The Holy Machine

13

The trade talks were supposed to resume at three, but when Manolis brought me to the Archbishop’s headquarters at 2.30 p.m., the two Illyrian negotiators were waiting anxiously outside. And to my surprise both men piled hastily into the back seat of the taxi.

‘Thank God you’ve finally got here,’ they said. (For Illyrians did still say ‘Thank God’). ‘We need to go straight to the airfield. The helicopter is on its way.’

Both of them were experienced middle-aged men (one a Japanese-Illyrian, the other of French origin), who up to now had seemed to be dealing quite calmly and competently with a slow and frustrating task. But both were now in a fever of agitation.

‘What’s happened?’ I asked.

The French-Illyrian, Claude, made frantic hand signals, pointing at Manolis.

I reassured him that the driver spoke no English at all.

‘There’s been trouble back home,’ said the Frenchman. ‘There’ll be a reaction here. It won’t be safe until we’re back in the City.’

Frowning, Manolis looked at me, glanced back at the negotiators and then frowned at me again. He was suspicious. He could sense the tension and he was wondering what he’d been excluded from.

‘Tell him to turn off his radio!’ said the other negotiator, Tojo. (Manolis had been listening to some crackly bouzouki music). ‘The news may come through any time now and then he won’t want to drive us.’

‘Tell him my colleague here has had a heart attack and we have to get home urgently,’ the Frenchman said.

I told the taxi-driver that the Japanese-Illyrian was very ill and needed quiet.

Manolis frowned, looked dubiously back at Tojo, and very reluctantly turned off the radio.

‘A thousand drachmai, to the airport,’ he said coldly.

We agreed without further argument.

‘There’s been a big squippy demonstration back home,’ Claude explained to me tersely (‘squippy’ was a derogatory term in those days for guestworkers, many of whom were Albanians, or Shqips). ‘Some people have died, most of them Greeks. We need to get out of Epiros before the news spreads.’

But the news was already spreading. We could actually see it, like a weather front moving across a landscape. For a little while the people in the streets were still just as they’d been all morning and over the last two days. Then there were more signs of agitation, more groups conferring, more glances towards our taxi and the three of us inside looking very Illyrian with our clean-shaven faces and our white, collarless suits.

Then someone threw a stone at us.

Then someone else shouted.

Then the car started to be jostled: fists were banged on the roof, doors were kicked, faces glared through windows.

Someone delivered a hard kick to Manolis’ door. He wound down his window and roared out abuse.

‘About thirty died,’ said Claude (he was listening to the news through an ear-set as he spoke), ‘Epirote Greeks, almost all of them.’

‘Atheists! Murderers!’ people were beginning to shout at us. A group of youths made to block our way.

Manolis put his foot down, scaring them out of his way by sheer ruthless speed.

He turned a corner and pulled up abruptly.

‘Right, get out now,’ he said.

Claude produced a wad of banknotes.

‘Ten thousand if you get us to the airstrip!’

Tojo produced a handgun and pointed it at Manolis’ head.

The driver grinned mirthlessly.

‘You don’t seem very ill to me!’ Then he shrugged. ‘Okay, ten thousand drachmai. But make sure everyone can see you pointing that gun at me.’

A lump of brick smashed a hole in the windscreen and sprinkled my suit with glass.

‘And keep the safety catch on,’ Manolis added through gritted teeth. ‘I won’t get you to the airport if you’ve blown my head off.’

He was sweating profusely. The Illyrian civil servants were sweating too. All three men were muttering a stream of obscenities in their respective native languages.

But as for me, oddly enough, for one so frightened of so many things, I felt completely unafraid. More than that, I actually felt elated. There was, I could see, a real possibility that the car would be stopped and we three Illyrians dragged out and beaten to death. But that prospect was quite eclipsed for me by the wonderful and unfamiliar feeling of really being alive.

Somehow we got through the town and on to the airstrip where the Illyrian Air Force helicopter was waiting with its rotor spinning, the unblinking, black-and-white Eye of Illyria painted on its side. Another helicopter, this one a ferocious gunship, was hovering overhead to ensure that no one interfered with our departure.

Soon we were safely on our way home above the Zagorian mountains. The helicopter crew filled us in on the day’s events.

More than twenty thousand guestworkers had come out onto the streets. They had demanded the usual things: religious freedom and full citizenship of Illyria, where they formed the majority of the population but continued to be treated as foreigners.

The police had ordered the demonstration to disperse under the Prevention of Bigotry Act. The crowd had refused and a riot had ensued in which shops were looted, vehicles burnt and several robots damaged. This was when a group of Epirote demonstrators had run amok and been shot by police machines.

Tojo snorted: ‘Their demands are ridiculous. Illyria has always made clear that it is a state for scientists and intellectuals, and that full citizenship will only be given to those who are properly qualified…’

He went on, his voice becoming louder and shriller. ‘Squippies came to Illyria out of choice! They know the rules! They’ve got no business trying to change them.’

He gave an angry snort. His face was all blotchy with emotion and his lip was trembling.

‘But what’s the point? They’ll never listen to reason. The sooner the entire guestworker population is replaced by robots, the better.’

‘Very pricey though,’ observed Claude with a shrug.

‘A price worth paying!’ snapped Tojo, ‘Really Claude, it is just absurd to talk about price!’

We were near the frontier. I looked down at the mountains and fancied for a moment that I saw a tiny single figure far below, struggling southward into Epiros across a snowfield. Oddly jerky movements it seemed to me. Was the figure human, or could it be…?

But I was distracted from taking a second look, by Tojo breaking down into convulsive sobs.

A young paramedic was in the helicopter and he administered sedation.

We crossed into Illyrian airspace in silence, but for the gradually subsiding sobs of Tojo as he settled into sleep, and the thrub-thrub-thrub of the helicopter blades.

Claude glanced at me.

‘The Reaction was bad in Japan,’ he said gruffly, by way of explanation. ‘Public beheadings, torture… you know. It reminds him.’