Not the End of the World

by Christopher Brookmyre

  Cumulatively, the world’s religions could provide a God-given justification to hate anything about anybody. Steff had decided some years ago to hate them all back.

  He was what the devout would call a ‘lapsed Catholic’, a term he resented because it sounded like he was suffering from some kind of helpless affliction. It also carried the insulting and deeply smug implication that this was a temporary fault and ultimately he would be back.

  Steff Kennedy would not be fucking back. Put the house on it.

  He had been brought up a Catholic; a ‘good Catholic’, even, as the phrase went. He’d always striven to be good, a good boy for his mum and dad, good at school, good at home, good at church. Being a good boy meant being a good Catholic; being a good Catholic meant being a good boy.

  It was only when he became old enough to start thinking about what any of it actually meant that his ‘faith’ ran into difficulties. Unfortunately, this development came after he had signed up for the seminary.

  Again, he was just trying to be as good as his parents — or more importantly God - would like him to be. At school the Catholic teachers told you about ‘vocations’, about the calling, about how God chose people to become priests and nuns. At the same time they usually laid it on pretty thick about the abject shortage of both and how miffed God would get if you KB-ed His job offer. They gave the impression that if you ever found yourself wondering - even for a second — what it might be like to be a priest, then that was your card marked: God was calling you, and it was a Mortal Sin to ignore Him.

  He was not priest material, anyone could have seen that. Neither was any of the six other boys from his year at St Matthew’s Secondary in Motherwell who signed up at the same time - all, coincidentally, after seeing the Augustine’s College video. The Church in Scotland was just so desperate that they were cramming all manner of unsuitable candidates into the seminary in the blind hope that a few of them would go the distance.

  The video worked like one of those Army recruitment films, where they show you guys skiing down Alpine mountainsides and drinking beers in Belize, when the reality is a street corner in Belfast with angry young Irishmen lobbing bricks at your head. The Augustine’s College ‘Do You Hear the Calling?’ video was all swimming pools, tennis courts and walks in the hills. The reality was a damp, prison-like building in Ayrshire, where the angry Irishmen were middle-aged, and it wasn’t their bricks you had to worry about.

  Lives were wrecked in that place. Young lives.

  Steff heard boys cry in their beds every night, tormented by things they would not talk about. Secrets stalked the halls; whispered rumours and silent fears. But he only learned the truth when the whisky-reeking Father Meehan summoned him to ‘private prayers’ in his study, and locked the door behind them.

  Unfortunately for the priest, his drunken misjudgement had led him to pick on someone, even at thirteen, more than his own size.

  Steff remembered hearing the sirens as he sat upstairs in Father Cahill’s office, and being surprised when he looked out the window to discover there was only an ambulance, no police cars. But then he’d had a lot to learn about what the Church’s priorities were that night. The ambulancemen were told Father Meehan fell down the stairs (which probably seemed fairly plausible, given that he was drunk), but pressure must have been brought to bear so that nobody asked how many times he’d fallen down them to end up with a face like that. Steff, having terrified visions of graduating straight from seminary to borstal for GBH, thought it was him the priests were protecting.

  They had both spent their last day at Augustine’s College. Steff went back to Motherwell the next morning, but he didn’t know where Father Meehan went until nine years later when he saw him on TV, charged with a string of sexual offences against boys in his charge at a seminary in Galway. Steff hadn’t been very happy to discover that these offences were not coming to light after decades of silence — the Church had placed Meehan in the Galway seminary after his expulsion from Ayrshire. Still, what were a few anal rapes to protect the Church’s holy name from scandal? Didn’t these kids have any sense of loyalty?

  He once heard a Scottish archbishop say he wouldn’t turn an abusing priest over to the police (it was up to the victims to complain) but instead would try to help him change through much prayer and Church counselling. Steff had wished for five minutes in a locked study with that guy, too.

  However, the Meehan incident hadn’t been the catalyst for the crumbling of Steff’s faith: the questions that would pull down the temple had been in his head before then. What it did achieve, though, was to make him extremely resolute in dealing with religious bampots.

  Luther St John could therefore consider himself claimed.

  05:42:36

  Steff closed the door to Madeleine’s dressing room, having been given a sweet good-luck kiss and a nervous but redundant request to ‘be careful’. He looked down the corridor where two armed security guards were having a discussion about what they referred to as ‘football’. He winced, realising that even he wasn’t immune to being offended by blasphemy. One of them chucked the other on the shoulder and walked away, lighting up a cigarette. Shift change.

  Steff went for a quick circuit around the dressing and makeup area of the studio complex, all of which seemed too large for what was actually being produced from the place. It was also very new, like a huge low-rise extension to the older CFC buildings, the dusty smell of Gyproc and fresh construction materials still hanging in the air. Luther was getting ready for a much-expanded programme output in the very near future. Either that or he was going to rent out sound-stages to the major studios after theirs developed chronic rising damp.

  There was hardly anyone about. The studio audiences were made up of ‘pilgrims’ doing the full CFC tour, including the Luther St John Museum and, of course, souvenir shop. But they only got access to specified parts of the compound, whereas Madeleine and he had backstage passes.

  They’d been given the full VIP treatment, Luther presumably trying to disarm Madeleine with his charm and hospitality so that she wouldn’t wipe quite so much of the floor with him. Flight in on his private jet first thing that morning, Special Guest dressing room, bouquets of flowers and a personal greeting from the man himself before he went off to present Good Morning, Christian America. He’d been all smiles: ‘What a terrible ordeal, how brave you were, Miss Witherson,’ and ‘Let’s hope we can maybe learn something from each other today.’ Bags of warmth, politeness and consideration. Then he’d put the jet on standby for when the show was over, so they could both fly back to LA in plenty of time to drown with the rest of the condemned.

  The security guard was standing a few doors along from Madeleine’s dressing room. Steff sidled up and said hello. ‘Place looks like it’s on the up and up.’

  ‘Sure is,’ the guard said, a moustachioed plump man in his forties. Steff could see the butt of his pistol sticking out from a shoulder-holster, handcuffs hooked to his belt. ‘It’s all gonna get a lot busier after the great flood, when it comes. A lot more folks are gonna start listening to what the Reverend St John’s got to say.’

  ‘So you’re a true believer? You don’t just work here?’

  ‘The Reverend St John only hires true believers.’

  ‘Well, could you help me out with a wee theological question?’

  ‘I’ll do my best. I’m no preacher, though.’

  ‘I was thinking . . . I know that in your faith you believe sexual activity is intended solely for procreation. Therefore obviously homosexuality is out, and so are masturbation, sodomy, fellatio and cunnilingus.’ The guy seemed to reel from every word. ‘But I was wondering, where do you stand on the Glasgow Kiss?’

  ‘Glasgow Kiss? I ain’t never heard of that.’

  ‘I thought not.’

  Steff dragged the unconscious guard quickly and quietly into the empty and as yet unfurbished room behind him. He removed his gun, handcuffs and keys, tied his wrists to the water pipes with elec
trical flex, and fashioned a gag from some thick polythene that had been covering a new worktop. Steff examined the gun, never having held one before, and looked for the safety catch, flipping it off and on to familiarise himself with the action. Then he locked the door and went back to the dressing room.

  Madeleine was pale with worry when he came back in, over-dramatically putting a hand to her chest and closing her eyes once she had seen that he’d returned safely.

  ‘Okay, we ready for this?’ she asked, standing up.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, composing himself, checking again that he had correctly programmed instant-dial for the number that would greenlight the FBI agents’ incursion. ‘Oh no wait. Just a second. There’s something I meant to ask Freeman.’

  The sergeant had talked Steff through the logistics, explaining for instance that it was vital they made St John believe their actions were a protest stunt or some crazed act of vengeance. If he knew his big secret was out and Steff was working for the Feds, he’d know also that Steff couldn’t kill him, which would make the wee shite far less co-operative. However, there was one crucial aspect of the whole exercise that he feared had slipped the big cop’s mind.

  He went back outside and pressed the recall button on the mobile.

  ‘Hi, it’s me,’ he said. ‘Phase one is complete, I’ve got the gun. But before phase two, well, something’s been bothering me.’

  ‘What is it, man?’

  ‘This wee black box your guys are looking for. Will it just have a big shiny button on it that says “Abort"? It won’t have, like, a keypad for entering a code that only St John knows, perhaps?’

  There was a very, very, very long pause before Freeman said: ‘Ah, shit.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘Look, we still go ahead. Maybe once we got him . . .’

  ‘Hey, it’s okay, I can get the codes out of him,’ Steff interrupted.

  ‘No, man, I told you, he’ll know we can’t threaten him.’

  ‘I’m not gaunny threaten him. But he’ll cough, believe me.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’ll require some assistance, but in the main I’m relying on my faith.’

  ‘Faith? Faith in what?’

  ‘Faith in St John being full of shit.

  ‘Well I’m heart and soul on that one, brother. What do you need?’

  06:28:31

  The makeup-room door opened inwards and the holy man emerged to fill the gap, looking up warmly at Steff. He was evidently still in charming magnanimity mode, which was what Steff had been relying on. St John had a beatific smile plastered across his smug coupon, like he wasn’t in the process of murdering legions of innocent people. It was an enormous temptation just to banjo the wee bastard then and there, but apart from being catastrophically self-defeating, violence would be nothing compared to what Steff had in mind for later on. For crimes of this magnitude, there was no way he was getting off with mere physical harm.

  His body would be left unscathed. It was his soul that was in for a kicking.

  ‘Mr Kennedy. How can I help you, son?’

  ‘I’m sorry to trouble you, Reverend, but it’s Madeleine. She’s got a wee touch of stagefright, I think. She’s suddenly come over all nervous about the debate. Would you mind coming round and having a quick word with her, just to reassure her about a few things?’

  ‘That’s no problem, son. I’ll be right along.’

  There was a knock at the dressing-room door a few minutes later. Steff pulled it open and held it there, beckoning St John inside.

  ‘Thank you for coming to see me, Reverend,’ Madeleine said.

  ‘Oh don’t worry, I’m only too happy,’ he told her.

  He was less happy when Steff closed the door behind him and stuck a gun in his face. ‘You keep your fuckin’ mouth shut and do exactly as you’re told,’ he commanded, ‘or I become the first Kennedy to carry out an assassination.’

  Before St John could respond, Madeleine pulled a gag over his mouth and secured it tightly. First things first: if he couldn’t ask them any questions, he couldn’t suss what they were really up to. Then she blindfolded him with masking tape and slapped the guard’s cuffs over his wrists behind his back.

  They led him outside through the fire-exit and marched him swiftly around the back of the shiny new studio complex to the landing strip, where they added hijacking to their police-approved rap-sheet.

  04:27:58

  The Lear jet touched down with a thump, the pilot’s nervousness taking its toll on his landing skills. Through the windows Steff could see the police cars, Larry Freeman’s figure unmistakable even from two hundred yards away. Maddy lowered the stairway and Steff nudged the still-blindfolded St John towards the door.

  Agent Steel was first to the plane once it had taxied to a standstill, climbing the stairs to take hold of the baffled prisoner and lead him to a waiting car. Freeman strode up purposefully behind him.

  ‘All right, Kennedy, it’s all set up, let’s get moving,’ he said. ‘The agents back in Bleachfield found the gizmo, so Brisko’s given us an extra hour before they evacuate. But not a minute more, so this better work.’

  ‘I told you,’ Steff said. ‘Have faith.’

  04:12:08

  Steel stood by with his phone to his ear, in contact with Bleachfield. Freeman tied St John’s wrists to the wooden crossbeam, Steff binding his feet to the support-stock while Maddy removed the gag and the blindfold. Then together they raised him up and secured the life-size crucifix in place, fixed to the railings at the end of Santa Monica pier.

  ‘Okay, Luther,’ Steff said, looking up at him. ‘Do you know what the big blue thing you’re looking at is? It’s called the Pacific Ocean. Here’s the scenario. You’re at the seaside, on an all-American pier complete with funfare and saltwater taffy, whatever the fuck that is. Your cunning plan has been rumbled, I’m afraid, so I believe your next line should be something about “pesky kids”, but we’ll settle for the warhead abort code.’

  ‘Give us the code, Mr St John,’ Freeman reiterated sternly. ‘Your party’s over.’

  ‘Code? I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re a cop? Well, not for long. I’m gonna have your badge. Don’t you know who I am?’

  ‘You can play dumb all you want, sir,’ Freeman replied, ‘but you’re stayin’ on that cross for the next five hours, whatever happens. We’re gonna start evacuating the city real soon, but believe me, you’re the one guy who ain’t goin’ nowhere. So I was you, I’d give us the code.’

  St John’s face darkened in growing, genuine anger, replacing the mock outrage he’d been trying to sell them. He looked to the heavens for inspiration.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, swallowing back his fury, calming himself. ‘I’m not stupid and clearly neither are you. You obviously know what’s going on, so let’s talk turkey. I’ll pay all of you a lot of money, and you know I’ve got it. Just let me go and we can all fly out of here together on my plane, right now. I’ll make everyone of you rich people in a new America. A better America.’

  ‘Give us the goddamn code.’

  ‘For goodness’ sake, you idiots, look at the bigger picture,’ he yelled. ‘This country’s falling apart without God. America’s only hope for salvation is if it can renew its faith in the Lord, and with this wave I can make that happen. Can’t you see that? I can make people believe again. I can make people decent again. I can save this country. There’s so much more at stake here than just the lives that’ll be lost. It’s nineteen ninety-nine, the end of the millennium, and God’s running out of patience. This could be our last chance - don’t throw it away!’

  ‘Well, that’s entirely up to you, Reverend, actually,’ Steff said. ‘See, we’re not exactly up to our arses in evidence here. Once the bombs go off, the only proof of what really caused the tidal wave will be a wee black box in Arizona, and we’re not going to get far saying: “Honest, folks, this was used to detonate a nuclear weapon.” So America will therefore still g
et its act of God as prophesied by yourself - and if that act of God is going to save America, then America will indeed be saved.

  ‘You, however, won’t. But as you said, there’s more at stake here than just the lives that’ll be lost. You’ll still achieve what you wanted. You’ll save the souls of those millions who will repent and change their sinful ways. All right, it’s going to kill you, but your reward in the next world should be pretty substantial, even by eternal-bliss standards. You’ll be remembered for ever, as well - the first American saint, the man who prophesied the wave and begged everyone to heed God’s warnings. Plus,’ Steff added, slapping the wood, ‘we’ve even set you up in the classic martyr-messiah stance for your meeting with the big man. So, like I said, it’s your call.’

  He stepped away and stood next to Madeleine, who took his hand and gripped it tightly. Steel - phone still held to face - and Freeman flanked them on either side. In front of them, Los Angeles was going about its business. Classrooms, construction sites, hospitals, offices. Studios, sound stages, back lots. Cars and freeways.