he’d made the idea of an Omega weapon central to it. Designing a tale that he hoped would have maximum allure for its intended audience. Everything made sense except for the fact that it beggared belief. But was it just madness or did he have a more calculated aim?

He saw Rhys’s approaching reflection in the windowpane as he returned to the table. Except that it wasn’t Rhys at all.

“Where were you?” van Oost said angrily. “Why are you here?”

The top of his naked head was a mass of gore. Blood fringed it like a ragged inverted crown. He wore no snowsuit but rather a winter-camouflage uniform that was caked with mud. He reeked of cordite and burnt flesh.

“We’re still waiting,” the major said, putting his blackened hands palms-down on the table, fingers splayed. “When are you coming?”

His grimy blood-splattered face was filled with the fierceness of his demand, a dead man’s summons that made Owain go rigid.

“When are you coming?” he repeated with even greater urgency, and it was not clear whether he was demanding rescue or insisting that Owain share his fate.

Now it was Owain who lurched up from the table. His head began to fill up with a siren sound. It was a second before he recognised it as the wail of an air-raid alarm.

Swiftly he moved through the dining area towards the corridor. He half hoped to find Rhys sprawled over a sink or slumped in a cubicle. He’d haul him out as unceremoniously as possible.

But the line of washbasins was unattended. Owain pushed each cubicle door open with his foot. All proved to be empty. He looked around, thinking that Rhys must be lurking in some corner. But there was no sign of him.

He went back out into the corridor. The siren’s wail sounded more urgent. In the dining area people were still sitting at their tables, eating and talking. He could scarcely credit it. Did they think themselves so privileged here that they were immune to the fall of a bomb or the trajectory of a missile? Did they imagine they could survive like superhumans?

He headed for the stairs, certain that Rhys must have fled for safety the instant the alarm began. He had always been one for protecting himself. It was easy to imagine him scampering away into the darkness, consumed with terror.

Outside the siren noise was louder, though no one was panicking. It was months since the last air-raid warning and perhaps people thought there was no longer any danger. The more fool them.

He thought of seeking sanctuary via the Eagle monument, of burying himself in the Whitehall complex. Given his status, he was confident there would be no problem in gaining emergency admission. But no: he would spend the night with the ordinary citizenry, shelter with the anonymous masses.

He sprinted across the street, heading towards the Underground station. The gate at the entrance was already unlocked. He scrambled down the stairs.

Bomb damage had brought about the collapse of the tube system when he was a child, but many stations were still used as air-raid shelters. He swiped his ID card through a slot in one of the turnstiles and pushed through. Pale blue bulkhead lights provided a minimal illumination as he descended, making everything look spectral.

The platforms were deserted: he was the first one in. He paused to recover his breath.

Pallets and sleeping bags were strewn everywhere. Here he would be safe. Here even the ghost of Major van Oost wouldn’t be able to find him. Soon others would come, but for the moment he had the pick of the bedding. He found a dry mattress and dragged an eiderdown across himself, huddling up like a child—excited, relieved and, suddenly, fill/p> an overwhelming weariness.

He could no longer hear the siren, only the sound of water dripping further down the tunnel. He rested his head on the mattress. The solitude and tranquillity accentuated his feelings of escape, of refuge from everyone and everything that oppressed him. It felt like bliss.

A phone was ringing.

Tanya rose from the table. I had an immediate sense of just having left Owain, yet I was sitting in the dining room, the remains of my main course in front of me. The other two place settings at the table were unoccupied.

I struggled to adjust to the abrupt shift in focus. It was all the more disorientating for its seamlessness.

I had a vague recollection of sitting down to dinner, of making conversation with Tanya, though I had no idea what we might have talked about. Owain’s experiences were far more vivid, especially van Oost’s manifestation. A dead man whom Owain plainly imagined was still alive. A hallucination, doubtless like the one of Vassall clinging to the Spectre in the NGZ.

Tanya reappeared, holding the handset. “It’s Rees.”

This was all I needed. Tanya looked a little concerned, and I wondered how I could have been sitting here behaving more or less normally while simultaneously occupying Owain.

“Speak to him, Owen.”

I took the handset from her. “Rees?”

“Sorry.”

I had to focus resolutely on the present moment. “What’s happened?”

“I’m not going to make it.”

“Where are you?”

“Couldn’t programme the video.”

It took me a few seconds to process this. His ancient VCR. He was always having problems with it. It might absorb his whole attention for hours.

“Is everything all right?” I asked gingerly.

“It’s sorted now.”

“I thought you were bringing someone.”

“She had to work.”

He didn’t elaborate. There was an edgy, distracted tone to his voice.

“That’s a pity,” I said.

He was silent. I u the pause to catch a mental breath.

“Are you sure you’re OK?” I asked.

“Couldn’t be helped,” he said. “I think it’s knackered.”

“The video?”

“Should have got a DVD in the sales.”

I almost said that we could have bought him one for Christmas, but the cascade of associations that this precipitated almost swamped me. I swallowed it all back, thinking that if I had done so I would never have been in my present situation.

“Got to go, bro,” Rees said.

“OK,” I said wearily. “But you should have rung earlier.”

“I know. Sorry.”

He cut the connection.

I looked up, flourishing the handset, trying not to think of Lyneth and the girls. “He’s gone. Problems with his video recorder, he says.”

Unable to raise him on the phone, we had waited over an hour. Tanya had cooked enough for four, just in case Rees turned up with someone else. Geoff, I imagined, was doing one of his evening clinics. In the end Tanya had warmed everything up in the microwave and we’d eaten, just the two of us.

“I’m bloody annoyed with him,” I told her. “He shouldn’t have left it so late.”

Tanya just shrugged and picked up my plate. She was still a little cool towards me, though we hadn’t discussed the letter-opener incident further. It was a relief to be back with her, to have escaped the bizarre assertions of Owain’s brother and Owain’s feverish reactions.

“There you go again,” Tanya said.

“What?”

“On autopilot. Not really here at all.”

Her tone conveyed irritation and concern in equal measure. It was hardly surprising that her patience was beginning to fray. I was a guest in her house, abusing her hospitality. She couldn’t begin to imagine how far away I actually went when I wasn’t there.

I made myself ask: “So who is here?”

“You tell me, Owen.”

But I couldn’t, though it was all too obvious. If I was capable of entering his world, it was equally possible Owain could do the same in reverse. It would explain many of my memory lapses, along with the urgeto wet shave, read coffee table history books and attempt to force the lock on Tanya’s bureau. Sometimes when I wasn’t here, he was.

THIRTY

Owain woke late, alone on the platform. He splashed his face with water from a fire bucket and made for the stairs. Pigeons fled from the shadows as he ascended into the light.

The morning air felt crisp and clean. There had been a dusting of snow during the night. His feet made a virgin path through it towards the observation tower at the square’s western end.

He was a lot calmer than the night before and had already persuaded himself that he had simply had a bad reaction to his brother’s unexpected appearance and his outrageous fabrications. It was even possible that Rhys had spiked his food or water with something. But this morning he felt much more clear-headed.

As far as he could tell, there was no indication that there had been any attack, no new barriers, extra patrols or the wail of emergency vehicles. If anything, the city looked freshly restored under its covering of snow. Security personnel stood calmly at their postings or squatted at braziers, brewing tea and smoking cigarettes.

The mixed-race security policewoman who stood at the entrance to the tower perimeter was tall and slim, about his age. A captain.

“Good morning, major,” she said as he approached.

Owain nodded. “All quiet?”

“Sunday morning. Like the grave.”

Her accent sounded familiar.

“If it’s OK with you,” Owain said, “I’d like to take a look up top.”

“Sightseeing, major?”

“I used to live out in Hampstead. Wondered if you could still see it from here.”

A flimsy story, and he expected her to be at least suspicious. But she didn’t question it.

“Don’t see why not,” she replied. “As long as you surrender any weapons.”

He gave up his handgun and knife without demur, opening his jacket so that she could frisk him. Her hands moved briskly and efficiently over his body.

“You were born in Cardiff?” he guessed.

“The Docks.”

A cosmopolitan area, packed with overseas migrants.

“Haven’t been back in over fifteen years,” she said. “They tell me the castle’s still standing.”

“It’s a regional HQ,” he told her. “More fortifications than ever.”

She led him through the gate. At the base of the tower was a caged lift, crank operated, big enough for perhaps half a dozen people. He secured the door.

“You’re on Field Marshal Maredudd’s staff,” she said to him. “Am I right?”

“How did you know?”

“We get mini-cine briefings these days. I’ve a good memory for faces.”

He started turning the handle. As he rose, the air grew warmer, then colder again. Pockets of smoke were rising from all over the city—rising before merging into a murky layer, as though a threadbare grey blanket had been suspended in the air. From somewhere he caught a waft of frying bacon. It was swiftly gone.

In little more than a minute the cage clanged into place on the platform. A private was there to meet him—a boy who couldn’t have been more than sixteen, his face stained by a crimson blotch that lay like a distorted map of South America down his left cheek. He saluted Owain.

“Just up for a quick look,” Owain said as purposefully as he could manage. “Any chance of a pair of binoculars?”

The boy, evidently eager to please, hurried around the observation deck. Through the support struts Owain could see two older men hunched down behind the grimy plastic windows of the cold-weather cabin. Both of them were reading the Daily Herald.

Owain moved off in the opposite direction, peering through the haze when he reached the north side. He had an unrestricted view out over Soho. The boy reappeared with a pair of Zeiss, the covers already off. He loitered at Owain’s side. The smoke haze meant that visibility was not as good as he would have liked. But it was clear that nothing had changed on the Soho site: it was a featureless white. The steel gates on the northern side were closed and there was no evidence of recent traffic either inside or out. He scanned the entire area. It was so flat you could have played bowls on it. Virgin territory.

“What are you looking at?” the boy asked.

The question was framed with an adolescent’s simple curiosity. Owain eyed him. A Londoner, by the sound of it, his ears pink under his gunmetal cap. His uniform was too big, the iron-blue jacket sagging at the shoulders, its cuffs turned up. He was thin, pasty-faced, probably suffered from some chronic or congenital condition that meant he would never be of use to the armed forces.

“Nothing,” Owain replied, handing the binoculars back. “Nothing at all.”

The bedroom door opened. Tanya came in, bearing a mug of tea.

“Morning,” she said. “Sleep well?”

I nodded, glad that friendly relations appeared to have been restored. I was also pleased with the brevity of my latest sojourn in Owain’s world. I had occupied his mind in a feather-light way, merely skimming the surface of his thoughts. He was in control of himself again, had put the distortions of the previous night behind him. And he did not appear to have visited me in the interim.

Tanya drew back the curtains, and sunlight flooded in. The tape deck still sat on the table by the window, while beside it was a small pile of newspapers. Until now I’d assumed that I’d been reading them, seeking to catch up with events in the world at large; but perhaps Owain was just as interested in gleaning information about my existence as I was about his. The idea was chilling, but I knew I had to confront the possibility. At the same time I’d never detected anything in his thoughts to suggest he was aware of me or my world. Which didn’t prove he wasn’t.

“I have to go out today,” Tanya told me. “There’s a quiche in the fridge if you want it for lunch and plenty of salad stuff. Or you can have any leftovers from last night.”

She’d said as much during dinner. But I wouldn’t have remembered if she hadn’t mentioned it again.

Tanya was wearing fresh makeup and a navy skirt and jacket over a petrol-blue top.

“Meeting?” I asked, wondering if she’d already told me.

“British Library first,” she replied. “I need to do a bit of burrowing in the archives. After that there’s this thing at the ICA.”

I recalled that she was writing a book about Alfred Wegener and the hostility of the scientific community towards his theory of continental drift. The “thing” at the ICA was actually a presentation she was delivering on the Two Cultures.

“Maybe I’ll come to the talk,” I said.

“The ticket’s on the mantelpiece if you want it. But don’t feel obliged. You’ve probably heard most of it before. I should be back by five. You can always ring me on the mobile if there’s a problem—but not between two and three. I’ll be spouting.”

“OK.”

“Are you sure you’ll be all right?”

“No problem,” I said. “You in a rush?”

“Not hugely,” she told me. “Why?”

“I wanted to ask you abou something.”

“Go ahead.”

“Multiple worlds.”

This took her by surprise. “What?”

“It’s in one of your books.”

Tanya perched herself on the edge of the bed, looking intrigued. “Uh huh.”

“The idea that all events can have more than one outcome. That histories can branch at any given point.”

A slow nod. “That was the gist of it, yes.”

“Do you think it’s possible? In reality, I mean? That it could actually happen?”

I had her full attention now. “It’s just a theory,” she said. “One interpretation of quantum events. Tiny changes having a knock-on effect.”

“So in one of these branching worlds there could conceivably be alternative versions of you and me?”

She nodded. “Alternative versions of everything. Even universes.”

“Is it given much credence?”

“The theory? Well, as much as any other, I suppose. It’s where physics shades off into metaphysics. Why do you ask?”

“Just curiosity.” I took a sip of my tea. “Could these different worlds be connected, linked to one another?”

“Once they’ve branched? Personally, I don’t see how they could be. They’d be like spokes radiating from a hub. Or different fragments from the same explosion. Flying further and further apart as time went on.”

A little silence fell. I swallowed more tea. Tanya had sugared it liberally, even though I’d always drunk it without. I was, I realised, a little thin. Hadn’t been eating much until recently. She was trying to fatten me up.

“Do you believe that such worlds exist?” I asked. “In practice, I mean.”

She looked contemplative, though I suspected she was thinking more about me, wondering why I was suddenly so interested in the subject.

“Personally I don’t buy it,” she said. “To me, it’s too profligate, it doesn’t have any utility. So anything could and has happened—so what, if you’re never going to be in a position to know one way or the other? I don’t see how it’s open to falsification like the best theories. I also think it flouts the principle of Occam’s razor—the simplest explanation is the best.”

“There could be stuff we don’t yet know about,” I offered.

“Things beyond our ken,” she said in a portentously doomy voice. “Well, no doubt there are. And always will be.” She paused for a moment. “So what about you, professor? Do you think it’s a runner?”

“I don’t know,” I said hastily. “I’m just the layman here.”

“You’re still entitled to an opinion.”

“I’ve no idea,” I insisted. “Really.”

I don’t know whether I sounded agitated, but she laid her palm on my forehead.

“Some of the best scientific minds have been arguing about quantum interpretations for decades,” she told me. “The jury’s still out. For one thing we don’t really understand how the fuzziness at sub-atomic level translates itself into the actualities of the world we live in. It’s slithery, non-intuitive stuff. Maybe, if you go deep enough, the universe just isn’t designed to be comprehensible to the human mind.”

I thought about it. “Fair enough. Though somewhere there could be another version of yourself saying something quite different.”

“Touché.” She removed her hand and eyed me with curiosity. “You look dead worried.”

“Do I?” I manufactured a laugh. “It was just something I read in the paper.”

She must have suspected that there was more to it than that, but she didn’t press me.

“It doesn’t pay to obsess too much about it,” she told me. “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Would it change your life if you knew?”

THIRTY-ONE

“Please wait here, major,” the MP said.

He withdrew, closing the heavy oaken door behind him. Owain lingered for a moment before crossing the lobby to an administrative area.

I didn’t want to be with him. At first I resisted, trying to wrench myself back to my own world. Then it occurred to me that if Owain was active here, he could not be doing anything there. When I occupied him he remained alert to his surroundings; when he occupied me, I was seemingly absent in both worlds. Which meant that perversely I was spared his intrusions when I shared his life.

He perched himself on a stool close to a television that was playing unheeded in one corner. It was the BBC News-24 channel, showing Carl Legr in a meeting with the American chargé d’affaires in Lisbon. The volume was turned down low, but Owain gathered that the discussions had centred on the disputed territorial waters around the Azores. The picture switched to the Chancellor, who was shown giving a speech to a large audience in which he expressed his concern about unprovoked American incursions in the Guianas and Australian territorial waters. His tone was one of measured exasperation. Now there were shots of USAF overflies of the Alliance launch complex in French Guiana, and Nemesis-class submarines that were said to be conducting provocative manoeuvres in the Torres Strait.

The door opened and the MP came out. Owain was on his feet in an instant.

“You can go in, sir,” he was told.

Owain entered the anteroom. It was furnished with antique dressers and upholstered chairs with elegant cabriole legs. The walls were crammed with a variety of paintings from Holbein’s “The Ambassadors” to a 1940s portrait of a tank commander pictured in the turret of his Comet, done in the Documentary Realist style of the period. Owain knew this only because his uncle had told him as much: he had little appreciation of art.

Owain was five floors down in an eastern annex of the War Office where Sir Gruffydd had his private quarters. Bare subterranean tunnels connected it directly to both the Admiralty and the MoD, wide enough to accommodate vehicles in the event of an emergency. By contrast the offices and apartment rooms were fully carpeted and lavishly furnished with items removed for safekeeping from galleries, museums and private houses. Had it not been for the absence of windows, Owain could have imagined himself inside some ancient stately home.

There was a gilded mirror above one of the dressers, folded regimental flags crossed above it. Owain saw that his face looked gaunt, his cheeks sunken. He’d made himself stop at a canteen on the way: porridge laced with currants, followed by a slab of forces-issue fruitcake that sat fermenting in his stomach.

Giselle Vigoroux appeared in full uniform, wheeling a chair in which a withered man sat, grey and trembling. In his initial glimpse, Owain had imagined it was Sir Gruffydd, malevolently wasted away to a wraith in a matter of days. But it was Giselle’s husband, Phillipe. He’d been infected with enhanced-measles virus when insurgents detonated a car-bomb at the Alliance headquarters in Prague ten years before. His head was twisted up, skewed eyes raised to the ceiling, mouth lolling open. Brain-damaged. Quadriplegic. A mangled puppet of himself.

Giselle wiped his chin with a handkerchief and kissed him on the forehead. A young nurse appeared and wheeled him away.

“Good morning, major,” Giselle said to him.

“How is he?”

“Comme ci, comme ça.”

He realised that she was talking about her husband. She’d brought him with her when she was transferred to London, had a special room with all the necessary medical equipment. Shifts of nurses attending him night and day. He remembered her saying, in mixed company, that she had once tried to end his misery by suffocating him with a pillow but had been unable to carry it through.

“I meant the field marshal,” Owain said.

“Ah. There is cause for optimism.”

“He’s still sick?”

“On the mend. At his age, such things take time.”

“He’s not dying, is he?”

She was mildly amused. “Nothing so dramatic. But stomach pumps and purgatives are scarcely tender on the older constitution. Not to mention its dignity.”

“I thought—” Owain faltered. “I hadn’t heard anything.”

“There was nothing pressing to bring to your attention. No point in burdening you unnecessarily.”

“I need to talk to him.”

“He’s not receiving visitors at present.”

“It’s urgent.”

“Not even family. The doctor’s prescribed sedatives. He’s sleeping.”

This wasn’t what Owain wanted to hear. Though he was holding himself under firm control, I could sense his anxiety. There was looming danger, he was certain. Things were happening in the shadows, allegiances were uncertain, too much was unclear.

“What is it?” Giselle said.

“Did you know my brother was in town?”

Her husband’s nurse appeared again from a side room. She approached Giselle and murmured something in her ear in French. Owain didn’t catch it.

“Give him a blanket bath,” Giselle said, speaking clearly in English. “He also needs a shave.”

The nurse went off. As she re-entered the room, Owain caught a glimpse of two male figures in conversation. One of them was Tyler, the other a taller man in a dark suit standing with his back to Owain. The door closed.

“Did you know?” Owain said again to Giselle.

“Of course,” she replied. “It was only a temporary posting to Switzerland. I’m

sure he spoke of it when we met in Paris.”

Owain didn’t contradict her. Perhaps she imagined he and Rhys had had a proper conversation rather than a series of verbal skirmishes.

“He came to see me last night,” he said.

“Oh? A social call?”

Was she being sarcastic? Often he found it difficult to tell. Not that he saw it as anything more than affectionate. It was as if she was an indulgent aunt, amusedly tolerant of his social awkwardness. She felt he needed looking after. Perhaps that was why she was prepared to facilitate his meetings with Marisa.

“What he had to say to me was highly disturbing,” Owain told her.

“Indeed?”

“It’s vital I talk to the field marshal.”

He expected her to ask him to elucidate, but she did not.

“He must rest, Owain,” she insisted. “There’s nothing I can do.”

“Perhaps you can help me.”

“Of course. In whatever way I can. Though I think we should find another place for our discussions, yes?”

He knew what she meant. Privacy was impossible here. Every room, corridor and alcove would be planted with surveillance equipment.

“I have to go out,” she told him. “To Northolt. Would you care to accompany me?”

I wandered in from the garden. My clothes were damp. I’d been inspecting the unkempt flowerbeds, absurdly thinking I should weed them. I used to do the same in the garden of my own house, letting Sara and Bethany “help” me, supplying them with plastic trowels so that they could dig holes and emphatically flatten anything green.

I was smiling at the memory. Why had I let Lyneth take them to Australia? What could I have done to make this possible? And why on earth was I outside in the rain?

I’d not been able to find the front-door keys, so I’d unbolted the back garden gate and gone wandering down the overgrown lane at the rear of the house. But I knew I couldn’t leave the place unattended, the conservatory doors open. Duty—and the fact that it was raining—had overcome my urge to explore.

But something else had brought me in from the garden. I couldn’t think what. I stood motionless in the kitchen, the silence of the house somehow eloquent, like a pause in a conversation.

There was a packaged meal sitting on the worktop next to the chrome toaster. Macaroni cheese, still frozen. It wouldn’t have been my choice. When had Owain taken it out of the freezer?

There was no other evidence that he’d been up to anything else. Perhaps it was me after all. Or perhaps Geoff had come back. I went through into the hallway and listened, looking up the stairs.

“Geoff?” I called somewhat tentatively. “Are you there?”

Silence. I waited, listening again for the merest hint of movement somewhere in the house. I could hear only the muted pneumatic thrumming of the central heating system. There was no one at home but me.

The phone gave a little peep. It was mounted in the hallway next to the living room door. I stared at it, finally realising that someone had probably just left a message. The phone must have switched to the answer service before I could get there.

I lifted the handset and tapped out 1571.

One message, I was informed, received a minute before. I let it play.

There was a pause before a querulous elderly male voice said: “Hello? Is anyone there?” A longer pause, and now the voice saying at reduced volume: “He’s not there. Shall I say who’s calling?” A further silence before the voice spoke directly into the receiver once more: “It’s me. Are you out? They didn’t tell me you were going anywhere.” Yet another long pause. Finally: “Goodbye.”

Throughout all this his tone had veered between the quizzical and the perplexed, his voice sounding fractured with age.

My father. It felt like decades since I had last heard him speak. Before I was fully aware of it I had pressed 3 to delete.

The helicopter was a diminutive de Havilland Sprite. Owain sat next to Giselle as she took off, banking away from the landing pad on the War Office roof.

Despite many helicopter rides, Owain had never flown up front before, let alone in a light craft whose bubble canopy gave him an intimate identification with the vast grey spaces beyond it. Giselle was already radioing ahead, confirming clearance for landing. No problem, she was told by another female voice. We’re expecting you. There was no other low-altitude traffic en route.

They followed the line of Western Avenue, flying below five hundred feet, overtaking a convoy of supply trucks. Giselle handled the craft with a minimum of fuss, maintaining a steady speed and altitude. Encased in her pilot’s helmet, she looked born to it.

I didn’t bother to try to reject the transition. I just sat there in the back of Owain’s mind, once again finding no sign that he was actually aware of me as a distinct presence. He evidently swamped my consciousness when he occupied me, whereas I had barely left a footprint in his world. But then I had so far been too curious about his world to be single-mindedly active. From his own visitations he must have known of my existence and my world, yet he continued to rationalise my sporadic interventions as a renegade aspect of his personality. This was to my advantage: it meant I still had room for manoeuvre. Sooner or later I would have to act decisively; but not before I had a better understanding of what was going on.

“I didn’t know you flew,” I heard him remarking to Giselle.

“I used to be an instructor,” she told him.

“Really?”

“In my younger days.”

“Helicopters?”

“Combat trainers. Demons and Chouettes.”

“Dassaults?”

“Of course.”

“You were in the air force?”

“Army. I like to—what do you say?—keep my hand in, when I have the chance.”

Owain changed conversational tack, asking her about his uncle again. She insisted she was not unduly concerned about his condition. She was attending the briefing in his stead, a bulging briefcase tucked in the luggage compartment. It was something to do with revised emergency procedures in the event of attack; he knew better than to ask about details.

Soon the aerodrome was in sight, its square control tower surrounded by slab-faced ziggurats, runways radiating from it, sprinkled with aircraft. Since the destruction of Heathrow it had been steadily expanded and was effectively an airport in its own right, though with few facilities for civilian craft.

Giselle was occupied with taking guidance for landing. As they closed on the aerodrome Owain could see the artillery platforms and missile silos in concentric rings around it. Beyond, the landscape was a mixture of derelict houses and scrubby white fields.

Giselle made an expert landing on a platform jutting from the rear of the control tower. She killed the engine and waited for the rotors to die to a whisper before saying: “So—what is it that is disturbing you, Owain?”

He saw that they were sitting directly under a cluster of radar dishes and antennae. They were all pointing to the sky. It was a perfect “shadow” where they would be free from electronic eavesdropping.

He decided to be as direct as possible. “Rhys talked about something called Omega.”

She was taking off her helmet, replacing it with her cap. All she said was: “And?”

“You’ve heard of it?”

“Everyone’s heard of it, Owain. It’s whispered like an incantation.” Already out of her seat, she pulled her briefcase from the luggage compartment.

“Does it exist?”

She screwed up her eyes in a manner suggestive of incredulity. But incredulous of what? The very idea? Or the fact that he should question it?

Two ground crewmen and a trio of aides had appeared and were approaching. Giselle unbolted the door and slid it open. Cold air gushed in.

“Come,” she told him.

He clambered down after her on to the platform. She surrendered her luggage to one of the aides, whom she clearly knew well, and said she would join him shortly. Putting an arm through his, she led Owain away as if they were close companions.

Presently, when they were out of earshot, she said, “Tell me what happened.”

At every turn she was surprising him. He still had the feeling that she wasn’t taking him seriously, considered the whole thing a mere diversion. Which made it all the more vital that he was clear and concise in what he had to say to her.

“He turned up last night. More than a little drunk. Persuaded me to have dinner with him. We went to the Viceroy on the Strand. He talked about Omega, some kind of miracle weapon that was going to win the war. A means of folding up terrain, getting rid of it completely. He said that I’d field-tested it on the Minsk mission.”

Giselle led him to the parapet railings. There were extensive views out over the runways.

“So,” she remarked after a moment, “what was your reaction to this?”

“I didn’t say anything. Just asked questions.”

She eyed him. “But what did you think?”

“I thought it was madness. In more than one sense. Madness to have come up with such a preposterous story and expect me to believe it. Or, in the unlikely event that it did exist, madness to be revealing such a secret to an unauthorised person, brother or no.”

Giselle kept staring at him, a smile slowly gathering on her lips.

“You have a remarkably proper sense of duty, major.”

“Was he lying?”

“What do you think?”

“I began to suspect that it was all bluster, some sort of vainglorious attempt to impress me. But why would Rhys go to such lengths?”

“Why indeed?”

“Perhaps he has an ulterior motive, something none of us are aware of. Perhaps he wants to throw me off the scent.”

“Of what exactly?”

“I don’t know. But it may represent danger.”

Giselle appeared to give this serious consideration. “Was he lucid?”

“I think he might be dangerously unhinged. He’s never been a particularly stable character.”

She turned up the collar of her coat. “What do you remember of the mission he mentioned?”

“It’s hazy,” he admitted. “But why would I pretend ignorance of something I knew about to my own brother?”

“Perhaps you don’t trust him?”

“Well, I don’t deny it. Are you trying to tell me that what he said was true?”

She took his arm again, began walking him along the parapet. Snow had started to drizzle down from the sky.

“I’m not telling you anything of the sort,” she said. “Operational details are not my brief. Access to them is strictly limited.”

“Is it possible,” Owain said, “that there could be such a device as Rhys mentioned and that Sir Gruffydd doesn’t know about it?”

“I’ve learned to assume that anything’s possible,” Giselle said bluntly. “But your uncle is C-in-C of all Alliance forces here. He is effectively the head of state.”

“But what if someone’s deliberately trying to outmanoeuvre him? Or worse?”

“What do you mean?”

Feeling melodramatically furtive, Owain glanced around to ensure that no one was in hearing distance. The ground crew was inside the helicopter, well out of earshot. Otherwise the platform was deserted.

“I’ve no hard evidence,” he admitted. “It’s just a feeling. Generaloberst Blaskowitz was an ally of my uncle’s.”

“Sir Gruffydd had great admiration for him,” Giselle agreed.

“They talked together in Versailles about the limits of war and the need to find new solutions to the problems we face.”

She waited.

“Now tz is dead. Uncle was poisoned. I find this sinister.”

Snow was beginning to settle on the shoulders of her overcoat. “You suspect a conspiracy?”

“Perhaps. I don’t know. I think we need to be careful who we trust. I think my uncle’s life could still be at risk.”

He could tell that at last she was beginning to take him seriously.

“Do you have any other evidence?” she said after a moment.

He shook his head. “It’s more of a feeling that something might be brewing in the background.”

“So much of what you’ve told me is based on speculation rather than fact.”

“I know,” he conceded. “But presumably there are other members of the Council who don’t necessarily share uncle’s views on everything.”

“That’s inevitable. There are always differences of opinion.”

“Is it possible that those differences may have reached breaking point?”

Giselle was looking down over the jumble of Pelican transporters and Vantage interceptors that were parked in front of the airport buildings. No planes were coming or going on the runways.

“What is it you want me to do?” she asked.

“Warn Uncle. Tell him that something needs to be done about Rhys. I think it’s essential to establish if he’s sane. And, if so, where his loyalties truly lie.”

“Are you suggesting we arrest him?”

“It would be more a case of taking him into protective custody. But keep it in army rather than CIF or SP hands. What harm can it do? After all, Sir Gruffydd’s his guardian.”

The rising whine of jet engines drowned out her reply. Beyond the clutter of military aircraft on the runway a white Nimbus-9 passenger jet was slowly taxiing. The aeroplane appeared newly refurbished, its domed back housing a retractable radar dish. One of a small fleet of AWACs craft that could also be used as aerial command-and-control centres during emergencies. It looked like the aeronautical equivalent of a swan drifting serenely past a gaggle of ugly ducklings.

Giselle’s pager bleeped on her belt.

“I must go,” she said.

Owain had hoped for more: more time and more information.

“Will you speak to him? Even if I’m wrong, ital to ess better to be prudent.”

“Of course. I promise.” She led him to the top of a fire escape and jangled a set of keys in front of him.

“What are they for?”

“Did you expect to fly home yourself?”

He hadn’t even thought about it.

“There’s a Panache in the car park.” She pointed through the snow and he saw it, the only civilian vehicle amidst ranks of staff cars and Land Rovers. It was the blue of a cloudless sky, the colour of memory.

“It’s yours?” he said.

“A good friend in the Admiralty. He needs it delivered to the bays there. You can leave the keys in the ignition. And no scratches, please. I will see you tomorrow. Bon voyage!”

Before he could thank her, she was striding away, leaving him thinking that she had revealed nothing of what she knew or thought.

He didn’t linger, hurrying down the fire escape, swiping his ID card through unmanned security barriers, nothing hindering his progress.

The Porsche was a custom-built model of a similar vintage to Rhys’s Mercedes. Snow was beginning to fall more thickly, but he was confident of its road handling. The height-adjustable black leather seat oozed comfort, the vehicle’s walnut-panelled dashboard a refined expertise.

He gunned the engine and reversed out of the parking space, for once determined to indulge himself in unaccustomed feelings of luxury. It was easier to do when he was alone. When he knew it was only borrowed time.

Evidently the car’s number plates had already been security flagged on the way in, and he was not delayed at any of the checkpoints. Within minutes he joined the A40 from the slip road.

There was no traffic about. He depressed the accelerator pedal steadily and felt the car pushing him back in the seat. As the interior began to warm up he caught a hint of Giselle’s lingering scent. Was it the car of a lover? No business of his if it was.

The needle was at eighty. For prudence’s sake, he moved out into the middle lane, where the view was better on both sides. Turning the wipers up to maximum he kept accelerating, fat snowflakes hurling themselves at the windscreen with exhilarating abandon. He felt like he was sweeping the storm aside, that nothing could hinder his path. With any luck he’d have a free road until Paddington.

The formalities of rank had prevented him from pressing Giselle more strongly about what was going on. In the end, he could do no more than defer to her and hope that she respected his misgivings sufficiently to take appropriate action. But two realisations were pressing in on him. The first was that Giselle hadn’t actualenied that Omega existed. The second was that the man he’d glimpsed through the doorway with Tyler was more than familiar. Almost certainly it had been Carl Legister.

THIRTY-TWO

One of my father’s favourite epigrams was that history is just informed opinion. He often bestowed such nuggets of wisdom on Rees and me as we grew older and he sought to challenge our views. “Examine the facts with as little preconception as possible,” he would tell us. “Assume nothing that is not implied by the evidence.” Not that he believed in an absolutely objective view about anything: even science wasn’t free of human bias. It used the same methods as the best historians, the analysis and interpretation of evidence, but it was also a product of personal prejudices and—a favourite word of his—the Zeitgeist.

So dark was the shadow he cast over my youth I suppose it’s not surprising that I should end up rejecting both him and his works. Not to read his books, in particular, was a way of countering his dogmatism with blithe neglect. They filled the shelves of my childhood, those volumes of his, all stripped of their dust jackets, which my father considered vulgar. I can see them now with their dark spines and daunting titles such as The Origins of Totalitarianism and Patriots and Scoundrels: Nationalism and Politics in the Twentieth Century. He had also written a memoir of Harrow school and a biography of Neville Chamberlain.

I never doubted that he deserved his eminence, or that he had had important things to say about the course of human affairs in the twentieth century, the era in which he specialised. But the austerity of his judgements meant that charity was often lacking in his work. At times it had an air of ruthlessness, most starkly illustrated in his expropriation of my grandfather’s diaries for a book that took no account of my mother’s feelings.

At fewer than three hundred pages, In the Eye of the Storm was a slimmer volume than he usually produced. It was originally published in hardback under the title: Duty Bound: The Diaries of Colonel Heinz Thom, and for once his original title better captured the essence of the book. Heinz Thorn (he lengthened his surname to Thomas on immigrating to England) had been a young officer who was attached to the general staff of the German army shortly before the outbreak of the war. He served under its chief, Franz Halder, and his successor, Kurt Zeitzler, until a bout of ill health forced his retirement from active duties in the summer of 1944.

The colonel, who never joined the Nazi party, was the son of a Lutheran pastor from Osnabruck in Lower Saxony. Between 1940 and the end of the war he kept diaries that revealed a romantic, philosophical bent. A description of linden blossom glimpsed on an otherwise grey morning might lead him into a disquisition on the evanescence of beauty. The fall of light on a polished table might give rise to reflections on the subjectivity of perception. The sound of a horse clattering over cobbles might catapult him back to childhood and the smell and feel of such a creature in a humid stable when he was lathering it after a gallop. My grandfather had obviously read Proust; he was clearly a man of refined sensibilities.

No mention was made in any of the entries of hisday-to-day duties, and he kept them scrupulously free of any political comment. There were only passing references to the war, as when a joyous family Christmas in 1942 was contrasted with the plight of the troops in the east, by which he doubtless meant the encircled Sixth Army at Stalingrad. The regular entries ended when he was transferred to Munich after a bout of tuberculosis; after that they became infrequent, and much more focused on his joy at having his wife close at hand. They didn’t record what must have been his growing horror at the advance of the Red Army. Though he never expressed any untermenschen sentiments in his writings he plainly had a great love of his country and its culture. He also had a deep commitment to the ties of blood and family. He recorded his delight at his wife’s pregnancy and the eventual birth of my mother in early 1945, then mere weeks later his despair that his wife, who had gone to Danzig to rescue her elderly parents, had been trapped there and consumed in the Soviet onslaught, missing presumed perished.

The diaries alone, as an unadorned source, were interesting as a human document; but my father found a way to give them much wider moral significance. He did this by interleaving them with accounts of the concurrent administrative activities of my father’s office, the most notorious of which was the framing of the so-called Commissar Order prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union. This had authorised the immediate arrest and summary execution of all Communist officials by occupying forces. It was held to be the point at which the German Army surrendered its military orthodoxy to the insane imperatives of the Nazi regime.

My father’s insertions were presented without comment, except for a crucial and damning passage in his preface, where he pointed out that Heinz Thorn was one of Halder’s senior subordinates and would have been intimately involved in his office’s administrative activities. Halder, who after the war was eventually honoured with the Meritorious Civilian Service Award by the US government for services to the state, was one of the senior generals who had helped formulate the Commissar Order; he had also advocated blanket reprisals against groups containing hostile individuals. The implication was clear: despite all his aesthetic scruples, my grandfather was deeply complicit in the brutalisation of the war in the east, a brutalisation that had led to the death of millions.

The book was a modest but unexpected success when it appeared in paperback, its cover adorned with a misty black-and-white photograph of my grandfather. A handsome man, he was shown in uniform with a peaked cap on which the Nazi eagle and swastika were prominent. My father freely confessed that this had outraged my mother as much as anything else, because my grandfather had destroyed everything from the war years apart from his diaries, forcing the publishers to use a post-war civilian photograph on which they had superimposed the uniform. My father was dismissive on this matter, claiming that the cover was meant to be symbolic, was actually better than the unadorned image since it conveyed the extent to which my grandfather had been compromised by the Nazis, despite his intelligence and culture. He was an exemplar of the moral corruption that had destroyed Germany. To me this was the height of hypocrisy, especially coming from a man who’d always been intolerant of anything but typographical covers.

What had my mother made of it all? Had she voluntarily surrendered the diaries to him in the first place? He always claimed so, though it was all too easy to imagine him taking them witho her knowledge, using them for his own ends.

After reading the book following Rees’s accusation I had a long telephone conversation with Tanya in which I damned it as nothing more than character assassination. To my surprise, Tanya confessed that she had also read it, a matter of months after we first met. And while she sympathised, she could also see my father’s point of view. Modern research was showing a greater complicity on the part of the German armed forces in Nazi war crimes; a similar re-evaluation was taking place about Soviet excesses. Uncompromising ideological forces had swept along even the good-hearted. The savagery of the times had tainted everyone but the most saintly.

It was only years later that I discovered Father had donated all the royalties from the book to the Institute for Holocaust Studies.

Again a telephone was ringing. I lay in the bath, surrounded by mounds of foam. I was holding a framed family photograph, a rare one showing all four of us, Rees and I not yet teenagers, huddling in the loose embrace of my mother and father, who were standing like two strangers in front of a sign advertising a ghost train.

With an agility that surprised me I pivoted out of the bath, grabbed a towel and padded into Tanya’s bedroom. By now the phone had stopped, but it started again. I snatched up the receiver, somehow convinced that it was going to be Lyneth.

“Hello?”

“O? Is everything all right?”

Tanya.

“Fine,” I said. “I was in the bath.”

She’d obviously rung off and tried again because she didn’t want to leave a message. She wanted to talk to me direct, make sure I was behaving myself.

“Did you have some lunch?” I heard her asking.

Had I? To my relief I remembered putting the macaroni cheese back in the freezer and preparing a tuna salad. I had done it myself. Sometimes my lapses were just that—lapses, not indications of Owain’s manifestations.

“Yes,” I told her. “I’ve even washed up. How did the talk go?”

“I haven’t given it yet. I’m on my way.”

The bedside clock showed one-thirty.

“I’m missing you,” I said.

“Are you all right?”

“You’ve already asked me that. Don’t worry. I can cope. Are you nervous?”

“About what?”

I’d meant the talk, but I said, “About leaving me alone.”

I heard her laugh, though it wasn’t entirely spontaneous. “I’m sure you can look after yourself. Just don’t forget to take your tablets. The little red ones.”

Antidepressants. I said, “Do you think they’re working?”

“What?”

“The happy pills.”

I heard her fumbling with the phone. “Do you?”

This wasn’t fair on her. “Absolutely,” I said. “But I couldn’t get my electric razor to work in the bath.”

“Owen!”

“Joke.”

I heard her breathe in. “Not funny.” She sounded distinctly peeved. “Not funny at all.”

“Sorry. I was just trying to demonstrate that I haven’t entirely mislaid my sense of humour.”

“Do you want me to come home now?”

“Of course not. I didn’t mean to rattle you.”

“You’d better behave yourself. Don’t do anything daft.”

“Well, I’d decided against sunbathing.”

“Listen, I need to go. Are you positive you’re all right?”

“Scouts’ honour.”

“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Break a leg.”

When the line went dead I felt a sense of my own foolishness. Dredging humour out of a situation that was not at all funny, least of all for her.

The wardrobe doors were open; sweaters, shirts and underwear poked out of drawers. I’d been going through my clothing again, searching for keys, money, anything that would give me information or facilitate my urge to go exploring. But everything important was locked away. Including the smallest bedroom across the landing, whose door in my frustration I’d only just refrained from forcing.

I put on my towelling robe and tidied everything as best I could. I set the photograph back on top of the dresser by my bed. It was the only one there, another relic that Tanya must have salvaged from my hous. The empty house whose phone might be ringing even now, with Lyneth calling, wondering where I was. No that was ridiculous. Tanya or someone else would have told her I was here. So why hadn’t she rung, or at least put the girls on the phone to speak to me? Had she taken all the family photographs when she left? Had I done something so terrible she’d shut me out of her and the girls’ life completely?

I went back into the bathroom and pulled the plug. The right arm of my robe was now wet to the elbow. I stood there in the steam and spicy bubble-bath fragrance, watching the mountain range of foam slowly collapsing as the water drained. Tanya and Lyneth. Lyneth and Tanya. The two fixed emotional points of my adult life that I’d orbited like a planet around a binary star. I just hadn’t been able to stay away from Tanya.

About six months after she’d married Geoff I phoned her at home one weekend, ready with a cover story in case Geoff answered. But she took the call, and in no time I was confessing that I yearned to have regular contact with her. Was it possible that perhaps we could meet on an occasional basis, just as friends, just to keep in touch?

She sounded mildly amused but remained noncommittal, saying only she would think about it. A month later she phoned to say that she would be in London in a few days’ time and would I like to meet up for lunch?

By now she had learnt that Lyneth was pregnant again and must have known that this had prompted me to call her in the first place. I expected her to warn me off completely, but in fact we spent three hours at a pavement cafe near the British Museum over toasted sandwiches and endless cups of coffee.

Tanya was genuinely pleased that we were having another child. She made it plain that she intended to do nothing to compromise her marriage to Geoff, or mine to Lyneth. At the same time she admitted to having missed my companionship and said that she would be happy to see me when circumstances permitted. I suggested that it would be better if we said nothing to Geoff or Lyneth about such meetings; Lyneth in particular would not have reacted kindly to them. Tanya agreed but insisted we didn’t pretend we were doing something that wasn’t deceitful.

So we began what I suppose was a chaste affair, though it was certainly far from platonic. Tanya and I never disguised our continued attraction for one another, but we never quite articulated it either. We talked of Geoff and Lyneth only in passing, though Tanya was always interested in the doings of the girls. She would have made a terrific mother.

I was still in the bathroom, wiping my arm on one of Tanya’s towels, inhaling its smell of her. It was far more familiar to me than Lyneth’s, which I couldn’t bring to mind. Poor Lyneth, whose loyalty and industry I’d always taken for granted. Sara and Bethany, her finest creations. They’d been gone for months. But I still didn’t know why.

I unhooked the showerhead and rinsed out the bath. I went back into Tanya’s bedroom and stood at the bay window. No cars on the driveway. Tanya had driven to the station, and Geoff was always up at six each morning so that he could get into work before the rush hour. I had a recollection that he was attending a conference in Nortmpton, would be staying overnight.

Two o’clock. Nothing living was moving, outside or in. The house felt unoccupied. I had a sense that even I was not truly there, had become my own phantasm.

THIRTY-THREE

The snow kept tumbling down. It was already up to the ankles of his boots. Owain tugged at his cap brim, wishing he’d picked up something warmer from the stores after dropping off the Panache.

A squad of cadets from a youth brigade was doing manoeuvres near the Guards Memorial in St James’s Park, their drill sergeant forcing them to hunker down in the snow with their replica rifles and submachine guns. The wooden weapons used by recruits were usually crudely carved, making splinters as much of a risk as chilblains or sprains. In his youth they had been weighted with lead shot or horseshoes. He’d done his early training on the Brecon Beacons, under conditions far more desolate. According to a report he’d seen recently, forty percent of the brigades were now made up of female conscripts.

He crossed The Mall. The missile battery at the Admiralty Arch looked deserted, everyone doubtless huddled around the nearest stove.

Ghostly figures were emerging from a ruined building, spilling out of its rubble-strewn entrance. They flooded forward, passing through him, blurred images talking soundlessly to one another, as insubstantial as smoke. He shut his eyes and kept walking until he knew they would be gone. Nothing was going to hinder him. He wouldn’t allow it.

Perched in his head, I was astonished both by the phantoms and the realisation that they might actually be emanating from the ICA in my own world. Minutes before they could have been Tanya’s audience. They were fleetingly manifest in this world because of my link to Owain.

He found the Windsor easily, saw that it was a Georgian remnant squashed between the egg-box façade of a furniture repository and a big rectangular water tank on galvanised trestles. It looked as if it had been converted from some earlier use decades before, its red plastic lettering faded, the crown over the W askew. A hoppy aroma in the snow-filled air told him that there was a brewery in the vicinity.

The hotel foyer was full of dark wood, crystal chandeliers and framed photographs of young servicemen. Owain stamped his feet on the doormat and dusted the snow from his cap.

An elderly woman wearing gold-framed bifocals was sitting behind the reception desk.

“Good day, major,” she said to him in an impeccable English accent. “Isn’t it appalling weather.”

“Awful,” he agreed. “I’ve come to see my brother, Rhys. He told me he was staying here.”

She didn’t check the register but slowly swivelled her chair to glance at the rows of keys hanging on brass hooks.

“I do believe he’s at home,” she told him.

A quaint way of putting it, and rather contrived, too: as far as he could see, only one key on the board was missing.

She was in her seventies, wearing an expensive silver cardigan that long had seen better days. Blue rinsed hair and a string of what might have been real pearls at her neck. Withered, arthritic hands. A relic, like the hotel itself, of another age.

“I’ll let him know you’re here,” she said, reaching for the telephone.

“I phoned earlier,” he lied. “He knows I’m coming.”

The furrows on her brow deepened. He guessed that she had been at the desk all morning.

“I rang his portable,” he improvised. “By a miracle there was a signal. We had dinner together yesterday evening.”

“Ah.” She was mulling it over. “I do believe I remember him mentioning that at breakfast. He was rather late coming down.”

“Between you and me,” Owain said, “he’s never been much of an early riser.”

His tone conveyed sympathy with her disapproval of such tardiness. She looked mollified. Part of him was relieved to hear that his brother had returned safely. He needed him in one piece, and fully sober, if he was going to get any sense from him; but he also wanted to catch him off guard.

The keys were arranged in rows that he suspected represented the six floors of the building. The absent one was in the upper right-hand corner.

“Top floor?” he guessed.

“Of course,” she told him. “The suite. It has the best views.”

He was doing his utmost to be diplomatic and withheld his smile. The place was as quiet as a deserted barracks. It was probable that none of the other rooms was let.

“I wasn’t sure I was going to catch him,” he remarked. “The line was poor. I thought perhaps it might just be an overnight stay.”

“No, no,” she assured him, not even pretending to check the register. “Payment for three nights has already been made.”

“Ah. I’ll go straight up in that case, if it’s all right by you.”

“I’m afraid the lift isn’t working. You must forgive us. It’s such a problem these days. One simply cannot get the tradesmen.”

All this was said with an eggshell dignity. Her head was shaking slightly as if to say: What could you do? When would this intolerable state of affairs ever end?

“Please don’t concern yourself,” Owain commiserated. “I’m used to the exercise.”

“Turn right at the top of the stairs,” she told him. “It’s the third on the right. You remind me of him, you know.”

“Sorry?”

“Griff.”

It took him a moment to realise she was referring to his uncle. “You know him?”

“When I was younger. We were good friends in those days. I haven’t seen him in years. Your brother tells me he’s in fine fettle.”

What was the point in disabusing her? “Hale and hearty,” he said.

“We used to go dancing.”

“Ah.”

He thought she looked misty for a moment, but she quickly pulled herself together.

“Well,” she said, “you mustn’t let me delay you.”

The carpets were threadbare, dark with age. None of the sconced lights on the stairway were working. He ascended into the gloom, past landing windows thick with outside grime. All the corridors on the left side of the building were boarded up, with hazard stickers on them. It was probably bomb damage, judging by the way the repository next door abutted it as if to shore up the facing walls. Of course there might have been an outbreak of something, especially if the place had been used to house refugees. Few establishments could afford the expense of decontamination, and fewer still had the contacts to expedite the work. Its aura of shabby gentility would not be likely to appeal to

Rhys. Sir Gruffydd had probably arranged the accommodation as a favour to an old friend fallen on hard times. And as a means of keeping Rhys close on hand—but not too close.

His brother’s room turned out to be at the end of the corridor along the topmost floor. It grew colder as he moved down it. He didn’t knock but turned the knob. The door wasn’t locked.

Owain stepped quietly inside to a stale unventilated heat. A pair of shoes lay on the lounge floor, and there was a copy of the News Chronicle on the coffee table. Yesterday’s edition. The room gave no other evidence of habitation.

He slipped into the bedroom, where the contrast was stark. The bed was unmade, items of clothing scattered on it, an open paperback lying on the pillow. The Rake of the Main, a trashy TripleX adventure novel, sold in PP outlets only. A tale of de-may-care pirates, of lust and vengeance on the high seas, it said on the back. They sold for thirty euros or more on the black market.

The door to the en suite bathroom was open, a razor and brush on the sink, the sides of the bath still wet. But Rhys was gone: he must have exited the room minutes before.

Owain pocketed the book and went outside. The fire escape door opposite was open a crack, the cold air seeping in. There were fresh footprints on the snow-covered steps. He followed them down, treading carefully. They continued along an alleyway that gave out on a ramshackle open space of stalls, barrows and braziers arranged around three sides of a flagstone square.

A rich mixture of smells reached his nostrils: wood smoke, curry sauce, and the ammoniacal smell of raw fish turning rank. Civilians and soldiers of many nationalities milled around in the dirty slush, buying and bartering all manner of goods from bowls of glistening offal to galvanised bathtubs. Two carthorses were munching straw in one corner, while corrugated sheets framed a latrine in the other.

There was no sign of Rhys amongst the crowds. Had his brother spotted his arrival and made haste to flee? Probably, though an odd reversal given his previous eagerness to make contact. Owain’s premonition of impending danger, and of the need to get some straight answers from his brother, was merely heightened.

He swiftly abandoned the idea of attempting to find Rhys by hunting through the bustle. Instead he went into a pub that stood on the corner of the square. From its front window he would have a clear view of the entrance to the alleyway. Assuming that Rhys returned via the same route, it was the perfect place to spot him.

The pub, like the square, was crowded, mostly with customers he judged to be ex-servicemen or manual workers from exempted industries. The place was thick with cigarette smoke, raucous voices and the reek of spilled beer. A large alcove was packed with spectators watching horseracing on a dusty track. He found an empty stool at the window and wedged himself in.

Within minutes of sitting down he realised he was hungry. He hadn’t eaten anything all day. When a young boy pushed through the crowd with a basket holding brown paper bags of nuts, Owain bought one and wolfed them down. They tasted of little but salt and left his mouth feeling stripped of its juices.

He put his hat on his stool and pushed his way to the bar. A hollow-eyed Dravidic woman was serving. She could have been any age between thirty and fifty, her hair dyed the colour of dirty straw.

“What can I get you, major?” she asked.

Owain realised he had no idea. I seized my chance, said, “Beer.”

“Pint?”

I waited for him to say something; he simply nodded.

“Dimpled or straight?”

It felt like a test. “As it comes.”

He was given a dimpled glass with a handle, the beer a mahogany brown with caramel-coloured foam. She slopped a portion of it as she pushed it across the counter, already taking an order from her next customer.

Owain manoeuvred his way back to the window, only to find that a beefy, florid-faced man now occupied his stool. He looked like a stereotypical butcher.

“I was sitting there,” Owain said to him.

He was already tensed, expecting a confrontation, but the man merely picked up his drink and slid himself off the stool. He said something in what sounded like Norwegian before merging into the crowd. Owain saw that his hat had been carefully placed on the ledge, propped by its peak against the window to minimise seepage from beer puddles.

He seated himself and put the glass to his mouth. It smelled like yeasty bilge water. He swallowed a big mouthful. A shudder went through him as the liquid went down, bitter and earthy. Steeling himself, he took another mouthful, determined to moisten his mouth, sloshing it through his teeth, not swallowing until it was warmed to body heat. All the while he was looking out the window, searching for a glimpse of Rhys.

He set the glass down, made himself more comfortable. Outside the snow had stopped falling and the crowd in the square had thinned. Stallholders were starting to pack up for the day. Though it was still early, the sky already held the first hint of the darkness to come.

THIRTY FOUR

“Owen?”

“Rees?”

“You’re there.”

“Where else would I be?”

There was a pause. Phone at my ear, I looked around the hallway, trying to remember what I had been doing.

“Sorry about the cock-up yesterday,” Rees said.

“You should be.”

“Lost the plot. She told me off.”

“Tanya?”

“Keisha.”

I took the phone into the living room and sat down. “Keisha?”

“My girlfriend.”

I wondered: was this the “someone else” he was supposed to have been bringing to dinner? Hardly surprising that neithert of the dad showed. Rees had never been able to maintain a settled relationship.

“A girlfriend,” I said carefully. “That’s nice.”

“We met at the support group.”

“Oh?” I didn’t like the sound of this. “Is she—what does she do?”

“She’s a nurse. At the centre. I’m teaching her chess.”

It was hard to know what to say to this. “Is that so? Do you mean generally or at this very moment?”

An over-emphatic laugh. “You’d like her, Owen. She’s funny.”

I couldn’t resist it: “Peculiar or ha-ha?”

“Ha-ha,” he replied, as though it had been a perfectly serious question. “We laugh a lot.”

“Well,” I said, “they say that laughter is the best therapy.”

No response to this.

“How long have you two been together?”

“Just a couple of weeks. I think dad might like to meet her.”

“Dad?”

“She says she’s up for it. I thought we could all go.”

I wasn’t expecting this. “All?”

“Me and Keisha and you and Tanya.”

His voice had the usual edgy quality it always took on whenever he had to speak at length on the phone. He disliked not being able to see the person he was talking to. He also tended to make inappropriate comments and suggestions. It wouldn’t occur to him to consider that Father might find a visit from four people rather overwhelming, especially since two of them would be strangers.

“I’m not sure that would be appropriate, Rees. He’s always better with one person at a time.”

“When did you last see him?”

I tried to think. “Well, it was a while ago. A few months. Six, maybe.”

“I haven’t seen him in nearly a year. We’re overdue, bro.”

“I’m not ready for it at present.”

“Might b just the tonic you need. Remind you that there’s always others worse off.”

I stifled my surprise. It was rare for Rees to make a non-subjective observation.

He went quiet again. His telephone silences always made you feel you were in danger of losing him, that he was already shunting off down a mental siding where the conversational track would abruptly end.

“Funnily enough,” I said, “he phoned last night. Left a message.”

After a moment: “How did he sound?”

“The usual. Vague and confused. I didn’t actually speak to him. Does he know about my accident?”

There was a silence suggestive of the idea that he was thinking about it.

“Would he remember if anyone told him?”

“Probably not.”

“Perhaps Tanya’s been in touch. Did you ask her?”

“No. Are you sure everything’s all right, Rees?”

“Ticketyboo, bro. Ticketybro, boo.”

He sounded a little manic. “You taking your medication?”

“’Course. Keisha makes sure of that. She’s a stickler.”

“Can I speak to her?”

“She’s in the kitchen, cooking dinner. Bean curry. Some like it hot.”

It was an L-shaped bedsit, the kitchen tucked in one corner. I couldn’t hear any sounds of cooking in the background.

“How old is she?” I asked.

“Five five.”

“Fifty-five?”

He sniggered. “Squared. We’ll come and see you soon so you can get to know one another.”

“Really?”

“Honest. Listen, got to go. Think about what I said, eh?”

It was dark, the square practically deserted. Owain drained the last of his pint and belched, tasting the curried pastie he’d eaten earlier. The pub was popular because street vendors called in, offering leftovers at bargain prices.

There were two other empty glasses in front of him. The crowd in the pub had thinned a little but the bar was still busy. He could hear darts thudding into a board above the hubbub. The TV was now showing an old black-and-white Hollywood movie. Men and women in dinner jackets and gowns moving around an elegant apartment with a skyscraper horizon visible beyond the window. Even more people had crowded into the alcove to watch it.

Fog was starting to fill the square. With the wagons and stalls gone Owain had had an unimpeded view of all approach points to the alleyway until now. But there was still no sign of Rhys. His brother hadn’t returned—at least not via this route. Soon the fog would prevent him from knowing even if he did. He saw to his surprise that it was after six o’clock. He couldn’t wait any longer.

Getting down off the stool, he almost fell forward. As he traversed the bar he heard peevish voices and realised that he had walked across the line of sight of the darts players. He found the door, lurched outside.

The cold lunged at him. He took a few steps and threw up into the snow. Rummaging in his jacket he found a handkerchief and swabbed his face. His thoughts were tumbling over one another. Giddy myself, I couldn’t get a grip on them.

The snow was inches deep. He made his way down the alley to the fire escape. With extreme deliberateness he mounted the stairs, gripping the handrail, setting his feet down firmly on each snow-coated step. He looked neither up nor down but straight ahead, concentrating utterly on not losing his footing.

The fire door was still open a crack. He stepped through, crossed to his brother’s door. Turned the handle with as much stealth as he could muster.

Rhys hadn’t returned. The room was exactly as he had left it hours ago.

There was no sign of any briefcase or documentation. He checked the bedside dresser: the drawers were empty. In the wardrobe hung shirts, jackets and trousers, all freshly pressed, three or so of each. Underwear and sweaters still inside his suitcase at the bottom of it. Enough clothes for a few days’ stay but no more. Nothing except for loose change in any of the pockets. No wallet or ID card. No evidence that he’d shared the suite with anyone else.

Owain briefly contemplated scribbling a message but rejected the idea. If Rhys had actually fled from him there was no point in giving hints of why he had come. Of course he could pretend that it had just been a social call. But would Rhys believe it? Unlikely. Better to leave him guessing.

He also considered and rejected the idea of leaving via the foyer, and perhaps giving a message to the old woman at the desk. A stupid idea. She would want to know what he had been doing in the interim. Possibly she had phoned up to let Rhys know he was coming, giving him time to flee. It was odd that no one had come upstairs to check what was going on. Maybe she was too arthritic for the climb. Perhaps there wasn’t anyone else to hand. More likely she knew better than to meddle in anything involving the military.

He exited again, going down the fire escape with even more caution than he had ascended. By the time he reached the bottom he needed to pee. The alleyway was deserted, the walls framing it blind brick. He relieved himself under the stairway.

The fog was thick. He had just finished when he glimpsed a movement in the square. A figure in a bulky coat, moving stealthily around.

Owain crept forward. The murky light spilling out from the pub showed the figure crouching, picking up something from the impacted snow, edging closer to the alleyway. Pausing and looking around, as though to check that no one was looking. Head swathed in a fur cap.

Owain waited until it turned its back on him. He raced out, clamping one hand across the face, the other grabbing an arm and twisting.

There was a brief struggle, buttons popping on the coat, a mound of flesh under his hand, the cap dislodged, dark hair spilling out. He saw the grimy face of a girl.

He pushed her into the alleyway and up against the wall. She was perhaps seventeen or eighteen. Owain had a sense of having known from the outset that it wasn’t Rhys but being compelled to take action in order to be certain. He was spoiling for a fight.

I willed him to restrain himself, and he did pause for a moment. The girl went motionless under his grip. Her hair was ragged-edged, her fur coat worn and fetid. Underneath it she wore layers of blouses and shirts, all of which had parted effortlessly under the thrust of his hands. No bra, her left breast squashed under his palm. He slid it up towards her shoulder. A pretty face. Lean-bodied but soft in all the right places.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded to know, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Her fearful eyes flickered. She held herself absolutely still except for the rise and fall of her chest.

“I come—” she began, and faltered. “There is food. I am come for gathering food.”

An eastern immigrant. The fanciful idea that she might be a gypsy took hold of him. In the snow he saw the grubby canvas bag she’d been carrying. From it had spilled scraps of cabbage leaf, cheese rinds, a trodden onion.

Owain’s exertions had set the blood sloshing in his head, and suddenly he felt as if he was going to lose his balance. He took his hand from the girl’s shoulder and flattened it against the wall to support himself. Almost instantly she slipped her free hand into the pocket of her coat and brought it swiftly out again.

A knife. He had been half-expecting something but was a fraction slow in reacting. She brought the blade straight out towards his midriff, but he managed to pivot so that it caught in the open flap of his jacket. He grabbed her wrist and twisted. She instantly ceased struggling again, the knife falling to the ground.

He saw that it was a short-bladed kitchen implement, sharened on both sides. Breathing heavily, he pressed his hands all around her to check that she was carrying no other weapons. He was thorough, unable to stop himself from relishing her fleshiness under his probing fingers. She stared over his shoulder, holding herself rigid. Mustering all my willpower I urged him to draw back.

There was no other weapon. He relaxed his grip a little, shook his head at her, forcing her to look him in the face.

“Not a good idea to be out here on your own,” he said. “Not a good idea at all.” He swallowed air. “Have you any family?”

Nothing at first. Finally a curt nod.

“Mother and father?”

“Father.”

“Brothers and sisters?”

She looked away, towards the square. Yearning to be able to flee.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “What’s your name?”

He was wavering a little, the words coming out thick and slow. The girl glanced back at him, and her expression changed. Fear giving way to something more calculating.

“You want?” she said.

“What?”

“If you pay, I will do it. Money in front, yes?”

It dawned on him what she was suggesting. He was holding her pinned with her arms splayed, her front open. He, too, was open, even down to his fly, which he’d neglected to zip up.

He heard himself utter a laugh. Very carefully she brought up a knee and stroked it against his groin. The fear wasn’t exactly gone from her face but superimposed on it was a harder-edged look of extreme practicality.

“Twenty-five euros for mouth,” she said softly. “Forty for condom.”

He just kept staring at her.

“Fifty bare. Any way. But no kiss or hit, yes?”

There was an instant when he hesitated before pushing himself away from her, sickened by her brazenness, disgusted also with himself.

As soon as he had retreated sufficiently the girl crouched down and snatched up the knife. She held it out in front of her, pulling her coat together with her other hand. Though he knew it was cruel, Owain couldn’t stop himself: he withdrew his Walther and levelled it at her.

She froze again. It was so easy to return her to a state of fear. The power was his again. Easy to do whatever he wanted with her. If he killed her, who would know? Who would ever find out? It happened all the time.

In that moment he felt that the whole world had descended to a grubby tableau which he and the girl were enacting in this desolate fog-bound space where nothing, not even God, existed apart from the two of them. And he was the absolute dictator of it.

He started laughing, but it came out shrill. Her eyes had filled up. With a fierce effort I made him say: “Go. Take yourself from here.”

She didn’t move immediately. I lowered his pistol. She took a step towards the square. And another, watching him all the while. I expected her to run the moment she reached the square, but she crouched down and began scooping the spillages back into her bag.

I made him lift Rhys’s paperback from his pocket and toss it at her. “Take this,” I said. “Sell it.”

It fell in the snow in front of her. Still watching us, she picked it up, dusted it with her sleeve and even glanced at the cover.

She looked uncomprehendingly at us.

“It’s valuable,” Owain said. “Don’t take less than the price of a fuck.”

He broke into brittle laughter again. The girl pushed the book into her bag and fled.

“Owen? It’s me. Sorry I’m late. I’m on my way.”

I was still reeling from what had happened in the square. I stumbled into the living room, the phone at my ear. The clock on the mantelpiece said five past six.

“They insisted I stay behind for a few drinks,” Tanya said. “I couldn’t really say no.”

I knew I had to maintain some semblance of a normal conversation.

“Did it go well?”

“Well enough. A few googlies from the audience afterwards, but nothing I couldn’t bluff my way out of. Everything all right at your end?”

I thought of the phantoms, of Owain’s inebriated state. What could I say? Tanya sounded uplifted, full of life. A little tipsy perhaps.

“All’s quiet,” I told her with as little edge as possible.

“You haven’t eaten, have you?”

“Not since lunch.”

“I don’t think I’m going to be up for cooking. All right if I pick up some akeaway on the way home?”

“Fine.”

“Indian or Chinese?”

“Chinese,” I said at random. “Sweet and sour?”

“OK. I should be back by seven. Let’s eat on trays in the front room. Put a bottle of white in the fridge.”

“Yes, miss.”

“Sorry. Just trying to think ahead. It’s been a long day and I’ll be glad to put my feet up. Are you sure you’re OK?”

“You keep asking me that.” I made a concerted effort to re-orient myself. “Rees phoned.”

“Oh? How is he?”

“Says he has a girlfriend. I’ll tell you about it later. You going to be all right to drive back from the station?”

“Probably not. I’ll get a cab if I have to. Is the hot water on?”

“Everything’s as warm as toast. Looking forward to seeing you.”

“Plain or fried?”

“Eh?”

“Rice.”

“Um, plain.”

“Anything for afters?”

“A snog on the sofa wouldn’t go amiss.”

I don’t know what made me say this. Tanya laughed and said, “You must be feeling better.”

Like a ghostly background image to our conversation I was seeing Owain’s view of the foggy city as he trudged his way home, reeling slightly with each step. It was as if I’d inherited a little of his drunkenness.

“Don’t forget the wine,” Tanya said, and hung up.

On the television screen the newsreader was talking about EU commissioners. What did Owain make of the European Union that existed here? I had no access to his thoughts on anything he had experienced when he occupied me.

I was pretty sure he hadn’t recently been active in my life—with one striking, intimate exception. His encounter with the girl in the alleyway had left us both with an erection.

THIRTY-FIVE

Owain got a lift from a security patrol that stopped to check his ID and offered him passage across the river. The three-man crew, which comprised a Scottish woman, an Armenian and an oriental from Solihull, were bored but jovial: they were on a dusk-to-dawn patrol, with a long night ahead of them. The fog had reduced visibility to a few metres, the patrol itself to a lengthy exercise in futility.

Ensconced in an old command post Saxon with a bronchitic engine, they took a circuitous route to the south bank, following in the wake of a snowplough. The Armenian, who spoke little English, offered him a swig of liquor from the little nest of bottles on one of the map tables. Normally Owain would have refused, but he was chilled and needed to rid his mouth of its sour taste.

He selected the only one that wasn’t coloured, swallowing the shot whole and not flinching as it raged down his throat and filled his head with the fruity chemical aromas of esters. At once revolting and liberating. Anything to keep the dreariness of the night at bay. He declined the offer of more, noticing that all three were invalids of some sort, the woman with a cloudy eye, the Armenian subject to an involuntary tremor, the Chinese with a pancake burn scar at the side of his neck and an ear that looked melted into his skull. All of them were in their forties, too worn out to be of use elsewhere.

They dropped him in front of the Barracks, the Saxon swiftly consumed by the fog as it drove away. Owain climbed the stains, feeling light-headed. Not that he was hungry; he’d gone beyond it He felt as if he were floating, a ghost drifting through the featureless limbo of some eerie afterlife.

His door key was gone from the ledge. He checked the windows: the blackout blinds were down. The door was unlocked, but as he eased it open it came to rest against the security chain.

He could feel the warmth seeping out. There was the merest hint of a familiar scent from within.

He felt an irrational urge to kick the door open, to pretend he didn’t know who was inside. To scare her. But he suppressed it and merely called in the loudest whisper he could muster: “Marisa!”

There was no immediate response. He called again, raising his voice a little, tempted once more to announce his arrival by hammering on the knocker. A dim light filled the hallway, and seconds later he saw her fingers fumbling with the chain, heard her saying his name.

As usual she wore a black dress more suited to the summer. Her hair had been trimmed, styled into a bob whose inward arcs were like commas punctuating the soft curves of her cheeks.

She immediately embraced him, pressing herself into his chest, her fingertips scrambling along the ridges of his collarbones.

“You’re back,” she said, her head in the crook of his neck.

It was the most wholehearted greeting she’d ever given him. But Owain was peering beyond her, looking down the hallway, wanting to be sure tha she had come alone. The living room door hung open, a single white cup visible on the arm of the empty sofa. No sign of anyone else.

Owain smiled to himself and said, “What an unexpected surprise.”

“Ouch!” Tanya cried, pulling her hand back from the edge of her plate, almost slopping a spoonful of black bean sauce on the carpet.

“They’re hot,” I said redundantly. “I overdid them in the microwave.”

I pulled the cork on the wine and poured out two glasses while Tanya spooned food on to our plates. She’d insisted on showering when she returned and was wrapped in her cream towelling robe. Nothing else. I’d had the heat on full all day and the house was baking.

She passed me my tray and I handed her a glass of wine. We were perched opposite one another on the big sofa with a cushion’s space between us.

“Any calls?” she asked.

“Only Rees.”

“So how was he?”

“How do you tell? He was pretty buoyant, but that could be the rise before the fall. He claims he has a new girlfriend. Keisha. Wants us all to meet up.”

“That would be good.”

“You believe him?”

“Depends on who shows up, doesn’t it?”

“My family,” I said with a weary fatalism. “One basket case after another.”

Tanya grinned at me and swallowed a mouthful of rice. “You’re not so bad. I’ve seen worse.”

I could tell she’d had a few drinks: she was slightly flushed and her eyes had a loose, relaxed look. She took another mouthful of her dinner.

“Have you spoken to Geoff?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“He hasn’t rung here.” Id made a point of checking the messages, just in case I’d missed one.

She just shrugged and kept on eating, looking at the TV, some sketch show. As if it didn’t matter. As if all that mattered was the here and now.

“You’ve had a drink,” Marisa said, a half-question that contained both surprise and amusement.

“It was my birthday,” Owain replied.

She looked puzzled. “Really, Owain?”

“No. I just fell into bad company.”

She passed him a cup of coffee, replenished her own and sat down on the sofa, tucking her bare feet underneath her. Her boots were outside in the hallway. How effortlessly she d made herself at home.

“One of the night patrols,” Owain said. “They gave me a slug of engine fuel.”

Plainly perplexed by his levity, she said, “Aren’t you going to take your jacket off?”

He’d flung himself into the armchair on entering, was sitting facing her.

“In a minute,” he said. “I thought you were on holiday.”

“We came back early. It was as I said it would be. Two days in Lisbon. Carl was in meetings. Always there was something pressing.”

“I saw him on TV. Peace talks, was it?”

“I’ve never known him so severe. I think perhaps this time it is serious. He only said that all leave is being cancelled. Do you know what is happening, Owain?”

It was finally dawning. How subtle she was. And what a fool he had been.

“Perhaps there’s going to be a big parade,” he said.

Her quizzical look became a frown. “Is something wrong?”

“That’s just what I was wondering. How long have you been waiting for me?”

“A few hours. Giselle did not know your whereabouts. So I thought I would wait.”

“Won’t Carl be worried?”

“He told me not to expect to see him tonight.”

“Very convenient.” Owain swallowed a belch and loosened his jacket. “In that case you’re free to spend the night here, aren’t you?”

The frown was now serious. “Something is wrong, Owain. What is it?”

“You tell me.”

He saw her afresh, as someone whose innocent veneer was the perfect cover for something more sinister and predatory. Legister’s whore, sent by him for the purpose of extracting information. The insight was oddly liberating.

“Has something happened?” Marisa asked anxiously.

“How would I know?” he replied. “I’m just an aide.”

“Now you’re frightening me,” she said. “Something has happened. Is that why you are drunk?”

“Not drunk. Loose. Chasing phantoms.”

She didn’t pick up on this. “What is it? Tell me.”

“Nothing to tell.” He shrugged off his jacket and sat down beside her on the sofa.

“More wine?” Tanya asked, waving the bottle.

“I haven’t finished this one.”

“Lost your appetite?”

“Not for some things.”

I picked up the trays and took them out to the kitchen. When I returned Tanya was using the remote to channel-hop. Finally she blanked the screen.

The half-light accentuated her beauty. As I knelt down in front of her to retrieve the lid from one of the cartons, I could see one of her breasts pouched in the folds of her gown. I brought my head up. She was smiling at me. I pushed my mouth on hers.

Marisa drew back as Owain pressed himself against her but she didn’t try to wriggle away. He began kissing her on the lips, his hands on her bare upper arms as he insinuated his legs between hers. Tanya responded without inhibition, pulling me on to her. I lost myself in our kissing, forcing her mouth open, forcing my tongue between her teeth, feeling her beginning to twist, to move around and give me a better position.

“Owain,” I could hear her say breathlessly as I dragged the shoulder straps right down her arms, feeling them tighten. “Owain, please!”

I freed one hand to get my trousers open, tugging them down to my knees. Then up underneath her skirt to grasp her tights, pulling at them while she pleaded and twisted, allowing me to free them, to peel them away. I crushed my mouth on hers again, shifting my weight forward, pressing my erection between her legs, already full to bursting.

“Take it easy,” I heard Tanya say. “Slow down!”

She wasn’t ready. I had a partial recovery of my senses. I used my tongue to lubricate my fingers, began stroking her. She writhed beneath me, playing the game of subdue and conquer to the hilt. I pushed my face into the crook of her neck, feeding on it, fumbling between her legs. I found a slickness there, exploited it instantly, surging in.

Marisa beneath me, slim and olive-skinned, head twisted back, the skirt of her dress thrust up to her wast, its straps pinioning her at the elbows. Tanya more ample, her gown a pool of cream at her midriff. I had my hands on her shoulders, pressing down as I thrusted, looming over her. She was squashed into a corner, uncomfortably twisted. A voice was repeating my name in feverish entreaty, but I couldn’t stop myself. Within a matter of seconds I was lost, jetting a few instants of my entire consciousness into them.

A long silence. No movement apart from the pulse of my heart and the diminuendo of my breathing. Finally I raised my head.

Marisa continued to lie absolutely still. She was gazing at the ceiling.

Owain withdrew, getting up and stumbling away from her. He went into the bathroom and began swabbing himself down with toilet paper.

Revenge. It had been revenge. All this time he’d trusted her, assumed that she was genuinely interested in him, had feelings for him. Now he was certain she was working for her husband. A spy planted to extract information from him about what his uncle was doing.

He splashed water on his face and dried it. Took the remainder of the toilet roll into the living room.

Marisa was sitting up, her knees clamped together. Owain offered her the toilet roll. She just looked at him.

Her hair was tousled, her face flushed. I couldn’t tell whether the muted look in her eyes was a result of abuse or consummated desire. I didn’t know whether she had been pleading with him to continue or to stop.

Owain himself scarcely cared. He tossed the toilet roll onto the sofa beside her.

I slumped back, looking at Tanya with bewilderment. I’d been gripping her shoulders so hard I’d left imprints on them.

She untangled her legs from mine and eased herself up to a more comfortable position. She looked disturbed but not exactly outraged. Unsure as I was about Marisa’s compliance, I knew that Tanya had been a willing partner, at least at first.

“I can’t believe I did this,” I told her.

“You were pretty rough.”

Not exactly the response I had expected. As if she was more concerned with style rather than content. Which was a relief in one sense but shameful in another. That she’d wanted me and that it was Geoff I had betrayed. Geoff, who’d offered nothing but utter generosity of spirit.

And not only Geoff. What about my own family? Until I knew what had happened to them I couldn’t take anything for granted. There was also the sudden emergence of Owain’s sexuality. He’d been impotent, or at least functionally celibate, for years. Had I had any influence over that?

“This is such a mess,” I said, as angry as I was ashamed. “It’s such a bloody mess.”

Tanya was calm. She looked less distressed than exasperated.

“O,” she said finally. “What is it? What’s really wrong?”

I knew she wasn’t asking about Lyneth and the girls: that was given. I had a feeling that she already suspected more than I imagined about the power and pull of my secret life. How much had I already given away? Had I called out Marisa’s name again? Or been supplanted by Owain in more blatant ways than I’d assumed? She needed some truth from me, if only in recompense for what had just happened.

The truth about where I went when I wasn’t there.

Owain heard water spurting erratically from the shower. The supply was never reliable after dark, little more than tepid bursts. But Marisa persisted: he could hear her lathering herself, pausing each time the flow ceased before resuming. She was being thorough, taking her time, enduring whatever discomfort was necessary.

She’d taken her clothes in with her. Hadn’t asked for a towel. He went to the cupboard in the hallway, found a white one he’d never used. He laid it outside the door and called through to say that he had done so.

No reply. He hadn’t expected one. In the back of his head there was a high-pitched whine, only just within the limits of audibility. For once he didn’t quite know what to do next. He wanted to leave, to walk away for an hour, so that by the time he came back she would be gone. But he refused to be a coward.

He felt no sense that he had done anything wrong: merely something irrevocable. He’d wanted to challenge her that she’d been making sexual overtures to him ever since they had started seeing one another; but she’d gone into the bathroom and locked the door before he could say anything.

He sat in the armchair and waited. At length he heard the water stop. The door opened and closed again. She was still inside. She’d taken the towel.

The mosquito whine would not go away. As a purely academic exercise he began to contemplate what the outcome might be if he simply killed her. He would have to dispose of her body, and also her car. He could take both and simply dump them somewhere, make it look like a random assault. But unlikely to be convincing, especially if Legister had dispatched her to him. No, it was neither necessary nor desirable. If she cried rape, he’d take whatever measures he could to protect himself, though somehow he doubted that she would actually tell Legister what had happened. It would be like a confession of professional failure, an admission that her cover had been blown in the most naked fashion.

He was smiling to himself. The door opened again, and he heard her come out. He didn’t get up from the armchair.

She came into the doorway, her hair still damp. Bare-legged, looking more waif-like than ever, a little lost girl done up as a woman. It was such an artful pose that a renewed slus to violence took root in him. I did my utmost to dampen it, but his emotions were at boiling point.

There was an English sergeant he’d served with at the Konigsberg garrison who liked urchin refugees, who boasted that he held them tight as he took them from behind, one hand wrenching their chins up so he could slit their throats in the instant of his climax. A little death and a big death, he liked to joke. He kept his knife honed and oiled because you never knew when the opportunity would arise. Smiled like an alligator. Said that it was easy, made you feel like a little god. All-powerful. Answerable to no one in the blind, heedless universe.

“I must go,” Marisa said, looking straight at him.

Owain’s hand was already resting on his knife.

“Owen!”

I was slumped on the carpet. Tanya helped me back up on to the sofa. I’d fallen off, fainted.

“I’m all right,” I assured her, though I was in fact a little groggy.

She went into the kitchen and came back with a damp towel which she insisted I press against my forehead.

“Was it—him?”

She meant Owain. I’d tried to stifle him, to black him out: which had presumably made me pass out here.

“Not exactly,” I told her. “I wanted to stop him.”

She didn’t pursue this. I could tell she was still trying to decide whether I was totally mad or not.

It was late. I had no idea how long I had been talking, but the TV was off. Tanya had listened with absolute attention while I’d told her about the major’s world and my connection to it. I’d kept talking even when I was back with him, interrupting my narrative to let her know what he was doing and thinking, even telling her about his murderous thoughts. I saw her stiffen at this and look at me with something more than vast curiosity: it could have been shock or recognition or perhaps even terror.

Into the silence she said, “Is he there now?”

I shook my head. “No. He’s gone. I’ve lost him.”

She had her arms clasped around her shins, was bunched up protectively.

“What did he do?” she asked at last.

“I don’t know.”

She didn’t immediately say anything further. I expected questions about Owain, about the people and places in his life, the texture and depth and extent of my experiences, and about their relatonship to the world I inhabited with her. I was ready for fascination, scepticism, anxiety or outright incredulity. But there was none of this.

Finally she said, “Did you want to make love? I mean with me?”

I nodded wholeheartedly, though I still felt ashamed.

“It wasn’t you, Owen. You may have started it. But you’d gone before you came.”

If it was a joke, she wasn’t smiling. And of course I knew what she meant. But she was missing the complexities of it.

“It was me, Tan,” I insisted. “It was him, too. In both places. It was both of us.”

THIRTY-SIX

He dreamt that he was stumbling through a blinding light. The instant he woke he knew the light was in his bedroom, shining directly into his face. A gloved hand clamped itself across his neck, thumb and forefinger squeezing.

The torch was high-powered, its radiance a bluish-white. The man leaning over him relaxed his grip slightly, tugging him forward. He sat up slowly, trying to peer beyond the glare.

“Out you get,” said a voice from the foot of the bed. “Nice and steady.”

A northern accent. Yorkshire. Owain slid the heel of his hand back. His pistol was gone from under his pillow. The beam wavered a little as he swung his legs over the edge of the mattress. The CIF man standing beside him had the stubby black barrel of his automatic pointed almost nonchalantly at his chest.

Owain’s brain was thick with sleep and alcohol. He wondered if Marisa had told them he usually slept with the pistol close at hand. But how would she have known? They’d never shared a bed. No, it was just standard procedure. He knew that any acts of bravado would be futile. Stupid to get shot before he even knew why they were here.

“Get your boots on, major.”

A second man at the foot of the bed threw them into his lap. The one standing beside him stepped back, keeping his weapon trained on him as he laced them up. A Sterling TMP.

The torch was clicked off.

As his vision adjusted Owain realised that a murky dawn light was seeping into the room through the open door. The two men both wore full body armour and wraparound helmets with night-vision goggles perched on them. Crack troops, he didn’t doubt that, so best be obliging. They resembled bulky pilots that had just dropped out of the sky.

His jacket was tossed on to the bed. He put it on, asked for a glass of water. They ignored the request. He felt less hung-over than deprived of good quality sleep, as though he’d spent the st few hours merely floating in the shallows of unconsciousness.

“Let’s go,” said the man with the Yorkshire accent.

They marched him outside, the northerner going ahead of them. He wore a section commander’s patches, while the younger man was unit leader. No ordinary rankers for him: special duty operatives.

A tall, lean figure in a long overcoat was standing at the balcony, staring towards a band of light in the east. The blood-orange half-disc of the sun could be seen, squatting in a gap between the horizon and a line of thick cloud.

“Good morning, major,” Carl Legister said without turning around.

He was hatless, his dark hair slicked back on his scalp, delineated by the sharp lines of a recent haircut.

“Where is she?” he asked.

His men took up flanking positions. Both carried Sterlings. They were compact and lightweight, capable of single shots or rapid fire. At close range they could put a hole through you the size of a fist.

It was obvious Legister was asking about Marisa. A muted panic blossomed in him. He’d had vivid nightmarish dreams in the few hours he’d been asleep, dreams of flight, of chases, of corpses and ghosts pursuing him across blasted landscapes. Before that, there had been his conquest of Marisa. The empty aftermath. Her face at the door, hair still damp from the shower. After that? He couldn’t remember. It was all completely blank.

“She’s gone,” was all he could muster.

Legister didn’t move. “That much is evident, major. The question is—where?”

Owain was still trying furiously to recall. Nothing would come.

Legister turned to face him. “You don’t deny she was here?”

Owain knew that before he spoke, he had to think. I sat perfectly motionless within him, wanting to do nothing to disturb the dangerous fragility of his situation.

“You know that already,” he said. “Didn’t you send her?”

Legister’s hands were buried in the pockets of his overcoat. He had the look of someone engaged in a tiresome distraction, who wanted swift answers but knew that the protocols of their respective positions would have to be observed, if only for the sake of his own decorum.

“You say she’s gone,” he remarked. “An interesting choice of phrase. In what sense do you mean exactly?”

“She left. Hours ago.”

“What time?”

“I’m not sure. Around midnight.”

Legister made a motion of his head to the men, who retreated out of earshot. Owain was confident that their weapons were still trained on him. He wondered if Legister was also holding his own gun in his right-hand pocket. The thick navy serge of his overcoat made it difficult to be sure. No, he decided; it wouldn’t have been dignified.

“Was the rendezvous pre-arranged?” Legister asked softly.

“Why are you asking me?”

A slow exhalation that sounded like a sigh of impatience. “Tell me, major.”

It was hard to get his thoughts in order, especially when they contained such a crucial gap.

“She was here when I arrived home,” he admitted. “I wasn’t expecting her.”

“What time was this?”

“I’m not sure. I’d had a few drinks. Ten, eleven o’clock.”

“And then what?”

He had penetrating eyes and the capacity for making his whole being go so abruptly still that he became like a lens concentrating your attention, making you the focal point of his.

“We had coffee. Talked. She left.”

“Is it a sexual relationship?”

Owain managed to turn his surprise into a soulless laugh.

“Aren’t all the details of my recent conquests on file? My endless affairs and frequent visits to the city’s brothels? I imagine you have a good account of such activities.”

Legister didn’t react to this. He merely waited. Owain hadn’t considered until now the impact of negative evidence. It was perversely redemptive: a secret disclosed through the very absence of disclosure.

“Didn’t she tell you?” he said. “About my—difficulties? I thought that was part of the appeal.”

Nothing altered in his face. “She left around midnight?”

“I think so. I wasn’t watching the clock.”

“And you did—what? “

“Went to bed. Slept. Until your wake-up call.”

“You saw her drive away? “

“Yes.”

There was no way of telling what he was thinking. But if the car was gone, Marisa or he must have driven it. If he had done so, perhaps he had killed her. But no memory would surface. How long had he been sleeping? When had he actually gone to bed?

“I assumed she was going home,” he said, trying to project himself into the spirit of his fabrication.

Legister turned to one of men flanking him. “Go back inside and take a thorough look.”

He did so, the other remaining in position.

Owain didn’t move but merely stared beyond Legister, watching the burgeoning dawn. The sun had already been absorbed into the cloudbank, its light drowned. He heard the commander shift his position, moving behind him. There was the chink of something on his Sterling. Owain had a sense of being impaled between Legister’s stare and the unseen muzzle of the man’s weapon.

I couldn’t believe how calm he was remaining. Partly it was his training, of course, but I thought I detected a new brazenness in him. I continued to keep myself very much in the background, doing nothing to endanger us. At the same time I was eager to discover what had become of Marisa.

Owain was acutely aware that he must show no sign of wavering. Legister would pounce on any kind of weakness or inconsistency. He had a formidable reputation. It was he who had overseen the amalgamation of the civilian police force and the security services into the Security Police, he who had formed the Counter Insurgency Forces, giving them quasi-military ranks and equipment to rival the best of frontline units. While the SP was becoming a refuge for invalids and incompetents, the CIF had grown into a private army, increasingly answerable to him alone.

The younger man emerged and walked across to Legister. He was holding Marisa’s bunched-up tights in his gloved hand.

Legister took them from him and put them to his nose. Sniffed.

“Difficulties, major?” he said, holding them up, letting the legs dangle so that their soiling was clearly visible. Their withered emptiness declared both his crime and his damnation.

Briskly Legister stepped forward, producing a slim silver cylinder from his overcoat pocket. He thrust it towards Owain’s face and something hissed from its end.

A waft of menthol-like vapour, swiftly followed by a numbing flood, as though his body had been severed from his head. As he fell, it was Legister himself who caught him.

I came surging out of Owain, and my first thought was that I too was paralysed. But no. I was lying alone in the single bedroom, dawn light seeping through the open curtains.

My heart was racing. I lay there until it had slowed, wondering what had happened to Owain. Not death, at least not yet: I had a continuing sense of his undeclared presence. But Legister had done something to incapacitate him. For once he had looked angry.

Had Owain actually killed Marisa? I could only find out by returning to him. And I had my own reasons. Like Owain I had a feeling that I was about to be exposed. I’d told Tanya everything but I had no idea what the consequences might be. Was my admission proof that I was making progress? It didn’t feel that way to me; if anything, there was a renewed sense of crisis.

For Owain it was literally a matter of life and death: for me it was a question of culpability. If my presence had somehow stimulated his assault on Marisa, I was partially responsible for whatever had happened to her.

I went into the bathroom to pee. The house was already warm, the blurred outlines of the garden visible through the dimpled window glass. I was afraid to look at myself in the mirror. In case I saw him there.

I flushed the toilet and went out on to the landing. There was no sound elsewhere in the house. Carefully I crossed to Tanya’s door. Slowly turned the handle.

She had locked it from inside.

THIRTY-SEVEN

“You must forgive me,” Carl Legister was saying to Owain without a trace of regret. “It was an infantile act, and one that inconvenienced all of us. Not least the men to whom I should be setting an example.”

They were in the back seat of Legister’s Bentley, which was moving along the street at a pace barely faster than walking, its engine noise muted.

The two CIF men sat in the front behind steel-meshed glass. They had bundled him down the Barracks steps and into the car, he semiconscious, completely numb from the neck down, breathing raggedly through his lolling mouth. Only now was the feeling beginning to return to his body.

“They tell me it’s a combination of an opiate and a motor inhibitor,” Legister remarked without looking at him. “N-pentathio something or other. One of the boffins at Porton Down christened it nepenthe.”

Owain managed to sit himself fully upright. The smell was now vaguely medicinal. The after-effects of the drug? Or did it come from Legister himself? Owain was drawn to notions of formaldehyde, as though the Secretary of State had been pickled, was no more really alive than the Silicon Chancellor. He gave off no body heat, was merely an animated object, instilled with sentience and intelligence but containing nothing visceral.

Legister gazed out the window as they drove along the Embankment, rolling a slender gold ring between his thumb and forefinger. It looked like one of Marisa’s but it hadn’t come from his quarters. They’d found only the tights.

The Bentley had special identification plates, was instantly recognisable. They passed through a checkpoint without delay, the duty guards coming to brisk attention, salutes held until they passed. Legister, hidden from their view behind mirrored bullet-proof glass, showed no interest.

Gingerly I probed Owain’s mind, but he still had no memory of what had happened the night before. Had I blacked him out? Possibly, but he’d woken in his own bed. Had he got rid of Marisa before succumbing to alcohol-induced amnesia? Or was it merely a symptom of a more general mental disintegration?

At present I had no answer. I could only wait and see what emerged.

The morning was bright, the sky filled with a seizure of magnesium light, as if someone had exploded an enormous flare. There were fewer civilians and more security police on the streets than usual. All the observation posts and gun emplacements they passed were fully manned.

The two CIF men in front had removed their helmets and replaced them with padded black forage caps. The younger man, who was driving, glanced into the back at one point. He was orange-haired, perhaps ten years younger than Owain, a sprinkling of acne blotching the florid skin of his face. Hazel eyes, whose irises appeared slightly inward-looking, giving the impression of perpetual intense yet mindless concentration.

The Bentley stopped outside a community medical centre, a green cross on a white disc painted above its entrance. The commander climbed a flight of steps into the building, walking past a straggly queue of civilians who were waiting to redeem their prescriptions. Though the main entrance was open, the shutters were still down on the dispensing hatches. Everyone was slouched patiently against a retaining wall, studiously not showing any lingering interest in the car.

Presently the commander came out, leading another man in a grubby white laboratory coat. He was Owain’s age, good-looking but with an apparent crook in his neck. Owain saw him shake his head when questioned. When he replied he squinted in the direction of the rooftops, as though anticipating sniper fire.

Owain became aware that Legister was looking at him.

“Dr Marcel Hanson?” Legister said, making it sound like a question.

Owain merely indicated his incomprehension.

“You’re not familiar with him?”

This time it was more of a statement than a query.

“Should I be?”

Legister buried the ring in his overcoat pocket. He waited until the commander came back down the steps. Owain saw the doctor edge back inside the building, reaching out to touch the doorjamb as he did so. He was blind.

Legister touched a button and the window glided down.

“No sign of her,” the commander told him. “He was here all night. All day yesterday. Other staff have verified. Dysentery outbreak at a school.”

Legister absorbed this and gave a single nod. The man climbed into the car. They drove on.

“Who is he?” Owain asked.

Legister removed a leather document holder from a pouch in front of him. Its clear plastic compartments held files on five or six men. Owain glimpsed a photograph of himself among them. Legister flipped to a picture of the doctor, an enlarged ID face-and-profiles stapled to a sheaf of multicoloured papers and stamped with the SP shield. Surveillance documents. Pastel greens, pinks and blues containing details of everything from personal characteristics to most recent movements.

“No one of any special account,” Legister told him. “A medical doctor of Anglo-Belgian ancestry. Three children in Community Centre care. A family man who has to accept that we cannot spare unattached medical personnel for parenting. He was blinded in the same explosion that killed his wife. A land mine. Apparently they were on a bus. A sightseeing trip.”

Was Legister amused by this? Perhaps not, though as always it was difficult to judge. The curve of his lips had a multitude of possible meanings, the least of them a smile.

“Marisa sometimes helped out at his surgery,” Legister went on. “They occasionally had lunch together. She liked to take him to places he wouldn’t be able to go on his own. While he ate she might read the newspaper or his mail to him. Keep him abreast of things.” Legister paused. “How very unnerving that I should already be speaking of her in the past tense.”

Owain swallowed. “She’s seeing him?”

Legister flipped to another compartment. This showed a swarthy young man of Marisa’s age.

“Naium Sadiku,” he said. “Turkish Cypriot. No family. He was invalided out of the navy after suffering second-degree burns following a magazine explosion. He’s scarred from his neck to his knees. Ruined.”

The ID photographs belied this, suggesting a vigorous young personality with sleek skin and eyes that held a hint of mischief.

“She helps him bathe and assists with his physiotherapy. They met at Dr Hanson’s surgery, though I don’t believe the good doctor knows that she still sees him.”

Another flip. “Malcolm Mosekari. A former premier’s son from one of the old colonies. I remember introducing them at a reception. Nineteen years old. A handsome man, wouldn’t you agree? He has a mental age of six. She takes him on excursions to urban farms. He has special fondness for piglets.”

Legister closed the folder. He hadn’t looked at Owain throughout his recital and only did so now.

“Of course you thought you were the only one.”

Somehow Owain knew it was all true, that it wasn’t a ploy.

“She always told me she was bored,” he said. “She claimed she was lonely, had too many hours to fill.”

“And so she does. Some of these are irregular acquaintances. I think you had even become her favourite. But you will note consistent themes.”

Again it was a statement couched as a question, though when he said nothing, Legister provided his own elaboration: “All personable men in their different ways. All somewhat, shall we say, compromised in terms of what might be expected of them. As fully functioning representatives of masculinity.”

He was waiting for Owain to say something.

“Did you assault her, major?”

“No! It was—she gave me every reason to believe that it was what she wanted.”

“Indeed? That would represent quite an unexpected volte-face.”

“What do you mean?”

Legister looked as if it would be too distasteful for him to discuss it. Then he changed his mind. “Has she ever discussed with you what her existence was like before she was delivered to me in Alexandria?”

“She said she’d been in hiding. On the run.”

“And that was all?”

He didn’t know what to say.

“She was a captive, major. Held for the pleasure of her captors. For three months. They used her in any way they saw fit, though they were careful to preserve exterior appearances. When she was delivered to me her belly was bursting with them. Am I being sufficiently graphic?”

Owain found it hard to imagine, though all too conceivable.

“The foetus was already dead. She had to deliver it stillborn. Fifteen hours of labour, with few resources for medical intervention. Can you imagine it? Of course you can’t. After all, we are men.”

Owain looked away.

“You can understand then, why my wife might be averse to full-blooded intimacy. Can you not?”

Despite his distancing manner of expressing it, Legister nevertheless conveyed a sense of real if cold-blooded anger.

“Yes.”

“She is a young woman with youthful appetites, and I allowed her a certain latitude. But she did not return last night. She always comes home before dawn. We have a satisfactory account of the movements and whereabouts of all her other acquaintances. You were the last person to see her. Where is she?”

The car was moving slowly down a side street, going nowhere in particular, its journey merely an exercise in keeping him contained. Owain, still finding nothing to fill the void in his memory, wrestled with what to say next.

“I don’t understand why you’re asking me this,” he said. “If you’ve been monitoring her movements, you must know.”

Legister shook his head impatiently. “There’s not the personnel for blanket surveillance. We’re not the many-headed Hydra of popular legend. There are always more urgent priorities.”

Owain salvaged a scrap of scepticism: “I find it hard to believe that you wouldn’t make special arrangements for your own wife.”

He thought he saw a fresh flash of anger in Legister’s face. “It wasn’t considered necessary for established acquaintances whom we had no reason to suspect might harm her. Have I misjudged you, major?”

Owain took a gamble: “I think you’re the one who’s lying to me.”

Legister sighed, nothing changing in his face. “She was followed to your home. The men in question withdrew. They were summoned to an emergency briefing that I myself was conducting.”

“Really?” said Owain, growing bolder. “What emergency?”

Legister looked contemptuous. “The likelihood that war is about to break out. What could be more pressing?”

Owain decided that Legister was probably telling the truth about Marisa not being under twenty-four-hour surveillance. If she was reporting back to him, such security wasn’t necessary. So what had happened to her? Why couldn’t he remember? He’d poisoned his brain with drink, surrendered to his urges. But how far had he gone?

“I don’t know anything about that,” he said.

“My dear major, are you really intent on testing my patience to destruction? You expect me to believe that the field marshal has said nothing to you? You, his nephew, not party to his confidences?” Legister paused. “Unless, of course, your amnesia is a more pervasive affliction than I imagined. In which case I would consider myself culpably negligent in leaving Marisa unsupervised with you.”

Owain had full mobility back, but he still didn’t feel himself. The whine was beginning to insinuate itself into his head again. The car was airless. Trapped within its armour-plated confines, he was already in prison. Were they taking him to CIF headquarters? Was he to be incarcerated in some subterranean cell?

“I’m inclined to think that it’s a more selective affliction,” Legister persisted. “Rooted in a sense of self-preservation.”

“Sir Gruffydd’s been sick,” Owain managed to say. “He’s still convalescing.”

“Really? He was remarkably himself at our morning meeting yesterday.”

Owain’s hands, clamped on the curve of the leather upholstery at his thighs, felt tacky. He was sweating, certain that Legister could smell it.

“Well, no matter,” Legister said. “You’ve had the consolation of a recent reunion with your brother, I gather. Dinner, wasn’t it?”

He had no reason to deny it. “Is that illegal?”

“I’d gained the impression from your uncle that the two of you weren’t particularly close.”

“He was in town. He looked me up.”

“He had important things to discuss?”

Legister removed one of his contact lenses and inspected it on the tip of his fingers. For a few moments he looked vulnerable, a skew-eyed mole forced abruptly into the light; but Owain knew it would be foolish to assume he had gained any temporary advantage.

“Didn’t you have microphones planted in the salt and pepper pots?” he retorted. “Someone squatting under the table?”

Legister slipped the lens back into his eye. “If only our budget allowed such luxuries. He was anxious to speak to you?”

“Who says?”

“A visit to your quarters. A three-course meal in privileged circumstances. Past differences reconciled?”

“No.”

“It wasn’t just a social meeting?”

“He was trying to mend fences. To impress me.”

“Indeed? And how, precisely?”

Owain was finding it difficult to adjust to this new line of interrogation. Difficult and dangerous. Suddenly Legister was more interested in Rhys than the fate of his wife. He needed to be very careful about what he said.

“Hard to imagine he wouldn’t have shared confidences with you. You were together—what was it?—three or four hours?”

“You’re asking me to inform on my own brother?” Owain said with as much indignation as he could.

“Ah.” Legister invested the exclamation with feline satisfaction. “Am I to assume he was rather indiscreet?”

“No.”

The car abruptly darkened. We were travelling down the Whitehall Underpass, its overhead necklaces of red and white lights almost festive. The tunnel was closed from dusk to dawn to non-military traffic, and any civilians seeking shelter there risked being shot on sight.

“What did you and your brother discuss?”

An image of Rhys, swilling down wine and jabbering at the table.

“Old times,” he said.

“You understand what I am asking you. Did he talk about his work?”

“Why don’t you ask him yourself?” Owain said angrily. “What has this to do with your wife? Do you think they’ve eloped together?”

It was a stupid, tactless piece of flippancy. Legister did not even deign to comment on it. “You said he was trying to impress you. What did he talk about? The latest initiatives in the military sphere?”

Too quickly Owain said, “I know nothing about that.”

“About what exactly?”

“Nothing.”

“I would have thought that both of you would be eager to share your intimate knowledge of recent developments. After all, you are the commander-in chief’s aide.”

“My uncle doesn’t confide in me.”

He felt that in a sense this was true. Or that somehow he was being deliberately excluded from the old man’s confidence.

They came out into daylight again. A trio of aeroplanes swept overhead: RAF Swordflashes, their wedged wings in forward-facing position. Though they were flying low, their passing was silent: the car was well soundproofed.

“You’re his nephew,” Legister said. “He’s always taken care to nurture and protect you.”

The Whitehall bunkers faced him. The Bentley pulled over.

“Even to the extent,” L went on, “of salvaging both your careers.”

It was like a slur. Owain didn’t hide his anger.

“I didn’t ask for a staff posting,” he said hotly. “I’d rather return to combat duties.”

“No one doubts your bravery, major. But the times also demand balanced judgement. I rather feel you show tendencies to martyrdom arising from a misplaced sense of loyalty. Things are not always what they seem. Even within a family.”

Words. The more Legister spoke, the more his meaning slipped away, was swallowed up into the shrill noise in his head.

“Whatever you want from me,” he said, “I can’t provide it.”

Legister opened the door and climbed out. He indicated that Owain should do likewise. Somewhat awkwardly, feeling as though his limbs were newly bestowed, he did so.

We were outside the road that led to the Westminster complex. I made Owain take a deep breath of air, as much for my own relief as his.

“You have been most unhelpful, major,” Legister said without resentment.

“Do you expect me to compromise myself?”

“Of course not. I expected that you would dissemble. But if I discover that Marisa is dead or harmed on account of your activities, even your uncle’s protection will not save you.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

I was standing beside a reedy pond with pollarded willows. A pub on the corner opposite. Intermittent traffic passed, going around a mini-roundabout. In the near distance stood a substantial spired church in buff stone that sat like a becalmed vessel in a sea of grass. Beyond it was a line of buildings.

Something in my overcoat was vibrating.

I fumbled in my pocket, pulled it out. Tanya’s mobile. I pressed the answer button. “Hello?”

“O? Where in heaven’s name are you?”

I looked around again. “Blackheath.”

“What?”

“I’m by the pond. Opposite the Hare and Billet.”

“I’ve been frantic. How did you get there?”

I struggled to remember. “Bus.”

ÜA bus?”

“To Lewisham. Walked up the hill.”

There was a pause before Tanya said, “Why?”

Why indeed? Had it been a whim?

“I needed to get out,” I told her. “I think I’d started to scare you.”

“This is what scares me, Owen. What have you been doing?”

“Just walking around. Taking in the sights.”

“You’re all right?”

“Fine.” At least I’d had the sense to take her mobile.

“It’s been over an hour. I didn’t know where you were. I’ve been driving the streets, phoning everyone I could think of. Geoff’s on patrol even now. We were going to phone the police.”

“Ah. You didn’t notice your mobile was gone?”

“That’s the only reason we kept hanging on. There’s half a dozen messages on it. You didn’t have it switched on.”

Perhaps I’d activated it by accident. Or more likely unconscious design.

“Sorry. I was going to leave you a note. Your bedroom door was locked.”

She said nothing to this non sequitur.

“I thought you might need a little space,” I said.

“Not at the expense of total loss of peace of mind,” she told me with feeling. “It was really irresponsible of you.”

“I know.”

“You haven’t done anything, have you?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Accosted strangers. Run around naked singing the national anthem.”

“I’ve been walking. Keeping myself to myself. Shoes are a bit muddy.”

“I’m coming to get you.”

“OK.”

“Stay there.”

“Righty-ho.”

“Please. Don’t go anywhere.”

There was a quaver in her voice. Only now did it fully dawn on me how much I must have scared her. And what I’d been doing.

I’d gone looking for my house. Spent the best part of an hour traipsing the streets, trying to find it. But I couldn’t remember the address and didn’t have a clear idea of its specific location. I’d begun to panic, clinging on to my memory of the girls’ bedroom, with its amethyst walls and big heart-shaped mirror on the back of the door. I must have climbed the hill until I reached the top.

“Owen?”

“I’m still here.”

“I’m on my way. Don’t move.”

“If you can’t see me,” I told her with a levity I didn’t feel, “I’ll be in the pub.”

“No, you won’t,” she said firmly. “It’s only nine-thirty.”

Two young boys were standing under one of the bridge pontoons, trying to make a hole in the ice with a broken propeller blade. A crude fishing rod and a small canvas bag lay on the ice beside them. They were totally focused on the task, ignoring the steady trundle of military traffic overhead that was passing from south to north across the bridge towards Parliament Square.

Owain was mentally subdued. We sat in moist chilly air on a riverside boulder, the smell of exhaust fumes and vegetable broth in Owain’s nostrils. A paper bowl was cradled in one hand. The broth had come from a soup kitchen on the embankment above.

Military police were everywhere, redirecting what few civilian vehicles were braving the streets. There were new roadblocks and diversion signs, helicopters patrolling, sirens in the distance that doubtless signified traffic patrols swooping on vehicles or citizens who were in the wrong place.

Owain used a husk of bread to scoop the last of his broth from the bowl. He waited until the bread was saturated before swallowing it. The food sat like a warm dense mass in his stomach. He screwed up the bowl and tossed it aside.

The convoys mostly comprised trucks and ATVs, with the occasional ambulance and mobile missile platform. Nothing tracked or too heavily armoured: the bridge wouldn’t have held them. Supply columns, most likely, headed out of the city. Something was definitely afoot. Which was what had made him take pause, seek a little time alone. He had waited until Legister’s car had driven out of sight before heading down towards the relative tranquillity of the river margins. Close at hand a waste pipe was leaking steam into the air, its warmth having melted the snow round about and provided a micro-climate in which he’d been able to sit comfortably for—how long?

His thoughts were muted, with little volition. I willed him to look at his watch. It was not yet ten o’clock. He became aware that one of the boys was standing in front of him, was asking him if he could spare a little bread.

He’d eaten it all, but croutons lay scattered on the pebbles where he’d tossed them earlier. The boy was about eleven, his dark hair severely shorn around his ears. He was filthy but looked reasonably well fed. There was an enterprising air about him.

“Take those,” Owain said, pointing.

The boy gathered up the croutons, putting them into a little canvas bag. He scampered back across the ice to his friend, whereupon they proceeded to peer into the bag as if beholding treasure.

Bait. Bait for fish they were never going to catch, even if they succeeded in penetrating the ice.

An MP on the bridge had spotted the boys. He called another man over. There was a brief discussion before the second man went off.

The first man drew his pistol and began firing shots into the ice near the boys, making them leap and scurry for cover under the bridge.

“No! No!” Owain heard him yell. “Out! Out where I can see you!”

The boys emerged reluctantly. The MP flourished his weapon at them, indicating that they should move further back from the bridge. Warily they did so.

The second man reappeared, leaning over the parapet, the squat tube of a rocket launcher over his shoulder.

Without any warning, he fired.

The back flash and the impact were instantaneous, the shell striking close to the boys, showering them with debris.

As the smoke slowly dispersed, Owain saw that a neat hole had been punctured in the ice. It was still bubbling, churning with white-streaked water. They’d probably used an armour-piercing shell without the explosive charge.

He heard the men laughing, saw one of the boys smear blood from his cheek. Both began to scramble around, one retrieving the rod and the bait bag, the other dragging a large stone across the ice for a seat.

Owain rose. Nothing had come back to him to fill the gap in his night’s recollections. It was still a void. A blank confusion was his prevailing emotion, along with uncertainty about the allegiances of those closest to him. What was Rhys up to? Where was he? Why was his uncle apparently avoiding contact with him? What did Legister want, beyond information on Marisa’s whereabouts?

He crossed a path through Parliament Gardens, past the concrete flowerbeds and blackened saplings. A corpse lay frozen in the derelict gazebo, a drift of snow covering it like a bed sheet. He was conscious of the labyrinth of rooms and chambers far beneath his feet that would be bustling with subterranean activity, all of t dedicated to the preservation of the state. He felt like an ant on the skin of a whale, out of place, at sea. His entire career as a soldier had been geared towards taking pragmatic action according to clearly defined circumstances. There was seldom the time to dwell on matters of morality or cause and effect; any such inclinations were positively discouraged in the field. Here, very little was clear, while taking any sort of action precipitated a host of unforeseen consequences. Webs of intrigue in which he felt ever more entangled.

He approached the first of the guards outside the building and showed them his ID. The man checked through sheets on a clipboard. He saluted.

“I’ll notify them you’re on your way, sir,” he said. A walkie-talkie was crackling at his hip.

“Am I expected?”

“You’re listed personnel, sir.”

A female guard at the main entrance didn’t even bother to check his ID; she stepped aside to let him through. He didn’t have a cap or beret and felt somehow naked as he entered the bustle of the main hall. But no one paid him any attention. Everyone was busy on telephones and typewriters. Much ado about something very pressing indeed.

I made him head for one of the lifts. Their buttons had a granular texture, were supposed to contain circuitry that gave an instant thumbprint match with a personnel catalogue on AEGIS. Or so it was rumoured: no one would ever confirm such things.

The lift arrived empty. I’ve no gun, Owain thought as it took him down. Legister’s men had never returned it. His usual anxieties about confinement and falling didn’t surface. Possibly it was my influence: probably he had more urgent priorities.

Another guard in the lobby, a Sikh in an incongruously white turban. His homeland was now under American administration. How does it feel? I felt like asking. Would you rather be there or here? What difference would it make to your loyalties?

The man escorted us to Sir Gruffydd’s quarters. Knocked on the outer door and opened it.

Giselle Vigoroux was just getting up from a desk, a sheet of paper in her hand. On seeing Owain, she put it down.

The guard withdrew, closing the door behind him.

“Major Maredudd reporting for duty,” he said with ostentatious formality.

“Where on earth have you been?”

She sounded irritable, looked less than pleased to see him. There was a young female secretary working at another desk nearby. Apart from this, the administrative area was empty.

“Out and about,” he said. “Walking.”

“Your phone’s dead. We sent a car around for you.”

“Really? When?”

“Two hours ago.”

Probably the ginger-haired CIF man had ripped out the wires when he was searching the place.

“Carl Legister was there first,” he said.

She frowned at him.

“An early morning call. He took me for a little ride.”

She put the paper down but didn’t move from the desk. He could see her thinking, wondering what tack to take.

“Apparently Marisa’s missing,” he said, feeling both brazen and foolish. “He wanted to know if I’d seen her.”

She looked angry, but in a steely sort of way. Arms spread, hands flat on the desk top.

“He was also asking about Rhys.”

Still nothing, though he was certain she knew something.

“You haven’t seen either of them, have you?”

“Ingrid,” Giselle said to the secretary, “would you leave us, please.”

The girl rose and went out. Attractive, though overzealous with the lipstick, and slightly on the buxom side, the brass buttons on her jacket under strain. She couldn’t have been more than twenty.

“We’re leaving within the hour,” Giselle said when she was gone. “Do you have anything to pick up from your quarters?”

“Where are we going?”

“The field marshal’s decided to make the journey by car. You’ll be riding with us.”

Her tone was barely civil. She looked like she’d hardly slept.

“Better, is he?” Owain said.

“He’s been asking about you all morning.”

“That’s good to hear. I thought I’d become persona non grata.”

“We may be gone for several days.”

He couldn’t decide how much of her attitude was pure hostility, and how much mere suspicion.

="3"size="3">“Don’t you want to know what Legister wanted?”

“You’ve already said. He was looking for Marisa.”

“He was also very curious about what Rhys might have said to me. When we had dinner together.”

She’d started gathering up the papers on her desk.

“Did you talk to uncle about him?”

“I told him, yes.”

“And what did he say?”

She was busy slipping the papers into files and wallets, not looking at him.

“There really isn’t time to discuss it now.”

This was more than military need-to-know: he was plainly being kept out of the picture. Things had changed. There was no longer any basis for trust between them.

He waited while she checked through the drawers, locking each one after doing so.

“Any chance of a cup of tea?” he said. “It’s cold out there.”

He could almost smell her impatience, her urge to be done with him.

“Sit down,” she said, indicating the leather chair to the side of the desk.

He did so. She emptied the trays on her desk, putting the papers on top of the pile, which she carried out.

Owain didn’t move. He just sat there, closing his eyes and putting his thoughts on stand-by. I was surprised at his insolence, his almost wilful disrespect for her authority. That he should react to perceived threats with aggressive defensiveness wasn’t unusual, but not with those he considered his patrons and superiors.

I couldn’t get access to his deeper thoughts. They were less concealed than absent, as though he would not permit himself the luxury of any sort of reflection.

A side door opened and Owain was startled when a brigadier emerged, accompanied by the Chancellor.

Automatically he stood bolt upright and saluted. The Chancellor wore a dark suit over a white open-necked shirt. He didn’t even glance at Owain as they exited. Owain overheard him talking in a broad West Country accent.

Of course it wasn’t really the Chancellor, but a flesh-and-blood sighting was always remarkable. A look-alike, one of several in existence throughout Europe, created by a combination of plastic surgery, posture training and suitable applications of hair dye. Doubles of a non-existent person, indispensable for public displays such as ades or television footage of assemblies that demanded an extra degree of three-dimensional realism. Everyone knowingly entered into the spirit of the fabrication.

The secretary, Ingrid, returned with a mug of tea. Louche blue eyes, an accommodating smile. A seduction, he suspected, would be easy. He let her go without a word; it was enough to relish the notion of it.

The tea was liberally sugared. Perhaps he should have come to the office with more humility, though he doubted it would have changed Giselle’s frosty attitude. Clearly she knew far more than she was prepared to tell him—but about what exactly?

He wandered over to Ingrid’s desk and glanced at the paperwork there. A list of provisions that included chocolate-cream biscuits and hot-water bottles. Four-day weather reports for the North Sea littoral, detailing wind patterns, cloud cover, likely precipitation. The text of “Armour Excelsior”, a popular patriotic poem, torn from a book with Ingrid’s spiral doodles around a colour picture of warring thunder gods. A computer printout of support personnel with most of the names highlighted in pink.

“Curious, major?”

Giselle had returned.

“Just browsing,” he replied. “I didn’t open any drawers.”

She stood in the doorway, holding a big bunch of keys.

“Tell me something,” he said. “Am I under suspicion?”

“Of what?”

“I don’t know. Stupidity? Lack of common sense? Murder?”

He knew it was a gamble to say the last word, but the uncertainty was paralysing him.

“Do you feel as if you are?”

That was their way: to turn your questions back on you.

“I feel excluded,” he said. “A liability. As if I’m not trusted.”

“No. That’s not the case.”

“So why wouldn’t you let me see my uncle?”

“He was very busy. He didn’t want any distractions.”

“Really?”

“Sometimes other matters have to take priority.”

“What about Rhys?”

“What about him?”

“Why is he here?”

“Here?”

“In London.”

“Because he’s needed.”

“For what?”

She went back to the desk and put the keys down. “Sir Gruffydd will explain everything later.”

“Can I see him?”

“He’s exasperated with you, Owain.”

“Why? Because I wasn’t around when I was needed?” He allowed a pause. “Or is it something else?”

He wanted her to tell him what she knew, however damning it might be.

“I’ve arranged an escort to take you back to your quarters,” she said. “Pick up whatever you need and be quick about it. Be back here within half an hour.”

“An escort? Am I under arrest?”

“I want to make sure you don’t go wandering off again. You need to be ready to go.”

Owain thought about it. “There’s nothing I need there.”

She looked mildly surprised at this but didn’t question it. He had no desire to return to what might be the scene of a crime.

THIRTY-NINE

“Listen,” I said to Tanya, “I’m really sorry about what happened last night. It was unforgivable.”

She was driving the Toyota, taking us back home. I’d waited faithfully outside the pub, even when it had started to rain. She’d been more relieved than angry with me but had insisted I promise never to go walkabout again. I was surprised she had come alone, without backup. Apparently Geoff had returned to work as soon as he knew that she had located me.

We turned down a side street that I thought I recognised. And there was the house, near the end of the street, with its white wooden fence and black wheelie bin tucked in a little brick enclosure. Curtains half drawn on the window, no sign of present habitation. But no, the door was navy, the windows PVC rather than wood. Had I misremembered it?

We turned on to another road. I glanced at Tanya, but she wasn’t looking my way. Had she deliberately driven down the street to see how I would react? There was no evidence that she had.

“Why he?”

“This alter-ego of yours,” Tanya remarked. “Do you think he’s real?”

Did I? On arrival she’d quizzed me remorselessly about Owain’s existence while swabbing mud from my shoes with a rag. She had taken it perfectly seriously, avoiding the obvious judgement that it was all a huge figment of my disturbed imagination. Which didn’t mean that she didn’t think it, merely that she wanted to be clear about its extent.

“He seems real enough,” I said. “With a life of his own. It doesn’t have anything to do with me, except for the fact that we’re counterparts, linked. Does that make sense?”

“And you think he’s cracking up, becoming homicidal?”

“It certainly feels like it. As if something’s awakened in him.”

She glanced at me. “Intriguing way of putting it.”

I saw what she was getting at. “The thing is, at first I just assumed that it was me who was inhabiting him. It didn’t occur to me that it might be the other way around as well.”

“You think he’s looking to set up permanent home here?”

I couldn’t believe she was discussing this madness so calmly. “If I was him, I would. Believe me, this is a much better place than where he lives.”

“But it has its attractions?” She was eyeing me. “You describe it with a certain sort of relish.”

I couldn’t deny it. “It’s alluring,” I admitted. “Exotic in a morbid sort of way. And the game’s not yet up.”

“No,” she said, with what I thought was a note of regret. “I can tell that it isn’t.”

“Are you going to say anything to Geoff?”

“About this?”

“About what happened last night?”

“You must be joking.”

We stopped at traffic lights. I recognised the Catford one-way system. Everything looked so blandly normal, people scurrying by with umbrellas and hunched shoulders.

Neither of us said anything further for the rest of the journey. It was a silence clamorous with unspoken thoughts.

Tanya’s house was in a quiet leafy street in Sydenham. She reversed the Yaris into the driveway.

“Well,” she said as though there had been no pause in our conversation, “the thing I want to know is what you’re doing to do about it.”

Assertive action. She was always one for sorting out problems by doing something rather than waiting for things to happen.

“It isn’t that easy,” I said, following her out, my legs feeling wobbly. “I keep coming and going.”

“You’re indulging yourself, Owen.”

This sounded harsh. Or was it? The truth was, a part of me enjoyed the escape. But not at the expense of ending up there permanently. That was the ultimate danger.

The first thing Tanya did when we were inside was to check the telephone messages. I watched her face shift from disinterested curiosity to vague puzzlement and finally to a weary exasperation.

She put the phone down and looked at me.

“What?” I said.

“It’s Rees.”

“Oh?”

“Calling from a mobile. I rang him earlier but no one was answering.”

“But he called you back?”

She shook her head. “He was obviously in transit. Now he’s in West Byfleet.”

The place was familiar but it took me a moment to recall its significance. My father was in a nursing home there.

“Did you arrange something with him, Owen?”

I shook my head.

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“He thinks you did. He’s asking where we are. According to him, we’re supposed to be meeting up at the home.”

I remembered the conversation, but we’d made no firm plans. It was the last thing I wanted, or expected, to hear.

“He’s already there,” Tanya said.

PART FOUR

MANIFEST DESTIN

FORTY

Owain was finishing off a gristly sausage sandwich when Giselle entered the canteen. A leather-gloved warrant officer lingered in the doorway as she walked straight to the table, nothing in her face, and said, “It’s time.”

We took the lift up to street level, no one speaking. The warrant officer kept tugging at his gloves and scissoring his fingers for a snug fit. Stradling, a fellow-countryman, though from North Wales. Rhyl or thereabouts. A man renowned for his taciturnity and apparent lack of fellow feeling for any other human being. But efficient and an excellent driver. His uncle’s favourite chauffeur.

A trio of identical black Daimlers was waiting in the car park, their engines running. Land Rovers, APCs and triple-wheeled motorbikes flanked them. The air was heady with their exhausts.

Owain was directed to get into the driver’s seat next to Stradling. Giselle climbed in after him, leaving nothing in the way of elbowroom. The Daimlers were built to accommodate up to six people including the driver, but it was always a snug fit. A mirrored window with a sliding partition obscured the rear seats.

The heating was turned up full, the car practically tropical. We sat in silence for several minutes, Owain watching the rest of the vehicles manoeuvre into formation. The motorbikes were triple-wheeled Triumph Tridents, the rear men sitting back-to-back with the front rider on swivel pillions that gave them a traverse of over a hundred and eighty degrees for machine-gun fire and an elevation of close to ninety. Six surface-to-air missiles were mounted on their flanks. Despite their bulk, they were fast and manoeuvrable machines.

The rear doors of the car opened, and I felt the suspension react to the entry of one, two people. So, not quite a full house. Owain glanced at Giselle, but she was taking a mouthful of drink from a white plastic bottle. It smelt like lime juice. She didn’t look at him, gave every impression that she preferred to pretend he wasn’t there.

Some of the motorbike riders were forming up at the head of the exit ramp. The APCs and the other Daimlers began to tuck themselves in behind one another. Stradling moved off and they took their place in the column. The hatch behind Owain slid open.

“You been behaving yourself?”

It was his uncle, speaking in Welsh. He sounded curious rather than irate.

Owain twisted around. Sir Gruffydd was sitting in one corner, with Henry Knowlton next to him in a big black overcoat.

“The Secretary of State for Inland Security picked me up for questioning this morning,” Owain said.

“So I gather. And what did you tell him?”

His uncle looked quite hearty, showing no hint of his rect illness.

“Nothing,” Owain replied. “I was a bit worse for drink the night before. Couldn’t remember a thing.”

There was a silent instant before his uncle burst out with laughter, in which Knowlton loyally joined, despite the fact they were still speaking in Welsh.

“That’s the spirit,” his uncle said. “Kept the bugger guessing, did you?”

“He was very interested in Rhys.”

“That a fact? And how did you enlighten him?”

“I pleaded my usual ignorance. Told him I never discussed family matters with strangers.”

Owain was aware that this was something of a loose paraphrase of his actual conversation with Legister, but the essence was true. Sir Gruffydd nodded, eyeing him all the while.

“Where is Rhys?” Owain asked.

“Fill you in later. Have lunch, did you?”

Owain nodded.

“Then sit back and enjoy the ride. All will be revealed.”

The old man leaned forward and slid the hatch shut.

We made swift progress on the South Circular before hitting a tailback at Wandsworth Common. I was doing everything I could to suppress my agitation, but I felt under siege. It wasn’t just a question of what was going on with Owain; developments here were just as challenging in their way.

I didn’t have any appetite for seeing my father. The last time I’d visited I’d found him sitting on the balcony, apparently doing the Times crossword. He looked quite normal and lucid until I sat down next to him and he asked me if I’d come to read the electricity meter. When I told him that I was his eldest son he’d reacted angrily. Of course, he’d retorted, as if I was a moron. Who the devil else did I think I was?

The anger subsided as swiftly as it had come and he asked me if I’d brought any chocolates, producing an empty Minstrels packet. His hands were so busy making fidgety movements I wondered how he’d managed to get the chocolates out of the bag and into his mouth. And yet he was evidently still able to use a pen: the crossword was half-completed in spidery red capitals. It quickly became apparent, though, that he was fitting in words at random, many of them obscure or misspelled.

All this was so different from the fastidious, precise man of letters he had once been. The dementia had assailed him in quantum leaps of increasing severity. Mrs Bayliss would phone to say that he’d spent the day in his pyjamas, had put his wallet in the refrigerator, had been found paddling in the stream at the bottof the garden in his slippers. By now the house in Bishopston had been sold and he was living exclusively in Oxford; but he kept muddling both places, looking for the bathroom in the wrong place, demanding to know why the Western Mail hadn’t been delivered.

To begin with these episodes did little to interrupt his work. He’d retired from lecturing and was writing what he described as a work of autobiographical historiography that would combine an account of his life and times with up-to-date reflections on the essence of his profession. To my surprise he was reading advanced texts on everything from cosmology to genetics. In his book, he told me, he intended to show how the insights of modern science could shed light on the interpretation of historical processes.

For a while I remained in denial about the growing eccentricities of his behaviour until finally there was an incident with a bus driver who my father had demanded should take him to Mumbles. Despite the diagnosis of dementia that followed, my father remained feverishly attached to his work, still spending hours in his study each day reading, researching, writing.

We employed a full-time nurse to assist the ever-stalwart Mrs Bayliss, but each time I visited I found that the waters lapping the shores of his rationality were growing ever more turbulent. Though Rees occasionally accompanied me, I preferred to see him on my own. My father often regarded my visits as unwelcome intrusions, as if I’d come to spy on him, was a busybody who wouldn’t leave well alone.

“Are you with me?” Tanya asked.

The traffic was moving sporadically again, the car lurching and weaving as Tanya negotiated speed bumps and pavement extensions.

“You don’t deserve this,” I said.

“What?”

“This—mess.”

She thought about it for an instant and shrugged. “If we can get through Wimbledon we’ll be fine.”

A hole appeared in the windscreen. Stradling slumped forward on to the wheel, the car swerving off the road, smashing at speed into the trees.

An explosion flung the Centaur in front of them into the air, sending it spiralling up and over in a slow-motion cartwheel, plunging down on to the Daimler.

Stradling pulled a gun and shot Owain and Giselle in the chest. Dead, pinafored with blood, they stared helplessly while the traitor chauffeur flipped open the hatch and began pumping shots into the rear of the car.

London had dwindled away and we were heading north-east along the motorway through a snowy wasteland interspersed with dark forestry plantations. Vast acreages had been planted over the last twenty years on abandoned land, but only birch and pine flourished in the harsh winters and summer droughts. The landscape resembled the forbidding expanses of the eastern terrur flis.

The road had plainly been cleared of all non-essential traffic, giving the convoy unhindered passage. Stradling was rock-solid behind the wheel, staring straight ahead with remorseless concentration. On the other side of Owain, Giselle Vigoroux kept tapping buttons on her hand device, the information on its screen not visible to him.

“Communication problems?” I made him say.

She didn’t reply, or look up.

“Where are we headed?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

“Why didn’t we take the Ironside?”

The armoured train out of Liverpool Street. It ran through a custom-built tunnel on the old Underground Line track as far as Stratford. Easier for slipping out unnoticed.

“It’s already left.”

The cold shoulder was positively Siberian. Well, perhaps it was understandable, although for once he could have done with a little mindless conversation. Without being able to explain why, he had become obsessed with the conviction that the convoy was going to suffer attack. Probably from the air, where they were least well defended, a strafing by hostile fighters or the swift obliteration of a bomb. Or perhaps a missile strike from insurgents waiting in the woodlands. Maybe the train had already gone ahead as a decoy.

“Why didn’t we take a Shrike or a helicopter?” he asked bluntly. “This is like advertising a target.”

“Do you think we’re the only column?”

They probably had several going off in all directions, just to confuse things. Maybe the cars were populated with doubles of his uncle and other senior commanders. The Russians had a word for it: Maskirovka. Deception.

“Who’s looking after your husband?” he persisted.

“He’s being taken care of.”

She switched off the device and put it in her pocket. Resolutely refused to give him a glance.

“Any news about Marisa?”

This made her face him. But she wasn’t going to say anything. It couldn’t have been possible to get more contempt into a single look.

FORTY-ONE

“How did he sound?” I asked, meaning Rees.

“The usual. Frustrated we’re not where he expects us to be. You’re sure you didn’t arrange to meet him there?”

“Honest to God. I’m not exactly up for hobnobbing with my father.”

We were on the A3, Tanya scrupulously observing the fifty-mile-an-hour speed limit; there were cameras at regular intervals. She knew the route well, had friends in Guildford.

“How did he get there?” I asked.

“He didn’t say. Drove, I imagine.”

Rees had an old Astra that he seldom used, and when he did so he drove like an octogenarian. I could imagine him pootling at thirty miles an hour down this stretch, impatient Surrey speed merchants piling up behind him.

“I wonder if he’ll wait,” Tanya remarked.

“Probably not. I just hope he doesn’t get the old man agitated.”

“We should have phoned and warned them.”

“Too late for that now.”

“We could still ring.” Tanya indicated her mobile.

I shook my head. Part of me didn’t want to know what he was up to.

“Do you want me to do it?”

“No,” I said firmly. “Let’s just get there.”

Seconds later there was a flash of blinding light. At first I thought we’d had an accident before I realised I was somewhere else entirely. Walking through the glass doors of a hotel into the suffocating heat. I was in shorts, T-shirt and sandals, carrying two drinks out to the pool.

Tanya sat at one of the tables in the shade of a palm, wearing a black vest top and a patterned sarong tied at her waist. The paleness of her skin contrasted with my tan. I’d been here a fortnight, combining location work with a holiday. Cairo, the pyramids visible from the window of my hotel room. Only yesterday I’d come back from a visit to Tobruk. Tanya had arrived that very morning.

I set the drinks down and took a seat opposite her. Hers was an orange and soda, mine a vodka and tonic.

“So what did he say?” I heard myself asking, and I knew I meant Geoff. This was last summer, when Tanya had finally told him about our clandestine meetings.

Abruptly I was back in the Yaris. Tanya hadn’t noticed anything. It was she who’d brought matters to a head after telling me she couldn’t pretend any more. She had told Geoff she was moving out, intended to live alone; but he’d persuaded her to stay,n if they were no longer to share a bed.

He had guessed that she had been seeing me periodically. He’d even accepted her assurances that we weren’t having an affair. It had all been reasonably amicable given the circumstances. He’d always suspected that she and I were still drawn to one another. Lyneth had too. They’d talked about it occasionally on the telephone.

I went cold on hearing this. Tanya hadn’t expected any equivalent action from me, particularly since I had children. But I knew that Lyneth would find out and be far less accommodating than Geoff. So I phoned her from the hotel that evening. There was no answer. When I finally got through next day Lyneth informed me that she’d already made arrangements to fly herself and the girls to Australia. Nothing I could say would dissuade her. They were going to stay for a year. Her sister would help her place the girls in local schools. She had told them I would be away filming.

Tanya and I flew back from Egypt together. We had stayed in separate rooms at the hotel, been more scrupulous than ever in our friendship. But by the time I arrived home Lyneth and the girls were already gone.

Air traffic had thickened overhead, helicopters and fat Behemoth transporter planes orbiting. The sky was coated with a wash of high altitude cloud, the sun just a silvery smear. The weather forecast had predicted no precipitation for the next few days, with light winds and good visibility.

Owain had never visited the Mildenhall-Lakenheath complex. It was extensive, with a network of tunnels and overpasses that converged on roundabouts before forking again, bypassing angular clusters of buildings with squat towers and a panoply of aerial instrumentation. Mobile security units patrolled the hard shoulders of approach roads, armoured cars and riot wagons were parked outside main entrances, missile batteries and little phalanxes of Citadel tanks guarded runaway perimeters.

All roadblocks were opened up long before we reached them. A small formation of Buzzard scout helicopters was flying ahead as though guiding us in.

We descended a long underpass, the tunnel barely lit, cat’s eyes blinking on and off at their headlights. Stradling looked cadaverous in the instrument panel’s glow, while Giselle had her eyes closed. No sounds from the rear of the car.

We emerged, and when Owain’s eyes had readjusted we saw that the convoy was drawing up in front of a line of enormous concrete hangars camouflaged with turf. Two of the hangar doors were open and inside each of them stood a white Nimbus, identical to the one we had glimpsed at Northolt.

Broadoaks Court was a 1920s redbrick mansion at the end of a wooded drive. We parked in one of the side bays and walked around to the front, my heart beginning to pump a little faster as we mounted the steps. There was no sign of Rees’s car.

I still couldn’t fathom why Lyneth hadn’t been in touch since the accident. Surely someone must have contacted her by now? Had she taken the girls on holiday somewhere further afield—Indonesia or the Pacific Islands? Perhaps they hadn̻t been able to track her down. But surely she would have phoned over Christmas, at least had the girls leave a message. It might be on the answer phone at home. Strange that Tanya hadn’t mentioned it. I was certain it wasn’t something I would have forgotten.

“All right?” Tanya asked.

“Fine.”

“Liar.”

I couldn’t ask her about it now. Too much else to contend with. How could Geoff tolerate my presence in his house, knowing what he knew? And not only tolerate it but also actively try to assist me in my recovery. Where was he sleeping? In the locked bedroom? I couldn’t recall. It just wouldn’t come.

We rang the bell. It was answered by a middle-aged nurse in a green plastic apron.

Inside, the lobby had the air of a down-at-heels hotel, a threadbare carpet over mulberry-coloured tiles, a scruffy sofa against one wall. Plug-in deodorisers in the wall sockets failed to mask the smell of stale urine and cold boiled potatoes.

The nurse made a phone call. I remembered that the place wasn’t strictly a nursing home but an outlier of the local hospital where patients with age-related illnesses had agreed to undergo clinical trials of new drugs and therapies. So far nothing that had been tried on my father had worked.

Shortly a middle-aged man in tortoiseshell spectacles came down the stairs. Rees and a black woman in her twenties were close behind.

Rees made a beeline for me. By his standards he was smartly dressed in jeans and a putty-coloured jacket over a black top.

“He’s been asking after you,” he said. “We played draughts.”

“Oh?” I replied. “Did you win?”

“This is Keisha.”

She came forward. Good-looking, buried under an outdoors jacket in burnt orange. Her hair was drawn back in a loose ponytail that had the effect of giving her a sober, professional air. We shook hands.

“Pleased to meet you,” she said.

“Likewise,” I told her. “Has he been behaving himself?”

She rolled her eyes in a long-suffering way. “Does he ever?”

Rees had already gone over to talk to Tanya. The spectacled man was Dr Pearce, I recalled, the unit’s manager.

“Rees told me about you,” I said to Keisha. “To be honest, I thought he was making you up.”

“The last time I looked I was real.”

I tried to choose my words carefully. “I hope you don’t mind me asking—but are you really his girlfriend?”

“Well, today I feel more like his chauffeur.”

Tanya and Dr Pearce came over. Rees was talking animatedly to the nurse, who looked a little taken aback by the ardour of his attentions.

“How is he?” I asked Dr Pearce.

I was asking about my father but my eyes were still on Rees.

“He’s been fine,” the doctor said, obviously with reference to my brother, whose case history he knew. “How are you?”

“Bearing up. We didn’t know he was coming.”

“So I gather. No harm done. Professor Meredith was quite taken with Miss Rutherford here.”

“He kept asking if I’d give him a blanket bath,” Keisha said. “My role in life.”

Her tone was fatalistic. It was far more good-natured than my father deserved. He had always had a contradictory attitude towards non-whites, being a severe critic of colonialism while at the same time seeing in the eclipse of the white-owned corner shop a microcosm of national decline. He abhorred what he called tribalism as manifested in everything from team sports to civil wars but was prone to making irritable denunciations of “Rastafarian music” or the inability of “minorities” to adapt themselves to the prevailing culture of the country where they lived.

“Is he lucid at all?” I asked Pearce.

“It’s unpredictable. Your brother certainly kept him stimulated.”

“Until I dragged him out of there,” Keisha volunteered.

“Where is he?”

“In the recreation room,” Pearce said. “He hasn’t been out today. Perhaps you’d like to take him out for some air?”

Pearce was already moving towards the corridor, drawing Tanya along.

“What about Rees?” I said. He was talking avidly to the nurse about golf, a game I was certain he’d never played.

“I’ll keep him out of your hair,” Keisha reassured me.

FORTY-TWO

Thwoman wore RAF blue but her uniform resembled that of an air stewardess of old. She was offering hot drinks from a trolley. I wondered if this was intended as a grim joke, though it was hard to imagine that we were inside an aeroplane in the first place. Owain was sitting in a spacious wood-panelled cabin that could have been a terrestrial office except for the diminutive oval windows, giving vistas of wing and sky beyond them.

They had taken off ten minutes before, by which time Giselle had escorted him to the cabin and ordered him to wait there. It was equipped with a wall-mounted screen and a workstation, neither of them switched on. Armchairs and coffee tables were arranged around its periphery, bolted to the floor. There was even a wastepaper bin.

Every time the plane banked, I could see that we were flying low over snowy fields and angular expanses of woodland. At one point I spotted the dark tentacular mass of what was probably a deserted town, suspended like a spider in a web of roads. A recent report had estimated that less than a quarter of a million people now lived in East Anglia. Thirty per cent were military personnel.

The stewardess was attractive and perfectly proportioned, dark hair tucked up under a cadet’s cap. Her pale skin had a silken sheen. In her early thirties, Owain guessed, accustomed to her surroundings yet with the detached air of someone performing an irksome duty. Her trolley held savoury snacks and biscuits along with miniatures and a selection of cigarettes that included Lucky Strikes. He asked for a coffee but declined anything to eat.

She was Icelandic, she told him, had been in overnight quarters at Speer Airport when the Americans occupied her island ten years before. She’d been working the Frankfurt-Paris-London axis for Concordair, ferrying diplomats and industrialists around. Owain knew it was the only remaining airline that offered some of the comforts of civilian flight, though the pilots, most of them women, were all air-force trained.

“So what did you do?” he asked her.

She gave him a candid look. “Made the best it.”

Owain asked her to spoon sugar into his coffee. Her fingernails were manicured, painted coral pink, as perfect as her make-up. She looked absurdly flawless under the circumstances, with blemish-free skin and arctic-blue eyes. Two gold stars on the shoulders of her tunic told him she was technically a first lieutenant: a brevet rank, he was certain, and another dismaying example of the recent tendency to award them whenever the occasion demanded it, and to civilians as well as non-commissioned officers. Frequently it was done in the face of manpower shortages, sometimes for rather more private reasons. He was pretty certain she would be the mistress of one of the senior staff, who always looked after their own.

I could feel his growing, wilful urge to seduce her. At the same time he’d become convinced that he must have murdered Marisa, though the memory of it still refused to emerge. Both Giselle and his uncle knew, he felt certain, but Sir Gruffydd would continue to protect him. Even Legister would be kept at bay. If he took this woman now, even against her will, who would make him answerable? His uncle outranked everyone in the country.

I made him raise his coffee to his lips, did my utmost to quell his instincts and persuade him that he was letting her leave in a generous spirit of self-denial.

“Christ Almighty,” I blurted.

“What?” Tanya said.

She’d come into the recreation room with me. We were facing my father who, in tweeds and a dark woollen cardigan, was sitting in a wheelchair at the French windows, his nose so close to the pane that his breathing misted the glass.

“Nothing,” I murmured.

This wasn’t the time to be discussing Owain, as disturbed as he was, though it occurred to me that if he intended a permanent escape from his world by usurping me he might commit any act there, confident that he wouldn’t be called to account. If I were thrust permanently into his identity in reverse, it would be me who would shoulder the consequences.

I couldn’t allow it to happen. I wanted to be back in his world so that I could keep watch on him. But transitions never came to order, and I couldn’t muster one now.

Tanya nudged me. From one state of anxiety to another.

“Hello, dad,” I managed to say to my father.

He turned towards me. His long face had deflated a little more since I’d last seen him and his grey eyes looked duller, their light inexorably waning.

“Owen,” he said, “isn’t it?”

A cautious tone midway between query and affirmation. I nodded.

“Your lovely wife,” he remarked, looking at Tanya. “Where are the children?”

She smiled and, effortlessly accommodating him, said gently: “They’ll be along later, Alwyn.”

It was always a surprise to hear his name. I had never called him anything but “Father”, the very word often capitalised in my head. Alwyn—an Anglo-Saxon name, he liked to point out—was reserved for my father’s contemporaries, a form of familiarity I could never countenance. To hear Tanya saying it now was a measure of her autonomy. She must have met him before, though I couldn’t think when.

“How old are they now? Shouldn’t they be at school?”

My eyes filled up and I couldn’t speak. I hadn’t told him that Lyneth and the girls had gone to Australia. Even if Rees had mentioned it earlier, he was unlikely to have retained it. Blissful ignorance. There was something to be said for it on occasions.

“Is it Christmas?” he said abruptly. ÜIt looks cold out there.”

“It’s been and gone,” I told him.

“I could do with some new socks. Thermals. And a decent pair of slippers. Can’t ever get my feet warm here. Where’s Mrs Bayliss?”

“You’re not in Oxford, dad.”

He puzzled at this, squinting around him suspiciously. The room was mostly empty, a squat woman in a housecoat dozing in one corner, the television showing an afternoon soap to another woman who sat so still and upright it was as if the glow from the screen had turned her to stone. A male nurse sat in one corner, texting on his mobile.

“Who did you say you were again?” my father asked.

I wasn’t convinced that these little seesaws of memory were the real thing as opposed to a deliberately alienating device, designed to keep me at bay and retain a semblance of control. There were times when I’d catch a look in his eyes like that of a cornered animal, conscious of his plight, both fearful and angry at his dependency. He’d never really needed anyone until now,

“So how are the children?” he said to Tanya.

“They’re fine,” she told him. “They send their love.”

Did he know? Was he being deliberately cruel? I wanted to shake him, to tell him to stop. To hug him until I squeezed the madness out.

“We thought we’d take you out for a walk,” Tanya said.

He looked insulted at the notion. “Can’t go walking in slippers.”

“We’ll take your chair,” I said.

“What about an overcoat?”

“It’s in your room, dad.”

He squinted out the window as though inspecting the weather. The sun had come out, oblique shadows lying stark across the lawns and flowerbeds.

“Dr Pearce said you could do with the fresh air,” I remarked.

My father glared at me. “Who the devil’s he when he’s at home?”

FORTY-THREE

The cabin door was unlocked, and Sir Gruffydd and Giselle came in.

They took seats opposite, the field marshal asking Owain if he was comfortable. His uncle was carrying his walking stick. He was also in fulservice dress, even down to his red-banded hat.

“Can’t stay long,” he informed Owain, “but I thought I’d better come and fill you in. I take it you know why we’re here?”

What was he supposed to say to this? He had been told nothing. “Are the Americans going to attack?”

Sir Gruffydd gave an affirmative grunt. “We’re anticipating a strike on our command centres using DPMs.”

Deep Penetration Munitions. The field marshal squinted quizzically at him. Owain nodded to signal he understood.

“With the reduction of AEGIS and our remote-sensing systems we’re not in a position to have adequate warning of an attack. Just one of those little darlings could make a hole big enough to drop Wembley Stadium into.”

With a perverse distraction, Owain tried to remember when he had last watched a football match. Games were now played between May and September, when the pitches were fit. Competition for places was fierce since it meant extended leave-of-absence from military duties. Crowds were bigger than ever.

“So you’re taking evasive action,” he said.

His uncle opened his mouth and closed it again. He looked restless, eager to be getting on.

“Show him the task force,” he said to Giselle.

She pointed a control panel at the screen. Face like a sphinx.

The picture quality was grainy, but the skies were a little lighter than those outside the aircraft. Ships were ploughing through a swelling sea: cruisers, destroyers and the unmistakable outline of a big aircraft carrier.

The picture kept shifting, giving different perspectives, including one from altitude that gave a suggestion of their numbers—scores of them. The footage was being relayed from drones, he guessed, some flying low over the ocean, others higher up. Helicopters and interceptors from the carrier were buzzing them—veteran Arapahos and F-7 Firestorms, by the look of them, firing off Cloudburst missiles and dandelion puffs of chaff to incapacitate those they could. A mini aerial battle with no human casualties, conveyed without sound so that it had the air of a simulation. Like the Alliance, the Americans had been forced to restore to active service craft that were not dependent on sophisticated satellite navigation and computer control. But the fleet looked formidable.

“They’re presently about two hundred kilometres off the western coast of Ireland,” Sir Gruffydd said. “And ignoring all our warnings not to infringe our territorial waters.” He paused to squint at a close-up of the aircraft carrier with its herringbone ranks of Firestorms on the deck. “Of course the Enterprise is just the peacock. There’s at least a dozen submarines accompanying them, packed to the gills with missiles. They’re the aces in the .”

There was a pause, and I thought that Sir Gruffydd was about to suggest refreshments. Instead he changed tack.

“You remember Operation Anvil?”

It came to him for the first time: this was the code name given to their Minsk mission. The fact that it had been given operational status was a measure of its importance.

“I was there,” he said pointedly.

“But you still don’t recall exactly what it was about, am I correct?”

There was a hint of a query in the assertion. Or was it just suspicion?

“Only what I said in my debriefings.” But already he sensed the loose weave of his memory beginning to tauten under the pull of circumstance.

“Rhys,” he said. “He talked about Omega.”

Sir Gruffydd waited, showing no surprise. Had the old man instructed Rhys to speak to him?

“Where is he?” Owain asked.

“Don’t worry about him. What did you think? Ring any bells, did it?”

“I thought he was raving.”

“And now?”

“I’m starting to remember.”

His uncle couldn’t wait. “You were sent into the field to test it. I briefed you myself.”

It was all coming back to him. As Rhys had claimed, Vassall was an operations man from Orford Ness, shipped in to oversee the technical side of things in the guise of a soldier so that none of the others apart from van Oost would suspect the ulterior purpose of the mission. Owain had had months of preparation for it. And the major had been ordered to defer to him in matters concerning the weapon.

“You didn’t expect me to come back,” he said.

“What I didn’t expect was that we’d have you back with your brain so scrambled you couldn’t remember a damn thing about it.”

Hence the posting home, to his uncle’s staff, where they could keep an eye on him.

“Why didn’t you just tell me?”

His uncle shook his head. “Specialists advised against it. Sleeping dogs and all that.”

That was why they’d sent him to Brazil, to keep him occupied. Carmela, the interpreter, had seldom left his side. No doubt they’d instructed her to sleep with him if necessary. Anything to keep him in the fold.

“Then there was this dalliance with Legister’s wife,” his uncle continued. “It was pretty much on the cards that Legister would be keeping himself posted on your little tête-à-têtes—rather to our convenience, as it turned out.”

“Was Marisa his spy?”

His uncle didn’t pick up on the fact that he had used the past tense. “It wouldn’t have mattered either way. Easy for one of his people to get into your place when no one was at home.”

“He had my rooms wired?”

“We operated on that assumption when we put in our own devices.”

He hadn’t expected this. “Cameras and sound?”

“Just microphones, Owain. We’re not bloody voyeurs.”

Owain shifted his gaze to the screen. An angled, medium-altitude panorama showed the task force still steaming across the steely Atlantic, each ship like a slow-moving missile propelled by the chalky stream of its wake.

Possessed with a powerful sense of his privacy having been chimerical, his intimate habits laid bare, he couldn’t bring himself to ask what they’d actually learned, particularly over the last twenty-four hours. How would they have interpreted Marisa’s pleas for him to stop? And later, had he manhandled her out of there, or gulled her into letting him accompany her to her car? There was still a void in his memory. But evidence enough, he was sure, from recordings of that evening to convict him of a crime.

In the middle of all this, I was helping Owain to ask the right questions, insistently urging him on. Everything was unfolding in front of me. Soon I would have to take action or be trapped here forever.

“So Legister doesn’t know about Omega?”

“Of course he knows,” Sir Gruffydd replied. “He’s a member of the Council. Impossible to keep him out of the loop. But we’ve had our suspicions that he’s had his own agenda for some time. That why we didn’t discourage your fraternisation with his wife. It gave us a way of keeping tabs on him while making sure you weren’t doing or saying anything you shouldn’t.”

“We?”

“The JGC. Who else do you think is running things?”

“But he’s a member of it.”

“He’s a politician.” His uncle instilled the word with his deepest contempt. “We have to have a few on hand for appearances. They brought us to this pass in the first place. Never forget that, Owain. We’ve given Legister the space to cultivate his little empire, but only if he keeps it in his own sphere. They’ve sticky hands, my boy. We have to be careful where they touch.”

He’d been so naive to imagine that his liaison with Marisa wouldn’t attract more than passive attention. Naive in not even considering the possibility that both Legister and his uncle would know about it from the start and take appropriate precautionary action.

An insight came to me. “Legister wants peace with the Americans.”

Sir Gruffydd nodded. “Yak, yak, not flak, flak.”

“Is he a spy for them?”

I thought the old man wasn’t going to answer, but he said, “We’d have had him shot by now. His view is that the Americans are merely taking defensive measures against the collapse of their satellite systems.”

“They didn’t cause it?”

“That was our doing.” His tone carried no hint of apology. “Do you have any idea how much power the Omega orbiters transmit each time they’re activated? Like putting a three-bar fire in a circuit of Christmas-tree lights. Blew the whole lot.”

“Do the Americans know?”

“Well, they know something’s up. Can’t keep that sort of thing hidden indefinitely, especially when we’re field-testing it. That’s why they’ve been bringing stuff out of mothballs and helping the Russians salvage what they could. They knew their advanced systems were down for good.”

“Is that what was happening at the Minsk base?”

“Well, they probably wanted to provoke an attack. To see what we have.”

“So now they’re in the picture?”

“They’re not clear about exactly what it is. Not yet.”

“If they know we have a new weapon, why haven’t they already launched retaliatory strikes?”

The field marshal looked as if he was enjoying himself. “Hard to say without being a member of their Supreme Command, isn’t it? But I’ll tell you this—I’d rather be in our place than theirs.”

They were going to attack. Sir Gruffydd would have no truck with truces or negotiations. Something else occurred to Owain.

“Generaloberst Blaskowitz?”

“A first-rate commander,” his uncle replied without hesitation. “A man of the utmost integrity.”

“He was killed?”

The field marshal held his stare. “No way of putting a gloss on it. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made.”

“But he didn’t know about Omega.”

“He had his suspicions. That’s why something had to be done. He wouldn’t have taken kindly to it.”

Owain couldn’t make himself speak. I said, “I don’t get it.”

“He was wedded to the notion of manpower determining military outcomes,” Sir Gruffydd said, for once sounding eager to assuage. “Remember, Omega is a remote system. Its effectiveness doesn’t depend on the resourcefulness of field commanders. To a degree, it renders them redundant. The generaloberst wouldn’t have looked on such developments favourably. There was a long tradition of service. Notions of honour among combatants.”

“Is that so wrong?” I made Owain say.

“Wrongness doesn’t come into it. It’s a question of what must be done to save ourselves.”

Sir Gruffydd had a steely look in his eyes. Owain had seen it before. He cultivated a public persona of bluff bonhomie, but he hadn’t become head of the JGC by being soft-centred.

There was a muffled electronic bleeping. Giselle extracted her pager from her tunic and switched it off.

“You’re needed,” she told Sir Gruffydd.

The field marshal rose stiffly, both hands on his stick. He murmured something to Giselle as she made to shepherd him towards the door.

She handed Owain the TV control panel without expression.

“So now you know,” his uncle told him. He gripped Owain’s arm. “You’ve done us great service, Owain, never forget that. Soon we’ll see the fruits of all our labours.”

FORTY-FOUR

Parks and public gardens. You reached a time in your life when they occupied a larger space in it, when your parents were growing old and your children merely growing. So you were increasingly drawn to these soothing green spaces, with their tranquil arbours for the elderly, their ponds and playgrounds for the active offspring, promising fresh air and nature in its neatest municipal form. Your episodic presence signified nothing but passing time, a message reinforced by everything from the ritual sequence of flowerbed plantings to the names of former patrons inscribed on the benches.

I was thinking of Lyneth and how we had often bundled the girls into the car on a wet Saturday afternoon and hauled them around the grounds of places like Chartwell, the rain beading their lavender plastic macs while they stamped in puddles and pleaded for crisps. She could pack a bag with all the necessities for such occasions in a matter of minutes. She would have made someone the perfect wife.

I stopped myself, bewildered that I had the capacity or the inclination for such reflections, given everything that was going on with Owain. Then it occurred to me that he might well have been triggering all these episodes of intense recollection, trawling my memories as I had plundered his. He would need to know as much about me as possible if he intended to usurp me.

How was I to sever the link? Could I shut him out simply by making myself aware of his intrusions, by insisting on my own prior occupancy? For all I knew he might be controlling the transitions between our worlds, though I had found nothing in his thoughts to suggest this. In fact, I’d still found nothing to suggest he was actually aware—

“O?”

Tanya calling me. There was something important here, but I was trailing behind her and my father. She was wheeling him down the twisting path. I caught up, drawing alongside my father, saying somewhat pathetically: “It’s nice in the sun.”

“Squirrels,” my father said. “They’re vermin, you know.”

I could see none in evidence, but my father generally objected to things in principle, the intellectual equivalent of getting your retaliation in first. It was a policy he had adopted throughout his life. He saw the world as a series of antagonisms, and people as weak, foolish or venal unless there was outstanding evidence to the contrary. There was no one he admired unreservedly, and he disdained almost all organisations, including charities, as tainted by the compromises of bureaucracy. His favourite maxim was Thoreau’s “Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes”. He was a professional dissenter who’d often swum against the intellectual currents of his age. Admirable in his way; but a hard act to follow.

I took over from Tanya, turning the chair down towards a sunken garden.

“What are your views on gun control?” he said to me.

He was staring straight ahead, his prominent nose pointing the way, as though he were a human bloodhound on the scent of something interesting.

“Here, or in America?” I asked.

“Makes no difference.”

“Dad, I didn’t come to see you to talk about gun control.”

“Surely you have a view?”

“Does it matter?” I asked.

“Of course it matters,” he replied with an irritable growl. “You’re my brother, aren’t you?”

We looped around a damp fountain. My father’s elder brother, Arthur, had been a bomber crewman shot down over Essen in the last months of the war. Nineteen years old, by all accounts, my father himself too young to serve. Another thread of the web. It was as if I couldn’t escape it.

I noticed that Tanya was hiding a grin behind her gloved hand. I mouthed a “What?” at her, but she merely shrugged in a manner suggesting she didn’t know, or that it wasn’t important.

Perhaps it was the best way to take it. To see it as funny, although without disrespect. Tanya had often chided me that I always portrayed my father as an ogre, whereas she was plainly not daunted by him in the slightest. But she hadn’t grown up in his shadow.

My father was humming to himself, something rather jaunty. I’d never heard him sing or whistle or make any sort of joyful noise before. I recognised the melody: “Shall we Dance?” from The King and I.

Where among the mists of his memories was he? Tanya took his hands and raised him out of his seat. My father did a sterling job of keeping up with her as she gently waltzed him around. Then he started crying. Or rather silent tears were trickling down his cheeks.

“What is it?” I asked anxiously.

“Things lost,” I thought I heard him say as he fixed me with an intense stare. “Nothing unusual to report.”

He was relieving himself. Urine was running off his turn-ups, puddling around his feet.

Owain played with the TV control. The picture shifted from the Atlantic to a big military installation in the desert; a launch complex surrounded by rainforest; an army formation spread out on a treeless plain; a coastal town; a pale island covered with an untidy weave of aeroplanes. Were these all targets for Omega?

“They might be.”

Somehow Rhys had insinuated himself into the cabin. He was sitting in an armchair opposite, in a brindled charcoal suit and a white silk shirt.

“A question of keeping one’s options open. You didn’t believe me, did you?”

Sitting laxly in the chair as though this was any ordinary domestic occasion, he both looked and sounded smug.

“The hotel,” Owain said. “You saw me coming?”

Rhys nodded.

ont size="3">“Why did you run away?”

Rhys gave the impression that this was a stupid question. “Why do you think? You’re a loose cannon, Owain. Who knows what you might do?”

Owain had doused the overhead lights earlier so there was only the glow from the screen. Rhys crossed his legs. Pale, sheer socks sheathed his slender ankles. His black shoes gleamed.

“Bit of a risk coming in here on your own in that case,” Owain said in Welsh.

“What are you going to do?” Rhys replied in English. “Strangle me? Shoot me? What purpose would it serve? To vent a hate that has no rational basis?”

“I don’t hate you.”

“Well, you certainly despise me.” His brother gave the impression it no longer concerned him. “I couldn’t be the same as you, Owain. It just wasn’t in my nature. We can’t all be frontline heroes.”

“I’m no hero.”

“Father would have been proud of you.”

Coming from anyone else, Owain would have taken this as the best of compliments; but from Rhys it was devalued.

There were still holes in his memory: a lot he couldn’t remember.

“So you were assigned to this Omega project,” he said. “When?”

Rhys hesitated before replying, as if he wasn’t sure whether Owain was testing him.

“It’s been going on for years,” he finally said. ‘I was drafted in to help with the satellite systems. We had to build them like tanks—none of this featherweight stuff. Cabling as thick as your arm, transformers the size of Cougar turbines.”

Owain had no interest in the engineering details, or his brother’s boasting. But obviously the weapon had undergone extensive testing.

“It’s not clear to me,” he said, “what happens to all the terrain after it’s been excised.”

His brother looked impressed that he had remembered the terminology. He asked Owain for the control panel. Owain tossed it towards him at head height. Rhys managed to bring his hands up just in time, deflecting it down into his lap.

“Take a look out of the window,” Rhys said to him. “Tell me what you see.”

Owain craned his head, but in the end he was forced to stand up to get a good look out.

The sky was beginning to darken, but they were flying low enough that he could see a strip of coastline with the grey sea beyond. In fact it looked like an island, long and thin at either end, hugging the marshy coastline, a coiling river running between it and the sea.

“Orford Ness,” Owain said, knowing that it was linked to the coast by the slenderest spit of land at its northern tip.

“Fount of all secrets,” Rhys replied theatrically, pointing to the screen.

The screen at first showed a perspective from on high before the camera zoomed and began panning across the site.

Apart from its shingle shores, the Ness was largely buried under expanses of concrete and tarmac. There were airstrips, missile ranges, and two squat roofed structures that I knew from my own world were called The Pagodas, built for dummy atom bomb testing in the 1950s. Arrays of radar antennae and clusters of bunkers dotted the bleak snow-covered landscape. The place had been used by the military for the best part of a century. There was scarcely an acre of it that did not bear the imprint of their activities.

“They put us on the site of an old POW camp,” Rhys told him, the picture focusing on a modern-looking installation of overarching girders supporting a ribbed concrete dome. “Everything had to be rebuilt from scratch, most of it underground.”

From a distance it looked absurdly like an unfurled umbrella top. The usual missile batteries ringed it and there was a long landing strip close by, a few planes and helicopters parked around the control building.

“The project’s been running for over twenty years,” Rhys told him. “Dungeness was the first time we knew it might work, though no one anticipated that it would be at the expense of obliterating the entire site.

So the story about an old bomb going off had just been a cover. A bigger version of the lie they’d told him about what had happened in Regent Street.

“Then there were the problems with venting that you already know about. It’s only in the last eighteen months that we’ve had systems robust enough to control it.”

“Venting?”

“Backflash, remember? What goes out, must come in again.”

The picture switched abruptly, showing what at first Owain thought was a huge earthen wall that extended right across the field of vision like a latter-day Offa’s Dyke. It was a moment before he recognised it as a serpentine stretch of the Ness upon which were piled the jumbled remains of military vehicles—tanks, assault guns, artillery pieces—poking out of mounds of boulders, dark earth and broken trees. It was as if everything had been fed into an enormous hopper and dropped from a great height.

“Easier to dump it in our own back yard,” Rhys said. “least at first.”

“It’s displaced terrain?”

Rhys nodded. “Some of it from thousands of miles away.”

The materiel was so battered and buckled as to be unrecognisable. But it was easy to imagine that he could detect the contours of a T-92 or Tiger-X among the morass, easy to assume they were the very same tanks he had excised from the base near Minsk, sent twisting through some unimaginable rift in the fabric of the world to be deposited here in a prodigious topological belch.

“Of course we couldn’t go on fouling our doorstep indefinitely,” Rhys said with all the fervour of the sanctified. “Which is why the latest satellites incorporate re-routing facilities.”

Owain had no idea how it was actually done, but he guessed what Rhys was driving at. “So you can vent wherever you want.”

His brother nodded vigorously. “And where better than another enemy site?”

Owain felt surprisingly clear-headed. The world had once again contracted, this time to the dim confines of the cabin. For the moment only he and Rhys existed.

“That’s what makes it positively ingenious,” Rhys told him. “You not only use TEE to take out a threat, you target the venting behind enemy lines where it will cause maximum damage. Drop ten hectares of desert on a harbour packed with warships. Dump a mountain fortress on a missile silo or germ-warfare site. Bury the fuckers under it for good. Two strikes for the price of one, primary and secondary targets inseparable from one another. Could there be a better weapon?”

There was something brittle and excessively zealous about his brother’s advocacy. Owain wanted to shatter it.

“What about enemy attacks?” he said. “Missiles, for example. Could you take them out in flight?”

“Using Omega? Probably not. It would have to be a reasonably static target so we could insert the loop. And not too high up. It’s a geodynamic thing, linked to the earth’s magnetic field.”

“So they could retaliate?”

“If we didn’t get them first, yes.”

“We’d have to defend ourselves by conventional means.”

Rhys didn’t deny it.

“There could be major destruction on both sides.”

“The risk is considered acceptable,” Rhys said. “Remember, they have no means of defending themselves against Omega attacks.”

“They could take out the site here.”

“Do you really think we’d proceed with only one?”

No, of course he didn’t; he’d just wanted to know.

“We needed you up close at Minsk because the relay satellite was new and the only power source was here. You were there for triangulation, though we built in a little leeway so you wouldn’t get swallowed.”

They’d told him of the dangers when he’d volunteered. No better than a fifty-fifty chance of survival. He hadn’t hesitated.

“Now we have global coverage and control centres on mobile platforms. They can go almost anywhere.”

“How many?”

“Eight, ten, a dozen. Enough.”

He didn’t know for sure. Doubtless they would be scattered all across Alliance territory, and perhaps points beyond. There was an abundance of targets.

Rhys switched the channel to BBC-24. A newsreader was detailing recent instances of American aggression. There were pictures of new fortifications on the western Irish coast—teardrop-shaped domes of a pale concrete that blended in well with the snow-covered landscape. A new front line, he was being told, against any threat from the west.

Rhys turned the sound up loud. Now he came and sat down beside Owain.

“There’s only one problem,” he said softly.

“What?”

“You take out the terrain, but you’ve made a permanent alteration in the underlying geology. Remember it’s a three-dimensional loop, larger below than above. The bigger the excision, the deeper it goes.”

“Earth tremors,” Owain said, remembering Blaskowitz’s conversation with his uncle.

“That’s the least of it. Inevitable if the area’s extensive enough. Now imagine doing a big excision over a hot spot or plate boundary. You might get more than that: open up a hole in the crust or take out a chunk of a subduction zone. You’d end up with some pretty impressive firework displays, or get an event that’s right off the Richter scale.”

The heightened volume on the TV meant that they had to lean close to hear one another, a proximity Owain didn’t relish. He was tiring of words, of not knowing what others wanted from him.

“So what’s your point?” he said.

For once Rhys looked unctain.

“Are you having second thoughts?” Owain asked.

“I’m wondering what you think.”

“About what?”

Rhys smiled. There was something patronising about it, as though he considered Owain a hopeless case.

FORTY-FIVE

“This hasn’t happened before,” Dr Pearce said with some anxiety, rather less concerned with the actual incident than that we might consider him professionally negligent by not having warned us.

“I think I over-excited him,” Tanya confessed. “We were dancing.”

“Did he know he was doing it?” Pearce asked.

“Dancing or relieving himself?” I said.

“Relieving himself.”

“He knew.”

Rees gave a little chuckle. Keisha scowled at him and he subsided.

We all were in my father’s room, waiting for him to return. The room held a small wardrobe and a bedside table in addition to the single bed. A modern desk had been crammed into a space beside the door, but its beech-veneer surface was conspicuously free of books or writing equipment.

I knew that the wardrobe held no more than a few changes of clothing. No ties, though he’d always worn one, even when working at home. Another way in which his autonomy had been stripped from him. Everything was pared down to the essentials of easy maintenance. I’d brought him family photographs in the past, but they were nowhere in evidence.

It felt safe in the room—at least far safer than with Owain. Safe but dead, my father sealed in behind a window that couldn’t be opened without a key, behind a door whose lock was on the outside. Nocturnal wandering, Dr Pearce once told me, was a frequent symptom of someone in my father’s condition, though he’d hastened to add that a night nurse was always sent to the room of any patient showing signs of agitation. I liked the fact he called them “patients” rather than the euphemisms of “residents” or even “guests”.

“How long do you think he has?” Rees asked the doctor.

“Sorry?”

“Will he die before he goes completely gaga?”

Pearce looked mortified, as though Rees had sworn in church.

“Well,” he said awkwardly, “physically he’s in a reasonable condition for a man of his age. And new treatments are always coming on line.”

“It’s all right,” I said, rescuing him. “We know the score.”

Death was never mentioned here. Rees didn’t press it. I saw Keisha squeeze his hand in a manner I thought was both sympathetic and cautionary. She looked calm and self-possessed, given that she was surrounded by strangers in a difficult emotional situation.

“Is he still writing?” Tanya asked.

“No,” Pearce said with what sounded like genuine regret. “That stopped some months ago.”

I must have told Tanya about it, though I couldn’t remember the occasion. When I first discussed with my father the possibility of going into a nursing home he had agreed without qualm but insisted that he wanted to continue to work. He was aware of his mental decline but clearly felt that his lapses were mere periods of indisposition, a hindrance but not a bar to the continued pursuit of his profession. He compiled a list of essential reference books that he wished to take with him, along with notebooks and a range of coloured roller ball pens that he intended to use.

It wasn’t until he had been at Broadoaks for the best part of a year that I actually took a look at what he was writing. At first he guarded his notebooks from all external attention, but as his condition worsened so did his dominion over them. One afternoon Pearce left me alone with them while my father was undergoing neurological tests.

His working title was Chaos and Order in History, and what surprised me was the depth of his reading in such esoteric fields as non-linear systems and game theory. Three of his notebooks were completely filled with a jumbled collection of references, observations and commentaries obviously drawn directly from his reading. They were scribbled down in alternating blocks of red, green and purple that suggested a colour coding I was never able to fathom. Other notebooks held more extended passages in sober black and navy which were plainly a draft of the work itself.

Enough of the draft was coherent for me to grasp that he was attempting to apply two main ideas from science to the study of history. The first was that as macroscopic certainty emerged from innumerable fuzzy and probabilistic interactions in the sub-atomic world, so historical process, as he termed it, arose out of the equally innumerable and often random interactions of individuals. The second was that as ordered behaviour could spontaneously arise in systems that were far from thermodynamic equilibrium, like a whirlpool vortex in bath water draining down a plug hole, so historical pattern only emerged during periods of flux.

I read through the notebooks with a mixture of awe, confusion and, ultimately, a dismaying sense of the sterility of the enterprise. It was sterile not because I knew it would never be finished but rather because it expended a mountain of intellectual effort to scale a crumbling anthill. To say that historical process was the summation of individual actions was surely just to state the obvious. To assert that patterns in history only became evident at times of upheaval was unenlightening without a proper definition of what constituted such times. My father also implied that such patterns were visible contemporaneously, a notion at odds with another of his favourite axioms: History is a dish best served cold. While I knew that what I was reading was only a draft, filled with obscurities, non-sequiturs and half-developed ideas, it nevertheless conveyed the impression of a fixation so obsessive that he wanted to shoehorn the whole of history into it. He had succumbed to the tyranny of analogy.

“Where are his notebooks?” I asked Pearce.

The doctor looked puzzled. “You asked us to remove them the last time you were here.”

I remembered. He’d begun to deface them. Scribbling over them, tearing out their pages, perhaps driven by despair because the besieged rational part of him knew the game was up.

And here he was at last, being wheeled into the room by one of the nurses: freshly laundered, wrapped in his black-watch tartan dressing gown, looking both puzzled and disgruntled to find us all waiting for him. He was only seventy-four, but he looked ten years older, defeated by the very status to which he had always aspired.

“How you feeling, dad?” Rees asked cheerily.

His gaze had settled on Keisha.

“Who’re you?” he said to her.

“She’s with me,” Rhys interjected, and I could tell he was disappointed that he had already forgotten.

He looked at me. “Is it a party? Or am I dying?”

“No, dad,” I said, trying to sound amused. “Nothing like that. We’re just visiting. Though I think it’s time for us to be on our way.”

Rees was rummaging in his canvas shoulder bag. He produced a disposable camera.

“I thought we should have a few photographs,” he said. “For old time’s sake.”

“Makes no difference to me. Where’s Madga?”

For an instant it was as if someone had taken all the air out of the room.

“She’s dead,” I said.

“Don’t you think I don’t know that?” he replied. “The photograph. What have you done with it?”

The nurse, obviously practised in such situations, lifted the pillow on his bed. It was a 6×4 in a cut-price pine frame I had bought for it.

With the light fadoutside, we decided that the most suitable place for the photographs was in front of the window. At this point I glimpsed a cluster of figures in the garden beyond—five children and a woman. They were standing amongst clumps of ornamental grasses some distance away, waving at me.

I couldn’t clearly discern their features. The woman was noticeably tall and slim, dressed in a neat navy coat, blonde-haired, a flower-patterned scarf tied at her neck. There were three girls and two boys, all of them young. Two of the girls particularly caught my attention. One wore a silver puff jacket with stripy leggings, her slightly elder sister a red zippered top and jeans. They might have been Sara and Bethany.

A fierce compulsion propelled me away from the window, along with a determined conviction that they couldn’t possibly be waving at me, that there were other windows on this side of the building, balconies even, so it was highly likely they were greeting someone else.

It was essential to believe this, not to allow any futile hope to blossom. At the same time I was certain I had seen the woman before. It wasn’t Lyneth, I knew that. Suddenly it came to me: the park. Was it the same woman I had seen in there, the day I fell out of the wheelchair? With the two children who reminded me most of my own? How was that possible?

I made myself look again. They were gone. There was no one in sight.

“Owen?”

I looked around. Tanya, and everyone else, was waiting for me.

I steadied myself, summoning a smile, certain that it had been no apparition. My father, as if sensing my distress, salvaged me. As we arranged ourselves around him for the photograph, he caught my eye and did something astonishing. It was enough to make me swell with all sorts of emotions as the camera flashed and he sat rigid, my hand on his shoulder, staring straight ahead with a fixed grin like a child under orders. Sentimentally I had imagined that he was going to raise Mother’s photograph to the camera so that her image would be incorporated into the picture, but he had either forgotten or preferred to let her rest where she lay in his lap. Meanwhile I was seized with the certainty that this was the last time I was going to see him alive; and he knew it too, which was why in that private instant he had been able to look at me and, straight-faced, give me a quick knowing wink.

FORTY-SIX

Owain stood at the cabin window with Rhys, staring down at the diminishing outlines of Orford Ness as we flew away into the gathering dark.

The door opened, and two MPs came into the cabin, escorting Carl Legister and Marisa.

Legister was either under arrest or protective custody. Marisa looked guardedly at Owain, but neither she nor her husband said anything as they were seated on the sofa. Both MPs remained, flanking the doorway, submachine guns in their hands. The weapons could be used with near impunity: the Nimbus was triple-skinned, its fuselage reinforced with arched trusses like massive ribs, its deep-set. The entire craft was designed to withstand damage from anything short of an armour-piercing shell.

Legister looked both calm and implacable, staring unemotionally at TV footage of a Befreiungtag parade, held in Breslau each spring to commemorate the final extinction of the Nazi state. Marisa had perched herself at his side, but there was a space between them and they did not touch. She continued to look down into her folded hands. The usual strident music accompanied the footage, though Rhys had reduced the sound to normal levels.

Within a minute of their arrival, Giselle Vigoroux entered. She crouched down next to Marisa and they began a whispered sisterly exchange. It came to me that Marisa must have fled to Giselle after leaving Owain’s quarters. I saw Marisa listen before shaking her head. Giselle nodded and straightened.

“Are we all being confined here?” Rhys asked her with a degree of puzzled umbrage.

“We’ll let you out soon,” Giselle told him.

She exited as briskly as she had come.

Legister and Marisa sat like mannequins. Rhys, sensing the polluted atmosphere, came up close.

“She the one you were seeing?” he murmured, though he obviously knew.

I nodded.

“Pretty.”

“She’s lucky to be alive,” I made Owain say. “For a while I thought I’d murdered her.”

Involuntarily he moved back a little. “You’re joking.”

I shook his head. “I’ve been getting these violent urges. You were right to run away.”

Both of us were keeping our voices low, our backs turned to Marisa and Legister. But I knew they were watching us.

“You had a rough time,” Rhys said sympathetically. “Battlefield trauma’s a real syndrome, even if the military won’t admit it.”

“I’m possessed.”

This was Owain. It was the first time he had actually acknowledged that his thoughts and actions were not always his own; and yet he would not accept my presence as something distinct from himself. How could this be, if he knew of my life?

The door opened again and one of Sir Gruffydd’s staff entered.

“You’re needed,” he told Rhys.

“We’ll talk more later,” Rhys whispered, but it was clear he wanteut. When the door closed behind him Owain felt abandoned.

He made the mistake of catching Carl Legister’s eye.

“Sit down, major,” he said, indicating one of the armchairs opposite.

Owain didn’t move.

“Please.” He made the word sound like an order. “I want to talk to you.”

Rhys had thrust the TV control into Owain’s hand on leaving. I was tempted to turn up the volume again, to drown him out. Marisa was still looking into her lap.

“I’m so sorry,” I said softly to her.

“I want to talk about your father,” Legister said.

“What?”

“I think it’s time you knew the whole truth about what happened to him.”

I could feel Owain growing fiercely defensive. “I know what happened to him.”

“The full story, major. You’ve only ever been told the official version. It’s somewhat, shall we say, restricted.”

He wasn’t concerned about Marisa. It was as if she was no use to him in the present situation and could be discounted

“Come,” Legister insisted, indicating the armchair opposite him.

Owain took a step back.

“What are you afraid of, major?” Legister said with weary disdain. “I’m unarmed. We’re guarded. Aren’t you a seeker after truth?”

“I wouldn’t expect to hear it from you.”

“You have no interest in your father’s fate?”

“My father died while doing his duty.”

“Along with millions of others. I take it you were told the attack was launched by renegade militia making use of devices acquired after raids on abandoned missile facilities.”

Owain didn’t say anything, but neither did he turn away.

“Did you know your father was a member of the so-called Pazis?”

Angrily Owain said, “My father was no pacifist!”

Legister mimed surprise. “Of cour he wasn’t. Not at least in the popular sense of being a coward or a conscientious objector. But that’s not how the term is applied in official circles. Rather, it refers to a loose association of officers and civilians throughout our territories who favour negotiated settlements rather than continuing escalation. Most desire a permanent end to hostilities. A few even have as their ultimate aim the restoration of civilian, even democratic, rule.”

Legister’s sneering tone made it sound like a ridiculously idealistic aspiration.

“Are you suggesting my father was a subversive? A traitor?”

“My dear major,” he said emolliently, “I’m not suggesting that he was in any way deficient in his duties. But his record also indicates that he was a humane man who did not believe in unnecessary sacrifice.”

Was this a compliment or merely a means of winning Owain’s consideration?

“Colonel-General Blaskowitz was a more recent member of the fraternity. No doubt you’re aware of what happened to him.”

As usual he was giving nothing away but words. Then it came to me: Legister himself had similar sympathies. He’d been trying to negotiate with the Americans, and had been kept in the dark about the plan for using Omega.

“Ever since we began this entire enterprise,” he went on, “the bane of our existence has been our inability to stabilise our borders. And, of course, the problem of trying to meld the many constituent tribes of the Alliance into one harmonious whole against all the xenophobic instincts of our species. A utopian project, perhaps. Certainly a Herculean one.”

All this was remote from Owain’s own experience. It also sounded like a politician’s gloss on what had been military necessities.

“The Middle East presented a particularly intractable problem. Sixty years ago it was believed that the Jewish Question had been settled humanely by the mass evacuations to their ancestral homeland. But it bred equally virulent forms of domestic nationalism within the federated territories. In the Slavic lands we have a convenient wasteland for demarcation, in North Africa the desert expanses. But not in Palestine and Mesopotamia, despite our best efforts at homeland creation.”

His tone was that of a wearily exasperated parent, of someone whose boundless charity had been spurned.

“A festering wound on a sensitive frontier, Jews and Muslims and Christians in bitter unending conflict, even amongst themselves. Even with occupying armies. Too many symbols of religious and nationalist pride, too much history of strife. It became clear it was never going to go away. But the example of the east, how the very devastation of its territories was creating a cordon sanitaire, proved an inspiration to our strategic planners. Why don’t you sit down, major?”

Already I was beginning to anticipates gloss on might say. I made Owain sit. Marisa, whose head was still down, looked like she wished she were anywhere but here.

“The nuclear attack on Palestine was orchestrated by senior figures within the Alliance,” Legister stated. “It was they who supplied the weaponry, they who selected the targets. A means of reducing troublesome provinces to a radioactive desert that could more easily be policed while bolstering their own authority in the inevitable outrage that would follow.”

Sixteen years ago. Sir Gruffydd wasn’t C-in-C in those days, but as Vice-Chief of the General Staff his would still have been an important voice on the JGC. He would have known about such a decision, been party to it.

“You’re saying my father was deliberately sacrificed.”

“It had to look convincingly like an attack from outside.”

“No,” Owain retorted. “My uncle would never have agreed to it. He wouldn’t let his only surviving brother die.”

“Wouldn’t he?” Legister’s tone was laced with scepticism. “Perhaps he preferred to become the guardian of two impressionable boys rather than allow them to grow up under the tutelage of a father he considered a potential danger to the cause.”

“My father spent most of his time overseas. My uncle was already our guardian in all but name.”

“But he was a prolific letter-writer, busily expounding his humanitarian views to the two of you at every opportunity, is that not true? Views that your uncle would have considered dangerously at variance with sound military doctrine.”

“He loved my father, too.”

“That may well be so. But what of his duty to the greater cause? Do you think he would ever have retained his eminence without being able to take whatever action was necessary to preserve it?”

“This is his family. All he had.”

Legister gave him a pitying look. “You would find, if you were able to examine the records, that in the months preceding the attack there was an unusually high level of transfers and repostings to and from Army Group Middle East. A disproportionate number of the new arrivals were personnel whose files are stamped F. For Fraglich. Of questionable sympathies. It’s used to signify moral or ideological rather than military qualms.”

Marisa’s head was up, but she was looking at her husband, not me. It appeared that she was hearing all this for the first time.

“Your father had carried that classification for more than a decade. He was conveniently in place. Had your uncle wanted to get him out, he certainly had the authority to do so. He was meant to be there, major. He was intended to die.”< ><p>

A split-screen shot on the television showed a Muslim cleric leading prayers with a group of senior Alliance officers, and a Free Orthodox ceremony in a church with a black-bearded archbishop. It dissolved into the deck of a warship, where Pope Clement was bestowing benedictions in his brisk fashion on the assembled ranks of the crew. On the continent the Ecumenical Church had more of a Catholic flavour.

“A studio backdrop,” Legister observed wryly. “They’ve rather overdone the seagulls, don’t you think?”

“And me?” Owain said angrily. “What classification do I have?”

Legister didn’t even hesitate. “Verdächtig” he said.

It meant “Under Suspicion”. I was scarcely surprised.

The cabin door opened again, and this time a quartet of Sir Gruffydd’s personal guard entered. The pick of the commando squadrons. We were escorted along the corridor to the front of the aircraft.

A large cabin directly behind the flight deck was crowded with personnel from MPs to braided officers in grey khaki, navy and slate blue. It had an atmosphere that I could only think of as festive. People stood talking in small groups, holding glasses of wine as if at a party. Almost half of them were women, including a high proportion of non-combatants who wore military style jackets and leggings as though to blend in.

Owain’s uncle was perched on a collapsible stool next to one of the truss arches, talking to Henry Knowlton, who was wearing his old air marshal’s uniform. Stradling, Giselle and Rhys surrounded him, all with drinks in their hands. Rhys looked especially animated as he conducted a one-way conversation with Giselle.

“It would appear,” Legister said beside me, “that we’ve been invited to the première.”

FORTY-SEVEN

Above the door to the flight deck were mounted three screens, showing similar scenes to those we had seen earlier. No one was paying them particular attention. One of Sir Gruffydd’s guards detached Owain from Legister and Marisa and ushered us through the crowd. I glanced back, certain that Owain would have no further opportunity to speak to Marisa. Another of the guards was speaking to her. She looked frightened.

“Owain!” my uncle said heartily on our approach, rising from his stool. He reached out to grasp Owain’s epaulette and draw him properly into his circle.

“All clear, is it now, my boy?”

This last was spoken in Welsh. Had he anticipated what Legister was going to say? Had he been eavesdropping?

I let Owain nod and said, “The fog has lifte.”

Doubtless he’d guessed the likely outcome of putting Legister into the same room but hadn’t bothered to listen in. Too busy with more important matters. Didn’t view it as troublesome now that Owain was restored to his senses.

“Have to face up to the grim realities,” Sir Gruffydd said, this time in English. “Only way for it, eh? No matter how painful.”

So he had known. Had perhaps deliberately arranged it. As another test of Owain’s mettle.

Owain stifled an urge to salute. “Sir.”

“Here,” Sir Gruffydd said, lifting a wineglass from the tray of a passing waitress and thrusting it at us. “Take a drink. And for God’s sake don’t tell me you’ve sworn off alcohol again. Down your gullet. You’ve earned it.”

It was the same stewardess who’d come to the cabin earlier. She barely paused in her stride. Knowlton stared after her approvingly.

“The gang’s all here!” Rhys said with a brittle schoolboy enthusiasm. He raised his glass. “Happy centenary, uncle!”

“You cheeky devil!” the field marshal replied jovially, giving him a pantomime swipe that he easily dodged.

Rhys didn’t know the true story about their father’s death. Or he had been told and didn’t care. Everyone else was grinning, though Giselle had turned a shoulder away.

“The real balloon’11 be going up soon enough,” the field marshal said, subsiding back on to his stool. “Fortunate to have everyone on hand.”

He plainly meant his family. The three of us. Possibly Giselle as well, even though she was no blood relation.

It occurred to Owain that they might prove to be the last of his line. Rhys was only ever likely to become a father by making a donation to a Future Youth clinic, while Owain saw no prospect of having a family life again. His uncle might have his victory, but his bloodline would become extinct.

Across the room Legister and Marisa had been seated against the corridor wall near the door, still under discreet guard. No one was speaking to them, though the minister must have known most people in the room. Legister still looked quite contained, almost serene, given that his own hopes had also been thwarted: but he never showed great emotion. Marisa’s face was hidden behind the crooked arm of a rear-admiral, one of the navy representatives on the JGC. Other Council members would doubtless be aboard different aircraft to spread the risk, more or less immune to retaliatory missile attacks. And elsewhere across the skies of Europe, perhaps scores of aircraft would be keeping continental leaders aloft.

What would happen, I began to wonder, if the Americans had a miracle weapon ir own? A giant laser or ray that could make all the craft drop from the sky under the rapid sweep of its beam? Sending the entire upper echelon of the Alliance command crashing to earth? What then? It was a measure of the surreal atmosphere that I was able to contemplate such abstractions without finding them in any way fanciful.

I became aware that the conversations in the cabin had grown gradually more muted. There was a tinkling sound of metal on glass.

It was Sir Gruffydd, who had risen again and was tapping a teaspoon against an empty champagne flute.

“Officers and gentlemen and those of uncertain pedigree,” he began, pausing when the predictable spate of laughter ensued. “We are gathered here today to witness—no, damn it, I’m reading from the wrong script again.”

He tossed an imaginary sheet of paper aside to more laughter. It came easily enough, like a collective release of tension, and subsided just as swiftly.

The field marshal now studiously composed himself, his face taking on a solemn air.

“I want to tell you of the grave and pressing dangers we confront,” he began. “The United States and its subject dominions have been pursuing a vigorous campaign of territorial encroachment along our borders and spheres of influence. Protracted high-level negotiations have failed to resolve these issues—indeed, they’ve served only to buy more time to intensify their operations. All our appeals for moderation and plain talking have fallen on unreceptive ears.

He paused and motioned to Giselle, who promptly passed him his walking stick. He leaned on it with both hands but remained straight-backed, conveying a sense of someone physically burdened but not bowed by the weight of his responsibilities.

“The Americans have recently developed what they term ECO—Earth Cleaving Ordnance, better known to us as DPMs. These missiles, launched from submarines or high altitude bombers, can deliver nuclear charges at sufficient depth to underground sites to destroy them completely. They are instruments of an offensive war, intended to destroy our subterranean command-and-control complexes both at home and on the continent. Which is why, ladies and gentlemen, we’re presently up here and not down there.”

There was the merest flurry of laughter, another exhalation of relief. Sir Gruffydd conspicuously showed no humour.

“We pointed out to the Americans that these weapons are in breach of our most recent arms restriction treaty, which forbids development of any new nuclear devices. I have to tell you that they were implacable, claiming that the weapons were not new but merely a refinement of existing technology. This is not a view we were able to share. It is essential we take measures to protect ourselves.”

He took a TV control from Giselle and pointed it at the screens. The picture on the central one changed from an airfield to the fleet in the Atlantic we had been shown earlier.

Owain stared numbly at it. He was hollow, without volition. I lunged, determined to take control. He teetered, and then I couldn’t sense him at all.

I heard Sir Gruffydd explain that the fleet was entering Alliance waters, and that a second task force largely composed of munitions ships and landing craft was heading north-east from the Azores. The Americans plainly intended a first strike on Alliance centres of operation, followed by landings on the west coast of Ireland and a rapid drive across the country to take Dublin and Belfast.

None of the other screens gave evidence of this: they were showing footage of Alliance mobilisation.

I steadied myself, expecting at any moment a resurgence of Owain. It didn’t come.

I contemplated Ireland and Sir Gruffydd’s assertions. To me it didn’t make strategic sense. An American invasion force there would be faced with supply lines so long and subject to disruption that it defied military logic. I stole a look at Carl Legister and saw that he was gazing at the screen with stony incredulity. And he, as much as anyone else, would surely have been well placed in the preceding months to anticipate US intentions.

“This is not the only threat we face,” my uncle continued. “In several of our frontier territories offensive enemy operations are about to be undertaken. Action to neutralise these dangers will naturally be the responsibility of our continental forces. It is the one to the British Isles that we must counter. And for that, the most radical measures are necessary.”

Now the audience plainly sensed the approach to the payoff. My uncle looked more sober than ever.

“Omega,” he said, not quite savouring the word. “I think most of us have heard of it.”

There was no laughter this time: they were merely eager to know.

“Some of you may have thought it was legendary, the expression of sublime hope. Well, it exists, and we possess it. And because we have no alternative we intend to use it to avoid our own destruction.”

My uncle glanced at a clock on the wall: it was almost four pm. Though the portholes I could see that daylight was rapidly fading.

“Observe the main screen,” Sir Gruffydd said, using the control. “Watch carefully.”

The picture on the central screen was still of the US fleet, but those on the two that flanked it had changed. One, captioned W. Eire, showed the new coastal fortifications I’d seen earlier; the other an extensive military installation ringed with airfields and missile silos. It was captioned Omaha, Nebraska, USA.

My uncle had timed his oration to near perfection. You might have looked away for a few moments and missed it. The central screen showed a high-level view of the fleet as slender pale bullet shapes arrned a mottled iron-grey field. Abruptly they vanished, leaving for the merest flicker of time two seamless ocean edges with utter darkness between them that flashed into one another, colliding with such force that they raised an enormous crest of white water that split the ocean like a bloodless wound.

Within seconds one of the flanking screens showed a flurry of movement as the Omaha installation vanished beneath a watery turmoil in whose explosive turbulence were fleeting glimpses of what must have been capital ships—great vessels of tens of thousands of tonnes, hoisted and upended, thrust through netherspace, voided onto one of the nerve centres of the American military in the heartland of their territory.

There was no sound. This made it only more awesome, something that transcended nature itself. But it was easy, and indeed essential, to imagine it: an oceanic thundering, accompanied by a cacophony of crashing, mangled metal. Easy to be transported into grandiose realms of patriotic imagery, to envisage the storm god Thor repeatedly striking his enemies with a celestial hammer, relentless and irresistible. These were Owain’s sentiments, I thought fleetingly; not mine. But I couldn’t escape his sense of awful thrill: I felt it myself. Didn’t all of us who were drawn to military exploits secretly yearn for it in the most shadowy and tremulous chambers of the heart? The pain-free catharsis of an apocalypse?

No one moved or spoke. The Omaha maelstrom slowly began to abate, leaving a strewn mass of naval wreckage that sloughed off torrents of water. I could imagine it gushing down ventilation shafts and escape hatches, inundating everyone below.

It was hard to know where to look, and whether to keep looking. On the central screen the white crest had begun to resolve itself into a pair of tsunamis already racing away from one another, swamping the hapless ships that had escaped the earlier swallowing. If the excision had gone deep enough to take a section out of the ocean bed, surely other waves would follow in their wake as the crust readjusted. Or would the sea in the vicinity boil as magma welled out?

Only the screen showing the teardrop coastal emplacements remained unchanged, looking exquisitely tranquil in comparison. It dawned on me that they had indeed been purpose-built to withstand a sea-borne invasion, not of men and arms but rather of the great waves that my uncle and other senior commanders knew would be thrown up by the use of Omega on the ocean.

How much longer did they have, the personnel inside them, before the first wave struck? Minutes? Hours? It was unlikely they would have been told much more than to hold fast if something struck them from outside. Don’t poke your heads outside under any circumstances, until you receive further orders. There would probably be monitoring devices, sophisticated stress and pressure gauges to measure the effect of the impact, operatives secretly assigned to the tasks. As much useful information would be garnered as possible. As a basis for future provision.

The decision to deploy the weapon in the Atlantic had obviously been made many months before. What action had been taken to draw the American fleet into a suitable target area? It had probably required some ongoing provocation: overt submarine activity, zealous shadowing of American vessels, the bellicose rhetoric of which both sides had become masteld ver the past half century.

Stewardesses were moving around the cabin, filling glasses from bottles of vintage champagne. Henry Knowlton was actually slapping my uncle on the back as if he personally had created the weapon. The two of them stood at the back of the crowd exchanging incredulous grins like criminals who had pulled off a particularly spectacular robbery. And in a sense they had: it was the most audacious grab-and-smash in history.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” my uncle said above the continuing sounds of awe and naked enthusiasm. He waited until heads reluctantly began to turn.

“Please raise your glasses to Omega,” he said. “I hope and pray that it will be the salvation of us all!”

The cabin filled with the clinking of glasses and baritone reverberations of the toast. What happened next was confused and may owe as much to reconstruction as actual experience.

I thought I heard a dull metallic thud, and imagined that something had fallen over—my uncle’s stool, perhaps, but no, he was standing and it was still upright at his side. I became aware of a little commotion near the flight deck corridor, as if a scuffle had broken out. A thin mist was rising from the floor, carrying a faint menthol-like odour. I scrambled for my handkerchief and pressed it to my nose.

It was nepenthe.

FORTY-EIGHT

Instants later I was grabbed from behind and spun around. A dark figure with a bulging snout pushed some kind of leathery hood over the lower part of my face.

Rhys, wearing a respirator.

“Don’t take it off!” he warned, and I realised he had put a similar mask on me. He attached the straps and pushed me towards a corner of the cabin. I collided with a table, scattering bottles and champagne flutes, setting off a brief crescendo of shattering glass. Rhys thrust something into my hand before disappearing into the haze.

The mist was thickening everywhere, and already people were stumbling around, colliding with one another, falling. A small group surged towards the door, and there was a burst of firing. All were cut down.

Through the fog I heard more shouts and screams. Cradling the pistol Rhys had pressed into my hand, I glimpsed figures flailing around, some already on their knees, crawling, clutching at others’ legs or the necks of their own clothing. I was totally occupying Owain’s body, and felt that I should do something. But what? There was also the inescapable realisation that if I was utterly here, Owain might have become the person I was in my own world. Action and reaction. I had a flash of him walking out of Broadoaks with Tanya, though whether this was real or a willed figment I had no means of knowing.

Staccato bursts of firing continued for a while, diminishing as the movement of people in the cabin subsided. Most were ="0enmoving heaps on the floor. I could still hear voices, calling to one another, yelling queries and instructions. The Nimbus lurched wildly, throwing me out from under the table, its engine sound switching from a drone to something far more strident.

Already the vapour was beginning to clear. I saw that no one on the floor was actually unconscious: they lay there with their eyes open, immobilised, making little gagging sounds, helplessly imploring.

“Where is he?” I heard someone shout. A few figures still were darting about, though there was no more shooting or mass movement.

Someone grabbed me by the arm and hauled me to my feet.

“Well, major,” Carl Legister said from behind his mask, “the game’s not quite up yet—though you are extremely fortunate to survive this latest skirmish. If it weren’t for your brother I’d be inclined to shoot you.”

Rhys was over by our uncle’s upturned stool, a masked Marisa crouched beside him. Between them and us was a tangle of bodies covered in bloodstains and bits of broken glass. A victory party reduced to a human morass within minutes.

“Escape hatch,” Rhys said, indicating the open door in the truss arch. Inside it lay the body of Stradling. There was a pistol in his hand, but it looked as if he hadn’t had time to fire it before he was shot in the chest. Rhys dragged the body aside to reveal an oval hatch in the dimpled steel floor. “Bolted from below. We should have guessed.”

So Rhys and Legister were in collusion, both working to thwart my uncle. An alliance I would never have anticipated. Legister must have told Rhys about our father’s death some time before, probably trading on Rhys’s growing qualms about Omega.

I saw that Henry Knowlton was also sprawled lifelessly nearby, a bloody froth in his mouth. There was no sign of my uncle or Giselle. They must have fled to a lower deck before the nepenthe could incapacitate them. It looked as if Stradling had deliberately blocked the hatchway to facilitate their escape.

“We’ve little time,” Legister said, and he and Rhys promptly helped me across the cabin, paying scant heed to the bodies in our path. I trod on a thigh, an arm, the splayed blonde hair of a female naval officer whose face had the slackness of an opium addict’s. Below the engine noise I heard the cabin ventilation furiously working. Rhys lifted his respirator experimentally, but swiftly put it back in place.

Marisa was huddled in a corner beside the flight deck door, her eyes squeezed shut above her respirator. The two MPs, evidently loyal to Legister, were also masked. They were busy dragging limp bodies against the main corridor doorway, packing them together as if they were sandbags.

I was bundled down the aisle that led to the flight deck. The corpses of the original pilot and co-pilot had been dumped in a corner. Their splattered white flight helmets were now on the heads of two figures in RAF coveralls. The pilot was a young man, the co-ilot a woman whose face was hidden from me. Through the window I saw two Valkyries of the fighter escort flying lopsidedly abreast of us.

Rhys removed his respirator and started hauling parachute bundles out of hatches. I scrambled my own mask off, the air cool on my clammy cheeks but untainted with nepenthe. The cabin was under positive air pressure that had kept it unpolluted. Legister and Marisa also unmasked, Marisa cowering in a corner.

The woman in the co-pilot’s seat began talking into the radio, speaking English with a French accent, telling someone that the pilot had suffered a heart attack resulting in temporary loss of control. The situation was now stable but Field Marshal Mareddud had ordered a descent to five thousand feet as a precautionary measure. They were heading back towards the coast in case an emergency landing should prove necessary.

Though her voice didn’t sound quite right, I knew it was Giselle. The raucous reply to her radio message sounded questioning in tone. It appeared mollified when she added the information that Operation Niagara had been successfully executed and that they were going to resume radio silence as ordered.

I pushed my way forward past the two dead crewmen under the watchful eye of Carl Legister. He had his pistol trained on me.

“I didn’t know,” I said redundantly to Giselle.

She continued looking straight ahead.

“I thought you were loyal to him.”

“At the expense of bringing catastrophe to the entire planet? Everything has its limits.”

She spoke in a thick voice. The right side of her face was puffy from brow to cheekbone, already blackening.

“Sir Gruffydd did that?”

Her attempt at a smile was not successful. “He’s very useful with his stick. Quicker than you might imagine. He pushed his old friend in front of me so that he took the shot I had intended for him. And hacked me down.”

I was surprised that she could speak of it without emotion, given their long association. All the while she was scrutinising the instrument panel. The Nimbus was still descending, dropping down and down through the gathering darkness.

“Well, major,” Legister said to me. “What is your decision?”

He’d lowered his pistol. I realised I was still holding the one Rhys had given to me.

“You’re too late,” I said. “The weapon’s already been used.”

“What did you expect us to do?” Rhys interjected. “Nothing?”

“The Americans will already be retaliating.”

“Indeed,” said Legister. “Though whether the conflict escalates may depend on how successful we are here.”

“What do you mean?”

Legister looked impatient that he had to spell it out. “Sir Gruffydd represents the extreme of the warmongers among our chiefs of state. He has concentrated his supporters here in England over recent years. Many of them are aboard this aeroplane.”

“Are your men in control of it?”

“Only this forward section. But it will be sufficient for our purposes if we can hold out.”

“Really?” I said sceptically. “How? Are you going to crash the plane and kill everyone? That won’t stop the war. You heard what my uncle said. Other Omega attacks are being launched from continental sites.”

“Not yet they aren’t. Your uncle rather exaggerated on that score—exaggerated the extent of the enthusiasm on the European mainland for its indiscriminate use. Those in charge there do not share your uncle’s unbridled appetite for all-out war.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Put yourself in their position. The European landmass has suffered far more devastation than our islands. They’ve been in the front line for sixty years, seen their homelands reduced to cinders and rubble. They have every reason to be extremely cautious.”

Was this just another lie? I tried to recall the tenor of the Versailles meeting. There had been no sense that the participants had known anything about Omega. I said as much.

“Knowledge of its existence was severely restricted,” Legister admitted. “As you saw yourself on this very aeroplane. The translocation of the fleet is intended as a demonstration, a bargaining counter. This was the compromise arranged between the opposing factions in the high command. But, like all compromises, it’s neither fish nor fowl and will be unlikely to deter the Americans from wholesale retaliation. Unless we can supply them with stark evidence that there remains a significant tendency opposed to total war.”

Legister had a fondness for the orotund phrase and the circumlocution. He had known all about Omega and my uncle’s intentions when he interrogated me—presumably merely in order to gauge my loyalties or check the extent of my amnesia. It was absurd that we should even be discussing the potential outcome of its use on the flight deck of a hijacked aeroplane, surrounded by corpses and a croaking mass of nerve gas victims.

“Why should I believe any of this?” I said.

“We’re flying back to the main facility at Orford Nss,” Rhys told me. “The plane’s transmitting a homing signal tuned to the frequencies of a B-75 Stargrazer.”

A high-altitude bomber that could be armed, I knew, with nuclear missiles. This one, I was certain, would be carrying DPMs.

“They’ll never let you get near there,” I said. “They’ll shoot you down.”

“I don’t think so,” Rhys replied. “Consider the importance of the passengers on board. The chief of the JGC, no less! And the fact that Colonel Vigoroux can provide all the necessary security codes to ground control. We’ll tell them we need to make an emergency landing. There’s an airstrip close by.”

“And then what? Are we going to parachute out of here before the missile hits? Fly the plane into the building? It’s absurd!”

My incredulity was largely a function of my own private panic, a fear that I had trapped myself here while my true existence was stolen by a deranged upstart. There was something else, too—some significant exchange between Tanya and me that I simply couldn’t bring to mind in the frenetic circumstances of the present moment. The very effort made me giddy and disorientated.

“The parachutes are merely a precautionary measure,” Legister was saying. “At a prudent enough height we should survive any missile impact on the ground. You will recall that the earth penetrating devices are designed to focus their destructive power downwards rather than upwards. If we are lucky enough we’ll be able to spirit ourselves away, find a soft landing somewhere.”

It sounded ridiculously optimistic, though it was possible that, even now, he wasn’t telling me the whole story. Perhaps there were prior arrangements—a friendly ship waiting in the North Sea or an airfield specially secured for the purpose.

“And if not?” I asked.

Legister gave the impression that the question was not even worth considering.

Giselle had started to talk to ground control at the Ness. We couldn’t be more than minutes away. In the cabin beyond the two MPs remained on guard, one of them with his weapon trained on the bulkhead hatch, the other on the still-twitching bodies piled at the door to the main corridor.

Including myself, there were seven of us. Rhys looked fervent, Marisa merely wide-eyed with fright. Legister had probably compelled to her help him, and she wouldn’t have been able to refuse him. What she’d most wanted was distraction and a semblance of a normal life. She would never have it now.

“Thank you for saving me,” I said to Rhys in Welsh.

“What are brothers for?” he replied in the same tongue. “Who else do I have, Owain, but you?”

This was said with emotion but without self-pity. I squeezed his arm, something I was certain his real brother would never have done.

“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” I said in English to Legister. “Why did you let it come to this in the first place? If you knew what was going to happen, wouldn’t it have been easier to have my uncle done away with in the first place? Or did you try to poison him and fail?”

Legister gave me a smile of withering condescension.

“My dear major,” he said softly, “that would have defeated an important objective of this entire enterprise. It still remained necessary to show the Americans the extent of the damage we can inflict on them. A suitable demonstration of our capabilities. One cannot negotiate from a position of perceived weakness: there would be nothing to negotiate except the extent of one’s capitulation.”

Absurd that I should ever have thought otherwise, his tone conveyed. And he was right: it was absurd. Absurd to imagine that even those who balked at full-scale war in this world had anything remotely resembling pacifist tendencies. It was merely a question of the degree of armed force that needed to be applied to achieve one’s strategic aims. Even for so-called politicians, diplomatic initiatives were the outcome rather than the determinant of military considerations. It was an attitude bred in the marrow of everyone in high office.

Horrified at what I was about to do, I raised the pistol and pointed it at the side of Giselle’s head.

“What if I ended it now?” I said.

Legister didn’t even blink: he merely radiated scorn.

I pulled the gun back and stuck the barrel into my mouth, gagging with terror. Squeezing my eyes shut, I pressed the trigger, jerked with the emphatic bolt action.

Nothing. Just the dull resonance of metal on metal.

The pistol wasn’t armed. How stupid of me to think they’d assume my conversion to their cause.

I opened my eyes. For an instant I was certain I had soiled myself, but somehow I had imagined to avoid this indignity. My hands were quivering as I pulled the pistol from my mouth and let it fall to the floor.

“I think,” Legister said with a measured air of exasperation, “the situation demands more than futile theatrics.”

There was the sound of gunfire. It came from outside, in the main corridor.

Legister and Rhys had to climb over the mound of parachute bundles in the aisle to get into the cabin. Marisa was holding a pistol, but she went into a quivering paroxysm of fear that made me embrace her protectively from behind. Immediately she began to struggle, forcing me to grab her hand to prevent her from turning the gun on me.

The plane lurched into a steeper dive. I managed to keep us upright, still restraining Marisa with one arm around her waist while the other tussled for possession of her firearm. It felt like we were engaged in some bizarre military dance.

Behind me Giselle was talking to a flight controller on the ground, demanding clearance for an emergency landing.

Legister, Rhys and the two MPs had arranged themselves around the cabin, huddling behind nepenthe victims, their weapons aimed at the door. The engine pitch began dropping while the voice traffic from the ground grew more fierce and urgent. There was a stunning bang that sent me reeling.

FORTY-NINE

I landed with Marisa on top of me. She lay limp, her hair in my face. I tried to push her up, but she rolled off me. I heard automatic fire, this time inside the cabin. Marisa’s eyes were closed, her neck slick and hot in my hand. It was blood.

There was a gash on the right side of her neck, shrapnel embedded there. It had severed the carotid artery, which was still weakly pulsing blood.

The air stank of scorched hair and plastic explosive. I tried to shake Marisa awake, but her eyes rolled under her lids and her body sagged. She was gone.

“We’re on target,” Giselle shouted breathlessly at me over the urgent radio noise from the ground. “Almost there. You must hold them!”

I recovered Marisa’s pistol and, because I knew there was nothing for it, hauled her upright, wedging her in the doorway, piling the parachute packs around her into a makeshift wall.

Several of my uncle’s security detachment were already inside the cabin. Some were already heaving dead bodies aside. At first I thought that everyone had been killed, but Rhys was hauled to his feet. Though bloodstained and groggy, he didn’t look seriously injured.

My uncle came through the mangled doorway, also toting a pistol, looking briskly impatient. He motioned to the guards to drag Rhys over and turned towards me.

“Step aside, Owain.”

I was cowering behind Marisa’s corpse and the parachute bundles. Rhys’s head lolled, his eyes barely open. Behind me ground control was sending strident messages but neither Giselle nor the pilot was answering. I didn’t know the pilot; he looked far too young to have been given such an important duty.

“Step aside,” my uncle said again.

He was keeping his distance but looked consumed with a violent urgency. It felt despicable to be hiding behind the corpse of an innocent woman whom Owain had misused; but there was nothing else I could do.

“I don’t believe you’re any part of this, my boy. We need to end it now.”

I didn’t say anything. My uncle pressed the barrel of his pistol against Rhys’s temple.

“It’s in your hands.”

Bizarrely, in that moment everything slid to a halt, all movement and noise dwindling, no more hectic darting and jostling, no more gunfire or engine roar or relentless radio squawk. Even the smell of cordite was gone, along with the sense of defilement of my bloodied hands and the frantic thumping of my heart. Stillness and silence descended for what must have been the merest of instants, yet it was enough to absorb the implacable determination in my uncle’s face. He would have his way no matter what.

“En plein dans le mille!” Giselle said behind me.

I heard the shot, glimpsed Rhys’s head recoil, even as I thrust my gun-hand out and fired two, three, four shots at my uncle’s head.

The parachute packs began collapsing on top of me. There was more gunfire, and I thought I’d been hit, but no pain came. The flight deck door was slammed shut, bolted.

Giselle was holding a compact revolver. She let it drop as I scrambled to my feet. A burgundy stain was spreading under her left collarbone.

Gently I drew her to me. The pilot was looking around. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen.

“Maman?” he said.

She shook her head at him, gently but without comfort. Her gaze went to the window.

“Say goodbye, Owain,” she said softly in English.

Directly below us a seething ball of fire was billowing up from the ground. In the seconds before it consumed us I was already in mental flight back to Broadoaks. The green Scenic was standing in the car park near to Tanya’s Yaris. I heard Tanya say: “Are we going to let them see him?” The tall woman with the five children appeared. I experienced a jolt of recognition even as the two youngest girls broke from the others and began running towards us, shouting: “Mum! Dad!”

FIFTY

The hardest task for the historian, my father liked to assert, is to consider the evidence without prejudice. We all have prior agendas and tend to find what we’re looking for while ignoring anything contrary to our expectations. So history, because it is a human pursuit, is always partial and prejudiced no less than our own interior lives: both are just a sum of contingent memories.

“You still with me?” Tanya asked.

“My father,” I said. “I was remembering something he used to say.”

“Oh?”

“Words. For him everything in the end had to be reduced to them.”

“Well,” she said on reflection, “it was his trade.”

“His life. He could always express things pithily but he found it harder to act. To do the ordinary things that make us human.”

She was sitting in the passenger seat of the Yaris while I drove; or rather while we waited at a red light.

“I’d say his illness was having the opposite effect.”

I understood what she meant. The last couple of times we had visited him he was more emotional, prone to fits of laughter or bouts of tears. He would grin or shake his head if either of us addressed him with a question he considered too problematical. He still erratically recognised both of us, though sometimes he would talk as if we were his siblings or friends from his youth. All this was normal, Dr Pearce had assured us, a typical pattern of decline.

“I think he may actually be happier,” Tanya said.

“You might be right,” I admitted. “He’s lost his suit of mental armour. It’s made him lighter on his feet.”

The lights changed and we drove on. We were returning from a lunch in Kingston to celebrate Geoff’s eldest children’s birthdays. They fell within a week of one another, and it was an opportunity to get together. We had made it an afternoon gathering in a child-friendly restaurant close to where Geoff lived. His wife, Candida, was a solicitor. They had known one another since childhood and had married the year after Tanya and I wed. Three children, all under seven: James, Charlotte, and Robin. We were godparents to Charlie, as she liked to be called, and frequent visitors to one another’s houses. Geoff had always remained one of our closest friends. They had both been immensely supportive in the difficult aftermath of my accident. For a while everyone was worried that I might have suffered some permanent form of brain damage.

“Hang a left,” Tanya said.

I managed to indicate and turn at the last moment.

“Sorry,” I told her. “Daydreaming.”

“As long as that’s all it was.”

Her tone was gently questioning. She liked to check that I wasn’t off with the fairies, by which she meant back in Owain’s world.

“Honest, guv,” I assured her. “It’s not on my vacation list any more.”

We didn’t talk about it much these days. It was over, done with. Everyone there was dead, the entire world extinguished for all I knew. I had flashed from the final explosion to find myself already back in the house that I finally knew was my home. The same house which we were now approaching.

“I gather Rachel nearly thumped Adrian,” Tanya remarked.

They had also been at the party, Rachel a week overdue and desperate for a distraction. She had taken umbrage when Adrian was overtly attentive to one of the waitresses.

“She dumped a trifle in his lap,” I told her.

“Really?”

Tanya hadn’t seen it because she had taken the children into the garden when their party packs proved to contain plastic recorders that were much more fun when their mouthpieces were removed so that they could be used as blowpipes for raisins.

“You didn’t hear Rees laughing, telling him she’d creamed his jeans? He had jelly coming out of his nose. Keisha had to stop him colouring in all the pictures in the children’s party packs. It was like a pantomime.”

“Serves him right. He’s a bloody fool sometimes.”

She meant Adrian. “He wants the baby.”

“And what about Rachel?”

Both Tanya and Keisha had been very touchy-feely with her, gently kneading her bulge, delighting in any hint of movement.

I had no answer for this, though I hoped as she did that there would be a happy ending. Adrian was gung-ho for the new series, and it was as much as I could do to restrain him. At present I was only going into the studios two days a week and spending the rest of the time ostensibly doing background research at home. This actually comprised a little internet surfing and a slow progression through my father’s entire corpus. I had decided it was time I thoroughly acquainted myself with his achievements while he was still with us.

I parked the car in the driveway. A gusty wind assailed us as we climbed out, the daffodils in the flowerbeds swaying. Tanya remarked that while jelly was always a staple at children’s parties she knew no actual child who ever ate it.

“Rees,” I said. “He had at least two helpings. Inhaled most of it, I think.”

“He looked like he was enjoying himself.”

“In his element. We want to use him again when the new series gets up and running. I hope Keisha sticks with it.”

“Fingers crossed.”

Tanya unlocked the front door. Moments later the Scenic arrived. Geoff helped Sarah and Beth out of the back. The girls had insisted on travelling with Geoff and Candida’s three.

“I’ll get the kettle on,” Tanya said to Geoff.

“I think we’re going to pass on tea,” he replied. “We need to get our lot home. They’re all high on sugar and E numbers.”

James had his face pressed to the window, making disgusting faces at the girls, who were reciprocating. Candida sat calmly in the driver’s seat, a benevolent smile on her face, serenely tolerant. She and Geoff had looked after Sarah and Beth when I came out of hospital. Tanya had even arranged a temporary placement in a local school while I was recuperating. My behaviour had been too disturbing for them—particularly after my display in the park, when I had simultaneously been raving while failing to recognise them as my own.

Abruptly it began to rain. We said our goodbyes. I shepherded the girls inside while Tanya exchanged final words with Candida.

“Dad,” Beth said to me the instant we crossed the threshold, “Sarah said I’m fat.”

“No, I didn’t,” replied her sister. “I said that if you eat Monster Munch and chocolate sandwiches all day you’d be like Humpty Dumpty.”

Beth thought about this. Pointedly she said: “Anyway, I’d rather be fat than skinny.”

Sarah gave her a look of lofty disdain that implied she wasn’t going to descend to swapping insults.

“I’d hate to have stick legs,” Beth persisted.

“Better than having a pot belly.”

“See?” Beth said to me as though vindicated.

“Enough,” I told them firmly. “Truce, otherwise there’ll be no stories tonight. Neither of you are fat or skinny, so stop being silly.”

“That’s a rhyme,” Beth said.

“I hope you two weren’t behaving like this in the car on the way back.”

I led them straight up the stairs, ignoring their pleas for a half an hour’s television, and started running a bath.

While it was filling, they sneaked off. I wandered into Tanya’s study, where framed photographs of all of us were in clear evidence. It was Geoff who had suggested that I must have blanked them out because they didn’t fit in with my fantasy world. We hadn’t told him anywhere near the full details of it, but he saw it as a clear case of displacement and what he called “compensatory abstraction”. It was an expression worthy of my father.

Tanya’s desk held neat stacks of books, magazines and papers. She was gathering material for a new book, as yet untitled, though she described it as “a sceptic’s guide to para-science”. Apparently I had inspired her to it after my flirtation with another realm of experience.

It was Tanya who had stimulated my father’s interest in science and pointed him towards the books and periodicals he needed for his research. She had never been daunted by him, holding her own at the many dinner-table conversations we had over the years when we visited him.

The girls were now playing peaceably in their bedroom. The one with the heart-shaped mirror on the back of the door, though the walls were coral pink rather than amethyst. Tanya had kept it locked because of my obvious agitation whenever she mentioned the girls. I simply refused to acknowledge any evidence of their presence.

From the window I saw the Scenic finally drive away, Tanya waving after it. A sense of vast tranquil relief suffused me. It had been doing so at regular intervals since my recovery. As I stepped back from the window something went snap under my foot.

“Dad,” Sarah said with weary fatalism. “You just killed Mr Saucepan Man.”

I picked up a broken Lego figure. As usual, pieces were scattered all over the floor around a bizarre tree-like assemblage that they were building.

“Bath-time,” I told them. “Last one in gets a raspberry on the belly.”

They squeaked and scampered off across the landing.

I tidied the pieces into one of their boxes and shouted to them to put their cast-off clothes in the laundry basket and go easy on the bubble bath.

“Everything all right up there?” Tanya called from the hallway.

“I’m a toy killer,” I called back.

At least the girls were as I remembered them,, even though it was Sarah with an h and Beth, as in Elizabeth. Why all the false memories? Particularly of Lyneth. She had indeed come to London to live with me but we had parted after a year when I finally admitted I wanted to be with Tanya. Prior to that I had got Lyneth pregnant, but she lost the baby and was left infertile as a result. She had gone to Australia to live and I’d had no contact with her since. I went to visit Tanya in California and persuaded her to come home with me. As soon as she became pregnant with Sarah, we’d married. Somehow I had muddled their stories, perhaps because I felt I had ruined Lyneth’s life.

That would be the conventional psychological explanation, at least; but it begged many questions. Why would I create such a bleak world as Owain’s as an expression of guilt? Easier to believe that Owain was real, that his invasive presence had skewed my memories. That was how I’d rationalised it at first. But I didn’t think so now.

There was another possibility. Perhaps the Omega device had opened links between a sequence of alternative worlds. As I had occupied Owain, so another counterpart from yet another time line could have manifested himself in me, bringing his own history, which had become confused and conflated with my own. Just as Owain had never directly sensed me, so I would have remained unaware of this other version of myself: but I would have experienced his influence.

I knew I would never know for sure, though Owain remained as real to me as ever. Alive or dead, he would never be a mere figment. I couldn’t explain to anyone how intensely I had lived in his world. My oscillation between existences must have been triggered by the backflash in Regent Street that had linked us, opening up complementary realities until the link was severed with Owain’s death. And the death of everyone instrumental in his story.

I checked that the girls were behaving themselves in the bath before going downstairs. I constantly had to resist the urge to make a fuss of them, to marvel at my sheer good fortune in their existence.

On the mantelpiece in the dining room was our wedding photograph, Tanya looking only slightly plump and absolutely gorgeous. Geoff had been best man. He came home from California the same time as Tanya, accepting his defeat with infinite grace and good humour.

“Tea’s up,” Tanya called from the kitchen.

I started thinking of Marisa, Owain and his uncle, but also, and above all, of my false idea of Lyneth and the girls. Perhaps in another reality things had panned out in just the way I had believed. Another me had married another Lyneth and had children. Who could say it wasn’t possible? Occasionally I would still wake in the depths of the night in terror at the notion that in making my final escape from Owain I had returned not quite to my starting point but to another place, had been shuffled along the infinite variety of potential worlds to find myself here. Then I would get up and go into the girls’ bedroom and just stand in the doorway, watching them sleeping until my faith in the true order of things was restored.

Sometimes I think that memory and belief are no more than feelings. My father, in his final writings, speculated that our certainties, our sense of consciousness even, arose out of a swirl of mental imponderables like the froth of the manifest world on an unfathomable quantum ocean. In which case, our mutual lives are based on a necessary consensus rather than any bedrock of reality. We live by articles of faith rather than reason.

In the kitchen Tanya was holding the ultimate existential comforter: a mug of tea. She had on jeans and a peach-coloured mohair roll-neck. I hugged her from behind, burrowing my face into the crook of the neck, inhaling her deeply until she wriggled and squirmed away.

“What was that for?” she asked with amusement.

“Just fancied a sniff,” I said.

I ducked her tea towel swipe and began pirouetting around her, up on my toes, prancing about like an idiot, like an angel dancing on the head of a pin.

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Also by Christopher Evans

Aztec Century

Capella’s Golden Eyes

Chimeras

Icetower

In Limbo

Mortal Remains

Omega

The Insider

The Twilight Realm (writing as Christopher Carpenter)

About the Author

Christopher Evans (1951–)

Born in Wales in 1951, Christopher Evans won the BSFA award in 1993 for his novel Aztec Century. In the 1980’s, he co-edited three Other Edens anthologies with Robert Holdstock, and as well as the science fiction published under his own name, he is the author of a number of well received books for younger readers under the pseudonym Nathan Elliott, and a handful of film novelisations. His recent work, Omega, was his first for adults in almost a decade.

Copyright

A Gollancz eBook

Copyright © Christopher Evans 2008

All rights reserved.

The right of Christopher Evans to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2011 by

Gollancz

The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

Orion House

5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane

London, WC2H 9EA

An Hachette UK Company

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 575 10258 3

All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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Content

Christopher Evans
OMEGA

Enter the SF Gateway…

INTRODUCTION

PROLOGUE

PART ONE ALTERED STATES

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

PART TWO BROTHERS IN ARMS

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

PART THREE LOOPING THE LOOP

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-NINE

THIRTY

THIRTY-ONE

THIRTY-TWO

THIRTY-THREE

THIRTY FOUR

THIRTY-FIVE

THIRTY-SIX

THIRTY-SEVEN

THIRTY-EIGHT

THIRTY-NINE

PART FOUR MANIFEST DESTIN

FORTY

FORTY-ONE

FORTY-TWO

FORTY-THREE

FORTY-FOUR

FORTY-FIVE

FORTY-SIX

FORTY-SEVEN

FORTY-EIGHT

FORTY-NINE

FIFTY

Visit the SF Gateway Website

Also by Christopher Evans

About the Author

Copyright