Europe in Winter (The Fractured Europe Sequence)(97)

“This may all be true,” Rudi said, managing to keep his temper with an effort, “but you’ll excuse me if I’m a little affronted to be called a criminal by you.”

There was a silence at the front of the car. Then Crispin chuckled. “Affronted,” he murmured.

“Whatever you’re planning to do to the Community, you have to stop,” Rudi said.

“Says who?”

“Millions of people are going to die.”

Crispin shrugged. “Millions of people are going to die anyway, eventually. Billions. In a hundred years or so everyone on Earth right now will be dead. So it goes.”

Rudi said, “Please. Don’t do it.”

Crispin turned in his seat and looked into the back of the car. “You see, that’s one of the reasons I like you,” he said appreciatively. “If this was a James Bond movie, you’d kill my two guys here with some lethal gadget disguised as a pen,” the two bodyguards looked at Rudi as if daring him to try, “and then you and I would have a climactic battle, at the end of which I’d die horribly and you’d foil my evil plan. But this is real life, and all you’ve got left is please, and you still don’t stop.”

They had left central London now, making their way down a traffic-choked main road through faceless and mostly blameless suburbs. In the distance to the west, a catenary of lights hung in the early evening sky like a special effect for a 1970s alien encounter film. Aircraft queuing up to land at Heathrow.

“There used to be a village called Heath Row,” Crispin said, apropos of nothing, apparently. “It’s still somewhere under the airport. Thousands of years from now, people are going to excavate at Heathrow and they’ll find this buried village and wonder what the f*ck was going through people’s minds way back then.”

“It was a hamlet,” said Seth, who was still annoyed enough to be argumentative. “Not a village.”

“Hamlet, schmamlet,” said Crispin. “Are you guys listening to me?”

“Bearing in mind we’re sitting in the back of a car with two large and presumably heavily-armed men, I think you can safely assume you have our complete attention,” Rudi said numbly. The bodyguard to his left sniggered quietly.

“This is where it all started, you know,” Crispin said, gesturing out through the windscreen. “Colnbrook, Datchett, Windsor. Ernshire. You know what the first error was? The first alteration the Whitton-Whytes made to the map?”

“Stanhurst,” said Rudi. “They wrote Stanhurst in.”

“No, it was a house.”

“Oh? And how do you know that?”

“Stanhurst Manor,” Crispin went on as if he hadn’t heard. “They started small. They created a patch of land, oh, six or seven acres, took a couple dozen workmen across the border, had them build a house. Then they had the workmen build some more houses and go live there. And once they had a foothold they just kept expanding it until they thought it was big enough.”

Rudi tried to imagine a pocket universe the size of a market garden. What must it have been like for the first settlers of the Community, watching day by day and year by year as a new landscape appeared before their eyes? The Whitton-Whytes must have wondered, in their private moments, if they hadn’t become gods; they wouldn’t have been human if it hadn’t at least crossed their minds.

“When did your... organisation become interested in what they were doing?” he asked.

Crispin seemed quite pleased by the question. “Quite early on,” he said. “We managed to sneak some people in, but they never came back. Went native, I guess.”

“Or got whacked,” Seth put in.

Crispin thought about it, as if the possibility had never been considered by him and his predecessors. “Nah,” he said finally. “The Whitton-Whytes were never into that.”

“So, you’ve been keeping an eye on the Community for, what, more than two hundred years?” Rudi asked.

“About that, yes.” Crispin nudged the driver gently and pointed, and the car slowed and made a left turn. In the distance between the houses, Rudi could see the outlying buildings and radar towers of Heathrow. “Mostly it was just a watching brief; we had our own stuff to worry about, and they weren’t threatening anybody. We managed to get somebody in in 1889, but they didn’t want to talk to us.”

“But a year later they wanted to talk to the English.”

Crispin nodded. “Summer of 1890, they started putting out feelers to the British government. Fall of 1891, the British started rolling up our operation here, very quietly.”

Rudi thought about this. “And the two of you have been at war ever since?”

Crispin put his head back and laughed. “No!” he guffawed. “You think we were worried about the loss of a few networks? Jesus. The Community have never understood us. They think we’re the Mafia, and we’re not. We’re Europe. We thought it was quaint.” He shook his head. “Nah, we tolerated each other, which was fine by us.”

“Until they figured out you were interfering with the Campus.”

Crispin sobered. “They can’t hurt us, not really.”

“If they can’t hurt you, don’t hurt them,” Rudi tried again.

“Oh, I’m not going to hurt them,” Crispin said goodnaturedly.