Cherry Picking

by Tim Heath

  And there was Robert on the other side, this guy he’d believed and come to like, who’d offered him a way out and every opportunity to finally reach his potential, and yet he’d turned on him in such a way, betraying his confidence like only a traitor could. The thought sickened him to his core, so disgusted was he with himself that he could act in such a way, and yet even though it was Nigel who was responsible for it all, there was no way out for himself as he saw it. No way that he could hand over the lives of his family for it, knowing that even if he had sided with Robert, there would have been no guarantee that they’d actually have reached Nigel anyway, and with all things now open as they were, even less chance.

  And out there somewhere, in the light of day, these two characters walked around, one he had no choice but to follow, the other now with every reason to kill him for what he’d tried to do to him at the hotel when he’d arranged the meeting.

  And where would it end, he thought to himself? Would there be an end? How did he fit into any such end, given that he wasn’t even sure if Nigel would keep his side of the bargain if Robert was no longer a threat?

  And the thing that bugged him most was the realisation that it was no longer just Nigel who was the fake, but life itself seemed fake, as if nothing mattered because the very understanding of the truth made it all one big joke. Walking away from these thoughts as best he could, because they were now permanent additions in his mind it seemed, he went to get showered, using the guest shower in the downstairs bedroom so as not to wake anyone up and bring to their attention his current condition.

  By the time he’d finished and dressed there were signs of life coming from upstairs, doors opening and banging, water running, voices being heard calling one another, one of his girls asking her mother where a certain top was. Brendan made his peace with his wife, who again didn’t ask any questions, and two hours later things on the surface seemed back to normal, with Brendan getting breakfast ready for them all, which they ate together, before the kids went their separate ways and his wife got on with some washing. Brendan sat reading the paper in the conservatory, his mind never far from those earlier thoughts, with nothing interesting in the newspaper anyway.

  It was not until much later, once he’d made it into the office, that he checked his private phone and found a message had been left there from Nigel, his voice ever as lifeless as the relationship they shared with each other. It briefly told him that a message had been recorded between Jessica and Tommy from earlier that morning, mentioning that contact had been made by Robert. Nigel put it in no uncertain terms that Brendan should quickly sort things out with those that worked under his control, remembering what was on the line, as if he could forget, and to deal with the issue once and for all, doing things personally if those he employed were too stupid to get things done themselves.

  The man in Brendan thought about just ignoring the message and doing nothing, but as always he realised he had no choice and instead picked up the phone to Tommy, getting through via his secretary. Tommy’s rather more hostile than normal reception told him straight away all he needed to know.

  “You know I can have you fired today!” he said, after five minutes of increasingly heated discussion.

  “What, for speaking to someone?” There was contempt in Tommy’s voice now.

  “Don’t play games with me, not now, not after the week I’ve had. If you’ve met him then you’ve heard what he has to say. And if you’ve heard that, whether you believe it or not, you have a choice to make. Believe me, I’m not your problem, my boss is.”

  “The man Nigel Gamble, you mean. Yes, I’ve heard about him.”

  “Cut the crap, Tommy. You have no idea what you are playing with here and it’ll get you killed. Jessica also. Is that what you want?”

  “Are you threatening me, you good for nothing son of a...”

  “Now you look here!” Brendan shouted, more angry than Tommy had heard him before; he has clearly touched a nerve.

  “One more step out of line from you and you’re history! You hear me? We made you, we’ll break you, no matter what Robert might have told you about who you might have once been. That is no more, that’s history, or more accurately, that’s never going to happen! You’ve got to think about yourself now, and about Jessica. What are you both going to choose? If you oppose Nigel to help Robert, you’ll lose. Can’t you see, Nigel holds all the Aces, Kings and Queens! We’ve all got things at stake here if Robert gets away. Believe me, I was taken in by what he said but on his own he’s powerless to change anything, and any one of us who steps out of line to help wouldn’t last a moment once Nigel found out.”

  Brendan was more aware than ever that soon Nigel would be listening to this conversation and therefore needed to show that he was doing everything possible to press the case.

  “What are you saying then? We turn Robert in? What would that achieve?”

  “It’s not your war Tommy, it’s theirs. But anyone getting too near the other side without turning him in is going to end up dead, you do realise that, don’t you? This isn’t a game any more. I’ve seen too much blood in these last few months to know that he doesn’t take prisoners. He’ll stop at nothing to win, you know.”

  “Then what hope do you have?” If ever there was a more pertinent question, Brendan hadn’t heard it. He was right, of course, but he had to at least try.

  “Look, let’s meet and we can chat further.” Suddenly the thought that Nigel was listening in wasn’t good. Maybe there was still hope, maybe he could make things right again after all. Tommy, thinking of what Jessica had said last night and aware of all the hurt Brendan had caused, smiled to himself as Brendan finished.

  “Yes, meeting up would be great,” Tommy replied. “I’ll put you through to my secretary and you can arrange a time.”

  **********

  Nigel Gamble had wasted no time that day, the early morning sunshine looking glorious above the mountains that were now visible in the distance as he left the hotel on his way for the final part of the journey.

  He’d found the house exactly as he’d left it. He knew he’d need some household staff eventually but there were far more pressing things on his mind at that moment as he’d pulled the car around the back of the house, entering through an old servants’ door on the side of the house, a door hidden from view by a tall line of evergreens that stood just feet from it.

  His main objective now was to start up the engines on his operation ‘Wipe Out,’ knowing that if he was to carry it out he needed to be sure that he had the fire power in place to do so. After a dozen calls to various bases across Europe, as well as to his only weapons factory on the mainland just outside Amsterdam, Nigel was satisfied that such a strike could be carried out. The beauty and simplicity of the weapon he would use was its advanced design, meaning it couldn’t be traced on radar nor could it be spotted being launched. The only certain indicator of such a weapon having been fired was its massive explosion as it hit the target. In this current time he knew he could win any war with just a dozen of these rockets, so deadly would they be to an unsuspecting world yet to know about their existence. And the thought of such power at his finger tips gave Nigel another rush of adrenaline.

  One bomb would take out around three square miles, an amazing fact and something he’d only read about in textbooks, having never seen its use in the real world. Using a highly complex chain reaction not too dissimilar to a nuclear bomb, the team of scientists who’d made the breakthrough, a Chinese research team, managed to get the same amount of power as a nuclear strike but without all the radioactive mess that went along with it. The only other time either bomb had been used was way back in Japan in 1945.

  Like dynamite, the Chinese had invented it as a means to end all wars, and though it had led to a big stand-off between them and the rest of the world, their willingness to share it along with the desire to build a suitable defence and tracking system to alert anyone to the weapon’s usage, meant it worked and things had calm
ed down greatly.

  Nigel had obtained the blueprints and brought them back with him and in this present time no defence system existed to stop such a weapon. He made his final phone calls, alerting certain international groups and a few friendly governments to the potential position, playing each one off against the other, trading both money and power, to see who’d fall in line to become the world’s new superpower.

  And it was after all this planning, in a morning that had seen him calling all over the world, that he then sat down, preparing to make one last phone call, the very last time he expected to speak to a man he’d almost come to admire, someone who shared his same origins, his same journey. Although they were at opposite ends of the playing field, there was something in the persistence and endeavour of Robert that had now made him a worthy opponent, a David against his Goliath. Yet unlike that story, there were no small stones lying around to tip it his opponent’s way. It was surely a mismatched battle from the start and he wanted to give him one last way out, one last chance to have his own life. As Nigel’s interest developed in his opponent, he had done much research, pulling out from his vast sources of information anyone suspected of murder around the years that he placed Robert as being born, aware that if they were all stopped, thereby not killing anyone, Nigel could offer back to Robert his own parents as an exchange for his standing down. He picked up the phone and took a deep breath, glancing down at the sheet of paper in front of him that he’d been writing on that morning with all the details of the attack, as he dialled the number, and then he waited for the call to be answered.

  **********

  Robert was outside when his phone started ringing, having wanted to leave Jessica and Tommy to get on with things themselves knowing that Tommy would be off to his office before too long anyway. Glancing down at the phone, itself a piece of technology bought back with him from the future, Robert saw at once that it was an out of area call, even showing the satellite reference that the call was coming from, meaning it could only be Nigel himself, and the indication that he was no longer in the UK was an interesting but puzzling one.

  “Nigel, I presume?” he said, answering the call after the third ring.

  “The one and only. I hear you’ve been a busy man, talking to people that you shouldn’t, putting them all in danger.”

  “You can’t run forever.”

  “What makes you think I’m running? And what makes you even think there’s a forever, come to think of it? Surely you know it’s only a matter of time now? Tell me, Robert, in your agent’s training did they ever tell you about the NI889 which came out of China a few years back?”

  Something in Robert knew what he was about to hear, completely aware of the weapon that had the potential to do so much damage, as he had been on the front line when the threat arose with China and the world, it seemed, waited to see if World War III was about to break out.

  “Yes, I’m aware of it.”

  “I have it,” he said, pausing for effect before adding, “here, now.” Nigel could hear the sharp intake of breath from the other end of the line, as Robert’s mind raced.

  “And what, you’re threatening to use it? Where?”

  Nigel laughed out loud, the kind of laugh that showed he didn’t care about the fact that he was enjoying himself.

  “Where? That’s an interesting question. You see, though the Chinese made one of them to show that they could, I’ve produced rather more. I could use them everywhere if I wanted to, but you can choose.”

  Robert lowered his head onto his knees, aware that things had just got a hundred times tougher than they already were with no sight of the finish line, no chance that he could just sprint the last bit and get it all over with. Nigel continued:

  “I’d place your location and therefore the location of the other Door, just somewhere on the outskirts of London, bearing in mind your ability to get in and out, remaining undetected as you have done, clearly lying low in some sleepy place, somewhere I presume the other Wentworth brother had once been. Therefore I had planned to lay down a ring of fire around the capital, ready to strike at this very minute,” he said, twisting the truth a lot as things would take a day or so to get into place, before continuing, “circling the city, cutting it off while the outlying villages are obliterated, and along with it, if not you, the Door, trapping you either here, or more likely back there.”

  “You are crazy, you know. What kind of world would you then live in?”

  “I don’t know. England would fall, yes, that’s true, but I’d be there to step in. If London were to be taken out, you know that with the bombs, as opposed to a nuclear strike, the green would soon grow back, a blank canvas on which to start afresh, the battle to end all wars, all terror. I would step in as the hero of the hour, bring down the rogue terrorists responsible for such an attack, offering world peace, bringing all nations together under my leadership.”

  Robert thought he sounded more crazy than ever, totally evil.

  “You sound like the Anti-Christ.”

  “But I’m not, though, am I. And rather like God, you also get to choose what happens.”

  “Go on,” Robert said, not wanting to play along with his game but doing so anyway.

  “I can offer you your life back. I don’t even need to know exactly who you are, if you want to take that chance. I’ve rounded up a list of people convicted of murders dating back to around your parents’ deaths. I’ve given it a wide field because unless you tell me I don’t know exactly when to look. Some are men that it took years to find, people who went on to make many orphans just like yourself. If they were gone, think of all those crimes that would be undone. Think of your parents being alive. If you went back through that Door and I did this for you, your world would suddenly change around you, without you knowing it. You’d have parents, a home. Of course, if you trusted me with the details of who you are and where you were born, I could guarantee that I got the killer.

  “I’d even open an off-shore bank account for you here, now, giving you the details to take back with you, putting a few million in it for you. Think of the interest it would earn through all those years. You’d go back, have the bank details, and even if you didn’t remember about it you’d have the piece of paper and would soon realise it was yours. You’d be rich and with your parents. You’d have all the memories of childhood. You’d have all that you never had before, all that you’ve no doubt always wanted, and you’d save millions of people from being killed here. Give up the chase Robert, admit defeat. Go home. You can’t win. You can’t undo what’s already been done. Don’t you see? I can give you your life back. You could just walk back through that Door and never return and it would all be okay.”

  Robert was lost for words, amazed at the level Nigel was now going to, to get him off his tail, and yet it was an offer to end all offers. Here everything was being put on a plate for him. It was very tempting. Though he realised that there was no way he could really trust Nigel, no way on earth that he’d even let on who his parents were or his own identity, for fear that he’d just be killed off, as that would be the much easier solution.

  Chapter 29

  Robert had asked for some time to think, more so to work out what he was to do than really seriously consider the offer, because as good as it was, there was no way of being able to trust such a man to keep his word. Even if he was to somehow accept it, everything inside him was suddenly in turmoil, his emotions interfering with his mind so as to make getting a clear take on things much harder.

  Putting down the phone for a moment, with Nigel set to call back in around ten minutes, he went out for a walk, beginning to collect his thoughts. Nigel’s offer on some levels, if believable, was quite astonishing. His parents’ killer taken out of the scene, along with many other killers, in what seemed like from Nigel a final act of kindness, if he dared call it that, though a kindness linked to Nigel getting exactly what he wanted, which was always his real motivation. And not only his parents back, but money in th
e bank, and lots of it. But even if he chose this option, he saw straight away a few flaws. Firstly, though he wouldn’t actually give any specific details of who he was, so as not to endanger himself, it was only assumed that his parents’ killer was one of those on Nigel’s list. And even if they were caught, and Robert had these memories back, they were only like pictures of events he’d never actually participated in, things that he’d never had the pleasure of actually experiencing. They could never truly replace what he had lost, or could they? And even with the money in the bank account, he’d have the paper copy of the bank details but it was a long time for Nigel not to then withdraw such a large amount, though he guessed that actually Nigel would leave it there. With so much money already it would surely mean very little to him and would not be missed. However, could he really trust the man that had done so much damage at every turn? Cool air swept past Robert’s face as the wind picked up a little. He looked around and saw the beautiful countryside that surrounded him, wondering if Nigel would really carry out his threat. If he did, he doubted that he was actually ready to attack right now but knew he probably had one or at most two days to get out of the place.

  Everything in him now reminded him of the reason why he had come back and as a result had lost everything he once had. The chase was all that remained, his pursuit of this criminal was now his only constant in a world where everything was changing. And besides, there was hope, which he now reminded himself of, if indeed a third and more importantly, original Door existed. There was only one way to find this out, he needed to get out to Switzerland, to finish his investigation, and for that he needed to buy himself some time with Nigel.

  Robert was now back from his walk, his phone in hand and waited just a moment for Nigel to call him, which he did, right on time.