Not the End of the World

by Christopher Brookmyre

13:19:25

  Steff was awake again, standing in the half-light drinking water from a bottle as the clock mocked his disorientation. He looked down at Madeleine’s coiled figure on the bed, naked beneath a single cotton sheet, undisturbed in her repose since they’d finally been sufficiently sated to leave each other’s genitals alone long enough to nod off. An old Mutton Birds number played in his head, and he would have been content to sit and watch her sleep in some lyrical lovestruck daze, but for the hollow feeling in his stomach that kept telling him they were still a long way short of sailing off into any sunset together.

  He pulled the curtains back a little and looked down at the swimming pool, where work was continuing through the night to clear the debris. Everyone else seemed to think the show was over - why couldn’t he? He knew what it meant to Madeleine, but couldn’t escape feeling there was something of entering the lions’ den about their impending trip to Château Luther. Everything was going to be on the preacherman’s terms, everything was going to be under his control, but Madeleine didn’t seem to care - she just wanted her shot at the guy. Steff, having seen a few away fixtures at Ibrox, had a more vivid understanding of the phrase ‘home advantage’, and was far less confident that she wouldn’t get hurt - one way or another.

  She’d told him all about her childhood, or lack thereof. All about her father.

  He’d taken her apart, there and then. Dismembered her and scattered the parts; hidden them, buried them. Her whole life since had been an attempt to find them all and put herself back together again. She explained how it was only now that she’d done that that she could take her father on and make him face what he had done before the eyes of the public. And she made Steff understand why she had to face St John also. But she seemed so consumed by finally exorcising these ghosts of her past that he was afraid she’d be oblivious to the threats of here and now.

  Which was why while Madeleine had been phoning Tony Pia and talking terms with St John’s representatives, Steff had gone back to find Brisko. The gentle G-man filled him in a little more honestly than when he’d been in Senator Witherson’s company, admitting apologetically that pressure had been brought to bear on him to make going underground sound Madeleine’s best option.

  It turned out the bomber was some sad wee wank called Daniel Corby, and all evidence so far suggested he’d acted alone. As far as they knew, he wasn’t a member of the Southland Militia, but with two of them barbecuing alongside him in Glendale, there was obviously some kind of connection. Brisko told him the FBI’s biggest concern was that the whole carry-on could have been a diversion to distract attention from something else the Militia was up to, but wouldn’t share his fears or suspicions of what that something else might be. He tried to reassure Steff that Madeleine Witherson was under no greater direct threat from the Southland Militia than any other individual, as these bampots probably had bigger fish to fry. However, Steff remained very concerned that if the Militia had any involvement in what had happened at the Vista, he and Madeleine had effectively given them all a very public two fingers that morning, something they might yet wish to reply to.

  He finished his water and climbed back under the sheets beside her. Her smell was exquisite, the feel of her still electrifying. Maybe he was just going a wee bit crazy, and after the past few days, who could blame him? But suddenly, maybe even for the first time in his life, he had something he was very, very scared to lose. It wasn’t just how he felt about her; it was also how she made him feel about himself.

  He was terrified of someone or something taking that away, and he was prepared to do anything to protect it.

  12:21:43

  Larry still couldn’t sleep. He’d climbed quietly into bed beside Sophie, who mumbled dopily, rolled over so that her head was on his chest, then flaked out again. He lay there in the semi-darkness, aware of the lightening against the curtains as morning approached. He stroked his wife’s soft blonde hair, breathed in her smell, wondering whether it would be for the last time. He thought of the son they had lost, of the child growing in Sophie’s womb, and of those who would steal its life away too.

  The end of the world was nigh.

  Yeah, right.

  He thought of all the stupid fucks who were acting like they’d be disappointed if the Lord didn’t wrap up the party nine months from now. All the dumb shits who’d already committed suicide over it. All the sad assholes who thought Judgement Day was scheduled for December 31st, when God would come down and vindicate them personally, and all their shitty little beliefs and opinions. When God would punish their enemies and show the world that they were right about everything they ever thought in their entire fucking lives, from religion through politics down to how the ref was wrong when he made that call against the Lakers in ‘93. When they’d get their eternal reward for going to church every Sunday and sending off cheques to some redneck televangelist’s box number.

  1999. 2000. Whatever. There was no cosmic significance about the year, the decade or the century. The world’s clock was calibrated for aeons; millennia didn’t even register, and certainly not the pitiful few we’d been creeping around for.

  It was just a date on a calendar. The West’s calendar. Islam wouldn’t be getting around to the year 2000 for a few centuries yet. In Tibet they’d moved into the third millennium back in the fucking seventies. Awareness that our perception is subjective is what lifts our consciousness above that of the animals: from where you’re sitting, your dick might look taller than that skyscraper out the window, but only from where you’re sitting.

  It don’t make it so.

  Larry knew that reaching the year 2000 didn’t mean nothing, but it didn’t mean everything either. It was a lap-mark, not a finish line. A milestone for Western Judeo-Christian civilisation to stop at and take a look around, at where we had come from and where the road ahead might lead. A time of evaluation and assessment - but also of boundless opportunity.

  From the end of the twentieth century, the twenty-first looked like a Klondike, where there’d be an anxious rush to fight for a slice. But on the periphery of every Klondike there were always con-men, gamblers and charlatans, looking to cash in on the climate of uncertainty. Chancers, his friend Jack Parlabane would’ve called them.

  And chancer-in-chief was the Reverend Luther St John.

  Steel was right: they couldn’t touch him. Even if they went blazing in there, what was he going to do, what was he going to say? ‘Oh sure guys, I admit it - even though you got no proof. And better yet I’ll call the whole thing off, just for you. No hard feelings, huh?’ They couldn’t even squeeze the guy: all he had to do was wait it out until his bombs went off, because they were the only real evidence. Then he’d have his tidal wave and they’d have nothing. Anyway, how do you threaten a man who holds the lives of millions in his grasp? He knows the last thing you can do is kill him.

  Larry had heard him on the radio in the car home, ballsy as you like. Little shit had agreed to take on Madeleine Witherson in a TV debate, even though, as the newscaster put it, he’d been given a standing count after the pasting she dished out earlier. But then St John knew she could stick it to him again and he would still have the ultimate come-back.

  06:13:33

  Larry had sacked out eventually, waking to find an empty house and a note from Sophie, obliviously explaining that she had slipped out quietly to let him catch up on his rest. She’d see him around six, how about dinner out so he could unwind and tell her everything that had been going on these crazy few days?

  How about it indeed? he thought. If we still got a city left to dine out in.

  He pulled on his clothes and hot-tailed it to CalORI. If he was needed at the station, they had his mobile number, but he wasn’t going to be worth shit to them until he found out what the hell was going on at sea.

  Larry walked back into the now Fed-annexed building to find Steel sitting in the lab in front of a big radio set, Brisko and another agent standing nearby drinking coffee.

&nbs
p; ‘Jesus, couldn’t anybody relieve this guy? What, you got a shortage of agents?’

  ‘We did offer. Peter ain’t for leaving.’

  ‘I crashed out on the floor for a few hours,’ Steel said, rubbing horribly bloodshot eyes.

  ‘So any news?’

  ‘Nothing from the boat,’ Brisko told him. ‘The divers are under, but . . .’ He shrugged. ‘Just have to wait it out.’

  ‘But do you wanna hear the late-breaking stories?’ Steel asked.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘We sent agents to question Arthur Liskey,’ Brisko explained, taking up the exhausted Steel’s cue. ‘He’s nowhere to be found. Neither is William Rooke or Richard Kelloran, who are also part of the Southland Militia’s high command.’

  ‘Terence Nately and Oswald Vernon weren’t home either,’ Steel added ‘but that’s because they’re both in blister-packs at the Glendale morgue.’

  ‘However,’ Brisko continued, ‘it may be significant to note that the three I mentioned are listed as living at rented accommodation - all having sold properties in LA in the past two months. Also active in the real-estate market is our friend the Reverend St John. He’s been buying up land in both Arizona and Nevada, which is going to be worth a hell of a lot more if LA floods and the city has to expand eastwards.’

  ‘So now we get to call him Lex Luthor St John,’ Steel said drily.

  There was a burst of static from the radio. Steel proved that his fatigue hadn’t affected his reflexes, grabbing the handset and responding in less than a second. Agent Chai’s impatient voice cut through the breathless hush throughout the lab.

  ‘Peter, this is all for real now. We got a bomb. They just found it.’

  ‘Give me McCabe,’ Steel ordered. ‘Patch me through on a relay.’

  ‘You got it.’

  There was a moment of silence. Larry swallowed. Brisko was already reaching for his mobile.

  ‘Agent Steel, this is McCabe,’ said a distorted voice, words difficult to discern among amplified breathing noises. ‘We’re in real trouble.’

  ‘What are we looking at, Jim?’

  ‘It’s a warhead all right, CHIB-class, and it’s already armed, on a countdown. We got six hours, three minutes and fourteen seconds, then surf’s up.’

  Brisko’s phone clattered to the floor. Steel looked briefly at the men surrounding him. No one had anything dazzling to contribute.

  ‘Can you defuse it?’

  ‘Not for sure. Maybe. But there could be two more of these things and it’s taken us four hours to find the first.’

  ‘Jesus Christ. We better get ready to evacuate.’

  ‘No, wait up,’ McCabe said. He spoke firmly and slowly, the echoing sounds of breathing punctuating his words. ‘Listen. Your CHIB is a vehicle-mounted, remote-launch nuke. That means you don’t arm the warhead locally. It was a safeguard against it falling into non-Soviet hands. You had to transmit the launch codes before you could fire the missile. The codes initiate the launch, and simultaneously arm the warhead.’

  ‘So what?’ Steel asked.

  ‘So there’s a gizmo out there someplace with an “Abort” switch on it.’

  06:00:44

  ‘We gotta evacuate,’ Brisko declared, reaching down for the black plastic mobile where it lay on the tiles. ‘We gotta evacuate.’

  Larry kicked the phone away from his reach. ‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘You’re not from LA, are you man? We tell this city to evacuate and the panic’ll cause half as much damage as the wave. Instead of getting drowned in their homes, they’ll all get drowned in their cars, caught in gridlock on Wilshire Boulevard when five million vehicles try to drive east at the same time. We got six hours. I say let’s go after the detonator.’

  ‘Are you nuts, Sergeant? How do you know it still exists? How do you know they haven’t destroyed it?’

  ‘No chance,’ Steel said. ‘I don’t care how crazy you are, if you’re dealing with fifty-kiloton nuclear weapons, you don’t put gum in the Off switch. Especially not a control-freak like St John.’

  ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this. Time is running out, gentlemen, and you want to play hunt-the-thimble.’

  ‘Agent Brisko, I got a wife teaching right now in a Santa Monica high school - I do not need to be apprised of the gravity of the situation. My money says that detonator is still intact, and if Luther St John doesn’t have it on him personally, then he knows a man who does. So just give us a little time, and if we get nothing, start the evac.’

  ‘What the hell are you planning to do?’

  ‘We can have agents at Bleachfield in twenty minutes,’ Steel said. ‘We get inside and we tear the place apart until we find the thing.’

  ‘And what if it ain’t there?’

  ‘We get someone to stand on St John’s balls until he talks.’

  ‘No,’ Larry said. ‘We evacuate. If it ain’t there, we evacuate the city, that’s it. St John won’t talk, no matter what you do to him. He knows you can only stand on his balls for a few hours and then all your evidence goes up in mushroom-shaped smoke.’

  Larry looked Brisko in the eye.

  ‘Give us one hour playing hunt-the-gizmo, please. That still leaves as much time as would make no difference to the nightmare you’re about to unleash.’

  ‘I can’t afford to gamble an hour on—’

  ‘You’re gambling one hour, yes,’ Larry interrupted, ‘but believe me, it’s worth the stake.’

  Brisko sighed.

  ‘All right, you got an hour on the announcement. But I’m calling the Governor now.’

  ‘Cool.’

  ‘Time for me to make a call too,’ Steel said.

  ‘No,’ Larry told him, placing a hand on the telephone. ‘I mean, sure, get your agents ready to rock, but think about it. He hears you guys are in the house and St John’s gonna know he’s made. He’s got guards, guns - he gives the order and it’s Waco Two. And let me remind you once more, if he turns it into a stand-off, Koresh’s record isn’t under threat. St John only has to keep you guys out for six hours.’

  ‘So what do you want us to do? Teleport our way in?’

  ‘A little simpler. You just need somebody to keep St John immobilised while your men get inside.’

  ‘And how do we get that guy inside in the first place?’

  ‘Easy. He’s already there.’

  ‘Huh?’

  eighteen

  ‘Well, Jesus johnnybags,’ Steff said, walking back in and closing the door behind him. ‘Madeleine, hen, you better take a seat.’

  ‘Whassup?’ she asked, looking up from the makeup bag she was unpacking in front of the mirror.

  ‘What’s up? Eh, how should I put this . . .’

  Freeman’s call had come on Madeleine’s mobile shortly after they’d been shown to the dressing room. The sergeant asked to speak to Steff and he had gone outside to take the call, the fire exit at the room’s rear leading straight out into the desert sun. Arizona was beautiful, absolutely fucking stunning. Luther St John didn’t deserve to live there - Harthill would have been much fairer.

  It had taken some stubborn insistence before Freeman finally spilled out exactly why he needed Steff’s help, but Steff could hardly blame the guy for saying it was on a need-to-know basis. This was not the kind of thing you’d be in a hurry to share with members of the public. Nonetheless, you equally couldn’t ask a member of the public to do what Freeman was requesting without disclosing fully what he was getting himself into. This was a bit more elaborate than asking some bystander to call an ambulance.

  It would be fair to say the news took him a second or two to digest. Steff had long ago run out of surprise at what magnitude of stupidity religion could engender, but even he had to admit he was impressed with this one. It certainly vindicated his concern that he and Madeleine weren’t going to be left alone quite yet to live happily ever after.

  He disconnected the call and looked out across the desert, taking a moment to collect himself ahe
ad of what he was about to undertake. He might have been reeling from the sheer scale, madness and plain old-fashioned evil of what St John was planning, but that was sweeties compared to just how fucking angry he was, and he needed to be cool, focused and rational.

  Once he knew the truth he hadn’t needed to be asked twice, whatever the danger. Not just because of the multitude of lives at stake; not just because he was hoping to spend some time in LA with his new girlfriend and it would be easier if it was still there.

  For Steff, this wasn’t a matter of bravery, selflessness or even self-preservation. This was therapy.

  This was pay-back.

  The fundamental problem with fundamentalists was that no matter how much touchy-feely love and peace their religions professed, in practice they always turned into prescriptions for moral contempt. Reasons to hate were given divine sanction. ‘Hate the sin, love the sinner,’ they said, a phrase Steff had always considered among the most disingenuous moral cop-outs the human race ever devised, right up there alongside ‘I was only obeying orders’. If you consider somebody’s behaviour or beliefs an affront to your God for which they will suffer an eternity of pain and humiliation, it makes it kind of hard then to treat that person as an equal human being.

  Holy war. Crusade. Jihad. Fatwah. And now a tidal wave. That was what ‘hate the sin, love the sinner’ had led to. Please, Steff thought, love us all less.

  All us sinners.

  Because we were all of us heretics, every day committing obscene thought-crimes and unforgivable transgressions of moral and theological orthodoxies. All of us. Every one. Most of the time we didn’t mean it, but that in itself was often the nature of the infidelity; and when was ignorance of the law ever a mitigating excuse?

  With so many belief systems having evolved around the world, it was impossible to adhere to all of them; indeed, adherence to one was often deeply heretical in the eyes of another. Therefore, even the most conscientious devotee, leading the most ascetic, self-denying, disciplined, austerely moral, dull, drab, joyless and utterly, utterly self-nullifying existence was unfortunately guilty of acts and thoughts that would be found decadent, licentious and downright evil in the scrutinising eyes of another religion. Some wee old spinster in Coatbridge, in her hairy coat, plastic Rainmate and furry boots, nipping into the Co-op minimarket for a half-pound of cheap mince on the way home from the chapel, Scottish Catholic Universe under her arm, might tell herself she wasn’t, spiritually speaking, doing any harm. But she’d be kidding herself. And acting the humble innocent wouldn’t help. Hardline Islamics would have her on the dress-code, for a start. Vain, shameless slattern, flaunting herself like that in public, for all the world to see. Hindus wouldn’t go a bundle on her planned ingestion of bloody flesh, or her wider complicity in the sacred animal’s slaughter. Attendance at the ‘temple of the Satanic anti-Christ of Rome’ remains something of a no-no as far as the Scottish Free Presbyterians and Ian Paisley’s mob are concerned. And as for a woman being able to read, well, ask the Taleban about that in Kabul. Then duck.