Fanatics: Zero Tolerance (14 page)

Now, it seemed, his dreams had come to life before his eyes.

The first step was the acquisition of a place to live, a base from which to operate what would shortly become a highly illegal business. Jericho, a recently closed residential home not ten miles away, seemed the most likely prospect. Even if he sold his house, he would still not have anywhere near enough money to buy the place - he could hardly have rented the lobby! - but no doubt the cash would turn up. His Father was very rich.

He moved across the room to the telephone, and as he punched in the number of a certain solicitor of his acquaintance, he realised he was smiling. He glanced at the book he had been about to begin just as the census officer arrived. It would have to wait.

His day had come.

*****

“I don’t understand this.”

“There’s nothing to understand. Just do it.”

There was a long pause.

“Sir, I don’t feel I can go through with this unless I have some sort of explanation -”

“I can always get someone else to step into your job if you don’t feel up to it, Agent Grey.”

“But these people... Marshall,
Mulhearn, Spence... all of them! Just when we’re having to cope with so much crime - I mean, it’s not as if there’s even one of them who’s been involved in looting or murder or rape -”

“The problem isn’t as trivial as that. Lemmings are the problem.”

“What? I don’t see - according to the records, these people are the last you’d accuse of being Lemmings! And anyway, what if they were? It isn’t illegal.”

“
Don’t kid yourself that it doesn’t matter!
Those kind of people have brought us all to our knees!”

“But they’re not Lemmings! In fact, they were the ones responsible for that poster -”

“I know that! Don’t try to teach me my business!”

“Then why have we been ordered to wipe them out?”

There was another pause; this time a dangerous, teeth-grinding kind of pause that might very well have been ended by a gunshot.

“I’ll explain this to you once, and after that you will get no more explanations and I don’t want you to ever question my orders again. Understand?”

Agent Grey nodded grimly.

“Okay. Here are the facts. McDonald narrowly escaped assassination by a Lemming. While he was out of it, Lemming-minded people
here
stirred up a wasps’ nest, and Lemming-minded people of the Islamic variety over
there
jumped on the bandwagon; now every third city in the first half of your atlas glows in the dark, hm? We have all the proof we need that their mindset is a destructive, negative one. We can’t tolerate it and pat ourselves on the back for being broad-minded and cosmopolitan. It has to be stamped on, or we’re committing suicide as a state. But we can’t stamp on it, see? We know that doesn’t work; the communists tried repressing religion for years, but it just went underground and thrived. Do you see where that leaves us?”

“I think so. For the sake of our own survival, we have to stamp it out; but we can’t take the initiative. The impetus for wiping it out has to come from popular opinion. But the men and women on this list - aren’t they doing the job for us?”

“They’re doing it very well; so well, in fact, that we don’t want any of them getting an attack of conscience, stepping forward and saying, ‘Hold on, it was all just a practical joke’. We want to see this extended and intensified, hopefully across all of Europe.”

“But if public opinion should change... and aren’t those posters supposedly from the Government?”

“We have deniability. None of this was our idea, after all; we just happen to sympathise with the anger everyone feels towards the fanatics. And anyway, they’ll soon have the carpet whipped out from under them; something radical is developing, something that everyone will get to hear about very soon. I’m not allowed to say any more about
that
just now. Are you satisfied?”

Agent Grey’s nod was not so sullen this time.

“Well, then, what are you waiting for? Get out there and do your job!”

*****

The “radical development” soon found its way into the public domain in a series of carefully orchestrated information leaks, and was soon reverently referred to by many people as “The Proof”, or (by those of a more pedantic disposition) as “The Evidence”. It was a philosophical insight rumoured to originate with none other than Lewis McDonald, and caused a buzz that helped distract attention away from the introduction of what might have been a disastrously unpopular civil order measure.

Del Shannon (whose TV show was up and running again following an amazingly short period off the air) had guests on his show ready to discuss every contenti
ous aspect of both these things. Certain observers were naively baffled at how low-key the coverage was for the latter. Someone like Lemuel Page would have been just the man to raise this soft-pedaled issue’s profile, but alas! - he was no longer able to make television appearances except in archive footage, and he would have been more interested in challenging the so-called “proof” anyway. The CD Party had a lot to say about the matter, but there was such open antagonism towards them that Del Shannon would have faced widespread censure for bringing them onto his show; their only platform was now a website read by no-one but those who wanted to find material to criticise and ridicule.

Del’s
backroom people found a sociologist, a philosopher, and a human rights activist, none of whom the wider public had ever heard of.

“It’s a clear infringement of civil liberties,” insisted Hume, the human rights activist.

“It seems a very small thing after all we’ve been through,” said Del.

“It’s absolutely the right thing to do,” said
Sorcha, the sociologist. “For the sake of our lives - for the security of the wider community - if this is what it takes to achieve that, then we’ll all, I’m sure, make that small sacrifice. I mean, the terrorist problem has gone on too long in Ulster. As far back as the ‘98 referendum - in fact, since long before that, ordinary decent people in the Province have made their wishes known time after time about violence that arises from political and religious fanaticism. They don’t want to know. None of us want to know. This time it has cost far too much. We almost lost McDonald -”

“But it’s only a matter of time,” said Hume, “before the draconian measures being piloted in Ulster are applied to all of us, not only in Britain, but in the rest of the European Community too. Terrorism and religious intolerance are problems for all of us -”

“Hopefully not for very much longer,” chipped in Del, but Hume swept on before the subject could be changed yet again:

“-
after all, everyone has been affected by the war, and the involvement of the Islamic nations is certainly something which has implications for all of us -”

“
Alleged
involvement,” said Phil, the philosopher. “We have to be careful; we don’t know for certain if they were responsible for any of the bombs that fell on Europe, and they were on the receiving end too, of course.”

“It’ll be interesting to see how the Islamic peoples react to The Proof, Phil -” said Del, but Hume was determined to finish saying his piece.

“Whatever. The point is, we have to get past this switch-off reaction we have every time someone mentions Northern Ireland. What’s going on there concerns all of us. Today it’s ID cards for them; tomorrow it’ll be everyone else, too. And there’s the potential for even more worrying developments - following the catastrophe we’ve just been through, financial institutions all around the world are a hairsbreadth away from collapse, some very big names in insurance are set to go under, there’s a black market that’s already begun to burgeon alarmingly because so many ordinary radiation-free consumer items are very difficult to obtain...”

“I don’t agree with your economic analysis,” said
Sorcha, shaking her head.

“We believe,” said Hume as if the sociologist had not spoken, “the Government is considering the option of keeping a lid on all of this by doing away with cash altogether and making the ID card a
bank card as well.”

“That’s nonsense,” said
Sorcha. “It wouldn’t be practical. Such cards can be quite easily duplicated with the right technology.”

“There are ways around that,” said Hume, with a desperate, almost embarrassing sense of earnestness. “Obviously I can’t go into detail on the air, but I assure you it’s true.”

“Hmm,” said Del Shannon in the pause that followed, his brow furrowed thoughtfully. “Well,” he added grimly. Then he brightened up suddenly. “Well, there are subjects that we can discuss, and of course The Proof is one of them - Phil, McDonald has done well here, hasn’t he?”

“Absolutely. We really have to hand it to McDonald, don’t we? When you consider that the solution is so simple, so obvious, you wonder why so many people down through the centuries have had difficulties with this whole thing -”

“Not an issue anymore, thank -” began Sorcha, then corrected herself: “I was going to say ‘thank God,’ but we can all see clearly now that there’s no point in that!” The audience chuckled appreciatively. “I know we’re still left with a loophole, in that it’s impossible to prove a universal negative statement such as ‘there is no God,’ but -”

Phil chipped in. “It’s true that there is
theoretically
still room for argument, but it really is a very, very small loophole. It would be nitpicking to insist that The Proof could be refuted, and I frankly don’t think that anyone other than cranks are going to make the effort. The argument is wrapped up, certainly as far as I’m concerned.”

“So,” said Del, turning back to
Sorcha, “what on Earth
is
religion, then? Is it some kind of mental aberration - a disease, perhaps - or is it just a harmless eccentricity?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t have called it harmless,” she said quickly, “not when we have the lessons of history to consider - the lesson of the war we’ve just been through, the lesson of Ulster, right here on our own doorstep - no, too many people have died in so-called ‘holy’ wars, there’s been so
much bitterness and division. It really is long past time we grew up and consigned all religion to the dustbin of history…”

...
and so it went on.

After the show, Del Shannon had a very nice meal with a certain attractive young sociologist, Phil the philosopher received word of a quite unexpected promotion over the head of a colleague with more seniority, and Hume the human rights activist had a short and unpleasant meeting with some dark-suited Secret Service types.

*****

Speaking of short unpleasant meetings:

Gerry Marshall sat up sharply in bed, groping for his bedside lamp. “Who is it?” he started to shout, but collapsed back onto his pillow as something hard cracked against the front of his head.

“Don’t make any noise,” a woman’s voice said.

Gerry thought he recognised the voice, but the fogginess of sleep just disturbed, overlaid by a crackling haze of pain, made clear thought nearly impossible.

After a moment or two more, the sparks in his vision began to die away. “What’s going on?” he said in a more careful, gentle tone. “Who is that?”
No-one answered. “Listen,” said Gerry, “I’m feeling pretty rough. I’m really not in the mood for practical jokes.”

The woman stepped forward and sat on the edge of the bed. She was briefly silhouetted against the thin curtains drawn across the window, and Gerry became even more convinced that he knew her. She pressed something hard and cold against his cheek: a silencer fitted to the business end of a gun. “This is not a practical joke. I’m not the joking kind. Get dressed. The three of us are going for a little drive.”

As Gerry got up, he squinted into the dimness at the end of his bed, and noticed for the first time there was someone else there.

“Hurry up,” said the woman.

“Alright, alright,” he said. “What’s the rush?” He looked at the luminous dial on his alarm clock. “It’s hours before wake-up time. Haven’t we got all night?”

“We have,” said the woman. “You haven’t.”

Something finally clicked. “Joanne?” said Gerry. “Joanne, is that you?”

She said nothing.

“Look, what is this about? This is a joke, isn’t it? Joanne,
speak to me,
will you?”

There was another silence; then the other person spoke. “Do as she says. Get dressed.”

Gerry struggled into his clothes. “Don’t you have
anything
at all to say to me, Joanne?”

She seemed to think about it. “Goodbye,” she said finally.

“ ‘Goodbye’?” he said. “That’s it?” he was a whisker away from exploding angrily, but she raised the gun again, and his voice fell. “I thought you said you weren’t the joking kind, Joanne. But then, it wasn’t very funny, was it?”

“Shut up,” she said, but her tone was a little different this time; he could tell he was getting to her. She’d always had a volatile temper, as he recalled; perhaps he could use it to his advantage. (He had no idea how, of course, but in the Gospel According To Hollywood, the accepted wisdom was to get them off their guard, and then you could make your move... whatever that might be.)