‘Holiday?’ It was all coming thick and fast now.
‘Oh, yes, hadn’t I told you? Three weeks at least, on the state. I’m fortifying the Chateau. It will be quite impossible to get any branch work done . . .’
‘You’re doing what? Did you say you’re – ‘
‘Fortifying the place, yes,’ Borowitz was very matter of fact about it. ‘Machine-gun emplacements, an electric fence, that sort of thing. They have it at Baikonur in Kazakhstan, where they launch the space vehicles – and is our work any less important? Anyway, the work has been approved, starts Friday. We’re our own bosses now, you know, within certain limitations . . . inside the Chateau, anyway. When I’m finished we’ll all have passes for access, and no way in without them! But that’s for later. Meanwhile there’ll be a lot of work going on, much of which I’ll supervise personally. I want the place expanded, opened up, widened out. More room for experimental cells. I’ve got four years, yes, but they’ll go very quickly. First stage of the alterations will take the best part of a month, so – ‘
‘So while all this is going on, I’m to get a holiday?’ Dragosani was keen now, the tone of his voice eager.
‘Right, you and one or two others. For you it’s a reward. You were very good that night. With the exception of this hole in my shoulder, the whole thing was very successful — oh, and also the loss of poor Gerkhov, of course. My one regret is that I had to ask you to take it all the way. I know how hateful that must be for you . . .’
‘Do you mind if we don’t talk about it?’ Dragosani found Borowitz’s sudden concern for his sensibilities a bit much – not to mention entirely out of character.
‘All right, we won’t talk about it,’ said the other. But half-turning and with a monstrous grin, he added: ‘Anyway, fish tastes better!’
That was more like it. ‘You sadistic old bastard!’
Borowitz laughed out loud. ‘That’s what I like about you, Boris. You’re just like me: very disrespectful to your superiors.’ He changed the subject:
‘Anyway, where will you spend your holiday?’
‘Home,’ said the other without hesitation.
‘Romania?’
‘Of course. Back to Dragosani where I was born.’
‘Don’t you ever go anywhere else?’
‘Why should I? I know the place, and I love the people – as much as it’s possible for me to love anything, anyway. Dragosani is a town now, but I’ll find a place outside the town – somewhere in the villages in the hills.’
‘It must be very pleasant,’ Borowitz nodded. ‘Is there a girl?’
‘No.’
‘What, then?’
Dragosani grunted, shrugged, but his eyes narrowed to slits. Walking in front, his boss didn’t see the look in his face when he answered, ‘I don’t know. Something in the soil, I suppose.’
Chapter Two
Harry Keogh felt the warm sun on the side of his face, beating through the open classroom window. He knew the solid, near-indestructible feel of a school bench under his thighs, its surface polished by tens of thousands of bottoms. He was aware of the aggressive hum of a tiny wasp on its tour of inspection of his inkwell, ruler, pencils, the dahlias in a vase on the window ledge. But all of these things lay on the periphery of his consciousness, little more than background static. He was aware of them in the same way that he was aware of his heart hammering in his chest – hammering far too quickly and loudly for an arithmetic class on a sunny Tuesday afternoon in August. The real world was there, all right – real as the occasional breath of breeze fanning his cheek from the open window – and yet Harry craved air no less than a drowning man. Or a drowning woman.
And the sun could not warm him where he struggled under the ice, and the wasp’s buzzing was almost entirely lost in the gurgle and slosh of icy water and the burble of bubbles from his nostrils and straining, silently screaming jaws! Darkness below, frozen mud and weeds; and above –