details on that volunteer database? It would look good on my CV!’
He shook his head, grinning tiredly. ‘I wasn’t even meant to be in charge. The chap who was on the list to take charge was on holiday in the Dominican Republic when the crash happened. They couldn’t get hold of him, I was next on the list.’
He looked at Nathan. ‘So I’m not really the slash ‘n’ burn bandit leader type. Just a dull old pen pusher in charge of a hundred unruly boys.’
‘Sorry, Chief, I just thought . . . I heard what the boys was saying and . . .’
‘Think about it, Nathan, would I have brought you along if that’s what I intended to do, hmm? You’d be a liability. I’d have to keep an eye on you. Wouldn’t I?’
Nathan shrugged and nodded. ‘S’pose so.’
‘I can’t believe that’s what you were thinking, lad.’ He offered him a warm smile. ‘I’ll let you off this time.’
His gaze fell back on the boys; all so gullible, so pliable. All of them had been so young when he’d ‘recruited’ them from amongst his zone intake. Just bewildered little boys ranging from eight to twelve years in age. Schooling - that’s what he’d told everyone: they needed some sort of schooling if they weren’t going to end up being illiterate scavengers like the feral children picking scraps out of the ruins.
Perhaps that might have been the original reason he’d started up those classes. But it was those armed RAF troops and Met police officers, particularly the Met officers, that he found himself worrying about. Too much talk from them about putting the Zone under police jurisdiction.
His lessons became subtle treatises on power and command, military geniuses, emperors and caesars - the sort of history all boys love. Soon the boys were given orange vests and assigned auxiliary civic tasks to teach them responsibility. No one objected to that, they were becoming a nuisance with nothing to do each and every day. A year after he started the schooling, Maxwell had suggested the boys be billeted in the central part of the dome where they’d be better placed for schooling and being given increasingly more important tasks.
It wasn’t so long after that Maxwell learned that the Met officers were considering taking matters into their own hands. They had to go, and the RAF grunts they’d decided to involve along with them.
His boys, now his guards, his army, were infinitely more manageable than Brooks’s men and the police officers - there was no need to explain things to them, to have to reason with his boys, they just did as they were told.
But, like performing seals, only so long as they’re tossed a tasty fish.
The boys on the dodgems stopped their game and a shuffling of roles ensued, some of them fighting each other to get in behind the wheel. Maxwell watched them as the game finally resumed. So many of those boys, once so small and anxious away from their parents’ sides, were now tall enough that they towered over his stocky frame.
Once upon a time they listened avidly in class, hanging onto every word as he described the battles of ancient Rome, the insane excesses of Emperor Caligula, the brutal wars and punishments of medieval times, the burning of witches, the impaling of heretics. Now, Maxwell suspected, they listened only because he provided them with the things they craved . . . and not, as he sometimes tried telling himself, out of some residual loyalty to a much-respected teacher.
It was getting dark now, getting hard to pick out the fun and games going on beneath the canopy of the dodgems’ tent.
Maxwell gestured at the improvised game. ‘Be a lot more fun, I imagine, if we could switch the bloody thing on, eh?’
Nathan grinned. ‘Yeah.’
They watched in silence for a while.
‘You know, one day we’ll fix this country up again, just like it used to be. That’s always been my goal, you know? Between your Jenny Sutherland and me, we’ll get things sorted out.’
Nathan replied with a wary nod. ‘That would be good.’
‘Trust me, lad. The future, that’s what I’m thinking about. Everyone’s future. A better one. We’re all going to work together on this.’ Maxwell turned to look up at the evening sky. ‘Anyway, I’d better get a move on and sort out arrangements for tonight.’
‘We’re sleeping-over here?’
‘Overnight, yes. We’ll be up early tomorrow if the sea’s good. I want to make Felixstowe by the evening. Nathan?’
‘Yes, Chief.’
‘Will you organise