Europe in Winter (The Fractured Europe Sequence)(54)
“This is f*cking ridiculous,” Andreas muttered.
No traffic passed them on the road. A few kilometres further back, the Norwegian authorities had closed it by the simple expedient of bringing in a maintenance crew to dig up the carriageways under the pretence of emergency repairs. On the other side of the border, the Swedes had opted for something more showy, staging a chemical tanker crash. Between these two pieces of pantomime, the road and the old Svinesund Bridge were empty.
“I need a piss,” Andreas grumbled. He got out of the car and did up his coat, looked along the line of other cars parked along the side of the road. He waved to the nearest, got an answering wave from within, and walked into the trees.
He found himself a spot, unzipped, and began to relieve himself against a tree, but he’d hardly started when he heard undergrowth crunching under a number of feet. He sighed. Typical. He finished hurriedly, zipped up, and made himself presentable just as eight soldiers in vaguely old-fashioned uniform stepped out of the forest. They were carrying modern European automatic rifles, and behind them were half a dozen men and women wearing formal clothes and carrying document cases, their breath pluming in the cold air.
The soldiers reached him and stopped. One of them saluted.
“You’re late,” Andreas told him.
One of the diplomats, a tall man in late middle age, stepped forward. “You’ll have to speak English, I’m afraid,” he said affably. “None of us speaks Norwegian.”
Andreas regarded him levelly. “Very well,” he said in English. He waved behind him, towards the road. “We make the exchange over here.”
“Lead on then, please,” said the diplomat.
They walked back to the road, where there was a sudden flurry of activity, people getting out of the cars. Yngvar shot Andreas a sour look as he went by, but Andreas just shrugged.
Without having to be told, the civilians drew themselves up into two lines. From the cars there were diplomatic representatives of the largest European nations, as well as a bureaucrat from what still fancied itself to be the European Union. Facing them were the Community delegation. To one side, the soldiers and Andreas and the other members of Norwegian state security tried to make each other blink first.
“Please accept our apologies for our late arrival,” the Community diplomat who had spoken to Andreas told the Europeans. He didn’t seem particularly apologetic. “We had some travelling difficulties; I’m sure you’ll understand.”
The Europeans seemed jumpy, excited. Andreas had decided that their seniority among their respective nations’ diplomatic corps could not be very high; they were basically hostages, expendable. And more to the point, they were symbolic – their countries already had ambassadors in the Community. They stepped forward, a little hesitantly at first, and shook hands with their Community opposite numbers, and in a few moments the two groups had changed places.
Yngvar came over and stood beside Andreas and they watched the Community delegation climb into the cars, along with four of their soldiers. The other soldiers, along with the Europeans and several of the Norwegian security officers, turned and walked back into the trees. In a few moments, they were gone.
Andreas looked at his watch. Almost two and a half hours late. Yngvar made a brief phone call. Then they stood looking at each other.
“Head Office says this is the last time we get ourselves involved in something like this,” Yngvar said.
“No shit,” said Andreas.
Yngvar walked around to the driver’s side of the car and opened the door. “They didn’t word it quite like that, of course. There was swearing.”
ON THE FACE of it, the Union, the patchwork of treaties and agreements between the Community and the many nations of Europe, was a triumph. This was a shining new age of fraternity and mutual benefit. European firms opened offices in the Community, Community firms opened offices in Europe. There were university exchange programmes and film and television co-productions, fashion shows, cultural festivals and merchandising licences. Embassies and consulates popped up everywhere. Everyone was happy.
On a more pragmatic level, it was a nightmare. The fact that the Community was a nuclear superpower was not widely known; even less widely known was that its previous ruling faction had contemplated using biological warfare against their European neighbours and had – however accidentally – gone on to release the Xian Flu. From Europe’s point of view, the Community was spectacularly dangerous. There was no way to defend against an enemy who could walk across invisible borders anywhere on your territory whenever they wanted, while you were quite unable to retaliate.
It was also spectacularly rich, in natural resources and markets and plain old cash. It was, quite simply, irresistible. Better, on balance, to have it as a friend than an enemy, and – at the very highest, most secret levels of the four or five nations where these things were known – to set the Xian Flu aside in the name of the greater good. The secret would come out one day, because secrets always did, particularly secrets as monumental as this one, but the Europeans who entered into it calculated that History would at least understand what they had done, and they looked at their burgeoning bank balances and feathered nests and were comforted.
For the Presiding Authority of the Community, Europe was full of nothing but win. They suddenly had access to all manner of technology which had previously been unknown – medical technology, in particular – and they looked at their burgeoning bank balances and feathered nests and they, too, were comforted.