Vail (20 page)

‘Right where you are, Jack. Rich, famous and successful. You'd be no good to us otherwise, would you?'

‘I guess not. What do you mean, ‘good' to you?'

‘I mean in a position to do us some good. You can help us achieve our objective.'

‘Which is?'

‘To overthrow the
status quo
. You know that already. Wayde Dake told you that when he presented the report on Tex, Brown and me.'

Vail remembers, and the memory niggles at him.

He says, looking round, ‘So this is what a terrorist cell looks like. I've often wondered. Tell me, why meet here, inside a meat locker?'

‘Haven't you noticed, squire?' Tex Rivett says with his green grin. ‘It's lead-lined. Get it?'

‘No,' Vail says, shaking his head. ‘Sorry?'

‘The signals from that bug you're carrying can't transmit from here. They're blocked. Neat, eh?'

Vail experiences a shiver of apprehension. But then what, he reasons, would his death achieve? No, they didn't intend to kill him, because then how could he help them achieve their objective of overthrowing the
status quo
? Unless his death was an integral
part of the plan. But then how would the murder of a media personality do them the ‘good' that Fully Olbin had spoken of? What ‘good' could come of that?

Fully Olbin says, ‘Have you ever heard of the U.M.P.S. Programme?'

‘No, I've never watched it.'

‘You've never discussed it in production meetings at Thames with Bryce Ransom and Virgie Hance?'

‘No.'

Fully Olbin unbuttons the front of his tunic and pulls out a large manilla envelope into which he inserts his large black hand and withdraws a sheaf of photographs secured by a metal spring clip. He opens the clip and presents the first photograph for Vail's inspection. It is captioned
U.M.P.S. Programme: Phase One
and shows a bulldozer pushing some metal drums into a hole in the ground under floodlights. The driver of the bulldozer is encased in a white polystyrene suit, wears goggles and a mask and rubber gauntlets up to the elbows.

The second photograph shows the same area in daylight after the bulldozer has filled in the hole and levelled out the ground. Workmen, similarly encased in white protective coveralls, are planting saplings supported by staves driven into the raw tracked earth. In the background, perhaps two hundred metres from the site, is a children's playground with swings, slide and climbing frame, and beyond that five high-rise flats blocking out the horizon.

Fully Olbin hands him the next, third, photograph, captioned
U.M.P.S. Programme: Phase Two
. This shows protective-suited workmen piping liquid from an unmarked grey tanker into a stream. The stream bubbles and froths and yellowish steam rises up through which can be seen a two-storey building with many windows. The next, fourth, photograph is taken from the same vantage point only now the tanker has gone and children are playing in the asphalt yard of the school.

Another photograph, –
U.M.P.S. Programme: Phase Three
, – is of a long waiting-room filled to bursting point with upwards of two hundred people. In the foreground a harassed-looking nurse is reading out names from a clipboard, and next to her stands an Indian doctor caught in the act of yawning and rubbing his left eye. The people on the benches are gaunt-faced, haggard, hopelessness exuding from every pore.

In the next photograph the same Indian doctor is examining a child whose face is blotchily red with raw weeping sores. The child, a girl of about ten, has bare patches where her scalp shows through. Vail passes quickly over this one, hardly bearing to look.

Without a word Fully Olbin hands him a photograph captioned
U.M.P.S. Programme: Phase Four
. This one portrays a naked middle-aged woman strapped to a metal table with two laboratory technicians in green gowns and masks leaning over her holding stainless steel instruments: one technician has clamped her mouth open to its fullest extent while the other pokes and probes far down her throat, his hand practically inside her mouth.

The next photograph is of a similar laboratory scene in which a child of six or seven is fastened upside down to an aluminium frame and a technician is squeezing drops from a syringe into its nostrils.

When Fully Olbin holds out the next photograph Vail fails to respond. ‘You haven't seen them all. There's more.'

‘I've seen enough.'

‘This one shows what happens to the child in the frame when the drops have eaten into the brain tissue, – '

‘I can imagine it, thank you.' Vail is ashen to the lips and doesn't feel too well. ‘Is there a purpose behind all this?'

‘Behind all what? The U.M.P.S. Programme?'

‘No, you showing me these pictures,' Vail says, handing back the ones he has looked at.

‘Not so long ago you resolved to kill somebody and lacked the opportunity. Now you have the opportunity you've lost the resolve. We should like to rekindle it.'

‘Why did he murder my wife?' Vail says, pointing his finger at Urban Brown.

‘He's got so used to killing he can't help himself. He's a sick man.'

‘And yet you expect me to help you, to do you some ‘good'. How can you ask me to do anything at all for you when that man there killed my wife?' Vail says, weeping. ‘That man
sitting
there.'

‘What do you want me to do?' Fully Olbin asks gently. ‘Kill him for you in revenge?'

‘I don't know, I don't know. But he
murdered
her and you bring me here and ask me to help
you.'

‘Crazy things happen all the time today, on both sides of the wire. We're all of us crazy to some degree. It's not his fault; but I can have him killed if it will make you feel any better.'

‘Tell me why I should help you after what he did,' Vail says, weeping.

‘Well.' Fully Olbin considers for a moment. ‘For one thing, our aims happen to coincide, – or they did coincide until you lost your resolve. For another, you will be revenging the murder of your daughter. And thirdly, though I hate to mention it, it seems so trivial under the circumstances, you still owe us a favour in exchange for the one Tex did you. Without the
Temporal
you probably wouldn't have made it past Watford Gap.'

‘I made that promise in better days,' Vail says. ‘I had some hope then. I thought that if I could get to London I could save Bev,' weeping less now, a tiny cold formation of rage in his stomach making his tears flow less.

‘These aren't better days, I agree,' Fully Olbin says in a gentle tone of voice. For a big black man he has a very gentle manner. ‘Of course I can't promise you that they will ever get better. I'm being completely honest with you. And I can't force you to kill somebody if you don't want to. But now, or very soon, you will have the Opportunity, and Angie said that given the motivation you wouldn't hesitate.'

‘Angie told you that about me?' Vail says in disbelief, having stopped weeping altogether.

‘Yes.'

‘Angie, – the girl I live with, – told
you
that?'

‘Correct.'

‘I don't understand, – why should she? When?'

‘Jack,' Fully Olbin smiles, ‘Angie lives with you because I asked her to. I told her to get to know you, which she did, and gain your confidence. It was much easier than we could have hoped for.'

‘Angie is Fully's girl,' Tex Rivett chips in.

‘Do you mean she belongs to this terrorist cell?' Vail says incredulously.

Fully Olbin smiles down at him. ‘That's how we were able to keep tabs on you and how we knew that Wayde Dake Ass. Inc. had followed up Tex's phone calls and compiled a report on the four of us. Fortunately he couldn't discover Angie's identity. You don't think you met her by chance at that party, do you?'

‘Yes … I thought …'

Fully Olbin is shaking his head. ‘Nothing is ever that simple, Jack, not in this day and age. I thought you'd have learnt that by now.'

‘Christ, and I told her everything.'

‘Yes, it was a very full account.' Fully Olbin doesn't have to reach up very far to take down one of the S-shaped meat hooks with sharpened ends hanging from the metal bars. ‘About your wife and child and the green van on the M6, and picking up Brown, and meeting Tex at Sandbach, and what happened in Spaghetti Junction and your experiences at Watford Gap, and then at the Newport Pagnell checkpoint and driving along the A422, the supermarket and the hospital, the milk tanker and all that stuff. It was a very full account indeed.'

‘So,' Vail says, taking out his handkerchief and blowing his nose, ‘you've just been waiting. Would you have waited and waited … I mean just kept on waiting until I was where you wanted me to be? It could have taken years.'

Fully Olbin throws the hook the full length of the meat locker with sufficient force for it to be embedded in the lead-lined wall.

‘We nudged it along here and there. Angie planted the idea in Bryce Ransom's head that a programme along the lines of
Bootstraps
might be just what the public wanted and in Virgie Hance's head that you might be just the person to front it. It was very simple. Childishly easy, in fact. And of course they leapt at it.'

‘You know,' Vail says, ‘when you brought me here I thought you were going to kill me.' He doesn't know whether to feel relieved or disappointed.

‘That was the last thing on our minds, – we want
you
to kill for
us.'

‘Then we'll be quits,' Vail says. ‘That will be the favour I owe you, will it?'

‘Paid in full,' Fully Olbin confirms.

Vail thinks this over for a moment or two. ‘Are those photographs you showed me genuine?'

‘From Govt files.'

‘The things in them are actually going on right this minute?'

‘Everything Brown told you is true. Dumping toxic waste near to densely populated areas, discharging radioactive effluent into streams and rivers next to schools, reducing health care to the point where the system breaks down completely, conducting so-called medical/scientific experiments to control and inhibit the population. All true. That's what the U.M.P.S. Programme is all about.'

‘What does it stand for?'

‘It's a Govt departmental euphemism: Unwashed Masses Prefer Suicide. It confirms their own belief in what is right and best, and is a sop to their conscience. They want to believe, and do believe, that people would rather die than lead empty brutish lives, and as only a very few can lead decent lives, this is the expedient solution. It makes it easier for everyone.'

Fully Olbin delves into the photographs and holds one up for Vail to see: the workmen planting saplings in raw earth recently levelled by a bulldozer. ‘I thought you might have recognised the five high-rise buildings in the background. If you had there would be no need to convince you or say anything more.'

After studying the photograph Vail is none the wiser.

‘Zuttor Estate taken two years ago. You lived at Number 431, so my informant tells me.'

The suavely diminutive and softly spoken Ed Flesh is on the phone to Vail, his voice like the distant rush of the sea inside a mouse's ear.

‘Have you heard the good news? The programme's won an award.'

‘Really?' Vail says, sitting up in the oval bath. ‘The U.M.P.S. Programme, you mean?'

‘No, no, not the U.M.P.S. Programme, –
Bootstraps
. Your show. They think it's wonderful. That piece on the Baths …'

‘Who does?'

‘Everyone. It's a smash. I'm raising your asking price by fifty per cent and putting in a statutory profits clause. In the meantime don't open any supermarkets or endorse anything without my say-so.'

‘I don't intend to open any supermarkets.'

‘Then don't. I think I've clinched a six-figure exclusive merchandising contract for TV commercials and a ten-week promo tour.'

‘Who with?'

‘The Milk Marketing Board.'

‘Not milk,' Vail says firmly. ‘Anything but milk.'

‘I've only sold your mouth and larynx. The rest of you is up for grabs.'

‘Not milk, Flesh, I'm sorry. Beer, Coke, piss, vomit, diarrhoea, you name it and I'll endorse it. But not milk.'

Ed Flesh shrugs his sloping shoulders in his silk-mohair suit. ‘All right, Jack, have it your way. But if Selina had your attitude she'd still be fucking politicians for a living. And you know something, Jack? She hasn't had to fuck anyone she didn't want to in over
two years
. Think about it.'

Vail watches Ed Flesh's blurred image through the rising steam, – funny how he looks small even on the screen.

‘The last thing we want happening to you is what happened to The Pox, remember.'

‘Why, what happened to them?'

‘They've gone bust.
Burn Down the Schools
grossed $26 million worldwide and instead of putting it into securities as I advised they went into audio equipment, electronic games, TV leasing, car hire, insurance and fast food franchising. I told them they'd get their fingers burned but would they listen to Flesh? Sunk every cent into four offshore companies for tax avoidance and then guaranteed equity capital of quarter-million apiece to a Swiss outfit specialising in share dealing, commodity trading, venture capital and split dividend futures. Lucky they've got their property interests, recording studios and stock portfolio to fall back on or they'd really be in trouble.'

‘I suppose they would,' Vail says, soaping his chest thoughtfully.

‘So don't let that happen to you, Jack.'

‘No, I won't.'

‘Take a leaf out of Josh's book. He never invests more than $100,000 at any one time. That's how his LA operation started, – nothing wild, nothing high-flown. Now look at him. Of course he prays a good deal.'