Chapter 14

I listened to his puling drivel for nearly 45 seconds before my diplomacy switched to war. 'Well, sir, with all due respect,' I growled at the Minister, 'Ten days warning might just have been adequate to have at least shown we were on the ball scientifically, even if it might not have helped save very many lives.' Arthur and Sir Anthony cringed on either side of me; I felt a foot frantically kicking me under the table. I ignored the pain.

'Don't you dare you speak to me like that, Turner!' the Minister barked. 'I am the Minister, young man! You will treat me with the respect due to this office!'

Flattered as I was to be called "young man", I rose slowly. I placed my knuckles firmly on the glossy walnut table top and slowly tilted my body forward. Being woken up early in the morning does not exactly do wonders for my disposition. A very long time away from home didn't help, either.

'Now you listen to me, you fucking old baboon,' I snarled. 'I don't give a shit who you are and I've got no respect for you or your office. All I know is you're the one who sat on his big fat ass until it was too late. Not us. You're the one who's responsible for maybe fifty thousand people being drowned in their fucking sleep, you senile old fart. So don't try to shove the blame off on us, dammit.' Arthur's pale skin flashed the deadest of dead whites. Sir Anthony inspected the rosy dawn through the window with deep interest and a faint smile scampering upon his ample lips.

The Minister jumped up from his chair, overturning his fancy pen set. His wattles throbbed crimson. 'You can't speak to me like that, Turner! I'll have you thrown out of here on your bright green backside again!' he gibbered. 'And this time, by God, I won't rest until you're hounded right out of this country.' He grabbed for his phone.

Sir Anthony's hand snaked across the highly polished desk and calmly seized the Minister's wrist in a vice-like grip. 'Leave off, Freddy,' he said calmly.

The Minister spluttered, 'What! You, too, Tony?' He angrily tried to shake Sir Anthony's hand loose. He couldn't even budge Sir Anthony's arm. The Minister's bottom lip quivered. 'Let go, Tony, you're hurting me, dammit!' he cried plaintively. 'Let go!'

'You were always like this in school too, Freddy. "He did it, sir"', mocked Sir Anthony. He squeezed the flabby wrist even harder. The Minister paled. 'Now this time you've cocked up good and proper, Freddy. You're going to have to take your caning like a man this time, mate,' he growled. He opened his hand. The Minister jerked his wrist away. 'So sit down, shut up and listen to us.'

The Minister slumped back into his chair and massaged his wrist sulkily. 'All right,' he snapped, 'Let's hear what you've got to say.'

'First thing, I want to know is what do we know about what happened to the islands?' asked Sir Anthony.

'According to British Telecom, all communications to the islands were cut dead at 0148 this morning, our time,' said the Minister. 'They alerted MOD who scrambled a photoreconnaissance mission from Gibraltar about two hours later. It arrived over where Mindelo should be about two hours after that. It couldn't find the town, only some rocks sticking out of the water and a lot of garbage in the water. It took pictures of those and sloped back home. That's all we know.'

'And when she got there, the island was bare, and so the poor doggie had none, had none,' I sang. I was in pretty good voice that morning, too.

'Have you told the PM about our warning yet?' asked Sir Anthony, ignoring me.

'I was going to tell her today, Tony,' said the Minister petulantly. 'I was!'

'You what?' I yelped. 'You mean you haven't told her yet?'

The Minister lifted his nose in my direction. 'I have an appointment with her this morning, Turner, if you must know.'

'Got your plastic pants on yet, mate?' I crowed.

'All right, Dick,' warned Sir Anthony, 'That's enough'. He wasn't pissing around, either, I could see. So I shut up. He turned back towards the Minister. 'Now, Fred,' he said, 'I'm sure you'll appreciate that your news is now, umm, somewhat anti-climatic.'

'Well, dammit, Tony,' whined the Minister, 'You scientific johnnys are always jumping at shadows. How was I to know you just happened to be serious this time? I needed to weigh the evidence carefully before alerting the PM.' He turned a hurt face toward Arthur. 'Besides, you told me we had two weeks.'

Shutting up was impossible, after all. 'Minister, we told you 16 to 18 days, at the current spreading rate,' I hissed with commendable restraint.

'It was still almost a week early,' he accused.

'Listen,' I said slowly through tightly clenched teeth, 'This is an unknown natural phenomenon, not a bloody TV programme schedule. Nobody really knows how fast this thing's moving. Understand?'

'Moving?' gulped the Minister, alarm registering on his bland face. 'You mean it hasn't stopped?' He turned and appealed to Sir Anthony. 'I thought you said that the Cape Verde Islands would have some sort of tidal wave, like Weymouth only much worse, and that would be the end of it, Tony.'

'No, Freddy,' said Sir Anthony, 'That's not what we said. We explained about the Bulge to you. We told you that the Cape Verde Islands would be hit by an 85 foot swell in 16 to 18 days.'

'And you mean this Bulge thing is still moving?' he gasped.

Sir Anthony nodded deeply. 'We estimate that it'll hit the West Africa coast in just over a month.'

'Like a ton of bricks,' I added.

Unexpectedly, the Minister's face brightened. 'Whew,' he breathed. His face became noble. 'Naturally, gentlemen,' he said in a deep, politician's voice, 'This tragedy undoubtedly will cause terrible hardship to the people of West Africa. But they may rest assured that Britain cares deeply about them. Britain will be among the first of the world's nations to come to their aid. To share with them.'

I pursed my lips and shook my head sadly. Perhaps we really did deserve this scourge, I thought. God must have gone back and read the small print in his contract to Noah. Who could blame Him, either? Maybe the planet would be a cleaner place, in every way. 'Not quite, Minister,' I said.

'What do you mean, Turner, "not quite"?' he asked haughtily.

'I mean, that's not quite the end of it, Minister,' I replied. 'Not by a long shot. We'll be sharing a lot more with them this time.'

The Minister looked at Sir Anthony in confusion. 'Oh, what on earth is this fellow talking about now, Tony?' he fretted tiredly. 'That'll be the end of it, of course, won't it?'

Sir Anthony cleared his throat. 'Well, umm, predictions are, Freddy, that this Bulge will hit Spain and Portugal in about eight months, at the present rate of spreading,' he explained.

'Oh, those poor chaps!' cried the Minister, still not getting it.

'And it'll hit Britain about six months later, Minister!' blurted Arthur before the Minister could launch into another "Caring, Sharing Britain" speech.

Do you remember that old photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald getting shot in Dallas? You know, the guy who was supposed to have killed Kennedy. Oswald's doubled over in agony and there's a cop in a Stetson and white suit chained to him. Somebody must've forgotten to tell the cop what was going to happen. His face is a classic. The Minister looked just like Oswald's poor copper. To a tee. He even stopped spluttering and spouting rot for a few seconds.

I knew exactly what he was going to say. He said it. 'Are you sure, Tony?' he whiffled. 'Absolutely sure?'

'No, of course not,' I rasped. 'It's all a big joke, Minister. Hah, hah, hah!' I shook a playful finger at him. 'But we're not letting on how we got the Cape Verde Islands to disappear, Minister. That's for us to know and for you to find out. Look,' I said, pulled back my cuff, 'Hey presto, nothing up this sleeve ... '

'Dick, now that's really enough,' snapped Sir Anthony, 'Let's not make things any more awkward than they already are.' I flushed and clamped my mouth shut. He looked at the Minister. 'The PM will find out about the islands, even if it's D-Noticed, won't she?'

The Minister's adam's apple bobbed up and down. 'Oh, yes, of course, she will, Tony,' he agreed. 'She knows everything. Absolutely everything. She probably knows about the islands already from MOD or who knows where.'

'Who knows that we told you about the Bulge last week?' asked Sir Anthony.

'Well, no one, Tony,' said the Minister stiffly. 'It was a confidential matter. My secretary wasn't even there. I took a few notes myself.'

'No one knows?' demanded Sir Anthony. 'No one at all?'

'Well, I might have mentioned it to my wife,' he admitted. 'But she's a jolly discreet old girl, of course. Why do you ask, Tony?'

'Hem,' murmured Sir Anthony. 'Well, look, here's the problem, Freddy. If we admit that we knew what was going to happen, and you didn't tell the PM, then you're going to get the chop and maybe us, too. If say we didn't know what was going to happen, then the PM's going to chop us up and maybe you, too.' He pulled the tuft of woolly hair sticking out of his bald spot. 'I really don't think we can hide it, Fred. It's a bit of a dilemma, rather.'

'Oh, Tony,' the Minister pleaded, 'You're not going to throw me to the wolves, are you?'

'Looks like it, Freddy,' murmured Sir Anthony. He settled back in his chair and gazed sadly at the Minister.

'But, Tony, I got you this job,' he whimpered. 'It's not bloody fair.'

I snapped my fingers. 'Look, I've got this absolutely, totally wigged out idea, chaps!' I cried. All faces swung towards me, eager. 'Let's ... let's tell the truth!' Their faces dropped with disappointment.

'Oh, I say,' lisped the Minister with evident disgust. 'We can't do that.'

'Well, why not?' I demanded.

'Well, well ... it's just not done, Turner,' protested the Minister indignantly. 'It's not right. And nobody'll believe us, for a start.'

Sir Anthony pulled his pointed ear lobes and nodded. 'Hmmm, now that's a pretty canny game, Dick,' he mused admiringly. 'If we tell the truth, emphasising our natural caution, our careful on-going evaluations, of course, and point out the Oceanographic Institute's seriously under-estimated spreading rate, we might just get away with it. Everyone'll spend their time looking for some sort of cover-up which simply doesn't exist. That's not bad, Dick. It's not really bad at all. Very deep.'

'Yeah,' I added heavily, 'Besides, announcing the end of the world might just sort of distract people's attention from finding someone to blame, too, huh?'

Sir Anthony chose to take the comment constructively. 'Yes, of course, it will, Dick,' he said. 'We'll be able to hammer home our West African coast prediction and hint about the longer term, but urgent, implications for Europe. Worst comes to worst, we can lay Britain's risk on them. Minor details are bound to get lost in the shuffle.'

'Sure, minor details like a couple dozen islands, 50,000 lives and some very weak-gutted sods,' I rasped. I was having quite a bit of trouble with myself about our having argued the toss for two days. Of course we never let on to anyone about that.

'Oh, I do wish you wouldn't always be turning holy on us all the time, Dick,' murmured Sir Anthony. 'We made no worse of a mess out of this business than anyone else would have under similar circumstances. Our flayed hides, pegged out to dry in the sun and wind, aren't going to bring those unfortunates back, now are they? And a new crew is bound to make a lot more mistakes than we will, anyway.'

* * *

Amazing, isn't it really? The Bulge had claimed its first victims and was headed merrily in our direction. Our fate was sealed. So there we were, gouging, scraping and blaming away like mad. It was almost exactly like that, too, when they used to drive my sheep into the slaughterhouse vans. Herded off to their deaths, there they were, mounting each other and butting furiously to be head sheep. Well, I guess that's just life, isn't it, really? I shouldn't be so harsh on us, should I?