The trooper glanced at him, flipped through the many stamped pages, chewed his lip, slowed and became reflective as if something had caught his attention. He studied a page bearing stamps dated back in September.
“The stamps say you were through here four times back on September 18th.”
“That’s true,” Donald smiled. “I had to clear up a mismatch between a purchase order and an invoice.”
Such was the care with which Wingfield’s team prepared its counterfeits. The basic raised his stamp, banged it down and was calling “Next!” before Donald had retrieved his passport. He slid it deep inside his coat pocket and was on his way at a brisk march. It was that easy… As if he had just accomplished a dare, he felt quivery in the knees. The world outside the Grande Enceinte was dark and wide open.
*
To begin with, he walked in the general drift across a pitch-black dead zone. This unlit stretch was the Strip, which is to say, the razed area from which building materials had been gleaned to construct the Grande Enceinte back in the seventies. The way ahead was blocked by a floodlit iron gate. A wood-burning Stirling generator chugged powering the floodlights. In the glare, tradesmen in blue jean dungarees, footmen in cheap suits and corduroys, maids hidden under black veils; all queued to go home for the weekend. Ultramarines loafed about, yawning and smoking. This was the toll house of the turnpike. Donald handed over an aluminium coin called a Georgie (it had St George and the Dragon stamped on it). According to legend, the vast majority of Georgies had been stamped from the metal skins of Public Era jet airliners left derelict after the Glorious Resolution.
The sky to the east shone gas flame blue, then orange. A crack of sun glared into dawn. The display of dawn was a rare treat for one accustomed to canyon life within the congested Central Enclave. Directly ahead, the sunlight caught a pillar of smoke, frozen by its immensity, leaning to the east in the wind. It was miles away. Donald supposed it to be rising from the receiving end of the shells from Ladbroke fort. He thought little of it.
Wingfield had stringently cautioned him against ‘tourism’ (i.e. moronic gawping about). Despite the caution, Donald could not resist a glance back at the Grande Enceinte catching the first rays of dawn on its Naclaski forts. The great wall ran almost straight, diminishing with distance, until it bulged north around Regent’s Park and curved from view, eventually to meet the River Thames at Tower Bridge. To the west, it extended only a short distance to a squat corner fortress at White City. The Grande Enceinte ran for nineteen miles with twenty fortified gates. Supposedly, it contained two billion bricks, although Donald had always taken this to be a boast more than fact. The Grande Enceinte was a physical testament to the shock of the sovereigns following the Sack of Oxford in 2073.
On the left side of the turnpike rose a steep bank topped by a brick wall crested by a turmoil of thorny bushes. This was the frontier of North Kensington basin. The bank had been built from gravel and clay excavated from the basin. The bricks came from houses that had occupied the same area. It was all the work of Night and Fog gangs back in the seventies.
After a quarter of an hour walking up the mild gravel slope of the turnpike, he reached the arched entrance to the Friendly Co-operative of North Kensington basin. Wagons hauled by teams of twelve or twenty-four men rolled in and out. On every wagon sat one ultramarine to crack the whip and another with a sawn-off shotgun. The air sizzled with hobnails and steel-rimmed wheels on gravel. All this action before eight o’clock on a Saturday morning! Donald could not help but be impressed by the sheer scale of disciplined energy. He entered the customs house, a long brick hall across the end of the plaza, feeling a tight nausea reminiscent of his first day at public school. He was surrounded by streams of strangers who knew exactly what to do. Wingfield had been vague on the protocol here. Donald joined one of the queues. He felt slender and scruffy amongst the tough ultramarines in their immaculate black tunics. Most of them were smoking, clouding up the hall, hardening Donald’s aloof contempt.
At the counter he laid down his messenger’s passport and slid it across. The official was a plump young man with sharp eyes and a grin he switched on and off like stage lighting.
“What is your business today, please sir?”
“I’m visiting the Newman concern.”
The eyebrows twitched. He made a trip up the counter and returned flipping through a file.
“There’s no alert you’ll be here.”
“I’m not expected.”
“Then they won’t see you.”
“They’ll recognise my name. It’s a surprise.”
“Are you armed?”
“Yes.” Donald produced a big top-break Webley 455 revolver and a Colt 38 automatic along with his licence to carry. Wingfield had lent him the Webley as he considered Donald’s Colt 38 a bit light. The licence satisfied the official and Donald put the guns back in his coat pockets.
“I’ll have to send a runner to check with the Newmans,” the official said. “That’ll be a Norseman. If they give permission, your day visa will cost two white ones.”
A Norseman was a ten gramme copper coin issued by the Brent Cross mint. A white one was a silver sovereign, a ubiquitous coin issued by asylum and sovereign mints. Donald picked the coins from his pouch and slid them across. The official checked them with a counterfeit
