Omega

He was just high enough to peer across the deserted street and over the broken frontages into the Soho wasteland. The fog was rapidly thickening, making visibility intermittent. But parts of the area were lit with fuzzy halos of arc-lamp light, and he was able to see the outlines of bulldozers and other earth-shifting equipment. They were moving about amid a tangled, lumpy landscape.

The drone of their engines carried to him. He glimpsed a lorry piled high with debris, driving away into the fog. A few figures were discernible too—men who looked as if they were wearing hardhats and coveralls rather than decontamination suits. Some were directing dump trucks; others were hitching rides on open-topped ATVs. The noise of a mini avalanche reached him as another unseen lorry received its load. Squinting harder he saw that the mounds comprised mountains of earth in which were embedded the broken outlines of heavy machinery parts.

The area was supposed to have been cleared years ago, but it looked as if it had suffered saturation bombing, everything churned up and mangled beyond recognition. He cursed the fact that he didn’t have binoculars and could only rely on murky impressions. But what was certain was that this was no decontamination team: on the contrary, as much of the ground was being turned over as possible.

A wave of giddiness swept over him. We almost went plummeting down. Another sound reached us: that of an approaching helicopter.

Again Owain cursed himself for leaving the Land Rover’s engine running: if it was a patrol craft it would be carrying heat sensors that could locate the vehicle.

He scrambled down the wall, sliding off the ice but landing safely. Edging past the razor wire, he stopped for a moment and listened. The helicopter sound was receding. He glimpsed it in the near distance, banking. It was going to come back his way.

He jumped into the Land Rover and reversed down the street, back into Saville Row. He headed south, only switching his lights on again as he made a westwards turn along Piccadilly.

I was amazed at his calmness, but his hands began to tremble. He peeled off his gloves and gripped the steering wheel tightly, his entire body swimming with a nervous exhaustion.

A vehicle was approaching from the opposite direction, its headlights blazing. It went past him without slowing, an old Army Saxon APC, reconditioned for Security Police use with a rear-mounted machine gun.

At Hyde Park Corner a street market was shutting up for the night. The area around it had been levelled. Owain turned south, winding down the window. We passed what had once been Buckingham Palace Gardens but was now snow-choked allotments that extended into Belgravia. The palace itself had been bulldozed half a century before following a direct enemy hit, the royal family reduced to a handful of survivors who were shipped overseas for safekeeping and were now dispersed around southern Africa and the American-occupied Caribbean. Their departure had only added more legitimacy to the new military government, wch already had its counterparts on the Continent. Fifty years later it was still in charge.

Owain went through a dense pocket of fog. He was driving too quickly. A T-junction materialised without warning. Mentally I lunged, attempting to wrench the wheel around. Brakes screeched, and a wall loomed in front of us.

FIVE

Two male nurses were lifting me into a wheelchair. One of them folded a blanket over my lap. I was pushed to a window and left alone.

Darkness had fallen, but I had a good view out over a rectangle of lawn with two wings of the building on either side. A modern redbrick hospital with row upon row of windows, cars going by on the road beyond.

I tried to lift myself out of the wheelchair, grasping the window ledge and levering myself up. I almost managed to straighten but the giddiness returned. I let go, for fear it might sweep me up and send me spiralling back into that shadow-world.

I lay half-twisted in the chair, my head filled with the pulse of my blood. Someone helped me sit up properly. Tanya.

Her renewed presence, and the sombre look on her face, made me think again that Lyneth and the girls must be dead.

I began raving at her, demanding to know what had happened. But again nothing emerged: I remained as limp and mute as a stuffed toy.

It had to be the medication. Or was I semi-paralysed? Brain-damaged? No, it was neither of these, I was certain. At least not in the conventional sense.

Tanya drew up a chair facing me and sat down. She wore the same brown suede coat as before, looked quite artlessly alluring. But although she sat only a few feet away from me, she might as well have been on the Moon because the rolling, sloshing sounds I could hear were coming from her. She was talking to me but I couldn’t make out a single word.