CHAPTER TWO

 

They'd kept Morgan's flat for him while he was away, a small bedsit in a tower block near the Elephant and Castle. They hadn't bothered to dust it, though, and he woke up with his sinuses clogged and a gritty, unclean feeling in the back of his throat.

The phone had been disconnected about two years ago, so he'd plugged in his mobile to charge last night. When he'd rolled out of bed and showered he picked it up and scrolled through the stored names. He had until five o'clock, Giles had told him.

But there just wasn't anyone he wanted to talk to. He thought about cleaning the flat, then decided he didn't want to do that either.

Daytime television was as mind-numbing as ever. He sat through two hours of it before he reached for the phone again to call headquarters and get a number for John's family. John hadn't been married, but he'd talked about his parents.

Morgan's thumb hovered over the dial button, then flipped the phone shut again. They wouldn't want to hear his apology. The only reason he'd be calling was to make himself feel better, not them. He knew it was true because that's what Perry's sister had said when he called her five months ago, and then she'd screamed down the phone at him for ten solid minutes and he'd felt obliged to keep listening. Maybe it actually had made her feel better, but Morgan couldn't face the same bitter accusations from John's family.

He flung the phone away from him in a jagged spike of rage. "Fuck!"

There was no food in the flat, so at lunchtime he went to the nearest greasy spoon, in the shadow of the squat red shopping centre, and ordered the full English. The traffic dawdled by outside, the people too, and it felt very strange to be home. He found himself looking at the country through foreign eyes. Too cool, too grey, too restrained.

When four-thirty crawled round, he was glad to start the walk down Kennington Park Road towards Oval. It felt good to stretch his legs, even though the air was heavy with traffic fumes and incipient rain. He hadn't thought it would be possible to miss the clean, furiously hot desert air.

This time he was left waiting thirty seconds at the door of the Victorian semi, but it was the same smooth-faced man who let him inside.

There was no Phillips today. Giles had someone else with him. The man was dressed neutrally, in jeans and a green t-shirt, but he looked uncomfortable in his clothes. His face was very serious, a little too bony under thick blond hair. He inclined his head, but didn't offer to shake hands. Warned him to be careful, had they? Morgan immediately bristled.

"My new partner?" he asked Giles.

The little man nodded. "Tomas Len, this is Morgan Hewitt. Tomas has been out of circulation for a little while, Morgan. You may need to bring him up to speed on a few things."

Tomas nodded a curt confirmation. His eyes were a very startling bright green, and Morgan found that he didn't want to spend too much time looking into them. He didn't want to get to know this man. Definitely didn't want to get to like him. He was done with that, it hurt too much every time.

"All right," he said. "Good to be working with you."

"Likewise." But Tomas didn't sound convinced.

"Lovely," Giles said. "Now, your flight leaves in three hours, so you'll have to absorb the briefing materials on the way. We've provided you with a laptop pre-loaded with everything we know. You'll need to read it and reformat your hard-drive before you land."

"Three hours?" Morgan said. He hadn't imagined they'd be sending him out again so soon.

Tomas looked equally thrown. "I'm sorry, what's a -"

"Morgan will fill you in," Giles said quickly - too quickly. Morgan wondered what it was he hadn't wanted the other man to say.

Tomas hesitated a moment, then nodded. "My - " He laughed suddenly, not a very happy sound. "My passport has expired."

"All taken care of." Giles handed Morgan a briefcase heavy enough to contain the laptop he'd mentioned as well as a pair of passports. He paused for a moment when he caught Morgan's expression. "I'm sorry, were you expecting a longer leave? People to see, things to do?"

Morgan remembered his earlier inability to think of a single person he wanted to talk to and gritted his teeth. "Not a problem."

"Good. Budapest should make a nice change of scene for you, anyway."

Morgan frowned. "Budapest? What the hell are you sending me to Poland for?"

Tomas looked at Morgan in disbelief. "You mean Hungary."

Giles smiled at Tomas as Morgan scowled at him. "Now you see why we're sending you to babysit. It's not a military mission, Morgan, and you can't go armed. Too high a risk of a diplomatic incident. No guns, no knives."

"Then what the hell am I supposed to use? My cutting wit?"

"Thankfully, we shan't be relying on that. I appreciate that you may seem an unusual choice of operative for this mission, but I'm sending you because you're very good at what you do, and if the situation is as we think it might be, we may need to call on you to do it."

Morgan took a second to unravel the sentence. "You want me to kill someone." Giles seemed to be talking about something cold, calculated - not like the missions they'd sent him on before, which might have been off the books, but had still been part of the larger war.

If he did whatever it was they wanted, could he really still call himself a soldier, or would he be something else?

"An assassination?" Tomas said.

"Quite possibly. There's a man - a very wealthy man - who's acquired, and plans to sell, something far too dangerous to fall into foreign hands. We need you to find out who his intended buyer is, and most importantly to get it back. If that requires you to kill him, all we ask is that you do it discreetly."

"Something dangerous?" Tomas asked.

Giles grimaced. "You remember the Ragnarok artefacts, I'm sure. You did spend half your career chasing after them. That's why you were brought back for this mission."

"You're saying this person has found one of them?"

"We think so."

Morgan held up his hand. "Ragnarok artefacts?"

Giles sighed, as if he wasn't sure it was worth the effort. But after a moment, he said, "Ragnarok is the end of the world in Norse mythology - something like the Christian Apocalypse. The Ragnarok artefacts are said to be capable of bringing it about."

"The end of the world?" Morgan said incredulously.

It was Tomas who nodded. "So the stories say. There are three artefacts, and we never found a single one. But that was all right, as long as no one else did. If the Soviets get hold of them..."

"Or Iran," Giles said hurriedly. "Or almost anyone other than us."

Morgan frowned. "So we're talking about nuclear material? A dirty bomb?"

"Close enough." Giles smiled thinly. "Now, you'll be meeting another contact when you get to Budapest - Anya Friedman of the BND. The Germans were the first to give us the heads-up on this, so it's a joint mission, I'm afraid. But Anya's their lead agent on the artefacts. She's been researching them for seven years, and she knows almost as much about them as you do, Tomas. You're due to meet her at 3pm tomorrow - details are in the files."

As he was speaking, he slid a small photo across the table to them. The woman in it was strawberry blonde and very pretty but there was something forbidding about her face. She didn't look like she'd be a whole lot of fun to be around.

"And Richard?" Tomas said.

Giles shook his head. "Unavailable." His tone of voice shut down any further questions on the subject. "Try not to be late for the rendezvous. You know what sticklers the Germans are for punctuality. "

Tomas nodded curtly. "And who is the man we're going after?"

"Viktor Karamov. He made his money from the rape of Russia's energy industries, and he's been spending it with heroic speed ever since. We don't think this transaction is a matter of conviction for him - in fact, I doubt he has many. It's purely about profit."

"Does he even know what the artefacts are?" Tomas asked.

Giles looked completely serious for the first time since Morgan had met him. "Let's hope not."

 

Tomas was careful not to touch Morgan as they slipped into the back seat of the Ford together. He didn't know what his own flesh would feel like to a normal human and he couldn't bear the thought of Morgan flinching at his touch.

The same rangy African man who'd brought him and Giles down to London was driving. He caught Tomas's eye in the rear-view mirror and quickly looked away, though his face remained politely blank. He'd been there in that graveyard in Yorkshire.

Tomas found himself obsessively curling and uncurling his fingers, clenching and unclenching his toes. He'd never realised before what a noisy, twitchy, restless thing a living body was. His body still moved in the right way. It was completely under his control. But it was - silent. There was no blood surging through his veins, no food stewing in his stomach juices, no sweat pooling in his pores. He realised that the only reason he'd ever need to draw breath was when he needed to speak. He stopped his lungs for a minute, then two, five, and felt... nothing.

He was entirely inert - an object, not a person.

Morgan stirred in the seat beside him, and Tomas jerked a look at him, worried that he'd noticed Tomas's unnatural stillness. Tomas knew Morgan had been told nothing about what he was.

Morgan wasn't looking at him, though. He was still staring down at the miniature silver computer Giles had given him, one small frown line on his handsome, almost delicate face. Just how young were they recruiting them these days, anyway? Morgan couldn't have been far out of his teens.

A few weeks ago - twenty years ago - Tomas would have started a conversation designed to find out everything he could about his new partner. Because Tomas's life would be depending on him and he needed to know his strengths and weaknesses, the idiosyncratic ways his mind worked. Morgan didn't seem to want to talk, though, and that was fine with Tomas.

The way you formed a friendship was finding the point where you met in the middle. He couldn't imagine anywhere that he and this brash young man could meet.

He looked out of his own window instead, just as the car drew level with the River and turned right, heading east for City Airport. He didn't know this area of London well, but he was sure that building hadn't been there before - the overblown, ship-like thing with its prow pointing towards Vauxhall Bridge.

It had passed by before he had a chance to look more closely, but now he kept noticing these little quirks of change. The tower block opposite Battersea Bridge where there used to be a terrace of Edwardian houses. The cars parked outside just a little sleeker and rounder than the ones he remembered.

The Houses of Parliament were next, reassuringly the same. Except, no. Where the stone had once been black and grimy it was now a rich gold. They'd finally cleaned it.

A little further on, and what the hell was that huge silver wheel on the banks of the Thames behind City Hall? A moment later he realised it was a Ferris wheel. There were people high above the city in those round metal pods.

His hand fisted around the door handle as he made himself stop staring at it. He felt untethered from reality, as if he'd slipped into an alternate universe that was only tantalisingly like the one he knew.

For the first time, he felt the full force of all the time that had passed - but not for him.

"You all right?" Morgan asked.

Tomas nodded and dropped his head, drawing a deep, unnecessary breath. He didn't say anything else until half an hour later, when they reached the crook of the River that held the Isle of Dogs.

By then he was expecting it, of course, but it was still a shock to see: Canary Wharf, no longer an incomplete spike towering over a building site but the priapic focal point of a complete city in miniature. The red light on top of the pyramid winked at him.

"And upside down in air were towers," he said as he looked at it. "Tolling reminiscent bells that kept the hours."

Morgan frowned. "You what?"

"The Waste Land," Tomas said. Then, at the young man's unimpressed look, "It doesn't matter. It's nothing."

After that he kept his eyes shut, his forehead leaning against the cool glass of the window until they'd drawn into the airport.

As they stepped out of the car, Morgan handed him the briefcase with the miniature silver computer inside it.

"You'd better read it on the plane," he said.

Tomas handed it back to him. "Brief me when we land."

"Suit yourself." Morgan's cupid's bow lips narrowed in irritation, but Tomas could hardly tell him that he didn't have the first idea how to work the machine.

"You'll need this, anyway." Morgan handed him a ticket and a small red booklet that it took Tomas a second to realise was his passport. He flipped it open and frowned when he saw that it was in his own name. But then, who'd be expecting Tomas Len to reappear now?

"I'll see you at the gate," Tomas said, and Morgan froze a moment before nodding his head and stalking off. Tomas had the impression that he'd hurt him, though he couldn't imagine how.

Inside the big, neon-bright space of the terminal building he felt lost again. He'd thought that in the antiseptic no-where, no-when of the airport he'd be able to avoid it, but the dislocation was all around. The people talking into their tiny cellular phones, or - he thought this was what they were doing - taking photographs with them. The fashions.

He caught a glimpse of a stack of newspapers, sitting outside Smiths. The picture of the Queen on the front cover showed an old woman. He remembered her still holding on to a dignified middle age, but the whole world was older now. Everyone he knew. Friends' children now adults, friends' parents dead. If Kate had been alive, she would have been fifty-two.

It wasn't as if this future was unexpected. He'd seen the seeds of it in his own time. He just hadn't expected to be getting here so soon.

 

Morgan ordered himself a Big Mac Meal, then desultorily poked at his burger as he folded a fry in half and put it in his mouth.

It wasn't like he'd been intending to become best mates with Tomas. In fact, he'd been quite happy for Tomas to ignore him entirely. But there was something about the expression on the other man's face when he looked at Morgan that got to him. As if he wasn't really there - as if he wasn't worth knowing.

Tomas's attitude pressed a hot button somewhere in the part of Morgan's head devoted to his childhood. It released a memory, nearly ten years old, that he hadn't taken out and looked at in a long time. It was a maths lesson, something he used to be good at. Aaron got a question wrong and then Morgan got it right - all "me, me, me" with his hand in the air - and when Mr Logan praised Morgan, Aaron said, "It's Morgan's fault, sir. His smell's putting me off."

And what Morgan remembered was the wince in Mr Logan's eye that told him it was true. He remembered the sick lurch of shame. Of course there was no way he'd explain it was because nobody at the care home had the time to make him wash. But he stopped answering questions in class after that.

A tinny voice finally called their flight, and Morgan shrugged the dark mood off as he headed for the gate. He and Tomas had to find some way to work together. This Karamov sounded like a gold-plated shit, and he had the money to pay for high-calibre protection.

It wasn't until the men surrounded him that he realised they were there. There were five of them and he hadn't seen them in nearly two years.

"Oh look, it's Private Friendly Fire. Shot anyone else in the back recently, Hewitt?" said a bulky man with a red face and a brown crew-cut.

"Let you back in the country did they, Nobby?" Morgan said - smiling, because it was easier to pretend they were both joking.

Nobby didn't smile back. Around him, the four soldiers from Morgan's old platoon formed a solid wall of flesh. Morgan knew they'd all been told his cover story, that he'd gone AWOL just after shipping out to Afghanistan.

"Got some leave, did you?" Morgan asked, still trying to keep it friendly.

"Yeah," Nobby said. "Some of us wait till it's official rather than shitting our keks at the first sign of action. Do they know you're here, Hewitt? Can't do, or they'd have you banged up where you belong."

"I did my time," Morgan said, the nearest to an answer he could give.

Nobby seized the collar of his t-shirt with a sudden vicious jerk that half lifted Morgan off his feet. "Like fuck you did!"

Adrenaline rushed and instinct kicked in. Morgan broke Nobby's grip by gouging his knuckle into the soft flesh between his thumb and forefinger, then drove the other man back with a blow to his solar plexus that left him doubled over and gasping.

Instantly the other four were on him, fists raised, necks corded with strain and anger.

"Jesus," Nobby gasped. "Jesus Christ. Leave him." And when the others continued advancing, "Just leave him, I said. The little bastard isn't worth it."

There was a frozen moment of time, then the men dropped their fists. Their eyes still bored into Morgan, despising him utterly.

When Morgan felt the hand land on his shoulder, his keyed-up nerve endings almost twitched a blow out of him before he realised it was Tomas.

Yeah, of course it was Tomas. Because that was exactly the scene he wanted his new partner to see.

"Come on, we're going to miss the plane," Tomas said.

Morgan only looked up at him when they'd put fifty feet between them and Morgan's former comrades. He knew if he saw even a hint of pity in Tomas's eyes, he was going to deck him.

But Tomas just looked grave. "It's the nature of the job," he said. "No one thanks you, and no one else will ever understand."

For some reason, Morgan found that this made him feel a little better.

 

Tomas settled into his seat on the plane, careful not to catch Morgan's eye. He knew the younger man was ashamed Tomas had seen the confrontation earlier.

Tomas wanted to tell him that he understood. That when he'd been alive, he'd taught himself not to care what other people thought of him. He'd spent his career deceiving people who believed he was their friend, not just telling lies but living them for months at a time. And now...

But he didn't know how to start that conversation, so he didn't say anything. Instead he looked out of the window and wondered what it meant, that they'd woken him after all this time to continue his search for the Ragnarok artefacts.

Out of Morgan's earshot, Giles had told him more, that there had been worrying portents, several over the last year and four more in the previous week alone. An algal bloom had turned the River Severn red as blood. In Stockholm, a child had been born with two heads and the terrified mother claimed that one of them had spoken to her before it died. Crops failed in perfect weather. All the signs Tomas had looked for, in his long and fruitless search, were finally appearing.

The plane was cruising high above the clouds, an endless white field that looked like snow, and Tomas thought about another journey through snow, twenty-five years ago, with another young man who was his newest partner.

He and Richard had crossed the endless barren wastes of Greenland on a sled. The rank smell of the huskies surrounded them and there was nothing to do but talk.

"How long have you been searching for these things, anyway?" Richard had asked. He was American, soft-spoken and sandy-haired.

"A long time," Tomas told him.

"And you're still no closer to finding them?"

Tomas found Richard's open astonishment refreshing. He laughed. "You know how they say life is what happens when you're making other plans? The Hermetic Division seems to be what happens while we're looking for the Ragnarok artefacts."

"But what are they? The briefing didn't say."

Tomas just looked at him.

"You don't know that either? Jesus - then what the hell is the point?"

Tomas had asked himself the same question more than once, and had reached only one conclusion. "It justifies our existence to Whitehall. The things we are finding - the real discoveries - they're astonishing. You know that. But how much of what we know is of any direct use, the kind of use governments want to put it to? The artefacts offer everything the bureaucrats want. They're a reason to keep the Division open, and that's all Nicholson cares about. For that, it's worth sending me on a wild goose chase every now and again."

Richard shook his head, unconvinced. "But these guys we're visiting - they know about the artefacts, right?"

Tomas shrugged. "We'll see, won't we?"

They reached the abbey on the third day, its spires poking up over the horizon like the masts of a ship before the whole huge edifice became visible. It was said the monks built it anew from the ice every year, that they'd been doing it for a thousand years, since the first Norse settlers arrived on the island.

In the pictures Tomas had seen, the building had looked ethereal and beautiful, all long thin lines and graceful arches. But this year the monks seemed to have opted for a more gothic theme. The abbey was squat and powerful and the flying buttresses were carved into leering gargoyle faces, all the more sinister for their near transparency.

The abbot met them at the door. His blunt Inuit face broke into a sudden, unexpectedly broad smile as they approached. "Our travellers from England. Welcome."

He offered them food and rest but when they declined he nodded understandingly and led them through to his study, buried deep in the buildings. Like them he remained bundled in his furs, breath freezing into fog in front of his mouth. Everything in here, every wall and every door, was carved from the same blue-green ice. Even the high-backed chairs he gestured them to sit in were made from it.

"So you've come to ask me about the artefacts," he said.

Tomas couldn't hide his surprise and the abbot smiled. "I heard about your hunt and I knew you'd find me eventually. We're aware of the legends about this place. Our unusual set-up attracts them."

"Is it true you were founded by the Viking settlers?"

The abbot nodded. "Yes. Our records confirm it."

Tomas felt the first stirrings of hope. All the best sources of information about the artefacts were Scandinavian, dating back to the Elder Edda or before. Could this really be a genuine lead? "But the Norsemen left here nearly five hundred years ago," he said. "They were driven out by famine, weren't they?"

"The invaders fled, but they left their traditions behind. Some of my own people chose to continue them."

Richard looked impatient. He hadn't been at this long enough to understand the importance of validation, establishing provenance. When he'd chased as many dead-end leads as Tomas had, he'd learn.

"But what about the artefacts?" Richard said. "Are they here?"

"The artefacts have no place in God's house."

Richard leaned forward. "So you know what they are? And where they are?"

The abbot stood. He was a short man but his body was thick and Tomas suspected the furs hid layers of muscle as well as fat. Richard's mouth snapped closed as the abbot loomed over him.

"You could search the whole world and never find them," the abbot said.

Tomas recognised a non-answer when he heard one. "But do they exist?"

"They are real." The abbot leaned against the desk, round face abstracted as he seemed to ponder something. Tomas let him think. He sensed this wasn't a man who could be cajoled or bullied. Eventually the abbot sighed and reached behind him, pulling an ancient leather-bound volume from a shelf above his desk.

"Let me show you something." He flipped through the book, page after page of primitive, blocky woodcuts, until he settled on one near the end. It showed a man reading from a manuscript, while beside him another man plunged a dagger through a bleeding heart. They were dressed in the loose robes of medieval merchants and their faces, crudely drawn, seemed entirely devoid of emotion. It made what they were doing all the more unpleasant.

Richard frowned. "I can't see anything that looks like it might be the artefacts. The knife, maybe."

The abbot's gaze remained fixed on the page, his expression unreadable. "This claims to illustrate the ceremony in which they're used." He looked up suddenly, eyes spearing Tomas. "Knowing this, do you still want to find them?"

They'd stayed the night, but while the monks had been charming and hospitable, it was clear they wouldn't reveal anything more, and the next morning they'd departed, Richard frustrated and Tomas troubled.

"You were right," Richard said, on the long sled ride back to civilization. "It's a shell game with nothing inside."

 

Had Richard been right, or had this Russian finally found the artefacts that had eluded them for so long? And what would come of it if he had? Tomas realised that, twenty-five years later, he still couldn't answer the abbot's question. All he could do was watch the clouds slide by underneath them, white and innocent, and wonder what they'd find when they landed.

 

Two and a half hours later they were in Budapest.

The air hit Tomas as soon as they stepped outside the airport, so humid it was like something solid, even near midnight.

"Shit - I thought I was coming somewhere colder," Morgan said, then gave a slight wince and shut his mouth, as if the words had sparked an unpleasant memory.

Tomas drew him towards the taxi queue and didn't reply. There were at least thirty people already waiting, sweating and bored, but it was better than hiring a car. Anything you put your name to left a trail.

The queue crept forward, everyone seeming to move slowly in the sluggish air.

It gave Tomas time to look around, at the big, modern airport and the local people in their Western fashions and their Japanese cars. All these tourists - what would they have made of the Budapest he knew? But they wouldn't have been allowed into it.

Finally they were at the front of the line. The taxi driver - a dark-skinned, sour-faced man - didn't bother to get out, so Tomas popped the boot himself, then threw in his small suitcase beside Morgan's rucksack. Morgan kept the briefcase in his hand as they climbed in the back.

"Hotel Gellert," Morgan told the driver.

That beautiful art nouveau relic had been here the last time Tomas visited. The city they drove through was also reassuringly similar. Only the people looked different. They seemed both busier and more relaxed - free, he supposed.

He still couldn't fathom that the war he'd sacrificed so much to fight had been won while he was sleeping.

They were halfway into Pest, the grubbier, more commercial side of the city, before Tomas realised they were going the wrong way. He leaned forward to speak to the driver, and as soon as he saw the man's eyes slide shiftily away from his he knew that it wasn't a mistake.

Furious, he reached through the glass partition to grab the driver's neck. The man pushed himself against the left-hand window, swerving the car as he did. The wheels squealed against the tarmac and the car instantly stank of rubber. A second later, the driver had control again.

Tomas tried to twist himself sideways, but his elbow jammed in the narrow space between the glass panes.

"What the hell -" Morgan said.

"It's a trap," Tomas snapped, still groping uselessly for the driver. "This isn't the way to the hotel."

Morgan's eyes widened. He wrenched at the door handle, but of course the driver had locked it. And now they were in an area Tomas did know: derelict warehouses where anyone could do anything and no one would see.

Tomas pulled his arm back from the partition, then smashed his palm forward with all his strength.

The glass shattered and the driver ducked, spinning the car in an uncontrolled arc. But he'd already been braking. A few more feet and they were stationary.

Tomas drove his shoulder against the door beside him. Then again. There was a shriek of metal and the lock gave, spilling Tomas onto the cracked concrete of the pavement.

He rolled to his feet, while Morgan tumbled onto the ground behind him. The night was dark, only a sliver of stars showing between the walls of the buildings surrounding them. He thought he heard motion, but he couldn't see where it was coming from. Then the cab reversed, leaving another thin layer of rubber on the road, and as it swung away the beam of its headlights swept over Tomas.

Caught in the sudden gold brightness, four men stood facing them, faces hidden behind black rolls of cloth. All of them had guns.