Tigerman

20. Admission

IT HAPPENED SOMETIMES, and he had relied on that. No one would have questioned his meteorological fraud because it was a known risk, a pattern in the weather having to do with the Somali Current and the temperatures in the Persian Gulf. A monsoon wind calved from a bigger storm would spin off from Socotra and rebound south and east, then meet the wind blowing off the Indian Ocean and suddenly something like a cyclone blew up almost out of nowhere.

It happened. That was a given, indisputable. And it was happening now. He hoped Inoue was safely away, that she wasn’t flying into that. He saw her in his mind, drowning in the aisle of a tiny plane sucked down into the deep black water. Her fear. Her regret.

He shook his head inside the mask, growled and heard it echo down the empty street.

The Fleet would be preparing to move. Beneseffe would be scurrying to provide the ships with estimates and safe distances, dispositions and instructions. Exactly as planned. Except that everything was planned for tomorrow, and the thunderheads would not wait. What he had thought to fake was real, and jogging at his elbow, and he must keep up or be swept aside. Every plan was overtaken by events. Some few were overtaken before they had begun. He had chosen a plausible scenario to hide under, and here that scenario had come true. So. That was the world, and he was in it.

He snatched the mask from his face and ran for the Land Rover, heard the tyres screech as he hit the accelerator, and let himself reconsider the plan as he hurled the car up the hill.

There had been no time to seed paranoia in the Fleet captains. He weighed the pros and cons of a call to Kershaw quietly suggesting some outrageous betrayal, asking that Kershaw keep it under his hat until the Sergeant could confirm. The Chinese are coming to take North Africa for its oil. That would do. It was insane but not absurd. China was hungry for resources, had been buying rare earths and shale gas reserves everywhere. The American hawks would believe it. India and Pakistan had nightmares about Chinese expansion. The Chinese would know it wasn’t true but would worry about where it was coming from. The Europeans would try to cool things down, but individually each nation would be trying to gain advantage.

And telling Kershaw was like whispering in the ear of the Fleet, talking too loudly at the next table. Although it might conceivably start a war somewhere, which would be a crime on a level for which the Sergeant did not have a word.

The road was slick. He had to pull back from the urge to accelerate. Brighton House was seven minutes away, but it would be much longer if he went off the road. More haste, less speed. In his rear-view mirror, Beauville lay quiet against the sea and the hills. The warning howled in him, the bone-deep certainty: something is bad. Something is not as it should be.

I am holding the gun by its barrel.

He could feel the edges of it, knew it for a real thing. But until it was clear, he had to keep moving, keep advancing, because if he stopped now the window of opportunity would close – and the opportunity was there, he knew that, too.

Already the storm was ominously close. He needed to be in the water, sneaking between the ships. He needed to talk to Jack again, revise the plan. Half of him wanted to turn around and go back to the Grande, but the wiser part knew there would be no Jack. Jack did not hang around, could not afford to. Arafat, it was rumoured, had never slept twice in the same bed. Jack was more invisible, more cautious, in a smaller place and with a less loyal following. He was somewhere else by now, if he had ever been in the room at all. The speaking tube suggested that he had, but there might easily have been a radio on the other end.

Lester Ferris snarled and thumped the steering wheel. Everything was obvious. Nothing was simple. He was trying to hold it all together with his mind and his will but the pieces were not elastic and they were pulling away, coming apart in his fingers.

He had the gear, at least. He was getting through the armoury’s supplies, but he was nearly finished. God knew how he’d account for the wastage. The riots, perhaps, and some shipping errors. A timely fire. Opportunistic crooks among the refugees. Small potatoes for now. At worst, he’d just say he’d grown bored and tried the stuff out, offer to pay for it. It would be in character. So he had grenades, a couple of inflatables with outboards, remote detonators and flares for his diversion.

Which left Beneseffe. A bribe might be out of the question now, he might just have to go in there and stare him down. What if Beneseffe regarded his job as a sacred trust, or if he was more frightened of the Fleet than he was of Tigerman?

Will you make him afraid? And then trust him not to betray you when you have gone? Or will you tell him everything and hope he doesn’t sell you to Kershaw or Hasp?

Gravel crunched under the Land Rover’s wheels, and he put the handbrake on too hard, felt it complain and shudder, released the brake a little and ran for the door.

Inside the door he stopped cold. There was someone waiting for him, and it wasn’t the boy. He could tell from the feel of the place, the nature of the quiet. The refugees had moved to the far wings, and the house murmured with them, but his little space was still his own. None of them came here without asking. The boy did, but he was at home here and his presence was calm and unobtrusive. This was not him. It wasn’t soldiers, either, with an arrest warrant, or Kathy Hasp hoping for more indiscretions.

For one moment, the Sergeant thought it must be Jack, then he hoped it was Inoue, and then he was terrified it might be Inoue, because he would have to get rid of her or tell her everything and he could not get rid of her. Could not. If she was here she had chosen to miss her flight out, and something in him would not permit the vandalism in turning her away. It would – he was amazed and delighted to find – break his heart.

He had given himself most improvidently in these last weeks.

It was neither of them. He knew as soon as the other man moved. He could hear the breathing, the sigh of effort with each step.

White Raoul.

He was alone, and he had abandoned his crutch. Perhaps he no longer needed it, or perhaps for moments of great significance he rejected it. The Sergeant was amazed by the force of certainty that he carried. It was like meeting a general in your living room, an unexpected eminence too big for the space. He wondered how much courage it took for the man to stand there. The scrivener could tell the world, if he chose, who had made the Tigerman stele – and for whom. Was it courage or trust that let him stand there unafraid of the man who wore it and did mad things? Because surely men had been murdered for less dangerous knowledge.

There was no time for whatever this was, but the Sergeant was caught in it, and somehow it was of a piece, it was important.

‘I ain’t here to stop you, Honest,’ White Raoul said. ‘I think you’re crazy, but I ain’t going to tell you to stop. You done well enough, I guess.’

The Sergeant nodded.

‘And now you goin’ to do some other fool thing for that boy.’

‘Yes.’

‘Honest, you are a very strange man. You ever consider just telling him you love him like a son?’

Considered it every day. But never done it, and it was hard to say exactly why. Well, no, it wasn’t. ‘Too scared, I think.’

White Raoul snorted. ‘Face down guns. Can’t talk to a boy.’

‘Seems funny when you put it that way.’

‘You need practice, is all.’ White Raoul eyed him. ‘Why don’t you tell me now? What you’d say to him if you weren’t too chicken. I’m his grandpappy, after all. If you die out there, someone oughta know.’

‘Not planning on it.’

‘Tcha. Whoever does?’

And this logic seemed abruptly unassailable. ‘I’d say… what would I say? I’d say he’s my friend. He’s not the sort needs a dad like a straightforward sort of dad, not any more. But he needs a place to hang his hat. He needs a bed and a roof and someone to dust him off when he falls, take him out for his first beer. He’s probably had his first beer, I suppose. But his first beer as a man. You know what I mean. And sort him out when he gets in a tangle over a girl. And teach him how to change a tyre, or… well, I suppose he can do that already too. And he knows computers, which I don’t.’ He was drying up. What exactly could he do that the boy couldn’t do for himself? Not much. ‘I can show him how to be the right sort of stupid. How to put your hand in the fire for someone you love. I can do that.’ I do that quite well, it turns out. ‘But I think I just want him to know he doesn’t have to be alone. I don’t want to buy him, I want to give him whatever I can. Me. For a dad. For however much he needs me.’ He hung his head. It sounded very small. ‘I just want to be there to help. To be who we are. I don’t care where. Mancreu. London. Japan, even. I do wonder about Japan. He’d like Japan. They have ninjas there, and crazy blokes who go scuba diving to rescue their mothers-in-law, and temples and Zen and that. It’s been amazing being a superhero, by the way. It’s totally mad. But I don’t need it. I don’t want to be this… character. Not much. What I want… I want to be his dad. And that’s all.’

White Raoul gazed at him, then walked wordlessly past him to the front door. Shuffle, clump. Shuffle, clump.

‘Well?’ the Sergeant demanded. ‘You wanted to hear it. You said I needed practice. How did I do?’

White Raoul shrugged. ‘Lied about that,’ he said.

The Sergeant had no idea what he might mean. Lied about what? And then he felt his stomach vanish into his boots, felt an explosion pass through him from his chest to his fingertips, and, turning, saw the boy in the doorway of his room.

They stared at one another. How did I do?

The boy swallowed. ‘The storm,’ he said. ‘You need to talk to Jack.’ He ran forward then, slammed into the Sergeant and embraced him. ‘You need to talk to Jack. Promise me!’ He pressed a square of paper into the Sergeant’s hand, then unwrapped his arms and stared in what looked like absolute despair at the man who said he wanted to be his father, and ran pell-mell from the house.

‘Follow him,’ White Raoul said.

But there was no time. Somehow, recently, there never was.

In preparation, the Sergeant put the gear in the back of the Land Rover and prayed with foxhole devotion that the car would not be struck by an errant bolt of lightning. Between the phosphorous flares, the gas and fuel for the inflatables and the box of ammunition and flashbangs he proposed to use to create a credible threat, he reckoned they’d maybe find the roll cage and the engine. But a human body at the heart of the fire would to all intents and purposes cease to exist.

He realised that not long ago the idea would have seemed almost restful. He had not wanted to die – very much not – but the notion of being smoke, blowing over the island and chasing the wind, would have appealed to him in those strange endless days when he had been somehow absent from himself.

He placed his call to Kershaw, dropped hints about ‘possible non-allied East Asian involvement in the Mancreu theatre through proxies under cover of existing and legitimate false-flag water-based operations’ and hoped the intelligence analysts at NatProMan were creative enough and nervous enough to decide it was something to worry about. When they asked later, he thought, he could claim he had received information from a local source acquainted with activities in Mancreu’s shadow world – that would be Jack – and passed it on. If the tip was bad, well, that was informers for you.

Which meant he was as ready as he could be. Gear, diversion, storm, exit strategy. As long as Jack had good things to say about it all, even in a hurry.

Bad Jack, Bad Jack.

Jack is analogue.

Bad Jack. Jack Jack Jack. He muttered it over and over as he drove, glanced down at the paper in his hand. An address. A bad address, for Bad Jack.

The Hotel Vulcan.

The Vulcan was a big, empty slab of concrete like a parking structure, hard by an overhanging cliff. It had been intended as a bit of luxury, a stopover for the jet set. Break your cruise at the Vulcan. Party in absolute privacy, play in the casino, no paparazzi allowed. It had a James Bond look from back when Connery had had the role, as if it might at any moment unleash a space rocket into the atmosphere or gape to reveal a diamond raygun. And it was derelict, or supposed to be, because the money had run out almost before the thing was finished. A rockfall during one of Mancreu’s fiercer seismic events had sheered off one wall of the main structure – incidentally revealing that the contractors had not used specified materials and the whole thing was unsafe – making it into part of the island’s landscape as much as the empty chemical plant on the other side. In another place it would have been a spawning ground for Mancreu kids looking for somewhere to go crazy, but Beauville was filled with those and the Vulcan was genuinely inhospitable. So it was just there, like a backdrop.

There was a utility entrance halfway along the cliff road. When the Sergeant pressed his palm against it, the door swung open soundlessly. He made sure the mask was in place and went in. A light burned somewhere ahead, but the corridor was black.

You do love your underground hideouts, don’t you?

He felt the chill again, caught a flash of understanding as it surfaced in his mind. He reached for it. Corpse-white and alien, the idea slid away from him into the dark.

He went on.

The sound of his own breathing echoed, reassuringly vile, from the walls. He was careful, checking the path ahead for trips and plates, letting the sound and the airflow tell him there was no one sneaking up behind. The sharkpunch lay along his hand. But that wasn’t it. This wasn’t a trap. Not this.

He saw the monster again in his mind’s eye and let it flee, let the rhythm of his steps take him inside his own head. What are you afraid of? Where’s the dance going, that you don’t want to be?

Tigerman, the boy, Jack and Sandrine. Kershaw and Dirac and the Fleet. Inoue, but she wasn’t in it, she was near it, through him and not. Raoul. Mancreu, Beauville and dead dogs. The dogs were bad, but this place was worse. He didn’t know why, knew that he should. The Vulcan. Vulcans. Star Trek. Romans. Gods… None of that. Sean Connery, that was the heart of the problem. Sean was bad news. Sean and Vulcan and the underground hideout. Jack, and the photograph in the cave: the boy and Shola. Pechorin and the killers and Sean Connery in his dinner jacket. The missile. There’s always a missile, always a ticking clock, always a double agent and a beautiful girl who needs saving. Pechorin released by Arno. Pechorin, who might be undercover. I tell you another time. Where had he got the heroin? If it wasn’t his, had he seized it? Stolen it? And the photograph of Shola along with it? How had he known about it? Someone had told him, had let him know. Jack, of course, Jack who knew everything, setting up Pechorin as his cat’s paw. Jack, who used everyone, who was everywhere, who saw everything.

Pechorin, and the cave, and the night which had forced him to be Tigerman in earnest.

Which he had enjoyed, and been terrified by, and which he had wisely put away because it was mad. But someone had made it news and the press had come.

But then he’d had to do it again when the Quads came and he took in the refugees – and where had the Quads come from, with their shiny bikes? Just like Shola’s killers, out of nowhere. And he’d been a hero right in front of those cameras, and Mancreu was in the news again, right now, when it was dying.

And now Sandrine needed saving and here he was again, because it let him be who he needed to be. But he had not exactly chosen it, had he, more been chosen by it. Tigerman thrust upon him, oh, yes. Reluctantly made a hero. Helped along, every step of the way, his paths made obvious and unambiguous by love, and need. Helped, or herded.

The corridor broadened into the lobby. The lobby of the Hotel Vulcan.

Vulcan and Sean Connery. James Bond and the space-rocket hotel.

Bad Jack’s home. His secret base.

Secret Vulcan base.

No. Not quite.

His secret volcano base.

Oh, please, no.

He stepped into the room, and knew he was right.

The lobby was a huge open space, and along the inner edges it was still very much itself, a little cracked: gold chandeliers and a huge pop art rendering of Marilyn Monroe singing for Kennedy printed onto one wall. The outer section was gone, and the huge plate of stone which had cut it away made a tolerable seal against the concrete and rebar. The space was neatly kept, and forty yards along a side. The furniture from the casino had been dragged here, so half of that was roulette tables. The light was from looped industrial working lamps. A thick trunk of cable ran out beneath the cliff and was probably spliced into Mancreu’s power grid out at the main road.

At the far end of this space was a bed, a work desk with a familiar old laptop, and a selection of bookshelves. Some of these were occupied by digital Betacam cassettes. Yes, of course. The video from the cave. You made it, you put it out. These days you could buy a transmitter on eBay, and they weren’t big.

And all across the carpet, some in random piles and others in perfect neat lines and grids, were comic books, and a dozen chairs and cushions and tables to read at.

He even told me. ‘Many floors underground in my secret volcano base. I drink brandy, wear a smoking jacket.’

The Sergeant took off his mask.

‘Hello, Jack,’ he said.

‘Hello, Lester,’ the boy replied.

It’s not a monster at all. It’s just the end of the world.

‘Is she out there?’ the Sergeant asked after they had stared at one another for a while. ‘Sandrine?’

‘No, of course not,’ the boy said. ‘She is back on the hillside. The town makes her crazy. Crazier. Everything is too big. Too loud. I sent the jeep, the woman. They sang to her and she went with them. It works sometimes.’

The Sergeant nodded. Yes. I see.

‘She cannot,’ the boy began, and choked. He tried again. ‘She cannot be anywhere else. Do you understand? For her, this is the whole world. It is all she is. They cannot evacuate the island. She will still be here, even if we take her away. And in a camp, while they make forms and argue, she will die.’ His voice harshened. ‘And it is a lie! It is unnecessary. Worse, it is stupid. They say it will save the world but Inoue says it will not. I read her reports. All of them. It will not help and they will do it anyway because it is some stupid game! To make law and then hide from it and pretend that is good. And for this stupid game of law they will kill my mother. Throw her away like trash. Because they have no better answer than to explode her home.’

‘So what did you need me for?’

A flash of shame. ‘We were friends.’

‘I thought so.’

‘That is real! We were friends. But I needed magic. And you are magic.’

‘I’m just some bloke!’

The boy shook his head. ‘Not any more. Lester Ferris is a real hero.’

‘Bollocks. You did it all. You made it happen.’

The boy shook his head. ‘Some. I laid a path. But you were more, always. You made it real. The riots, the cave. And you saved my life. In Shola’s.’

‘And you finished the job.’

‘Yes.’ Not a hint of doubt. Yes. I killed the men who would have killed me, who killed Shola. ‘I made it so that they would die. I let it be known that they were talking, and something must be done. That is how it is. Something must be done, and it is.’ He sighed.

‘I am Jack. Before, there was another Jack. I worked for that man, carried messages. I know everything because no one pays attention to me. I know how it works. Then he Left with his money and now there is me. I trade. I do business. No one can find Jack. I make silly voices down tubes. I am analogue. I am a shadow. Without Jack, nothing can happen. So they must deal with me. But someone did not want to. And they found me.’

‘Someone?’

The boy shrugged. ‘The Fleet. Someone. The photograph is me, not Shola. I am the target, the bullseye.’

‘Do you know who?’

The boy nodded. ‘Yes. It is the same, you see? Something had to be done, so it was done. I must die, so an attempt was made. That is the Fleet. There are no people. No one breaks the law! It is just what is necessary and very sad. Shola was collateral. Great shame. The island will burn and my mother will die. Very sad. Film at eleven, drinks and dips.

‘But Jack is Jack. In Jack’s world there are orders and people who give orders. It is personal. You want to know who? The Fleet. The Fleet killed Shola. And Jack does not forgive. So I will kill the Fleet. Shola was my friend and there was no reason…’ He blew air through his teeth in a hiss, tried again. ‘There was no reason for that! No reason at all, just stupid! Why would anyone—’ He swallowed. ‘You stopped it. You saved my life and I saw you and I knew. I knew everything then. I had another plan, before, but it was weak. Tigerman is full of win. Tigerman is everything.’

‘Tigerman is a joke. Here today, gone tomorrow. A madman in a funny hat.’

‘Not so. Tigerman is everyone. He fights crime! He walks through fire and saves the innocent. He burns up drugs. He stops riots.’

‘Your riots.’ Dog-killing, because it would upset the English in particular, and the BBC would have to cover it. And because Sandrine hated dogs, he realised, remembering the cobblestone and the mongrel. She was afraid of them, the way some people are afraid of spiders. Everything serves twice. Three times. Nothing is one thing. Everything is the story.

‘Not mine. Mancreu’s. You cannot make riots. Only make the possibility. You cannot control them. Real riots, real fire.’ The boy stretched out his hand for a moment. ‘Real Tigerman.’ He left the hand there for a moment as if he hoped the Sergeant would take it, but it did not come within reach. Then he straightened and drew his hand back. ‘And tonight he will expose the Fleet. He will show the world. Live on TV! We interrupt this programme! It will be known: this is what is done here, under the cloak of law! Made possible by the nice countries, in the name of the good people. This place is a convenience for killers and torturers and tax evaders and drug bankers, for scum of the earth. But Tigerman will not stand for it! He will not back down! Because he knows what is right.’

‘They’d blow my fucking head off!’

The boy nodded. ‘Yes. They would. Lester Ferris, the hero of Beauville many times over, killed by his own side for being a good man. Close-up pictures. Scandal! He gave his life for a cause, for a people who had made him their own. You see? That is a story! And there is continuity. There is shape. First the cave, then the footrace, now this. And then I would say you gave me something for if this happened, and I would read Inoue’s report. “Mancreu need not burn.” Tigerman’s last will and testament. “This mess was made to order. It is a lie from the beginning. The island need not burn, but if it might burn then it is an un-place and all the dirty deeds can be at home here.” Two weeks ago, no one would care. Today, from Tigerman? It is the greatest show on Earth! Now tell me they would carry on! Tell me they would dare, after Tunisia and Egypt and Libya, after Khaled Saeed and Mohamed Bouazizi! No. No. People would march around the world. Tigerman for ever! For Mancreu! They would. It is a great story. Everyone wants to touch that kind of story.’ He punched the air, then slumped. ‘Already there are shirts. Shirts, and a band in Kentucky. By tomorrow there will be dolls. In six months, a movie. And it would have been an Oscar winner, too.

‘I was going to buy my island with your death, you see. But now, not.’

The Sergeant dragged air into his lungs. He felt as if he was carrying the whole island on his chest. ‘Why not?’

The boy threw his hands in the air. ‘Because White Raoul tricked me! And then he tricked you! He is a wicked, deceitful old man who thinks he is wise, and now words have been spoken and it is impossible to unhear them!’ And then his voice caught, with emotion or puberty or a little of both, the Sergeant could not be sure. ‘Why couldn’t you come before?’

‘I’m here now.’

‘Too late.’

‘It doesn’t have to be.’

The boy nodded as if this was a perfect statement of despair. ‘I am a leaf on the wind,’ he intoned.

The Sergeant had no idea what this meant. He said so.

The boy looked at him as if he were a barbarian or an idiot. ‘Stay here. I will show you.’ He walked to the door through which the Sergeant had come in, and closed it behind him.

A few moments later the Sergeant realised he had locked it and taken the car.

His first reaction was a sort of weary resignation. He was, genuinely, not cut out to be a costumed hero. This proved it. You’d never see the pros in this situation. Batman would never have managed to get himself locked into a dilapidated hotel lobby while someone nicked his car, any more than Superman ever woke up and found that Lois Lane had sold naked pictures of his body to the tabloids. Not even the Blue Beetle had ever had to deal with that sort of crap. But here he was, and the person who had created him, the evil boy genius who was both his herodaddy and his nemesis, had turned the key and left him standing by a plastic fern like a pillock.

It occurred to him that he was upset about this because for as long as he concentrated on it his heart would not actually break into a thousand pieces and kill him.

And then it occurred to him to wonder where the boy was going with his vehicle. Away, obviously, although there was nowhere which was away enough for a moment like this, for discovery and revelation and the end of a friendship.

Some part of him objected that they had never truly been friends, they had been something else, and the distinction was important. But leave that aside for now, the car was worrying at him, and the locked door. Away, yes, was a fine place to go when you were in pain, but where away? The boy was escaping in possession of a car full of explosives and equipment. Well, so. A child driving a load of military gear was no more likely to crash than a child driving anything else.

Not friends. Something else.

And the boy was not fleeing with the nearest vehicle to hand. He was answering a question. The plan, after all, was still a good one. It lacked only a sacrifice, a lynchpin. Would ‘child-criminal emperor slain by Fleet’ clinch the deal? It would certainly create a story, hours and hours of coverage, endless debate. Dead children always lead, always require soul-searching by organisations which on most days cannot locate their soul, let alone interrogate it. But someone would still need to deliver the coup, to accuse and to interpret.

Say, a heroic non-commissioned officer, recently seen in action helping fleeing refugees. And if that NCO also happened to reveal that he was the mystery man who had quelled a riot, who fought crime on those outlaw streets…

He stared in horror at the nearest table, at the papers spread out upon it like a map drawn for an idiot. Stages of a media campaign. And documents, too, showing his adoption of the boy, needing only his signature.

Not friends. We were never friends.

And now he thought about it: of course not. ‘Friends’ with your kids was a modern invention, the stuff of daytime talk shows and quality time, of that craven insistence that children make their own decisions while you lurked in the shadows to penalise the ones you didn’t like. It was all so much nonsense. ‘Friends’ did not mean what it meant between adults, a balance of selves and strengths. It meant setting standards your children could not maintain, because if they could you wouldn’t need to set standards for them. It meant child-rearing by remote and by phone. It was an abdication, for parents who never wanted to admit they were grown-ups, who dressed from shops which were too young for them and listened to the new music to stay in the swim.

To do the job right was something else, older and different and patient and endlessly enduring, something which got stronger the more it was clawed and scratched, which bounded and uplifted and waited delightedly to be surpassed. Which knew and understood and did not shy away from the understanding that there would be pain. Which could accept shattering, could reassemble itself, could stand taller than before.

No, not friends at all.

He laughed, and knew exactly what to say.

Jack.

I am your father.

He used the sharkpunch on the door, and stepped through.