20

AHA!

‘YOU AGAIN!’ SAID THE DOCTOR, STARING DOWN UPON ME. ‘WHAT happened to you this time?’

‘He can’t speak,’ said the nurse. ‘He has forty per cent burns. Refused to leave his room when they were evacuating the hotel.’

‘Was this the hotel? Hotel Jericho?’

‘That’s right, doctor.’

‘Well indeed, I suppose it makes this chap a little part of history, doesn’t it?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well if there hadn’t been one guest left in the blazing hotel, then the fire crews would never have gone in. And if they hadn’t gone in, they would never have burst into the secret room by mistake and found all the documents that proved the Prime Minister was selling nukes to the Iraqis. I just heard on the news that he’s resigned from office. And apparently the Pope was in on it too. And he’s had to resign as well.’

If I could have managed a smile, I would have. But I couldn’t, so I did not.

So, Barry, I thought, What do you have to say for yourself?

‘About what, chief?’

About the nukes, perhaps?

‘Oh those.’

Yes, those.

‘It was all quite innocent really. He was doing it for the good of all mankind.’

Bunging nukes to Iraq? For the good of mankind?

‘Certainly. Your brother reasoned that a country with nukes dare only nuke a country without nukes. Because if another country has nukes, it will nuke back, right?’

Right.

‘So if every single country in the world has nukes, then no country would ever dare to nuke any other country because it would fear the inevitable retaliation. It was what he called a world peace initiative.’

‘It would never have worked.’

‘Why, chief?’

‘Well …’ I tried to think of a why, but … ‘just because, that’s all.’

‘Fair enough, chief. We’ll never find out now, will we? Not now he’s resigned from office.’

‘Hmph,’ I said, and it didn’t half hurt.

Actually I didn’t look too bad once the plastic surgeons had finished with me. I could have passed for forty, as long as I wore a hat. They told me my hair would eventually grow back and that the no-eyebrow look was the current chic. They were also very apologetic when they handed me the bill, saying that before the old government got ousted over the nuke scandal, all the work could have been done on the NHS. But the new government had privatized all hospitals, so I’d just have to pay up.

I told them that this created no problem, that I would just telephone my friend who was a cardinal, and then I slipped out of a back door and ran.

I returned to my room at Hotel Jericho. There wasn’t much of it left and the bed was down to bare springs. But I wasn’t beaten yet.

‘Have you ever heard the expression, sucker for punishment, chief?’ Barry asked.

‘Just shut it, you.’

‘But, chief, come on. Surely you’re getting the message. Every time you do something small that causes something big to happen, it bounces right back upon you and you end up in the ka-ka.’

‘All right, you don’t have to rub it in.’

‘I’m just trying to look after you, chief, provide a bit of Holy Guardianship. If you get snuffed out a second time, I don’t know whether I’ll be able to rescue you. I mean, let’s face it, it was a pretty far-fetched do the last time, Golden Tablet of Tosh m’Plonker, or whatever.’

‘Aha!’ I said. ‘Aha!’

‘What are you “aha—ing” about, chief?’ ‘You’ve just given me a very good idea.’

‘Was it the one about hitting the beach, by any chance?’

‘No, it’s a reworking of the more-radical-than-voodoo one. I am going to withdraw from the plot and let other people do all the doing.’

‘But, chief, I won’t be able, I mean you won’t be able to have any influence over them.’

‘Wanna bet?’

‘No, stop, chief, this chapter’s too short, you can’t end it like—’