This Other Eden (38 page)

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Authors: Ben Elton

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He was
very tense. He knew that at some point he would have to act, but he did not
know when. For Judy was convinced that Rosalie planned to poison the heart of
Brussels and he knew that it was his duty to stop her. It all fitted, the same
sequence of events that he had followed on so many previous occasions was
happening again. Except that this time Judy was not piecing it together after
it had happened, he was actually there, right at the heart of it. He could
prevent it.

Judy
believed absolutely that this operation would not be a mere demonstration, he
knew that Rosalie’s team would not simply dump the convoy at the Palace of
Peace and Profit and then disappear, as they had said they would. Judy believed
that there would be a far, far more spectacular protest than that. There always
was.

Stealing
a glance at Rosalie, he reflected on how little one could ever tell about a
person from their appearance. Rosalie did not look like a villain, like a
person capable of coldly murdering hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people to
further her own political agenda. Not that Judy doubted Rosalie’s aggressive
commitment to the environmental cause, but it had seemed to him that her
principles were based on a love of life and a respect for other living things.
She seemed an unlikely murderer. Yet unless Judy had made the most monumental
miscalculation, Rosalie was about to render Brussels, and possibly the whole of
Belgium, temporarily uninhabitable; and Judy knew that he had not
miscalculated. The disasters always occurred where Natura were best placed to
exploit them, and the shadowy hand of Mother Earth was always detectable. It
was the same as before, all the elements were in place.

This
was why Judy had infiltrated the radical green movement. He had become
convinced that a dreadful, black propaganda war was being fought. From the
wealth of evidence that he had assembled over the years, Judy had concluded
that Mother Earth must have become frustrated with the complacency with which
the public viewed the environmental destruction of the Earth. They had
therefore decided upon a most terrible course. Planning and executing a
colossal double bluff, whereby the public might be shocked out of that
complacency.

Judy
had concluded that Mother Earth were creating set-piece disasters in order that
they might then protest against them.

 

 

 

Hidden
agendas.

 

The poison convoy quickly
arrived at the piazza of the Palace of Peace and Profit and came to a halt
amongst the sculptures and the fountains. As the noise of the engines began to
die away, Judy knew that he had to act. The plan as described to him was that,
at this point, the transporter drivers would disable their tankers, and scatter
into the night to take refuge in safe houses around the city. The piazza was
huge and all the floodlighting had been knocked out by an auxiliary unit.
Besides which, the police were keeping well clear, being unsure as to what the
hijackers intended to do with all the poison. The activists would simply melt
away, having proved the vulnerability of the toxic waste disposal system.

That
was the plan, as Judy had heard it, but he did not believe that the
transporters were going to be merely disabled. He believed that they would be
sabotaged, which was why he had to act.

Judy
produced the inflatable handgun which he had kept secreted about his person since
infiltrating the unit (he rather suspected, in fact, that this was the source
of his aggravated haemorrhoids). He held it to Rosalie’s head.

‘Ms
Connolly. I am an FBI agent and I demand that you order the immediate
withdrawal of your people from the scene of this operation.’

‘Judy,
you —‘ Rosalie blurted out, but Judy was in a hurry.

‘Now,
Ms Connolly! I mean it. I suspect that you are
intending to poison the city and I shall certainly kill you to stop that. Order
a withdrawal
now
or I fire!’

Rosalie
thought that Judy had gone mad. However, mad people are perfectly capable of
pulling triggers and Judy looked serious. Rosalie shrugged.

‘The
operation’s basically over anyway, disabling the transporters was just a bit
of mischief.’ Taking up her radio, she gave the order to withdraw. ‘Take no
further action,’ she recited on Judy’s orders. ‘This operation is terminated.’

Through
the window of the Land-Rover, Judy watched the activists scatter.

‘You
too, Saunders. Run,’ he said.

‘I’m
going to find you one day, and I’m going to kill you,’ said Saunders, leaving
the truck.

Once
they were alone, Judy faced Rosalie in the darkness of the deserted piazza. He
silently flipped on the little audio recorder in his wristwatch. What he needed
now was a confession. Having of necessity stopped the sabotage before it had
occurred, he wanted proof that it was to have happened. This would require very
careful handling. The police would soon begin to edge their way forward, so
Judy had only minutes in which to coax from Rosalie that which he already knew.
He had little experience of interrogation, but he did know that the first rule
was to show confidence. Lead with the presumption that everybody knows exactly
what’s being discussed.

‘I’m
curious, Rosalie. How were you going to do it?’ he asked.

‘I have
no idea what you’re talking about, you two-faced little worm.’

‘It
would have to look like an accident, wouldn’t it? Corrosives, I suppose. Rusty
tankers finally giving way? Is that it? You rupture the tankers yourselves and
then claim that you’ve
uncovered
the criminal negligence of the toxic
waste industry. Of course it’s quite a coincidence that the “accident” just
happened to occur during a Mother Earth hijack, but so what? Coincidences
happen and who would ever suspect the saintly environmental movement of dirty
tricks? Not with lots of nice Natura people all set up and ready to scream
about the nasty corrupt government. Do they know, Rosalie? Natura? Do all those
pretty little hippies know what you do? I don’t think so, they’re as big a
bunch of patsies as the public they preach to.’

The
gist of Judy’s theory was beginning to sink in.

‘Are
you suggesting that Mother Earth
causes
environmental pollution so that
Natura can kick up a fuss about it?’ Rosalie seemed genuinely flabbergasted.
Sufficiently flabbergasted for a tiny doubt to appear at the back of Judy’s
mind.

‘You
wouldn’t be the first to play that trick,’ he said, ‘the Bureau uses
agents
provocateurs
all the time.’

There
was a silence. It was strange to be in the middle of that great city, at the
very administrative hub of a vast, international federation and yet hear a
silence. Not a deep silence, there was noise in the distance as the police
cleared the area surrounding the piazza, but in the cab of the Land-Rover there
was a genuine pause in proceedings. Finally Rosalie spoke.

‘I have
never been so insulted in all my life,’ she said and, ignoring Judy’s gun, she
punched him in the mouth. Judy dropped his weapon and Rosalie produced hers.

‘Come
on,’ she said, ‘I’m going to hand you over to Saunders.’

They
left the Land-Rover and began to make their way across the huge, dark, empty
piazza. It was about two hundred yards to the edge and they crossed it slowly
and carefully. Rosalie was nervous, lest some brave police officer had finally
decided to make his or her way towards the silent convoy.

She
was, however, still pretty stunned by the nature of Judy’s accusation and could
not resist further comment.

‘I
still can’t believe it,’ she whispered, pushing her gun into Judy’s back. ‘It’s
got to be a joke, hasn’t it? Surely you’re not going to tell me that the FBI
actually believes
we’re
causing environmental disasters?’

Judy’s
confidence was evaporating fast. His theory was suddenly beginning to look a
bit stupid. There had, after all, been no disaster, and Rosalie’s indignant
surprise seemed worryingly genuine.

‘As a
matter of fact,’ he confessed, ‘it’s my own private theory. Everybody else in
the Bureau laughed at it.’

‘You
amaze me,’ said Rosalie with bitter sarcasm.

Then, just
as they reached the edge of the piazza and were about to disappear into the
deserted streets beyond, they heard a noise. It was a sort of huge hiss. It
came from the toxic waste tankers that they had so recently left. Judy and
Rosalie turned to see what appeared to be steam of some sort emanating from the
side of one of the tankers. Then the smell hit them, it was horrible, enough to
shrivel the hair on the inside of their noses, and both Rosalie and Judy
retched in disgust. Just then the steaming, hissing tanker seemed to buckle… it just gave way in the middle. There was a splash and the ground surrounding
it began to froth and burn, quite literally, as if the stone had been melted.

Anyone
with the slightest knowledge of what that buckled tanker contained could see
that a major environmental disaster was about to occur. Both Rosalie and Judy
had that knowledge. It was like being there at the moment the bomb doors
opened.

‘It’s
going to spread to the other trucks,’ said Rosalie. ‘The whole bloody lot will
go.

Judy
was completely astonished. This was exactly the thing which he had just
prevented, and yet here it was, happening anyway.

‘Rosalie,’
Judy said, ‘You didn’t do this, did you?’

‘For
God’s sake, man, of course I didn’t, you mad idiot!’ she replied. ‘This is the
bloody stuff we try and stop.’

The
fire and the corrosion around the stricken transporter was beginning to take
hold. Pandora’s Box had definitely been opened and all the evils of the world
were flooding out.

‘I
think we should run,’ said Judy. But Rosalie did not hear, she was already
gone.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter
Twenty-Two

 

The penny drops

 

 

 

The
Minister replies.

 

Judy pushed his way
through the terrified crowds and shouting policemen and away from the scene of
the ruptured tankers. He would have liked to have hailed a cab but of course
there were none to be had. Only endless emergency vehicles screaming and
wailing, hurtling through the streets, hurrying towards yet another stable from
which the horse had well and truly bolted.

The
toxins were in fact heading out from the piazza more quickly than Judy himself.
Within minutes, they had hissed their way across the piazza floor, poured
straight down the storm drains and into the water system. In doing so, they
had, as it happened, brought about one positive result amidst all the horror.
They had destroyed the much loathed and completely incomprehensible symbolic
mosaics which covered the whole Euro piazza. Although, interestingly, the
chewing gum which covered the mosaics remained unaffected, no toxin in the
universe having the power to remove chewing gum once some anti-social bastard
has decided to drop it.

Even as
the burning poisons poured into the storm drains, bio-suited Natura scientists
were on the spot, addressing the media.

‘All
tap water in Belgium will very shortly be undrinkable,’ the principal
spokesperson stated to the robot news cameras which surrounded him.

‘Now
hang on, hang on, hang on, things are nothing like that serious,’ said the
relevant junior minister, who had been sent out to attempt a little damage
control, and who was wearing a bio-protection outfit the size of a bus. ‘Let’s
not be alarmist about this now, shall we? It isn’t that the water will be
undrinkable, you
can
drink it, of course you can drink it… and if
you’re a fit person with no history of liver disorders and if you remember to
induce vomiting immediately after swallowing, well, then you should suffer
nothing worse than a mild, or perhaps severe case of the trots. So you see? The
word “undrinkable” scarcely describes the situation at all, and alarmist
generalisations, of which my radical friends here seem so fond, are really no
help to anyone.’

‘All
rivers and streams leading out of Belgium must be damned at the frontiers,’ the
Natura spokesperson insisted. ‘Also infants and the aged must be evacuated. The
atmosphere will be lethal to them and to anyone with respiratory difficulties
for at least a month.’

‘Now
hang on, hang on, hang on,’ said the relevant junior minister. ‘Let’s just get
our terms straight here, shall we? Bandying words like “lethal” about is really
no help to anyone. What exactly do we mean by “lethal” exactly? Hmm? If my
alarmist friend here means that breathing the air will kill babies and
grannies, well, then, yes, perhaps there is some foundation to the basis of his
remarks, but really it’s much too early to be counting bodies, surely? And as
for sealing the borders of Belgium, may I remind my sanctimonious chum that it
was his terrorist pals who dumped the damn stuff in Brussels in the first place.’

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