Fanatics: Zero Tolerance

by Ferguson, David J.

  As Campbell began to speak again, Shannon shifted in his seat slightly; instructions from the producer were coming via his earpiece. “Listen, Del, you can’t be seen smiling at this stuff Campbell’s coming out with. He’s going to be torn to bits in tomorrow’s reviews, and you with him.”

  With a discreet hand signal to the producer to acknowledge the message, Shannon let his ironed-on smile fade away, and adjusted his body language towards Campbell subtly. He put on his I’m listening carefully frown, with just the right degree of I don’t think I approve of what I’m hearing showing through; and of course with I’m relieved not to have to pretend I’m finding him funny showing not at all.

  Gerry Marshall watched it all on TV, fuming over an opportunity lost.

  *****

  Meanwhile, behind closed doors… Well, they’re paramilitaries, obviously.

  No, I can’t tell you what their names are. This is hush-hush. You’ll just have to think of them as Green and Orange.

  “The situation has changed,” said the green terrorist.

  The orange terrorist smiled at some secret joke. “We think so, too,” he said.

  “Radically changed,” said the green terrorist, slightly annoyed and puzzled that his announcement was not being received with more gravity.

  “Yes,” said the orange terrorist, noticing his adversary’s tone and wondering what he really knew.

  “Excellent!” cried the intermediary, apparently missing the subtleties in this exchange. “We’re ready to make progress at last, then.”

  “You could say that,” said Orange.

  “More progress than perhaps certain people can cope with,” said Green pointedly. “But they’ll just have to learn how to cope with it.”

  Orange feigned an attitude of pleasant surprise. “Ah, so you people are finally seeing reason, are you?”

  “Gentlemen,” said the intermediary, “this tone of hostility is not helpful. We’ve come a very long way in these talks. Why throw it all away now?”

  “We’ve reconsidered our position,” said Green.

  “What?” said the intermediary, dismayed.

  “We’re quite certain that we can win now,” explained Green.

  Orange actually laughed. “You’ve been saying that for decades,” he said.

  “Just like you’ve been saying ‘no surrender’ for decades,” said Green. “Well, now you’ll be begging us to let you surrender!”

  “No, no,” said Orange in a supercilious tone, “I don’t think so.” He leant across the table and growled: “We’ll demolish the whole of the North before we hand it over to the likes of you!”

  Green leant over the table too, so that they were now almost nose to nose. “We’ll demolish it if you don’t!”

  “You haven’t managed to demolish it so far, for all your thousands of tons of gelignite and semtex and who-knows-what-else over the years -”

  “You haven’t been listening at all, have you? Things have changed. We have something new, something special, and we’re not afraid to use it -”

  “Oh, yeah? What might that be? A blast-proof umbrella? Steel boxer shorts? Let me tell you, it’ll have to be something pretty special to protect you from what we’ve got. We’ve had enough. This is where it stops -”

  “It certainly is, but not in the way that you think -”

  The intermediary finally managed to get a word in edgewise. “Will one of you please tell me what all of this is about?” he said desperately.

  Green and Orange left off trying to outstare and out-threaten each other, and turned to look at him.

  “Plutonium,” said Green. “Enough to make plenty of -” His jaw suddenly dropped, and he turned to Orange. “You mean you have some too?”

  “Got it in one,” said Orange smugly, then did the same jaw-flapping act. “Hold on! What do you mean, too? I thought you meant -”

  They gawped at each other while the intermediary gawped at them both; then they both seemed to feel they had lost face by showing surprise, and resumed their macho routine. Even the intermediary, preoccupied as he was, considered that he could not remember when he had last seen such a terrible piece of acting. It was like watching people donning rather silly-looking overcoats.

  “You can’t be serious,” said the intermediary, gathering himself again. “Are you saying that you can both make -” he tried to say the words, but found himself choking on them. “And you’d really rather see the province destroyed than give an inch to the other side?”

  “We’ve never been bluffing about that,” said Green. “And in view of how the threat to us has just escalated, we can afford to bluff even less now.”

  “How do you expect us to give any ground to people with this attitude?” said Orange.

  Green shook his head. “There’s no point having discussions with people who are as intransigent as this.”

  Orange stood up. “Funny how we’re always the intransigent ones,” he said. “This is a waste of time. These talks are over.”

  The intermediary stared at them both in horror. “It’s all over,” he whispered. “All of it. Everything’s over. Look,” he added hastily, jumping to his feet, “can I at least persuade you not to speak to journalists about this yet?”

  *****

  On Saturday afternoon, Gerry Marshall drove over to Portstewart. His little red book provided the name and address of a certain blonde girl he hadn’t paid quite enough attention to recently, and he hoped to begin remedying that. If the blonde didn’t work out, well, there were plenty of other names in the book he could try.

  Unfortunately, either the address was wrong, or she’d found somewhere else to stay since Gerry had last tried chatting her up; an old lady with a blue rinse and an indelible scowl told him she’d never heard of Joanne Grey. Probably Joanne had lived here; but like all landlords around here, the old lady saw such a constant flow of new faces that she was a bit lazy about remembering names.

  Gerry walked away grumbling to himself about his wasted journey. If he ever found out who’d stolen his mobile, he’d put on his pointiest shoes and kick their butt so hard they’d be able to taste the shoe leather... He stood indecisively at the car door for a moment; then rather than get in and simply drive home again, he followed a whim and walked down the steps to the Prom. A cup of coffee in Nino’s, he thought, was just what he needed right now.

  Emerging from between the buildings at the bottom of the steps, he turned left, and some activity at the Town Hall end of the Prom caught his eye. His view of what was happening was a bit flickery, as the passing traffic kept obscuring it momentarily; but it looked as if a rock band might be setting up. He decided to forgo the coffee and have a closer look.

  From the vantage point of one of the benches facing the sea, he was able to glance sideways and watch the roadies’ progress as they unloaded the equipment and set it up on the sand while the band members first busied themselves with tuning instruments and then made nuisances of themselves by checking the roadies were doing everything properly.

  Gerry could overhear a few of their cracks about the size of the bandstand, and grinned: more like a Victorian folly than the real thing, it was a sort of pagoda with little room for anyone below it but the drummer, and the band had to spread their gear out to the left and right of it. It still looked like a good place for a gig, though; walled off from the sea, their equipment would stay dry, there was a power point in one of the bandstand uprights, and the broad rows of steps-cum-seats opposite them formed a kind of elongated amphitheatre.

  By the time they began their soundcheck, a handful of curious passersby, along with children who had been playing in the adventure playground next to the band, were waiting to see whether they were worth staying for.

  The soundcheck was pretty noisy; in the shops across the road, staff could be seen peering out of their windows, and one woman who looked like she was a cross old biddy at the best of times stepped out of her shop and glared in the direction of the noise, her scoldings sil
enced by the volume of the music even before they were uttered.

  Gerry tapped his feet in time to the music; the band wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad either. As he listened, he looked around to see how others were reacting, and his eye fell on one of the posters the band had put up to advertise themselves. The germ of an idea formed, and he let it grow for a moment or two.

  Yes, he thought, it would work. Get Sam to help with the wording... Run off a stack of them, get a handful blown up to A3 size... get Sam and the lads to help put them up all around the Triangle - bring drinks, turn it into an Anti-bull party! ...After midnight would be best... We could send copies to the other campuses... Spoof e-mails, maybe even a website... Brendan Mulhearn could probably get something rolling with the guys at Stran, too...

  The idea kept getting bigger and bigger. Gerry got up and headed back to his car; he couldn’t wait to set things in motion.

  *****

  The band, having finished their soundcheck satisfactorily, had a last quick prayer together before they started their afternoon’s evangelism. The angry-looking woman, one Sadie Parker, had by this time crossed the road, and she stood above the audience, glaring at the band much more efficiently from this closer range. She was determined that even if they could not hear her bawling her displeasure, they would at least see her scowling it.

  *****

  It was a peculiar thing (thought Mark Lindsay, the lead singer) trying to ignore the crowd of people making you nervous, and simultaneously trying to connect with them as a singer was supposed to do; and certainly unfriendly faces, like that of the woman he had only just noticed up there on the pavement, did not help him to relax. He looked towards the place where his girlfriend Ellen was sitting, and right on cue, she gave him an encouraging (and only slightly insincere) “My hero” smile. She grimaced suddenly and jabbed a thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the harpy watching them; Mark grinned at the mimicry and began singing, and found the words came to him just as they were needed:

  Last night I had a vision

  I saw the strangest scene

  I spoke to someone near me, I said

  “What’s this all mean?"

  He said

  “Say goodbye to your family

  “Say goodbye to your friends

  “Say goodbye to your lover

  “This is where it ends

  “Don’t you know,

  “Don’t you know this is Judgment Day?"

  *****

  “THE END OF THE WORLD - people have been predicting this for thousands of years, and even more loudly since the invention of nuclear weapons. It’ll not be a crazed megalomaniac who sets the ball rolling, though. I reckon it’ll be a religious fanatic. Don’t they look forward to the last days? Aren’t they the suicide bombers?”

  - from “Instant Wisdom” by G.C. Campbell.

  *****

  “Green light,” said the Bossman.

  His underlings looked at him, grey-faced. “You mean - with The Stuff?” one of them croaked.

  “Yes,” said the Bossman, imitating his subordinate's timid tone of voice, “The Stuff.”

  “But -” This timid-sounding underling was not actually a coward; he had done as many dangerous things for The Cause as anyone present. His real problem - the thing that made him sound rabbit-hearted - was simply that he understood better than anyone present what The Stuff could do. “How much time do we have?”

  “Hard to say,” said his lion-hearted Bossman. “We don't know when they're going to use theirs.” The word was not emphasised, but everyone heard it as if it had been: when, not if.

  “So we have to get in there first,” said someone else. There were nods all round.

  “How much time will we have to move our families?” asked Rabbit-heart.

  “You can't move them,” snapped Lion-heart. “We can't afford to give the Peelers the least clue about what's going down here. Besides, you can't know that you'd be moving them somewhere safe; we're not a hundred percent certain where they've got their thing stashed.”

  One of the others chuckled, shaking his head. “It's too bad. The wife would love to hear about this. She'd want to know why we hadn't used it a lot sooner! We're finally going to give them the kicking they deserve!”

  Lion-heart's grim expression relaxed until it was almost a smile. “I know how you feel. I’d love to stand on a rooftop somewhere when the big moment comes and yell ‘Slap it into ye!’ But the time to shout will be afterwards. Keep a lid on it, okay?”

  *****

  The Wife (and one or two other wives, as well) presently got to hear about the so-called green light, as certain people could not resist the impulse to become flap-jawed - not that they were grassing or anything, you understand; it’s just that while it’s nice to be in the know, you don’t gain any kudos if you can’t boast about it a bit.

  In most cases, The Wife did not react with the anticipated enthusiasm, and a blazing row ensued; one or two wives had to be physically restrained from gathering up their children, hastily packing a few suitcases, and bundling the lot in the family car.

  One Mister Flapjaw eventually persuaded his wife not to head for the hills after twenty minutes of cajoling, threatening, some misdirection, and a liberal sprinkling of little white lies: the green light didn’t mean anything was going to happen, it was just a threat, nobody was going to detonate anything, the other lot just had to be faced down - yes, of course they would cave in! They were cowards, weren’t they? Everybody knew what they were like - no, the bomb wasn’t kept anywhere near here, what did she take him for? Did she really think he would stand by and do nothing if his own family were in that kind of danger?

  Nineteen-year-old Carson Rodden sat out of sight on the stairs straining to hear his aunt and uncle going over all of this. He did not have his aunt’s inclination to give his uncle a fair hearing, for though he could not make out every word, he could hear his uncle’s tone clearly enough, and something about it told Carson that he was hearing white lies, and they didn’t sound particularly little at all.

  *****

  Mick Rock was within five minutes of killing the Antichrist.

  At least, he was reasonably sure that he was. There was always the possibility that he might throw it all away simply by virtue of being who he was: a man of straw, who at this moment felt deeply unworthy of the privilege being accorded him. His system was flooded with adrenalin, and he had more than a creeping doubt that he would be able to keep the rifle steady enough when the crucial moment came.

  He reassured himself with the thought that he had to be the right person for the job; he was chosen by God, and God does not make mistakes. God’s hand was upon him.

  God’s hand was upon everything that led up to this moment: the “coincidence” that led him to book a holiday in France at the same time as the Versailles summit, the extraordinary ease with which he had acquired the rifle from a local source when he knew the language hardly at all, the amazingly lax security around the Antichrist which allowed Mick to quite easily hire a room for the day overlooking the front of the hotel where the Beast was staying - all of it was providential. Mick could not believe otherwise. But to be the one whose finger pulled the trigger was still a heavy weight of responsibility for an ordinary man to bear.

  He relaxed from his marksman’s posture just long enough to wipe his brow with the back of one unsteady hand, then returned his eye to the rifle’s telescopic sight. A handful of anonymously dressed men with crew-cut hair were clearing people away from the steps of the hotel where the Beast was staying; he was presumably about to make an appearance. For the hundredth time, Mick began taking deep breaths to calm himself. The moment must be very close now.

  A couple of limousines pulled up at the kerb in front of the hotel. He ignored them, keeping his eye on the lobby doors.

  Then, suddenly, the Antichrist was there, a sitting duck as he stood posing for the camera corps that followed him everywhere. Mick held the gun as steady as he co
uld and, trying not to rush, took aim. Before he could shoot, though, the Beast began walking down the steps towards the cars. One of his flunkies, moving with him, obstructed Mick’s aim; Mick moved the crosshairs up from a position over the Beast’s heart to his head.

  As the Antichrist reached his limousine and began bowing to get in, Mick Rock squeezed the trigger. His target spasmed and fell into the car like a rag doll, leaving only his feet showing.

  Mick grinned, mostly out of a sense of relief that he had actually done the job, but also at the dismay of the Beast’s flunkies, who began scurrying about frantically trying to figure out what they were supposed to do now. He could not resist standing up before the window and yelling: “Tomorrow belongs to us!"

  Seven bullets coming from as many different directions immediately punched into him like staples through paper. The Beast’s security was not as lax as he had thought after all.

  *****

  The switchboard at the headquarters of the Christian Democratic Party was, naturally, jammed by calls from journalists immediately following the Paris incident. The first few interviews went like this:

  “Was Michael Rock a Party member?"

  “He is on our files as a member, yes.”

  “What’s your reaction to the news of what he’s just done?"

  “Well, we dissociate ourselves from it completely, of course.”

  “Aren’t you shocked by the news?"

  “We very much regret it, and we’d like to say that our thoughts are very much with Lewis McDonald’s immediate family at this time. However, we have to point out that Mr McDonald wasn’t the universally popular figure the media has consistently painted him as being. In some quarters his policies (and indeed the man himself) have been very deeply resented in a way that no-one has fully appreciated. So I have to admit that this development has seemed almost inevitable to many people.”