Chosen
Page 23
Even in Moscow there was evidence of a reawakening. Not out in the open in case they got shot or poisoned by Ripurpantzov’s goons, but young Muscovites were nonetheless following Yuri Krumkin’s advice to make their voices heard. Singing and playing Beatles songs at the dead of night, then like spooks vanishing back into the shadows and cellars where the police couldn’t find them. Night after night after night it went on, and not only in the capital. In Minsk, home of the old KGB headquarters, and in other cities all across Russia, there were similar ghostly whisperings. Even in Sevastopol on the newly “liberated” Crimean peninsula.
And how, you will be asking, were the psychos in the White House and the Kremlin feeling about this? Twitchy is the answer. Even Ripurpantzov, the guy who’d been newly re-“elected” as president having jailed any credible opposition, the “strong man” who was keen on following the example of China’s leader and making himself president for life, was hearing the worrisome echoes of a history he believed dead and buried. Good at judo and other forms of manipulation though he may have been, the very last thing he needed was any underground interference in his mind games with the West or any contradiction of his assertion of its pernicious influence on Mother Russia. Some nights he lay awake and wondered.
As did the madman in the White House, as he stuffed himself with cheeseburgers and fizzy drinks while fiddling with his Twitter feed and flicking around TV stations, on which even his beloved Fox News was showing signs of nervousness at the re-emergence of what it contemptuously described as “youth culture.”
“Gonna hafta do sumptn about this,” he muttered to himself as he chewed. “Like shoot some of these bozos and make out it was the Mexicans or the Muslims who dunnit. Who got the kids braindead on dope then gunned ’em down when they told tales out of school. Yeah, nice move. Change the story an’ go with the flow.”
Only how many stories had the madman already changed? Hundreds, thousands maybe, as he made his way to the zenith of American power. He was no longer sure how many. But what he was sure of—and increasingly irritated by—was how many of what the pinko media had taken to branding as his “lies” were coming back to bite him the ass. Outside of his own family, there was nobody in the White House he could trust any more, never mind how often he fired his top advisors, Secretaries of State, FBI and CIA cretins and their like. All they then did was go away and write bestselling books about him being a moron, psychopath and congenital liar. The madman wasn’t entirely sure what congenital meant, but it didn’t sound good. Had they just focused on his genitals and all the babes he’d bedded, he’d have been happy. But congenital?
And now, along with all the other pinko dorks who didn’t believe him when he said he was the best president America had ever had and were lining up to impeach him for nepotism as well as electoral, sexual and financial misconduct, let alone hero worship of the madman in the Kremlin, now there were these freakin’ kids on the streets wanting gun control, holding hands with hippies, singing Beatles songs, and saying the Lennon freak was still alive and kicking. Je-sus H. Christ, what was his world coming to? Hell in a handcart if he wasn’t careful, that was what. Unless his big brain could figure out a way of dealing with the situation, he could be looking at an awful lot of shit hitting an awful lot of fans.
“Hey, big brain,” he said. “You good to go on this?”
But Big Brain had gone AWOL.
“FUCK, FUCK,” said the madman in the White House, the first time because Big Brain had gone AWOL and the second time because of the wah-wah-wahs and the flashing blue lights all along Pennsylvania Avenue, where yet again city cops and National Guardsmen were struggling to cope with a sea of demonstrators waving banners saying THE PRESIDENT’S A DICKHEAD and playing through improvised amplifiers John Lennon’s “Revolution.”
“Shoot ’em, SHOOT ’em all,” yelled the madman from a top window in the White House through a half masticated cheeseburger, but to no avail.
Nobody was listening. Just like all those years ago in the sixties, some of the cops and National Guardsmen were laying aside their flower-bestrewn weapons to join the rally in echoes of the 1967 anti-Vietnam war march on the Pentagon.
“FUCK,” said the madman in the White House for the third time. Could this be the end of the America he knew, loved, and of which he owned huge swathes?
Epilogue
At the time of writing, only weeks since the release of Maurice Moffat’s final Beatles/Lennon video, it is far too early to make predictions as to its impact. You know how it is with history, how unpredictably it can shift. Whoever could have forecast Americans could have been so dumb as to elect a narcissist loon for their next president? That Russians would succumb to the wiles of a small-time KGB officer turned post-1989 state assets thief and then present himself as their leader for life? That the British could be hubristic enough to believe they were still the colonial world power they once were and vote to opt out of the very European Union that had maintained the peace on that continent since 1945? Nobody, that’s who, or else we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in today.
The problem with history is it’s only ever perceived in retrospect and normally only written by the victors, which leaves all sorts of unexplained lacunae. It’s not as though philosophers do any better. It was all very well for Hegel to propose thesis, antithesis and synthesis as a formula to explain the manner in which human societies have progressed over time, but that now looks like wishful thinking. Hegel postulated such stuff well before the invention of the World Wide Web and the malign influence it has had on global shifts. Ask Hegel what he thought about the manner in which Facebook’s research into “likes” and “dislikes” had been hi-jacked by populists to influence power politics and he’d have gone goggle-eyed. The name of the game these days is chaos theory, which takes seriously the concept of a butterfly flapping its wings in China and thereby producing a hurricane in Texas. So much for history.
Anyway, at the time of writing, the madmen in the White House and the Kremlin are still in their jobs, and there is little evidence of the British prime minister Phoebe/Clarissa being elevated to the status of heroine of the West. But then Maurice Moffat hadn’t expected such celerity. Too wise was he by far. Nonetheless, John Lennon’s words were continuing to echo across the sorts of cyber space Hegel could never have dreamt of, so at least out there were the seeds Maurice had sown for potentially tectonic shifts. He, Dame Muriel, and the crew back at the Shepherd’s Hut would just have to wait and see how long those seeds took to bear fruit.
Maurice asked Terpsichore/Tiddles/Cat for her opinion on the matter, but you know how it is with cats, how hard they find it to draw conclusions. Mind you, much the same could be said of human animals, despite their supposedly bigger brains. So on we stagger from an uncertain beginning to an even less certain end. Possibly T.S. Eliot got it right when he said, “time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future.” Who knows?
One thing remains clear however, when everything else becomes misty, and that is the obligation we humans have to make choices based in our own reason and not the whimsy of others. Otherwise we become the chosen, not the choosers. As Jeremy Crawford, Julie Mackintosh, “Maggie” Montague, Dennis “Shorty” Dawkins and, well before them, ex-professor Barry Broadbent, found out. It took them sooo long, but they found out, so no more day tripping for them. And more power to their elbows.
Author’s Note and Acknowledgment
It may well be you found the Beatles/Lennon idea on which this book draws overly fantastical or even specious, in which case I would refer you to Leslie Woodhead’s book How The Beatles Rocked The Kremlin: The Untold Story of a Noisy Revolution (Bloomsbury Publishing 25.04.2013 ISBN 9781408840436). And to the BBC programme it inspired—the one Maurice Moffat watched.
Thank you, Leslie.
Meet Paddy Bostock
Paddy Bostock was born in Liverpool and holds a B.A. in Modern Languages and History, a PGDip TESL, and a PhD in English Literature. Down
the years he has been a barman, a road worker, a songwriter, an educational researcher, a translator, a book reviewer, a university lecturer and Chair of Department, and a high school mentor. He lives in London with his wife, writer Dani Cavallaro, and likes animals and bicycles.
Works From The Pen Of Paddy Bostock
Mole Smith and The Diamond Studded Pistol - Tricked into believing he is to be accused of a murder he hasn’t committed, PI gofer Mole Smith is inveigled into the search for an ancient order and its famous diamond-studded pistol. What Mole doesn’t know, as he undertakes the quest with his partner Oksana, is what powers lurk behind the scenes.
Two Down - Failed crime-fiction writer, professional plagiarist and part-time private eye Dr. Jake Flintlock and his sidekick Dr. Bum Park are within a whisker of catching the killer of the Vice-Chancellor of the university that sacked Jake...But this is no ordinary murderer, as they are about to discover.
La Joie de Vivre - To escape a floundering relationship and writer’s block, Ambler leaves London for La Rochelle, where he stumbles into a tangle of corruption and revenge with a grisly murder at its centre: a crime which could cost Ambler his freedom — and his sanity.
For The Love Of a Woman - Ravaged by sun, mosquitoes and his partner Claudia’s extended family while on a summer holiday to seaside Italy, PI Jake Flintlock is keen—despite having been asked to stay to solve a local murder—to return to London for good. But then, after a second murder, he and his PI associate Bum Park are made an offer they can’t refuse and once in Rome, discover a whole new meaning to the words la famiglia
Foot Soldiers - Outraged at the market economic policies adopted by their university, the Podiatry department kidnap a senior academic in protest. The chance coincidence of the interests of the gutter press, Welsh Freedom Fighters, and a Prime Minister struggling for re-election ensures a minor campus story escalates into cataclysmic national proportions.
Hand In Glove - PI Dr Jake Flintlock and his sidekick Dr Bum Park are inveigled by American theater director Chuck Cinzano into the investigation of a severed hand in a baseball glove on Primrose Hill, London. The assignment morphs into a murder case as Chuck is “stabbed to death” in Jake’s home. Having flown to Sausalito, CA, Jake and Bum begin to suspect they are being used as actors in a play. Yet, a real crime has been committed and somehow the culprit has to be found.
Noddy In Wonderland - In his wildest dreams, Afghanistan war veteran Noddy Stoddart fantasised about becoming king of Liverpool, even though his brother, Knobby, told him he was crazy. But shooting government minister St John Jaunston in the bottom with an air rifle on a visit to the city leads bizarrely to Noddy’s dream coming true--as president of the newly created People’s Republic of Liverpool.
Peace on Earth - Mankind profits from nothing more than war. Hence, rumours about the existence of a disk said to contain the formula to “peace on earth,” obtained by a failed actor with a penchant for visions, pose a major threat to the planet. This unleashes a frantic hunt for the disk across continents, involving government agencies, master criminals, petty criminals, and would-be criminals, plus the local population of Pont-y-Pant: the tiny Welsh village on which disparate characters converge as the putative location of the errant disk.
However, nobody has taken into account the role that will be played by the three-year-old Newfoundland acting as the disk’s self-appointed custodian.
The Basque Head Case - Following the accidental discovery of a "head" afloat on the Regent Canal, London, PI Dr Jake Flintlock is seduced into taking on a case which draws him to Northern Spain and its darker history. There, in the company of his sidekick Dr Bum Park, Jake faces a mystery wherein an ancient Basque legacy of vengeance and strife intersects with a private vendetta - one with Jake himself as its unwitting target.
The Bore - Since birth, Professor Thaddeus Proctor has lacked any attractive qualities, his only asset being a formidable yawn capable of precipitating anyone who comes into contact with it into a state of soporific compliance. The yawn's power remains untapped until Thaddeus is offered the chance of competing in a TV game show, and becomes its champion.
Not even then, however, is the yawn deployed to the utmost of its capacities. It takes Thaddeus's removal to Fairyland, and involvement in the protection of its precarious peace, to test the yawn's true might, and reveal the professor is no mere "bore."
The Hanging - As the troll Vilius Vilutis hunts Cumbria in search of the magical onyx capable of revolutinizing smartphones and defeat his business foe Zingy Splitz, the elves Mordecai and Hazchem strive to keep the onyx safe. But then two hangings disrupt the peace, and darker forces begin to surface
Visit Our Website
For The Full Inventory
Of Quality Books:
Wings ePress, Inc
Quality trade paperbacks and downloads
in multiple formats,
in genres ranging from light romantic comedy to general fiction and horror.
Wings has something for every reader’s taste.
Visit the website, then bookmark it.
We add new titles each month!
Wings ePress Inc.
3000 N. Rock Road
Newton, KS 67114