Omega

My incredulity was largely a function of my own private panic, a fear that I had trapped myself here while my true existence was stolen by a deranged upstart. There was something else, too—some significant exchange between Tanya and me that I simply couldn’t bring to mind in the frenetic circumstances of the present moment. The very effort made me giddy and disorientated.

“The parachutes are merely a precautionary measure,” Legister was saying. “At a prudent enough height we should survive any missile impact on the ground. You will recall that the earth penetrating devices are designed to focus their destructive power downwards rather than upwards. If we are lucky enough we’ll be able to spirit ourselves away, find a soft landing somewhere.”

It sounded ridiculously optimistic, though it was possible that, even now, he wasn’t telling me the whole story. Perhaps there were prior arrangements—a friendly ship waiting in the North Sea or an airfield specially secured for the purpose.

“And if not?” I asked.

Legister gave the impression that the question was not even worth considering.

Giselle had started to talk to ground control at the Ness. We couldn’t be more than minutes away. In the cabin beyond the two MPs remained on guard, one of them with his weapon trained on the bulkhead hatch, the other on the still-twitching bodies piled at the door to the main corridor.

Including myself, there were seven of us. Rhys looked fervent, Marisa merely wide-eyed with fright. Legister had probably compelled to her help him, and she wouldn’t have been able to refuse him. What she’d most wanted was distraction and a semblance of a normal life. She would never have it now.

“Thank you for saving me,” I said to Rhys in Welsh.

“What are brothers for?” he replied in the same tongue. “Who else do I have, Owain, but you?”

This was said with emotion but without self-pity. I squeezed his arm, something I was certain his real brother would never have done.

“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” I said in English to Legister. “Why did you let it come to this in the first place? If you knew what was going to happen, wouldn’t it have been easier to have my uncle done away with in the first place? Or did you try to poison him and fail?”

Legister gave me a smile of withering condescension.

“My dear major,” he said softly, “that would have defeated an important objective of this entire enterprise. It still remained necessary to show the Americans the extent of the damage we can inflict on them. A suitable demonstration of our capabilities. One cannot negotiate from a position of perceived weakness: there would be nothing to negotiate except the extent of one’s capitulation.”

Absurd that I should ever have thought otherwise, his tone conveyed. And he was right: it was absurd. Absurd to imagine that even those who balked at full-scale war in this world had anything remotely resembling pacifist tendencies. It was merely a question of the degree of armed force that needed to be applied to achieve one’s strategic aims. Even for so-called politicians, diplomatic initiatives were the outcome rather than the determinant of military considerations. It was an attitude bred in the marrow of everyone in high office.

Horrified at what I was about to do, I raised the pistol and pointed it at the side of Giselle’s head.

“What if I ended it now?” I said.

Legister didn’t even blink: he merely radiated scorn.

I pulled the gun back and stuck the barrel into my mouth, gagging with terror. Squeezing my eyes shut, I pressed the trigger, jerked with the emphatic bolt action.

Nothing. Just the dull resonance of metal on metal.

The pistol wasn’t armed. How stupid of me to think they’d assume my conversion to their cause.

I opened my eyes. For an instant I was certain I had soiled myself, but somehow I had imagined to avoid this indignity. My hands were quivering as I pulled the pistol from my mouth and let it fall to the floor.

“I think,” Legister said with a measured air of exasperation, “the situation demands more than futile theatrics.”

There was the sound of gunfire. It came from outside, in the main corridor.

Legister and Rhys had to climb over the mound of parachute bundles in the aisle to get into the cabin. Marisa was holding a pistol, but she went into a quivering paroxysm of fear that made me embrace her protectively from behind. Immediately she began to struggle, forcing me to grab her hand to prevent her from turning the gun on me.

The plane lurched into a steeper dive. I managed to keep us upright, still restraining Marisa with one arm around her waist while the other tussled for possession of her firearm. It felt like we were engaged in some bizarre military dance.

Behind me Giselle was talking to a flight controller on the ground, demanding clearance for an emergency landing.