“Can we make a deal?” Jack asked, ever hopeful.

“No,” replied Briggs.

Jack hung up and then dialed Mary.

“It’s Jack.”

“Is it true about Ash?” she asked. “That’s he’s… dead?”

"‘Deflated’ would be a better term. He was a true hero and saved us all, and he asked me to tell you that he would ‘pluck the stars from the sky for you.’"

There was a momentary silence from Mary. “Thanks, Jack, I appreciate it. He was a fine officer, and a good friend.”

“He was,” agreed Jack, adding in a more urgent tone, “But it’s not over yet. Mr. Demetrios is the fourth bear, and Briggs isn’t exactly pro-Spratt at present. What’s going on out there?”

“You were right,” she replied. “McGuffin was watching. I’m with him now, and he has the Alpha-Pickle he cut from Fuchsia’s champion. He’s confirmed that it’s the last vestige of the strain—without it, thermocuclear power is nothing more than unverifiable pseudoscience. McGuffin says it’s all got horribly out of hand, and although limitless free energy is a positive step, the idea that any nation that possesses an average-size greenhouse and a trowel can have a nuclear capability is a bit of a downer—despite the truly spectacular fireballs, which he says he’ll miss.”

Jack breathed a huge sigh of relief. “That’s fantastic news. With McGuffin in custody, we can convince Briggs of my innocence—and put Demetrios in the clink.”

“Not really,” said Mary. “You see, I found McGuffin and then NS-4 found me. Agent Danvers is holding us both—and she wants to speak to you.”

“Hello, Spratt?” said Agent Danvers with an unpleasant sneer as she came on the line. “I suggest you get over to SommeWorld as soon as possible. You want answers? You’ll get them there. Mary says good-bye.”

And the phone went dead.

“Bollocks!” muttered Jack. He snapped his phone shut and turned to Vinnie. “Bartholomew is to give himself up in twenty minutes.”

“And you?”

“I need to get to SommeWorld. Can you get me past the three hundred or so armed officers who are surrounding the building?”

Vinnie flashed him a smile.

“Do I shit in the woods?”

36. Totally over the Top at SommeWorld

“Get on,” said Vinnie, indicating the pillion of his Norton motorcycle, “and whatever happens, stay on.”

He kicked the engine into life, clonked the bike into gear and then accelerated rapidly along the underground garage, up the ramp and into the evening light outside. Jack hung on as Vinnie expertly weaved around the cordon and straight through a small crowd of onlookers, all of whom scattered as they saw him approach. In a second they had turned left and headed toward the motorway. The police helicopter was rapidly diverted and picked them up at the junction to the M4, where the bear and his passenger were easily seen heading westbound. The helicopter stuck to them like glue, and within thirty minutes a full rolling roadblock was converging on the motorcycle. At speeds at over a hundred miles an hour, Vinnie Craps kept the police at bay until his luck and gasoline ran out thirty-two minutes after they’d left the Bob Southey, and the Norton coasted onto the hard shoulder. The pillion passenger, much to the officers’ annoyance, wasn’t Jack at all—he was a friend of Vinnie’s called Lionel.

While the full force of the law was pursuing Vinnie up the motorway, Jack was walking swiftly back to the Allegro. They had made the switch soon after passing the cordon. Lionel had been waiting at the side of the road in identical clothes, and the swap had worked like a treat.

As Jack drove past Theale, the sky clouded over, and several drops of rain begun to speckle the windshield. By the time he pulled up outside the gates of the deserted and unfinished SommeWorld complex, a downpour had begun. Lightning crackled overhead as he got out of the car and ran to the visitors’ center, which looked empty, dark and abandoned. He pushed open the heavy glass door with its Lewis gun magazine door handles and stepped quietly in, shaking the rainwater from his jacket. The centerpiece of the large domed vestibule was a First World War tank, set in a circular diorama filled with earth especially imported from the Somme itself. The marble flooring in the main atrium was engraved with the names of all those who had lost their lives in the failed offensive. The atrium was large, but the writing was by necessity quite small.

The door swung shut behind him and locked with an audible clunk, followed by the sound of other locks being thrown, echoing around the building. He was trapped. Jack looked up at a security camera as he took a few steps forward, and it followed him. He was expected, and he was being watched. He moved to the ticket office and turnstiles, the chrome tubing still covered with a protective plastic coating. To his right was the shop where souvenirs of the Great War would one day be sold, and to his left were the half-completed museum and auditorium, where visitors would be able to watch a five-minute animated featurette describing the events in Europe that led up to the conflict.

He walked past the outfitters where people would one day change into uncomfortable British army uniforms before manning the trenches outside; then he moved to the main stairway that led up to the administrative offices above. In the upstairs corridor, Jack could see a light shining from a half-open door, and he moved closer.

“Why don’t you come in, Inspector?” said a deep voice when he was still three paces away. “There’s no sense in skulking around.”

Jack pushed open the door of the security office and stepped in.

Bisky-Batt turned from the console of CCTV monitors he had been watching. The VP of QuangTech smiled at Jack and offered him a seat. Jack said he’d prefer to stand, and Bisky-Batt nodded agreeably, took one look through the windows at the faux battlefield that was still just visible in the dusk, and sat behind the desk.

“I want answers,” said Jack, “and I want Demetrios. Hand him over and things might not look so bad for you.”

Bisky-Batt laughed. “I hardly think you are in a position to ask for anything, Inspector.” He paused and frowned. “Do I still call you ‘Inspector’? Now that you’re wanted for impersonation, stealing evidence, perverting the course of justice and murder?”

“Where’s Sergeant Mary?”

“I owe you our thanks for finding the Alpha-Pickle and McGuffin, by the way. He’s brilliant, of course, but highly unpredictable. He should never have contacted Goldilocks after the Obscurity blast.”

“It was just another test, like the Nullarbor, wasn’t it?”

“Of course. We’ve been monitoring these cucumbers very closely and move in as soon as they start to approach the magic fifty-kilo mark to take samples, then observe the blast. McGuffin’s work at QuangTech was never about turning grass cuttings into crude; it was always cucumbers.” He smiled. “Cucumbers that can extract the deuterium and tritium from the groundwater, store it all up and then self-ignite. Finally cucumbers have a reason for being.”