Dead Lions by Mick Herron

wood louse, scuttling blindly on the topmost log of the burning pyramid. Despite the heat, his grandfather’s hand remained steady as he leaned forward, the end of the twig positioned so that the beetle’s next circuit would bring it immediately into its path, whereupon the dying creature would presumably launch itself gratefully upwards, as if upon a rope dangled from a helicopter. What was beetle for deus ex machina ? But the beetle had no words, Latin or otherwise, and avoided the offered escape route, making instead for the uppermost point of the log, where it balanced for a moment then burst into flames. River’s grandfather made no comment. He simply dropped the twig into the fire, and settled back in his armchair.
    River was going to say something, but turned the words into a throat-clearing noise instead.
    The old man said, “This was back in Charles’s day, and he got quite exercised about it in the end. Talked about wasting time on fun and games when there was still a war on, if nobody had noticed.” The O.B.’s voice changed with these words, as he indulged in that harmless habit of imitating someone your listener had never met.
    Charles Partner had been the Service’s First Desk, once upon a time.
    “And this was the man Dickie Bow claimed kidnapped him.”
    “Yes. Though to be fair to Dickie, when he came up with his story, it hadn’t been firmly established Popov didn’t exist. He must have seemed like a good-enough alibi at the time for whatever Dickie was up to. Drinking and whoring, probably. When he realised his absence had sent balloons up, that was the story he invented. Kidnapped.”
    “And did he say what Popov wanted? I mean, kidnapping a streetwalker …”
    “He told everyone who’d listen, and quite a few who wouldn’t, that he’d been tortured. Though as this took the form of being made forcibly drunk, he had difficulty summoning up sympathy. Speaking of which …”
    But River shook his head. Any more, and he’d know about it in the morning. And he ought to be getting home soon.
    To his surprise, his grandfather refilled his own glass. Then he said, “That closed town. The one he was supposed to come from.”
    River waited.
    “It disappeared from the map in ’55. Or would have done, if it had been on a map.” He looked at his grandson. “Closed towns didn’t officially exist, so there wasn’t a lot of admin involved. No photographs to airbrush, or encyclopedia pages to replace.”
    “What happened?”
    “Some kind of accident at the plutonium plant. There were a few survivors, we think. No official figures, of course, because officially it never happened.”
    River said, “Thirty thousand people?”
    “Like I said. There were some survivors.”
    “And they wanted you to believe Popov was one of them,” River said. His mind was conjuring a story from a comic book: an avenger arising from the flames. Except what was there to avenge, after an industrial accident?
    “Perhaps they did,” his grandfather said. “But they ran out of time. Our net filled up once the Wall came down. If he’d been flesh and blood, one of the bigger fish would have offered him up. We’d have had the whole biography, chapter and verse. But he remained scraps, like an unfinished scarecrow. Some reptile dropped his name in a debriefing session, but that was an admission of ignorance by then, because nobody believed in him any more.”
    The O.B. turned from the fire as he finished. Light from theflames emphasised the creases in his face, turning him into an old tribal chief, and a pang ran through River as he realised there wouldn’t be many more evenings like this one; that there ought to be something he could do to eke them out. But there was nothing, and never would be. Learning that was one thing. Living with it, another entirely.
    Careful not to let those thoughts show, he said, “Dropped his name how?”
    “There was a code word involved. I can’t remember what it was.” The old man