The noise and shockwave hit like a wall falling on them, the air itself pulsates, not like regular noise, but a force tearing at her ears. She doesn't hear anything after that, doesn't hear the sounds of buildings crumbling, cars flung into one another like childrens' toys, alarm sirens. The shockwave forces Danielle onto her knees. What she remembers most is seeing it ripple down the street like a gust of wind. The shockwave moves at six hundred miles an hour, the speed of sound, it takes only a fraction of a second to pass through her line of sight, but she swears afterwards that she saw the storm front of the explosion advance like a hurtling wave, shattering windows all the way down the street.
It actually takes a few seconds, stunned, deafened, and on her scraped knees, for her to associate what just happened with the bomb they built earlier today.
Laurent helps her to her feet, takes her hand, leads her on, walking away from the blast. His shirt is torn and there is blood on his arm from some kind of shrapnel. Danielle follows him robotically, in shock, unable to think, her legs marching by themselves. The world is soundless, as if someone pushed the global MUTE button. They pass ambulances and police cars racing the other way, sirens flashing. They keep walking. Her knees hurt. She looks down and sees they are bloody, the kneecaps have been scraped off her jeans. The world seems to be moving too fast around them, she doesn't have time to react to any sensory stimuli. People, old people and mothers mostly, are standing out in the streets or in their front gardens, talking to one another with concerned expressions, on their cell phones, looking back past Danielle and Laurent. A couple of them approach, meaning to help, but Laurent waves them off and they keep walking. They mustn't be noticed, mustn't be remembered, mustn't be caught. Danielle knows this but can barely remember why. A crackling buzz in her mind, overwhelmingly loud, drowns out all attempts at coherent thought.
She isn't sure how far they've walked when she begins to emerge from her cocoon of shock. Miles, she thinks. Her feet ache. So does her head. Her skinned knees have clotted over but bloodstains dangle like tongues on the shins of her torn jeans. Her ears ring as if she carries a fire alarm with her, but at the edge of her hearing she can hear the noises of the city, traffic, pedestrian chatter. They are in a more built-up area now, a busy street with a few stores, a Boots pharmacy, a newsagent, a post office, a café. A red double-decker bus passes. The people all around act as if nothing has changed, as if the world has not ended. She tugs on Laurent's hand to make him stop and turn to face her.
"I need to sit down," she says. She knows from the vibrations in her throat that she is speaking loudly, but she can barely hear herself.
He nods. They enter the café. The furnishings are cheap uncomfortable plastic, the plates and cutlery old and chipped, the stink of grease pervasive, the service malevolent, the décor nonexistent, but it seems like a sanctuary. They order bacon sandwiches and cups of tea. The fat old woman behind the counter gives them a sharp untrusting look, but Danielle suspects she does that with everyone. It is a great relief to sit on the plastic chairs. The sandwiches taste like ashes.
"Maybe they –" she begins, and then stops. She can't think of a maybe. Laurent shakes his head violently. "Not here."
She nods. It doesn't matter. Angus and Estelle must be dead. Danielle cannot even imagine how they might have survived the blast. The thought seems curiously unreal, as if it is not they who died, just their characters in a video game, Angus and Estelle can select New Game and pop back into this world untouched any time they like.
** *
Only minutes after returning to the apartment Danielle realizes she has no recollection of how they got there, of any time between the café and now. Laurent goes straight to the shower without saying a word. She slumps onto the couch in front of the television. After a moment, not allowing herself to think about it, she takes the remote turns on Teletext, the BBC's archaic pre-Internet system of textual news updates. The crude white letters on a black screen are like time travelling back to the 1980s. The lead story is BOMB IN NORTH LONDON – FIVE DEAD.
She can't bring herself to select the story and read more. She clicks the television off. She vaguely knows she should cry, tear out her hair, wear sackcloth and ashes, but it all still feels so unreal. And besides her hair isn't long enough to tear. For some reason this thought produces a ghostly smile which immediately prompts a stab of horrible, unspeakable guilt. Danielle tells herself that she just participated in the accidental murder of five people, including two good friends. It sounds ridiculous. She is very tired. She decides to go to sleep. In her heart she really believes that when she wakes up all this will somehow be over, erased, forgotten like a nightmare.
For a moment when she wakes she doesn't remember what happened. Then it hits her and she moans as if struck, curls into a fetal ball, unable to deal with the enormity of it all. Her whole body is shot through with icy shivers. Her mind keeps recoiling from the idea and then returning to it again, as if picking at a scab. Breathing hard, she sits up. Laurent is sitting in a chair, staring dully at her. She rushes past him to the bathroom and throws up. Eventually she takes a shower. It doesn't make her feel clean. She scrubs angrily at her skinned knees, making them sting like fire. When she comes out, wrapped in a towel, Laurent does not seem to have moved, but there is a newspaper on the bed front of him, the Evening Standard. BOMB KILLS FIVE is the headline.
She sits on the bed and reads. The dead have already been identified. Angus, Estelle, an old woman, a young mother and her infant daughter. Danielle cries out loudly when she reads that last. Seventeen others were wounded but are expected to recover. The article calls Angus and Estelle 'anarchists with a history of violence.'
"We probably shouldn't be here," Laurent says. His voice is devoid of life. "I don't think Estelle booked this place in her real name. But even so. They might be able to find it."
"What happened? How could this happen?"
"I guess I fucked up. Maybe, when I dropped it on the ground, to prove how safe it was –"
Then, incredibly, Laurent begins to giggle.
"Laurent," Danielle says, when the giggling continues. "Stop it. Stop it!"
She stands up and shakes him. His laughter deepens, his whole body shakes, tears begin to roll down his cheeks. Frightened, Danielle takes a step back and slaps him hard.
The laughter stops like she flicked a switch. He stares at her with red eyes. "Thanks. I needed that. I'm sorry. I don't know where that came from."
"Don't do it again." She feels like the ground has dropped away to a steep angle. The one thing she had thought was bedrock was Laurent's stability.
"I won't," he promises.
The telephone begins to ring. Both of them jump, then stare at the phone as if it too might explode.
"I'll get it," she says. Maybe it is the police. She almost hopes so. Atleast this would be over. She deserves to be captured. She deserves to be jailed. They both do.
"This is Philip," a hoarse voice says, "What the fuck is going on?"
** *
"This is not a setback," Philip says. "This is fucking catastrophic. The police connected the bomb to Kishkinda. The papers are full of speculation that Angus and Estelle didn't act alone, they had no history of bombs. They're looking for you. And us."
They are again in the foundation's rented boardroom near Green Park. Somehow a day and a night has passed, somehow time has not stopped. Danielle's night was spent in endless non-sleep, dipping into the pool of unconsciousness for only minutes at a time, then waking and nervously expecting a knock on the door, the police have come, they tracked their phone calls, or their walk down the street away from the bomb, or the manufacturer of the metal suitcase, or their intrusion into the Paris offices. Each time Danielle woke she thought of Angus and Estelle, the new mother and the infant girl, and howled softly with anguish. Beside her, Laurent slept soundly.
"Five people dead, including Angus and Estelle," Philip continues. "Seventeen wounded. Millions of pounds of damage. Every police officer in London trying to track the bomb. And Paris as well, now they found the bugs you planted. The purpose of this meeting is to officially inform you that the foundation is temporarily disbanding. We strongly suggest you leave the country. If you are arrested, and to be honest at this point we consider this quite likely, I very strongly suggest you do not breath a word about us. We have friends and ears in unlikely places high and low. Ministers' offices and prison cells. We can't afford to have our existence investigated and testified to. We will not be destroyed by your colossal mistake. We will ensure our invisibility. By any means necessary. Do I make myself perfectly clear?"
"Transparent," Laurent says.
Danielle nods.
Philip takes a deep breath and forces himself to relax. His face sags and suddenly he looks old and weak. "Go home, both of you," he says. "Go back to America."
** *
Danielle bursts out crying in the middle of yoga class that afternoon. She shouldn't have gone to class at all, she should have stayed hidden in their flat, but she thought if she went and pushed herself as hard as she could, to the edge of her endurance, she might achieve amnesia. It didn't work. She has to be helped out of the room. She takes a long shower in the change room and manages to keep her tears in when she leaves the building, at least until she is out in the Primrose Hill sunshine. It is a thirty-minute walk back to the flat. She cries all the way. At an intersection halfway there, she is nearly struck by a car, and after leaping to safety, she almost wishes she hadn't.
** *
"They're going to catch us, aren't they?" Danielle asks the next day, sitting in her chair, staring down at the street outside, clogged with London traffic and pedestrians. A curdled haze of cloud hangs over the city.
"Not likely. We'll be gone tomorrow."
"Running away isn't going to help. Everyone in the world is looking for us."
"How will they find us?" Laurent asks.
"I don't know. Something. Some little clue."
"No." His voice is assured, steady; there is no sign that yesterday's crazy giggle fit ever happened. "You know why most criminals are caught? Because they're stupid. Or they panic under pressure and make flagrant errors. Don't believe what you see on television. TV police win because it's what people want to see. The truth is most police, even the elite, even the FBI and MI6, aren't as bright and well-trained as they'd have you believe. Smart people who don't panic can run rings around them. You wouldn't believe the damage a single determined, competent person could wreak on a country like this, if one of us really tried. They won't catch us. They count on mistakes. We didn't make any."
"You made a pretty fucking big one, didn't you?"
"Yes," Laurent says. "I did. And in wars mistakes kill people. And I'm sorry for them. I'm terribly sorry. If I could trade my life for theirs I would. But I can't. Neither can you. So stop acting like you want to be caught. You think they should catch us, don't you? You think we deserve it."
"Don't we?"
"No. Our intentions were pure. Our objectives were noble."
Danielle half-laughs. "Pure. Noble. We killed people. Have you read about the ones who lived? One of them will never walk again."
"What can I say?" Laurent asks. "It's horrific. It's no more horrific than what's happened to the brain-damaged children in Kishkinda, or the ones who will never walk, or Jayalitha and her children. Remember what you told me about making mistakes? You move on. We will move on to New York. We will heal. It will be slow, it will be painful, but I promise, we will heal. And it wasn't you. It was me. It was my mistake. I'm the killer. You did nothing wrong, you have no responsibility."
"I could have stopped you. Or left you."
She lets the last sentence hang in the air.
"Don't leave me," he says, confidence suddenly drained from his voice. "Please. Not now. Please. If you've ever believed anything I've said, believe this. You're the only woman I've ever met who might save me."
She turns and looks at him. "Save you from what?"
"Myself," he says. "Come with me to New York. Please. We'll put all this behind us. It will all be over, all of it, forever. I swear."
** *
Laurent has gone out for a long walk when the phone in their flat rings. Danielle stares at it a long time, lets the doubled rings of the British telephone fill the empty space of the room a half-dozen times, knowing in the cold center of her heart that the caller bears bad news. She fears the unknown so badly she can hardly bear to make it known. But she forces herself to answer.
"Danielle?" A familiar voice, but one she is too distraught to immediately place. "Is Laurent there?"
"Who is this?"
"Keiran."
"Keiran?" She blinks. "What do you want?"
"Is Laurent there?"
"No."
"Good," Keiran says. "You should come meet me. Right this minute."
"What? Why?"
"Come alone," Keiran says. "It's about Laurent. I've found out who he really is and what he's doing. What he's really doing. I have to tell you. It's...appalling."