Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

hundred-metre
length. Beyond them all the naval hovercraft and hydrofoils
busily patrolled; still further away, across the strait towards
Rhodes, Myra could make out their equally assiduous counterparts,
the patrol-boats of the Greek Threat.
    They followed the long swooping road down to Fetiye, passing
the Lycian tombs in the cliffs and turning right before the
mosque and down along the edge of the bazaar to the
harbour’s long mole and esplanade. They pulled up at the
embarkation point, beside a star-and-crescent flag and a
glowering statue of Kemal.
    The engine spun to a halt. Jason looked across at her.
    ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Will I ever see you
again?’
    ‘If we’re both going to live forever,’ Myra
said wryly, ‘probably yes.’
    ‘I’ll take that as a no.’ Jason stuck out
his hand. ‘Still. It’s been a good few days. Keep in
touch. And if the investigation turns up anything, VU be
in touch.’
    She caught his hand, her newly sharpened sight blurring
suddenly. ‘Oh, don’t take it as a no!’ she
said, dismayed at his casual acceptance of her casual words as a
permanent parting. This was like adolescence all over again, this
was more than lust, she had a crush on him and she was saying the
wrong things. She startled him with a fierce embrace, herlips wet
on his, her eyelashes wet on his neck, and all the while thinking
this wasn’t like her, this wasn’t right, she was
supposed to be a diplomat and she was falling for a fucking CIA agent who had been sent to do a different kind of job
on her; this was Not The Done Thing, at all.
    They pulled apart, holding each other’s shoulders,
staring at each other, oblivious to the chattering crowd of small
boys around the vehicle.
    ‘Myra, you’re amazing,’Jason said. Til never
forget you, I’ll keep in touch, I’ll try to see you
again, but we both…’
    Yeah,’ Myra said. She made a long sniffly nasal
inhalation. ‘We’re both grown-up people, we have
jobs, we might not always be on the same side and – ’
she giggled ‘ – „we only have fourteen hours to
save the Earth“.’
    ‘Or something. Yes.’
    Jason disengaged, with a smile that to Myra still looked like
a regretful adieu. They remained awkwardly formal with each other
as Jason dismissed the boys’ unwanted offers of porterage,
helped her take her luggage to the shutde boat, and shook hands
as she stood at the top of the ladder.
    As the small boat chugged out across the harbour to the larger
craft, Myra watched Jason restart the jeep, turn it around and
drive it away, vanishing at a turn off the boulevard.
    She sighed and turned around to face the ekran-oplan. The vast
machine looked even more improbably huge as it loomed closer: an
aircraft the size of a ship, with stubby wings. A ship that flew.
It was on the regular Istanbul to New York run, which stopped off
at Izmir and Fetiye before hitting its stride. The boat steered
its way through its competitors and hove to under the shadow of
the port wing, wherea set of steps extended down to a pontoon
platform. Officials officiously tagged the luggage for loading
into the cargo hold, and the passengers ascended into the
ship.
    Myra made her way to the forward lounge, bought a gin and
tonic at the bar with her remaining handfuls of Turkish gigalira
notes, and took the urgent multilingual advice to sit down before
the ship took off.
    She’d never before travelled in one of these hybrid
vehicles – a Kruschev-era Soviet invention, she remembered
with residual pride – and she was suitably stunned by its
speed and above all by the impression of speed, as the
great machine roared across the Med at a mean height of ten
metres and a top speed of three hundred miles per hour. It left
Fetiye at noon, chased the day across the Atlantic, and arrived
in New York fourteen hours later at 6 p.m. local time.
    Myra spent most of those fourteen hours relaxing, sleeping,
sight-seeing and thinking about how to save the Earth.
     
    From the sea, Manhattan had a weird, unbalanced look, the Two
Mile Tower growing from the Lower East Side throwing all the rest
out of perspective. South Street Seaport was still battle-damaged
from the coup, and smelt more than ever of fish. Myra made her
way along the duckboarded temporary quay, indistinguishable in
the stream of disembarking passengers until she stepped into the
waiting embassy limo with its sun-and-eagle pennant and welcoming