Europe in Winter (The Fractured Europe Sequence)(32)

Rudi raised his eyebrows.

“She said it was a foetal heart monitor,” Mr Pasquinel mused. “And examining the scan, it could be.”

“But you’re thinking a bomb.”

“Something powerful enough to destroy one of our trains but small enough to present as a piece of implanted medical equipment. Is that possible?”

Rudi thought about it. “No, but it might have been a component of a larger device which didn’t show up on your scan.”

It was Mr Pasquinel’s turn to raise his eyebrows. “That’s... interesting,” he said.

“You didn’t hear that from me, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

“What have you done with them? Your staff?”

“Sequestered. Contemplating the error of their ways. Similarly with the Penningtons’ staff. Extramural rendition. They don’t know anything, though. We’ll let them go. Eventually.”

Rudi sat back in the pew and folded his hands in his lap. “Of course,” he said after a while, “you have to say that. If it’s a matter of your trains being unsafe, that’s the end of the Line – you’ll excuse the pun. Terrorism, on the other hand...”

“We’re certainly not making this up,” Mr Pasquinel protested mildly. “We don’t go around arresting people for the exercise.”

“Kidnapping,” Rudi corrected. “It’s called kidnapping.”

Mr Pasquinel sighed.

“No fundamentalist tendencies?” Rudi asked. “The Penningtons?”

“No tendencies of any sort,” Mr Pasquinel said. “No extremist connections of any kind. Their legends go back decades but they have no family, no long-term friends. No former neighbours in London remember them in any detail. For five years everything is concrete; before that it becomes vague. They both attended Brunel University in London, and their names are on record there, but no one remembers them. Classmates think they recognise photographs of them, but they can’t swear to it.” He looked at the stained glass windows. “Nothing you could take into court. It’s all on the drive. Photos, video, documents. Everything I could gather. Perhaps you will have more luck with it.”

“If we accept the premise that they caused the explosion, the question is who exactly they were, and who they were working for.”

Mr Pasquinel was quiet for a while, breathing in the smell of incense and old Bibles and centuries of worship. “There is,” he said finally, “going to be a piece of sleight of hand.”

“You’re going to blame somebody,” Rudi said. “At random.”

“Not random, precisely,” said Mr Pasquinel. “Plausible candidates. As you say, terrorism is one thing. An accident is something much more far-reaching. And it’s not as if they don’t deserve it,” he added. He thought about it. “Public relations.”

“And meanwhile, the Penningtons.”

“They seem our strongest candidates at the moment; if whoever they worked for thought we were going off in the wrong direction, that would be useful.”

“They won’t,” Rudi said. “Think you’re going off in the wrong direction. They wouldn’t be so stupid as to assume you were blaming some half-arsed terrorist group.”

“I know.” Mr Pasquinel shrugged. “I don’t make policy.”

“Also they will have a source within the Republic.”

Mr Pasquinel sighed. “I had an ancestor who was a Coureur, you know,” he said.

“Oh?”

“One of the original Coureurs, the French-Canadian traders who explored New France. Jean-Baptiste Pasquinel, a contemporary of Pierre-Esprit Radisson. My family have moved around quite a lot, for various reasons.” Mr Pasquinel started to gather together the wrappings from his lunch and put them back in his rucksack. “I’m old enough to remember a time when we thought there would be no borders in Europe.”

“Happy days,” Rudi said.

Mr Pasquinel looked at him and tried to gauge whether he was being sarcastic, but all he could detect was a certain tired wistfulness. He finished doing up his rucksack and said, “Well, it didn’t last long, anyway. Barely long enough to enjoy it, really.”

“It’s what Europe does,” Rudi said. “Borders.” He didn’t bother to add that the Trans-European Republic had the longest border in Europe. He got up and started to retrieve the little cubes – bafflers against electronic and sonic snooping – and put them back in his rucksack. “By the way,” he said, “have you heard anything about Luxembourg?”

“The Republic does not run through Luxembourg,” said Mr Pasquinel.

“Not even diplomatic gossip?”

“Luxembourg,” Mr Pasquinel said, “is really not chief among my concerns right now.”

“No,” Rudi said. “No, of course not.”

“So,” said Mr Pasquinel, standing and shouldering his rucksack, “it was good to meet you.”

“You too,” Rudi said with a smile. “I hope you enjoy the rest of your holiday.”

“I’m going to treat myself. A couple of days in London. Wren churches. Wren said he built for eternity.”

“Doesn’t everyone?”