Captains Stupendous

by Rhys Hughes

  ‘It looked like a triceratops, but I’m no expert.’

  I had nothing to say in reply. I was too dazed. Perhaps he mistook my silence for contempt; he made a new effort to be friendly, and I realised even more acutely how desperately he needed a navigator. So I had some power over him; good to know this!

  He said, ‘Do you play billiards? There’s a table in the recreation area. Yes, this gondola that dangles from the airship has more than one room! Later I’ll challenge you to a game. I’m a master at the sport, but not vain enough to suppose I’m invincible.’

  ‘Yes. I look forward to that, Monsieur Faraway.’

  ‘Good. Proceed with your work.’

  Across France we went and into Spain, following the east coast of that country toward the point where Europe and Africa loom close for a kiss or bite, depending on your political outlook. We veered inland, for I was making constant adjustments to our course, and soon we were in Almería, the only genuine desert on the European mainland. Yellow bleakness far below, scoured rock and dry riverbeds.

  I rubbed my eyes. ‘Are we in Africa already?’

  ‘Not yet, Mr Griffiths. This desert is a sample, a taste, of the wastes that dominate the Maghreb. But still it is Spain, essentially Spanish in all its quirks; and down there, if you search hard enough, you will find tapas and flamenco, siestas and Señoritas.’

  ‘Yes, I believe you; nonetheless it is strange.’

  ‘The Almerían desert is partly of man’s making. As Dom Daniel said, humanity is the despoiler of the Earth.’

  ‘How can men create a desert?’ I demanded.

  ‘By diverting water, Mr Griffiths.’

  ‘I understand. Reckless engineering projects?’

  ‘The little water that does exist in the region is pumped to commercial greenhouses where enormous fruits are grown all year round. So Almería is a productive enough place; unfortunately the old towns and villages are depopulated. Thirst drove the inhabitants out. Some roughnecks refuse to leave and manage to survive, but generally it’s a lonely corner of Europe. Having said that, what do you see?’

  I opened the nearest porthole and poked my head through. ‘Some kind of settlement, but it’s not on my map.’

  ‘Charts aren’t always right, Mr Griffiths. My airship is running rather low on supplies, and soon we will be over the open ocean; this might be a good opportunity to land and restock.’

  ‘On enormous greenhouse vegetables?’ I smiled.

  He nodded without obvious irony. ‘The avocado pears grown here are bigger and perhaps more intelligent than many human heads. Yes, I think we ought to descend. I shall vent gas.’

  I resisted the temptation to comment on this.

  Down we went, and when we were only a dozen feet above the surface, he shouted, ‘Cast out the anchor now!’

  I did so. The iron implement landed on the desert floor with a muffled thump, bouncing and catching a barb on a cactus. Then Distanto ordered the lowering of the rope ladder; he climbed down first and I followed. On firm ground again, I stretched my limbs happily. The dusty settlement lay a mile or so to the south. We trudged.

  We were equally dusty when we entered it. We passed beneath a crude arch made of planks badly nailed together. There was no pavement on the other side of the arch, just red earth.

  The flag sagging on the flagpole didn’t look right.

  A typical Almerían village?

  Hardly. It wasn’t what I had expected. Not Spanish in character at all. The houses were made of planks and the single street was deserted save for horses tied up outside a saloon.

  This saloon had swing doors. Tumbleweed rolled in front of it. A pot of beans was bubbling within and the aroma was emerging in beckoning wisps; that’s what my nose told me.

  ‘No shops,’ I remarked. ‘Nowhere to buy vegetables.’

  Distanto said, ‘Let’s go inside.’

  We stepped into the saloon. Faces turned to stare at us. Men with long, drooping moustaches and hats with extremely wide brims stopped eating stew and playing cards. The bartender had a bottle of tequila in his hand but he was no longer filling glasses.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ said Distanto cautiously.

  Then I realised something …

  What fluttered on the flagpole outside was the Mexican flag.

  A fat man stepped close to us.

  He wore two bandoliers on his chest and his moth-eaten brown poncho was thrown back to reveal them. He also had a belt around his waist and holsters suspended from his hips, and in the holsters were revolvers. With slow, threatening movements, he inserted a cigar stub between his stained teeth, took a match out of his pocket.

  Then he tried to strike a light on my cheek!

  The match failed to ignite.

  ‘Your steenking chin ees too soft, hombre!’ he said.

  Much laughter. Trouble!

  The Syndicate

  Kindly picture to yourself a rotting mansion in the dunes near Porthcawl. You know the one I mean. Newspaperman Ben Gordon, my former boss, and the evil Hugo Bloat, owner of the building, are huddled in the highest room. Since getting to know each other on my behalf, they have become inseparable, assisting each other’s schemes. They still want me dead, but that’s not the only plot that occupies their attention. At this very moment, in fact, they are planning a series of bomb attacks that they can blame on the Welsh Nationalists, not only to discredit the independence movement but also for financial reasons; Bloat has shares in English companies who are buying up land and resources in Wales, while Gordon wants a scoop to increase sales of The Western Mail.

  They work well as a team, these two villains …

  Having put the final touches to the details of their bombing campaign, they sit back and chuckle. ‘And next?’

  ‘Why not return our attention to Lloyd Griffiths?’

  ‘Oh, him. Why I ever endured—’

  ‘Come now, Mr Gordon, you weren’t to know he was going to turn out despicable when you hired him. You probably imagined he would make a perfectly fine journalist. And so he did.’

  ‘Humph! He has a conscience; I can’t stand that.’

  ‘Let’s eliminate him then!’

  They discuss many potential methods, including poison, traps, trained beasts, but nothing seems suitable. Then Mr Bloat winks. ‘Still a bounty on his head, isn’t there?’ he asks.

  ‘Of course! But nobody has claimed it yet…’

  ‘Let’s withdraw it and use the reward cash to hire assassins instead. A single professional is more effective than a hundred amateurs. I wonder if you quite know why that should be?’

  ‘Tell me, Mr Bloat, I’m listening attentively.’

  ‘So you are, my dear Ben Gordon. Well now, a single professional has no wife to distract him. Ha!’ The tears of mirth that fall from his withered eyes are oily. And he slaps his thigh.

  ‘A good joke, very original. And yet all the same—’

  ‘What is your precise objection?’

  ‘Don’t misunderstand me; I regard the suggestion of hiring an assassin with a surge of glee and awe in my bones. But we have no idea where Mr Griffiths currently might be. Why don’t we hire many assassins, one from every country in the entire world? That way, it doesn’t matter where he is, or where he goes. He’ll still be got!’

  ‘Ingenious! Brilliant! Yes, that’s the solution!’

  Never underestimate that pair …

  They have the resources to make discreet, effective enquiries through the channels of the criminal underworld; to advertise secretly for experts in murder; to transport the men and women thus recommended from any part of the globe to that mansion in the dunes near Porthcawl. And while they wait for the hired killers to arrive safely, Gordon and Bloat focus on their other projects, the bombs and embezzlements of a normal workday, for they are bellicose and versatile.

  And within a month, the final assassin arrives.

  By ship, train, horse, motorcar they have come, and also by aeroplane, even by sub
marine in one instance.

  There are 195 countries in the world.

  The assassins occupy the ground floor rooms; the furniture and carpets are mouldy and foul, but it’s only a temporary arrangement. Gordon and Bloat are standing at the top of the rickety staircase at the end of a narrow hallway; they send down their voices, without following them in person. I wouldn’t be flattered at the description they give of me, if I was present to hear it, though I admit its accuracy.

  ‘Lloyd Griffiths must die! Without a jot of mercy!’

  ‘We will kill him!’ is the reply.

  There are 197 assassins in the house; neither Ben nor Hugo notices the discrepancy

  The Great Work

  Alchemy is more than just the chemistry of fools and primitives. Properly done, it’s a mystic art that manipulates archetypal symbols of the soul and creates transcendent answers from arcane formulae. Mario Granieri was a true devotee of the discipline. He was forever playing with his retorts and flasks and bellows in his basement workshop. Although the processes of the ancient masters are extended metaphors, it doesn’t hurt to experiment with real substances, with fire and metal.

  When Mario melted down the head of the lance of Córdoba and added various elements to the bubbling sauce, he wanted only to turn the blade into gold, as I’ve already explained; but in fact something went wrong, or maybe it went right, and he ended up with three separate slivers of metal. Try as he might these wouldn’t recombine; the lance head had partitioned its miraculous qualities, split them off from each other. One fragment was gold; the other two were black and brown.

  He subjected these three shards to scholarly scrutiny, tested them with the objectivity of an authentic empiricist; the vibration of the musket, on that long ago beach, had blended into one substance the spiritual essences of holiness and war, and now he, the clever Italo-Mexican, had separated them again. The gold piece was pure holiness; the black, pure war; but as for the brown, that remained a mystery. What to do with these shards? He still needed a lance, for he was a soldier.

  There is a tradition amongst the Italians of unusual weapons. Some of the curious devices that can be obtained from craftsmen in that land have an Arabic origin; the scissors dagger, for example, that makes a gash big enough to post a letter in; or the theft-proof sword with a blade so curved it slashes its own owner. Signor (or Señor) Granieri wanted to incorporate all the shards into his new lance, but a lance with three blades isn’t a lance anymore; it’s a trident. That didn’t matter.

  He designed a trident for himself, but it was no ordinary fork. It was a flick trident, the blades concealed inside the shaft. A quick motion of his wrist and out they would slide! When the weapon was ready he practised with it until he was adept. The trio of blades sprang out simultaneously, a variety of glints at the tip of the stout pole, three points with considerable penetrative power. Holiness, war and a surprise! This trident pleased him so much that he often caressed its length.

  It certainly might be argued that Mario had misunderstood and warped the true intention of the alchemical arts. Many alchemists are very eager to stress that the processes involved are concerned with inner change and development; it was Jakob Boehme, influential in the late 16th and early 17th Century, who did most to encourage later initiates to regard alchemy as solely an inner discipline; the complex formulae and elaborate recipes were, for him, merely mnemonics on the long path of mental and spiritual evolution. But Boehme’s influence wasn’t entirely universal. Some others persisted with practical, messy alchemy.

  And although most work done in this field was wasted effort, let every sceptic be reminded that Tiphaigne de la Roche, one of the brotherhood, invented photography more than 60 years before its ‘official’ discovery and did so entirely through alchemical methods! Mario Granieri loved his basement workshop. He was forever mixing elements and purifying them or trying to hatch something from the flames of his furnace. He believed that this ancient art might help his intended revolution succeed; that gold made here, in his own house, would fund the overthrow of the legitimate Spanish government. He was an optimist!

  But he was also a nervous man. Huerta had never been popular abroad, and anyone associated with that dictator couldn’t expect too much support or even sympathy from the general populace of the European nations. The soft intellectual elites would shun him. Mario felt tainted; his taint was an itch over his righteous skin. Mexico had gone mad, in his view, tricked by the blandishments of prissy radicals. A brand new Mexico, superimposed on a decadent Spain, would revitalise the faith of those who preferred the stability of strong regimes! Such individuals did exist even in Europe, he felt certain; the problem was finding them.

  He crouched over his crucible, spooning molten iron.

  He wasn’t alone in his basement. He had assistants; women dressed in the bodices and skirts of harlots, flowers behind ears, stockings glistening in the light of his arcane fires. They washed his receptacles for him, gave him whatever he called for, typed his notes. In their spare time they made a little extra money upstairs, in the saloon.

  When Mario first arrived in Spain, he had been nothing more than one more refugee, alone and poor. But he had a tongue of gold. Some say this was also a product of alchemy; a golden tongue from which flowed words that were very persuasive. He found a remote region where he might have peace and quiet for the scheme he had in mind; the desert of Almería. He soon attracted followers among the dispossessed people of the abandoned towns. They willingly converted to Mexicanism, wore gladly the ponchos and sombreros, drank deep of the fermented cactus juice, strummed large guitars and puffed Mariachi on trumpets.

  Ay caramba! Ay ay ay ay ay! Arriba, arriba!

  Mario ordered; they obeyed. Rapidly and happily they constructed this village for him, a perfect replica of an obscure Mexico pueblo. And as for Huerta? Mario had once been utterly loyal to the tinpot but had outgrown him now. If Huerta turned up, Mario wouldn’t reject him outright; but the former dictator would have to know his place. There was a vacancy in the stables. Mario was the boss, the master …

  His trident stood propped in a corner. He continued to spoon.

  The door opened; through it came two figures and his chief henchman behind them, his pistol prodding spines.

  ‘Boss, I caught thees pair sneaking around inside the saloon. I theenk they are spies. Look at thees ugly gringo! His steenking chin ees too soft to strike a match on! Shall I keeel them?’

  Mario Granieri turned to stare at Distanto and me.

  The Stealth Empire

  ‘Whatta mistake to make, spying on me!’ roared Mario, throwing down his spoon and glowering. ‘No-one must know about this village. We aren’t ready yet to make our move!’

  ‘Shall I keeel them, boss? Shall I? Pleeese!’

  ‘Not yet Pancho Henchman!’

  The barrel behind me seemed to sag in disappointment.

  ‘May I speak?’ asked Distanto.

  ‘No, gringo, you may not!’

  Mario approached us, inspected the aviator carefully, sneered and gave me the same treatment. ‘Cabrones!’

  ‘With respect, we are explorers, sir,’ I said.

  He cuffed me across the cheek.

  ‘Whom do you work for? For the King of Spain?’

  I shook my head. ‘No!’

  ‘Who then? For Zapata and those pigs back in Mexico, those socialists and traitors to the natural order?’

  ‘Not them either,’ said Distanto calmly.

  ‘Then who?’ bellowed Mario.

  ‘For ourselves alone,’ crisply replied Distanto.

  Mario sighed, wiped the sweat of the furnace from his brow, smiled an awful smile and said, ‘No matter.’

  I misunderstood his comment. ‘You’ll let us go?’

  Mario and Pancho Henchman burst into a laughter so despicable I can only describe it as ‘yellow’, the colour of rotting teeth. Then the alchemist spat on the floor and lectured us.

  He told us about his schemes, his
dreams, his hopes.

  Obviously he intended to kill us!

  Otherwise he wouldn’t have said a single word.

  But why he decided we should hear about his plans in detail before we died is a puzzle to me. Maybe he missed having an audience; the denizens of his village doubtless had heard it all before. I tried to pay attention, but I wasn’t a model pupil and my mind was on other things, especially on the stark fact of my impeding destruction.

  To my chagrin, Distanto seemed genuinely intrigued.

  He asked intelligent questions.

  Mario replied politely to some of these, but it was plain he didn’t really care for his monologue to be interrupted too often. He explained the need for a new Mexico in Europe, a stealth empire, for it would be established in a host nation like a parasite, taking over from within. He envisaged that all future colonial adventures might be run in this manner. Having created a Mexican village in a remote locality as a base, it remained for him to set up a secret administration capable of doing everything the government of Spain did, in parallel. Then with a sideways flick of his followers, the old regime would be displaced, superseded.

  ‘And Mexico, the real Mexico, will have moved to Europe. The maps in the atlases will need to be redrawn. Here is the Iberian Peninsula, they will say, and it contains two countries…’

  ‘Portugal and Mexico,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Yes, gringo! For an idiot, you do have brains. Ay!’

  ‘You forgot Andorra,’ said Distanto.

  Mario blinked unhealthy lids. ‘What was that?’

  ‘Andorra is an independent country on the Iberian Peninsula. And let us not neglect Gibraltar,’ added Distanto.

  Mario turned pale. His rage was so extreme that his legs shook and his knees knocked together like massive castanets. ‘You dare to correct me! I am outraged by your insolence! Pig!’

  ‘The truth is never insolent,’ I muttered unwisely.

  ‘You will die now! Spies!’

  He clicked his blistered fingers. ‘Pancho Henchman! I command you to take these devious swine outside.’