The Temple (21 page)

Two teams of Immortals were
absent from the party, though if anyone should ask about them,
there were a hundred people to swear an oath in a court of law that
they had been present all night long at the barbecue. These two
teams had been practising for some time how to climb up the outside
of a building under cover of darkness.

One team ascended the steep grey
walls of the presidential palace and while the president was
snoring in ignorant bliss in his large bed they set about changing
the appearance of the palace. To be exact they sprayed the exterior
with graffiti. When the paintwork was dry they applied a
transparent protective layer on top to make it very difficult for
anyone trying to remove the paint.

The second team did the same
thing at the Dryvellist Temple.

Their job done the two teams
quietly descended the buildings and vanished into the night like
vengeful phantoms.

The occupants of the two
buildings had noticed nothing, so when in the morning they got up
and looked out of the windows they were surprised to see people in
the streets looking up at them, pointing, gesticulating, and even
laughing. It was only when TV crews and photographers arrived that
they understood something was seriously amiss. When the president
hurried outside with his bodyguards and looked at his palace he
nearly had a heart attack. There was a huge portrait of himself
with the word ‘Dictator’ on his chest on one side of the palace. On
the top just under the roof and on the other side it said:

‘Freedom of Speech!’ and ‘Free
John Drew!’

The president was livid and
hurried back inside.

When Jeremiah inspected the
outside of the temple he was greeted by three slogans:

‘Dryvellism is a lie!’

‘Dryvellists are
fraudsters!’

‘Jeremiah is a Murderer!’

When Cato switched off his TV he
said “Talk about poking a beehive with a stick.”

Joan grinned. “Even that foolish
president we have will have to realize sooner or later that he’s
got to side with the people. If he doesn’t protect us from those
religious fruitcakes and gangsters then he can’t complain if we
make life difficult for him.”

“Did you see how he was yelling
at his staff?” Cato sniggered.

“How long will it take them to
remove the paint?”

“A few days at least, I’d guess.
They can’t wash it off or paint over it because we gave it a
special coating. Mark thinks they’ll have to sandblast it, and
that’ll take time. The media will love the spectacle so we should
see everything repeated on telly for maybe a week.”

“I just wonder how that bastard
Jeremiah is going to take it.” Joan said.

“Does it matter? Let him be
hopping mad and get the heebie-jeebies if he wants to. After all
the money he lost at the cancelled show he must be broke. All he
can hope for is not to do anything else that might put people off
from making donations.”

Joan nodded. “Yea, I guess
you’re right. And if we keep up the pressure and he can’t pay his
rent the whole spook will be over before we know it.”

“Fools, imbeciles, gormless
twats!” Jeremiah yelled at the crestfallen brothers outside the
temple. Despite their best efforts at removing the offending
graffiti they had miserably failed. They had tried different soaps,
detergents and cleansers all to the same effect. Even a tin of
paint remover had turned out useless. The graffiti continued to
stubbornly cling to the walls looking just as it had done before
the brothers had tried to remove it.

“It’s just paint!” Jeremiah
yelled. “Any old idiot can scrape paint off a wall. Get it off or
I’ll get the skin of your flesh!”

He stormed off before anyone had
the chance to reply.

In his fury Jeremiah went
straight to the dead letter box he had set up in the park. In one
corner stood the statue of a Greek athlete throwing a javelin. It
was a very lifelike work of art that even went as far as
replicating bodily orifices. Jeremiah walked behind the statue and
looked around. There was no one in sight. He took a small scroll of
paper that contained a coded message from his pocket, walked up to
the athlete’s behind and pushed the scroll up his rectum with one
finger. It was a tight fit and he had to pull hard to get his
finger out again.

“You like it mate, don’t you?” a
voice behind him suddenly said.

Jeremiah turned round startled.
A middle aged man with greasy hair, a pot belly and thick pouty
lips stood there leering at him. The man stepped closer. Jeremiah
wanted to take a step back but he was blocked by the statue.

“What is the meaning of this?”
Jeremiah said.

“Oh, come off it mate,” the man
leered. “I know just what you want. No need to pretend with me,
mate. I can give it to you.”

“You can what?” Jeremiah said
incredulously.

The man came closer, reeking of
sweat and drooling over his victim. Unable to control himself any
longer he grabbed Jeremiah by the crotch with one hand and firmly
placed his other hand on a buttock.

“Oh, me and you’re going to be
great pals,” he breathed in Jeremiah’s face.

Jeremiah stood in shock for an
instant but then he came to again. He pushed the man away violently
and exclaimed “You filthy, disgusting rat! Perverted vermin, away
from me! Never have I been so insulted in my life, you sordid
stinking beast! Pox and pestilence upon you! Get thee hence! Be
gone with you, you wicked pernicious pustule!”

Waving and flailing his arms
wildly Jeremiah assaulted the surprised man who then turned and
fled.

Jeremiah breathed in deeply
trying to regain his composure. “Truly the ways of the Lord are
mysterious,” he said at last. Making sure there was no one around
this time he quickly checked that nothing of the scroll was visible
in the athlete’s rectum before he quickly walked away from the
place of his infamy.

Later that day Richard went for
a leisurely stroll in the park. Richard retrieved the secret
message from the dead letter box and went back to their little flat
to decode it.

“Master Jeremiah is brilliant,”
Richard said when they got back and told the others about where the
message was hidden.

“A pure genius,” Tancred agreed.
“No one would ever even think of looking in such a place.” He
unrolled the paper and put it down flat on a table. The paper was
covered in rows of numbers. He took a copy of The Holy Dryvel and
opened it.

“Now let’s see what Master
Jeremiah has written to us,” Tancred said.

“How do you decipher it?”
Bohemon asked.

“That’s easy. There are always
three numbers. The first one represents the page, the second one a
line on that page, and the third one a word in that line. It’s
known as a book code and it’s unbreakable.”

“You mean even the government or
police couldn’t work it out?” Richard asked.

“That’s right. I told you Master
Jeremiah is a genius.”

“By the Grace of God,” Herman
said. “Let us not incur the wrath of the Lord in vainglorious
pride, my brothers.”

“Quite right, Brother Herman,”
Tancred said. “Let us be united in drivel and prayer and humbly
implore the Lord for His Grace and His blessings in our
undertaking.”

After their prayer Tancred
decoded the message and they started their preparations.

The following morning Tancred
and Richard stood waiting at a lonely stretch of road in town.
Richard was slowly pushing a pram along the side of the road.

Tancred checked his watch.
“Should be any minute now.”

Richard’s grip tightened on the
handles and he sent a quick prayer up to the Lord. Then he saw the
familiar yellow that all school buses in the country were painted
with. At the right distance he started crossing the road pushing
the pram in front of him. In the middle of the road he stumbled and
fell. The bus driver braked and brought the bus to a standstill
just a few feet away from Richard. He opened the doors and jumped
down to the road. “Are you all right, man?”

Tancred came up behind the
driver and hit him hard with a sock filled with sand. The driver
collapsed and Tancred dragged him to the side of the road while
Richard took their weapons from the pram and boarded the bus.
Twenty-seven pairs of surprised eyes looked at him as he stood at
the front of the bus brandishing a submachine gun.

“Right, kids. Just shut up and
stay on your seats and you’ll be fine, but if you try any tricks
I’ll shoot you.”

Terrified some of the younger
ones started crying.

Tancred got on the bus, closed
the doors and drove off. After a few minutes the bus turned off the
road and went into an abandoned warehouse where the children were
forced off the bus one by one. Bohemon and Herman tied their hands
behind their backs and gagged their mouths before forcing them into
the back of a truck. Then Tancred drove the empty school bus out of
town and left it standing in a little wood.

Bohemon, Herman and Richard
drove the children to the other side of the city. They parked next
to a service shaft of the city’s metro system and made the children
walk down a long spiral staircase. The terrified children, some as
young as six, had to walk along a long corridor that only had
intermittent lighting. The corridor branched off in different
directions, one of which led to an abandoned section of the metro.
They crossed the dark platform and climbed down to the track. After
following the track for about five minutes Tancred stopped in front
of a steel door. He opened it.

“In you go, kids,” he said.
“This is your new home for the time being.”

The three brothers followed the
children through the door. There was a narrow corridor that led to
another massive steel door.

“Here we are,” Tancred said.
“This place was a bomb shelter during the war. No one’s been here
for more than fifty years so we won’t have to worry about any
surprise visitors.”

He untied the hands of one of
the older boys.

“There are camping beds and
boxes of food down there, and you’ll find a toilet and running
water in another room. Don’t waste your breath shouting. No one
would hear you here in a thousand years. So just relax kids and
enjoy your school break. We’ll be back in a day or two to see how
you’re doing.”

He slammed the door shut and
bolted it from the outside with two thick bolts he had installed
the day before just as Jeremiah had instructed him.

They then drove the stolen truck
away and left it standing far away at the side of the road as
though it had been taken by joyriders.

At lunchtime Cato switched the
TV on to see if there was any more news about their graffiti
campaign.

“This morning at around seven
forty-five, armed men hijacked a school bus with twenty seven
children on board. The driver was later found by the side of the
road where he was lying unconscious. It is not known where the bus
was taken to, but a short time ago we received a video from the
kidnappers outlining their demands. We have, of course, passed any
information we have on to the police to help free the kidnapped
children, but we have also decided, after careful deliberation,
that the public have the right to know what is going on, so we are
going to show the video to you now.

First the title appeared:

Blood Moon

Then a man wearing military
fatigues and a balaclava spoke to the camera.

“We are the Holy Dryvellist
Resistance Army. After continuing attacks and hate crimes against
our community, against the true believers, God’s own people, we
have had no choice but to defend ourselves. We therefore issue the
following demands to the government:

- Enact legislation that makes
blasphemy and Dryvellophobia a capital offence punishable by
death.

- Establish Dryvellist courts in
which Dryvellers are tried for any offence committed according to
Dryvellist law.

- The teaching of Dryvellism is
to be mandatory for all school children.

- The so called theory of
evolution must be banned from schools. It must be replaced by the
true teaching of creationism and storkism as revealed in The Holy
Dryvel.

If our demands are not fully and
unconditionally met by the government within one week, we will have
no choice but to execute one of the hostages every day.

“This is very distressing news
and I must apologize for showing you this, but as I mentioned
before, we think the public should know what is really happening.
Now, I understand that some of the parents of the hostages are
gathered at their children’s school so we’re going there live to
our correspondent Cecilia Hopewell. Hi, Cecilia. Can you tell our
viewers what is happening?”

“Hi Harold. Parents came to the
school more than two hours ago and they have only just come out
again now. This is an extremely distressing time for all of them,
but I managed to talk to one of the mothers.

Hello, your daughter was on
board the hijacked bus?”

“Yes, that’s right. I took her
to the bus myself this morning like every day. I’m so afraid
now.”

She burst into tears.

“I’m so sorry. Has the school
been able to tell you anything?”

“Nothing. They know nothing.
They told us to go home and wait. I don’t know how I can wait. I
only want to have my baby back. She’s only seven years old. She’s
never done anyone any harm. Please don’t hurt her, I’m begging you
not to hurt her. If it’s money you want we’ll pay anything you say,
but don’t hurt my baby…”

Her husband put his arm around
her and walked her away from the camera.

“That was very upsetting. Thank
you Cecilia for your report. And over to the presidential palace
now where the president is about to make a statement.”