This Other Eden (45 page)

‘Your
principal sales strategy? That would be the environmental disasters, would
it?’ Max inquired.

‘Exactly.
I get to thinking, if only I knew
when
these terrible things were going
to happen I could have the whole operation ready in place. The news teams ready
to report, the stock ready to go and above all the tasteful, classy,
non-exploitative little Claustrosphere commercials to play in heavy rotation around
the news breaks that reported the disaster. That’s the connection your FBI pal
made, and which he tried to prove with his pathetic little plan to drug me. The
breakthrough was to get the
news to fit my commercials,
in fact, to make
the news itself the commercial, and the actual commercial just the pack-shot.’

‘So you
start creating disasters?’ Max asked.

‘Hey
hey hey! Hold on!’ Tolstoy replied, and for a moment Max thought he might be
about to become cautious, but Tolstoy was waiting for his killing people and
was happy to tell his story in his own time and in the right order.

‘At
first, I’m still trying to do it legitimately, right? Trying to work out when
these genuine disasters will occur so I can be ready for them. So I get all
these scientists together and ask them to predict what’s going to happen next.
Ask me how they did.’

‘How
did they do?’ asked Max obligingly.

‘They
did shit. Never picked one, not one! They’d say,
maybe
a tanker will go
down off Alaska,
maybe
a Russian power station will blow. Well, of
course they would! I knew that! What I didn’t know was when! Now here is where
we get to the point about what I did
not
being unethical.’

‘I just
can’t see how you’re going to make that trick, Plastic,’ said Max, his face a
picture of concentration.

‘Watch
me. So I’m telling you that me and my scientists know the stuff is going to
happen, we just don’t know when. They’re giving me all these probability charts
saying ten nuke disasters a year, fifty oil spills, tigers to be extinct some
time soon, all that stuff, and I’m thinking, well if it’s
going
to
happen
anyway,
then there’s nothing wrong in me organising it to happen
in a disciplined manner. It’s like carrying your own bomb on to a plane because
the chances of there being two people with bombs on any one plane are basically
zero.’

‘I’m
not sure I follow that analogy, man,’ said Max.

‘What
are you, stupid? It’s like crystal. I’m thinking, if my science guys say that
two tankers will sink in the Panama Canal in the next three months, then why don’t
I sink ‘em? It’s the same damage and there are huge national and international
benefits to be achieved. The common good is well served.’

‘It
is?’

‘Well,
of course it is! Have you any idea how many
jobs
are involved in
Claustrosphere manufacturing? Also distribution and installation? Even then, we
had a colossal workforce, not to mention the associate industries. Maybe you
think that millions of working men and women should be laid off while we all
wait for some dumb rust-bucket to sink in the Panama Canal? A rust-bucket, I
might remind you, that we all know is
going to sink anyway!
Then there’s
the huge investment involved. Even then anyone could see that Claustrosphere
was going to be bigger than cars. In global economic terms Claustrosphere is
the difference between boom and bust. If the wind goes out of our sales, bang,
recession! I had a
duty
to make the Claustrosphere operation manageable.
The issue was jobs and dollars in the heartlands! That is not something that
can be left drifting up to vagaries of non-specific probabilities.’

‘You
mean chance?’

‘Exactly,
I mean chance.’

‘So you
saw creating environmental disaster as a kind of moral thing, then?’ Max really
was fascinated. Tolstoy’s sense of conviction was awesome.

‘I saw
creating a situation that was healthy for investors and employees alike as a
moral thing, certainly, and if that meant creating environmental disaster, then
so be it,’ said Tolstoy. ‘To me, encouraging growth and creating jobs is the
only morality, which as it happens is fortunate, because I must admit to you,
it turned out that my probabilities’ theory did not hold water.’

‘The
one about if two tankers were going to sink anyway, you might as well be the
person to sink them?’

‘Yeah,
what actually happened was that four tankers sank, our two and the two that
were going to, anyway.’

‘So the
bomb on the plane theory’s crap?’

‘It’s a
cute theory. I still think it should work.’

‘But it
doesn’t?’

‘Apparently
not, no.’

Plastic
Tolstoy paused for the first time in a while. Max could not help but gape at
the enormity of the horrors of which he had been told. Back at his house,
Rosalie and Judy too were completely dumbfounded. The sheer scale of Tolstoy’s
crimes left them lost for words.

‘Well,
I guess tough decisions take tough guys,’ Max said finally.

‘Exactly,’
Tolstoy replied. ‘Personally, I see myself as a global philanthropist.’

Another
job for the killing people.

Max decided it was time to
leave. The danger he was in had suddenly dawned upon him. He remembered how
Tolstoy had served Nathan for simply suggesting a screenplay idea. Now he, Max,
knew the whole dreadful story.

‘Thanks,
Plastic, it’s been real,’ he said and ran for the door. Unfortunately, the door
of the office was locked. Max turned to face Plastic Tolstoy, who was playing
with his gun.

‘Max,
you leaving without saying goodbye?’ said Tolstoy.

‘Are
you going to kill me, Plastic?’ Max inquired.

‘Oh
yes, thanks for reminding me,’ said Plastic and fired at Max. When the noise
died away, Max was still standing, if rather paler than before.

‘Just
kidding,’ said Plastic. ‘It’s a hologram. Ha ha! Like I told you, I don’t want
dead movie stars cluttering up my house. Besides, Schwartz and your girl know
you came here. If I kill you here, it might get complicated, even for a guy with
my clout. See ya, kid. Be lucky.’

Tolstoy
pressed a button, the door sprang open and Max turned and ran. He left
everything behind, including the telephone. He just ran, out of the office, out
of the house, into his car and away.

Rosalie
and Judy turned to each other in triumph. They had the whole confession on
tape, this was dynamite indeed.

‘We
have to take it to the police,’ said Judy. ‘Now.’

‘No
way!’ Rosalie replied. ‘If we do that, sure we get Tolstoy, but the tape
becomes evidence, prejudicial to the trial, then the appeal, then the appeal on
the appeal. We need it now! People have to see it, they have to know what’s
been happening to the world, what we’ve all let happen. This tape could be the
thing that finally turns the environmental argument around.’

‘I
don’t think so, Rosalie,’ said Judy. ‘Tolstoy owns the lion’s share of the
world’s communication systems. You can’t fight a propaganda war with him, even
with that tape. His will be the loudest voice.’

‘Maybe,
but there’s one voice people still listen to. One voice which will always be
heard, even if not one of Tolstoy’s channels were to broadcast him. Jurgen Thor
has the status to get the truth about Tolstoy into the public domain. I say we
take the tape to him.’

Rosalie
had been galvanised back into action. All thoughts of retreating from the world
had vanished from her mind. She no longer wanted to hide away in Max’s
Claustrosphere. She knew now that the end of the world was not inevitable, it
was being manipulated, and she wanted to fight.

Just
then, further discussion was cut short by the voice of Plastic Tolstoy. He was
not speaking to them, but Rosalie and Judy could still see and hear him over
Max’s phone, which still lay, its line open, on Tolstoy’s desk.

Plastic
Tolstoy was speaking to his assistant on his intercom. ‘Sugar, are the despatch
people at the gate? … Good . Yes, Max Maximus the movie star will be
emerging in a red Porsche … Yes, tell them to make sure they do it well
away from the house. The usual rules apply.’

Rosalie
and Judy both knew instantly what Tolstoy was saying. Rosalie grabbed the phone
off the hook, thus finally ending the lengthy recording.

‘Call
it off, Tolstoy!!’ she screamed down the phone, desperately trying to make the
man at the other end hear. ‘We know what you’re doing! We heard you! Killing
Max will achieve nothing!’

But
Tolstoy got up and left his office without hearing the tiny tinny voice
emanating from Max’s phone.

‘Tolstoy!’
Rosalie screamed, ‘I’ll kill you if you hurt him. I’ll kill you!’

But she
could hear the office door close, and knew that he was gone.

Chapter
Twenty-Five

The Hollywood Treatment

Failing
the hit.

‘Rosalie,’ Judy pleaded,
cowering behind the dashboard, his knuckles translucent on the armrests of his
seat. ‘If we get pulled for busting red lights we won’t even get a chance to
try and save Max.’

‘Nobody’s
going to pull me over,’ Rosalie responded tersely. Her whole body was hunched
forward, willing the car to go faster, her chin nearly touching the
steering-wheel. ‘If we can get a few cops chasing us, all the better.’

They
were driving very fast through the quiet tree-lined streets of the Beverly
Hills Fortified Village, in a desperate effort to intercept Max’s red Porsche.

‘They
can’t have got to him yet. They can’t,’ Rosalie was repeating to herself as
they hurtled across the exclusive residential area.

But
they could and they had.

Rosalie
and Judy skidded around a sharp corner in a leafy little road to find Max’s
Porsche slewed into the middle of the highway and another car, full of what
looked like common hoodlums pumping bullets into it.

Much to
Judy’s dismay, this terrible sight caused Rosalie to accelerate forward and she
deliberately slammed her car into the side of the car occupied by the hoodlums.

‘Get
Max,’ Rosalie cried, as they came to rest and their heads stopped whipping back
and forth. ‘I’ll cover you.’ It was only then that she remembered she did not
actually have a gun. ‘Shit!’ she said.

‘Here,
use mine,’ said Judy. ‘I’m not very good with it anyway,’ and he handed her
his regulation issue machine-pistol.

By this
time, the killers had regained some of their composure, and were thinking
about finishing off the job which had been interrupted by the crash. They did
not realise that what had happened was anything other than an ordinary accident
on the public highway. They were therefore considerably surprised when the
driver of the car began to shoot at them, killing one of their number almost
immediately. This was not how the contract was supposed to go. There was not,
as far as the killers were aware, supposed to be any resistance. Perhaps it was
the cops? If it was not the cops, it would certainly not be long before the
cops arrived. The killers took stock and the situation was not to their liking.
The police were coming and some mad woman was firing at them for some reason,
but what? Could it possibly be because she’d dented her car? The killers
wondered if they should call it a day, their job seemed done anyway. Max
definitely looked dead. He was slumped in his car, completely covered in blood
and bullet holes. Indeed, so much blood did there seem to be that, if the
bullets hadn’t killed him already, he would shortly drown. Feeling their
professional obligations to have been fulfilled, the killers withdrew.

Talk
to my agent.

Having got the dead, or at
the very least, nearly dead Max into the back of the car, Rosalie also
accelerated away from the scene of the incident. She did not know where she was
going, but she did know that she had to get away. Max was a celebrity and if
news of his being gunned down got out there would be a media circus, and it
would be impossible to keep him hidden. Rosalie felt sure that if Max was alive
Tolstoy would try to hit him again.

‘Is he
alive?’ she shouted over her shoulder at Judy, who had got into the back seat
and was attempting to tend to Max. ‘Please tell me he’s alive!’

‘I
don’t know, I think so. Yes, I think he is. He’s twitching a little, although
that could just be reflexes,’ Judy replied.

‘Is his
hand on his crotch?’ Rosalie shouted back.

‘No.’

‘Then
it isn’t his reflexes.’