Torchwood: The Men Who Sold The World (17 page)

While enjoying his morning ablutions, Len looked up past the concrete pillars and imagined who might be driving above his head. Sometimes he filled his days with this game. Gave them all names and wondered where they lived. Wondered what it would take to see them down here spending their days in a home with
Apple Jacks
printed on the side.

Not much he reckoned, not much at all.

He zipped himself up and decided to go for a stroll, work out the aches in his legs.

At 8.14 he looked up and saw the Channel 7 helicopter hovering above them all. In a moment of absurd solemnity, he saluted it. He had no idea why.

Gleason let the fronds of the Ytraxorian rifle close over his hand. Rather than be unnerved by the tingle of electricity, he decided to be emboldened by it. He imagined that charge coursing up his arm, making his heart pound faster, filling him with life and determination. He opened his heart to the weapon, let it see all he had to give, let it know how far he was willing to go, how little mercy was to be found in him.

It began to hum.

It was hungry.

It wanted to see a world
burn
.

Gleason pointed it at the coursing lanes of traffic below and pulled the trigger.

The effect was not instantaneous.

A laser beam did not scythe down bringing instant death.

The force that blossomed from the barrel of the gun was slow, almost lethargic. It floated down like a cloud of pollen rather than a wave of energy. The quality of the light changed when viewed through it, a crystal clarity, like that found just before a storm.

‘Jazz hands!’ cried Larry Gulliver, eager to see his wonderful son wave those delicate,
heartbreaking fingers at him. Fingers he just wanted to kiss whenever he laid eyes on them. Then he saw the back of his own hands and the effect the almost imperceptible wave had on them. They grew paler, drier, Fat brown splotches grew between the lengthening grey hairs, liver spots enlarging like droplets of wine soaking into a cream table cloth. He held his hands up towards him, mindless of the road ahead, and watched them crumble from the fingertips down. Like the perfect ash of a cigarette crumbled away to nothing at the whisper of a breeze.

He turned to his son, to make sure he was OK, but the rest of his body followed his hands and all he succeeded in doing was spraying the backseat of the car with the soft, fatty ash of his face.

Car collided with car, bumper meeting bumper, as every driver experienced the same thing. Some had the foresight to slam a foot down on the brake, but the crumbling bones of their ankles couldn’t bear up to such strain and powdered with the impact. Passengers stared open-mouthed only realising that the same desiccation was visited upon them as their startled eyes wizened and wept out of their sockets to push loose the powdery flesh of their cheeks.

Liquid Len, looking up and watching that faint wave as it fell down on them all, bringing years of age as it passed, had a little longer than most to wonder what it was that had brought all the traffic crashing to a slow halt. He heard the crump of compacted metal and the tinkle of shattered glass, almost graceful as the slow, rush-hour
chain, hundreds and hundreds of lives, came to a halt above his head.

Then the wave hit him also and his salute, still in place, crumbled down into confused eyes. His last thought was an apologetic one. All these years, he thought, and Mary the Greek was right after all.

A peace descended, broken only by the constant shuffle of the helicopter blades as Gleason and Mulroney descended for a flyby. Mulroney held the camcorder with one hand, the control stick for the helicopter with the other. As they flew past, he let the camera’s lens linger on as much of the carnage as possible. They circled a few times until, with the distant sound of traffic sirens creeping ever closer, they decided enough was enough and sailed away to clear skies.

Below, car after car sat stationary on the Interstates. Those that were outside of the field of fire drew to a halt as they looked at the chaos in front of them, a chaos that spanned half a mile in all directions.

As the emergency vehicles pushed their way through, they moved from car to car, unable to believe what they saw. Every vehicle empty but for the ageing, crumbled remains of people, most no more recognisable than the emptied bags of vacuum cleaners.

Then a call rang out in the unnaturally still Denver morning. ‘Over here,’ came a woman’s voice. ‘I’ve got one!’

Sergeant Dolores Cortez, of the Denver Police Department, couldn’t believe the look of the guy
sitting naked on the back seat of the car. Hand over her mouth, she wondered if it was cancer that made him look the way he did. He was so thin, every vein visible through his translucent skin. It’s not cancer, she realised as she opened the door and backed off to let him crawl out. He was just so old.

Why wasn’t he walking, she wondered, knowing she should reach out and help him up. But the old guy just wailed and Cortez couldn’t deal with that, however much it shamed her.

‘Sir?’ she said. ‘Sir, what happened here?’

But young Mikey Gulliver had never learned to talk, and all he could do was cry for his father, both hands splayed out towards her.

Jazz hands
.

To begin with, the TV news kept playing the same, flat footage: an aerial sweep of the Mousetrap, showing lengths of crashed cars. After a while, they stopped. However much the anchors talked the situation up, there was no story until they found a face. Finally, they found a family member who was happy to cry on screen. She would become a media star for a week or so, while the rolling voice of America waffled away beneath her on a scrolling banner of texts, emails and tweets. Needless to say, the majority of comments would deplore the Muslims who had likely perpetrated this horror. The news networks would be happy not to correct them, as would the government. Many extremist groups would also be happy to take the credit for the awful loss of life. Eventually, an easy target (the Freedom Voice of America, a white-supremacist movement run from a bus depot in Michigan) would be selected for the prize. The security services knew where to find them and, once assured that there would be no more
unpleasant incidents, they would release proof of the Freedom Voice of America’s involvement and promptly smack them hard, live on camera. And while that blatant piece of misdirection was going on, they would mop up after the real cause of what was now being called the ‘Rush Hour Massacre’. They would do it quietly, ruthlessly and with no mention whatsoever of the truth.

They would particularly not mention Mr Wynter, currently sat on a bench overlooking the Constitutional Gardens Pond, not a heavily vetted stone’s throw from the White House.

He was eating sushi from a polystyrene box. He hated its cold, bland flavour, but his doctor had given him strict instructions to cut down on red meat. He had been allowing himself a few indulgences too many. Oh, to still have a young man’s constitution.

‘Two meetings on one operation,’ said the voice behind him. ‘Both with their fair share of recrimination.’

Mr Wynter had no need to turn around. He knew his employer’s voice well enough. Besides, when meeting in public it was common form to avoid eye contact, just two gentlemen strolling in the park looking at the ducks. Mr Wynter imagined most of the park’s strollers were secretly plotting the downfall of governments. Spies were amongst the most predictable people on earth.

‘There has been more than the usual amount of ill-fortune in this matter,’ Mr Wynter agreed. ‘But I am confident that it will soon be resolved.’

‘Oh, you’re confident, are you? Well, that’s a
relief. I wake up to a shit-storm of dead motorists on the news but you’re confident it’ll all be fine.’

‘Don’t pretend a few fatalities matter,’ Mr Wynter replied. ‘You know as well as I do that, with enough spin, Gleason did you a favour. There’s nothing the voting public like better than a strong government, smacking down the aggressor. If the Republicans had their way, you’d be paying people like me to kill that many civilians
every
week.’

‘Your age has made you so cynical.’

‘It has made me
aware
.’

‘One hopes it has made you sufficiently wise to finally resolve matters. Just in case, I feel it’s only fair to warn you that there have been discussions as to your possible replacement.’ There was a long pause at that. ‘Perhaps, in truth, we should have done it years ago. A man can only fight for so many years.’

‘Some of us can do nothing else,’ Mr Wynter replied.

‘Then I look forward to your proving as much.’

Mr Wynter stared at the ducks for a few more moments, allowing his employer time to walk away. He popped another piece of sushi in his mouth. It tasted of compromise.

‘I think I just heard my career roll over and die,’ said Rex, sat next to Shaeffer on a red-eye from Colorado Springs to Washington.

Shaeffer spun the ice in his plastic glass of scotch and coke, trying to make its coldness infect the tepid fizz of the soda. ‘I think it was just wind from that guy three rows behind us. The one that’s
going to force me to kill him with a rolled-up inflight magazine if he snores any louder.’

‘Excuse me,’ came an irritated voice from behind them. ‘Would you mind keeping it down? I’m trying to sleep.’

‘Tell that to the Manatee with allergies in seat 4B,’ Shaeffer replied.

‘We’re discussing governmental business,’ said Rex, poking his face between the seats. ‘Matters of international security. I suggest you ask the stewardess for earplugs, as I will have to have you deported as a security risk if I think you’ve been listening in.’

‘You’re drunk.’

‘Damn right I am. There’s nothing I won’t do in the name of my country. Now wrap that blanket around your head and go to sleep.’

The passenger mumbled to herself but turned over and pretended to doze off.

‘You really think there’s nothing we can do?’ Schaeffer asked.

Rex shrugged. ‘Who knows where he is? Unless he slips up – and he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy that does – we’re only ever going to hear where he’s
been
.’

‘And when we do hear that…’

‘Then it means we’ve blown it. Again.’ Rex shuffled in his seat and gestured towards the flight attendant for another pair of drinks. ‘Not that it matters. After the last few days, I’m about as popular as Gleason. I’ve been acting way out of my remit and I’ve got nothing to show for it but a few expense receipts and an ex-special-forces grunt
who refuses to stop following me around. At this rate, I’ll be lucky to get a post filing paperwork.’

Gleason and Mulroney had found themselves overnight accommodation in a small cottage on the fringes of Arlington County. It had taken some time before they had found a suitable place, somewhere with enough private, off-road parking to stash the truck they had appropriated north of Denver. The previous inhabitants were wrapped up in bed sheets and dumped under a pile of firewood in the outhouse.

‘Transporting that much stuff,’ said Mulroney as they sat in the cottage’s front room eating a stew that Mulroney had prepared from what he could find in the kitchen, ‘it draws too much attention. We need to find somewhere remote, a new base of operations.’

‘What we need to do,’ Gleason replied, ‘is keep the pressure on until they’re forced to give in.’

Mulroney sighed and shuffled chunks of lamb around his plate. ‘You really think they’re going to?’ he asked. ‘You and I both know the standard response to terror threats. What makes you think this is going to be different?’

‘Scale,’ said Gleason. ‘We’re going to hit them so hard, so publicly, that they’ll be begging for a way to make it stop.’

Mulroney shrugged. ‘Ask me, it’d be a hell of a lot easier just to sell the weaponry off. It’s not like it would be difficult to find a buyer. Hell, most of our professional life has been building a list of contacts. A nice, quiet private sale and we vanish
off the radar. Wouldn’t that be better?’

‘I’m not handing weapons like this over to the enemies of America.’

Mulroney almost laughed. ‘You suddenly found a streak of patriotism?’

Gleason gave him a look that made it quite clear Mulroney had gone too far.

‘I never lost it,’ he said. ‘I wish I could say the same of our leaders.’

Mulroney raised his hands in a placatory gesture. ‘OK, so we don’t sell outside the country. Forget I mentioned it.’

Later, as he was fetching the video camera, Mulroney began to wonder if there was an escape route open for him. He’d always known Gleason was a little flaky round the edges, liked the feel of a trigger too much. But, in truth, Mulroney could relate to that and, over the years, the pair of them had looked after each other and built a future for themselves in case they ever wanted to leave the life behind. But now Mulroney’s future was compromised. When he’d abandoned his ranch, he’d also been leaving all the money he had hidden there over the years – if anyone were to dig in his vegetable patch, they would find a far richer crop than potatoes. The chain of vacuum jars filled with banknotes had grown vast. That loss was acceptable when he had believed it would be replaced – and more – by the spoils of their current actions. Now he wasn’t sure he believed any such thing.

Gleason wasn’t in this for the money. When
they had flown over the Mousetrap in Denver, Mulroney had seen the relish on the man’s face as he looked down on the destruction. Gleason had fallen in love with the power these weapons offered. Mulroney wasn’t convinced he’d give them up for any price. He thought Gleason would hold on to them until there was nobody left to point them at. Which left Mulroney as little more than a future target, and that was something he had been working to avoid once and for all.

He took the camera through to Gleason. ‘You ready?’

Gleason nodded and Mulroney began to record.

‘Wise Men of America,’ Gleason began. ‘I have once again proven our power over you.’ Mulroney began to zone out, Gleason’s speeches were beginning to take on the air of the zealot, not the voice of a business proposal but the sabre-rattling of a vengeful god. He kept the camera steady and began to wonder how he might extricate himself from all of this.