The O.D. (27 page)

“We acquired our first asylum seeker, Lonnie,” the Baronet said, pointing out a man sitting at a far table. “He’s French. Gilbert Cafard. We were waiting for you to get back before deciding what to do with him.”

Pilot stood up and walked over to the Frenchman’s table. “Where are you from, Gilbert?” he asked.

“I am French.”

“
Where
in France?”

“The Ardêche.”

Pilot returned to his table. “He’s a spy, Henry.”

“A spy for whom?”

Pilot finished his coffee and proceeded to tell Bradingbrooke about the Knights of Blasius, Dragan Drag
ić
, the French general from the Ardêche and Soldo’s complicity.

“Mirko’s involved?”

“Up to his beard. Not sure yet how to handle this, but for the moment, we’d better keep it within the Pentad.”

Bradingbrooke stared down at the table, spinning his spoon. “Have you ever heard of Agent Zigzag, Lonnie? Eddie Chapman, the World War Two double agent? If Cafard
is
a spy, we should work on him. Try to turn him like they did Chapman. He seems vulnerable and a bit wobbly.”

“Vulnerable and wobbly…” Pilot let the idea settle, then lit up. “I know just the person to turn him,” he said. “She could convert the Pope to Islam. I’ll talk to her. What’s Soldo been up to while I’ve been away?”

“Hard to say. He’s had three visits from a lady who flies here in a private helicopter, stays a few hours with him, then leaves. We call her ‘Oilslick’. Head soaked in Brylcreem, make-up like gloss paint. A human Jessica Rabbit. Mirko says she’s just a rich German heiress who fancies him.”

“My guess is that she’s his fifth wife-to-be,” Pilot said. “I also think she’s more than just a sexy caricature.”

Bradingbrooke thought for minute. “A cliché with a brain?”

“A female Knight of Blasius.”

Pilot spent the evening in Odile Bartoli’s room discussing the tactics for molding Cafard into a double agent. “Expose. Befriend. Turn.” Bartoli was a psychology graduate with psychiatric training. She had worked with troubled children for many years, and over dinner with Cafard that evening, had clearly detected a childlike vulnerability in the young Frenchman.

“He’s a tormented soul, Lonnie,” she said. “If I can get inside him and work with his demon
s−
”

“I’ll leave it with you, Odile. I’m going to bed.” Ten minutes later, Pilot was dead to the world – both his and Mirko Soldo’s.

The next morning, Bartoli poured two mugs of coffee, took them to Cafard’s room and knocked on his door. “Gilbert, we know who you are,” she said. “Let me in.” No response. “Does the word Blasius mean anything to you?” Still no response. “Gilbert. We know who you are. But is that who you
want
to be?”

“What do you mean?” Cafard said, opening the door cautiously.

“Your heart isn’t in this, is it? You’re better than that. May I come in?” He stepped to one side, then closed the door behind her.

When Pilot saw Bartoli and Cafard enter the mess hall to join the others for lunch he noticed tears in Cafard’s eyes and compassion in Bartoli’s. It looked like things were going well.

Later that afternoon, Bartoli found Pilot working at one of the sediment pits and pulled him to one side. “Agent Zigzag is ours,” she said. “And he is very cute. When I exposed him as a spy, he was mortified. He couldn’t give me one good reason why he was doing what he was doing. He’s a lost sou
l−
a rudderless ship grateful to be towed by anyone who throws him a line. I told him that if he cooperated we were prepared to throw him a
better
one than the Knights’. I told him about u
s−
why we had come here, what we were all about and why the planned invasion should never be allowed to happen.” Bartoli took on a mothering expression. “Gilbert has never before felt valued, Lonnie, anywhere or at any time in his life. He’s just a petty thief from Privas. He has promised to work with us and will do anything we ask. I’m one hundred percent sure of that.”

At four in the morning, McConie woke Pilot with an urgent message from one of Vaalon’s spies in the Hague. When he’d finished reading it, Pilot dressed and sprinted to Bradingbrooke’s hut. “Wakey, wakey, Henry,” he said, poking the man’s shoulder. “They’re coming to get you.”

Bradingbrooke, half asleep, gathered up a few essentials, donned his head torch and sloped off to the cauliflower patch with Pilot, who was already wearing his. Between the third and fourth rows, they located the stone that marked the entry to the bunker, brushed away some soil and lifted the hatch on the
Hussein
-
asylum
. Fifteen rungs down the ladder chimney, Bradingbrooke entered the ten square metre cell that Soldo had recently finished building and flopped onto its canvas cot. Above, Pilot lowered the hatch, brushed the soil back over it with his foot and went back to his cabin to await their visitors.

Three white helicopters with UN markings set down an hour later and disgorged troops of various nationalities united only by their common blue berets. The Belgian Colonel in charge approached Pilot, introduced himself and stated the reason for their presence. A lawyer from the Cour Internationale dé Justice emerged from the shadows and began reading the charges laid against Henry Bradingbrooke, Bart., relating to
the
negligent
genocide
perpetrated
eighth
August
,
last
,
with
the
full
knowledge
and
complicity
of
the
defendant
. “Mr. Pilot,” the man said solemnly, “lead the Colonel here to Mr. Bradingbrooke, if you please.”

“That, I cannot do,” Pilot said, handing over a piece of paper. “This is the printout of a message we received from Henry Bradingbrooke an hour ago.”

The lawyer took the sheet and read the loaded message.

Éxito
.
Arrived
Quito
undetected
.
Henry
.

The lawyer handed the message to the Colonel, who didn’t believe a word of it. “Find him,” he ordered his second-in-command as the first rays of dawn began to project above the western rim. “I want every dome and shed turned upside down.”

Three hours later, the hunt for Bradingbrooke was called off. The UN visitation ended to the cacophony of rotor blades screaming in frustration as the heavy helicopters reluctantly took their leave. On the ‘all clear’ rap on his hatch, like a Viet Cong soldier emerging from his tunnel to finish his coffee after a multi-million dollar B52 bombing raid, Sir Henry Bradingbrooke exited the Hussein-asylum, inhaled the delicious Atlantic air and headed to the mess hall for a late breakfast.

From that moment on, because the exact number of islanders on Eydos was known to the outside world, one person
always
had to remain in their cabin out of the watchful eyes of the spy satellites in permanent orbit above them and the camera drones, fashioned to resemble seagulls, that occasionally flew over Nillin to count bodies and otherwise spy on the Islanders. Meanwhile, bogus messages from Henry Bradingbrooke continued to be sent weekly by one of Vaalon’s agents in Quito. The accepted intelligence in The Hague was that their prey had joined the growing colony of international whistle-blowers and political fugitives enjoying their freedom in extradition-free Ecuador.

A message from Vaalon two days later also involved a charge of murder. Not against Bradingbrooke, but against Mirko Soldo. ‘Five years ago he was running a multi-million-Neuro con, smuggling counterfeit BMW car parts made in China into Stuttgart,’ the note read. ‘One of his partners, a German, wanted a bigger slice of the cake, so Mirko killed him. There’s a warrant for his arrest in Germany. Thought it could be of use to you. Latest intelligence suggests you only have until April, so a solution to Buvina will have to be found quickly. – Forrest.’

A brainstorming session with the Pentad had yielded no obvious answer to the problem of how to deal with Mirko Soldo and the Knights of Blasius. Pilot had wanted to confront the man face to face and reason with him. The others were dead against it, saying that it was Soldo, together with Drag
ić
, who had cooked up the coup in the first place and had justified its necessity. “To reason things out, you both have to speak the same language,” Macushla Mara said. “You don’t.”

“The second he thinks you’re on to him, Soldo will blow the whistle and the Knights will be on this place like girls on a boyband,” Bradingbrooke added.

As the sun crested the escarpment and rose into a cloudless sky, Pilot’s disposition was anything but sunny. Quite the opposite. The cause of his ill humour had left their dome in the middle of the night and not returned. It was the third argument they’d had that week, and the 7th that month. Pilot was finding Dubi Horvat’s moodiness increasingly difficult to bear. He had his own mood swings, but they were hidden and harmless, whereas hers were overt, hazardous and impossible to handle. Like the balloon he’d be flying in a moment, Pilot’s relationship with Dubi had become directionless. More than that, it was diverting attention away from important concerns and wasting valuable energy. For Pilot, Dubi’s last performance was the final straw.

He exited his cabin, zipped up his flying suit and headed for the balloon pad. Two flights had been scheduled for that morning to take advantage of the gentle southwesterly surface breeze the forecast had promised. Provided it held true and they stayed below a certain altitude, they were in for an interesting ride of at least twenty-five miles before they ran out of land. Three wagons had already been sent northeast to take position along the balloons’projected cours
e−
two to carry the baskets and canopies back, the third to haul the camping equipment needed for the overnight stops.

When Pilot arrived at the pad, Rebecca Schein was already there with Bart Maryburg and Jane Lavery. The latter’s tall, slim figure was so swathed in clothing against the cold that, with her copper hair extended in the breeze, she looked like an Olympic torch. She, Maryburg and Schein were to ride with Pilot in
Blitzen
. Leon Bonappe’s brother, Philipe, had taken temporary residence on the island as their instructor, and would carry three further passengers in
Donner
.

“Pressurise the tanks to 125psi,” Bonappe instructed the ground crew.

All of this hot air would lead eventually to a working balloon route between Eydos and the mainland, Pilot hoped. Philipe had gone so far as to prepare a feasibility study, based on his brother Leon’s wind maps, and had even drawn up a series of possible routes. But without the favour of the countries he hoped to land in – and no time had been available to curry this – Pilot was powerless to fly beyond the borders of their own coast.

The noise of the fans as they began the initial inflation of the canopies was deafening. When the canopies had reached the appropriate level of inflation, the gas burners were fired to heat the air within. As the two baskets, which had been lying on their sides, began to move to the perpendicular, the excitement of the passengers rose accordingly. The late March air smelt spring-like and full of promis
e−
a powerful, emotive aroma that was beginning to intoxicate everyone on the island.

When everything looked stable, the signal was given for the passengers to enter their baskets. Pilot felt he would never become desensitised to the thrill of balloon travel, but there was something else this time that was adding to his arousal. He caught Jane’s eye and, to his surprise, felt a warm rush of blood in his chest as she returned his searching gaze with one of her own. It was that special moment when two people’s eyes meet at the frontispiece of their story, and neither wanted to look away. It was Pilot who cut off the current. He had a balloon to fly, after all, but a connection had been made and the sky wasn’t the limit.

To the cheers of the many onlookers, first
Donner
and then
Blitzen
left the ground. Their ascent began in the vertical, but as they cleared the protective windbreak of the canyon rim, they were swept north and east towards the rising sun by more than the light breeze the Comtrac V weather satellite had predicted. The jolt to the basket caused by the sudden injection of lateral acceleration forced a stifled scream from Lavery and it would be several more minutes before she could raise herself from the floor of the basket and peer down at the rolling grey rock below. “It looks like the sea has been turned to stone through some ancient Celtic curse,” Pilot whispered in her ear.

“Poetic, Lonnie. It looks like rock to me. How strong are these cables?” Lavery reached up and touched one of the steel stays connecting the basket to the skirt.

“Strong enough. Look back there, Jane.” Pilot pointed towards the last few domes of Nillin as they disappeared behind the receding basin rim and then studied her profile. Her hair was blowing everywhere and he reached over to guide it away from her face, brushing her freckled cheek with the back of his hand as he did so. She inclined her head slightly to reveal wide brown eyes framed by smile lines. He smiled back.