Chapter 6

Sorry, I had to introduce a new character. He does relate to the existing ones though...

Chapter 6

Phillip swore to himself and took a long slug of coffee. Coffee that is, topped up with whisky. Whisky smuggled in by one of his lackeys. It was so difficult to get the whisky he wanted out here. Yet it was essential to be out here, for his plans to come together.

His plans, he reflected bitterly. All his best laid plans, gone to waste, all due to the meddling of the mysterious “Great She Elephant”. What was she up to? he thought. Who was she? Was she the one pulling the strings behind this whole operation? Or was she a decoy?

Ever since the incident in the BBC accounts department all those years ago, Phillip had swore revenge on Eddie. Sure, it was only an accident, he’d said. But Phillip knew the score. Nothing was an accident as far as Eddie was concerned. Phillip had been spoken to, he knew he’d been spoken to and he knew there was nothing he could do about it. Until now that is.

On their first day working together, Phillip had mentioned the pumping lemma. He often mentioned the pumping lemma. He regarded it as a shibboleth as to how he would react to people. Few knew what he was talking about of course, but it how they dealt with this fact that interested Phillip. Conversations with Phillip were like a war even back them.

The Pumping Lemma was something Phillip recalled fondly from his undergraduate days. Well, something from his studies that he remembered fondly from his undergraduate days, as he would often add, lest people think he actually had been concerned with his studies in a significant degree. After adding that disclaimer, Phillip often permitted himself a raise of a sardonic eyebrow at the recollection. He rarely permitted himself such outwardly clichéd reactions, but as far as he was concerned there was a time and a place for such things, and the time and the place was now.

Imagine his surprise when Eddie hadn’t adopted the blank expression Phillip knew so well but had instead replied, “Are you referring to regular or context-free languages?”

Phillip was dumbstruck. He resolved to share with Eddie his thoughts on the Reimann hypothesis at the earliest opportunity. It wasn’t something Phillip had ever been able to bring up in conversation before, even amongst his fellow undergraduates.,

He and Eddie became fast friends, often to be discovered at the canteen engaging in incomprehensible conversations. Incomprehensible to all who attempted to listen in, sure, but many people held the opinion that what they were discussing was not mathematics at all.

They thought Phillip and Eddie were talking in code.

Of course all this initial camaraderie made what happened later on so much of a surprise and so unexpected and horrible for Phillip.

He’d turned the events of that day over and over again many times but he still failed to understand why Eddie had done it. Eddie had had his reasons, Phillip knew that, but he’d always thought he was on Eddie’s side of the divide.

Eddie talked about the divide a lot. He wasn’t talking about some projection-slice theorem. He meant the divide between “them” and “us”. Phillip had always assumed he was a “us”, Imagine his surprise, when he discovered that he was, and always had been a “them”. Well if he was a “them” he was going to be the greatest “them” there was.

Now, after all this years, he had a chance to rectify the situation a bit in his favour. But his plan to lure Eddie to a final showdown in La Ciudad de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula had been thwarted at least for a few more chapters. Chapters? he thought. Did I really think that? I meant days of course.

Obviously the heat was getting to him. Phillip often saw himself as merely a character in an imaginary world, an idealized author substitute in a world gone mad, a caricature of what he’d become.

All because of Eddie.

And what was he to do know. He’d been working on Ryan for quite some time, reasoning that he would make an excellent go-between for his purposes. One of his thugs had suggested working on Caro. Phillip checked his watch. Good. She would be here very soon. Then the second phase of the plan could begin.

Phillip started down at the pad on his desk, endorsed by the Hotel Borg and giving details of all of their sister hotels all over the world. They even had one in Iceland, Phillip couldn’t help noticing.

He then looked down at what he’d written:-

Ryan tried to ignore the two men leaning on his car and focus on his map. Somehow he'd taken a wrong turn — missed the turnoff for Interstate 10, as best he could tell. Which meant he had driven a lot further south than he had intended. The man nearest his passenger window was laughing. This couldn't be a good thing. The one to his right was digging around in a worn backpack and shaking his head.

He’d have to change the names, he thought. That would be far too obvious. Just then his laptop computer, currently sprawled on his bed, emanated a loud beeping noise. He had mail, he thought. I wonder who it’s from?

But he froze when after the screensaver had been switched off the sender of the email’s name sat there: “The Great She Elephant”.

Just at that moment, the phone on the bedside table started to ring.

Phillip, leapt up as if he’d been stung by a bee. Compose yourself, he thought and reached for the receiver. Phillip was like he had been all that time ago at the BBC. Not Phillip as he was now, Phillip as he was then. Phillip liked being who he was now, and didn’t like being reminded of who he’d once been. He wanted to be the new Phillip again, not this old version.

“Hello?” he said nervously.