A Plague of Hearts by Patrick Whittaker (best large ereader .TXT) 📖

- was the Big Cheese? ‘Actually I’m going to see Doctor Ormus.’
‘So am I. He should be expecting us.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he’d know by now about what’s happened to our respective bosses. Yours has been arrested and mine’s been murdered by one of the Panda’s Death Squads. He was found this morning with piano wire wrapped around his throat. The police have already said it was suicide, but it strikes me as absurd that anyone would - or even could - kill themselves that way.’
‘But why should the Panda want to knock off the Royal Librarian?’
‘That,’ said the Grey Squirrel, ‘is what I intend to find out.’


4. The Big Cheese

The music filtering into the Conference Room filled the Panda with a vague nostalgia for something he could not name. Resting his elbows on his desk and his head in his paws, he reflected on how different his life might have been had he been human. Instead of twelve feet of reinforced concrete, there would be a sky over his head and perhaps a wife at his side. And children. Things his Generals took for granted.
He doubted that he would have become President. Given a choice, he would have steered clear of politics and entered a more honourable - and less stressful - profession. It was not as if he even cared for the Party or its doctrines. They had asked him to stand as a bye-election candidate, hoping that his cuteness and apparent docility would win over at least the housewives. When he’d come through with a majority unheard of in recent times, it seemed only natural that he should set his sights on the party leadership and then the presidency.
It had been easy. Ridiculously so. No struggle. No starving in the wilderness. It seemed that in politics cuteness was the key.
So here he was, the youngest President in the entire history of Wonderland, a dictator who had come to power by virtue of two black eyes, a wet nose and a streak of ruthless cunning.
The mahogany desk which supported his elbows was littered with maps and documents, well thumbed legacies of his years at the top.
Just one match, he thought, a single flame and the will to use it and these papers become ashes. Then I can get up and walk away, disappear into obscurity, leaving behind only a smoke-filled room. I’ll tell my Generals and Party Big-Wigs that I’m going into retirement and they can find someone else to conquer the world for them.
But, of course, it wouldn’t be that easy. The Panda was too important to be allowed to slip away.
Leaning back in his chair - all velvet and leather - he opened the desk drawer and examined its contents. Everything in there, the chewing gum and the paper clips, the photo of himself as a youth wearing his school uniform - all these were covered by a fine film of dust. It made him feel old, as if he was dead and buried and all-but forgotten.
What made me look in here? he wondered. His younger self stared up at him from the old photo, a reminder of things past and lost forever. In the picture, he was smiling. And in the background, the red brickwork of the Faraday Secondary School gave way to playing fields. There seemed to be a rugby match in progress; the players were blurred, out of focus, matchstick boys playing a game of no significance whatsoever.
The President had been excluded from such games. The school governors had not liked having to allow animals into their school and were certainly not going to put the human children through the ordeal of sharing showers with them. For the most part, they did not even have to work with them. Separate classes. Separate rules.
Suppressing a feeling of hurt, the President closed the draw and pressed a button on the side of his desk.
The response was immediate and predictable. Like a well-trained circus dog, General Cartier appeared in the doorway then marched briskly forward, his face as bland as the buff folder tucked under his arm. He stopped in front of the President’s desk, clicked his heels and saluted.
‘This music,’ said the President, pointing to a speaker hanging on the wall. ‘What is it?’
Cartier frowned. ‘I honestly don’t know, Your Excellency. I’m not really a musical person.’
‘No. You wouldn’t be, would you?’
General Cartier made no response. It did not occur to him that he was being criticised. Snugly sheltered behind his uniforms and medals, he was sure of himself, certain he could hold himself against the strongest of verbal attacks. But his whole strategy depended on the attack being frontal and obvious. He was not a subtle man. Blood and thunder were the terms he thought in and that left him wide open and vulnerable.
Which was why the Panda found him valuable.
There was no danger of Cartier involving himself in quiet, complex conspiracies against the status quo. Such intrigues were beyond the grasp of his imagination. If Cartier was to turn on the Panda, it would be an all-out, nothing-held-back affair. One which could be spotted a mile off.
Standing in front of the President, the General had no real presence. He was like a familiar piece of furniture, a lamp-stand without a bulb.
Or, decided the Panda, a machine without a mind. ‘I want to ask you something.’
‘Excellency?’
‘And I want an honest answer from you. Understood?’
‘Of course, Your Excellency. My expertise is always at your disposal.’
‘I want to know if you think I’m cute and cuddly.’
For a second, Cartier lost a layer of composure. The question hit him like a physical projectile, causing him to blanch. ‘Well,’ he said, and paused while he sought for an answer. Finally, he had one. ‘My wife, Mrs. Cartier, has often told me that you have a way of looking sad and vulnerable which she finds quite endearing.’
‘You mean she wants to mother me?’
‘You’d have to ask Mrs. Cartier that, Your Excellency.’
‘Maybe I will.’ The Panda decided to settle for an impasse. ‘All right, General. We’ll let the matter drop. I hear the Gerbils were busy again last night.’
‘They blew up an ammo dump in Bios - less than ten miles from here.’
‘And what action have you taken?’
‘We’ve set up several road blocks and are using as many men as we can spare to search the area. With any luck, we’ll have the blighters under lock and key by nightfall.’
The Panda doubted it. But there were more important matters to worry about. ‘How about Operation Big Sweep? Do you have the figures?’
Cartier patted the buff folder he had brought with him. ‘All the latest intelligence is in here, Your Excellency.’
‘Where’s General Lazenby? I thought you two were working on this together?’
‘He’s right outside.’
‘Then ask him to come in. And tell him to bring a couple of chairs. I’m not having you two hovering around me like a pair of hungry vultures.’
‘Yes, Your Excellency.’
Two chairs and General Lazenby were duly fetched.
The Panda watched every movement of Cartier’s face as he sat down; he noted that the man never once glanced at Lazenby. The mistrust between his two top Generals was something the Panda both relished and encouraged. Divide and conquer. Keep the enemy at its own throat.
Lazenby perched uneasily on the edge of his chair. A thin, intense person, he chewed persistently at his lower lip, kept looking from left to right as if expecting disaster to strike at any moment. The Panda loathed all his staff but had a special dislike for Lazenby. The man was an opportunist. He had inherited a great fortune at a young age and used his money to bribe and bully his way into General Command, drawing about him a tangled web of deceit and intrigue.
The Panda hoped that Lazenby would one day suffer a nasty and undignified end.
I’m surrounded by perverts and psychopaths, the Panda reminded himself. There’s not one of my Generals who isn’t sick in the head.
‘Everything’s working out fine,’ Lazenby announced. He smirked insolently, pleased with himself for flaunting protocol by addressing the Panda without leave to do so. ‘I would say that at least ninety-percent of our targets have been rounded up and the remaining few have been rendered ineffective. I don’t think we need worry any more about the so-called Red Orchestra.’
The Panda pointedly ignored this snippet and turned to General Cartier. ‘I don’t want any let-up in effort until every last element of dissent is safely neutralized. This gets top priority.’
General Cartier looked uncomfortable. It was his habit to obey orders without question, but these latest ones made no sense at all. ‘I really don’t think we should be wasting our time with a handful of malcontents. So far, they’ve had absolutely no significant effect on any aspect of our war effort whatsoever.’
‘That’s as maybe,’ said the Panda. ‘But I feel this war will be over in a matter of weeks, and I want the path to peace to be as uncomplicated as possible. I don’t expect you to understand my reasons. After all, you’re a soldier, not a diplomat.’
Finally acknowledging Lazenby’s presence, the Panda pointed a clawed finger in his direction. ‘What’s the latest on the March Hare and the Grey Squirrel?’
‘As you predicted, they’re heading to Enigma. In fact, they were spotted passing on the ferry just a few minutes ago.’
‘Straight to Doctor Ormus.’
‘Whom,’ said General Cartier, ‘I feel should have been arrested and charged with treason months ago.’
‘You still insist he’s the Head of the Red Orchestra?’ said the Panda, amused by the General’s naivety. ‘The so-called Big Cheese?’
‘That’s what every piece of evidence points to.’
‘Yes. Kind of convenient, isn’t it?’
‘Begging your pardon, Your Excellency,’ said Cartier. ‘But I think he’s a far more likely candidate than the Knave of Hearts.’
‘Of course. It never even crossed my mind that the Knave was the Big Cheese.’
‘So we can dispose of him?’
‘No. I have plans for the Knave of Hearts. Very big plans indeed.’
*
Moodily, the March Hare stepped off the ferry and stood on the quayside, studying his own reflection in the grey water beneath his feet. He felt uneasy - not just about his visit to Castle Ormus, but also about the fact that he and the Grey Squirrel seemed to have a common purpose. There was a pattern to everything that had happened today. He could sense it shifting around him. But he had no idea what that pattern could be, or who had set it into motion.
The Tired River slapped lazily across the stone embankment like a slow handclap, throwing out ripples that made a nonsense of his reflection. The top and bottom halves of his face swung in opposite directions, coalesced, parted again. His arms grew and shrank.
He was vaguely conscious of the Grey Squirrel standing behind him, his books clutched in his arms, his anorak flapping in the breeze.
From all around came sounds the March Hare found oppressive. Passing traffic. A vendor shouting meaningless syllables to draw pedestrians to his barrow. A police siren fading into the distance. It was all alien to him - aspects of a murky world that existed apart from the life he led in the pastoral surrounds of the palace.
Enigma,