“I affirm the above statement is the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God.”
Donald folded the sheet and stuffed it back in his jacket pocket, causing a scratching noise like a mouse due to his shaking hands. A cold, sick nausea gripped him. The only other occasion he had felt this anguish was after Father told him about the glioblastoma. As recently as a week ago, Donald would have thrown the statement away as an outrageous calumny. Since then, he had seen and heard a great deal.
He still refused to believe it.
Chapter 20
Donald’s first action as minister for trade for the Republic of the New Nation was to request Lawrence’s personnel file be sent up from General Wardian HQ in the Central Enclave. He also sought the file of Leading Basic Garrington. It felt good to boss glory bureaucrats about after they had shown such disdain for his approaches in the past. The files would be on his desk by late morning.
His second action was to drive into the Central Enclave to visit a house in a humble corner of the prestigious Mayfair district. The sirens of the motorcycle escort cleared the streets of pedestrians as a shark clears a path through a school of tuna. There were no man-hauled wagons or oil-fired limousines about. The only other vehicles were armoured cars and glory trucks, which pulled over at the scream of sirens. As the streets became progressively narrower, Donald had to call out directions to his driver. It was some years since he had visited the location in question—to drop off his daughters, not as a guest. His memory was hazy. After a couple of embarrassing back-tracks, the noisy little convoy drew up outside the gates of a fine white-painted stone mansion set behind a high wall backed with cypress trees.
No reaction stirred from behind the rivetted iron gates. Donald stood in his dark grey Party suit and black leather raincoat, Colt 38 pistol gripped inside the right pocket, scanning the upper floors of Laxbury House for any signs of life. The first floor and mansard windows had been shuttered with steel plates. He asked two of the motorcycle riders to give him a leg up against the gates. No one shot his head off as he peered into the garden. The ground floor windows were also secured by steel shutters. The place was abandoned and his daughters long gone to the Lands of Krossington. For several minutes he simmered over whether to order the place burned to the ground. As minister for trade he was authorised by the Provisional Cabinet of the Republic of the New Nation to take any actions he deemed necessary to invigorate the economy.
Burning down a mansion created demand for reconstruction. Any destruction was therefore creation; definitions were all relative.
After cooling a little, he wrote out an ordnance on an official form that declared Laxbury House to be the property of the Republic of the New Nation. No entry was permitted except by those authorised by the Provisional Cabinet. Signed, the minister for trade.
The next stop was back outside the Grande Enceinte. His fish-like black petrol car with its escort of one light armoured car in front, another behind and six motorcycle outriders roared up the turnpike from Ladbroke fort, restrained by the armoured cars’ maximum speed of thirty-five miles per hour. Their tormented oil engines spewed up clouds of grey smoke which swirled behind in a long tail and fouled the air of Donald’s car. The little convoy turned under the iron arch of the Friendly Cooperative of North Kensington basin. The gravel standing yard was empty. The vehicles pulled up outside the customs house and shut off their engines. Complete silence descended on the scene. Donald entered the customs house to find it empty of the usual line of ultramarine drivers. A single customs official stood at the counter. It was the same man who had served him when he came out here for the first time looking for Sarah-Kelly. That was only five weeks ago. The official switched on his flashlight smile and then switched it off.
“Are you aware that all frontiers within the Republic have been declared illegal by the Provisional Cabinet?” Donald said.
A big tough with a sawn-off shotgun stepped out of the back office and aimed at Donald’s face. He said:
“We don’t have time for you fucking radicals with your crazy laws and screaming leaders. Just state your business.”
Donald could have pointed out that the Provisional Cabinet had also banned the bearing of arms except by forces of the Republic. He decided to leave the individual concerned to learn the hard way. Instead, he laid down his brand-new citizen’s passport and paid the tariff for a day visa and a runner to fetch the members of the Basin Council.
An hour later he returned to his car in a thoughtful and gloomy mood. He had met the three basin councillors. One of them was Bartram Newman, although neither he nor Donald revealed they knew each other and there had been no chance in the tense encounter to ask him to one side for news about Lawrence. Such favoured attention would naturally have generated seething suspicions in the other two councillors. There was a fundamental deadlock of principles between the bargee enterprises and the Republic of the New Nation. The Provisional Cabinet had declared that all commerce must be conducted in the paper fiat legal tender of the republic, the Free Dollar. The bargees refused point-blank to take ‘boxes of paper’; they would take only gold. If the Republic did not like the terms on offer, that was the Republic’s tough luck so far as they were concerned. Donald was unable to budge
