by Gary Baker
'Congratulations, gentlemen,' said The Captain. 'I see our little ruse is paying dividends already.'
The word 'ruse' struck Roger like a slap in the face. People had died for a ruse?
'Do you mind if I ask,' began Roger, 'what those dividends are?'
'You tell me,' said The Captain. 'The current parameters are set to target a small portion of the total throughput. Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds per hour being delayed for four hours. Let's say that's one million pounds on deposit at any one time. We're getting, on average of say, five percent.'
'That's only fifty thousand pounds a year,' said Roger incredulously. 'I don't need the little voice in my head to tell me we've probably spent more than that outfitting everyone in matching dark shirts.'
The Captain's hair was quite grey, his eyebrows the brown of earlier years. The combination emphasised dark eyes which he narrowed coldly. 'I'm not sure I like your tone, Mr Peerson.'
'I'm sorry,' said Roger, 'but it seems to me that innocent people, young soldiers just doing their job, have died unnecessarily for this – what amounts to in the scheme of things - trifle.'
'If the fifty thousand pounds a year was all, I would agree,' said The Captain. 'Please, sit down.' The Captain gestured for Meadhill and Roger to sit. 'I will explain.'
The Captain unbuttoned his jacket, sat back down and lit a cigarette. Through a curtain of smoke he said, 'What you achieved yesterday has gone some way to prove a little theory that some of us have been toying with over the last year or so. Is it possible to, for want of a better word, hack, into one of the world's most secure data stream, alter it permanently in some way to our advantage, and then leave without the alteration being detected for; 24 hours, a week, months?'
'You could have just asked me,' said Roger.
'With all due respect,' said The Captain meaning it, 'we had to be sure.'
'I take it it's not just some kind of idle intellectual experiment?' asked Roger.
'Indeed not,' said The Captain. 'Now that we have confirmed our little theory, and assuming your - patch? - stays in place for the next seven days or so, there is a much more interesting game to be played.'
'And until then?' asked Roger, knowing The Captain was not going to give him any more details.
'Until then?' The Captain stood, buttoned his jacket and spread his arms wide. Beamed. 'Until then you can relax. Enjoy the hospitality of The KOPALDA.'
*
Anyone who says Blackpool is England's answer to Las Vegas might have been to one place or the other, but not both. Or perhaps neither.
Roger remembered: he had been to Las Vegas on a trip to the Comdex Computer Exhibition some years previously. He had stayed in a huge hotel shaped like a pyramid. The Luxor. Like millions before him, Roger had walked the strip in Las Vegas, thoroughly impressed by the audacity and gall of that homage to American overconfidence and greed.
In Blackpool, like thousands before him, Roger had promenaded the beach-front, dulled by the mind numbing dullness of row after row of inexpensive glowing plastic decoration.
But the children were enthralled. More instant memories: Roger had loved it as a child too. He'd spent hours in traffic jams cruising the Golden Mile, his mother patiently at the wheel of an old three wheeler Bond Mini.
Part of the entertainment was counting the cars broken down at the side of the road. The slow moving lines of traffic had been too much for many early cooling systems and the engines had overheated. Their bonnets high, engines steaming into the cold night air. It looked to young Roger like the dead cars' souls rising up to heaven.
Now he had more sophisticated tastes. Or was he just a snob. Part of the mocking masses, sneering at something that was once their own favourite when they were innocent, uncritical, open and receptive.
In this Blackpool, Roger was never alone. Mr Auxiliary was always with him. Silent and humourless. Never closer than five yards, never farther away than twenty. Roger toyed with the idea of trying to lose him. Just for fun. But fun didn't seem to be Mr Auxiliary's thing and it was hard to shake the image of him impassively crushing a young soldier's face with the butt of an assault rifle.
By day four, Roger had taken to staying in his room. The lap-dancing clubs had made him ache for Heather and, even with his card-counting skills, or maybe because of them, the casinos held no fascination for him.
Roger lay on his hotel room bed watching a small spider walk across his ceiling and deliberately emptied his mind. At such times memories leaked through from wherever they were dammed up. Roger had been to Blackpool before. A holiday with his mother. A chess tournament. His hand shook with nerves each time he moved a piece. He'd lost in the final to a blonde girl with pink glasses who sniffed all the time. He was ten. The fun house where the steep slide took your breath away and the spinning wooden saucer, no, a giant record player, had made him feel ill. Sand everywhere, making the tops of his legs and his bottom sore. A small boarding house with narrow stairs and a glass door to the bathroom. His mother turning bright pink in the sun. A friend. A girl in shorts his age. His mum took a photograph of them wrestling happily on the beach. That photograph still existed somewhere. In an album with other photographs of Roger on a donkey, Roger with a monkey. 'That's you on the left,' mum always joked when they leafed through the mostly black and white pictures. School photographs – he remembered practising the smile. Pictures of Roger in familiar hand knitted jumpers. Lists kept flat under clear plastic. Lists of cars. Lists of football players. Lists of Norse Gods. Roger had loved lists. Memories. Waiting for a number eleven bus on Common Edge Road. Sometimes Roger would walk to avoid the teasing. Freak-a-zoid. Freak-a-zoid. Roger was different, quiet, clever, but sometimes what people said didn't make sense. Sometimes teachers said, 'Sit down now, please,' when what they really meant was, 'return to your own desk now then sit down on your chair.' How the hell was he supposed to know the difference? Well now he knew. He'd memorised the differences. Freak-a-zoid. Freak-a-zoid.
Roger sat up. Some memories weren't worth having. But you are your memories. Without them you're someone else. New ones make you change into a different person. The old you dies a million times.
You are your memories. Without them you're just a bias towards moods.
*
He'd met Meadhill in the hotel lobby on the afternoon of day five of his stay and enquired how things in general were progressing. Meadhill replied, truthfully Roger thought, that he knew as little as Roger at that time and was simply taking the time to relax and catch up on some horse racing.
'Will, um,' Roger rubbed the back of his head. 'Will Heather be joining us at any time?'
Meadhill frowned at him. 'Who?'
'Oh, just … ' Roger felt foolish. 'Horse racing? I've never even been into a betting shop. Wouldn't know what to do.'
Meadhill continued to frown at him.
*
On day eight, Roger decided to take advantage of the morning sunshine and go for a promenade along the seafront. Mr Auxiliary followed ten yards behind. A cool, salty breeze threatened to make Roger's nose run.
Roger, mind empty, was leaning on the sea wall looking down at the littered beach when Mr Auxiliary tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to a black Jaguar waiting for him by the side of the road.
At last, thought Roger.
With Roger and Mr Auxiliary in the back, the Jaguar performed a squealing u-turn and headed south. With choppy, steel blue seas to their right, they drove out of Blackpool and along the coast road towards Lytham St. Anne's.
'There's a good golf course along here somewhere, isn't there?' offered Roger by way of conversation. Mr Auxiliary and the driver remained impassive.
'Look, Mr Auxiliary,' said Roger, 'I haven't had a conversation that didn't involve the exchange of money for days now, so how about you give me a break and maybe loosen up a little?'
Mr Auxiliary looked straight ahead. Roger noticed the driver glance briefly at them in the rear view mirror.
'Ho
w about telling me your name then? I can't keep calling you Mr Auxiliary.'
Mr Auxiliary turned to Roger and opened his mouth. Wide.
At first Roger didn't know what this meant then he realised with a start that, where there should have been a pink, moist muscular tongue, was a grizzled jagged stump of a thing in the back of Mr Auxiliary's mouth.
'Oh,' said Roger, embarrassed. 'Sorry. I had no idea.'
Mr Auxiliary reached inside his pocket and pulled out a pen and notepad. He wrote something and handed it to Roger.
'I like Mr Auxiliary,' Roger read out loud.
'Good. Can I call you Aux for short?' he asked. 'No, on second thoughts, sounds too much like ox.'
The Jaguar slowed, pulled left into a side road and stopped opposite some sand-dunes that would have had small children clammering to leave the car and play. Let's roll down the sand-dunes, Daddy. Pretend to shoot me and I'll fall down. Look, Daddy, it doesn't hurt. The sand's as soft as anything.
Don't think about Harry.
The driver waited, staring into the rear view mirror, focussing past Roger and Mr Auxiliary. Something must have happened because the driver eased the car forward and headed towards the once British Racing Green double doors of a stand-alone, ramshackle garage fifty yards further along the road. The twin doors opened as the car approached. They glided into the dark interior and the floor dipped down onto a steep slope threatening to have Roger slide forward from his seat. The driver flipped on the lights to illuminate the concrete walls and floor sloping down and round to the right. The underground passage levelled out at a security barrier where the black Jaguar came to a halt. Powerful lights shone into the car and, between them, a ceiling mounted camera studied them with its Cyclops eye. The security barrier lifted and the Jaguar pulled through and into one of several parking bays. Two other identical black Jaguars where parked next to each other. Roger noticed they had the same number-plates. K094 LDA. He got out of the Jaguar and followed Mr Auxiliary, who took the lead for once, towards the only door. Looking back he saw the car he had arrived in was indistinguishable from the other two.
How extraordinarily brash, thought Roger.
The door opened into a room filled with cigarette smoke. Darkly dressed, armed men and women sat around smoking and drinking from black mugs. Some screens on the far wall showed CCTV images of the road outside, the entrance passageway, the security barrier, the parking area, the room they were in and other rooms Roger did not recognise.
A burly woman approached Roger and Mr Auxiliary with a metal loop dangling from her wrist.
'Weapons on the table,' she grunted.
Mr Auxiliary had a .38 special under his arm and a black knife at his ankle. He placed both on the table. Roger had one small, red, Swiss Army knife which he placed on the table next to Mr Auxiliary's weapons. It looked pathetic. A dead goldfish.
Roger looked at the woman and held his hands in front of her. 'These are deadly weapons too,' he joked. 'Where should I leave them?'
In one swift, irresistible movement, the woman grabbed Mr Auxiliary's knife, took hold of Roger's right hand, dragged his arm over the table and held the blade over his wrist threatening to sever his hand from his arm.
Roger's arm was pinned. He couldn't move it.
'Want to leave it here, darling?' she asked, in a high South London accent. Her breath smelled of stale coffee. Mr Auxiliary smiled. Roger looked at him. Some onlookers chuckled.
'So you do have a sense of humour after all,' said Roger, trying to appear unconcerned.
The woman let Roger go then stabbed the knife hard into the table top millimetres from his hand.
She took the metal loop and ran it quickly around their bodies. Satisfied, she said, 'Follow me.'
A door at the far side of the room opened into a passageway which was the start of a whole warren of tunnels.
'Tunnels seem to be a big thing in my life, these days,' said Roger. 'But I suppose The KOPALDA is an underground organisation, hey?' For God's sake shut up, thought Roger B. It's the nerves. I'm not funny. Why am I trying to be funny? With these two, of all people.
They stopped at an unmarked white door. It opened with no visible effort from anyone. The woman stood back to let Roger and Mr Auxiliary through into a large white walled room. Chairs lined sections of the walls and a dark wooden oval table, big enough to seat fifty, stood at the room's centre. Meadhill and The Captain sat at the far end. The Captain's grey hair and beard looked almost white next to Meadhill's black hair and black clothing.
Mr Auxiliary took a seat by the door.
The Captain stood, buttoned his jacket around his plump waist. 'Join us, please Mr Peerson,' he said.
'Quite a place you have here,' said Roger, taking a seat next to Meadhill. Meadhill nodded silently and made his mouth smile showing Roger his gold tooth again.
'The experiment,' said The Captain, ignoring Roger's pleasantry, 'was, and still is, a success.'
Roger felt his shoulders relax. He breathed more easily.
'We now feel confident we can move onto the next phase,' said The Captain.
Roger sat forward attentively.
'You will stay here from now on,' said The Captain, 'From now until the exercise is complete.'
'You mean here?' asked Roger, open palms indicating the room around them, 'In this underground … ' Roger did not know what to call it. Bunker?
'Complex,' said The Captain. 'Yes.'
'How long will that … ' began Roger, but The Captain cut him off.
'Until the exercise is complete,' repeated The Captain curtly. 'Completed to my satisfaction.'
'And then what?' asked Roger, starting to feel nervous again.
'And then we shall see,' said The Captain. 'In the meantime -' The Captain stopped and stiffened, listening to something. Meadhill frowned. The Captain stood, 'Mr Peerson,' he said, 'The Major would like to meet you.'
An almost invisible door in the wall to Roger's left slid open.
'How very James Bond,' said Roger, immediately wishing he hadn't. He stood and moved towards the door. Watch out for Donald Pleasance stroking a white cat, thought Roger B. Shut up.
The door opened into an office which wouldn't have looked out of place in an old London Solicitors. Aged wood and leather furniture, bookcases filled with encyclopaedic tomes. A computer screen sat on the edge of the green topped desk behind which sat a Humpty Dumpty of a man wearing a pin-striped suit and talking into a telephone.
'Quite,' he said. The single word spoke of Eton or Harrow or some other public school that spat out boys who over pronounced their P's and rolled their R's. He motioned Roger to sit in the leather chair facing the desk. 'I don't foresee any problems there either, sir.' A tinny voice on the other end of the phone said something Roger could not understand and The Major replaced the receiver in its cradle. 'Mr Peerson,' he said, 'good to meet you.' His jowls wobbled as he spoke.
Roger leaned forward to stand and shake the Major's hand but The Major sat motionless studying an open file on his desk. Roger settled back down.
'Just refreshing my memory,' said The Major. 'You have quite extraordinary talents, Mr Peerson. You have had some disappointments and tragedy in your life too, I see.'
Roger looked puzzled. 'Tragedy?' he asked.
'Yes, I agree. Tragedy is too small a word.' The Major turned a page of Roger's file. 'Ah, yes,' he said reading on, 'interesting.' After a minute of reading he closed the file. 'Your performance during the, shall we say, test run, seems to indicate that all is well and that you're fully recovered.'
Roger suppressed the urge to ask the man to explain himself. Recovered? Recovered from what?
'I must apologise for The Captain's abruptness,' continued The Major. The last word causing his jowls to wobble particularly horribly. 'He is not employed for his tact. His talents lie in other directions. You will, of course, continue to stay at the hotel and come and go as you please. I will have a car assigned to your escort.'
Roger coul
d feel The Captain shuffle uncomfortably behind him. There was no love lost between these two and that may come in useful some day.
The Major steepled his fingers.
Where had Roger seen that recently? Here's the church and here's the steeple, open the doors and here's the people. He forced his concentration back to The Major.
'… phase is critical for The KOPALDA's future,' The Major was saying. 'I can't emphasise enough the importance of your contribution and, of course, the level of your rewards.'
The Major grasped the arms of his chair and hauled his bulk into a standing position with a grunt. He started to stroll around the office, hands clasped behind his back, head bowed.
'You are aware that, as an organisation, The KOPALDA's actions are based, to a certain degree, on a philosophy of unaccountability. That the consequences of one's life and actions are, for all intents and purposes, non-existent. That as many minutes, of as many days, of as many years as possible, should be spent in the completely selfish pursuit of pleasure and that all deity based religions are an anathema.'
Roger heard the words and marvelled at how The Major could talk about selfishness and self-obsession with such conviction and confidence as if they were attributes at least as admirable as the more traditional qualities of compassion, bravery or self-denial. The repeated words rang hollow like a tolling bell. The delivery made sense. But the philosophy wasn't real was it? Wasn't it all, made up? Did this guy believe his own marketing?
'But,' continued The Major, 'The KOPALDA also recognises that the true Hedonist needs others' co-operation in order to capture that which he pursues and that there is one single common denominator transcending all others which, when utilised to its fullest extent, will ensure, not only co-operation but, in the end, capture that true and illusive … ' The Major paused, searching for words.
Roger's mind was churning. He wasn't sure he followed what The Major was saying.
The Major gave up his search. 'Fundamentally,' he said, 'as far as all of us should be concerned; money can buy you happiness. So it is the pursuit of money, and the means to distribute it to its members throughout the organisation, that is The KOPALDA's primary tenet.'