Channel Blue (34 page)

‘Perry Bunt?’ the woman said cheerfully.

‘Yes?’ Perry answered, disarmed.

‘I’m the Gardener,’ the woman said. There was an awkward pause. She reached over and absentmindedly opened a buckle on a strap attached to the table. ‘Is there anything you’d like to tell me before we begin?’

‘Begin what?’ Perry said.

The Gardener gave him a plump-cheeked smile. The soldiers pulled a hood down over his head and strapped him onto the table. He felt a tightening tug on the straps, followed by a falling sensation as the table was tilted at a downward angle. A folded towel was placed over his face, closing off any light that he’d been able to sense through the hood. He had a chance to take two laboured inhalations before he realised that water was running up his nose.

He held his breath. He knew now what was happening to him, knew that it was called ‘waterboarding’ and had been used on suspected terrorists, had heard the debate between civil-liberties groups who claimed it was torture and national-security advocates who claimed it was an interrogation technique, which he frankly had not really cared that much about because what it really sounded like was a water sport. Now he not so much regretted his lack of interest in the practice as his inability to take a deeper breath before it began happening to him. He was already out of air and the water was still pouring onto his face. His lungs throbbed, pulsing with carbon dioxide desperate to be exhaled.

When he could no longer stand the pressure, when the breath shot out of his mouth and he was forced to take an immediate breath in and the wet cloth sucked up against his mouth, effectively cutting off his air, he realised that the civil-liberties groups and the national-security advocates were both wrong. What waterboarding really turned out to be was drowning. And while Perry had become somewhat inured to thoughts of death since learning of Channel Blue’s cancellation, this kind of death was not as abstract as he would have liked. It was terrible and painful and it was happening to him
now
.

Moments before lapsing into a troubled unconsciousness, Perry found himself flipped upright, the layers of soaked cloth on his face, now as heavy as a wet hippo’s ass, peeled away. He blinked into the fluorescent light and coughed, sucking in breath only to cough some more.

The Gardener observed this benignly, a small half-smile on her wide face. ‘Now do you have anything to tell me?’ she said.

Yes!
Perry tried to say.
Noah Overton. It was all his fault, he gave me those terrorist ideas, he put me up to it. And Amanda Mundo, it was all her plan, she was the mastermind, she got us into the White House. I don’t know if that’s her real name – I was just following orders, I’m a nobody, I’m just a teacher at a community college, for God’s sake!
But when he tried to speak, he could only cough. ‘Noah,’ was all he managed to choke out. ‘Noah,’ he rasped. ‘Noah.’

‘Oh well,’ the Gardener said, shrugging. The wet hood was shoved down over Perry’s face.

‘
No!
’ he managed to scream, realising too late that, in his croaky voice, it sounded a lot like ‘Noah’. Tilted back again with the wet towel over his face, he managed one gasping breath before he felt water surging once more up his nose.
This was never meant to be an interrogation
, he thought.
This is an execution
. He started to panic and his chest bucked.

He decided to take Alistair’s advice and rewrite this ending. He visualised himself with Amanda, in the house he had owned before his screenplays stopped selling. It was a beautiful house, a modernist three-bedroom, high in the Hollywood Hills, with a swimming pool on a terrace that seemed to defy gravity. He and Amanda were kissing, out there on the terrace, and a child ran up, a little boy. Perry picked him up and hugged him. The child showed him a toy, a wind-up animal, and did something with it that he and Amanda thought was cute and they laughed together. He pretended to push Amanda into the pool and then Amanda really did push him. He did a comical stutter step and fell into the water, laughing, and plunged to the bottom – but then something strange happened. When he paddled, his hands and feet passed through the water with no effect. He couldn’t get off the bottom of the pool, couldn’t tell anyone up above what was happening – they couldn’t even see him down there. He was drowning, dying...

And then he wasn’t. He was back upright, coughing. The buckles around him were being unclasped. The Gardener gazed down at him, her full flaccid face a picture of distress. ‘Are you all right?’ she said. ‘I am so sorry.’

It was then that Perry realised that there was a newcomer in the room. He wore a full military uniform with ribbons and shiny medals. He had a clipped moustache and a distinct air of authority that belied his youthful appearance.

‘The lieutenant here says there’s been a mistake,’ the Gardener said. ‘He’s here to take you home immediately.’

The lieutenant gave Perry a warm smile and took him under one elbow. ‘Come on, Perry, let’s get you out of here,’ he said. In a daze, Perry shuffled alongside him into the hallway. The guards followed but the lieutenant waved them off. ‘I can handle this,’ he said. The guards nodded and walked in the opposite direction. The lieutenant steered Perry around a corner.

‘Thank you,’ Perry managed to gasp. ‘I thought I was—’

The lieutenant pushed him against the rock wall and pressed the cold steel barrel of a pistol against his forehead.

‘I’ve been given the honour of killing you,’ he said, ‘and I will. But I’ve also been asked to tell you why. I’m only going to say it once before I kill you, so listen closely.’

Perry was all ears.

‘This is why,’ the lieutenant said. ‘Because your plan has failed.’ With that, he took a sharp breath and cocked the gun.

‘What?’ Perry yelped. ‘That’s the reason?’

‘Quiet!’ The lieutenant scanned the hallway.

‘I don’t even know what that means. What plan?’

‘That’s all I was told to tell you.’

The gun’s muzzle dug into the flesh of Perry’s forehead. ‘Then I have no idea why you’re killing me.’

The lieutenant sighed. While keeping Perry pinned to the wall with one arm, he reached up with the hand holding the gun and pulled down the collar of his shirt to reveal a fresh tattoo: a cupcake with a red slash across it. ‘
No one gets the cupcake
,’ the lieutenant said. ‘Got it?’

Perry shook his head. The lieutenant’s eyes widened with impatience. ‘You wrote that letter telling the President how to save the world,’ he hissed. ‘Three weeks ago in a park in Los Angeles, before the aliens reached down and took him away from us, the Buddy prophesied that the aliens would destroy Earth. And that’s exactly what they’re going to do. No false prophet is going to try and stop them.
Now
do you understand?’

Perry had a terrible realisation: like the blue-clad demonstrators he’d seen in front of the White House, the lieutenant was a misguided follower of the religion he’d inadvertently created when he told the homeless about Channel Blue. But it seemed that since his brief stay in St Jude’s Park, the religion had metastasised from a benign, slightly bananas belief system into a deadly doomsday cult.

‘Listen to me,’ Perry said, as calmly as he could manage with a gun to his head. ‘There has been a huge misunderstanding. My name is Perry Bunt–’

‘I know who you are!’ the lieutenant barked impatiently.

‘I was the guy at the park in Los Angeles who was trying to get everyone to be nicer to each other so the aliens wouldn’t kill us.’

The lieutenant’s face scrunched up in disbelief. ‘You’re not the Buddy!’ He fished in the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a laminated card that showed what appeared to be Jesus in a blue tracksuit, his arms outstretched in supplication, levitating over a crowd of adoring followers. ‘That’s the Buddy!’

Perry shook his head. ‘I never said I was the Buddy or even Buddy, for that matter. This homeless guy Ralph called everyone “Buddy” and that’s what started it—’

‘Brother Ralph? Are you claiming to know Brother Ralph?’

‘I don’t know about Brother Ralph. I’m talking about Ralph, this homeless guy in Los Angeles who hangs out at this one convenience store—’

The gun smacked across Perry’s jaw and he tumbled to the ground.

‘Brother Ralph is our prophet on Earth since the Buddy was taken away by the aliens,’ the lieutenant said. ‘He is only second to the Buddy in divineness.’

That explains a lot
, Perry thought. He rubbed his jaw and tried to sit up, no easy trick in shackles and handcuffs. ‘Listen to me: no one ever said aliens
have
to destroy the Earth. The whole point is to help each other so the aliens
won’t
destroy Earth. And if you help me get out of here right now, there might be enough time. There’s still a chance. If I can get above ground or at least somewhere there’s a few flies, we could save our lives and everyone else’s. Do you understand? We could still save the world!’

‘Don’t try to seduce me with your lies!’ The Lieutenant kicked Perry in the side, sending him back down to the ground. ‘Everyone knows that the world has to end!’

Perry tried to sit up again but the pain was too much. ‘Why?’

‘That’s the Word of the Buddy. When the world ends, his prophecy will be revealed to all as the one true Word.’

Perry knew he shouldn’t act annoyed at someone with a gun pointed at his head, but he could no longer help himself. ‘Are you listening to what you’re saying? If the world ends, what’s the difference? No one will be here!’

The lieutenant’s face turned strangely ecstatic, the eyes opening wide, the mouth smiling broadly. ‘Oh yes. I’ll be here. And so will thousands of others. The Buddy will come down in his spaceship and save all who believed in his Word.’

‘No, he won’t! The Buddy doesn’t have a spaceship! He doesn’t even have a fucking pair of pants right now!’

‘Enough of your falsehoods, blasphemer!’ The lieutenant knelt down so he could once more place the muzzle of his gun against Perry’s forehead. ‘Prepare to die.’

‘Lieutenant?’ A voice came from around the corner. The lieutenant stood and holstered his pistol. A soldier appeared and saw the lieutenant standing over Perry. ‘Is something wrong, sir?’

‘This detainee was being difficult. What do you want?’

‘We have orders for the detainee, sir.’

The lieutenant frowned. ‘This one?’

‘Yes. Perry Bunt. I checked in Room 6 but was told you’d taken him.’

‘Yes,’ the lieutenant replied. ‘My mistake. Wrong detainee. Please.’ The lieutenant motioned to the guard, who helped Perry to his feet. ‘Just a moment, private.’ The lieutenant took a handkerchief out of his breast pocket and pressed it to Perry’s swelling jaw. ‘There we go,’ he said, then leaned into Perry and whispered. ‘If they don’t finish you off, I will.’

The guard ushered Perry away. In minutes, Perry, dressed again in the suit he wore to the White House, stood in an office before Drummond Nash. The elderly spymaster now wore a red-plaid hunting cap on his bald head to complement his hunting jacket. A shotgun lay across his desk. Next to him stood a man in a suit who the old man introduced as Dan Whittaker of the State Department.

‘Mr Whittaker here will be taking you back to Washington,’ he said. ‘Today is your lucky day. It seems that the President wants a word with you.’ Perry’s heart raced. Amanda’s plan had worked. It had taken longer than they’d thought, but he was actually going to be able to talk to the President.

‘Apparently, he saw your name on a list of detainees,’ Drummond Nash continued. ‘Why, with all hell breaking loose in the Middle East, he feels the need to interfere with our vital work is not readily apparent.’ Dan Whittaker glared at him and the old man realised he’d let his emotions get the better of him. Releasing detainees was something he wasn’t comfortable with – understandable because he’d never done it before. He took a deep breath. ‘I am bound by the Constitution to obey the President’s orders.’ He returned his focus to Perry. ‘You will be escorted by a security detail throughout the trip, and they will bring you back here as soon as the President is satisfied.’

Drummond picked up his shotgun and began polishing it with a rag. It was obviously his signal that the conversation was over. But Perry wasn’t through.

‘I want my letter back,’ he said.

The old man stared at him, his eyes small and intense. ‘We, of course, need the original for your case file, but I’ll have a copy brought out to the helicopter,’ he said, then turned back to his gun.

Perry nodded. Then he, Dan Whittaker and two guards left the office and entered an elevator. The car rapidly ascended for what seemed like several minutes. Then its doors opened on the enormous wood-panelled lobby. Large heads of dead animals adorned walls under huge rough-hewn wooden beams. A fire roared in a room-sized fireplace. One of the guards slipped a hood over Perry’s head. Dan Whittaker pulled it off.

‘I’ll take responsibility,’ he said. The guard nodded uneasily and pocketed the hood. Perry was led out of the hunting lodge where, among Aspen pines, a Marine One helicopter idled.

‘Where are we?’ Perry asked.

‘I can’t tell you,’ Whittaker said.

They boarded the helicopter. The cabin resembled that of a luxurious private jet. Perry was given a row of large leather seats to himself while his guards took up the two rows in front of him and Whittaker rode in the cockpit with the pilot. The aircraft roared to life and lifted into the air.

Perry peered out the window at spectacular snow-covered mountains. He hoped that Alistair would someday find out how far off the mark he was. The two guards promptly nodded off.

He pushed back his seat and closed his eyes. He wanted to sleep before his meeting with the President so he would seem as cogent as possible, but his nerves wouldn’t stop jangling.

‘Would you like a coffee or a cold beverage?’ a woman’s voice spoke.

Perry opened his eyes. Amanda Mundo stood in the aisle.

CHANNEL 31

THE FINAL EPISODE

After leaving Perry at the White House, Amanda had returned to their suite at the Willard-Intercontinental Hotel. There she whiled away an hour watching TV, which had the same fascination to her that watching smoke signals might to a tourist at an Indian reservation. She was about to change out of her evening dress when there was a loud rap on the door. She opened it. Two serious-looking men in suits stood on the threshold. ‘Amanda Mundo?’ one of them asked.