The Fourth Bear

by Jasper Fforde

  “I really don’t think he cares, Vinnie—who is he?”

  “Nick,” he said slowly and with infinite sadness. “Nick…Demetrios.”

  “Demetrios?” repeated Jack incredulously. “The head of NS-4? Danvers’s superior? A bear?”

  Vinnie took the book out of Jack’s hands, flicked to the picture section in the middle and showed him a group portrait taken at the opening of QuangTech in the sixties. Standing between Pobble and Bisky-Batt was a short bear. While everyone in the photograph was smiling, the bear just glared sullenly into the camera.

  “Demetrios,” said Vinnie, tapping the picture with a claw. “He’s slippery and ambitious and for many years has been the poster bear for what ursines can achieve, even in this human-dominated world. Ever wonder why no one gets to see the boss of NS-4? Well, now you know.”

  This new piece of information whirled in Jack’s head. Demetrios—the fourth bear. He was in with QuangTech from the beginning and must have known all about McGuffin’s work with cuclear energy. As head of NS-4, he was best placed to guard the nascent technology—until Goldilocks got wind of it and was about to go public. If she did, then thermocuclear energy in the public domain would net Demetrios, Bisky-Batt and QuangTech the sum total of zip—the secret had to be protected at all costs.

  Jack pulled out his phone and called Briggs. He needed to have him arrest Demetrios and then have some officers sent over to the Quangle-Wangle’s facility to do the same to Bisky-Batt and seize all the QuangTech files. But, unsurprisingly, Briggs didn’t quite see it that way.

  “You’re certifiably insane,” he told Jack unkindly, “and the only thing I want to hear from you is that you’re surrendering. If you’re not out of the Bob Southey in an hour, we’re going to storm the building.”

  “Can we make a deal?” Jack asked, ever hopeful.

  “No,” replied Briggs.

  Jack hung up and then dialed Mary.

  “It’s Jack.”

  “Is it true about Ash?” she asked. “That’s he’s…dead?”

  “‘Deflated’ would be a better term. He was a true hero and saved us all, and he asked me to tell you that he would ‘pluck the stars from the sky for you.’”

  There was a momentary silence from Mary. “Thanks, Jack, I appreciate it. He was a fine officer, and a good friend.”

  “He was,” agreed Jack, adding in a more urgent tone, “But it’s not over yet. Mr. Demetrios is the fourth bear, and Briggs isn’t exactly pro-Spratt at present. What’s going on out there?”

  “You were right,” she replied. “McGuffin was watching. I’m with him now, and he has the Alpha-Pickle he cut from Fuchsia’s champion. He’s confirmed that it’s the last vestige of the strain—without it, thermocuclear power is nothing more than unverifiable pseudoscience. McGuffin says it’s all got horribly out of hand, and although limitless free energy is a positive step, the idea that any nation that possesses an average-size greenhouse and a trowel can have a nuclear capability is a bit of a downer—despite the truly spectacular fireballs, which he says he’ll miss.”

  Jack breathed a huge sigh of relief. “That’s fantastic news. With McGuffin in custody, we can convince Briggs of my innocence—and put Demetrios in the clink.”

  “Not really,” said Mary. “You see, I found McGuffin and then NS-4 found me. Agent Danvers is holding us both—and she wants to speak to you.”

  “Hello, Spratt?” said Agent Danvers with an unpleasant sneer as she came on the line. “I suggest you get over to SommeWorld as soon as possible. You want answers? You’ll get them there. Mary says good-bye.”

  And the phone went dead.

  “Bollocks!” muttered Jack. He snapped his phone shut and turned to Vinnie. “Bartholomew is to give himself up in twenty minutes.”

  “And you?”

  “I need to get to SommeWorld. Can you get me past the three hundred or so armed officers who are surrounding the building?”

  Vinnie flashed him a smile.

  “Do I shit in the woods?”

  36. Totally over the Top at SommeWorld

  World’s oddest theme park: Contenders abound in this field, and several deserve mention. ElephantLand in impoverished East Splotvia is odd in that it has no elephants, nor a clear idea of what one is. GummoWorld in upstate New York is devoted to the Marx brother who had the distinction of never appearing in a movie, and Nevada’s ParkThemeLandWorld is a theme park dedicated to other theme parks, but has no attractions of its own. Somme-World in the UK invites its visitors to taste the marrow-chilling fear of being an infantryman in the Great War, and, by contrast, ZenWorld in Thailand is nothing but a very large empty space in which to relax. Our favorite, however, is La Haye’s DescarteLand, which merely furnishes ticket holders with a paper bag to put over their heads and a note reading, “If you think it, it shall be so.”

  —The Bumper Book of Berkshire Records, 2004 edition

  “Get on,” said Vinnie, indicating the pillion of his Norton motorcycle, “and whatever happens, stay on.”

  He kicked the engine into life, clonked the bike into gear and then accelerated rapidly along the underground garage, up the ramp and into the evening light outside. Jack hung on as Vinnie expertly weaved around the cordon and straight through a small crowd of onlookers, all of whom scattered as they saw him approach. In a second they had turned left and headed toward the motorway. The police helicopter was rapidly diverted and picked them up at the junction to the M4, where the bear and his passenger were easily seen heading westbound. The helicopter stuck to them like glue, and within thirty minutes a full rolling roadblock was converging on the motorcycle. At speeds at over a hundred miles an hour, Vinnie Craps kept the police at bay until his luck and gasoline ran out thirty-two minutes after they’d left the Bob Southey, and the Norton coasted onto the hard shoulder. The pillion passenger, much to the officers’ annoyance, wasn’t Jack at all—he was a friend of Vinnie’s called Lionel.

  While the full force of the law was pursuing Vinnie up the motorway, Jack was walking swiftly back to the Allegro. They had made the switch soon after passing the cordon. Lionel had been waiting at the side of the road in identical clothes, and the swap had worked like a treat.

  As Jack drove past Theale, the sky clouded over, and several drops of rain begun to speckle the windshield. By the time he pulled up outside the gates of the deserted and unfinished Somme-World complex, a downpour had begun. Lightning crackled overhead as he got out of the car and ran to the visitors’ center, which looked empty, dark and abandoned. He pushed open the heavy glass door with its Lewis gun magazine door handles and stepped quietly in, shaking the rainwater from his jacket. The centerpiece of the large domed vestibule was a First World War tank, set in a circular diorama filled with earth especially imported from the Somme itself. The marble flooring in the main atrium was engraved with the names of all those who had lost their lives in the failed offensive. The atrium was large, but the writing was by necessity quite small.

  The door swung shut behind him and locked with an audible clunk, followed by the sound of other locks being thrown, echoing around the building. He was trapped. Jack looked up at a security camera as he took a few steps forward, and it followed him. He was expected, and he was being watched. He moved to the ticket office and turnstiles, the chrome tubing still covered with a protective plastic coating. To his right was the shop where souvenirs of the Great War would one day be sold, and to his left were the half-completed museum and auditorium, where visitors would be able to watch a five-minute animated featurette describing the events in Europe that led up to the conflict.

  He walked past the outfitters where people would one day change into uncomfortable British army uniforms before manning the trenches outside; then he moved to the main stairway that led up to the administrative offices above. In the upstairs corridor, Jack could see a light shining from a half-open door, and he moved closer.

  “Why don’t you come in, Inspector?” said a deep voice when he was still
three paces away. “There’s no sense in skulking around.”

  Jack pushed open the door of the security office and stepped in.

  Bisky-Batt turned from the console of CCTV monitors he had been watching. The VP of QuangTech smiled at Jack and offered him a seat. Jack said he’d prefer to stand, and Bisky-Batt nodded agreeably, took one look through the windows at the faux battlefield that was still just visible in the dusk, and sat behind the desk.

  “I want answers,” said Jack, “and I want Demetrios. Hand him over and things might not look so bad for you.”

  Bisky-Batt laughed. “I hardly think you are in a position to ask for anything, Inspector.” He paused and frowned. “Do I still call you ‘Inspector’? Now that you’re wanted for impersonation, stealing evidence, perverting the course of justice and murder?”

  “Where’s Sergeant Mary?”

  “I owe you our thanks for finding the Alpha-Pickle and McGuffin, by the way. He’s brilliant, of course, but highly unpredictable. He should never have contacted Goldilocks after the Obscurity blast.”

  “It was just another test, like the Nullarbor, wasn’t it?”

  “Of course. We’ve been monitoring these cucumbers very closely and move in as soon as they start to approach the magic fifty-kilo mark to take samples, then observe the blast. McGuffin’s work at QuangTech was never about turning grass cuttings into crude; it was always cucumbers.” He smiled. “Cucumbers that can extract the deuterium and tritium from the groundwater, store it all up and then self-ignite. Finally cucumbers have a reason for being.”

  “If McGuffin won’t help, you’ve got nothing.”

  “He might be a bit recalcitrant at present, but he’ll come across. We’ve got as long as we want with him, after all. No one’s going to miss a dead man.”

  “I want to see the Quangle-Wangle.”

  “No one sees the boss.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’s been dead for over twelve years. He had odd ideas about his will—something about dismantling the company and giving the proceeds to Foss, his cat. We thought it better for all concerned—especially us—if we just placed the Quangle-Wangle into a sort of legal suspended animation and took over the running ourselves.”

  Jack said nothing. It was time to start putting his plan into action. Then he remembered: He didn’t have one.

  “I must say,” continued Bisky-Batt, “when Danvers asked you to come over here, we really didn’t think you’d come. It shows either a considerable misunderstanding of the whole situation or a sort of boundless optimism that, while mildly endearing, will be your undoing. There are journalists and cucumberistas lying dead who knew considerably less than you. The finer points of this little adventure will die with you.”

  “I’ve told other people about it.”

  “Let me guess,” said Bisky-Batt. “Bartholomew and that jumped-up teddy bear Craps. They won’t live to see a debrief. Believe me, Danvers is staggeringly loyal to Demetrios, and if he tells her it is in the national interest, she’ll do anything he asks. Your Sergeant Mary will enjoy a similar fate, only more imaginative—two accidents here at SommeWorld in less than a week should spell the end of the theme park, and about time. A bigger waste of money I have yet to see. And even if there were still people who might have a vague idea of what’s going on, will anyone believe them when they claim that it’s possible to extract sunbeams from cucumbers? No. And there is no concrete connection between anyone at QuangTech and this whole shady business—aside from you.”

  “We know all about the Gingerbreadman.”

  Bisky-Batt paused and stared at him. “You might think you do.”

  “No,” said Jack, “we really do.”

  He pulled out of his pocket the photomicrographs Parks had given him. The scanning electron microscope had revealed to the world that which is too small to be seen with the naked eye: Nestled around a tiny speck of ginger less than the width of a human hair was a serial number.

  “This is from the Gingerbreadman’s thumb, Bisky-Batt. I’m no genius, but I’m willing to bet that the suffix ‘QTBioWD’ on this serial number stands for QuangTech BioWeapons Division—and I think most other people will, too.”

  Bisky-Batt leaned back in his chair and placed his hands behind his head. Jack noticed for the first time that his shirt was damp with nervous sweat. Despite the outward calm and geniality, the VP was running scared.

  “Who else knows about this?”

  “Not many. Just those with an Internet connection.”

  “Unwise, Jack, unwise. You would have been better keeping this to yourself. Disposing of you is beginning to look less like a chore and more like a pleasure.”

  “Disposing of me won’t alter the fact that you were the VP when the Gingerbreadman was engineered. You knew what he was, and you did nothing. One hundred and twelve deaths, Horace—and you could have stopped them all. Now: Where’s Demetrios?”

  “He’s behind you.”

  Jack smiled and wagged a finger at Bisky-Batt. “Oh no. I don’t fall for the old ‘he’s behind you’ routine.”

  “That’s a shame, because he really is behind you.”

  Jack froze and then turned slowly around. Standing at the door was a bear barely three feet high. He was nattily dressed in a sharp suit and had his fur brushed impeccably in a central part that continued along the bridge of his nose. Over one eye was an eye patch, on his cheek was an ugly scar—and in his hand was a revolver.

  “I have every reason to hate you a good deal,” he said in a faintly silly high-pitched voice, “but in many ways I hold you in great esteem. Still, I suppose none of that really matters anymore.”

  “They know the truth about the Gingerbreadman,” said Bisky-Batt with a tremor in his voice. “We’re finished.”

  “No,” said Demetrios, “we’re not finished…you are.”

  There was a sharp crack and a dull orange flash. Bisky-Batt gave a look of utter confusion and shock, then keeled forward and hit the desk before slumping to the floor.

  “Well, now,” said the Small Olympian Bear, lowering his smoking gun. “With an outlay of less than a pound, I have just doubled my net worth. Now, that was an investment worth making!”

  Jack, who had been waiting for his chance, flew at Demetrios. He was dead if he didn’t do anything—he was probably dead if he did. But since the latter of the two options was the only one that afforded even the slightest possibility of success, he took it. His fist almost connected, too. But as he lunged forward, a brown arm shot out from the doorway behind Demetrios and grabbed Jack by the throat. He stopped in midair with a choke, was twisted sideways and pulled backward into a painful half nelson. He could feel the sinews in his shoulder stretch. He yelled in pain but was held fast. The heavy aroma of ginger pervaded the room and made him cough.

  “Hello, Jack,” said the Gingerbreadman with a friendly smile. “Surprised?”

  “Nothing surprises me,” grunted Jack. “It’s an NCD thing.”

  “You were smart to put his thumb under the microscope, Jack,” said Demetrios as he moved closer. “No one else would have thought of it. And you’re right that he’s one of ours. Mr. G is the prototype of Project Ginja Assassin, a bioculinary weapons technology that despite early promise remained—alas!—on the drawing board. Can you imagine a legion of gingerbreadmen, all impervious to pity, guilt or scruples, as the advance guard of an army on the move? Frontline bakeries would have been able to churn him out by the thousand, then set him against the enemy with a hardwired knowledge of every method of death imaginable. He is agile, adaptable, tireless and highly motivated—the perfect Ginja—and he can never be caught.”

  “You’re wrong. I caught him. Twenty years ago.”

  “Sorry to disappoint,” said the Gingerbreadman with a smile, “but I allowed myself to be captured. Where would be the best place to lie low and await reactivation? On the run—or in a nuthouse? And when once again I need to rest between engagements, I’ll just allow myself t
o be recaptured. But shh. Don’t tell anyone—it’s our secret!”

  “Isn’t he just the cutest thing ever?” murmured Demetrios in admiration. “I brought him out of retirement as a bit of misdirection when Goldilocks’s ‘silencing’ didn’t go according to plan. Who would want to look for a missing journalist when there’s a psychopath on the loose?”

  “I would.”

  Demetrios’s face fell, and he stuck his snout close to Jack’s. His breath smelled terrible, and his teeth were in a bad state. “Yes, I should have known better. If those dratted bears hadn’t come back from their walk in the forest early, they would never even have seen Goldilocks, and all this would have been a lot easier.”

  “And Ursula?”

  “Ah, yes,” he said with a smile, “dear Ursula. Best porridge chef there was. As for her and me, what’s the point of being the supreme dominant male bear if you can’t abuse it a bit? Ed was going to blow the whistle on me, and Ursula…well, she might have blabbed, so I had to order her death, too. But none of that matters now.”

  “What about me?” asked Jack.

  “You? No one ever found out what became of you. That should sell at least twenty more copies of Conspiracy Theorist, wouldn’t you say?”

  Jack stared at him vacantly. There didn’t seem a lot to add. He couldn’t budge an inch in the iron grip of the Gingerbreadman, who he could feel breathing hot, sugary ginger breath down his neck.

  “Justice will prevail, Demetrios.”

  Mr. Demetrios chuckled and shook his head sadly. “‘Justice will prevail.’ Where do you policemen get your clichés? I am the director-general of the country’s national security service. ‘Justice’ is a purely relative term in the boardroom where I work. Bisky-Batt will take the rap for the Ginja, and you’ll take the rap for Bisky-Batt. Without you around I have complete deniability—and I have the Alpha-Pickle and McGuffin. As soon as the dust has settled, QuangTech will begin experiments in thermocuclear power. I may use it for domestic energy purposes or as a weapons system. I haven’t yet decided. Maybe both. The sunbeams locked inside cucumbers will lead Britain’s economy into the third millennium and beyond, and at the head of the power revolution will be…myself. This isn’t just a technology, Jack, it’s the savior of the planet. They will raise statues to me in years to come as ‘The Bear Who Changed the World.’ The name Demetrios will forever be associated with clean air and an optimistic future. And one thing is for certain: I will make an obscenely large pile of cash. They’ll have to invent a new word for it—‘rich’ just won’t do it justice.”