The Adjacent, Page 3

  Tarent was less comfortable about his background. It led him to the habit of feeling different, an outsider. He had known it all his childhood, and it worsened when his father was killed in Afghanistan, in circumstances never explained, even by the US State Department for whom he had worked. Tibor was a child at the time, only six. The concealed bomb beneath the roadway that destroyed the armoured Jeep in which his father was travelling was in its own way comprehensible through the familiarity of so many other similar incidents, but why his father had been out there at risk in the rugged hills was never established, or at least never made known to his family. Officially his father was a diplomat but clearly he was more than that, or less. Something other than diplomacy was going on, putting him in a role that sent him out there to a mountain road, in the wrong place and at the wrong time.

  Tibor’s mother, Lucia, also a diplomat, remained in Britain afterwards. She was a cultural attaché at the Hungarian Embassy in London, so never in the same kind of danger as her husband, but she too died a few years later, victim to breast cancer, as Tibor was leaving university.

  That sense of foreignness became more remote as he and Melanie began a more or less conventional married life. No children appeared. She worked at a hospital in London, but his freelance photography caused him to travel, took him away from her, sometimes for a week or more at a time. After ten years in London, Melanie found the hard routines of hospital work were telling on her. She enrolled with Médecins Sans Frontières, loved the work, but it took her away too, often for many weeks at a time. Their marriage began to crumble. The expedition to Eastern Anatolia, not with MSF but with a new aid body set up by the British government, had been a last-ditch attempt by them both to try to cement themselves together again.

  Tarent looked through the toughened porthole at his side. While he dozed the Mebsher had travelled a fair distance, and there was a glimpse of countryside out there, a hedge beside the road and a grassed area beyond. But his view was restricted – it might have been an urban park. There were two trees in sight. One of them was leaning at an angle, its upper branches entangled with the one next to it. Neither had many leaves.

  Pressing his eyes to the glass, Tarent tried to see as much as he could. The more he looked the more he saw that storm damage was apparent everywhere. The soil and subsoil were laid bare where the storm wind had scoured unsheltered fields, a bleak reminder to him of the scorched and desolated landscape of Anatolia. At times the Mebsher drove past houses or larger buildings, and most of these too had suffered damage. They passed teams of rescue workers, tackling the trunks and thick branches of fallen trees, or pieces of masonry that had crashed into the road. The Mebsher slowed to go past these teams, the vehicle lurching over some of the obstructions. There was flooding in most places, by now becoming shallow, but mud was everywhere. The smell of sewage came in through the filters of the Mebsher’s air-con.

  Tarent reached down to one of the protective cases he had placed on the floor beside his feet and deftly slipped out the Canon. He tried to line it up through the distorting glass, get it to focus. The camera felt natural in his hand, like a thin glove moulded into his grip. He took a couple of shots through the porthole but he knew even as he released the virtual shutter that the pictures would be no good. The cabin was vibrating too much, there were too many imperfections in the thick glass.

  As he lowered the camera he saw that the woman in the row of seats in front of him had turned her head to see what he was doing. It was his first glimpse of her face: she looked nothing like Melanie.

  ‘There’s a lot of storm damage out there,’ he said unnecessarily.

  ‘Do you have a licence for that camera?’

  ‘It’s my job.’

  ‘I asked you if you were licensed to carry a camera.’ She had an intent, officious look.

  ‘Of course.’ He swivelled the camera so that its back was towards her. The LIN was engraved there. He wondered how she had known he was using the camera – she had been facing away from him and the camera operated silently. ‘I’m a professional photographer. I’m carrying three cameras, and have three licences.’

  ‘We were told you were a member of the Diplomatic Corps. Attached to OOR.’

  ‘I’m travelling on a diplomatic passport. I’ve just returned from abroad.’ He briefly explained the means by which the OOR had enabled him to travel with Melanie. Non-medical staff were not allowed to travel abroad, not even spouses. They needed Melanie’s specialist training and experience, though, and she made it clear she wanted Tarent with her otherwise she would take another posting. The solution was a temporary passport, which to Tarent’s quiet satisfaction seemed to open the way to almost anything he needed to do. His swift return to IRGB would have been impossible without the passport and the status it conferred.

  ‘If you’re not a diplomat you should hand it in,’ the woman said.

  ‘I’m still on government business.’

  ‘You don’t need a passport for that. I could cancel it electronically now.’

  ‘Please don’t. I might need it to go abroad again. My wife was killed, but her body was never found. It might be necessary for me to identify her.’

  ‘She was the woman killed in Turkey? Nurse Tarent? ’

  ‘Yes. How do you know?’

  ‘We heard. She was a civil servant.’ She turned away from him again.

  He was chilled by her inquisitive manner and irritated by the intrusion, but it was the first time he had been able to take a look at her. She had a strong face, with good features: a firm jaw, wide forehead, dark eyes. He did not like her frown, the humourless sense of authority over him. He thought perhaps she was in the police, but the law required all officers to identify themselves to members of the public. If she was a cop, did his presence in a government Mebsher place him temporarily outside the category of member of the public? Then again, she might not be a cop.

  He kept the lightweight camera in his hand, cupping it lightly. The slow journey continued. After a few minutes one of the drivers fed the BBC news bulletin into the passenger compartment, but the storm and its after-damage were hardly mentioned. Most of the bulletin was about an Emirate meeting of heads of state, due to take place in Toronto. Tarent lost interest and continued to peer at what he could see through the small window. After the politics, the news turned at last to the storm.

  It sounded bad. Several of the southern English counties had been affected by damage and floods from the storm surge, but most of the water had already soaked away, especially from the towns and along the Channel coast. Essex was worst affected. Inland rivers had swollen and broken through their banks and levees, cutting off towns and villages, bringing down power lines and swamping electricity relay stations. Many wind turbines had been damaged or put out of use. The tidal generators in the Essex archipelago were no longer functioning, or were producing reduced power. Tarent, remembering the country he had just left, one almost without any fresh water at all, imagined the streets of IRGB cities transformed into canals, the quietude that always attended a flood, the slow sound of the water draining away, the stench of mud, sewage, rottenness spread about.

  Above everything now, a cleaned and cloudless sky, brilliant blue. The last spiral outriders of the storm system had rolled away eastwards over the North Sea and the hurricane, spawned in the warm Atlantic waters of the Azores, was gone. Officially, IRGB was never at risk from hurricanes, too far to the north, too far east, so they were called Temperate Storms. The news said that Edward Elgar had been less intense than was feared at first, but nevertheless it had caused extensive damage.

  Another storm, TS Federico Fellini, was already crossing the Bay of Biscay, gathering intensity, but its likely strength by the time it reached Britain was still not known, nor was its route.

  The radio clicked off, with an ear-popping snap of static.

  Tarent, growing bored, stared around the compartment he was in. Much of his journey down to Turkey had been inside vehicles like this
one: they had been picked up in Paris, travelled down to Italy in a Mebsher, transferred to a train across to Trieste, then another long slow haul in a Mebsher through the Balkans. The tedium of being trapped inside the vehicle was always much the same. You felt safe because of the strength of the armour, but you were always more vulnerable because the sight of a slow moving personnel carrier was often too tempting to be ignored by insurgents. While they were crossing Serbia a pair of youths had loosed off RPGs at them. One had missed but the other struck the armoured side. The noise of the explosion was terrifying, and he was still suffering tinnitus as a result, but there was no serious damage to the Mebsher. The only injuries to the passengers – himself, Melanie and two doctors – were cuts and bruises from being hurled violently around inside the cabin, but nothing more serious had happened. After that, no one was willing to complain about the cramped conditions, the unrelenting heat, the noise, the boring food. Instead, they travelled in tense silence, fearful of another attack.

  At least in Britain the armed gangs who controlled some parts of the countryside were carrying mostly automatic weapons, not grenade launchers. And during the summer months in Britain the temperature inside was usually bearable. It was different in hotter climates where the intensity of the sun on the metal skin overcame any attempt to keep the vehicle cool. The other extreme was just as unmanageable – in three more weeks the heating equipment inside the elderly vehicles would barely cope when the first of the big freezes set in. September in southern England was getting to be a problem, the interface between climate upheavals, a delineation of two distinct climate challenges.

  They came eventually to Bedford, a cordoned town, a devolved seat of government, or DSG, in case of national crisis. Tarent looked curiously through his distorting window, wondering what the town would look like in its new ascendancy of importance, but it was much as he remembered it from his last visit some years earlier. They had now travelled a good distance away from the footprint of the storm, and no damage to buildings could be seen.

  Tarent and the others spent the night in a Home Office hostel, an installation with most of its facilities concealed below ground level. It was somewhere near the railway station, which was apparently still in use. They saw little else of the town before transferring from the Mebsher to the building, stepping through the chill evening air.

  He was relieved to be allocated a single room for the night because he was in no mood to have to share with a stranger. Once again his diplomatic ID was invaluable. It was concerning to him that someone like the woman in the seat ahead of him apparently had the ability to disable it remotely, but for the time being at least it went through the swipes and scans without a hitch.

  The room he was given in the hostel was little more than a cell, several floors down and therefore deep underground. It was properly ventilated, though, and was kept clean and tidy. The corridor outside smelled of old food, paint, rust and damp. Tarent located the refectory on the same level, ate a large meal, followed it with some fruit, then returned to his room with a carton of chilled fresh milk. He went early to bed but slept badly. There were noises all night: doors slamming, voices passing down the corridor. The ventilator droned constantly, and in the early hours someone went slowly along the corridor with an electric cleaner. He was woken at 7:00 am.

  5

  He was first to take his seat in the Mebsher. When the others boarded they barely glanced in his direction but nodded briefly and conventionally towards him. The woman was last to board. As she clambered through the narrow, reinforced hatch her shoulder-bag caught on something. While stretching back to free it she stared directly at Tarent for a moment, but as soon as she had wrenched it from the obstruction she looked away again without saying anything.

  ‘Good morning,’ Tarent said as she took her seat in front of him, but she did not reply. She opened her bag, apparently wanting to make sure nothing had been lost from it.

  They were soon under way again. As the Mebsher moved slowly out of the town centre one of the crewmen came on the intercom. It was a formula greeting: peace be unto you, Allah is almighty, welcome back aboard, keep your seat-belts fastened, food is available in the galley but remember that no alcohol is allowed aboard, please follow all instructions from the crew in the event of emergencies, Inshallah. There would be a short refuelling stop in about an hour. The crewman added that there could be breaks in the journey for prayer if requested, and these were not only allowed but encouraged. At least one hour’s notice would be required, either to travel to the nearest mosque or to locate a suitable halt and to manoeuvre the Mebsher into position.

  Tarent had met both of the crew the day before when he boarded. They were young, apparently well trained and efficient NCOs. They were from the Royal Highland Regiment, the Black Watch, courteous and sharp-witted, willing to try to meet the passengers’ needs while the long and uncomfortable journey continued.

  They drove north out of the town, shortly heading into the flat countryside of Cambridgeshire. Tarent tried to see what he could through the window. After two hours the drivers pulled in at a depot to recharge the vehicle’s cells and to take on more biofuel. The woman in the row in front of Tarent climbed down to the tiny service bar beneath the passenger compartment. She brought back two styrofoam cups of coffee, one for herself and one for the man she was travelling with. She did not look in Tarent’s direction.

  Thinking ahead to the need for food at lunchtime, and like the other passengers rather unwilling to try clambering down the steep steps while the Mebsher was in motion, Tarent went down to the service area and took some sandwiches and a vacuum-sealed salad from the chill box.

  He returned to his seat and stared again through the narrow pane of armoured glass. From the position within the recharge dock he could see at least a dozen fallen trees, which must have lined the side of the road before they fell. Maybe they had been struck by the storm Melanie’s parents had mentioned. Their root balls stood perpendicular, great ragged discs of soil and root material. There was still a carpet of leaves, smaller shrubs, branches and other debris spreading across the dock forecourt and into the main road. With interest he regarded the many tonnes of timber and vegetation he could see in just this short stretch of the road and from a restricted viewpoint. The whole of southern England must be similarly wreathed in torn and broken vegetation because of the storms. He wondered what would happen to the valuable material when at last it was cleared up.

  His interest in the recycling of timber and other vegetation had been sharpened by the last photographic assignment he went on, two weeks before the start of the ill-fated visit to Turkey with Melanie. This had been to central Spain. Here he had covered the PCVE, Proyecto Carbón Vegetal Españolas. The Spanish authorities had set up a vast network of carbon-negative power generators based on the bulk creation of charcoaled biomass. The residue, when buried in the ground, restored the waste carbon to the soil, not to the atmosphere. As a long-term measure it would also return fertility to the hundreds of thousands of hectares of the country that had turned to desert since the beginning of the twenty-first century.

  At a time of ever-worsening ecological catastrophe, the PCVE had induced in him a feeling of optimism, that something was at last being done. Looking at the fallen trees around him, Tarent hoped and assumed that people in Britain would not be so shortsighted as to incinerate the organic debris from this or any other of the recent storms, or to pile it somewhere to decompose. The Spanish charcoal biomass project was still the only large installation in Western Europe, but immense complexes of biochar electricity generators, coupled with carbon reclaim, had been established in China, Ukraine, Russia, India, Brazil and Australia.

  He knew, though, that in many parts of the world the climate was so extreme, and the urgent re-use of waste so little understood, that the old and wasteful methods were still being employed.

  He settled down on the thinly padded seat as comfortably as he could to endure the inevitably long hours of travel th
at must still lie ahead. Boredom was an enemy because of the mental blankness it created, allowing in the thoughts that normally he could guard himself against. It was still only a few days since Melanie had died. They had been together for more than twelve years and in spite of everything that had gone wrong he still did not yet know how he was going to get by without her.

  Obviously it had been a mistake to travel with her – from the moment they arrived at the field hospital he realized he was at best superfluous and at worst in the way of the clinical work. He busied himself with his cameras, went out on shoots as often as possible, but the hospital inevitably drew attention to itself, and as the weeks went by it became increasingly dangerous to venture outside. Soon he was more or less confined to the compound, or to the clinical areas inside. Melanie hated that, and his presence became the endless, continuous aggravation that did so much damage to their relationship.

  The journey to Anatolia was the first time they travelled abroad together, and at first the experience drew them together. For days they passed through blighted countryside, past barren slopes and dried-up lakes and rivers. They saw striking evidence of the abraded climate: sudden devastating storms that led to flash floods and mud-slides, blinding, airless heat, the fields of burnt crops, the fire-blackened forests. All that was what they saw as they passed through southern France, through Provence, along the Mediterranean coast, as the Mebsher took them slowly to the north of Italy. After a total of more than a month of such travel, Tarent’s party had joined up with another OOR medical team in Trieste. They allowed themselves three days’ rest. A slow convoy of Mebshers then set off through the perilous mountains of the Balkans. It took another four weeks to reach the hospital compound in Eastern Anatolia, where work was already going on. The people they relieved left immediately in the Mebshers. Backed up by intermittent supplies brought in expensively by privately operated helicopter couriers, the staff managed to keep the hospital running for five months, two more than their original expectations, but towards the end everything about the work was becoming unsustainable.