Read Online The Coldest War by Ian Tregillis - Free Book Online Page B

his head, shook off the memory. Now the telly shouted the BBC news at quarter past. Cracking his knuckles against his jaw, Marsh turned on his stool to get a glimpse of the screen.
    A kerosene lamp had been identified as the cause of the recent fire in the Forest of Dean. The rumors of abandoned villages in Tanganyika had proved false, but now similar reports were coming out of British-held India near the Nepalese border. The Eighth Cruiser Squadron was soon to join the HMS Ocean in the Persian Gulf. Radio receivers at Jodrell Bank in the U.K. and Parkes, in Australia, reported the space station had fallen silent. Urgent transmissions from the cosmonauts returning from their orbit of the moon suggested they had received no communications from the station since emerging from the moon’s shadow a day ago. Moscow denied any problems.
    Closer to home, news of the day concerned a sweeping new trade agreement between the United Kingdom and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. His Grace, the Duke of Aelred, was credited with brilliantly shepherding the initiative through a period of increased tensions between the two nations. Up flashed an old clip of Aubrey Beauclerk shaking hands with a member of the Soviet diplomatic mission. The duke was thought to be a likely successor to the Foreign Secretary, if the BBC could be believed.
    Then the image changed to a clip of the duke’s brother.
    â€œTurn it off,” said Marsh.
    The younger Beauclerk, long a political outsider and burdened with what was delicately referred to as a “murky” past, had in recent years become one of the duke’s closest advisers. Lord William Beauclerk had played a major role in hammering out the new agreement; the commentary predicted a bright future for the duke’s brother, complete with twee metaphors about sunlight after the storm.
    William fucking Beauclerk. It wasn’t fair.
    â€œI said, turn it off!” Marsh hurled his pint glass at the television. He missed. It shattered against the wooden cabinet, splashing the screen and those closest with the dregs of his beer. The room erupted with shouts of anger and alarm.
    â€œOy!” the barman yelled. “That tears it!”
    Somebody tried to grab Marsh’s arm; his knuckles connected with what felt like a jaw when he threw a punch. But dizziness and rage made it a wild, uncoordinated swing, little more than a glancing blow. The hand on his forearm tightened its grip.
    Marsh jumped from his stool, reflexively thinking to use it as a weapon to break the hold on him. But when he wheeled to face the man holding his arm, a punch landed solidly on his cheekbone, just beneath the eye. The sting of torn skin; the thrower wore a wedding ring.
    Somebody else grabbed Marsh in a wristlock and slammed his head to the bar hard enough to rattle glasses. Marsh struggled, but halfheartedly. The barman stood in the corner, telephone receiver to his ear, glaring at him.
    He knew that look, and it took the fight out of him. He’d lose his job if he got tossed in the clink again.
    Marsh wrested free of the man holding him. Every eye in the room watched him warily. The pub was silent as he plucked the towel from the bar, gathered his hat from the hooks behind the door, and stepped outside. The murmur of conversation—mostly “tsk, tsk” and “shameful drunk”—resumed as he slammed the door.
    The pub shared a doorstep with a shoe repair service. Marsh sat there, trying to staunch the flow of blood with the towel, waiting for the police. It stung; the towel had whiskey on it. The sunlight left him feeling cold. A white-haired lady hurried down the street with a grocer’s sack. Marsh scowled at her; she crossed the street.
    Blood still trickled from the gash along his cheekbone when a black Ford Corsair rolled to a stop in front of the pub. The police radio squawked something incomprehensible; the driver responded into a handset while his partner emerged