Stark

by Ben Elton

  ‘Jesus,’ said a surprised Walter. ‘This dude says he’s going to kill me. I mean, man, that is just totally unnecessary.’

  ‘We don’t like boongs and we don’t like hippies!’ the megaphone crackled — ‘boong’ being an extremely rude word for Aboriginals. ‘And you’re on Moorcock property, so get in the fucking light.’ To everyone’s astonishment a shot rang out and a spurt of sand burst up at Walter’s feet. Instinctively Rachel, CD and the Culboons moved back into the glare of the truck’s headlamp.

  ‘Now come on, mate, this is ridiculous,’ said Mr Culboon. ‘You can’t shoot someone for trespassing, there wasn’t even a warning sign.’

  ‘Yeah! What’s your man scared of?’ shouted Mrs Culboon, the jolly sarcasm still heavily present in her tone. Mrs Culboon had lived over half a century in the lucky country, the country that her ancestors had first come to forty thousand years before. It had been half a century of abuse. In her life she had been confronted by bullying racist white men with guns more often than she could remember. Of course, it still scared her, but she had learnt to walk tall. Besides, she, like the others, did not actually believe that the man would shoot Walter.

  ‘What’s his problem?’ she laughed. ‘Does he think we’re going to order too much room service in his hotels!! Ha, ha! Raid the mini-bars? Christ almighty lord, what goes on here? If the porters carry guns, I wouldn’t want to meet the manager.’

  ‘It does seem a bit over the top,’ added CD. ‘I mean, what’s going on…’

  ‘Where’s the other one?’ the voice shouted back, ‘the one with the beard! Get in the light or we shoot!!’

  The man’s tone was becoming distinctly threatening. CD for one was beginning to take it seriously. He stepped forward.

  ‘Look, come on, don’t be silly, we’ll just get back in our car and—’

  The man doing the shouting was not the one doing the shooting. The trigger happy one was in the passenger seat, his pistol arm hanging out of the passenger window. Zimmerman was watching it with interest from his position crouched against the passenger door.

  Zimmerman was back in the jungle, the danger of the situation clearing away the debris of the years. He was wondering if the fellow was left-handed or not. If he was, then Zimmerman could perhaps afford to let him loose off a few more warning shots, which was clearly the only option available to the man. Unless he actually was going to shoot Walter, which Zimm considered unlikely. But, if the man was right-handed, then he was taking a big risk firing with his left. It was possible that if Zimmerman hung around too long, one of his companions would catch an unfortunate stray…

  ‘Dreadful accident…compensation…apologies all round, but they mere trespassing and Abos were involved.’

  Zimmerman did not need to be a cynic to believe that Moorcock was in thick with the local fuzz, especially since Zimm had actually heard Moorcock talking to the chief. All in all he reckoned it was time to finish the business and get out. He broke the unfortunate man’s arm and took the gun. Both guards were too surprised at the sight of the bearded apparition rearing up at them to say much. Zimm pointed the gun into the cab and spoke quietly to the others.

  ‘Go get in the car everyone. It’s time we had a beer and clearly this hotel isn’t open for business yet.’

  They did as he told them. CD and Rachel were amazed. This new gag cracking, arm breaking Zimmerman was a revelation to them. Even Mrs Colboon felt there was nothing more to say.

  ‘Give me your gun man,’ said Zimm to the driver.

  ‘Oh now come on,’ the driver replied, sounding a lot less coppish now he wasn’t using a megaphone. ‘Don’t you think maybe this has gone far enough? Why don’t you and your friends just get on out, don’t come back and we’ll just forget about everything.’

  ‘Give me your gun man.’ Zimmerman’s tone did not change but now it was accompanied by the whimpering of the other guard whose arm was beginning to come out of shock.

  ‘He broke my fucking arm!’ he sobbed, ‘give him the gun. He broke my fucking arm like a twig.’ The driver drew his pistol slowly and handed it over. Then Zimmerman made a search of the truck.

  ‘Who were you expecting?’ he asked, eyeing the extensive armoury, ‘the Black Wizard of Thargon at the head of the Great Troll army?’

  Luckily Zimmerman did not appear to expect an answer to this. He just shouldered two automatic rifles, a rifle with an infra-red telescopic sight and six stun grenades.

  Then he shot out two of the tyres plus the radiator. ‘Tear out the radio,’ he said, looking in through the cab window. ‘There isn’t anything but shit in the charts these days anyway.’

  ‘Oh come on, Mister, we’re 20 K from base, you broke my mate’s arm. They won’t come looking for us till morning.’

  ‘You trying to tell me you don’t have to call in?’ asked Zimmerman. ‘We don’t, honest, mate,’ said the driver.

  ‘Yeah, and I’m a teapot called Erika,’ replied Zimm, presumably to show that he was dubious as to the driver’s claim. ‘I guess if that bastard Moorcock’s got you goons, there’s just kind of a small chance he’s going to have a chopper. Which, if I leave you your rig, will be up my arse in about fifteen minutes.’

  CD, standing by the car, debated briefly with himself whether to say something witty about not being prejudiced and that a chopper up the arse was fine between consenting adults using a condom. Wisely he decided that Zimm’s mood was too volatile to risk interrupting him and he would save the gag for later.

  Zimmerman shot the radio out of the dashboard with a burst of automatic fire, so sudden and so close that both men had unfortunate accidents. Which was a shame because, as it happened, the security set-up being very new, they were not supposed to report back and hence would not be missed until morning, meaning that they would have to spend the whole night, quite literally, in the shit.

  Zimmerman loaded the ironmongery into the back of the Culboons’ pick-up and suggested that they drove home. ‘Maybe we should press on,’ suggested CD, ‘I mean, we’re past the guards after all.’

  ‘Yeah, I thought about it,’ Zimmerman replied, ‘but we’d never get the wheels through and it’s 20 K into the middle. There and back that’s quite a hike.’

  ‘Well,’ said Walter, ‘I guess we should go home, smoke a little doobie and really try and concentrate.’ And on this contradiction in terms, they drove home.

  122: CONSPIRACY THEORIES

  Ever since discovering that there definitely was some form of covert co-operation between the world’s richest men, Chrissy had been casting desperately about, trying to find the vaguest hint as to what that co-operation might be. After all, it is not illegal for a large group of people to go out to dinner together. It might be boring if you get sat at the wrong end of the table, next to the wrong people. It might be annoying if you got lumbered trying to divide up the bill. Even more annoying if it is decided to just split the bill equally and you know that you only had a starter and that you didn’t drink because you were driving. It might be all those things, but it is not illegal.

  The tiny scraps of information that she did manage to pick up, simply added to the confusion. Using the information contained in Linda’s final letter to her, she had been able to follow up one or two of the purchases that her target personalities had made during the first hours of the crash. But this had only made her more confused. For instance, the last thing that Slampacker had bought was a vast quantity of dried food, whilst Nagasyu was involved heavily in the jumble sale sell-off of the West European Space Group.

  WESG had collapsed with the concentration of the satellite market, immediately following the crash. It had been hugely wealthy but only in the long-term. Being an entirely civil organization it had been able to concentrate purely on the commercial development of space, whilst both NASA and the Soviets had a huge military commitment. Unfortunately, the whole thing had been financed on credit, selling launch space for pay-loads that would not take flight for half a decade. With the
wholesale cancelling most of these contracts, WESG found itself suddenly bankrupt. As it became apparent that the world was entering a decade of low consumer spending ability, all the new TV channels, private phone links, and mass satellite communication stuff had to be shelved. Nobody rents another TV channel when the cupboard’s bare.

  The Stark Consortium had been aware that this would happen and had jumped in early to asset-strip the agency. This had been the last major move that Chrissy had been able to observe, after that the transactions dried up. Unbeknownst to her, the reason for this was that Durf was now centralizing the preparations in order to speed things up. Obviously neither Durf, nor his assorted buyers, were in Linda’s original computer program, so their dealings went unobserved.

  But none the less, the few snippets she did uncover were enough to scare her even more deeply than she had been before. Chrissy was a good financial journalist, she understood money flow, she had even read parts of Capital. Of course, she did not agree with most of the social conclusions that Marx drew. She knew that the yuppies would do for themselves with cocaine, long before the dictatorship of the proletariat had time to inevitably succeed the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. She didn’t even know who the proletariat were anymore. On the other hand, she had always thought that there might be something in Marx’s idea that war was an inevitable part of the money cycle. Money needed war. And somebody very rich was buying rockets. The time had come to seek advice.

  123: A LACK OF INTELLIGENCE

  That is the most preposterous lot of crap I have heard in all my years with the Agency,’ CIA man Toole admonished, ‘and I was the guy who wanted to poison Idi Amin by putting arsenic in his mistress’s bidet.’

  Chrissy had not really known what to expect, but going to Toole was the only thing she could remotely think of to do. She supposed that maybe she had hoped that he would check the door and then inform her that the CIA were already on the case and that she could forget about it. Of course, Chrissy had no illusions about the extent of the CIA’s knowledge about anything. Like all intelligence agencies, they knew what they stumbled on, unfortunately they could never believe what they stumbled on because it could be a plant, so they spent all day getting headaches, trying to double-think an opponent they were not sure existed.

  But what could Chrissy do? Who could she turn to?

  ‘I know it looks sort of weak but come on, Toole, we’ve known each other a long time. You’re the only agency man I’d talk to. You know I’m not one to start at shadows.’

  ‘Well, sure, but all this capitalist conspiracy stuff is pretty questionable you know, Chrissy,’ Toole replied. ‘I mean, maybe you should take it to the other side. It’s kind of more their game you know. Our lot like capitalism, that’s what we’re here to defend. If there is anything in this, which of course there isn’t, it is definitely a KGB brief, or maybe the Cubans. I can make a couple of calls if you want.’

  ‘I’m not talking about capital ism, I’m talking about capital ists, a small group of them, who may be trying to screw the rest of us. Look, you have got to agree that I have the evidence that they were together and you’ve also got to agree that that is real strange. I mean real strange. Now what is the world financial situation at the moment?’

  ‘It’s in crisis, Chrissy, even the Agency can read the papers.’

  ‘That’s right, there is a world financial crisis. Decades of buying a new Hi-fi when you get bored with the record that’s on it, has peaked. The credit boom is crashing about our ears. At any other time in history there’d probably be a war. That’s what Marx said. The very nature of the system is growth, expansion and profit and the only way to keep that spiral moving upwards is to blow it apart with a war every now and then. Recreate demand, stimulate production, destroy old products, etc., etc. But it hasn’t happened has it? In terms of major power against major power, there has never been a longer period of peace in history. Marx didn’t know about nuclear weapons, he didn’t know that the very next century after his, people would get scared of war, so the war he predicted hasn’t happened, which leaves the world market in crisis…’

  Toole interrupted her.

  ‘Chrissy, are you suggesting that a group of well-known and respected businessmen are fixing to start their own war in order to recreate a market for their goods, because they’re all good Marxists and he’s told them how to keep capitalism on course?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Chrissy replied, angrily, ‘it’s just a suggestion. You try and explain what’s going on here. My friend was murdered…’

  ‘You think,’ corrected Toole.

  ‘She was murdered, whilst close to uncovering some kind of bizarre alliance between top money-biz fat cats. I pick up on the research and find that not only are they buying rocket fuel, but also half the West European Space Group…’

  ‘Along with about a million other things, Chrissy,’ Toole butted in again. ‘Look, I’ll do one thing for you and that is all. I’ll call London and see if they know anything more about your friend’s murder.’

  Chrissy’s knuckles were white with frustration. Toole adopted a kinder note.

  ‘If you want my honest opinion, I’ll tell you. I think you’re probably on to something here. I agree that there are certain aspects that look a little strange, but no way in a billion years is this Marx business stuff cutting any ice with me, or anybody else. You’re going to have to do a whole lot better theory-wise than that.’

  ‘I haven’t got any other damn theories!’ Chrissy shouted. ‘I have no idea what is going on!’ They parted; she to go and get a drink; he to make the one call that he had promised to make. He was linked with an MI5 man called Carre. He knew him pretty well and reckoned there was a good chance that he wasn’t working for the Russians.

  124: KEEPING A SECRET

  Secret Services are a bit of a puzzle really. In the light of the various unsavoury discoveries made about them since the war, it is becoming extremely difficult to find any satisfactory reason for why they exist at all.

  It now seems fairly clear that for most of the time since the Second World War, the KGB have completely penetrated and totally compromised British Intelligence. And what good has it done them. They have not, as known, invaded Britain, or blown up any of Her Majesty’s shipyards. They seem to have made no real profit out of their astonishing coup whatsoever. In fact, in the history of Britain, the audacious Russian penetration of our cloak and dagger boys will probably be deemed to have done little or no real damage at all, except perhaps to the egos of a few ex-public schoolboys. It has, on the other hand, sold an awful lot of novels. If the Soviets had thought to penetrate the West’s publishing houses at the same time that they were penetrating its espionage organizations, they might today have all the hard currency that they so desperately need.

  Of late the CIA has got the publishing bug and it almost seems that operatives are writing their memoirs before completing their first mission; with the result of blowing the gaff on past and present colleagues. The whole concept of espionage is so totally riddled with doubt and betrayal that the suspicion cannot be avoided that the entire charade is an utter waste of money.

  Except of course it isn’t, because the real purpose of national secret services is not to spy on foreigners but to spy on the people that pay for the thing in the first place; the population of the country in question. This is almost certainly the main job of the KGB and, if recently published memoirs are to be believed, is also the principal concern of MI5. The next John Le Carre novel should be about Smiley trying to penetrate a bunch of vegetarian members of CND in Islington.

  125: THE GATHERING STORM

  Chrissy went home more frustrated than ever, wishing that her friend, Linda, had never come up with her observations in the first place. She passed a news stand.

  One of the placards announced that the heat in the southern hemisphere was now so severe that the rise in the sea level, due to the meltdown in Antarctica, was now a day to day reality. Coastal towns wou
ld soon no longer be safe and the whole of Egypt and Bangladesh were directly threatened. In the early eighties, scientists around the globe had predicted that within forty years the human race would face the most drastic climatic changes since civilization began. It was all happening much sooner than anybody had expected.

  But Chrissy could not get worked up about it, she liked warm weather. She saw the second placard, it read:

  126: DOUBLE EURO-NUKE TERROR; FRENCH REACTOR BLOWS; BRIT SUB FLOUNDERS.

  Chrissy bought a paper and learnt of the dreadful events that had happened on the previous day. She could not help but smile. If the world wasn’t careful it looked as if all her worries about money and the machinations of the world’s billionaires would be entirely academic since there would no longer be any life on the planet to worry about.

  127: WARMING GLOW

  The submarine in question, HMS Dogged Endurance, had hit trouble in a huge and unseasonal sea. The swell had been massive and Captain McEntoe had never seen the like before.

  ‘It’s those damn Americans mucking about with the weather,’ he remarked, sucking on his pipe. But it wasn’t. It was just the sort of storm that only comes very occasionally and nobody had really minded until the seas began to fill up with nuclear hardware which, once fractured, could poison extremely large areas for thousands of years.

  HMS Dogged Endurance had been trying to leave harbour at its secret(ish) base in North Scotland when the weather had hit it and, despite its enormous power, the boat found itself drifting towards the rocks that formed the natural harbour. Three tugs had been called out immediately and had actually managed to get a rope onto the wallowing sub. However, to no avail and the side of the ship was breached on the fierce, craggy and soon-to-become extremely radioactive rocks of Scotland.