The Albatross

by ComsatAngel

The real story about the Martian's undeclared war against Earth! Captain Scarlet through a lens darkly.

6. Chapter 6

14) The Nice Man Cometh

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

STATE CAPITOL ASSEMBLY BUILDING

AUSTIN

TEXAS

Mad Jack was back! The word was out amongst the staff in the building, making the September air seem even colder than normal, creating a stir from basement to penthouse; secretaries found memos to type, supervisors discovered people who weren't working, security guards made people queue for searching.

A court clerk received a call from their contact at the airport, saying that McClusky just left, a message that got passed up the line until it reached a penthouse suite, that of Congressional Aide Cheyne. He passed it back down the line of communication again until it percolated down to the lowest level.

Great, he told himself, not meaning it at all. Half an hour to prepare, not long but it will help.

In fact it didn't. Ever one for a bit of sharp practice, McClusky had in fact left the airport thirty minutes ahead of his official convoy. The first anyone in the Assembly Building knew of this was when an olive drab jeep screeched to a tyre-abrading halt in the street below. Four uniformed figures leapt out, the tallest of them leading the way up the Capitol steps two at a time. Once they reached the portico two armed guards hesitated before coming to attention. Their salutes were returned by the men in uniform. When the party had passed the two guards exchanged knowing glances with each other.

Mad Jack and his companions did not enter the building via the lobby, going over to the lifts on the left instead. Taking the middle one they rode express to the top floor by using a MagIC key to override the security brakes, thus reaching the top floor without being seen by any but a handful of people.

Cheyne was dialling through to his manager when the suite door flew violently open under the impact of a kick, done for effect since Mad Jack unlocked it first. The aide jumped so violently that the cordless fell out of his hand. And then Cheyne's worst possible scenario came true as Senator McClusky, wearing a camouflage uniform with the silver eagles and the Lone Star Guard fatigue hat he favoured, stamped into the suite.

'Hi Cheyne, surprise surprise! On your feet, quickly now boy.'

'Ahh, uh, yes sir, Senator. Mister McClusky.'

The tall Texan took his aides place and put his booted feet squarely upon the veneered table top. Cheyne winced internally; that table top cost a hundred dollars per square inch and here the Senator was, treading dirt into it and scratching it, too.

'Cheyne, Sergeant Farrell here has come to inspect the security of your premises and staff and I'd like you to escort him while he does so. Is that okay with you? 'Cause it is with me.'

The aide gulped awkwardly. There was no realistic way he could refuse and remain in employment.

Sergeant Farrell looked extremely bored, cracking his knuckles one after the other. Essentially a five-and-a-half foot square of muscle, the NCO obviously couldn't care less about inspecting the Capitol Building, it's staff or the security precautions. Nor did McClusky, but he did want Cheyne out of the way. Putting a meaty arm around Cheyne's shoulder, Farrell carefully pushed him out of the room, pulling the door shut behind them. The three remaining men visibly relaxed. One of them, with a major's insignia, produced what appeared to be a humidor and swept the room with it. The single light in the device blinked green.

'Okay, we're clean.'

McClusky expected the room to be clean and bugless since he had spent several thousand dollars on interior design, hiring an ex-Agency man to install a jamming device, when the room was refurbished a year ago.

'Well,' said McClusky. 'Shall we have a drink? Dave, you can play mother.'

Dave Cordman, the major, poured out three tumblers of whisky with a stiff jolt in each, then handed one each to McClusky and another to the third man, Peter Stone, a captain.

'Here's to a hit,' toasted McClusky, macarbrely.

'Ah, right, cheers,' replied Cordman, knocking back a big swallow. Stone drank but remained silent.

'By the way, did our weak link problem get resolved?' asked Mad Jack. Stone took another sip, grinned bleakly but stayed silent, still.

'Oh yes,' replied Cordman. 'We took a day trip to one of the open-hearth furnaces up at the Scranton Museum and threw the weak link in. Total melt down.'

A satisfied silence settled.

'Are we going to increase volume of the product we're shipping?' asked Stone.

Mad Jack shook his head.

'Nah. Expansion is how we acquired the weak link in the first place.'

Another silence fell while they sipped away, savouring the spirit.

'This is top-dollar whisky, Jack,' commented Cordman, impressed. The senator winked.

'All the way from Glen Shiel, Scotland.'

Cordman blinked. What about the embargo? Ran through his mind, and the senator picked up on his expression.

'Hey, Dave, remember my name. Blood is thicker than water, unless it's aqua vitae, better known as uisge beathe in Gaelic.'

After a while, bored of the business going on between McClusky and Cordman, to which he was emphatically not privy, Stone sat down at the room's terminal and began tapping in request codes at random. One after another the terminal rejected every word he put in. Mad Jack looked on in amusement, having finished discussing things with Cordman. The latter walked over to the busy key-tapper.

'Pete, you may as well leave it. Cheyne will have altered all the access passwords. You may have read the background file on him but blind luck will only get you so far.'

Stone cursed and punched the screen.

'How do we get in?'

Cordman momentarily wished he had one of those Total Access Computer Terminals that the Fed Commies issued to their agents. With one of those it would have been easy. Without one there was only one way he knew of at the moment, and that would be to dial in to Open Sesame, have them lock onto Cheyne's modem and speed a datastream to break the passwords. An expensive process costing upwards of a thousand dollars per second.

'What time do you have?' asked McClusky, suddenly.

'Two twenty-three. We're okay for a while yet.'

'Yeah. Oh, by the way, I hear some longhair liberal comedian is using my name in his act, saying how reactionary I am in regard to drugs. Sending me up.'

Cordman frowned. So?

'Isn't that good?'

'No it isn't!' snapped Mad Jack. 'I don't want my name associated with drugs, hard, soft or couldn't care less, full stop. See to it.'

Great, thought Cordman, careful to keep his disapproval internal. No, actually, wait a minute, we can make this look good. Use Phillips, that homo PR aide of Cheyne's, we've got a hold on him; get him to give our comedian friend an envelope of cash after informing a friendly journo. That way the longhair gets a reaming, Phillips goes down and Senator Orde is blackened by implication. Two birds, one stone. Yeah!

'Okay, sir, consider it done.'

Meanwhile, Stone had managed, by sheer luck, persistence ( and a lack of imagination on the part of Cheyne, who used his wife's name as a password), to gain access to part of Cheyne's computer records. Not all of them, just enough to make interesting reading.

'Hey, come look what I found. Phone calls, a record of phone calls Cheyne's made.'

The monitor displayed a list of the phone calls that Cheyne had been making that day, starting from early that morning. Stone proudly flourished a hand, showing what he stumbled across. When Cordman came over to have "an investigate" he spotted an outgoing call to the offices of Senator Orde, made only minutes before they had arrived.

'Senator, guess what we found. A call going out -'

'To Senator Orde's office. Yeah, I know.'

Now, how did he know that! Wondered Cordman. If he knew already he kept it under his coonskin pretty damn well.

'Hey, Dave, it was pretty friggin' obvious, you know. Orde put pressure on the selection panel and one of his pigeons got appointed, obviously to keep an eye on me and report back to Orde and his staff. It goes on more at election time, that's the only difference. And before you ask, yes we have a man in their camp. Well, now that I know for certain what Cheyne is, he's neutralised.'

Yeah, right, agreed Cordman. Someone else to take the place of Phillips, in fact. Oh, that's neat! I like it. Occasionally he found himself wondering if perhaps Senator Orde didn't have a member of staff plotting his, David M. Cordman's, demise, thoughts that even more occasionally led him to question his involvement in the cut-throat world of American politics. However, once you were in, you didn't leave. Not voluntarily, certainly.

'Two forty-five. Time to go. Button up tightly, folks.'

They went ostentatiously downstairs, making sure that their presence became known to one and all, spreading what Mad Jack called "a little healthy fear" amongst the Capitol workers. McClusky stopped once or twice to chat to people he knew.

By the time the threesome reached the lobby it was nearly three o'clock and before they stepped outside Mad Jack drew Cordman aside for a quiet word.

'Dave, just a word. I know you've organised this. That's all good and fine, but bear this in mind - if I go, my people know where your family live and ten minutes later you'll be a widower without kids. So if Orde got to you, to arrange this, they're dead. Okay! Good! Now, let's go.'

Not for the first time, Cordman considered how chilling it was, the way McClusky could switch from paranoid threats in a jovial tone to an expressionless matter of fact tone, maintaining a cheery smile the whole time.

By now the official motor cavalcade had arrived and parked in the reserved space outside the Capitol Building. In some confusion, the guards and drivers were sitting in their vehicles, leaning on them or sitting on the Capitol steps. Onec McClusky started down these steps people all leapt around busily, communing on earlink monitors, firing up engines, opening doors.

Mad Jack reached halfway down the steps before the event happened, as arranged. Between lifting up his right foot and putting it down, an invisible hammer swung from nowhere to hit him over his entire chest, driving all the breath from his lungs. The steps flew sideways, then up and sky came over, then steps again. He breath wouldn't come and he couldn't feel his chest. The edge of a step pressed into his cheek. Nothing hurt, not yet, in fact he felt numb all over. Gradually he realised there was a chorus of shouting and yelling going on all around him. Peter Stone shouted "The roof! The roof!"; a crackle of shots were taking place in the background.

It took less than a second for McClusky to realise that he had been shot, by a gunman probably situated across 15th Street, on the roof or upper floors of the District Capitol Office.

All this for the Ethics Committee, he grimly told himself, then passed out.

Father McCutcheon turned the radio off. He tried hard not to feel the hand of Divine Retribution behind the shooting of Mad Jack McClusky, knowing that the fratricidal politics of the New America Party were more likely to be responsible. Still, the biter bit, he told himself. Now he knows what it's like, to suddenly get shot for no reason.

The priest was not bitter about those of his friends and parishoners who had been disappeared, and in fact could find it in his heart to pray for the souls of those who did the disappearing act. Faith. It consoled and supported him in his struggle against the forces that had hijacked political power in America, forces that even now would be groping their way towards him. With a determined straightening of his back, he turned the power on and began to watch as the ancient Gestetner machine began its noisy duty, cranking off the sheets that he would distribute later tonight to the group leaders. They in turn would pass them out to their group members, who would paste or post or hide the leaflets where ordinary people could see them. McCutcheon was a member of the American Catholic Underground, that tentacular (not to say hydra-like) organisation that had developed in opposition to the NAP, one of the weedlike underground groups that so distracted the FBI . The priest had discovered the Gestetner wrapped in a rotting tarpaulin down in the cellars of the Catholic Mission over a year ago, and knew immediately that it had been a sign from God: spread the truth, give people the gospel news and defy the censored media. He knew people here in Seattle in the Underground and promptly joined, creating the leaflet titled, simply, "The Light". Never more than a double-sided sheet of A4, it had so aroused the ire of the FBI, the NAP, local and state police and for all he knew the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms too, that a million-dollar reward now sat on his head. Despite that, he had been at liberty for a year, puncturing the streams of lies and deceit that the government pumped out, receiving tips and information from friends and relatives, from people within the establishment who hated what it had become, from sources abroad.

Finally, the copying machine clattered to a stop and he turned it off, with an affectionate pat. He feared the noise it made when operating, knowing that it might be the clue that tipped off the police to his operation. In the fall he'd had to move it from the Mission when a curious passerby had heard the racket through an injudiciously opened window. They might not say anything to anyone, but then again … And the transfer had been the closest to disaster he'd ever come. He'd been driving to the church with Stan Mazurka, a brawny parishoner who could carry the machine single-handed, when a patrol car pulled them over on a random check. Stan had paled and muttered prayers when the patrolman swaggered over. Once the hard-eyed policeman saw the priest and the tarp over the Gestetner, he got curious and told them to uncover it. Father McCutcheon was thinking of excuses as he tugged the cloth loose and the cop saw the machine, his eyes widening a little. For a second he looked at the machine, then gestured for McCutcheon to cover it again.

'Nah. Nothing here,' he called to his partner. 'Sorry to have troubled you, Father,' he said, with a deadpan wink.

'The guy upstairs heard me,' avowed Stan.

Father McCutcheon did not debate the point.

Now, Stan was back again, in the chapel. He had ushered in a small, dark and exotic-looking woman who looked around her with a curious and unreadable expression.

Mexican? wondered Father McCutcheon, or Latino of some kind. He was puzzled at her presence here, near the Canadian border, when Mexico was so much further south. The pipeline would get her to Canada if she needed, but Mexico would have been closer for her.

'Oh, hi Father. This is -'

'Ruth Strauss,' said the woman, very quickly.

'Shalom alechem,' said McCutcheon, extending his hand. The woman blinked rapidly, apparently taken by surprise at his unquestioning acceptance of a jew in aCatholic church. 'The description "Catholic" can also apply with a small "c", Ms Strauss. A fifth of our membership is made up of Protestants. In this group we already have three jews - well, one Orthodox, one Liberal and one Marxist-Leninist who's declares himself an atheist. We are united in our resistance to a great evil and denominational differences tend to disappear as a result. Since you are here, Stan and his loyaltly committee have already vetted you. How can I help?'

Ruth Strauss blinked again.

'Ah - well - ah - this is a bit fast for me, really. I sort of expected a long settling-in period.'

Stan laughed silently. The priest glared at him and continued.

'No, sadly we don't have settling-in. Our members have to hit the ground running. Perhaps you would like to ask some questions, find your feet?'

'Oh yeah. What are you doing here?'

'Tonight I'm preparing a release of the pamphlet we send out. It's called "The Light".' The woman's eyes widened at that and she looked impressed. 'I see you know of it already! Yes, I write and print it from here.'

'Wow! I remember when I saw that the first time! That is so cool! What's in it this time?'

McCutcheon cleared his throat in embarassment, not used to the praise.

'Uh, well, this is one dedicated to two Special Agents of the FBI who decided their conscience didn't allow them to carry on in the job as before. There's Special Agent York, who objected to what he had to do on moral grounds; he sent in information to us about government eavesdropping and mail-searching. The other side of the leaflet is for Special Agent XYZ, who hasn't been caught but who gave us information on how the FBI tracks and deals with protest groups like ours, because he felt that all the internal spying the FBI did meant it neglected other duties.'

Ruth nodded to herself at this, seemingly impressed at McCutcheon's testimony.

'And now, Ms Strauss, I have to ask you what you can do for us.'

'No problem. My brother is a mail inspector in Seattle. Last month they got his boyfriend on a morals charge and Steve is hopping mad, ready to do them down in revenge. He wanted some way to get back at them and I said I'd look into it. I know there's the Democratic Labour Group, bu tI didn't know how to contact them, and the Rainbow are too violent. So - here I am.'

McCutcheon visibly perked up. A mail inspector! Things were on the up!

15) A Parting

RSFG

MUNICH

SEPTEMBER

Alex slept only a little. One of his kneecaps hurt again and as a result he lay awake next to Morika until five o'clock. She was quite a surprise package, all things considered, but what she considered him to be - that was less sure. Still, he needed to get back to Room A312 or Olukaside would tannoy him at one minute past seven. With a twinge of conscience Alex left a non-commital note for his paramour and left.

C# for twenty seconds, a tuneful and loud alarm call. Alex groped his way out of bed and got dressed on automatic pilot. This time he stuck the Zap Gun down the elasticated side of his boot. The instant the door opened a cloud of evil-smelling smoke greeted his nostrils, Olukaside's herbal mixture preceding the man himself.

'So here you are. Okay, follow me and I'll brief you.'

'Follow to where?'

'The canteen. I passed my report on to the Iceberg last night. They called me back this morning at ten to six. There appears to be a pattern of sorts emerging.'

Alex felt blank. They picked up ersatz coffee and toast with sliced sausage and sat.

'Not just about this incident, there are others, inexplicable ones that are way out of the normal profile.'

To Alex this sounded rather vague, only faintly threatening. Like thunder in the distance.

16) Hot Air

ICE07

GEOSTATIONARY PLOT

EASTERN MEDITERANNEAN

SEPTEMBER

Officially members aboard ICE07 were on permanent duty and had no leisure time. Of course, human nature being what it is, this nonsense got treated with the derision it deserved and members held a certain portion of their day as time off, remaining nominally on-call.

Now, on the observation deck, an informal discussion took place between UNION assignees around a private viewing booth with the screen left on but the sound reduced in volume. Bibor was there, along with Rossi, Gray and others.

'There is a pattern here, a network -' began Bibor.

'Bull!' snorted Gray. 'That's a nonsense, how could there be!'

'No, I agree with Bibor. There is a connection,' stated Rossi.

'Seriously?'

'Look. The Threat Assessment Package has sorted all this out. There is a connection between those bomb attacks at Red Rock, the American military engineers going berserk, Atom City being attacked.'

'Must be quite a persuasive connection to join the dots on all three of those.'

'Yes. It's our ex-Number Two, Bob Chernovsky. Seen at all three sites.'

'Perhaps. We can't trust the Americans to tell the truth about anything, you know.'

'They didn't report anything, we eavesdropped on them, got the information via FIDO. They don't know that we know that they know.'

'Alright, so Chernovsky is involved. Where does that leave us?'

'So there's the pattern.'

'I still think there's a network.'

'No, can't see it. What pattern is there? No-one gains from an attack on Krasniy Kameniev, no-one at all.'

'Perhaps the Russians would gain from an attack on Atom City.'

'Yeah, and Chernovsky's Russian. Just about proves it, eh? It's a plot by him to take over the whole world.'

'Oh come on! Chernovsky was in UNION before the wheel got invented. How the hell do we know he's gone over -'

'How likely is it?'

'There's no alternative, he must be responsible.'

While his subordinates argued amongst each other to no conclusion, Weiss communed with more high-powered FedCon members. Not in person, only by broadcast. As he saw it, merely one of the interminable meetings he needed to attend to; Bibor ought to be assuming a portion of them but lacked the experience needed, an irksome reminder about the loss of Chernovsky.

Which, by coincidence, happened to be the topic of discussion at the moment.

'How serious is this man's defection?' asked one of the Security Review Commission members. 'I mean, he can be replaced, can't he?'

'Yes. That isn't the crux of the matter. Chernovsky was my Number Two for five years and an assignee for three years before that an inductee before that. In short, he knows UNION inside-out from the bottom upwards. As a result of his presumed defection, capture or interrogation we have been forced to change codes, ciphers and various software packages dealing with security. A long and slow process, I warn you.'

Costly, too, Weiss might have added. Contingency plans for such an eventuality had been laid down years ago but their implementation to date was rather stumbling.

'Can we say, then, that currently measures are being undertaken to resolve the assumed defection of an important UNION member?'

Oh yes, better get the story right before the media got hold of it. A display screen lit up with a unanimous collection of green lights via broadcast; there was a clear consensus between the scattered Committee members. They moved on to the next item on their tele-agenda: Red Rock and Various Security Aspects Associated With It. Weiss reported that a UNION agent had been despatched on the Red Rocket when the extent of the disaster became obvious, hoping to impress his overseers with this, since the launch schedule for Krasniy Rackyeta had been brought forward by a month and discomfited a great many people; tourists, passengers, crew and System Command traffic controllers. With a high-cost, long-burn, rapid transit to Mars there would be an extra billion marks on the balance sheet, but Weiss knew from past experience that when Mars was concerned expense meant little. All nations working in harmony, that kind of back-slapping self-congratulatory stuff, where nobody wanted to play the villain and cut the budget.

As he mentioned, security precluded any transmission from their agent on Mars unless exceptional circumstances warranted it; there were still the American bases on the Moon to consider, their Big Ear satellites and monitoring stations, all of which would eagerly eavesdrop on any Earthbound transmission.

17) Our Man On Mars

RED ROCK GEOSTATIONARY PLOT

MARS

EARTH RELATIVE SEPTEMBER

The Red Rocket wasn't capable of travel in an atmosphere and it couldn't cope with gravity wells, either. This meant that it needed to stand well off in orbit whilst passengers and crew were ferried up from or down to it's planet of call. Despite the name, the vessel that travelled between Mars, the Moon and Earth looked nothing like the conventional streamlined missile so beloved of old. The forward section was a torus with two cross-corridors running along two diameters at right angles to each other; and the juncture of these was a cylindrical body. From the rear of the torus ran another length of corridor, terminating in the power plant, a spherical unit. Passengers and cargo travelled in the torus, crew in the cylinder.

From the departing, Mars-bound shuttle craft, Anderson Lovell could see the interplanetary spaceship in all its shabby grandeur, large enough to be impressive, old enough to be worn, important enough to have a "paint-job" annually. It cost too much to simply be abandoned and the intricate finances to replace it were not yet agreed.

Lovell bore the official title of an MJO investigative officer on assignment to Red Rock. In reality he was a UNION agent-nominee out to do a thorough research job into the sabotage attempts. His brief was to delve into the background, organisation, systems and personalities of the Martian base, in addition to the explosive sabotage.

'Attention please, attention please,' said a hidden speaker, which then repeated the phrase in seven languages, of which Lovell recognised only French and German.

'We are about to enter the Martian atmosphere. For your safety please lock you retaining stanchion in place. Those of you with window seats -' all six passengers in fact '- may look down as we begin our descent. You will see the stunning Martian landscape, marvel at exotic hues and colours and thrill to the many marvellous sights.'

Lovell began to wonder at the attitude of the pilot, coming over sarcastic like that. He peered out of his window, looking at the light side of the demarcator, as the surface expanded away in all directions, Red Rock becoming faintly visible. Clusters of domes, stellate interconnecting walkways, submerged corridors. A large block of lights blinking rhythmically with the phi effect showed where shuttles landed. Near to that, too near in the opinion of Lovell, were the swelling tops of liquid fuel tanks. As they dropped lower still, more details became visible, like the lights shining from semi-polarised windows.

All anti-climactic. Millions of miles from Earth with just this to travel to. Even if most of Red Rock was buried underground there seemed precious little to show for the trillions invested there. So much of gross national product world-wide had been poured into Red Rock that it was said war had been rendered impossible for decades afterwards, due to fiscal depletion.

The shuttle grounded with a thump.

'Okay, here we are. Welcome to Mars. Enjoy your stay because once we leave, that's it, you're stuck here.'

The speaker sounded bored. Understandable really, after their tedious journey across the depths of interstellar space, a process what had no romance to it so far as Lovell could see. Everything aboard the ship was carried out by computer with the crew acting in a supervisory role, intervening only rarely when things went wrong. The entire passage was a far cry from the wonderful special effects "hyperspace" trips taken by space travellers in films.

Releasing his retaining stanchion, Lovell straightened up, hearing his knees crack loudly. A stewardess, face carefully rendered symmetrical by surgery, stalked down the aisle, smiling broadly at each passenger. She ferried them all to the egress port and outside.

Lovell took his first step onto the soil of an alien world and found it hard and unyielding - because he stood on plastic flooring rather than Martian ground. The flooring was past of a corridor, very brightly lit and glaring white. Another anticlimax for Lovell, who discovered that a corridor on Mars looked much like a corridor anywhere else.

A dark-skinned man, possibly Indochinese, waited at the entry gate for arrivals from Earth in order to greet them personally. He shook hands with them all while they crossed the light barrier and underwent sterilisation. It may have been the Antiguan's imagination, but he thought that the man shook his hand with unusual force.

The man, Bhatacharjee by name and Indian by origin, explained that one of the hardest things to come to terms with about Mars was the sheer ordinariness of the indoors environment. As Lovell had already experienced, an enclosed room felt and looked like an enclosed room anywhere with only the perceived change in body weight to remind one of just where you were - and the mind and body soon adjusted to the difference in weight.

18) Crocodile Tears

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

AUSTIN

TEXAS

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

In order to present the common touch, Senator McClusky had been moved into the Eisenhower Memorial Hospital. The media were informed about his tenure in FedCon Wing ("for obvious reasons details about the ward cannot be disclosed"), but were not told that in fact Room 616 was a private suite, attended by a private doctor, two private nurses, guarded by a rota of two officers from the Lone Star Guard, catered by McClusky's own personal chef and bugged by the FBI. Latter point unknown but suspected by the ever suspicious senator. The common touch was strictly for public consumption; McClusky actually held sway in a one-room domain where he ruled as best he could, injuries allowing.

Those injuries were relatively minor if one considered that the senator had been shot; broken ribs, extensive bruising, a fractured cheekbone where he'd hit the steps. Cheyne probably considered himself less fortunate, since he was dead, having been hit above the right eye by a bullet and killed instantly. Cordman and Stone escaped unscathed, as did the mystery assassin.

It was all a construction, of course, carefully planned by Cordman to divert, placate, stall and halt an Ethics Committee investigation of his superior. Four earlier investigations of McClusky came to naught, abruptly halted when Committee members discovered themselves mysteriously targeted by assassins, blackmailers, IRS, or simply disappeared outright. Nothing came back to McClusky, or his people, but the message was clear - if you investigated him, your life and career were both in danger.

However, Senator Orde was a persistent and determined opponent with a formidable bloc behind him. They prevailed upon the President to order the direction of the Ethics Committee's spotlight upon McClusky for a fifth time, following that Senator's recruitment of an infiltrating "weak link". This weak link, one Ralph Quillan by name, worked for Orde. His brief was to obtain dirt on McClusky by any means possible and effectively this meant involvement in what were called "paralegal" activities of McClusky's office. Many senators indulged in such business, since they needed to raise capital in large amounts for patronage, promotions, exclusions and all the unofficial debits involved in senatorial work. Voluntary contributions had dried up long ago under the detested State of Emergency and the insularity it ushered in. Mad Jack needed more income than most, since he was the sponsor of the Lone Star Guard to the tune of ten million dollars per year. His main paralegal prop consisted of large-scale importation of drugs from across the Mexican border (sweet irony). How did McClusky rationalise his drug-running activities? To answer that one would need to understand the mental processes of the man, and no-one did. The government agencies looked on drug-smuggling with ambivalent eyes; yes it was illegal, yes, it funded organised crime, but it also kept the inner cities quieter and more docile and lessened the number of anti-Emergency riots. Other senators carried out their own, equally schizophrenic schemes: Murdoch owned a string of Californian porn parlours (illegal since he came from Nevada), Wisbech had false holding companies trading with FedCon states, even the President, it was rumoured, has a dark, secret operation funding him.

The mystery assassin was Arnold Pressman, a member of Mad Jack's personal entourage, a man Cordman could trust for the job. When Pressman turned up at the pre-arranged rendezvous for payment, Sergeant Stone gave him a surprise present instead, a short burst of gunfire to the head. This apparently motiveless slaying went hand in glove with the assassination attempt on Mad Jack. Expertly manipulated by Dave Cordman, the press and television were able to get bedside footage and coverage of Senator Jack McClusky recovering from surgery. The injured man's brave responses came from careful rehearsal and an autocue.

'Who shot me? Damned if I know, gentlemen. I surely wish I did, then I could return the favour.'

'Have I any ideas about their identity? Well, they sure as hell weren't from the IRS, were they! That was a joke, if the IRS get to hear it. Play safe with those guys, eh?

'Dick Cheyne? Yeah, they told me. Arnie Pressman? No, that I didn't know. Jesus Mary and Joseph, what is this, open season on my staff? Do the rest of them have protection?'

Shortly after the above conversation was broadcast on prime-time national television Senator Orde put a call through to the Ethics Committee chair, even if such an action could bring severe penalties. Whatever the Senator heard didn't please him at all, because he threw his handset brutally at the wall.

Later that same day a known homosexual senatorial aide was found beaten to death in a Nevada hotel room. Also dead in the same room, a needle of pure heroin still stuck in a vein, was a comedian well-known in Chicago.

19) North of Transplutonia

BADFORT TOWERS

LONDON

OCTOBER

Alex returned to his apartment from Germany, feeling vaguely depressed that he and Olukaside were now removed from the Lothar-Theo case. Olukaside considerately warned him about this phenomenon; possibly the most annoying thing about working for UNION was not being able to follow a case to conclusion, since national agencies of member states within FedCon tended to intervene and take over. After that, need-to-know kept matters cloaked in secrecy and it took patience, time and influence to find out what happened in the end, if everyone lived happily ever after, and for most work it simply wasn't worth the time to investigate.

Once he opened the apartment door Alex knew there had been a change. When he entered the living room he discovered just what; his telescope had gone. Nor was the computer sitting on his desk the same one he had left sitting there; instead it was a newer, more expensive model, doubtless minus Alex's painstakingly acquired chess games. UNION action.

Shit, thought the Serb, dropping into a comfortable chair. Thanks for asking me about that, UNION. Another wonderful aspect of the job, one that really brought home the fact that he worked as a spy in an organisation of spies. Picking up a remote handset he recalled the incoming message-dump on his phone. Nothing of interest there, so he went to make a cup of tea, hoping that his much-prized Min hadn't gone the way of telescope and computer. What he needed was company, and also milk.

There lay the rub. Since this was a secure dwelling you couldn't simply invite friends up on a whim. And - Alex lived kilometres out in the suburbs. He'd have to go to company rather than have it come to him.

His ankle hurt, so he rubbed it mindlessly for a few minutes, where the Zap Gun pressed into it ever since Customs had reluctantly returned it to him at Dover. He threw the weapon onto the three-seater and turned on the wall viewer.

Newschannel appeared, giving an economics review of the past quarter that scrolled upwards with lots of charts and diagrams, complete with pauses for hard copy offtakes. Alex frowned and killed the sound, remembering his days of practicing formal English by listening to Newschannel and the received pronunciation of its staff.

Aha! He thought, remembered his mail box, unemptied since he walked in. When he checked there was only one item, a message disk without a label (but a mysterious writer had scribbled "Play me!" on it).

'Good day, citizen,' said an animated face when the disk got played. The androgynous, anonymous, flawless and perfectly symmetrical face must be an animation, surely? Nor was Alex Petrovic a citizen of anywhere whilst he served in FedCon, so the disk had that wrong from the start. 'You have been specially selected for a mission, due to your special qualifications -'

Oh yes? pondered Alex with not a little suspicion, and what qualifications might those be?

'- for detailed hard copy please press F1, thank you. Remember that this is also a one-shot erase-as-it-plays disk and what you have heard will be gone forever. Good luck.'

Pressing F1 brought reams of print rolling out of the unit.

They must want me to complete an encyclopaedia … He read on. No, they wanted him to go to Moldavia.

'Moldavia!' guffawed Neil, almost blowing beer down his nose. 'Also known as the armpit of Europe.'

As far as Neil and Eric knew, Alex now worked as a relief officer of the MJO and had been required to travel abroad. Privately Neil doubted this cover, but when he started to question his friend a little more deeply, the Serb's eyes narrowed slightly, even if the smile remained. Neil, untypically, took the hint and stopped asking.

'It is supposed to be a little er, backward, out there, yes,' added Eric. '"Under-resourced" is the current phrase.'

Alex popped another can of beer.

'I have to check institutions dealing with orphaned children. Orphans. Children. Christ Risen, what I don't know about stray kids would fill volumes. I'm not married - despite Mama's best attempts - so I know nothing about children.'

The sound of "Mama" set Neil off again, since the word seemed so incongruous. Eric stared at each of them in turn, a little bewildered. Then he shrugged and took anther sip of beer.

Alex had earlier decided to abandon his apartment for the evening. It felt like a prison cell, designed to keep him in as much as keeping others out; you couldn't invite people around without an appointment and it didn't keep unwelcome visitors like UNION out.

'When do you leave?'

'Not straight away. If I leave on the shuttle to Belgrade I can see my family en route for a couple of hour, so I'm going late tomorrow on that. It'll be a surpise.'

'A what?'

'Surprise. I meant surprise. Shit, this beer is strong.'

Neil counted a dozen empty beer cans on the flooring, so inebria stalking amongst them wasn't unexpected. Eric decided to tune into the Adult Channel, which he did successfully via the remote, but he then dropped the device on the floor, where it bounced heavily and lay still. Neil swore heartily, Eric looking guiltily at him.

'Dickhead. You've set the anti-theft chip off now. We can't change channels now.' He explained to Alex that the set, second hand, came cheap because the remote, if handled roughly, would set the television working at full volume on the last channel selected for at least an hour. An anti-theft function.

'Look what's on! Blaster Squad. This is all your fault, Eric.'

Alex looked alternately morose then annoyed. "Blaster Squad" was a British home-grown entertainment, one of the ultra-violent cop shows that outlived their progenitors across the Atlantic; still enormously popular on this side. Nominally the programme in question lasted for thirty minutes of which the introduction and closing credits took up three minutes, adverts another three minutes, plot, characterisations, segues and landscapes took another four minutes. The remaining twenty minutes consisted of gunfire, killing, explosions and sudden death with a myriad variations every week. Alex detested the programme almost as much as "Pander'. To avoid watching it he borrowed a large towel from the kitchen and draped it over the screen.

Eventually their conversation trickled to an end under a combination of fatigue and alcohol. Pleading tiredness, Alex got to crash out in the living room, under an old quilt that Neil dug out from a deep chest. It felt strange to fall asleep in an unfamiliar room in the dark, under a slightly musty blanket.

To the later torment of Alex, his dream came as a minutely detailed reconstruction of one day as "La Loco Motiva" near Nuevo Laredo, less a dream than a video replay, exact in all details. Alex playing the part of a mysterious fourth-wall camera.

This time there were no other volunteers in the market square at dawn, just Alex and a battered Volvo 6 by 10, with incongruously bright patches over bullet-holes in the bodywork. The vehicle, named "La Loca", possessed a legendary ability to keep going under any circumstances; rain, mud, bullets, mist, bombs or plain bad driving meant nothing to it, despite (or even because) the self-guidance unit being a jury-rigged relic, a decade older than the truck.

Alex ambled over to a stall, where the holder was setting up, and bought a small melon for breakfast. Raw and sweet, it made his mouth pucker, even in the dream. It had to be a dream because there didn't seem to be any colour in the world.

'Hi and good morning to you. Can't you sleep?'

It was Lanfranc, a Canadian responsible for the FedCon administration in Camp Two. Because of his nationality and accent he had been treated with considerable distrust and dislike by the refugees, until his unstinting hard work and self-effacing nature won them over. Still, he must be a brave man, daring to work along a border where his accent, skin and way of speaking might mean being mistaken for an American and murdered. Alex felt respect rather than like for the man, but he was sincere about what he did, to the point of taking supplies when drivers were in short supply.

'No. Once I awaken up I do not be getting back to sleep again. What are you being doing at this time?' Back then his English had been a bit erratic.

'I'm looking for volunteers. And do you know, I just found one.'

This oblique reference didn't apply to Alex. A new arrival had come to replace Sienkiewicz (last heard of departing west with a stolen truck, a stolen gun and an under-age Mexican girl). Eager to please, this arriviste promptly volunteered to do driving duty, unaware of what it involved. Lanfranc had come hunting an experienced driver who would either dissuade or adopt their new assistant.

'Who are they, this new person?'

'An Irish guy called McDonaghy. Young, enthusiastic, cheerful -'

'Already I hate him,' complained Alex, only half joking, since he felt old, resigned and glum. Sudden embarrassment: the Irishman appeared from nowhere, out of thin air in very dreamlike fashion.

'Aha. How are you, Mack Don Agee?' asked Alex, not only embarrassed but unsure of how to pronounce this Celtic interloper's name.

'I'm fine, thanks. How's yourself, Mister -'

'Petrovic, pronounced with a "vich". Just call me Alex, it is easier. I hope you are all ready'

'Ready? Ready for what?'

Lanfranc put a paternal arm around McDonaghy's shoulder.

'More of that later. Alex, will you come over to my office?'

All three trekked over to Lanfranc's office, a small adobe-plastered demesne filled with elderly furniture old enough to fetch a fortune in any European antiques shop. Newly installed screens, printers and interfaces were starkly out of place in this setting, which could have come from a century ago. A large bar chart on one cluttered wall showed the current condition of various aspects of Camp Two: Supplies, Edible: Violet. Supplies, Non-Edible: Blue. Water: Blue. Transport, Rail: OUT; Air: OUT; Road: Red. Due to the American rolling sabotage programme the transport of supplies by road was difficult, impossible by rail and suicidal by air.

'Good news or bad news first? Okay, good it is. The Lone Star Guard are sending an honour guard to Dallas for a civic parade of some sort. That's a thousand or so less to worry about.'

'And the bad news?' prompted Alex. 'There is always bad news.' Not that it seemed the sort of thing he'd actually said, perhaps that meant he was dreaming.

''There always is bad news. As you know, that idiot from Manchester crashed the water tanker en route to Camp Three. We couldn't salvage it and the Lone Stars used it for target practice last night, so all that's left of it are two axles and a transmission shaft.'

'That's very interesting. And?'

'Camp Two is short of water. Short of food but shorter on water. We are going to load up La Loca with water blivets and run a mercy mission to our thirsty neighbours.'

McDonaghy visibly beamed, eager to make the run between camps instantly if that were possible. Alex and Lanfranc became aware of their novice's dash when they were all three loading ten-litre water blivets into the Volvo. The Irishman thumped the side of the cargo compartment with a meaty fist.

'Is this armour-plated?' he asked. 'Only I noticed the springs are low on it's suspension.'

Alex laughed out loud with grim, veteran amusement.

'No, no. Armour plating? I am afraid not! This is just sheet metal and the springs are low because the suspension is -how is it?'

'Screwed?' suggested Lanfranc, not seeing anything humorous.

'Exactly, yes, the suspension is screwed. We get a very bumpy ride in La Loca but she is fast. Armour plates would slow her down too much.'

'Couldn't you have just a little armour plate?'

Alex scowled.

'What do you think that this is the army! Christ Risen, we drive fast to miss the bullets, not slow to let them hit us.'

By now a few refugees with nothing else to do had gathered in the market square, watching the truck being loaded and the three strangers loading it. Alex went through a test of the vehicle, going so far as to run the engine for ten minutes. McDonaghy was appalled by the noise and smoke produced during the warm-up, to the amusement of Alex, who considered this morning's test to be quieter than usual.

Before allowing McDonaghy in to the cab, Alex stressed a few ground rules. One, do as you're told. Two, always keep moving. Three, if you're stopped for any reason at all, get out of the cab on the side opposite the Americans. Four, if you got out of the cab then take cover behind the road camber and keep crawling towards the nearest camp. There were all sorts of tales of people who didn't follow those rules and died from neglect.

Camp Two slowly came to life when Lanfranc stopped the loading and gave Alex a roster greenscreen to sign, a release form that said he departed freely and without duress, knowing the dangers the situation involved. McDonaghy signed too. The pair climbed up into the cab, Alex patting the St Christopher's medal Mama had sent him and which hung from the rear-view mirror. The Irishman looked curiously at his partner, then muttered a benediction and touched the medal himself. After all, he told himself, what harm can it do - a little good luck never goes amiss. There were other good luck charms, too - a crucifix wired to the radiator, a sprig of heather stapled to the back of the driver's seat, other medals that Mrs Petrovic had sent nestling in the glove compartment, the good wishes of Camp Two and "their" driver.

Lanfranc tapped on the driver's door. Alex rolled the window down.

'Which route are you taking? Any idea?'

Alex shrugged his shoulders. He considered it to be bad luck to decide or make a choice in advance, based on his past experience, and he was still in one piece.

Still warm from the test run, the Volvo's engine started first time, ticking over with an impressive rumble. Alex selected manual for the gears, then pulled his safety cradle down.

'Web in, we are going off.'

The trick was not to raise dust. Therefore, no harsh acceleration or wheel-spinning take off. Instead, a steady calm acceleration up to ninety.

'This is the easy part,' yelled Alex over the engine thunder. Almost straight away they left the metalled surface of the exit road and hit the track that now ran to Camp Three. McDonaghy stared in surprise at the potholed track that he knew to be a metalled road, on the maps at least. What he didn't know was that the contractors refused to risk American cross-border shooting in order to build the road, an omission that the cartographers, sadly, didn't know about. The track made for a punishing ride even with good suspension. For a weary old trouper like La Loca and anyone inside the journey felt much worse.

'Oof!' said McDonaghy. 'I hope it's not all like this.'

Only where it got worse was it any different. The driver didn't wish to waste his breath on redundant facts so he waited, thinking that time would tell, even if this happened to be dream. And, dreamlike, they were suddenly ten kilometres from Camp Two, the ridge that shielded them from American eyes gradually decreasing in height, letting the northern bank of the Rio Bravo come into view. This portion of track constituted the first dangerous stretch, where hostile observers could see any movement on the track from there onwards. The truck would remain in plain sight until they reached the Shooting Gallery. At that point the track divided in two, the better surfaced part leading up a small hill, the cruder path travelling behind the hill. It would have been an appropriate time to explain this if the Lone Star Guard had not intervened with their customary venom and vigour. An inverted cone of earth with a brief bright flash at its base leapt into the air, twenty metres ahead and just off the road edge.

'ARTILLERY!' yelled Alex, suddenly panicky. He braked sharply, his leg seeming to take an age to depress the pedal, then he dropped down a gear to accelerate better, weaving across the whole of the road while doing so.

One after the other, three explosions scarred the road behind the truck, the last being close enough for bits of dirt to rattle on their cab roof. Alex braked again, dropped two gears, then accelerated and braked in swift succession, using engine braking too. His passenger looked grimly ahead with one hand clutching the safety cradle and the other locked onto a door handle.

Another explosion, off towards the river bank, followed by another on the opposite side of the road, threw up more smoke and gravel. BANG! Went the off-side fender, causing McDonaghy to jump in fright and nearly leap out of the cab, but the collision was only with the remains of a burnt-out truck. Unable to see properly, Alex had clipped the rusty wreck in his haste.

Now came the worst part: The Shooting Gallery. Alex didn't let the fear surface to where it might become a threat, but he still worried enough for the two of them. He didn't take the turn-off, just carried on up the hill road, still erratically stamping the accelerator. Variation and inconsistency, that's what you needed to avoid being ranged by American predictor gunsights (craftsman constructed in Southern California).

With genuine dreamlike, aching slowness they crested the hill. Ahead a thin, smokey meander rose from an obliterated truck further down the track, the water-carrier carcass. Strangely, they were not under fire now; perhaps their tormentors had become bored, or run low on ammunition?

No! shouted Alex to himself as a mortar bomb, a nasty black-finned thing, plopped savagely into the track ahead. And stayed there, dud. Did this take place when he drove with McDonaghy the first time or could this be a dream?

Time didn't allow any manoeuvres. Having a high ground clearance, the Volvo thundered directly over the dormant projectile as the driver straightened his leg to get maximum leverage on the accelerator. If the bomb was a dud then it probably wouldn't go off and if it had a delay or trembler then the only escape was to outrun it.

It must have been faulty, decided Alex, because I'm still here thinking about it.

More express deliveries were fully functional and bracketed the track on both sides, so Alex left it for a short stretch, hammering the suspension further and punishing both occupants into the bargain. Then it was back onto the track with a sudden hush making their ears ring hollowly, a sign of blast pressure effects and an indirect warning about how close they came to being killed. Alex jinked once or twice before reaching the hill's downward sloped where the road zigzagged in slow, lazy bends.

'God Almighty!' yelled McDonaghy as they raced straight off the road, in an approximately straight line for the point, much further ahead, where the road became less wandering. He seemed more scared of his partner's driving than of the American ordnance.

A percussive crack made La Loca quiver momentarily and for a bleak second Alex thought a structural member had failed, until they reached the Gallery's end, by which time he realised that if there was a problem with the truck then it wasn't terminal.

On this stretch he kept their speed high, varying between eighty to a hundred and twenty. Better traction kicked this up by another five until La Loca suddenly skidded into the outskirts of Camp Three, it's croupy klaxon blaring in deserved triumph. Driving past the slums brought a sense of contradictory relief and grief to Alex, mingled in a way difficult to disentangle or explain, made worse by the irrationality of the dream.

When they rolled to a halt McDonaghy let out a painfully constrained sigh of relief, long held in suspense. Both driver and passenger jumped down from the cab without a word, McDonaghy feeling his knees give unexpectedly as he jumped down from the running board, but Alex, long experienced at such missions and feelings, stayed upright; his stomach was a clenched knot and there he had cramp in both shoulders, but he stayed upright.

Swarms of thirsty 'Canos came to collect water blivets handed out by supervisors from La Loca's read loading ramp. Alex noticed a small hole low down on the cargo compartment's nearside; he went around to the off-side and saw a much larger hole, edges splayed out in jagged flanges. Still curious, he peered into the rear, past a lone supervisor smoking a lone cigarillo. Yes, the two holes were opposite each other; a handful of empty water blivets lay on the floor in a puddle.

'You were lucky, man. The Virgin likes you, Mister Loco,' drawled the supervisor.

Alex nodded slowly. From the look of it, a Mexican soldier told him, an armour-piercing cannon shell had gone straight through the truck body; perhaps a tenth of a second sooner and it would have gone through the driver's cab and the driver.

'Thank God that's over,' exclaimed the Irishman. 'Your driving scares me - what?'

'It is not over. We have to go back. They need this truck at Camp Two.'

The dream faded into darkness.

POLICY STATEMENT

DRAFT 3

SECTION 3:2

1) When in transit it is established practice that FedCon employees will travel at the Most Economic Rate on the most economic mode of transport.

2) Due to existing transportation schedules, it will normally be expedient for FedCon employees to travel on previously organised FedCon transport.

3) Under exceptional circumstances it will become necessary for special arrangements to be made for the transport of personnel; wherever possible, FedCon transport will be utilised.

4) If during 2) above, it is not possible to procure FedCon transport then suitable, appropriate and alternative transport will be chartered from other sources (see Appendix 17 for list of Approved Sources)

There were no special flights this time for Alex, no, it was back to a more mundane level of operation and it showed. From London to Yugoslavia, he certainly didn't feel like driving the Khan all that way, then on to Moldavia, then returning again.

After checking through TACT he discovered a four vehicle convoy due to leave from London, bound for Kosovo with thirty tonnes of mixed white goods. Time was short, though. He had to get from Neil's home back to his own, sort out travelling arrangements and gear, get down to the appropriate vehicle park in South London and park before the convoy left - assuming that they would take him without quibbling.

'Morning. Coffee?' asked Neil, suddenly appearing from upstairs, clad in a remarkable garment that looked like exotic wrapping paper.

'Yes please. Black -'

'- with two sugars, yes, I know you by now.'

'You look like a Christmas present come early.'

Neil shouted in reply from the kitchen.

'It's a heater gown. You know, from the space-suit liners. It keeps you warm when the batteries are switched on..' He reappeared with two cups. 'Neat, HM? Saves turning on the central heating.'

Alex nodded. One of the less profound FedCon spin-offs that continually popped up as consumer products. Such as his prized German knife collection; mono-molecular lined blades, derived from German micro-engineering research.

The coffee burnt his tongue, which made him pay attention to the here and now. He finished the drink, then left, politely but rapidly.

He made it to, of all places, South London Sorting Office for the rendezvous with the trucks before they left, arriving by taxi. Expensive and necessary. He suffered a brief argument with the driver before he got a receipt, since he wanted to try and claim the cost as a legitimate travelling expense, all the while thinking that a secret spy never had to suffer such banal indignities in films.

There were now four trucks travelling to Kosovo, making eight drivers who had got together in a huddle to discuss matters. When they say their additional charge the discussion stopped and one driver greeted him.

'Hello! Are you this Russian fella? Going to Belgrave?'

'Yes. I am Serbian, actually.'

'Yeah, from Serbiria, right!'

The driver turned to his fellow truckers and announced "The Russian's arrived". Try as he might, Alex was never able to explain to them convincingly that Serbia was not a part of Russia. Memories were short in London, it seemed. Still, they were friendly enough and stowed his cases away in the blink of an eye.

Being a passenger, it was bad form to speak to the driver unless he talked to you first, so there were long periods of silence, since the relief driver slept whilst his comrade drove. Thus they passed rapidly through France, into Switzerland, then Italy and to the Yugoslav border with Slovenia. Rapid and efficient, the two-driver system, even if it meant little in the way of conversation. Pit stops were infrequent, limited to calls of nature, refuelling, food restocks and border checks. Alex came into his own when they drew up in the customs lane of the Yugoslav border post, each truck halted with motors stopped.

An officious patrolman in blue-gray uniform strolled up an alongside the lead vehicle, carrying a white baton tucked under one arm. He stopped, took the baton and used it to push the peaked cap back a little on his head; this appeared to be customs-official body language for "I am going to inspect you"

'Bloody hell. This one's going to be difficult. I can tell, you know, and the run's been dead easy so far,' grumbled the driver, a Cockney called Pete. He powered the window down.

'You are English, yes?'

'Yeah. English.'

'I am customs officer from Border Customs Inspectorate for this region. I am wanting to see your vehicle, also your papers.' He tapped the radiator grille with his baton. 'I am also meaning this thing. Car - wagon -' He swore briefly in Serbian, unhappy at having to converse in English.

'Hey, mate, no need to swear. What's the problem?' enquired Alex cheerfully in his mother tongue, to the considerable surprise and relief of the customs officer.

'Who are you - no, never mind, I won't ask. Look, what's going on here; all of a sudden four British trucks turn up out of nowhere. I'm curious.'

Alex shrugged.

'We're from FedCon, going all the way to beautiful Beogradska, that's all. We're carrying general office supplies. Terminals, cabling, interfaces, hard cards, that sort of stuff.'

The other cocked his head to one side quizzically.

'Well, I don't know. Oh, sod it, you've got an honest face and it's lunch time.' He switched back to English. 'Okay, you okay, go now.'

Pete expressed his surprise and satisfaction. Clever lad, coming from Russia and able to speak Yugoslav! If only he knew. Alex had spent every waking minute ever since his assignment came through, learning Romanian. He now possessed a limited vocabulary, some idiom and a good accent.

Since his last visit home there had been considerable rebuilding and reconstruction work in Belgrade, a lot of the ugly Revisionist architecture going under the demolition ball, to the extent that he failed to recognise certain districts that they passed through.

Ah, beautiful Beogradska, your least favourite son is back, he said to himself, also aloud in English.

Pete looked at him curiously.

'You lived here?'

'For eighteen years. Aha, look, there's the television tower. At least that's not changed. Look, could you drop me near the central bus terminal?'

Luckily the roads leading to the station had not changed overmuch and the expatriate was able to find his way there easily enough, guiding the trucks. Pete dropped him off, plus baggage, with a cheery wave, and each truck gave a loud blast on its horn as it rolled past.

'Take care, mate, you're a long way from home!' was Pete's parting line.

Alex could tell he was back in his homeland by the difference in people's attitudes; by now he had gotten used to the politeness and rule-following of the English, though the islanders didn't see themselves that way. Serbs and Belgradians by contrast were rude. Perhaps if he'd spoken English to them, they would have been politer.

'I'm busy. Get lost,' snapped the first bus driver he dared to approach.

'I screwed your wife last night,' riposted Alex tartly, getting into the swing of things straight away. The bus driver glared ferociously but couldn't leave his cab, busy taking fares from passengers. Eventually Alex found an information kiosk staffed by a surly attendant, who grudgingly let him have a bus timetable. Locating the correct bus wasn't easy; you had to take day, time, holiday, location and availability into account before going to the correct gate.

If this was Holland or England the info would all be on a voice-activated display board. Shit, we can put men on Mars but public transport is too difficult. Shit again, if this were England the bus would go on time and not pull out just as you got to the stand …

He interrupted his internal fuming to consult the timetable and caught the next bus, forty minutes later. It took over an hour to reach his family's housing project since the bus wandered over a meandering route. A few children threw stones when the passed into the Voivode estate. Eventually they reached the Trajanov project, a series of huge curving housing blocks. They were looking rather shabby, pondered Alex. No paint since last time I visited, in fact.

Paint might have been lacking but the symmetrically-laid flower beds were immaculately maintained, doubtless by the project's Flower and Plant committee (which seemed to consist of all the elderly residents).

The Petrovic flat was on Floor Three, low enough to avoid problems with stairs or lifts, high enough to avoid problems from vandals.

As usual, the lift didn't work. It hadn't worked the last time he came home, either. In fact there seemed to be a rule, in any country, that whenever a public housing project existed with stairs or lifts the lifts would be broken and the stairs would be awkward.

A middle-aged man wearing an equally aged homburg was descending the stairs while Alex ascended. They passed on a landing and nodded before moving on.

Just a minute, I know him, realised Alex.

The other stopped in mild astonishment and looked upward from the flight below.

'What? Do I know you?' Then he squinted. 'A minute, a minute. Ah! It's Mrs Petrovic's son, isn't it - Alexander. Well, well, home again, young voyager. Give my regards to your mother. Goodbye.' Off he went, at a nervous pace, remembering who Alexander worked for.

Alex walked along Floor Three to apartment Eighteen. His stomach flipped over briefly before he pressed the bell. It had been a long time since his last visit, which made for a little reflective nervousness.

The door swung open and a small, grey-haired woman with glasses and a worn face stood there.

'Mama!' shouted Alex, dropping his cases and giving her an arm-wrapping hug, kissing her on both cheeks. She gasped as he squeezed the air out of her lungs.

'Alexander Dragan! Oof, put me down, you don't know your own strength. When did you arrive in the city? Are you staying? You should have called to tell me you were coming. Why didn't you call from the airport?'

Throwing up his hands to fend off this barrage of questions, Alex managed to get into the apartment. His mother led him into the kitchen. Kitchen and dining room combined, really, the largest single room of the whole apartment. Branko used to make his models there, Katerina still did her homework on the table, Zdanko played card games at the weekend with friends from the AeroFabrik (though he made sure the slivovitz and cigarette butts were gone by morning).

Zdanko sat at the table now, eating a pastry and drinking some coffee.

'Hello there,' said Alex politely. He and elder brother didn't get on, hadn't done so for a decade. Zdanko nodded politely in reply, carrying on eating and drinking.

'You wait here, Alexander, Ante is upstairs, I'll go and get him for you.'

Alex sat down at the table. Much to his surprise Zdanko poured him a cup of ersatz coffee instead of ignoring him.

'Ta - I mean, thanks. Are you still living here? I heard you'd moved out.'

That earned him a scowl.

'Cheeky little bugger! Yes, I have moved out but I come here for lunch from the AeroFabrik. If Mama needs any odd jobs doing then I help her.'

Alex waved the barbed riposte away, took a sip of coffee and looked around as another person bounded into the room.

'Hello stranger! You're looking old!' That was Ante, making his usual abrupt entrance. The two brothers shook hands and embraced.

'You watch your mouth, Ante Milos,' said their mother, hitting him smartly on the back of the head.

'Ow! Pack it in, Mum, it's just a joke, he can take it. Hey, how long are you staying - are you on leave from FedCon?'

'No, I can't stay long. I'm on assignment to Moldavia so this is only a flying visit. I have to catch a shuttle flight out of Belgrade to get there. Hey, just a minute, what do you mean, "old"? Twenty eight's not old!'

'It comes to us all,' commented Zdanko, drily.

'How's college going for you. No compulsory conscription yet, I hope.'

A pained silence fell for a second or so. Even now, over a decade after a bitterly reluctant Alexander entered the army, the subject could still raise hackles.

'Er, they can defer it for three years, now,' mumbled Ante. Mama saved the day by providing a plate of honey biscuits, which she knew Alex dearly liked and couldn't find in London.

Ante ran like a fountain with a constant stream of questions about life in England. Partly this was due to their long separation, partly due to the younger Petrovic's boundless curiosity, partly due to Alex's reluctance to go into detail about his host country. Zdanko waited until Mama left to do some unavoidable chores upstairs, amongst which was probably making Ante's bed, then he leaned over and hissed at Alex.

'Don't go filling his head with bloody rubbish about how wonderful your job it, you stupid ass. You had enough trouble when you joined the Concordat, didn't you? Well, didn't you!'

True. Alex found the hard way that, once you had worked for the FedCon, it was difficult to obtain employment outside it, owing to the innate suspicion of employers and governments in respect of potential loyalty.

Ante put his view forward.

'I don't want to join up. Not yet, anyway. And I want to get onto the Applied Biophysics course at the university, so I'd never join up until after that.'

His elder brothers harrumphed at him in chorus.

Unfortunately Katerina was at college and wouldn't be home in time to see Alex before he left; Branko was still at work and wouldn't be home until at least six, so Mama brought Alex up to date with information about his brother and sister.

Come time to leave, Mama left to get a bottle of vodka from the freezer, jogging her son's memory - he had several presents brought all the way from England, which he might otherwise have forgotten to unpack. There was a copy of "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" in English for Katerina, a black plastic construction kit of the MoonDog for Branko, a Welsh lace shawl for Mama, a state-of-the-art Swiss calculator for Ante ("too cool!"), a bag of best Dutch rolling tobacco for Zdanko. Alex also broke the news about future royalties from his sole publication: there wouldn't be any more since (white lie) FedCon had decided that it had been naughty of him to keep money from a pre-Contract source without having declared it in full. So, no more monies. To sweeten the pill he promised to try and be home for Christmas, although he couldn't guarantee that because he might end up doing emergency cover.

Zdanko saw him out of the flat, to the landing of Floor Three, Alex expecting a critical shaft upon departure.

'Watch yourself in Belgrade. They called out the army to keep the streets controlled and some of them are still there, so be careful. They're mostly in the centre.'

An embarrassed pause fell, as if the sentence hadn't finished yet.

'Look, I know we've never got on, Big Brother acting the father and all that, but until last year no-one mentioned the royalties to me. Mama never told me.'

Alex looked curiously at his older brother.

'How d'you think she could afford the apartment and still send Katerina and Ante to college?'

The other shrugged.

'I thought it was Dad's pension. I was wrong. Look, what I'm trying to say - I'm not doing this too well - I'm grateful for what you did, I thought you'd just disappeared abroad to have a good time and forget about the family. Shake.'

For the first time Alex could remember, they shook hands. A strange feeling, reconciliation with his brother. Not unwelcome, but definitely strange and it stuck in his mind on the bus back into Belgrade.

As recounted, there were army units out on the streets, clustered especially at street corners with plastic shields and shock sticks, loitering with casual, bored attitudes, still looking for student rowdies to baton. Nevertheless, everyday affairs still seemed to be rolling along much as usual; there was even a gypsy band playing outside the central bus station as there had been every other time when Alex visited Belgrade. Accordion, violins, double bass and a guitar; an opened violin case lay in front of them filled with dinars of every denomination. Since he had to pass by them to get on the airport bus Alex threw them all the loose change he had - he didn't want to take any Yugoslav currency into Moldavia. A violinist bowed to him and the band inserted a flurry of chords into their song as a thank you.

Because the airport bus would be seen by international travellers at the terminal it was a well-maintained air-cushion vehicle, all polished chrome and immaculate mock-leather upholstery, quite a difference from the tired workhorse that plied the Trajanov estate. The stewardess who warmly but insincerely greeted each passenger lacked the symmetrical surgery that was so beloved of major service enterprises in Western Europe. Good. A human touch.

The bus waited for quarter of an hour after its departure time to allow any laggards to arrive, because those using it to travel to the airport were likely to be foreigners, tourists, businessmen and the like, all with lots of nice foreign currency that needed to be spent. If they weren't looked after then they might not come back next time, and if they were late then they had probably been spending their money.

Incorporated into the seat back facing Alex was a flat-screen, showing a melodramatic soap opera with bad actors and bad acting. Crap, judged Alex. All that wonderful technology being used for a dismal soap. Well, it could be worse, it could be Pander.

The stewardess wondered why one of the passengers punched off his video screen later when that new British program started.

Alex reported to the FedCon office maintained in Novi Bucuresti, where several branches of the organisation were represented on different floors.

Up on Floor Four: the Mandated Judicial Overview office. A clerk ushered Alex into a sparse room, where he faced a woman sitting stark upright behind a desk. She had piercing, angry eyes.

'Flexibility!' she snapped. Sparks almost shot out of those angry eyes.

'Pardon?' asked Alex, at a loss for a second or so.

'Flexibility, that's the word, that's what we need. Do you have flexibility?'

'Why - my nickname is Mister Flexible,' replied Alex firmly, playing a part.

The woman opened a desk drawer and produced a ziplocked police evidence bag, full of magazines.

'Then take a look at these. Here's a bag if you feel sick.'