‘More so than you, Mr Bell.’
‘I only pry when I’m concerned. And to tell you the truth, Dunc, I am concerned.’ Subject change, the art of leaving peril hanging. ‘Is that carpentaria or stephanotis I can smell?’
‘Probably.’
‘I love stephanotis.’ He inhaled deep. There was a hard, playful edge to the tone, deliberately evasive. Pitt tilted his head towards the night sky. They were playing him, for sport or by design; they wanted a confession, would exploit the cracks. Scare tactics. He had spent long enough in lecture halls and tutorials to read people, gauge audiences, fine-tune his delivery. Bluff was the key to survival, assumed superiority and sour indignation the mode of choice tonight.
‘And I would love an explanation.’ Peevish exasperation, heart-felt, fear-driven. ‘You aren’t here to compliment me on my shrubs, my home or my wine cellar; you didn’t force entry for a fireside chat.’
‘Nothing wrong with discourse.’
‘Everything wrong in your approach. I’m a busy man, Mr Bell.’
‘You should make time for old friends.’ A slow pull on the glass of cranberry. ‘It’s what memories are made of. You remember how much we had in common, the information we shared, the confidences?’
‘There are many interests claiming my attention.’
‘And loyalty. See, I used to admire you, Prof. You had integrity, values. We had mutual goals.’
‘Mutual?’ The voice hissed high in a tightening jaw. ‘You flatter yourself. I’ve never condoned what you do, advocated violence.’
‘Oh, no. You’ve always kept your hands clean. Professor Clean. It’s important to you, isn’t it? Important to us, too. Nothing like objectivity, intellectual credibility.’
Pitt rounded. ‘I deserve credibility. I won’t be blamed for you and your paramilitary madmen distorting my research.’
‘I’m sure people will be sympathetic to your dilemma.’ Bell smiled in the gloom at the academic’s impotent wrath. It was an amusing diversion, the conversation itself of no consequence. Sound did not travel out here, fury got nowhere. You could set fire to yourself in a driveway and local residents would still attribute the smell and screams to a family barbecue. ‘You realize the world’s gonna burn, Dunc? Every black township, every black dwelling, every black trace. From the Lorraine Motel, Memphis, to Uncle Tom’s cabin. All going up. A firestorm’s coming.’
‘They die out, always do.’
‘Not this one. Charlie Manson, his cult followers in The Family? Amateurs. Compared to us, their attempts to create race war through project Helter Skelter were crude, small-scale, a test-tube experiment. We’re creating Supernova, Big Bang, collapsing the whole known fucking universe in order to create.’
‘I’ll have no part in it.’
‘You’re so right.’
‘Is that a threat?’ He guessed it was.
Bell was concentrating on the distance of space, peering upwards. ‘Ever heard of 2001 KX 76?’ He did not wait for the reply. ‘Ice planet, that’s what it is, 788 miles across, floating between Neptune and Pluto.’ Floating? Pitt was doing the same, somewhere between a rock and the hardest place. ‘Orbits the sun from a distance of four billion miles.’
‘About how far you are from reality, Mr Bell. We’re talking criminal stupidity, insanity, not astronomy.’
‘The spores of Atlantis, of the Aryan nations, came originally from an ice moon like that one. We’re different, Professor. We’re inheritors, we’re descended from the first superior seed.’
‘Nazi claptrap.’
‘Is it? It’s written in the stars, it’s written in blood.’
‘Not in the source material I’ve studied.’
‘You believed, but you’ve been turned. You sold out, sold us out.’
‘How dare you …’
‘Don’t shit me, Professor.’ The interruption was harsh, shouted, the finger jabbing into Pitt’s chest, pushing him against the wall. ‘I respected you, liked you. But you deceived me.’
‘Wait.’ The glass had fallen from Pitt’s hand. He was sweating, mind tumbling. The finger pressed into him, ended the doubt, the shadow-boxing. He attempted to keep his balance, his demeanour, as the truth closed in, as the grounds for arbitration fell away. They had discovered.
‘Wait for what – for Reverend Azania to come and save you? For an academic, you sure are stupid. Wake up!’ The flat of a hand struck Pitt’s face. He cringed. Bell brought his mouth close, his voice lowered. ‘There’s one thing more dangerous than getting a complete picture, and that’s getting a partial one. Makes for poor judgement, makes for error. See, Al Azania is signed up to our project, totally committed to conjoining us in battle.’
The response was high and reedy, near-inaudible with shock. ‘I never meant …’
‘Do I have to guess the song? No one ever means, Dunc. Simple oversight. You forgot what loyalty was, you forgot your obligations, you forgot you wanted to stay breathing.’
‘It was duty. As an American.’
‘As an American, my grandpa was skinned alive by the Japs on Peleliu. As an American, my older brother had his balls cut off by slopes in ’Nam. So don’t quote me duty.’
The world of lecture circuits, of celebrity academe, was a parallel existence, unobtainable. He was in a different landscape, without local knowledge, without survival tools. No one would hear, none would reach him. British Security Service officer Josh Kemp was several thousand miles distant. Too far, too late. Pitt was alone; he would have to improvise. He attempted a comeback. ‘Look, Ted, let’s be rational. This is unnecessary.’
‘Oh, it’s necessary.’
‘Simply because I don’t share your goals …’
‘Doesn’t mean you can’t share in our methods. We don’t know who else you’ve contacted, who you’ve tried to warn.’
‘Nobody. I …’
Bell swiped a finger across Pitt’s sweating forehead, tasted the moisture on his tongue. ‘My, you’re sweating like a nigger on a rape charge.’ Voice measured. ‘The Feds seem appraised of the Forresters. Leaves us with a messy situation. I don’t appreciate mess.’ He poured the ice from his glass over Pitt’s head. The professor shuddered. ‘I do, however, enjoy practical jokes.’
