Bread

THE JOURNAL OF ELLIOT CRIPPLESBY

  I had been in contact with Ollie Donald several times by phone, as I have been since we left Kenya. He had discharged himself from hospital in Mombassa and gone back to South Africa where he thought he would be more comfortable, but now that he could walk around again he was restless. Mr Donald is a man of action and although I tried to dissuade him - as it seemed no more than an exercise in futility - he remained adamant and insisted on flying out to meet us in Calgary. Of course Geeza was not yet back when his plane was due to land, so I met him at the airport alone.

  “Ollie what are you doing?” I reprimanded him as I watched him step gingerly down from his Lear jet. “You shouldn’t have flown in that condition – look at you! You should still be in hospital!” The lumps and bruises had faded somewhat since I saw him last, but they still betrayed the fact that he had been through quite an ordeal.

  “Yeah, yeah, good to see you too. You sound like my doctor,” he grinned.

  We clasped and shook hands heartily as I took him back to the taxi I had waiting outside Arrivals.

  “Of course it’s good to see you Ollie,” I said as we walked, “but really, should you have come?” I noticed that he winced in pain whenever he forgot himself and moved too sharply, his tender ribcage reminding him in no uncertain terms that he was not yet fully fit. Carrying him through his obvious discomfort though was his mood of cheerful optimism, and determination.

  “I’m fine Elliot.”

  “Well you don’t look fine. Come on Ollie, you’re a mess. You should be in bed man.” He turned to me and laughed.

  “And now you sound like my wife! Look, I’m here, ok; get over it. Anyway what else was I supposed to do? I can’t just lie around doing nothing knowing you guys are out here with the pedal to the metal.”

  “Hardly that Ol. I can’t say I’m actually doing anything myself,” I said. “I’m pleased to see you, really - I just don’t know what you can do that’s all. What either of us can do.”

  “Look, Elliot, don’t get me wrong here,” his South African accent was thick and strong, especially as he pronounced here the way they do – h’yerr. “I’m under no illusions that I’ll be able to do anything. I’m pretty sure my being here won’t make the slightest difference, but at least if I’m with you two there’s a chance – hanging around in my sick bed in ‘Toti - that was just driving me mad, you know?

  “You guys are the two men closest to stopping this Humphries and I just want to help. My jet, my houses if you need a place to stay – I’m putting it all at your disposal. We have to stop this guy…”

  Well that much was true. The situation had worsened further.

  “Anyway, where’s Geeza?” he asked as our cab made its way through the Calgary traffic. I sighed and shrugged my shoulders dejectedly.

  “I don’t know. Not back yet.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “Out there!” I widened my eyes and gesticulated expansively, giving him the best impression of my friend I could muster: “It’s too closed here Elliot! Too closed. I’ve got to get back – back to the wilds!” I sighed again. “God knows Ollie; god alone knows. We split up a couple of days ago. I stayed here to keep up with the news; he headed back to the Park. I haven’t heard a thing from him since.”

  We booked another room and Ollie went to shower. Despite all I had said about him coming here in that state, I was relieved to see another friendly face to be honest. Company had been sadly lacking since Geeza had gone walkabout, other than whoever happened to be occupying the front pages of the numerous newspapers I’ve been trawling through on a daily basis. Once Ollie had freshened up I introduced him to my pathetic routine of waiting, watching and listening to the reports as they came in from around the world.

  The situation was bleak. Society as we knew it was teetering on the brink of collapse. The barriers between rich and poor had been all but broken. Nobody could afford anything anymore, stock markets had crashed, there were riots, there was looting - everything that had been so laboriously built up by our fathers and their fathers before them had all too suddenly come crashing down, lost and gone forever. At least that is how it was being reported.

  And there didn’t seem to be anybody coming up with any answers. All the politicians, police, armies, and organizations like the UN and NATO, all those people we as a society have been persuaded to put our faith and trust in over the years – nothing. They were all completely conspicuous by their lack of action. I think everyone knew that they couldn’t do anything anyway - they just wanted someone to shout at. To blame.

  It is always easier to apportion blame rather than to try and solve a problem, but it was actually fair enough in this instance. These people, these rulers of society have lived very privileged lives thank you very much, while supposedly looking after our best interests and now there was a real crisis they were nowhere to be seen! There was just the Professor, beaming out his stream of demands from his still undiscovered location, to which there was simply no answer. No one could see where this was going and no one had any idea where it was all going to end.

  At first there had been a purpose to what he was asking, but by now he had the world on its knees and had obviously become drunk with the power. Not only did his commands become more and more imperious, but there was no longer any rhyme or reason to them. They were becoming more and more surreal with every day.

  One of the last announcements he made for example, was a proclamation stating that all people throughout the ‘westernised’ world must cast off their shoes and socks and go about barefoot. Otherwise he would make all bananas turn blue and taste like fish paste! What could people do? What choice did they have? We had all witnessed the destruction this man was capable of with his time machine and his scientific meddling and manipulation, so barefoot it was. How he could ever have checked up on us all I don’t know, but most people were not prepared to take the risk.

  Some ignored these more absurd demands – probably people who didn’t like bananas in this case – but that only caused more trouble. Factions quickly sprang up and non-conformers soon found themselves ostracised, abused, or even hunted down. People were beaten, people were killed!

  Maybe this is just what Humphries wanted – to throw the world into total confusion and anarchy. Perhaps that’s what was behind these otherwise seemingly purposeless insanities. To set people against one another.

  It’s an ugly thing, Mob rule. Everybody has begun to watch everybody else and an atmosphere of dark suspicion has crept around the world like a… well, like a big… creeping cloud of… suspicion. It happened during the French Revolution, when friends and neighbours suddenly began turning each other in to the Mob; it happened in Nazi Germany and it was drawing ever closer to us with the ridiculously Orwellian War on Terror.

  Sad to see how easy it is to bring the worst out in people. And as if all the violence and suspicion wasn’t enough, the compensation culture has also managed to rear its ugly head. Many people have started claiming they will be crippled for life due to this period of shoelessness. Personally I doubt it, but that’s another thing it is always easier to do than find a solution – complain and try to milk things to your own advantage. Geeza would have probably welcomed everyone being made to go native as he would have put it, had he been with us. But he wasn’t. Still!

  It was not until two days after Ollie had arrived that, sometime early in the morning, Geeza finally crawled in, haggard and frail looking. He was painfully thin and so weak he could hardly stand - God knows how he managed to get back here from wherever it was he had gone.

  “The wilderness,” was all he told us when we asked him, which is scarcely sufficient to narrow it down around here. To be fair to him though he probably doesn’t know. Having found out a little more about the way he works, I guess he just went off at random until he felt he was where he needed to be.

  I began drawing him a bath which he insisted he didn’t need – but which both Ollie and I insisted he most de
finitely did – and ordered up some food for him. Having managed to get some fruit and bread and tea down him and while the bath was cooling, he told us the staggering news.

  “I know where he is.”

  “You do? I exclaimed and helped myself to an apple. “Geeza you’re amazing!”

  “Don’t thank me – thank the Moose.” I didn’t even ask.

  However he had done it, he had somehow got a map reference which he scribbled onto a napkin. Ollie Googled it on the hotel computer and it turns out that our elusive, megalomaniac, nutcase professor is not holed up in a hollowed-out volcanic cone, or hidden away in a subterranean base underneath a frozen lake in the wilds of northern Sweden, or something like that, but in a semi-detached house in Troon, just up the coast from Ayr, back on the west coast of Scotland! I should have known this would all lead us back there.

  Ollie was animated in an instant and leapt to his feet, although he must have regretted it an instant later as he crumpled to the floor clutching his battered ribs, howling as the pain lanced through his side. Asking if he was all right, I helped him more slowly to his feet, but then shooed me away, reaching for his coat.

  “I’ll phone my pilot and have the plane fuelled up and ready to go. Are you going to be ok to fly?” He put this last question to Geeza, who really did look ill. Vermies insisted that he’d be alright, so Ollie made the call. “Ready to go in two hours, landing at Prestwick Airport. I’ve got some paperwork to attend to down there, so I’ll meet you guys at the plane.” And with that he was off.

  I let Geeza sleep for an hour or so while I packed. Then I had a bit of a brainwave. I remembered that back at the hotel in Eilean Ban there had been a delegation of officers from Interpol and that was only a hundred miles or so to the north. I was not too sure whether they would still be there or not, but I chanced a phone call. It was a good thing that I did.

  Interpol had set up a temporary mission control, right there in the hotel. With so many of their top brass and head honchos still there at the conference when the crisis had broken out, they had quickly established communications with their main offices wherever they are - Belgium probably. Most things like that are in Belgium - and worked from there.

  When I gave one of the chief inspectors the address of the semi in Troon he seemed highly sceptical, but as it was the only lead they had - that anybody had - he said he would look into it. I didn’t actually believe him to be honest, but to his credit he set wheels in motion. Deciding not to take any chances he put in a request for an anti-terrorist unit to stake out and storm the house.

  Not that we knew any of that at the time of course. Red tape being red tape, even in the midst of such a catastrophic global crisis, we beat them to the house in Troon – 127, Grassy Lane (doesn’t sound very sinister does it?). It turns out that it took a while assembling the squad as the SAS were already stretched to breaking point and all that was only possible after permission had finally been granted by Whitehall.

  So it was that the three of us found ourselves in the deserted Scottish street, crouched behind the yew hedge that surrounded the garden of 127 - in our minds, all that stood between this maniac and the civilisation as we knew it.

  And what a sorry bunch we were! Ollie was still moving like an invalid, Geeza was weak through lack of food and sleep (and then the trans-Atlantic crossing) and as for me – I was scared out of my wits and fairly gibbered at the very first problem we encountered – that of getting into the house.

  “Leave that to me,” said Geeza. The way he stealthily crept through the front garden was amazing, keeping low all the time and hardly making a sound. To look at him you would never have known he had spent four out of the last five days exposed to the harsh Canadian wilderness. In no time at all he had twiddled with a couple of bits of wire in the lock and the door swung slowly open.

  I had absolutely no idea what to do now. We were in, clustered nervously in the narrow hallway just inside the door, but what now? We were only moments away from finally catching the man who had brought the world to its knees, but how could we hope to confront him? Geeza was running on pure adrenalin and when that ran out he’d be sluggish as a snake in hibernation. Ollie had already been battered nearly half to death by this lunatic and could barely walk, let alone defend himself and I was becoming more and more terrified with every breath.

  “Elliot,” Geeza whispered harshly, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Panic is a killer. Don’t worry. We’ve got him three to one. Breath deeply; we’ll be fine.” I followed his advice and gulped down several lungfuls. “Ok,” he continued, taking charge, “we split up. I’ll take the upstairs, Ollie, you take that door,” he pointed to the first door on the left, directing me to the other one at the bottom end of the hall. “No heroics; whoever finds him, yell for help. Then find something big and heavy and whack him with everything you’ve got! No matter what happens, he isn’t walking out of this house. Ok, good luck!” And without another word he started tip-toeing up the stairs.

  I looked at Ollie and Ollie looked at me. We both went to our doors and listened, but neither of us heard a sound. He winked at me and went through. Heaving in a deep breath I did the same.

  I found myself in the kitchen and it was empty. A further door led off to the left and I heard electronic noises coming from whatever lay within. Swallowing nervously I looked around for a weapon. This was insane! I’d never been in so much as a school fight! Geeza had warned me not to pick up a knife, as most people might do in a similar situation, because unless you knew what you were doing you’d probably end up stabbing yourself. My fingers closed around the comforting weight of a rolling pin and even as Ollie was going through the lounge and downstairs study I pushed aside the door and entered the garage.

  What had once been a garage anyway. Although it still bore all the hallmarks of your typical garage – a lawnmower clogged up with old cuttings, various tools, pots and extensions cords lining the walls, an old video recorder, that sort of thing - the resemblance ended there. One wall was taken over completely by stacks of computer towers, monitors and keyboards, with wires splattered about everywhere like an explosion in a noodle factory. Several benches held the debris from old experiments, their multitude of test tubes, vials and retorts each clutching their crusted secrets to their unwashed sides. A threadbare carpet, dust-ridden and stained, hinted at a more colourful past in a Moroccan bazaar.

  Standing with his back to me and looking like Heath Robinson’s worst nightmare, the professor was hooked up to his machine by a series of tubular attachments clamped to his head.

  Whether it was this hideous sight that stopped me I don’t know, but for some reason I did not call out for my friends. Hearing or perhaps sensing something, Humphries spun around.

  “You!” he screamed.

  “You!” I hissed in return and brandished my rolling pin, taking a two-handed stance that I’d seen in a Japanese film about samurai back in the Beaver’s Teeth. Humphries glared contemptuously at my posture.

  “What are you going to do, lay an egg?”

  Perhaps I did not look quite as I had imagined. With a four foot katana of deadly sharp, folded steel, I would probably have looked more impressive, but the rolling pin was obviously not doing it for me. I stood up straight again.

  “Err, no; I’d rather hoped that was the Sentinel at the Castle Gates actually.”

  The professor sneered at me with disgust. “Do you know how long I’ve been looking for you?”

  “About three weeks isn’t it? About the same time I’ve been looking for you,” I quipped back. “And I think we’re winning in that respect,” I continued, suddenly emboldened. “You found me once; we found you twice in Africa, almost got you in Banff and now again here. 4-1 to the good guys I make it.”

  “Shut up!” he yelled, unimpressed by my bravado. “How the hell did you get away from McCourt and his bikers?” he snarled.

  “Do you know, I’m still not too sure about that myself. It involved pigeons though. Lots of
pigeons.”

  He took a step towards me, an evil fury written all over his face. “It doesn’t matter,” he took another step. I brought the rolling pin up in front of me and slightly to one side, Jedi style. He came no further, but whether it was the rolling pin or the wires on his head having reached their full length that stopped him, I couldn’t say.

  “So what are you going to do now? Why have you come here? What can you possibly hope to achieve? You can’t stop me now, nobody can! No matter how much Scottish money you’ve got; no many how many pigeons-” he spat the word - “you choose to keep!” Whirling on his heel, he stepped back to his machine. He spread his hands wide and laughed insanely before turning to face me again.

  “We have passed the point of no return… what did you say your name was? I still don’t know.”

  “The name’s Cripplesby. Elliot Cripplesby.”

  “Hmm, doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue does it? More sort of stumbles. Well Cripplesby, you’re too late. I have destroyed the balance of power. I have smashed economies and toppled governments. I have the whole of humanity eating out of my hand! The World is mine!”

  “Not any more!” I snapped, having had quite enough of this bloated egomania.

  “Oh, and what are you going to do? Got a time machine of your own have you?” he asked laughing.

  “No,” I replied.

  “Or what,” he pointed to my weapon which I still held out in front of me, “are you going to roll me out and bake me for twenty minutes?” He reached out and snatched a golf umbrella from a dusty shelf. “I used to fence for Edinburgh University. How about you?”

  I took one look at him and gulped.

  “Ollie!” I shouted, “Geeza!”

  “On guard!”

  I charged, my fear giving way to desperation and we met in the middle of the faded rug with a clash of …blades. I was quickly made aware of the gulf between our skills however, as he parried each of my frenzied attacks with ease, a nimble flick of his fencer’s wrist being more than enough to deflect my clumsy strikes aside.

  I never even looked like landing a blow to be honest, until suddenly his machine clicked and beeped behind him, drawing is attention momentarily. Seizing my chance I lunged, striking out with all my force. At the very last minute though, as if warned by some sixth sense, he spun around and opened the umbrella up to its full extent! The ribbed, tartan material acted as a shield and my blow bounced off.

  He deflated his umbrella as I struck again and our weapons met in mid-air. Our faces pushed up against each other as we jostled for supremacy.

  “Don’t you know it’s unlucky to open an umbrella indoors?” I snarled as we tussled.

  “Don’t you know that it’s dishonourable to strike at a man when his back’s turned?” he spat in reply.

  I was about to question the honour of using a time machine to fiddle about with reality and take over the world, but at that moment he clicked a button and his umbrella whooshed open again, throwing me backwards! With the speed of an Olympian he danced half a step forward and rapped me sharply on the wrist, causing me cry out in pain and drop the rolling pin to the floor.

  Had he pressed home his advantage I would have been doomed, but fortunately the wires connected to his head prevented him from finishing me off. Staggering back, I looked around the room and rushed over to the corner near the door, grabbing the lightweight, aluminium standing lamp that stood there.

  “Ollie! Geeza!”

  I leapt at him again in the eerie red glow that now illuminated the garage - my wrenching the lamp from its socket had cast the room into near darkness, the only light now coming from the numerous coloured bulbs glistening evilly from the Time Machine. We were cast as dark silhouettes against the infernal crimson glow.

  It was not long before Humphries was forced to abandon his tattered brolly, realising he needed a different weapon to match this new onslaught. With an agility I would never have suspected, he discarded the sorry umbrella and replaced it with a 16” hand saw from a nail on the wall, and backed it up with a plastic dustbin lid in his other hand. These he used to savage effect and in the short space of time it took for my companions to burst into the room I was covered in bruises and saw-toothed gashes.

  The lamp-stand had gone by then and I was barely defending myself with one of those long, plastic extension tubes you get with your vacuum cleaner. As I screamed for help I saw my friends arming themselves from the corner of my eye, Geeza with a glue gun and Ollie with an old bronze flower vase. Before they could come to my aid though, all hell broke loose!

  Little did any of us know, but moments after we’d entered the house a handpicked team from the SAS had silently sped in, blocking off the street with black vans. Thirty men had quickly encircled the house, and evacuated the neighbours from next door.

  They may not have blown a bugle like the cavalry do in all the films, but they did arrive in the nick of time. I couldn’t have held out any longer and my two friends in their weakened states would have been no match for the Prof.

  I caught a quick glimpse of a masked and balaclavad man knocking my friends to the floor, then there was a flash and a bang and then it was all over. The next thing I knew I was lying on my belly out in the street with my hands fastened behind my back and a hood over my head.

  ***