I loaded the shotgun, and then stowed it under the rear seat. By the time I reached Eden-Olympia my targets would still be asleep.
I would start with Alain and Simone Delage, drowsy after their late night in the Rue Valentin. Jane had told me that Simone kept a small chromium pistol in her bedside table, so she would be the first. I would kill her while she slept, using Halder's handgun, and avoid having to stare back into her accusing eyes. Then I would shoot Alain as he sat up, drenched in his wife's blood, moustache bristling while he reached for his glasses, unable to comprehend the administrative blunder that had led to his own death.
The Delages slept with their air-conditioning on, and no one would hear the shots through the sealed windows. Wilder Penrose would be next, ordered from his bed at gunpoint and brought down to the bare white room where he had set out his manifesto. He would be amiable, devious and concerned for me to the end, trying to win me with his brotherly charm while unsettling my eyes with the sight of his raw fingernails. I admired him for his hold over me, but I would shoot him down in front of the shattered mirror, one more door to the Alice world now closed for ever. Destivelle and Kalman would follow, and the last would be Dmitri Golyadkin, asleep in his bunk in the security building. I would reach the TV centre in time for a newsflash on the early-afternoon news, but whatever happened I knew that Eden-Olympia would lead the bulletins. This time there would be questions as well as answers.
I listened to the Cherokee taxi towards the runway, then stop and begin its take-off checks. Its propellers threw the morning light back into the sun, and the high drone of its engines seemed a warning call to the people of the Riviera, rousing them from their torpor.
I started the Range Rover, reversed outside the showroom of Nostalgic Aviation and set off through the airport access roads to the coastal highway. The Cherokee moved down the runway, rose confidently into the air and made a wide turn over the sea towards the heights of Super-Cannes. I watched it disappear beyond Eden-Olympia and Sophia-Antipolis, its passengers briefing themselves for their board meetings at Sandoz and Ciba, Roche and Rhône-Poulenc, the pharmaceutical companies who blessed the deepest sleep of the townsfolk and tourists lying behind their shuttered balconies. The beaches beside the coastal road were littered with forgotten film magazines and empty bottles of suntan cream, the debris of a dream washed ashore among the driftwood. I drove on, thinking of Jane and Frances Baring and Wilder Penrose, ready to finish the task that David Greenwood had begun.
About the Author
J. G. Ballard was born in 1930 in Shanghai, China, where his father was a businessman. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, he and his family were placed in a civilian prison camp. They returned to England in 1946. After reading Medicine at Cambridge for two years, he worked as a copywriter and Covent Garden porter before going to Canada with the RAF. His first short story appeared in New Worlds in 1956, and after working on scientific journals he published his first major novel, The Drowned World, in 1962. His acclaimed 1984 novel Empire of the Sun won the Guardian Fiction Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It was later filmed by Steven Spielberg. His controversial 1973 novel Crash has also been made into an equally controversial film, directed by David Cronenberg. J. G. Ballard's most recent novels include The Kindness of Women, Rushing to Paradise, Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes.