Omega

There was an English sergeant he’d served with at the Konigsberg garrison who liked urchin refugees, who boasted that he held them tight as he took them from behind, one hand wrenching their chins up so he could slit their throats in the instant of his climax. A little death and a big death, he liked to joke. He kept his knife honed and oiled because you never knew when the opportunity would arise. Smiled like an alligator. Said that it was easy, made you feel like a little god. All-powerful. Answerable to no one in the blind, heedless universe.

“I must go,” Marisa said, looking straight at him.

Owain’s hand was already resting on his knife.

“Owen!”

I was slumped on the carpet. Tanya helped me back up on to the sofa. I’d fallen off, fainted.

“I’m all right,” I assured her, though I was in fact a little groggy.

She went into the kitchen and came back with a damp towel which she insisted I press against my forehead.

“Was it—him?”

She meant Owain. I’d tried to stifle him, to black him out: which had presumably made me pass out here.

“Not exactly,” I told her. “I wanted to stop him.”

She didn’t pursue this. I could tell she was still trying to decide whether I was totally mad or not.

It was late. I had no idea how long I had been talking, but the TV was off. Tanya had listened with absolute attention while I’d told her about the major’s world and my connection to it. I’d kept talking even when I was back with him, interrupting my narrative to let her know what he was doing and thinking, even telling her about his murderous thoughts. I saw her stiffen at this and look at me with something more than vast curiosity: it could have been shock or recognition or perhaps even terror.

Into the silence she said, “Is he there now?”

I shook my head. “No. He’s gone. I’ve lost him.”

She had her arms clasped around her shins, was bunched up protectively.

“What did he do?” she asked at last.

“I don’t know.”

She didn’t immediately say anything further. I expected questions about Owain, about the people and places in his life, the texture and depth and extent of my experiences, and about their relatonship to the world I inhabited with her. I was ready for fascination, scepticism, anxiety or outright incredulity. But there was none of this.

Finally she said, “Did you want to make love? I mean with me?”

I nodded wholeheartedly, though I still felt ashamed.

“It wasn’t you, Owen. You may have started it. But you’d gone before you came.”

If it was a joke, she wasn’t smiling. And of course I knew what she meant. But she was missing the complexities of it.

“It was me, Tan,” I insisted. “It was him, too. In both places. It was both of us.”

THIRTY-SIX

He dreamt that he was stumbling through a blinding light. The instant he woke he knew the light was in his bedroom, shining directly into his face. A gloved hand clamped itself across his neck, thumb and forefinger squeezing.

The torch was high-powered, its radiance a bluish-white. The man leaning over him relaxed his grip slightly, tugging him forward. He sat up slowly, trying to peer beyond the glare.

“Out you get,” said a voice from the foot of the bed. “Nice and steady.”

A northern accent. Yorkshire. Owain slid the heel of his hand back. His pistol was gone from under his pillow. The beam wavered a little as he swung his legs over the edge of the mattress. The CIF man standing beside him had the stubby black barrel of his automatic pointed almost nonchalantly at his chest.

Owain’s brain was thick with sleep and alcohol. He wondered if Marisa had told them he usually slept with the pistol close at hand. But how would she have known? They’d never shared a bed. No, it was just standard procedure. He knew that any acts of bravado would be futile. Stupid to get shot before he even knew why they were here.

“Get your boots on, major.”

A second man at the foot of the bed threw them into his lap. The one standing beside him stepped back, keeping his weapon trained on him as he laced them up. A Sterling TMP.

The torch was clicked off.

As his vision adjusted Owain realised that a murky dawn light was seeping into the room through the open door. The two men both wore full body armour and wraparound helmets with night-vision goggles perched on them. Crack troops, he didn’t doubt that, so best be obliging. They resembled bulky pilots that had just dropped out of the sky.

His jacket was tossed on to the bed. He put it on, asked for a glass of water. They ignored the request. He felt less hung-over than deprived of good quality sleep, as though he’d spent the st few hours merely floating in the shallows of unconsciousness.

“Let’s go,” said the man with the Yorkshire accent.

They marched him outside, the northerner going ahead of them. He wore a section commander’s patches, while the younger man was unit leader. No ordinary rankers for him: special duty operatives.