The Wilt Alternative

'Besides, being a Moslem, you'd be doing me a favour. I've always understood that death in battle was a guarantee of salvation according to the Prophet, and while I can't say I'm actually battling I should have thought being shot by a murderer amounts to the same thing.'

'We are not murderers,' shouted Baggish, 'we are freedom fighters against international imperialism!'

'Which serves to prove my point,' continued Mrs de Frackas imperturbably. 'You're fighting and I am self-evidently a product of the Empire. If you kill me I should, according to your philosophy, go straight to heaven.'

'We are not here to discuss philosophy,' said Chinanda. 'You stupid old woman, what do you know about the suffering of the workers?'

Mrs de Frackas turned her attention to his clothes. 'Rather more than you do by the cut of your coat, young man. It may not be obvious but I spent several years working in a children's hospital in the slums of Calcutta and I think I know what misery means. Have you ever done a hard day's work in your life?'

Chinanda evaded the question. 'But what did you do about this misery?' he yelled, poking his face close to hers. 'You washed your conscience in the hospital and then went back and lived in luxury.'

'I had three square meals a day if that's what you mean by luxury. I certainly couldn't have afforded the sort of expensive car you drive around in,' riposted the old lady. 'And while we're on the subject of washing, I think it might help to quieten the children if you allowed me to bath them.'

The terrorists looked at the quads and tended to agree. The quads were not a pleasant sight.

'OK, we bring you water down and you can wash them here,' said Chinanda, who went up to the darkened kitchen and finally found a plastic bucket under the sink. He filled it with water and brought it down with a bar of soap. Mrs de Frackas looked into the bucket doubtfully.

'I said "Wash them". Not dye them.'

'Die them? What do you mean die them?'

'Take a look for yourself,' said Mrs de Frackas. The two terrorists did, and were appalled. The bucket was filled with dark blue water.

'Now they're trying to poison us,' yelled Baggish and headed up the stairs to register this fresh complaint against the Anti-Terrorist Squad.

Inspector Flint took the call. 'Poison you? By putting something in the water supply? I can assure you I know nothing about it.'

'Then how come it's blue?'

'I've no idea. Are you sure the water's blue?'

'I know fucking well it's blue,' shouted Baggish. 'We turn the tap and the water comes out blue. You think we're idiots or something.'

Flint hesitated but suppressed his true opinion in the interest of the hostages. 'Never mind what I think,' he said, 'all I'm saying is that we have done absolutely nothing to the water supply and '

'Lying pig,' shouted Baggish. 'First you try trapping us by raping Gudrun and now you poison the Water. We don't wait any longer. The water is clean in one hour and you let Gudrun go or we execute the old woman.'

He slammed the phone down, leaving Flint more mystified than ever. 'Raping Gudrun? The man's off his head. I wouldn't touch the bitch with a bargepole and how I can be in two places at the same time defeats me. And now he's saying the water's gone blue.'

'Could be they're on drugs,' said the sergeant 'Gets them hallucinating sometimes, especially when they're under stress.'

'Stress? Don't talk to me about stress,' said Flint and turned his anger on a PLD operator. 'And what the hell are you smirking about?'

'They're trying it out in the bath now, sir. Wilt's idea. Randy little sod.'

'If you're seriously suggesting that a couple copulating in a bath can turn the rest of the water in the house blue, think again,' snapped Flint.

He leant his head back against an antimacassar and shut his eyes. His mind was churning with opinions. Wilt was mad. Wilt was a terrorist. Wilt was a mad terrorist. Wilt was possessed. Wilt was a bloody enigma. Only the last was certain, that and the Inspector's fervent wish that Wilt was a thousand miles away and that he had never heard of the bastard. Finally he roused himself.

'All right, I want that helicopter back and this time no balls-ups. The house is floodlit and it's going to stay that way. All they have to do is land that telephone through the balcony window and considering what they've done here that should be child's play. Tell the pilot he can rip the roof off if he wants to but I want a line through to that flat and fast. That's the only way we're going to find out exactly what Wilt's playing at.'

'Will do,' said the Major, and began issuing fresh instructions.

'He's playing politics now, sir,' said the operator. 'Makes Marx sound like a right-winger. Want to hear?'

'I suppose I'd better,' said Flint miserably, and the loudspeaker was switched on. Through the crackle Wilt could be heard expounding violently.

'We must annihilate the capitalist system lock stock and barrel. There must be no hesitation in exterminating the last vestiges of the ruling class and instilling a proletarian consciousness into the minds of the workers. This can best be achieved by exposing the fascistic nature of pseudo-democracy through the praxis of terror against the police and the lumpen executives of international finance. Only by demonstrating the fundamental antithesis between...'

'Christ, he sounds like a bloody textbook,' said Flint with unintentional accuracy. 'We've got a pocket Mao in the attic. Right, get these tapes through to the Idiot Brigade. Perhaps they can tell us what a lumpen executive is.'

'Helicopter's on its way,' said the Major. 'The telephone's fitted with a micro-television camera. If all goes well we'll soon see what's going on up there.'

'As if I wanted to,' said Flint and retreated to the safety of the downstairs toilet.

Five minutes later the helicopter swirled across the orchard at the bottom of the garden, poised for a moment over Number 9, and a field telephone swung through the balcony window into the flat. As the pilot lifted the machine away a trail of wire spun out behind it like the thread of a mechanical spider.

Flint emerged from the toilet to find that Chinanda was back on the phone.

'Wants to know why we haven't cleared the water, sir,' said the operator.

Inspector Flint sat down with a sigh and took the call. 'Now listen, Miguel,' he began, imitating the friendly approach of the Superintendent, 'you may not believe this '

A stream of abuse indicated all too clearly that the terrorist didn't.

'All right, I accept all that,' said Flint when the epithets dried up. 'But what I'm saying is that we aren't in the attic. We haven't put anything in the water.'

'Then why are you supplying them with weapons by helicopter?'

'That wasn't a weapon. It happened to be a telephone so we can talk to them...Yes, I daresay it doesn't sound likely. I'm the first to agree...No, we haven't. If anyone has it's the...'

'People's Alternative Army,' prompted the sergeant,

'The People's Alternative Army,' repeated Flint. 'They must have put something in the water, Miguel...What?...You don't like being called Miguel...Well as a matter of fact I don't particularly like being called fuzzpig...Yes, I heard you. I heard you the first time. And if you'll get off the line I'll talk to the bastards up there.'

And Flint slammed down the phone. 'All right, now get me through to the attic. And make it snappy. Time's running out.'

It was to run out for a further quarter of an hour. The sudden reappearance of the helicopter just when the Wilt alternative had switched from sex to politics had thrown Wilt's tactics out of joint. Having softened his victim up on the physical level he had begun confusing her still more by quoting the egregious Bilger at his most Marcusian. It hadn't been too difficult, and in any case Wilt had speculated on the injustice of human existence over many years. His dealings with Plasterers Four had taught him that he belonged to a relatively privileged society. Plasterers earned more than he did, and Printers were positively rich, but allowing for these discrepancies it was still true that he had been born into an affluent country with a favoured climate and sophisticated political institutions developed over the centuries. Above all an industrial society. The vast majority of mankind lived in abject poverty, were riddled with curable disease which went uncured, were subject to despotic governments and lived in terror and in danger of dying by starvation. To the extent that anyone tried to change this inequity, Wilt sympathized. Eva's Personal Assistance for Primitive People might be ineffectual but it had at least the merit of being personal and moving in the right direction. Terrorizing the innocent and murdering men, women and children was both ineffectual and barbaric. What difference was there between the terrorists and their victims? Only one of opinion. Chinanda and Gudrun Schautz came from wealthy families and Baggish, whose father had been a shopkeeper in Beirut, could hardly be called poor. None of these self-appointed executioners had been driven to murder by the desperation of poverty, and as far as Wilt could tell their fanaticism had its roots in no specific cause. They weren't trying to drive the British from Ulster, the Israelis from the Golan Heights or even the Turks from Cyprus. They were political poseurs whose enemy was life. In short they were murderers by personal choice, psychopaths who camouflaged their motives behind a screen of Utopian theory. Power was their kick, the power to inflict pain and to terrify. Even their own readiness to die was a sort of power, some sick and infantile form of masochism and expiation of guilt, not for their filthy crimes, but for being alive at all. Beyond that there were doubtless other motives concerned with parents or toilet training. Wilt didn't care. It was enough that they were carriers of the same political rabies that had driven Hitler to construct Auschwitz and kill himself in the bunker, or the Cambodians to murder one another by the million. As such they were beyond the pale of sympathy. Wilt had his children to protect and only his wits to help him.