First and Only (20 page)

‘
Hell, no!
’

But if the Vice Admiral was
looking for signs of regret and humility in Psimon’s face then he was sorely
disappointed. Indeed, Psimon’s eyes burned with an intensity that was decidedly
unnerving.

‘Vice Admiral,’ said the American
aid more urgently.

‘I told you…’ said the Vice
Admiral, rounding on his subordinate. ‘Not…’

‘I think you should take this
call,’ said Psimon in a voice which, for all its softness, was utterly
chilling.

The Vice Admiral shot a blazing
look at Psimon.

‘Who the hell is it?’ he
demanded, thrusting out his hand to take the phone.

‘It’s Force Command,’ said the
aid, leaning in to convey his message more quietly. ‘Two of the subs on
Operation Tsunami have broken radio silence.’

‘Nonsense,’ dismissed Fallon in a
fierce hiss. ‘Nuclear submarines do not break radio silence.’

‘They do if there’s a DISSUB
emergency,’ said Steve who had overheard the whispered words.

Fallon’s eyes fixed on Steve like
the barrels of a gun. DISSUB was the code word used to designate a submarine in
distress.

Fallon put the phone to his ear.

The room hung on his words, and
watched the storm clouds gather on his brow.

‘You’re joking,’ said Vice
Admiral Fallon in a tone that could not have been more devoid of humour.
‘When?’

‘What is it?’ asked Admiral
Grant. He moved closer to his American counterpart, speaking in a hushed tone
of concern.

Vice Admiral Fallon held up a
hand as he concentrated on what the Force Commander was telling him. Then he
leaned in close to speak to Admiral Grant.

‘Operation Tsunami,’ he said
quietly. ‘Two of the subs are in trouble.’

‘Yours or ours?’ hissed Grant.

‘One of each,’ said Psimon, and
suddenly all eyes were back on him. ‘The HMS Vigilant under Commander Douglas
Scott, and the USS Carolina under the command of Captain Philip Kern.’

They looked at him as if he were
an alien from another world.

‘They will sink within the hour
unless you do as I say,’ said Psimon, his eyes holding the horrified gaze of
Vice Admiral Edwin T. Fallon.

‘This is impossible,’ breathed
Admiral Grant. ‘There’s no way on God’s earth you can affect something hundreds
of miles away…’

‘Tell that to the Prime
Minister,’ interrupted Psimon. ‘Tell it to the American President.’

‘What is it you want?’ asked Vice
Admiral Fallon, in a tone that suggested he would consider just about anything
to prevent six billion dollars worth of military hardware from falling to the
bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

‘As I said,’ intoned Psimon. ‘I
want your assurance that I will not be followed, detained or in any way
constrained until such time as I choose to put myself forward for study. And…’
Psimon added, nodding towards the Chancellor who was still holding the pen in
his hand. ‘I want a signature on that Class A Transactional Immunity.’

‘And if we refuse to do as you
ask?’ demanded the Vice Admiral in a final gesture of defiance.

Psimon smiled but it was someone
else who spoke.

‘Then we sink your fucking
boats!’ said Steve.

Chapter 24

Lucifer surveyed the
interior of the black transit van. Not a trace of the heretic remained. He
locked the van and closed up the barn, lowering the steel bar across the heavy
doors before securing it with the padlock. Then he turned his back on the
unsavoury requirements of the delusional world and crossed the yard to the
chapel. In the sacristy he donned his cassock and cotta before entering the
chapel itself.

The stench of confession
assaulted his nostrils.

He breathed it in.

It was confirmation that his
calling was being fulfilled; that the prophets of mendacity were being
systematically removed from the world, those who claimed to know the minds of
men; those who spoke of ailments, conditions, insanity.

They knew nothing.

They did not know the rapture of
attending the chorus in one’s mind, the ecstasy of obedience and the supreme
agony of non-compliance.

How
could
they know, those
empty vessels of flesh?

Lucifer coiled up the corrugated
hose and stowed it against the wall of the chapel. The aspergillum and silver
bucket he had washed out earlier. A few small spots of the acid had landed on
his arm, just above the gloves, and he had clenched his teeth against the pain;
silent, not crying out as the heretics would during the cleansing. Their
screams spoke of weakness; his silence spoke of strength.

He approached the altar and
picked up the fist-dagger from where he had left it. The blood had left a
crimson slick across the short blade. It shimmered attractively in the light.
He would not clean it off. He would leave it to dry like that… put it away
another time. Then he crossed over to the lectern to see where his vocation would
lead him next.

Lucifer gathered up the massive
bible and stood it on its spine. Then, with a quick prayer for guidance, he let
the book fall open. On the page that revealed itself two lines of text were
underlined…

 ‘…I hate pride and arrogance,

evil behaviour and perverse
speech.’ (Proverbs 8:13)

And, tucked in the crease of the
page, a cutting from a medical journal…

The role of
anti-psychotics in treating audio hallucinations

A Lecture
by Professor Christian Thomas

Saturday
March 14th

Lucifer looked at the cutting. He
noted the date and the time and heard the rising clamour for action. But no…
The latest heretic’s body would be found soon, the medically debauched would be
alert and wary. The choir agreed… the clamour subsided.

Lucifer would be prudent. He
flipped the pages back to a leaflet that lay in Psalms…

‘His mouth is full of curses
and lies and threats;

trouble and evil are under his
tongue.’

Psalms 10:7

He lifted the leaflet…

INTERNATIONAL PSYCHIC CONVENTION

He opened it and scanned through
the programme of events for the following day…

Sunday 8th of March

Morning

10 – 11.00am : Beyond the Veil with Jonathon Fry:
Clairvoyant.

11 – 12.00am: Sixth Sense & Sensibility with
Colleen Edwards: Medium.

Afternoon

1.00 – 2.00pm: A Winning Mind with Sam Delaney:
Sports Psychic,

2.30 – 3.30pm: Challenge the Psychics: An open
debate.

4.00 – 5.00pm: Be Thine Master with Suzie Murkoff:
Psychic Healer (treating everything from shingles to schizophrenia).

The psychic healer, Suzie
Murkoff, had been circled in black. People like her should not be given a
platform for their deceit. She obviously had no comprehension of what true
authority was.

Be Thine Master!

Perhaps she should be the one to
attend a lecture…

Know thy place!

Heresy comes in many guises.

Lucifer would go.

Chapter 25

Psimon’s flat was filled with the smell of Chinese
food. The mood of the two men stuffing their faces was buoyant, triumphant. It
felt like a victory feast

‘…we sink your fucking boats!’
said Psimon, doing his best to mimic Steve’s voice but there was no way he
could match the savage certainty of Steve’s tone.

‘Well that’s what you were going
to say, wasn’t it?’ asked Steve, laughing and scraping together the last of his
Kung Po Chicken with his chopsticks.

‘No,’ said Psimon, failing
miserably to keep a straight face. ‘Actually I was ready to tow the line.’

‘Yeah, right,’ said Steve,
spinning a prawn cracker in Psimon’s direction.

Psimon looked across the room at
Steve. This was the first time he had seen him smile; really smile, as if he
were happy. Despite everything, the relief that they would not be ‘disappeared’
to some secret military base was intoxicating. It put everything else into
perspective.

‘
Well, almost everything…
’
thought Psimon.

Steve put his plate to one side
and took a swig from the cold bottle of beer.

‘So just how long have you been
planning this whole ‘coming out thing’?’ he asked.

‘A while,’ said Psimon, taking a
sip of his own beer.

It was a typically understated
answer.

‘
And the rest
,’ thought
Steve, casting his mind back to Psimon’s planning wall and thinking how
efficiently Psimon had humbled those in power; those who had thought to confine
him.

‘So tell me about this business
venture of yours,’ said Psimon suddenly.

‘You mean you don’t already know,’
teased Steve.

‘I’d rather hear it from you.’

Steve quirked his head. It seemed
a lifetime ago since he had been wrangling with bank managers, negotiating with
suppliers and paying a fortune in research costs to companies across the globe.

‘It was all about power
generation for the domestic user,’ said Steve wistfully. ‘Self sufficiency for
the home.’

Psimon noted the use of the past
tense.

‘Wind turbines on chimney
stacks,’ he said.

‘Exactly,’ said Steve with a
smile.

‘I thought you could get those
from B&Q nowadays.’

‘Yeah, you can,’ said Steve. ‘But
we were working on a more integrated approach.’

He sat forward in his chair and
it was clear that, despite everything, his enthusiasm for the project had not
been extinguished.

‘Super efficient turbines, designed
in Sweden… solar panels from Germany… and a new generation of photo-electric
cells developed here in the UK.’

‘Sounds expensive.’

‘Not as bad as you might think,’
said Steve. ‘Thanks to a charming wife who haggles like a Moroccan carpet
seller.’

Psimon smiled at the pride in
Steve’s voice.

‘We’d also managed to secure
enough orders to bring down the unit costs. We’d designed a system that would
pay for itself in five to ten years; not the fifteen to twenty that the market
was currently offering.’

‘Impressive,’ said Psimon. ‘I’ll
take one.’

‘Sorry, sir,’ said Steve
regretfully. ‘There’s a small problem with supply on account of the business
being completely screwed.’

Steve looked down at his hands.
Then he clapped them together and grabbed his bottle of beer.

‘Well, enough about my woes,’ he
said. ‘There’s just one more day of our agreement to go. And I can’t wait to
see how you plan to top today.’

Again Psimon smiled.

‘Nothing quite so dramatic,’ he
said.

He reached down the side of his
chair, pulled out a leaflet and tossed it to Steve. Steve caught it against his
thigh. He turned it over. He recognised the title. He had seen it on Psimon’s
planning wall.

INTERNATIONAL PSYCHIC
CONVENTION

‘Oh, you’ve got to be kidding,’
said Steve, opening it up and glancing through the articles that trailed the
various speakers. ‘I used to know a Sam Delaney,’ he said, reading the article
about the ‘Sports Psychic’, who was apparently having great success with one of
the premier league rugby teams.

He read down the list of sessions
scheduled for the Sunday, smiling at the ridiculous names that the speakers had
given them. Then, just as it had been on the planning wall, there was one
session circled in red.

2.30 – 3.30pm: Challenge
the Psychics: An open debate.

It was in between the Sports
Psychic and the Psychic Healer.

‘Should be an easy crowd, at
least,’ said Steve.

‘How do you work that one out?’

‘Well, they already believe in
psychics,’ he said. ‘Then again…’ he added with feigned gravitas. ‘They say a
prophet is never recognised in his time.’

Psimon failed to respond to
Steve’s cautionary, raised eyebrow. He seemed pensive and subdued.

‘I was only joking,’ said Steve,
seeing that Psimon looked uncomfortable. Surely you must know how it goes.’

Psimon lowered his eyes.

‘Things get a little hazy from
here,’ he said quietly.

Steve was suddenly concerned. Was
this the same man who had faced down the head of Fleet Force Command? Who had
manoeuvred the British and American governments into abiding by his will?

‘This is the fear you mentioned?’

Psimon gave an almost
imperceptible nod.

‘And you can’t see through it?’

The shake of the head was just as
slight.

‘Well, are you sure you want to
go then?’ asked Steve.

‘I must,’ said Psimon.

‘Why?’ demanded Steve, feeling
suddenly annoyed at Psimon’s irrationality. ‘In fact,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t you
just let the Americans take you?’

Psimon looked up but Steve
refused to be unnerved by the dark expression in his eyes.

‘I mean it,’ he went on. ‘You say
you are going to die soon…
tomorrow
, by the sounds of it.’ Steve’s anger
and frustration were coming to a head.

Psimon averted his eyes.

‘So why not let Vice Admiral
Fallon take you?’ he beseeched. ‘You’d live a comfortable life on a secure
military base. No one could get to you. And, if you co-operated, who knows what
they’d allow you. You might not be free… but at least you’d be alive.’

Steve sat back as if he had made
a pretty convincing case.

Psimon said nothing for a while.
His posture was closed, withdrawn… his eyes downcast. Then finally he spoke, in
that quiet arresting tone.

‘Could you do that?’ he said.

‘Do what?’ asked Steve.

‘The killer won’t stop,’ said
Psimon, seeking out Steve’s eyes with his own.