The Zeno Effect Page 16

  “One of our units in Trafalgar Square has got hold of Julie Fenwick, the reporter who broke the initial Porton Down story and, last week, the Zeno story that is the focus for today’s demonstration. I think we can speak to her. Julie, can you hear me?”

  The sequence of shots of Trafalgar Square gave way to a head-and-shoulders of Julie Fenwick, wearing a headset and speaking into a microphone held by someone off-screen. She nodded. “Yes, I hear you, Miriam.”

  The camera stayed with Julie as Miriam continued.

  “Julie, you’re the only reporter to have spoken with the organisers of this demonstration. Is this chaos what they were aiming for?”

  “No, of course not. Their intention was to have a peaceful demonstration and to establish an occupation around the Ministry of Defence to make clear the strength of public feeling about the Zeno conspiracy. From what I can gather from my contacts here, it’s the authorities who have panicked and turned it into a riot. I’ve had a call from one of the organisers who is somewhere in Whitehall. He says that there are people dead and dying, indiscriminately fired upon by the military.”

  “But we’ve seen violence from both sides, Julie. The horses were brought down by people hurling objects under their hooves and our reporter in Whitehall saw some kind of fire bomb thrown at the soldiers. That’s hardly peaceful demonstrating.”

  Julie shook her head vigorously. “But you have to ask yourself, who escalated this into violence? The demonstrators are only responding to being attacked.”

  “But Julie, people must have brought the fire bombs with them, intending violence.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” Julie conceded. “But all demonstrations attract some people like that. The organisers that I spoke with definitely wouldn’t have behaved in that way. I’m absolutely certain. But once someone starts the violence, then it takes on a life of its own.”

  As if to confirm this claim, just then there was a much louder explosion which echoed back and forth among the buildings surrounding the square, followed by the sound of a helicopter evidently hovering close by. A man leaned into the TV shot and whispered something into Julie’s ear.

  “I have to go now, Miriam. I’m told that we’re not safe here.” As she spoke, Julie was removing her headphones and handing them to someone out of shot. She turned away from the camera and, led by a powerful-looking man who forced a passage for her, disappeared into the crowd.

  The TV image cut back to Miriam in the studio. “That was Julie Fenwick, arguably the individual most responsible for precipitating today’s events. She was heavily criticised by government figures earlier this week for, they claimed, stealing and publishing secret documents, and forging some others. After today, no doubt they will be even more concerned.”

  Just then Wilkins’ voice returned.

  “Miriam, it’s terrible here. There have been several explosions and a couple of buildings are on fire. People have found alternative routes into Whitehall via Great Scotland Yard and Whitehall Place and there appears to be a pitched battle going on near the Household Cavalry Museum. I’ve never seen anything like it. And I can hear helicopters approaching. There’s one almost overhead, and another…”

  Wilkins’ voice disappeared mid sentence, drowned out by the sound of a large explosion. Then, nothing.

  “John, John, are you still there? Can you hear me? What’s happening?”

  But there was no reply and no background noise from his microphone. Only the sound from Trafalgar Square where the crowd’s growing fury was all too apparent. Then, one by one, the TV units scattered about the square were overwhelmed, unable to hold their positions as they were struck by wave upon wave of desperate people. At last, all contact was lost, leaving only a shocked Miriam seemingly alone in the studio. After a moment of silence, she nodded and spoke to camera.

  “I’m told that video shot by demonstrators in Whitehall is finding its way onto internet sites. We can show you some of it now. I should warn you that these are distressing images, so much so that we can’t screen all of them. But there’s no doubt that many people have died and that several fires are raging at various points along Whitehall. There appears to be no sign of the violence abating. In fact, it all seems entirely out of control.”

  A final shot of Miriam revealed her shaking her head at someone off-screen and repeatedly mouthing what looked like “fuck, fuck, fuck,” an image that quickly gave way to the compilation of uploaded video from the street.

  Ali and Douglas sat in silence, holding on to each other, unable to find words to respond to the mayhem playing out in front of them. At last the terrible images ceased and, as if there was nothing that could possibly be allowed to follow them, the screen simply went blank.

  Douglas turned to Ali.

  “It’s begun,” he said. And again, shaking his head in despair: “It’s begun.”

  Even at the best of times, in freezing winter weather the late-night streets of Helsinki would not be teeming with people. But with flu raging through the city virtually nobody was to be seen. As the official Night Recovery Vehicle trundled slowly down towards the harbour and the frozen Baltic sea, lamps mounted on its roof swung in 180° arcs illuminating the darkened doorways and alleys as it passed. Suddenly it came to a halt, one of the lamps shining into a shop entrance. Two figures emerged from the vehicle, clad in full isolation suits and masks. They walked to the now illuminated alcove and one knelt down and examined an indistinct form lying in the doorway. After a moment he looked up at his colleague and shook his head. Then, between them, they lifted the object, which once fully in the light revealed itself to be a body, and gently added it to the accumulating pile in the back of their vehicle. Only a year ago they would have been searching for drunks or the homeless with a good chance of finding them alive and carrying them to safety before they froze to death. Now their business was almost entirely with corpses, those overtaken by illness and by drink and by the winter’s cold. Climbing back on board they continued on their sombre way, the constantly swinging lights receding into the icy darkness.

  5

  Hart found himself taking a certain morbid pleasure in observing how rapidly things fell apart. While, like most people, he had been shocked at the loss of life at that first big Zeno demonstration, he had noted with some satisfaction the inadequacy of the government response both to the demonstration itself and in their subsequent actions. They had even managed to alienate the normally deferential BBC by shooting down their drone and, whether by accident or design, killing one of their reporters. None of this particularly surprised Hart who had spent sufficient time close to the politically powerful to have grasped the manifest truth that they were as capable of profound errors as anyone else. Perhaps, indeed, more capable, given their propensity for hubris and their willingness to believe their own deceits.

  In the immediate aftermath of the Whitehall Massacre – not a designation accepted by the government but in common use by almost everyone else – the intelligence agencies had been instructed to ‘solve the problem’ by detaining or otherwise disabling the presumed leaders of the protest. Some had been eliminated, but with little impact on the actions that followed across the country. Because members of the government routinely saw themselves as an elite skilled at leadership, they presumed that any apparently organised mass activity had to be similarly dependent upon individual leaders. But in this they proved mistaken for, however hard they tried to lop off the head of the Zeno protest movement, it just kept on resurrecting itself.

  The DSD had inevitably been a party to this misguided policy of repression, although Hart had done what he could to ameliorate its effects as far as his agency was concerned. Besides, the intelligence agencies and the police were seriously short-staffed and were increasingly required to focus their attention on the capital city. London was, after all, where most of the major government institutions were located, and the now rather frightened ruling elite was
insistent on the need to prioritise their protection. This inevitably restricted resources elsewhere in England and it was clear, to Hart at least, that established order was fragmenting in the urban centres of the Midlands and the North. Vast reaches of the larger cities – Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds – were becoming no-go areas for anyone other than locals, their neighbourhoods annexed by the criminal gangs that had always operated among them.

  By guaranteeing supplies of essentials, local bosses commanded the loyalty or, at least, the resigned acceptance of the population. They constructed and policed their own borders and effectively conducted themselves as warlords, excluding what remained of the regional police forces and maintaining fluid and fragile truces with neighbouring enclaves. So far this was only happening in some cities and in specific areas within them. Elsewhere a kind of normality coexisted with this quasi-tribalism, but Hart was uncertain as to how long that might continue. His shrinking band of agents around the country reported, when they could manage to report at all, that some smaller towns were entirely out of the control of recognised authorities and that even in areas retaining orderly structures there was constant dissatisfaction directed towards central government.

  Not that all the emerging enclaves were fundamentally criminal in character. In communities which had long been segregated on ethnic grounds, usually in particular zones of the big cities, there were ready-made foundations on which to construct local systems of self-support. Many of them had always had their own lines of supply for their distinctive requirements, dietary and otherwise. Protecting these delivery routes had become the key challenge for them, especially if neighbouring enclaves were aggressive. To this end a number of ethnic communities had established their own modes of policing – again something that they had anyway been doing for some time to compensate for the inadequate protection that the state had offered them in the past.

  Meanwhile, outside the urban areas, where rural communities were accustomed to rather more self-reliant ways of life, there was as yet less pressure to establish defended territories, although other distinctive responses to the growing crisis were becoming apparent. In East Anglia, for example, there had been an explosion of unusual religious groupings, perhaps not unexpected in a region that had in the past often played host to deviant religiosity. Cults, sects, Hart was uncertain how best to describe them, but he expected the phenomenon to spread as circumstances became more dire and people sought spiritual sustenance as well as material security.

  All this had developed within a few months, surprising even Hart with the extent and pace of social disruption. Initially his ‘masters’ – he now used that term to himself with heavy irony – had believed that order would be restored quite quickly given application of appropriate sticks and carrots. They were now beginning to understand that their confidence was misplaced, that most people rejected their empty guarantees of safety and, anyway, were beyond the reach of the shrunken police forces ordered to discipline them.

  A measure of quite how far things had gone was that over the past couple of days Hart had been required to attend two lengthy meetings of the Security Co-ordinating Committee, a small group charged with establishing detailed plans for Operation Homestead. The general objective of the operation was clear enough – to establish and protect the governing elite in a variety of secret underground sites around the country, though mostly concentrated in the South-East. This, it was hoped, would allow them to continue to govern securely in spite of growing instability. The detail, however, was much less clear. Who was to be housed in these various successors to the Regional Seats of Government, first established in response to Cold War fears of nuclear attack? How would their supply chains be maintained? Could military personnel be relied upon to protect them even though the soldiers themselves would be largely outside the complexes? These and many other questions were exercising the collective minds of the SCC, pushed along by the prime minister himself who had personally addressed them and emphasised the urgency of their task.

  Hart, of course, would be among those provided with a place in one of these putative safe havens. And not just Hart. Immediate family members were permitted to accompany the notionally fortunate recipients of state protection, although Jill had scoffed at the very idea when he had raised it.

  “If you think I’m going to be locked up with that load of shits,” she had said, “you can think again.”

  Her response did not especially surprise him. Rather than binding them closer, Rosemary’s death seemed to have pushed them further apart, and Hart suspected that as far as Jill was concerned he too was now one of ‘that load of shits’. Although she certainly blamed the government for her daughter’s fate and for the terrible havoc wrought upon the population at large, he was not at all sure that she would approve of his private plans for retribution and so he had not felt able to confide in her. But if Operation Homestead was implemented, as seemed increasingly likely, Hart knew that that he had to remain on the inside of government from whence he would be able to do the most damage. For as long as he was privy to high-level decision-making he would be in a position to pick precisely the right time to strike. How he would actually do so remained undecided, depending, as it did, on unpredictable circumstances. But strike he would, he was sure of that, and directly at the heart of those who had been responsible for taking away the one thing that he loved most in the world.

  After yet another largely inconclusive meeting of the SVRG – the Baby Bug Hunters were not having much success in their hunt – Ali was on the train from Glasgow to Edinburgh. She generally quite enjoyed the hour of peace that this afforded her, but today she was seated next to Michael Lang who was eager to engage her in conversation.

  “I’m afraid that my group isn’t making much progress,” was his opening somewhat cheerless gambit. “It would still be a big help to have Sarah and Hugh on the team. I gather that you had an inconclusive reply to your letter with my offer.” This last observation was conveyed in what Ali thought to be an entirely unmerited tone of reproach.

  “Yes,” she said, reluctantly turning towards him, “as ever, Hugh is willing but Sarah wants to stay where she is.”

  “Even in the present circumstances? Things sound to be getting pretty bad in England. Or at least, so Douglas told me when I asked him if there had been any progress.”

  “They surely are,” Ali said, shaking her head ruefully, “but as well as everything else Sarah wants to stay in reach of her mother. I’m positive that Irene would advise her to move but she won’t know about the offer and Sarah won’t have told her. They have to be careful what they say on CommsTab links.”

  “But there is a secure line of communication to Professor Johnson is there not? Maybe you and Douglas could set something up.”

  Ali thought for a moment and then nodded: “I’ll speak to Douglas about it.” She did not add that she and Douglas had already talked their way through most of the obvious options and could see no immediate course of action. But perhaps if they could engage Irene’s support? At least it would be worth a try.

  Arriving at Waverley station Ali and Michael parted ways, Michael to his home in Corstorphine and Ali to walk up The Mound to her flat. There had been some unexpected late-winter snowfall during the previous night, and it had just begun to snow again. Since the latest Zeno revelations fewer people were to be found on the streets of Edinburgh, and that plus the snow meant that Ali seemed to have the white-clad city almost entirely to herself. As she walked she looked across to the castle, still partially illuminated in spite of the power rationing, and reminded herself how fortunate she was to live in such a beautiful place.

  The footpaths and lawns of Princes Street Gardens now had a fair covering of snow, the park’s lamps creating intermittent pools of brightly reflected light. But for all the pleasure these sights afforded her, at heart Ali felt despondent. Was this all going to fade into nothing as more and more people became victims of the virus?
Douglas was convinced that social order would collapse in the cities sooner rather than later, and reports from England appeared to confirm his pessimism. How could she bear to see her lovely birthplace descend into such chaos and decay?

  The answer was, of course, that she couldn’t, and, what’s more, she was determined that she wouldn’t. At Douglas’s behest they had thoroughly discussed this possibility and she knew that if it came to such desperate straits they would have to leave. Douglas was already making detailed plans, accumulating supplies and even weapons, plotting out places to go and considering long-term survival strategies. In the light of this, Ali had spoken at length with her father who was now acting as a kind of storekeeper, receiving the equipment and provisions that Douglas organised and adding them to the resources that he had already assembled on his own account. Their plan was to head to his house in Argyll when Edinburgh became too dangerous and, if necessary, to move further north after that, although this last proposal was something of a sore point with her father who was determined to stay where he was.

  “I retired here intending to be carried out feet first,” he told Ali. “I shan’t be moving again whatever the circumstances. Besides, I’m too old for all that survival crap. I’d just be a liability.”

  Ali still retained some hope of persuading him otherwise, but not much. Her father could be exceedingly stubborn, a trait that she knew very well since she had inherited it. Anyway, she thought, they would deal with him if and when things became that bad. Her hope was that they would never face such a predicament, although in her heart of hearts she knew otherwise.

  These ruminations had occupied her all the way home and it was with some surprise that she realised that she was in Forrest Road. Taking a last look at the snow-covered streets, she climbed the stairs, unlocked her front door, and, after switching on the coffee machine, slumped into a kitchen chair. The remnants of her breakfast were scattered across the table; she had been in too much of a hurry that morning to clear things away. I must sort this out, she thought, and in a surge of last-gasp energy she put dishes in the washer, wiped the table clean, drew an espresso from the machine and carried it through to the living room. A few sips of coffee later and she felt revived enough to v-call Douglas.