

## INVISIBLE FATHERS

### By

### Peter McCloskey

Chapter 1

God smells, just the faintest whiff of piss. He must be over fifty years old. I've been meeting him once a week now for nearly a year and I'm getting embarrassed by the smell. He drinks double shot cappuccino's and I have to apologise to the waitress every time when he sends it back - not hot enough, he says.

'Don't apologise for me,' he says, 'It's embarrassing.'

They notice the smell, the waitresses - they seat us at the front of the room and open the door. Even in December they open the door. I'll sit there freezing drinking tea watching him waiting for his cappuccino to cool and we won't say anything. Then he'll speak first, he always does.

'Oh hey,' he'll say, 'Things are nearly in place'.

It's been nearly a year.

I met God on the bus. He helped my mother off - she doesn't get around so well so he helped her - she won't let me. 'It's embarrassing' she says. My mother insisted he come back to hers. I went with them, I didn't trust him, but how could I? What sort of man says yes to a request like that? She lives alone, my dad is dead, he's been dead for years, ten maybe - fifteen. God comes home with us and he won't tell us his name... he's says to call him whatever we like... my mother calls him Greg. He doesn't mind. He doesn't go to see her anymore.

'I never really gave a shit about your mother anyway,' he says now.

It's been a year and we meet once a week and finally he says it;

'Do you hate them for what they did to you?'

'No,' I say.

'Yes, that's all well and good, bravo, correct answer, but... do you? Do you hate them?'

'Yes,' I say, 'of course I do'.

He gets up and leaves.

'We're done,' he says, 'Same time next week, don't be late'.

So now I sit for a while. I read a paper, I chat with the waitress who doesn't want all that much to chat back, she's just wondering if a tip is coming. I tip her, more than I should and I leave.

***

My first proper meeting was a year ago, maybe a year, give or take a few months. He found me here in this café.

'Can I sit down' he said. He took his seat. I could smell him.

'Greg?'

We talked for a while, he mostly asked questions and I answered them. I got the feeling he knew the answers, he just wanted me to know that he did. 'You know all this already' I said.

'Did you cry when they touched you', he said and I knew then that all he had told me was lies.

'Of course I did', I said, lying right back at him, 'I was young. You'd cry too.'

'Do you hate them?'

'No'

'Are you sure?'

'Yes'

We met again, a week later. It's the same all over again. After a month of this, there's not much left to say. We both know I've agreed. We both know I'll do exactly as he's asked. We both know I don't know exactly what that is and that I don't care about that. I'm going to do it anyway.

'When they ask you why you did it, what will you tell them?' he says

'You think they'll catch me?'

'Oh' he says, 'most certainly'.

'Then I'll tell them you told me to do it.'

'And when they ask who I am, will you tell them?'

'Yes'

'What will you say?'

'I'll say, God asked me to do it.'

'Will you make them believe you?'

'I don't believe me.'

'You don't?'

'No, that's not right. I don't believe you.'

'It doesn't matter. You'll do all I ask anyway'

'I'm not doing it for you.'

'I know.'

'Don't think that I am'

'I don't care who you do it for, if it's just for you, well, that's probably best for all of us.'

He leaves. A week, he tells me again, we'll meet again in a week and we'll take it from there. And that's how's it's been. A year of that - a year of this. A year of weekly meetings in the same café and now it's coming to a head. We're nearly there and now it's Christmas time and I go home to my mothers. I've bought her a gift, it's a shitty little thing she'll not like but she won't care. I'll cook dinner, we'll eat in silence. I'll leave her in the afternoon when she falls asleep in front of the Queen and I'll go home. I'll take the leftover meat and vegetables wrapped in tinfoil and I'll eat again in the evening with wine. I'll write something maybe. I'm documenting everything. I'll drink, I never used to drink all that often but I'll drink. I'll meet Benny. Benny's in on it too. Benny got the visit from God and now we're in this together. Me and Benny and a couple of other guys. I'll meet Benny, we'll go to a bar, we'll drink some more, we'll play pool - we'll toast, and we'll get ready for our war.

***

Benny's a fucking monster of a man. A proper soldier. Nobody fucks with Benny. To look at him, he's an ogre, a Bic shaved head - 'twice a day' he says - he keeps it tight, Love/Hat knuckles - he's missing the little finger on his left hand - I don't know how so I ask. 'Done it myself - chopped it off, I didn't want that word on my body. I don't like to hate.'

Benny got bullied as a child, you can tell, same with me. You can always tell. He doesn't like to hate but he's full of it, it's why he's here, same as me. 'We're the same', he says, 'me and you, we're the same and I got your back. You've got mine, don't you man?' he asks - he doesn't, he pleads - he wants it to be true. I feel sorry for him. I tell him I do, that I've got his back. He says he'd take a bullet for me. I tell him I would too but I don't know if I mean it. I don't. 'We're the same' he says again, a whisper in to his glass, more for his benefit than mine. God told him all about me and me about him.

Benny got touched up as a kid, some priest, for four years between the age of eight and twelve. Then when he started to grow, started looking more like this guy beside me, and the priest didn't fancy him so much Benny got tossed aside and the old man got himself a younger, fitter, more beautiful model. God told me how Benny, although already fucked in the head, felt rejection. He had started enjoying it, well that's a little strong, started to appreciate it, understand why the priest did what he did. When puberty hit and Benny started getting proper boners he didn't mind so much the old mans hand jobs in the vestry - that's when he got the boot \- the first day he came. 'I thought it was a sin' he says now as he recalls the fresh milky white string wrapping across the old man's knuckles. 'I didn't know what it was, he called me names, told me I was impure - he kicked me out.' Benny only became an alter boy because he liked the bell - he wanted to be the one that got to ring it. He's never been with a woman - 'but I've got a pile of porn this big' he says, laying a hand on an invisible five foot stack.

'Do you hate him?' I ask

'Who, the father?' says Benny wrapping his hand around a fresh glass.

'Yeah, him.'

'Course I do, you would too.'

Benny doesn't like to hate, but he can't help it. It's one of those things. You have to do it, you'd be mad not to hate.

'It's unforgivable' he says, 'but I don't want to be walking around repressing that sort of shit, that shit'll fuck you up.'

'It's fine.'

'You'd hate him too' he says again.

'I'm not judging Benny, relax' I say.

We're all on the edge. We're all ready, we're all ready and willing to go. It's been a year and it's all been regurgitation \- that's all it's been. The endless meetings in the cafes, the long talks, the seminars. It's all prep, winding up springs until they're tight, all that energy condensed and taut and then all it is, is to let it go. It's exactly how he wants us to be. Like children led to the front of the rollercoaster and told to wait... waiting to see the front carriage come back round that final bend so it's their turn - and now we've waited and it's coming round the final bend and coming to a stop and we're bouncing on our toes and on our heels.

Fight or Flight?

...and then a very sure decision

\- Fuck it -

FIGHT

'Let's do one now' says Benny.

'Do what?' I say. 'You can't be serious?'

The whiskey's gotten to us. I know it has, I'm in the mood to be convinced - not that it's difficult, I'm an easy touch and too readily inspired. Benny looks at me, raises an eyebrow, a come on and a challenge - 'I've got your back'.

'You're drunk' I say to him and only try to half laugh it off.

But he doesn't have to ask twice and in thirty seconds we're pouring through the door. We go to a filling station. Benny walks in and I wait round the corner. He buys four bottles of milk and some cloths and two lighters and some tape. He comes back round and we trade places. I buy a fuel canister and a gallon of petrol and tell the guy behind the counter my car conked out half a mile down the road. He doesn't care, he tells me as much. It's Christmas Day and he should be home with his family he says.

'I think there's one near here' Benny says, 'it's a small one, it's not on the list I don't think but that's good right? I mean, because we've to stick to the plan.'

'If it's not on the list then there's no harm in it is there?' I say, more to convince myself than him.

'Yeah, I mean, if it's not on the list...'

Benny's a little off the mark because we have to walk a long before we find something suitable. It's a parish hall \- not a church like we'd have like. It's fenced off with seven foot railings. There's stain glass windows but it's hardly a venue for prayer, AA meetings and cake bake sales, slimming clubs, discos for disabled kids maybe.

'It's good practice' says Benny.

There's a cross above the door and Benny's directs my gaze towards it.

'What do you think?' he says.

'I think it's good practice' I say and he smiles. We wait for cars to pass and so that the street is silent, just like we were told to do and when there isn't a sound we cross to the entrance. Without a word, and just how we were taught we walk the perimeter, shoulders to the fence around the corner till we're out of sight. The fence is easy to scale and we work out our exit routes. We'll go in different directions once we're done.

One of the first things we were taught was how to mix a Molotov cocktail. Benny pours the milk on the ground and I fill each bottle three quarters full and stuff them with the cloths leaving enough hanging out the top for a wick. Benny tapes the caps back on and fastens them with tape. I douse the wicks with petrol. Benny hands me a lighter.

'I'll go first' he says, 'as soon as you hear the glass smash you throw okay - those two windows,' he says, pointing to the side of the building directly in front of me, 'and we'll meet back in the bar.'

Benny disappears and I wait. I hear the glass smash and an explosion of colour in the stained window. I light up, tossing one in each window and comes then a wave of heat and light. I walk away quickly, looking back to marvel briefly as it burns.

Job done...

Cherry popped.
Chapter 2

We've got a few inches in the paper... hardly a footnote, no photograph, no nothing;

Investigations are continuing into what caused a fire that destroyed St John's Catholic Parish Hall on Gypsy Avenue . No-one was hurt but the building which housed community events for the surrounding area, was gutted. Police are requesting the assistance of anyone who may have been in the area at approximately midnight, December 25th.

Benny and me sit silently with the others. It's been a year, every Wednesday night, a new venue every time, we get a letter through the door, hand delivered, always covertly, always that morning with the place name, address and directions, and at the bottom in different coloured ink, your alias for the evening. I couldn't tell you if God delivers himself or not, but I don't think he does.

There's twelve of us in all. All of us wear suits, you have to wear a suit. Benny's squeezed into his, a lump of sausage meat in a too thin skin. We don't talk much, it's not like that. we're all very quiet before meetings. A couple of the guys might go to a bar or something with one another, like me and Benny do but mostly this is the only time we'll see each other in any given week - group meetings.

'Someone's broken the rules' says God. He always comes in last - we never see him arrive. He comes in through the door - the function room this week of the 'Glengarry Hotel'. We're sitting round a long conference table, jugs of water, sandwiches, a notepad at each place. We come through reception and ask at the front desk and give the fake name. The sign on the function room door reads, 'The Parker Society - Overcoming Adversary in the Workplace'. Here we are, The Parker Society, we're work-shopping a few ideas, it's a think-tank, a brainstorming session, any old thing, the usual shit I'm dragged to during office hours. It's our cover, we're getting overtime.

'Someone's broken the fucking rules' he says again, louder, he means it - God's pissed off. He holds the paper up, he turns it to the page, he slams it on the table the pink highlighter pen circling the column. He's dressed himself up - he always does, tomorrow he'll be back in his casuals. He looks good in a suit though, he cleans up well, we always remark on it. His hair slicked back, neat, fitted black matte suit, red tie, waistcoat, Armani glasses, a Rolex, watch - Modern man.

I shoot a look at Benny, his face is tight, stiff as hell, if God clocks him he'll know, I whisper to him to relax.

'I'm not going to spend our valuable time trying to root out who it was, it's pointless, it serves no good, what's done is done, but gentlemen, please, for your sake and mine, we cannot afford to deviate from the plan.'

He takes his seat...

'So if anyone wants to get something off their chest, now's the time.'

Some one speaks...

'How do you know it was one of us?'

'I've seen the police report... I've got a guy. Milk, poured out at the scene, petrol can - left beside the milk, four entries, one Molotov in each of four windows... '

... he breathes,

'Now, you tell me that that wasn't somebody in this room.'

'I'm just saying, maybe it wasn't.'

He scans the room, his gaze falling over each of us, all of us now sweating just as much as Benny.

'Fuck it... but, one more time gentlemen, one more time and I swear, heads will roll. We're too close now, all of us, too close for a couple of you to start acting like cowboys. You'll get us rumbled and yourselves killed, so it stops, now.'

He seats himself, he opens his briefcase....

'But it was a sound job. Whoever it was, I'm proud of you... now don't let it happen again.'

This week - inventory. We're given cash, all of us. We get five hundred each and we note down what to buy. We're each given a separate store to buy in. Each item, a different store, no two guys the same.

Black Caterpillar leather, steel toe cap boots; Pit-Stop

Black Tommy Hilfiger dress shirt, loose fitting; Burton

Black Adidas Sports socks; Lifestyle

Navy Blue Nike Hooded Sweater; JMS Sports

Black New Era Wool Beanie Hat; Foot Locker

Grey Levi 501s; Kennedy Men's Wear

And then...

Three piece, plain black, matte Armani suit;

Plain Blue Fedora Silk Tie;

We all buy the same new suit - that's the only thing - it doesn't matter where we buy it, but we all must have the same suit. The exact same one. We ask why of course, the rest of the stuff makes sense, but the suits, we're not sure why the suits. This was meant to be covert, it was meant to be all done at night, an operation, a military manoeuvre, why the suits? I don't ask, I think how I've gone so far now, it barely even matters. I'll do exactly as I'm asked, and I won't question it.

'We've come a long way since our first meeting gentlemen,' he says, 'and we're nearly there.'

He's right. It's been nearly a year, all this prep, all the meetings, the conversations, the run-throughs, all come down to what's to come in the next few days.

The first meeting, twelve of us, in a parish hall in an estate in the West, nobody quite sure what to expect. He had met us all, just like he had, helped someone's mother off a bus, pulled over when someone had a flat to pump the jack - who knows how he convinced us all. The private meetings with me, it was like he knew. Benny says God brought it up with him the first day they met. Benny was in the gym, he was in the pool, God swam up to him, they got talking. God took him for a beer, told him what he knew.

'Do you hate him', he had said. 'for what he did to you?'

He knew, he knew about all of us and over the year we've all got to know each others stories. Some are very similar, some not so much, but all have one thing in common. At the first meeting he handed out badges, he put our names on them and then a description of our grievance. Benny's name tag read simply, 'BENNY - TOUCHED UP'. There was a lot of these, maybe half the guys there, their badges all said that. It ousted us, we'd nothing to hide, no pride, no secrets, these twelve guys, we all knew each others secrets, we weren't going to tell anybody. We were together, as one, almost immediately. One guy, Morrow, he must be fifty five years old, the eldest of the group, a nice guy - 'MORROW - LIMBO LIES'. He lost a kid a couple of hours after it was born. His wife went to the church, the priest told her how that's where the child's ended up, that it won't get in to heaven. His wife, she'd gone to Mass every Sunday in her life and then every day during Lent, and her un-baptized child, still rife with Original Sin, simply couldn't make it in to heaven. This revelation coupled with a strong dose of postnatal depression saw her hang herself six months later. Three months after that, the Vatican renounced the whole idea. They came clean and told everyone it was just something they'd all made up. As you can imagine, Morrow wasn't best pleased. Who could blame him. God found him shopping for one in the supermarket, he helped him out to his car with his groceries, 'I only had three bags' Morrow had said, 'but he seemed like he was genuine enough'. God took him for coffee, bought him lunch and then it was just like it was with the rest of us, same place every week for a year and a group meeting on Wednesdays.

At that first meeting he went round the room. The twelve of us sat in a circle. There were no suits yet. Only one meeting without the suits. For anyone looking in, anyone who would have passed by the window, it would look just like an AA meeting, I think that was the intention. We sat around in a circle and all in turn we stood up, we said our name out loud and what it was that they did to us.

'My name is Benny'.

'Hi Benny'.

'I got hand jobs from a priest when I was a kid for four years until one day I came on his hand and he stopped'.

There was no, 'thanks for sharing', or any of that other stuff. But we all left that night shameless, we weren't going to back out, not after we'd all said our bit. It felt like I'd signed a contract.

'My name is Tomas... but you can call me Tommy'.

'Hi Tommy'.

***

Then came the suits. The first meeting you could look around the room and you could tell the poor guys and the rich ones. The second, we were all dressed the same. Everyone to buy a suit. Those who could afford it or had their own were to buy one or wear one costing no more than a couple of hundred pounds, anyone who couldn't, God knew who they were, he paid for them. That next meeting, I couldn't remember half the names, let alone if I'd marked them out as rich guys or not.

So here we all are, twelve of us, all touched up, fucked up and pissed off at something or an other. I think we all know we're being taken advantage of, I mean, of course we do. We weren't a bunch of twats with nothing better to do when we were taken in, most of us have jobs and some of us families to hold down. But they're not important, not now. Fuck the jobs, but the family men amongst us, they'll do it for them as much as themselves.

God tells us he'll get in contact with us, to keep an eye out for the post, that'll we'll be getting something soon enough. He looks at me and Benny and tells us all not be fucking cowboys.
Chapter 3

After the meeting me and Benny go to the bar. We take Nicky Fusco with us. Nicky's a young one. He's twenty two. He's the same as Benny, only Nicky got fucked. Nicky got fucked in school, the cute little Italian kid with brown skin and dark hair from his mother but he got his fathers accent. He went to a Catholic boarding school. Miles from home, eleven years old and fucked near every other night. Nicky wasn't like Benny, Nicky didn't get used to it, he didn't like it, but what can you do when you're that young?

'He died last week' says Nicky once we get talking about it.

'Who? Your guy?' says Benny.

Nicky's upset, he got word from an old friend.

'You're not going to quit on us, are you?' I ask

'No', he says. 'Fuck it. I mean, it's not like it would matter if he was alive for it anyway would it? He might have been the one doing it but don't think the rest of those fuckers didn't know it was happening.'

He'll be okay, a lot of us just want to make amends, to feel like we're evening up the score on someone. Nicky's lost some, but not all of his motivation. He'll still come through, like he says, it's not like this guy was the only one.

He drinks too much, buys a shot with every round.

'We'll show the bastards, won't we?' he says drooling in to his glass.

'Yeah, we'll show them' says Benny.

'Cunts.' says Nicky.

Nicky's drank too much, he starts running his mouth, he knows it when he speaks but his brain is chasing his tongue and can't keep up. He says how he joined up to one of the brigades when he was younger, tried to anyway. His sister got beat up, his mother was harassed - they stuffed a burning bag of shit through her letterbox, he went to some guys who said they'd help him. All he had to do with help out with a beating, some young guy who was dealing, the same one who beat his sister... he couldn't do it... he walked away at the last minute. He let her down, he says with tears in his eyes, those drunk far away tears that are always sitting right behind the eyes \- we see them ballooning up in the tear gland, that moist haze falling over them. Nicky got fucked, his sister got beaten - she came home with two black eyes and a sprained wrist he says. He doesn't know why. He's angry, he slams his glass down too hard and we get a warning shot from the barman. Benny puts a hand on his shoulder and says, 'I know man, I know'. He doesn't, obviously, but he says it anyway. Nicky goes to the bathroom. I follow him in. He stands at the sink breathing heavily. He tells me to leave him alone... he goes outside, into the street. He starts a fight he can't finish with the first guy he can find who looks up for it and me and Benny step in. He's coiled up, tight like a spring, and just like God said, we're nearly ready, we're all coiled up, I get to hitting this guy and it's easy, I think nothing of it. We beat at him till he stops, so that he's not even shielding the blows with his hands or blocking the kicks with his feet. We've to pull Nicky off him. We send him home. Benny asks me what's happening to us' but I don't want to think about it. We go to another bar... we drink some more, Benny stays the night on my sofa, his mother doesn't like him coming in so late drunk that he can't find his way to his bed and lies in the armchair and fills the room with his farts so that the whole house is stale in the morning.

I wake face up on my bed... I don't dream much, nothing important. I wake up and I've dreamt and I try to recall as much as I can because it's fading quickly. I get a face, a woman's face, I get a place but it's gone in a second. My head hurts. I wake seconds before my alarm rings. I get on to the floor, two feet without confidence and I stretch. I lumber in to the bathroom and cough up phlegm, nutty green goo, choking on my own coughs, trying to force up and out some invisible obstruction in my throat - I smoked too much last night. Benny's lying on the floor on the front room. The television's on and he's wrapped up in the blanket I usually drape on the sofa in front of it. His eyes shut tight, snoring loudly in between gassy beer farts. I leave him be. I check on the floor by the letterbox but there's nothing there. I change. I have some tea, I sit in the kitchen. I go to work. I get the bus normally but they aren't running today so I walk. I could afford a car but I can't drive and would be too embarrassed to learn how to now.

I sit at my desk. I answer the phone, I have thirty calls drop before lunchtime. I answer their questions and I amend their accounts and I transfer them to 'retentions' when they say they want to leave. I phone it in. I don't even bother to push this months offers. I'm over thirty years old. I work here, in this call centre, I answer phones. I listen to English people ring up and complain that that their bill was too expensive, I point out that two hour phone call to Australia they made and how it cost them fifty quid and they tell me I'm ripping them off... I let them go and go and say how they want to talk to a supervisor. I eat lunch in the cafeteria, forty minutes exactly and if you're not back and logged on to your phone to exactly the minute you get a talking to. I'm shown at the end of each week the stats and they ask why I took four piss breaks on Tuesday and took five minutes longer for lunch. I'm dying in here, ever so slowly, I'm dying away in here. I'll get a superfluous boner two hours after lunch when I start to feel sleepy with the fake air pumping around the building. Some one on the ground floor will get a cold at the start of the month and it'll spread through the building, floor by floor, week by week. I had seven colds last year. I feel unclean when I leave in the evening. I feel as though I'm covered in dust. I walk to the door every morning and put my hand on the big brass handle and I pause and I think, what if I didn't go in? And then I think of the child. I think how, if it were up to me, I wouldn't go in. I'd happily not, I'd be piss poor, on the dole, wouldn't give a fuck. But I always think of the child, and see her face where mine should be in the glass door and it urges me inside. She's perfect, she has her mothers looks, the same nose and smile, but she got my eyes. She calls me 'daddy', she likes my stubble, I pick her up and she rubs her face against it and paws at my face with her hand. She has her mothers looks, she has my eyes and she's got a mind that I adore. She's four, she's only four years old and I swear she's smarter than me... she's smarter than her mother. She can read already, I give her books. I read to her when I have her and let her sleep in bed beside me. I can't have a bath with her anymore and it makes me sad. I'm doing all this for her... I tell myself that so I believe it even more than I already do. I'm doing this for her so she can have a daddy that won't be a fuck-up. So that when she's old enough to look in my eyes and know what I'm thinking, she won't see anything terrible, so that I can look at her and know that I'm right for her, and that it's okay that I'm with her, and that I'll never, ever, fuck her up.

It's three o'clock now, I've two hours left and I get the boner... I push in close to my desk and reach a hand down and pull it in to my waist band. I've left my phone off the hook, I can't be bothered to take one more call. I'm due a smoke, I take the lift to the ground floor. It's busy today, it's New Year's Day, there's only a few of us working, I'm getting double time - I need the money. It's cold outside, I can't tell when the smoke has stopped coming out of my mouth - I can't tell what's smoke and what's just my breath. All the sad fuckers work today. All the guys with no family. It's all men, there's no woman. A woman will always find somewhere to be, I don't think men find it as easy to encroach. I'm back at my desk then and I look around and I feel sorry for all these poor bastards. We're all fuck ups.

I go home. I buy beer, I've been drinking a lot, all of us have. It feels right, like we need it. I think it helps us, we can't make sense of it if we were sober, it's easier to make sense then if we're drunk - simplify it. They did this to us, now we'll do this to them. They fucked us up, we'll fuck them up. If we can keep our thoughts running like that, nice and simple we won't deviate. 'That's the key' God said, 'once you all start thinking about this, you'll start to question it, let your morals guide you the wrong way, all that turn the other cheek shit, that's all just in there to keep you line, feel like you're a better man if you don't fight back. Well fuck that, and fuck them and fuck the guy who they're working for.' Me, I don't care about who they're working for, I don't think he exists - I know he doesn't . I want them, only them, and by fuck I'll get them.

Benny's still in my house. He's can't have been up long. He looks sleepy still. He's found a jar of instant coffee I didn't know I had and he's slugging on it like medicine. 'You alright?' I say and he shrugs and tells me my coffee stinks. We eat takeaway food and sit around. We play chess, I've to teach him how so he has no clue what he's doing so that doesn't last long.

'How was work?' he says.

'Shitty', I say.

We sit around and don't do much. We get in to the beers and talk. Benny tells me he's been thinking. He's been thinking that once this is done, he's going to find his guy, the priest he means, we all refer to the guys that fucked us up as, 'our guy' \- well, he's going to find him, and he's going to ask him why. 'It'll be an extra headache for the fucker' he says.

Then the letterbox rattles and out by the door two envelopes lying on the floor. One for me. One for Benny, our names written in thick black ink. I toss Benny his and he holds it in his hand.

'They're watching us?' he says

'Certainly would seem that way wouldn't it', I say, and try not to sound like I'm bothered. They're watching us \- there's never been a question of they before, but it seems obvious now that it's not just one guy. God couldn't put this altogether on his own.

'He knew we burnt the hall out didn't he?' says Benny.

'I certainly got that impression'.

'Fucker's got spies'.
Chapter 4

It's my day with Molly. I pick her up from her mothers and go through the motions like always before I even get to see her, I tell her yes, I'll have her back by seven, and no, I won't buy her ice-cream, and all the other checks and safeguards. She's a good girl - her mother I mean, but she's a bitch really. She blames me and that's fine, I blame me, but it's not my fault entirely - she doesn't see it that way.

'Don't tire her out' she says, 'she's been to the doctors this morning and she's a bit groggy.'

'What's wrong with her?' I ask.

'Nothing' her mother says, 'she just was feeling a little under the weather so we just took her for a check-up.'

She's glad to see me, her mother drops her arm at the door and she runs out and in to my arms. I kiss her head and she holds my neck tightly.

'So what do you want to do today then?' I ask as we stroll our way to the bus-stop, me only half listening when she answers as I begin inspecting her for some indication of this apparent ailment. I see nothing except for a small bruise on her head.

'Dunno' she says.

We take the bus. She sits on my lap for a while before getting embarrassed and shuffling on to the seat beside me and I think how she's growing up and how I'm not privy to the half of it.

I take her for lunch in the restaurant in the shopping centre. We eat. There's a guy near to us, he's a cop, I can tell, not because I'm a criminal, or because I've suddenly acquired a heightened ability to spot them, but he's a cop, I can tell, anyone could tell. He has an eye on me and he thinks I haven't clocked him but I know he's there.

I take her to see a film. We sit in the dark cinema and I relax in to the chair and start to doze. Molly sits very quiet, transfixed by the images on the screen. I fall in and out of sleep and then I get this feeling. I get this feeling and I know he's here. I stretch my neck back and I see him alone in the back seats staring straight ahead. I get up, leaving Molly and I walk to the back of the room. He's sitting there tossing popcorn in his mouth. I sit beside him.

'They're watching you.' he says.

'Who are?'

'The police.'

'Why?' I ask.

'They know.'

'How can they?'

'We have a mole.' he says very calmly, 'But I don't know who yet. We'll cool off for a while. I'll be in touch.'

'If they know, why don't they move on us?' I ask him.

'If they pinch us now, we get done for conspiracy. If they pinch us in the act... son, we'll all go away for a long time.'

'So one of us is a cop.'

I run through the faces and the names...

Morrow?

Benny?

Nicky?

Marcus?

It could be any of us... we don't know much about each other.

God laughs.

'No, not a cop. Just a Judas.'

'I better get back to the child' I say.

'Let me ask you something' he says as I shuffle up to leave. 'What's your masturbation habits like these days?'

'It's an odd question but I resist the compulsion to tell him to mind his own business.

'I don't.' I say.

He believes me.

'Why not?'

'I just don't.'

'Because it's a sin?' he asks. 'Do you not enjoy it? Or is it because it makes you feel lonely?'

'I think the second.'

'La petite mort.' he says in a strong French accent.

'I suppose.'

. I sit with Molly and wait for the film to end. God wants us to cool off. To postpone everything. I'm itching to get going, we all are. This is not what we want. Even if the cops are on to us... they know everything already, we're going to go to prison one way or the other. I just want to get this done and be done with it. I want the slate cleaned, we all want the slate cleaned... there was never a question of a risk assessment, there was never a problem being caught. We don't care, we know that, we've decided that already, we expect it. God's watching his own back. That can be all there is too this. I can't see now, why else we're stopping.

My day is cut short when the phone rings. Molly needs to go home. I don't even ask why. I stopped asking a long time ago. I just agree and we leave, both of us, half way through a knickerbocker glory. I tell her not to tell her mother and wipe her creamy smile gently away. She promises she won't. I don't know, she seems to get it - something about the way she looks at me, like she doesn't have any doubts about me. I take her home and she falls asleep on the bus and so I have to wake her up. She looks tired, withdrawn - something. And I carry her the way home from the bus-stop and she lies sleeping in my arms and I feel bad when we get to the door and I have to wake her and I kiss her and hug her. I hold her like I'll never get to hold her again. I savour as best I can the smell of her hair, her beautiful little marshmallow eyes all swollen from sleep and tell her that daddy loves her and everything I do, I only do it for her. And then I tell her - you tell her, your own little daughter, your own flesh and blood that you'll see her again soon. And you think you might have lied when I said it.
Chapter 5

I wake to the stale taste of too many cigarettes and the thumping of the door. I see the blurred and paunchy silhouette of Bennie peering into my letterbox through the net blinds. He calls my name and raps the door again as I iron out and to my feet.

'You don't look good' he says.

Benny keeps a diary. No, that's not true, Benny keeps many diaries, and they're not his own.

'Will you come to church with me?' he asks.

Benny still does this. Benny still goes to church, he takes his mother but today she doesn't want to go. She's ill, he says and he wants to go anyway. It's a habit thing, it's a force of habit. But he doesn't want to go alone. I don't care, I'm not one of those people that find it odd or uncomfortable. I'll go, I'll sit, I'll stand, I'll even kneel if that's what Benny wants.

'You wouldn't mind?' he says. 'I thought maybe, you know, what with everything, you might find it kind of weird'.

The truth is, the only thing I find weird is that Benny knowing what he's in to, knowing full well what he's committed to, what he's pledged to do, the only thing I find weird is that he'd still want to go. But, what can you do? This guy says he'll take a bullet for me, the least I can do is go and hold his hand while he sits, stands, kneels, prays.

Benny's in to them for the whole lot. He takes the bulletin, he pockets the hymn sheet, he goes for a second helping of communion. He's getting his money's worth.

We sit up front, the second row, Benny says how he wants to get a good view.

A bell rings and the priest enters flanked by two kids, altar boys in white robes. We stand for them as they reach the altar and the muted affair begins. With the drone of the congregations responses the replies and psalms trickle familiarly down my ear as I find myself involuntarily mouthing along and instinctively sitting, kneeling, standing to my feet. Robots the lot of us... one big game of Simon Says, in which you confidently know, Simon will always say.

I watch Benny, but he doesn't watch the priest like everyone else. His eyes are fixed neat on the boy in robes knelt below the bulky white marbled altar with the bell by his side.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son...

Me watching Benny, watching the kid - and the priest, a man of indeterminate age watching over us all as we chant hollow prose to the ceiling. I mouth along silently, feeling as though I should put on a show and Benny, Benny just stares at this kid. Benny with his big, blank, Bic shaved face. To look at him you'd think there wasn't a thought in his head,, like someone pulled a plug. And when the time comes and the priest raises the chalice above his head and announces without fanfare the miracle of the consecration of the bread and the wine, the boy takes his queue and shakes the bell hard and Benny bows his head and exhales loudly, a long almost flamboyant outburst pushed between tight sealed lips that has a woman with a blue rinse turn to us with a screwed up scolding face.

Now, this used to happen a lot when I was a kid, something about the sleepiness of the whole thing, something about the way in which you're almost forced to daydream. You'd think I'd grow out of it, but there sitting proudly, pitched up like a tent pole in my trousers I feel the tip of my boner pinching through the cloth of my underwear against the zipper. I chuckle at it and nudge Benny who looks down at me and swallows a laugh. You can't help but feel a little guilt, but it's more for those around you, those staring intently or otherwise at the priest now munching away on his king-size portion of communion bread. If I feel guilt, it's for them... you shouldn't be disrespectful, you tell yourself, not when they're taking this so seriously.

The priest raps it up pretty quick after that and once the boner's died down we make for the exit, all two hundred or so of us, fresh faced, cleansed, enlightened, going back out in to the world to get enough sin crammed down our throats to make next weeks visit worth the trip.

Benny keeps a diary, but it's not his own. He needs to go shopping for new ones. Benny's been doing this for as long as he can remember. Every year he buys three diaries and each night he fills them out. It started off as a school assignment when he was eleven years old but Benny liked it and the three imaginary friends lived long after the assignment was handed in. He got a D.

'I dunno, I just like doing it' he says.

The diaries - they're all connected. There are three friends, there's Alan, Brian and Stephanie. In the diaries Benny is a character too. In the diaries his girlfriend is Stephanie. He and Stephanie have been boyfriend and girlfriend since they were both twelve years old. Benny and Stephanie are getting married in two weeks. Alan is Benny's best friend and he's going to be the best man. Alan's been writing about how he's worried about the speech he has to give on the wedding day. Stephanie's been writing about how excited she is about the wedding and about how it will be the happiest day of her life because Benny is the man of her dreams. Brian's been writing about how he can't wait for the wedding because there might be some hot bridesmaids there. Brain's the good looking one of the group - after Benny that is.

A psychiatrist would have a fucking field day with this shit. A psychiatrist could squeeze enough juice out of reading just one of those things to justify keeping Benny on his couch for years.

I buy Benny a coffee and sit across from him watching him finger the spine of his new books and I ask him again why he bothers.

'It's fun.' he says, looking up. He's opening each book and smelling the pages. He's happy, I've never seen him as long as I've known him look quite so pleased with himself. His fresh new book, blank pages, his to do with what he wants, a whole life to create for himself written by those who love him... he looks happy, and why shouldn't he be. He's getting married in two weeks. And Stephanie, he tells me Stephanie is beautiful - 'you should see her' he says, 'she's the most beautiful woman in the world.'
Chapter 6

'Did you cry when they hurt you?'

A lie on top of a lie, on top of a lie. I think of how many, if any, of the others are lying too. I never got fucked, I never got touched up, my wife never killed herself because of some draconian sentiment of redemption and sin. I lie so I'm included. I lie, and he lies and we may all be lying, because that's all there is. Our lies, their lies and therein lies the story.

'You'd cry too.' I say.

He smiles.

'I don't doubt that?'

He knows.

And I'm in school again and we're sitting here in the classroom and the priest wheels in a television on wheels and plays a tape and we see the silent scream and a death in blue and grainy silhouette and our minds are made up. Each sperm is sacred and to touch yourself is sinful. You must confess.

'And when they come for you, what will you tell them?'

And I promise not to touch myself ever again. I think of how many times I've done it already and I don't know for sure. Thirty maybe, maybe forty. And I do the calculations in my head. One hundred and twenty million by forty? How many decades of the rosary will clear that? Into tissues, into socks, sneaky shanks into the toilet bowls at lunch times. I count them all up, all my fallen men, all my sin and I know I'm damned. I'm twelve years old and I'm damned. I sit in that room as he switches the television off and explains what we've just watched. Some kid at the other side of the room has tears in his eyes that fall on his desk behind the self defending jeers of laughter and shamefaced sniggers.

'We're all made in God's image', says the priest.

'You're made in His image'. The creator of everything, the be all and end all. He looks just like you - a manicured ape with a body wax?

'We're all made in God's image' says the priest, 'a sin against one of our own is a sin against Him.'

'A sucker is born every minute.'

'God....'

'No, no... call me Greg.'

'Okay, Greg...'

'You just have to be patient. I'll find the rat... and then we'll take care of him. And we can get started.'

'Fine.'

I'm being groomed.

'There'll be a stage when I'll have to leave.' he says.

'You mean run away.'

'It's not a matter of saving my own skin.'

'You want me to take the fall.'

'Do you expect you'll get caught?'

'Do you?'

'Nothing's certain.'

'I can't be there when it happens?'

'Why not?'

'You've been asking a lot of questions lately.'

'I'm no Judas.'

He's blowing on his cappuccino. It's been weeks now and we haven't met up. I haven't seen anyone bar Benny. He says he's close to finding our mole. A few days and we'll have him. I'm wondering why it's taking so long. Surely he should know by now, but then again, he still thinks I got fucked as a kid or something. I only told him what he wanted to hear.

'When I find him he has to die. We have to kill him'

'Okay.' I say.

'And I want you to do it.'

And now I know I'm in over my head.

'Why me?'

'Because I know you can, because it's nothing new to you. Is it?'

And then I know that he knows. He knows everything.

A lie on top of a lie.

I never fooled him. Not for a second.

'I wasn't born yesterday.' he says, 'It's just how it is.'

A sucker is born every minute.

'I'm not forming a fucking support group.'

'Then what is this?'

'You know what this is.' he says, 'I never fooled you for a second.'

He's blowing on his cappuccino. It's started to cool and the foam has rust a dirty crust on the rim. It's been weeks, two weeks at least since he found me in the cinema and I've done nothing. I had itchy feet before and this enforced hiatus has made it all the worse. I've hardly slept. I've gone to work, I've phoned it in... I'm at breaking point. I need to move now... if there's nothing in the next few days ....

'It's going to get tough for you soon.' he says. 'Yeah, it's going to get tough alright. For all of you.'

I know this psycho babble. He's been spewing this stuff for a year now. It's all an empty threat. All that shit about losing all fear and redeeming yourself. Taking back the hurt and replacing it with the will to change yourself has worn thin. We're in no better a position. None of us. We've all got the same shit jobs, same shit lives. Nothing changes. None of us are alive, none of us are dead. We just are. We're being taken for a ride.

'It's going to get hard soon.' he says. 'But you'll come out the other end and you'll be better for it. Truly. I mean that. Better. Improved. New.'

'Who will you tell them made you do it, when they ask?' he says again.

'I'll tell them God made me do it.'

'And will you make them believe you.'

'No.'

'No?'

'But they'll trust I believe it.'

'Now you're getting it.'

***

I'm at home. Benny's moved out of his mothers and has taken up residence on my sofa. He shouldn't have. I mean, it makes things complicated for me. But he needs me. If Molly's mother finds out I have a lodger she can stop we from seeing her until we get a police check run on Benny. I won't ask him to do that. It wouldn't go over well. We sit and play chess. He's getting better. He still calls the rooks castles and the knights horses but he's getting better. We play using the kings as queens and the queens as kings. It was Benny's idea. He preferred it that way. The king can move in any direction, covering as much of the board as he wants in a straight line. The queen can only move one square at a time. 'It makes more sense.' he says. It's easier for him to understand. It's been two weeks since we heard of the mole. Benny knows too. God found him at the gym and told him everything.

'I hope he finds him soon.' he says.

'He will.'

'What will he to do him' he asks.

I lie and tell him I don't know.

I'm home with Benny the evening after God tells me I'll kill the mole. When the telephone rings now, I answer it and Benny looks up at me hoping that it's good news. Hoping that we've got the green light, that we're back on. His eyes glaze over in disappointment when he realises its my mother, or Molly's mother... or something else. Tonight. Tonight Morrow is on the other end. He needs to talk. He needs a drink. He's got some bad news. And I hope to God he's not the mole. I don't feel like killing anyone this evening.

Benny drives. He starts the car and I pack my gun. God left it in the empty recycling bin at the front of my house. A fucking gun - a handgun, and a note.

If I call you and ask to meet me somewhere, you take the gun.

If you leave the house after midnight, for any reason, you take the gun.

If you intend to be anywhere, other than home overnight, you take the gun.

If another member of the group calls and asks to meet you, at a bar, for instance... you take the gun.

I thought maybe everyone had be given one, everyone had one secretly sent to them and stashed away somewhere for them to find it. Somewhere for them to stumble across it when going about their business. When they're reaching for their glasses in their glove compartment of their car, when they're opening the cupboard or their fridge... when they're taking in their emptied recycling bin. I don't feel so sure anymore as we drive through town. I'm starting to doubt very much the notion that we all have guns. I'm thinking Benny sure as hell doesn't have a gun. He couldn't have kept that too himself. He'd have walked round the house practising his Travis Bickle routine. The radio plays and it's hitting ten o'clock and the news report comes on.

'The head of the Netherlands Catholic Church said on Tuesday it would offer "the utmost accessibility" to victims of sexual abuse by priests or church workers, in a move seeking to re-establish public confidence.

After a weekend of introspection in the pulpit and shock across the country following the revelations of hundreds of abuse cases with twenty six linked to suicides exposed by church-backed investigators, cardinal Dirk Van der Mann said the clergy's first duty was to listen.

Personal attention is the first thing we have to regain, following the report, the cardinal told a live TV press conference.'

'We're everywhere,' says Benny, 'we're going to be famous. All these guys, we're doing it for all of them as well.'

Benny has his own reasons. All of us have our own reasons and they're mutually exclusive. No one guy is doing this for the same reason. It's all revenge if anything. Maybe that's it. Maybe that's all there is to it.

I've the gun packed into my coat. A 9mm semi-automatic pistol. The first thing I did when I found it was go out and buy a long coat with deep inside pockets. 'I can't hold your hand forever' said God, 'some things you have to work out for yourself.' It's tucked in there now and I can feel it against my ribs. It's heavy, heavier than you think it would be. It's not like on television. You could hold this thing straight at a right angle from your chest for no more than minute before your arm would start to sag. It's heavy - as though it's made of pure lead. I have to weigh the opposite pocket down with something... a book, a heavy, hard backed book so that the coat doesn't hang unnaturally to one side so that it's clear I'm carrying something. I bought the coat and went to a bookstore, a second hand bookstore and bought the heaviest book I could find that would fit snugly in the pocket. God laughed when I showed him what I had settled upon and applauded my sense of irony.

Morrow is hidden away in a corner. He's not a drinker, he's said so himself, but he's not fucking about this evening. There's two empty pint glasses in front of him and he's most of the way through a third. Morrow, the eldest of the group, thin, charcoal coloured. He looks older than I remember from just a month ago - like he's aged in decades the way a president or prime minister ages after an eight year term in office and you see their profile pictures on some news show illustrating how the pressures of the job took their physical toll. We sit down in front him, across the table, like an interview, like an interrogation and I hope to fuck I don't have to put a bullet in him. I hope to God he doesn't open his mouth and say that he's sorry, say how they got to him and he was scared so he just did as they said.

'Drink' he says, 'get yourselves a drink.'

Benny goes and I stay.

'I'm sorry' he says, and my heart sinks into my guts and I feel the gun again against my ribs. In the bin was the gun, a 9mm semi-automatic Smith and Wesson, and ten magazines, seventeen rounds in each and weighing seven hundred grams unloaded, a barrel length of four and half inches, short recoil operated, locked breech pistol that uses Browning-type locking. The pistol is striker fired, with a double action only trigger. I looked it up. I don't know the first thing about these things.

I tell him to get up and leave. To go, that he's fucked if he doesn't. If he doesn't leave the group he's a dead man.

'But I need the group' he says.

'You don't know what you're in to' I say.

'I do.' he says. 'Without the group now I may as well be dead.'

Morrow doesn't' want to talk about the group. He just needs a friendly face to speak to. I have one eye on the door, fully expecting God to come in and lead us all out to his car. Drive us out to the middle of nowhere and when he has Morrow on his knees, and Morrow's made his tearful confession, about how the cops came to him and offered him sanctuary, made him a guarantee, told him they were on to him and all the rest of us and if he'd just help them bring us down, they'd let him go and say no more about it, God'll tell me to step in.

'Did you bring the gun...?

'You know I did.'

Then do it.'

And I'll have to put a bullet in Morrow's head and we'll leave him out there, in the middle of nowhere to rot.

'You know' says Morrow, 'you know when you think nothing, nothing can make things any worse? When all you want is some luck, when you're praying for some luck. You get on your hands and knees at night and you pray to a god you don't believe exists and you ask him for luck? You should really remember which sort of luck to ask for.'

We get drunk with Morrow and we take him home at kicking out time. Benny walks him three-legged-race style to his door and Morrow threads his key through the eye of a needle and into the lock. He packs a bag, a suitcase, crammed with clothes and things to tide him over. He packs in a separate bag a pair of leather, steel toe cap boots, a dress shirt - loose fitting, some sports socks, a navy blue hooded sweater, a black wool beanie hat, a pair of Levi 501s, a three piece, plain black, matte suit and a plain blue silk tie. We go home and Morrow takes Molly's room.

Yeah, it's going to get tough alright. For all of you.

When Morrow's wife died, Morrow moved out of his home.

'People tend to do that' he says.

'Do what?' asks Benny.

'Tend to move on in times of unhappiness. Don't you find that? Sometimes even a place you call home, feel safe in and secure can quickly become associated for you only with some pain you've experienced there.'

He's better now, he's sobered up a bit and we put coffee in him and he begins to speak with his usual eloquence.

Morrow moved out when his wife killed herself and started renting a place. It was easier. He owned a shop, a computer hardware place where he did repairs and built desktop computers to spec. He got in early, just before computers where a fixture in every Tom, Dick and Harry's home. He could get a single order in from a company, a call centre - maybe an order of five hundred computers and could charge as much as he wanted as long as he undercut the big stores' quote - even marginally.

'Then people started shopping online, then as usual, big business won through, big business can afford to undercut someone like me after a while, but it was good while it lasted. When you run a business like I did, most of your cash, well, it's not really cash, it's assets, it's your stock, it's your monitors and hard drives and processors and all that stuff. I had thousands and thousands worth of equipment in that store. If I sold it all, I could have lived comfortable for three, maybe four years.'

Morrow woke up this morning, like every morning and took the car to work. He could see the smoke as he turned through the streets, the smoke wafting over the roof tops and opening a window he could smell the burning plastic and could taste the soot in the air. He stopped outside his store, parking across the street as the fire crew rinsed out the last of the flames that tickled what remained of the tiles on the roof.

He had ignored the letters from the insurance company urging him to renew his contract with them knowing he couldn't afford the minimum twelve month policy until he had been paid for the thirty three desktops he had shipped off to the St John Agustus' high school. The cheque, along with sixty eight 27 inch PC monitors, over one hundred high end hard drives, two hundred wireless routers and other assorted components were now nothing more than the melted down plastic remains of what had been once John Morrows only reason for living. His rent was due in a week. There was nothing in his house of any value. He slept there and put in fourteen hour days in his store. Even if he didn't have to work, he'd stay there, building computers he may never sell.

'I was going to take the cheque and put it in the bank. I was going to pay the insurance company. Before I even opened the store this morning, I was going to take the cheque and I was going to pay the insurance company. And that was one thing I wouldn't have to worry about. In fifteen years that shop could have burned down any other day and I would have been fine. Today was the only day that store was uninsured. The only day. I've nothing now. Not a thing.'

'You're free,' says Benny.
Chapter 7

I lie on my bed. Downstairs Benny is asleep on the sofa, he's left the television on and I can hear the far away sounds of studio audience applause. In the next room I can hear Morrow weeping. He stops after a while and the crying gives way to snoring. I lie on my bed, not in it, on top of it and wait for sleep to come. I think about my father. My father's dead, ten, fifteen years... no, that's not true. He's been dead, if I'm honest, for twenty years... twenty years today. The clock reads 12.03, so it's today. Twenty years today.

They can't send you to prison when you're a thirteen year old kid... you're not a criminal, not to them - you're just broken, different, fit for pity and attempted understanding. Turn eighteen years old and commit the same act and you're a killer. At sixteen you're probably insane, at thirteen, you're just troubled - that's all - troubled. You can still be saved... God can save you. You can spend the next five years of your young life holed up in a prison for kids with clergymen as wardens and walk out a redeemed individual, fit to weave snugly back into the threads of civilized society.

A crack in the curtains dyes the room humourless street lamp orange and outside I can hear footsteps on the pavement, then the crunch as they move on to the gravel of my yard and then the sound of a hand reaching into small stones. I hear footsteps shuffle back two steps and then the rat-a-tat-tat as a fist full pepper the window.

I'm sitting in the kitchen with God when he offers me a cigarette and motions with a half empty bottle of scotch for two glasses. He looks as always, unkempt and dirty. There's the familiar smell but he looks fresh. As though he just woke and showered. It's as though the smell is perfume, as if he showered and washed and sprayed on this dog piss de toilette. And I know it's all for effect.

'I see you're hording my men,' he says and smiles.

'They need me.'

'Indeed they do. You're very important,' he says and he pours the scotch and we toast to nothing. I think about him wandering the streets, this perfect act of his. A tramp can't afford scotch this good.

'You know about Morrow?' I ask and he smiles as if it's a stupid question. It is. It's practically rhetorical.

'Yeah,' he says finally, 'that was me.'

'Why?' I ask.

'Why? Why not? He was dying in there. A man shouldn't live like that.'

'It's not your decision though.'

God drinks up all his glass and pours another one. He doesn't even look at me. And I wonder why he's telling me this.

'Hey, you all knew what you were getting yourselves in to. I told you things would happen. I've been straight with you all from the get-go.'

'But that's his life,' I say and I somehow sound like I'm pleading.

And he says, 'You all want the same things. You all wanted a better life. Well, that's what I'm doing.'

And I realise I'm privy to more than the others.

'Morrow's life is ruined. He's too old to start again.'

He says, 'Do you know what the life expectancy is for a man that lives how Morrow lives?'

God trusts me.

'He's old,' I say.

He wants to convince me.

'He's fifty, he doesn't smoke, he doesn't drink, he only eats organic food, no red meat, he exercises.' God says Morrow's practically middle aged. That he's a child. 'He'll live longer than you, you wait and see.'

And he's succeeding.

'It's a special day today. Isn't it?' he says.

I don't even bother to ask how he knows.

'I wouldn't say special.'

'I'd like you to tell me about it,' he says.

'I don't feel like it.'

'Were you frightened of him?' he asks.

Of course I was, you would be too.'

'Did you cry when he hurt you?'

'You'd cry too.'

'Do you hate him for what he did.'

'Of course.'

'So you killed him.'

'You'd kill him too,' I say.

'Are you still frightened of him>'

'I was young.'

'That's not what I asked.'

'You'd still be too.'

'I don't doubt that.'

'Can we stop talking about this?'

'You can't stay frightened your whole life.'

'I won't.'

'What will you do?'

'I don't know.'

'It's not like you can kill him again.'

'I know that.'

'They still have it coming... you can't back out now.'

...

'Did they know in the borstal if they ever dared stick their cock on your mouth you wouldn't think twice about biting down hard?'

'Yes.'

'Did they hurt you?' God asks

'Of course they did.'

'Do you still have nightmares?'

'Sometimes I'm afraid to go to sleep.'

'So it's not your father you're afraid of.'

'No.'

'Then it's them?'

'Maybe it's you.'

'And who am I?'

'I don't know yet.'
Chapter 8

In the morning I go to work. I leave Morrow and Benny at home. Morrow's already up when I come downstairs and he's cleaning my house. He's tiptoeing around Benny, fluffing the cushions and rinsing dishes, opening the windows to let the fart smell escape.

'I really appreciate you letting me stay here,' he says.

I've left the gun in a box under my bed and tell myself I need to find a better place to hide it.

The boner comes on in the elevator before I've even got to my desk. I penguin waddle down the hall, pulling it up straight through my pocket as covertly as I can. I get coffee and I sit at my desk. Nine minutes until the hour when I have to punch the call button and the disgruntled lottery begins to trickle down my ear piece. Nine minutes and I think how I could have hit the snooze button one more time. Nine minutes and I read the paper and drink my coffee and look out the window. Nine minutes and my phone rings. The phone never rings, not usually, your headset clicks and then there's a voice on the end of the line that doesn't know how to read a bill or wants to know why their internet usage cost them seventy pounds this month and you politely tell them you have no idea . But it's probably downloaded pornography. The phone only rings when there's a call from inside the building and when it does you answer it with the receiver, and you hate the fact you are enjoying the novelty.

'Can I see you in my office,' the voice says.

And I say 'Sure Carla,' and my voice is cheery.

Now, I don't know what this is about but more than likely it's the bathroom break I took I had yesterday that lasted fifteen minutes. She's probably come in this morning and scanned the phone logs and realised I wasn't on my phone for a quarter of an hour between 2:26 and 2:41.

Passing the cubicles and desks, the chatter of the other workers still half asleep - 'Good morning, Jessica speaking, how may I help you....' - 'Yes sir, if I can direct you to the far right margin you will see how the bill has been calculated...' - 'Miss, if you continue to use that sort of language I will be forced to terminate the call...' We're like monkeys who come in every morning, caged hens, tied to our desks for eight hour shifts, deprived of real sunlight - the artificial strip lighting and the fake air pumped around us - vitamin D deficient drones. We'll all get sick this year, if someone downstairs gets sick, everyone in here will get sick.

In Carla's office there are two men. They're cops, I know they are. One closes the door behind me as I enter.

'Before I say anything,' Carla says, 'I want you to know that we're not making any accusations yet, but... you're a suspect.'

My stomach creases up and I look towards the door and play out in my mind if I were to make a bolt for it whether or not I could get it open before one of the cops got his hands on me.

'These men want to speak to you,' she says and gets up and leaves the room.

'Take a seat,' one says and I sit down and feel a cold drop of sweat fall from underneath my arm and drip down my side.

They found kiddie porn on my work computer. I've been suspended pending a full police investigation. The cops spare me my dignity by letting me walk out of the office un-cuffed - but they have them on me by the time we reach the elevator. And I know somehow, God has something to do with this. Carla catches up with me in the foyer. She calls my name and I turn and she grabs me in a hug.

'I'm so sorry,' she says, 'I know this is nothing to do with you, it couldn't be, you're not like that.'

And I tell her, 'It's fine.'

'The pictures,' she says, 'They're horrible, I know you wouldn't do that,' and she's crying now and cops are rolling their eyes.

'Just call me when I can come back to work, okay?' I say.

The question me. They ask a lot of questions and none of them I can answer. I think about Molly. They give me the good cop / bad cop routine. I didn't think it was real, something cops only do in movies. 'You're a sick fuck, you know that don't you?' - 'Look, we can make this easy for you, you just have to talk to us, this will all be fine for you if you cooperate.'

I don't say a word. They can't charge me with anything more than suspicion. Not until they've performed a post-mortem on my desktop. I picture men in uniform walking through the rows of desk and unhooking my computer from the wall socket - I picture the workers talking and making up stories, I imagine the whispers in the canteen and on the gantry where the smokers take their breaks.

I'm in a cell for three hours and I think of how I've done all this before. It's fresh, the memory is clear, like how you still know the words from a movie you watched religiously as a child, thought you'd forgotten about only to catch it some afternoon on television and know exactly how the flow and ebb of all the character's dialogue goes. But I'm not afraid. This isn't one of those repressed memory things. I'm calm, I'm at peace. I have no fear in this little cell.

You kill your father... and it's mostly an accident... an accident up until the point you realise you've sank a knife into his chest, an accident up until the point you're twisting the blade at a right angle. At thirteen years old you're just a troubled kid, all thirteen years of your accumulated strength sinking the knife in as far as it can go, thirteen year old hands twisting sharply to the right so you can feel the blade inside break a rib and rest against his heart.

You are breathing slower than you normally should. You help your father to the floor, clutching the back of his neck so he slinks to the kitchen tile without a sound. He mumbles something, some words that get lost, drowned in the blood that has filled his throat and mouth so that all his vowels are spit blood red. You call the police. You call the police and the woman on the phone is very gentle with you as your voice, not yet broken tells her coolly that you've stabbed your father in the chest and he's bleeding on the floor. She asks you if he's dead already and you tell her no, but you don't reckon he has anymore than a minute or two left, and if she's thinking of sending an ambulance that really it would be a waste of time. That even if she did, the moment you heard the sirens you'd take the knife out of his chest and sink it in the middle of his head, just to be sure. She tells you that you'd better not be fooling around.

The cops, they don't know what to do with you. They come in to the house, they calm your mother and lead her away shielding her from her husband on the floor, doing all they can so as not have her turn and see him and leave her indefinitely and until the day she dies, with that one image forever itched pristinely in black polished stone, that picture of her husband lying in a gallon of his own blood and her son, her little boy standing transfixed, standing stiffly as a freshly recruited soldier over his father's lifeless body, smiling. That one image that could so easily, if the cops had let her look, have really fucked her up.

Benny got bullied as a kid, same as me, but I never got fucked. Fucking a kid's not always the worst thing you can do them, God had told me early on, you've no reason to feel excluded.

Chapter 9

I'm in the cell for three hours when a cop comes in and tells me I'm free to go. Outside a car is waiting for me. God rolls the window from the driver seat and tells me to get in.

The car is warm inside, the air conditioning makes my head hurt as we drive in silence away from the centre of town.

'Why'd do you do that?' I ask.

'That was nothing to do with me,' he says.

God tells me why they let me go, that they could have held me for longer but they probably didn't see any point. If they don't charge you they can't hold you. I wasn't charged. They'll wait to see what they find on the computer before they do that.

'They're not my images,' I say.

'Of course they're not,' he says, 'Someone's out to get us. Someone's trying to take this whole thing down.'

'The mole?' I ask.

'Maybe,' he says, 'We'll find out soon enough though. I've got him.'

The car splutters along into the countryside - into the mountains and I feel sick and God says, 'Now might be a good time to tell me again about your father.'

'I don't really feel like it,' I tell him and he says, 'No, I think you should tell me. We haven't spoken about it in a long time. It might be good for you.'

The first time I meet God I'm in a café. I'm in the same café I go to twice a day. It's a Saturday, even on Saturday's I go here. I had left Molly at her mother's and I went to the café. I'd moved out, been kicked out even, a little less than a year and now I'd got my own place. The waitress had brought me green tea and it was raining. It was quiet inside and the rain fell, the sort of day where everything inside is warm and the cold fresh gusts of air that comes through the door when someone leaves is both welcomed and cursed by those inside. It's stuffy, the whirling air-con fanning heavy breaths in waves of nausea. I'm near the door and I'm drinking tea and I get that flush of air on my face and as the newspaper pages turn themselves in the draught I see him standing there. Greg, the guy on the bus.

'Can I join you?' he asked.

The waitress takes his order - a double shot cappuccino, and I notice the smell.

'I'm not really called Greg you know,' he said.

'Then what's your name?' I asked.

He leant in close, both hands resting on the table inviting me to stoop down so he could whisper in my ear.

'I'm God' he said, 'and I know everything about you. I want to help you, I want to help you and others like you. I have a plan to make things better. To make the world a better place. Do you want to hear what that plan is?'

We talked for a while, he mostly asked questions and I answered them. I got the feeling he knew the answers, he just wanted me to know that he did. 'You know all this already,' I said. He knew a lot, more than he should have, but he missed out one thing.

'Did you cry when they hurt you?'

He talked about fear. He talked about what it is to be God.

'If you had to kill me,' he said, 'How would you do it?'

'I'd shoot you in the head,' I said with a smile.

'That's not going to work though is it?'

'It's not?'

'No. That won't do at all. I'd still be alive.'

'How?'

'Because I'm God,' he said plainly. 'I'm not dead because you shoot me in the head. God doesn't die like that. I only exist because people believe it.'

'Like Santa Claus?' I said.

'Or the Easter Bunny,' he says with a smile.

'So how do you kill God?' I asked.

And he said, 'The same way you kill Santa Claus.'

We spoke about my father, but I didn't tell him everything. My father was an ordinary man. He was cunt. He used to beat my mother. He used to hit her everyday, for anything, he was always looking for a reason. If his dinner was cold, if the television was on the blink, if the carpet hadn't been vacuumed, if she hadn't cleaned. This from a man who never bathed, a man who used to wash in the sink with cold water and a bar of soap.

We spoke about fear.

'Take your mother,' God said. 'What does she fear now that she has no husband to be frightened of?'

'I don't know.'

'Come on,' he had said, encouraging me, 'What does she fear?'

'Death?'

'Death,' he said, 'Death and only death. The simplicity of that is beautiful, don't you think?'

'In a way,' I supposed.

'Now what do you fear?'

'I fear retribution,' I said.

'From who?'

'From Him.'

'From me you mean?'

'You're not God.'

'Really? What if I told you, we're all Gods.'

And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM

'What if I told you, that if you fear God, you accomplish nothing more than fearing yourself?'

'I don't know what I'd say.'

'Does that sound plausible?'

'I suppose.'

'So if it's true, you'd be a fucking idiot wouldn't you?'

The smell seemed to increase every time the door opened.

'The minute you start fearing God, you start fearing everything around you, you starting fearing yourself, your family, your life, your fucking haves-and have-nots. You're a cowering idiot, wasting away, pissing your life into a job you hate - probably. You start fearing everything, even those thinks that are good for you - you fear love, you fear love because you can lose it. Because you're an idiot. Because you're scared.'

'Some fears are real.'

'Fear?' he said. 'Fear only exists because we believe in the future. We believe something can, will, should happen.' And should happen, well, that's the real the killer. You fear most what you think you have coming to you. Should happen? That's how people see God. That's retribution... that's what justice is... some fucked up, archaic sense of justice.

You count them all up, all your fallen men, all your sin and you know you're damned.

The smell, it's like fanning a flame and so the waitress leaves the door open and I have to put my coat on against the cold.

'Fuck fear.' he said, 'Fuck fear and he who frightens you.'

***

The rain comes down heavy on the windscreen. The rain gives way to cloud and the early afternoon turns to something like evening. I see the lights switched on in houses as we pass.

'You lied to me at the start,' he says.

'You knew they never fucked me.'

'Why did you lie?'

'I wanted to be included. I was afraid you wouldn't let me in if you thought I...'

He laughs.

'If I thought you hadn't been fucked? There's a lot worse things you can do to a kid than fuck them.'

God tells me to open the glove compartment. The gun is hidden amongst the clutter of road maps and tissue paper. He tells me to keep the safety on until we get inside. All around us there is nothing. I hold the gun on my lap and run my finger around the trigger guard. I think how it would be to pull it, I think of how the kick back would bolt a shock through my wrist and I think of where God might want me to point when I shoot.

Our mole sits in a chair flanked by Benny and Marcus. He has a bag over his head so I can't see his face, but the hands - those dark, olive brown hands - young hands, Nicky's hands. Morrow stands in the corner blank faced, as though he's not really here, as though he's not watching, as though he's not a part of this. We're in an old hut, some wooden and tin shack in the grounds of a farm yard I've walked maybe a mile to get to. God parked by the roadside and we stumbled in the rain and over fields to get here and now I'm standing over Nicky, the gun in my hand and three faces looking towards me and with God on my right shoulder.

Marcus, I don't know him so well. He's not one of the rich guys but he dresses better than he can afford. He has his shirt tucked in tight to his trousers and wears a suit jacket but his shoes aren't polished and he's maybe worn those expensive pair of pin-stripes three days this week. Dandruff and dead skin have rained pebble-dashed on his lapel - rich guys don't get dandruff.

'He says he did it,' Marcus says and nods at the chair and I step forward towards the dark skin handed man with the bag on his head that I know full well is Nicky. Nicky, who's the same as Benny, only Nicky got fucked. I catch myself in the dark afternoon of the window and see a vague reflection. This is how my father looked. A second step and I'm standing over Nicky. His hands are shaking but the bag on his head, the thick cord bag sits perfectly still.

What if I told you, we're all Gods.

The gun by my side and with Benny and Marcus looking on, God places a palm gently on my shoulder and his fingers curl around the bone to a grip. Morrow turns away and faces the corner - a frightened child when his drunk father comes home to his mother. God tells him to turn around, that he has to see this and he shuffles back all reluctant, his eyes blotched with forming tears. I raise my arm so it's outstretched and barely inches from where I guess Nicky's face should be. This is my best Travis Bickle impression.

'There's no such thing as what should happen,' says God.

You close your eyes and wait for the shockwave to jolt through your wrist once a finger you can barely claim as your own has pulled the trigger. This is how you fire a gun for the first time. The rain on the tin roof makes it hard to hear... but you think, if you had shot, if the gun had gone off, you'd think at very least you'd have heard the shot. I drop the gun and when it falls God tells me he's proud of me, that I have nothing left to fear - and I tell him he's wrong. He kneels down by Nicky and takes the bag of his head and whispers in his ear.

'Bang - you're dead.'

Nicky doesn't speak... I can see on the silver tape that's closed off his mouth all covered in snot and tears, a pin hole where he can breath.

'He's got a cold,' says Benny, 'He can't breath right with his mouth all taped up like that.'

Nicky's greatest fear was that he would die without getting his retribution. Nicky's greatest fear was that he priest that fucked him would die without Nicky getting the chance to deliver what was coming to him, that he'd spend his last moments cursing himself for not having the brains, courage or strong enough inclination to do it. Nicky has no fear. Nicky now isn't even afraid of death. Nicky's been saved. Nicky can do whatever he wants and Nicky doesn't have to feel bad about it.

What if I told you Nicky, was a god?

'Did you think you were about to die?' says God.

'Yes,' says Nicky.

'And now, how do you feel?' says God untying his hands, 'Have you ever felt more alive? Have you ever had so little fear of the future?'

Nicky rubs his hands to his face... Nicky feels every inch of the skin that clutches the bones around his mouth, around his jaw, around his nose - Nicky knows now, exactly who he is. Nicky never really felt what it was to touch his face before.

A manicured ape with a body wax.

Me? I don't see why it was necessary. I don't see why it was necessary to kidnap Nicky, drive him out to the middle of nowhere with a bag wrapped around his head and make believe he was going to die and I tell God as much. We're back in the car, me and him following the rest of the men driving up in front. Two cars winding slowly through country roads and I wonder what the conversation is like between the others.

'How do you feel?' God asks.

'I feel fine,' I say.

'No really, how do you feel knowing that you could have killed him? That you believe in something enough to take another mans life?'

'There was never a mole was there?' I say.

'Don't dodge the question,' says God and he slams the brakes on hard and the car jolts to a stop.

'How do you feel?' he says again. 'You could have ended a mans life today, you tried to - you did everything you could have to kill him. Now, how do you feel?'

'I don't know,' I say.

'How did you feel when you killed your father?' he's raised his voice and he's gripping the steering wheel tight.

'I felt nothing,' I say.

'Nothing? You felt nothing?'

'I felt empty. Like it wasn't me that did it. Like I wasn't in control.'

'How do you feel now?'

The mountain rain crashes in clustered waves against the car and to the backdrop of the heavy whirring fan heater I think of how I was. With depression time doesn't pass in grains of sand, it drips like drops of dull shining mercury. I hadn't noticed it, not amongst the relief that the gun hadn't gone off, amongst the relief that I didn't have to look down at the blown out face in tangled cloth rags of this young kid who I'd grown close to. I hadn't noticed it, not when hidden away amongst the relief that when the click of the empty barrel took the place of what should have been a deafening bang that I knew there was no mole, that it was all an elaborate strategy to get us all in line. Lost amongst all that cowardly relief, I barely realised the change, the subtle, almost invisible adjustment...

'How do you feel?' God bellows again.

'Like I can do whatever I want. Like I'm not a little boy anymore.'

And it's true. I'm not even kidding myself anymore.

'What if I told you, you were a God?'

People pay thousands for this kind of closure. All I have to do is exactly what I'm told by a man who is convincing us all, day by day, that maybe, just maybe, he is God Almighty himself.
Chapter 10

There's another man living in my house. He arrived today with an airbed under his arm and a rucksack full of clothes. He handed me a note. It simply read;

They need you

He's sleeping in with Morrow. Standing in my room and I'm staring at the gun laid out on my pillow and I can hear him furiously inflating his bed with a bicycle pump. There's four of us now, a little unit, a cell - Morrow, Benny, me and this new guy, Clement.

Clement's someone you barely notice. He's been to all the meetings, he hardly ever speaks, he sits in the kitchen now with Benny watching him as he writes - Benny's tongue stuck out and resting to one side where his lips meet one another, the little childlike gesture of concentration most people grow out of. Benny's scribbling fast, two books open on the table in front of him, his pen darting back and forth between them - I'm guessing it's a continuity thing. Benny doesn't notice Clement, he's got other things on his mind. He's on his honeymoon. The wedding went well. Stephanie looked beautiful in her white dress and Alan nailed his speech. Brian got drunk and was too wasted to hook up with the blonde bridesmaid who winked at him when he was showing everyone in the church to their seats.

Clement arrived home yesterday afternoon to find his wife in bed with his brother. He got a call at work. There was a family emergency. He was told it was important that he go home that instant. The receptionist at the front desk relayed this to him as he gathered up his coat and told his patient that he was sorry, but something had come up. There was nearly an accident as he hurried through traffic - he pictured his eight year old son lying on the street, run over by a speeding car, he pictured his wife, maybe she'd fallen, maybe she'd hit her head, he pictured his house - burning to the ground, maybe his wife had left the gas on and gone grocery shopping, coming home to the smell of turgid gas. Maybe something made a spark and his kitchen sink was now wedged in the wall of his living room.

In the driveway he noticed a car he knew as his brothers and in the hallway he could hear the barely familiar moans of his wife... the moans she used to make - years ago. In the bedroom she was on her knees, her ass pert pounding against his little brothers crotch. She never let him fuck her like that... not in a million years would he get to fuck her like that. Family emergency \- What emergency?

'Someone knew,' Clement says, 'and they wanted me to know.'

Clement was always afraid his wife would leave him. He didn't know, but his brother has been fucking her for years. I don't tell him, but I knew before he even showed up. God told me and so I was the one who made the call.

'It's not how it looks,' was all his wife said, and his brother, his brother said nothing, retracting out of her with a soggy squelch.

Morrow's arranging milk bottles by the sink. He has twelve laid out and the wicks ripped for each one. He pours equal amounts of petrol in to each and stuffs the rags in and seals them with tape. We had a group meeting, our first in a long time - in what must be a month. We're invigorated, we're back on track, we have our cause - something to fight for. Time is passing like sand again. And they're not called group meetings anymore.

'Briefings gentlemen,' is what God says now, standing at the head of the table dressed uniformly in his creased perfect suit, his hair slick, his golden watch, his immaculately moisturised skin. 'Group meetings are for losers, for addicts, for people with little hope - group meetings are for people who have lost it all, who need assistance, who need to be lied to - people who have nothing left to offer but the comfort and support of others who are as fucked up as they are. Group meetings are for victims - we gentlemen, are not victims.'

It's difficult not to be inspired. It's difficult sitting here at this long table, the twelve of us, everyone looking as we look now - we have nothing, any of us, we've lost it all these last few weeks, whatever it was - and now looking around at the faces - none of us happy, none of us with anything - none of us with much left to lose, you think how even if we don't believe a word he says, we have no choice but to nod and follow like lambs. We're down to our last throw of the dice. They found kiddie porn on my computer but I won't be charged - God says so, they've nothing on me. But I can't help but feel I got lucky.

We're here, in out suits, the Parker Society - this week a conference on Managing Creativity in the Corporate Environment and we're ready to go to war. I sit next to Benny sat next to Morrow sat next to Clement - each of us in three piece black suits by Armani, each of us with our plain blue silk Fedora ties. Across the table are Marcus, Billy, Bailey and Teddy - dressed the same. Daniel, Nicky, Luke and Holborn, again these uniforms of black Armani and splash of silken blue around our necks.

God speaks of serendipity, he speaks of irony, how the planets align, about fate, faith and how bad things don't always happen to bad people. He tells us how things don't always happen for a reason but sometimes you have to take note of when they do, when something in the cosmos is letting you in on a secret. He tells us that when the extraordinary occurs you would be mindful to sit up and take notice and not to wilt in the face of events that seem to conspire against you. He says all this and all I can think of is making that call to Celement's dental surgery.

He says all this and I don't believe he believes a word he's saying.

There is three units, each unit with four men, the leader of each unit is the man whose house the others are staying in. Daniel is a head and Marcus is a head. It's our jobs to take all messages, to keep our men fed, warm and in good spirits. 'It's very simple,' says God.

'What will you tell them when they ask you why you did it?' God says.

And in unison, like a classroom of obedient children we answer...

'I'll say God made me do it.'

'And will you make them believe you?' he says and raises his hands to our chorus...

'No. But they'll trust I believe it.'

The truth is, none of us believe we'll get caught. We're too smart, this is a too well oiled machine, every detail is being discussed, every eventuality played out and think-tanked. We have escape routes planned, alternative routes if something goes wrong, we have alternatives to the alternatives. They couldn't catch us, even if they knew where to look - or at least that's how it seems.

In the kitchen Clement watches Benny while Morrow packs the milk bottles under the sink. I make them lunch, I boil a large pot of water and add stock and vegetables for soup. Clement is a big guy, almost as big as Benny but without the rough. He's a dentist, or at least he was a dentist. He is a partner in his own surgery and has taken a leave of absence under God's instruction.

'Do you know,' he says blowing on his spoon, 'Dentistry has the highest suicide rate of all working professions? It's true, a dentist is six times more likely to kill himself.'

'Have you ever thought about it?' asks Benny.

'Me?' says Clement, 'Yeah, I suppose.'

'Why dentists?' I ask.

'No one's ever pleased to see a dentist,' Clement says, 'Do you know how I spend most of my day? I watch children cry. Those little fuckers are crying before they even get in the chair. I can hear them crying in the waiting room even when I have the drill going. That shit gets to you. You can't even give the little bastards a lollipop after they're done.'

We've been given strict instructions. We have to wait for the phone call, we can't leave the house until we get the call. It's important. God had said it's imperative that we don't go fucking around and getting ourselves in to trouble. We're not allowed to do anything. We can't use an ATM, we can't make calls, send texts, we can't get food delivered to the house, call a cab, answer the door to the postman if he's got a parcel too big to fit the letterbox. 'It's called going dark gentlemen,' God said as he wrapped up our last group meeting - our briefing, 'You disappear.'

I'm in the kitchen and I'm cleaning out the pot and the phone rings. The three men look at me as I answer, this expectant look on their faces. It's Molly's mother. She tells me that Molly is ill and that I shouldn't bother showing up at the weekend as usual. I tell her fine. She asks me to take her to the doctor in the morning, that she has to work. I ask if it's serious and she skirts around giving me an answer, telling me it's probably flu, that it seems like flu anyway.

'Will you be here at nine?' she asks.

I'm not supposed to leave the house.

'I tell her I will.'

'Good,' she says and the phone drones in my ear as she hangs up.

'You're not supposed to leave the house,' says Benny. Morrow pretends not to notice. And Clement \- Clement has tears in his eyes and is crying in his soup.
Chapter 11

At twelve years old you lie in your dorm on top of the covers. You lie that way so your arms are free. You know they won't have the balls to come after you, you know this because you know they heard what you did. They all followed the story on the news as the trial rambled on for weeks. You, this little celebrity - a celebrity with no face, a black outline - an empty silhouette, a question mark in a box. They know that if they even try to stick a cock in your mouth you won't think twice about biting down hard. But you're not the monster they think you are, you're not brave and you're not fearless. But neither are you the evil little shit they've taken you for. You cry yourself secretly to sleep every night because if they were to see you were afraid they'd know you were ripe.

My father was dead before the ambulance arrived. My mother barely remembers. He had hit her - he had hit her hard enough to knock her out cold. She banged her head as she fell and then he had stood standing over her shouting at her to get up - to stop fucking whinging. He told her to get to her feet so he could hit her again. I woke to his voice. I came downstairs to see her lying on the floor. He was stooped at the fridge and I ran at him. He didn't even see me come in. I took the knife from the counter top and I went at him. He was at just the right height for me to get him where I did - turning round to the sound of my scampering feet, the knife catching his chest perfectly - the sound of a rib cracking when I twisted sharply to the right.

You lie on top of the covers so your legs are free. Even in winter when it's cold enough to see your breath. You can hear the footsteps along the corridor and the rustle of beads against a hip. You learn to sleep after a while, when you're confident you won't be disturbed but you'll wake some nights to muffled whines through the wall.

It's not prison...

it's not school...

but you're being held and you're being taught.

In the mornings you stretch out on the floor and wait for the door to be unlocked. You get in line and silently march to prayer, you can see in the eyes and on the faces the ones that didn't sleep. You can see the ones who woke in the middle of the night and were held tight below the covers.

The boys here aren't like other boys. They're not like you. These boys are little men, wicked little men without a mother or a father. Thieves and thugs, some of them addicts - but there's only one killer. And you, all four-foot-fuck-all of you with your side parted hair and the blues eyes your mother says came from your grandmother - your grandmother who was a painter and who would have loved to have met you. You're the only killer in here. These people - they wouldn't dare lay a finger on you... but you don't know this. You lie on top of your bed with your arms free and your legs fit to kick and you don't suspect, not for a second that they don't have the balls to risk even looking at you in that way.

You go to church everyday and everyday you learn about hell. A cold old man, his head hidden in a book, the familiar renditions. The New Testament promises salvation - it's a how to guide, a design for hope and encouragement. The New Testament with its fluffy clouds and great white lights - a comfort blanket, an aerosol spray to kill the odour but not the germs - it's brushed over like an epilogue - no one ever changes without fear.

'In hell, there is no light,' he says, his voice booming, the book cast to his side so he orates now without council and without supervision. 'There is only darkness. In hell your fears become real and you endure them, morning, noon and night.'

The other boys sit silently, it washes over them, the voice bounces endlessly against the walls so that even once he stops for breath the smack of his lips are heard as fading echoes.

'Make no mistake, you're all going there if you don't change who you are.'

The mortal sin - the undoable evils and deeds that we can't repent from, not even if we were to read the bible everyday of our lives, not if we repented repeatedly, not even if Jesus Christ himself had a word in God's ear and told him surely he can make this one exception.

'Mortal sin is a sin of grave matter. Mortal sin is committed with full knowledge. Mortal sin is committed with the deliberate consent of the sinner,' he says.

Thou shalt not kill.

Honour your mother and your father.

'Mortal sins cannot be undone.'

You sit silently, your head full to bursting with blood, that cold empty hollow sweat you feel in your stomach when you know that you're truly fucked. And you count up all your fallen men and know there's not enough decades of the rosary to even wipe out a tenth of what you've done.

'In hell you burn in liquid fire and your eyes are pricked with needles... in hell you cry out and it does nothing but encourage your tormenter. God doesn't care for you in hell and your cries to him will fall on the deaf ears of the devil.'

You're twelve years old and you're hearing this and you want to cry, you want to be held and hushed - but you can't, you can't cry, they'll know you're ripe and then it's nothing for them to come to you at night and hold you under the covers.

'We say these things to you because we care,' he says, his voice calming in seduction. 'You can be the future of the world as God sees it and in this world you can find a place to live without the needs of wanton mischief.'

A boy makes a fart noise between his hands and the eyebrows of the old man at the pulpit sharpen and in retort he flings the book open again, a loud and heavy thud as the full force of all but the last few pages slam against the wood.

The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants what must soon take place; and he made it known by sending his angel to his servant John...

And then all you can do is sit and try not to listen - as impossible as it is with the wall mounted speakers set to a volume so high they hiss.

You can barely sit still with the need to run coursing through your legs. Your involuntary shaking alerts the kid next to you of your quiet distress and you hope he's not one of those kids that doesn't get frightened by this. You hope he's one of those kids that did something really bad, you hope there's some kid in here who's a killer like you - someone to share your damnation with, someone who's going to be as dead to God as you are - a swimming partner for the dip in the molten lake you're destined to take. But there never is, they're not as bad as you, no one here killed anybody. They maybe burnt a car out, maybe broke into some old woman's home and hit her when she found them rooting through her cupboards. No one here is anywhere as close to truly fucked as you - the old man at the speaker, his warnings to them is his sentence to you.

You'd go to your dorm and rap a belt around your neck and tie it to the light fixtures - you've checked it out and you're pretty sure it would hold your weight - you're a skinny little shit - there's not much meat on you and you don't eat much. You'd happily tie a belt around your neck and stand on a chair and make a sharp jolt to the side and have them find you suspended and perfectly still once the swinging had stopped. You'd be happy to let them find you blue in the face and as cold as a stone if you thought for one second that the rest of you, what was left intact - your immortal and conscience soul, wouldn't be, at that same time getting strapped into the dentists chair.

You feel the hot and cold fluid running down your legs, collecting in a crevasse in your underwear and seeping through he material staining it dark. The kid beside you, that one who's not a killer makes a scene and laughs too loud. Someone bundles him away, dragged by his shirt collar as you cover yourself up and stare dead ahead.

The old man talks for so long - he finishes the entire book from where he started that the wet patch on your legs has dried enough to barely be noticed. It's lunch hour and you scuttle of to your dorm as quickly as you can and take another longing look at the lighting fixture.

You eat something - you eat some soup that's barely a meal and then you go outside into the air. Over the fields you see a road with cars. You can see a man walking a dog and a service station and a family on a bike ride. You see houses and a school. You smell the smoke from a bonfire burning and the smoke wafts into the grounds. You follow the trail and dream of getting lost in it. Of being swept up in the snaking mist. The smoke comes thicker again and so you barely see in front of your face. It's in your lungs and is hot and rolls away across the fields and over the wire mesh fence you've dreamt of scaling.

And you know you're mad to try it but you look around and although you know you're surrounded, you can't see a thing. If I can't see them, then they can't see me. You see a dark plumb coming towards you in the grey cloud and you wait for it to hit - your turn your body in to it and focus for a second. You slow your breathing, careful not to inhale too fully and you bend your knees to a starting position. And when it hits, when the black cloud comes over you and you're baptised in it's shade - speckles of black dust forming like flakes of rain on your cheeks - you feel a gust of air come through your back you run for the fence.

'Get up', he said, 'take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt.'
Chapter 12

My little daughter looks very pale sitting beside me. In the waiting room we sit very quiet, her head resting gently against my arm as she drifts in a dose.

It was early when I left. I barely slept - catching the tail end of the night and slipping out in to the morning under it. The early bus with it's puffy faces - even the old men look like children still dreaming when their eyes wince against the glare of the strip lighting - everyone always looks vaguely surprised when they're awake this early in the day.

'We're not supposed to leave the house,' Benny said as he turned his back to me on the floor and away to sleep again.

I walk steady and head down and I tell myself I'm being paranoid and that I'm not being followed. I tell myself, he trusts me now, there's no need for him to keep on eye on me - he knows I'm on board - I'm just being paranoid. Everything, will be fine.

By the time I have Molly on a bus - my third - and huddled into my coat, the light of the day has broken through. The stale, pale and sunless morning punctures the dark cosy cover and so now I'm in full view. This is not going dark. This is the opposite of that.

In a chair by the magazine rack an old man coughs hard in a handkerchief so you can hear the clatter of his tubes grinding - a sound that says - this will all be over soon, while a young woman looks nervous and hides her head in a book - she looks perfectly healthy but you just know she's caught something from someone and it's rotten inside her.

You look around the sullen faces and you question why a loving God would place your daughter amongst such poison. If you're going to catch anything, you're going to catch it in here. You'd be best to stand outside the door and have the nurse come out to you when the doctor's ready - stub out your cigarette and dart through the waiting room holding your breath.

A room like this is purgatory on Earth. You could go to church everyday of your life and you'd be hard pushed to feel as celestially involved as this.

Molly holds my hand as the doctor pokes and prods at her - the cold stethoscope on her chest that makes her squirm, the blood pressure cuff that she looks on with pleading eyes to stop pressing around her thin arms. He checks her over and asks her how she is. She looks tired - like she's only half there. She answers the doctors questions with shrugs. She doesn't care what's wrong, she just wants this to be over.

'I'll a run a few tests,' he says.

I hold her hand and she squeezes it tight when he takes blood. I take her to the bathroom and wait outside the stall for her to pee in the cup he gives her.

'It'll be a few days,' he says and he tells me I shouldn't worry. 'It could be anything, but it's probably nothing. Give her plenty of Vitamin C and plain food.'

She seems tired, that's all.

'You don't look good yourself,' he says as we go to leave and insists despite my protest that I give him five minutes.

'You look tired,' he says once he has me sat on the table, my feet dangling off the edge like a schoolboy.

'I haven't been sleeping,' I say and I asks how long it's been.

Truth is I don't know. I haven't slept well as long as I can remember.

'How's your stool?' he asks.

I search for the word, something appropriate. 'Inconsistent,' is the best I can find.

'Headaches?'

'Loss of appetite?'

'Lethargy?'

'Restlessness?'

'Chest pains?'

'Musculoskeletal pains?'

What?

'Back pain? Sorry.'

Yes to all of them.

'Have you considered that you're experiencing some form of depression?'

'Yes.'

'Why not come see me before then?' he says sounding half comforting, half agitated in only the way a doctor can. As though you not being well is more of an inconvenience to him than you.

'I didn't see the point,' I say.

He prescribes some pills.

'They're not Prozac are they?' I ask. 'Because I don't want to get dependant on these things.'

'No,' he says, 'They're mild, and will take the edge off, help you to relax, maybe let you catch up on some sleep.'

My daughter still looks very pale and I don't like to have her see the doctor talking like this to her daddy. She's only a little thing but like they say, kids are like sponges at that age, they soak everything up.
Chapter 13

He says it's all just a matter of closure, that when someone hurts you, when someone steals from you, does something that can't be undone, the only thing a victim can hope to do is readdress the balance. Don't believe all that turn the other cheek shit - revenge is necessary, if revenge isn't consecrated it can kill, you know.

'That's all God's about,' he says. 'Whether you believe in hell or not, you should at least understand the idea of it.'

'These people,' he says, 'they're going to live their lives unchecked - they'll go to their graves and not one thing will be done about it. They'll go to the grave and not one person will have a bad thing to say about them - those that do, well, they'll be too scared to open their mouths.'

I feel like I'm being preached to again. I already know all this. He speaks with his usual gusto, his usual zeal, his words like a script - a director to his actor. His words to my deaf ears.

'Write your list,' he says 'get the others to write theirs too and make copies.'

He's called me out of the house and we're together again in this little café, where it all began. He hands me an envelope.

'Open it,' he says and inside there are folded pages full of names.

'Who are they?' I ask.

'Our victims.'

Fr. Eamon Shea - Paedophile

Fr. Francis Green - Liar

Fr. Paul Abbot - Paedophile

Fr. Brendan Flynn - Rapist

Cardinal Aidan Fraser - Liar

Fr. Benedict Moore - Paedophile

...

'Liar?' I ask. 'That doesn't seem like such a crime.'

God looks at me with mild disdain and as if to ask how I could be so naive.

'You don't necessarily have to speak to tell a lie,' he says, 'You can do that just as well by not opening your mouth.'

There must be a thousand names on these pages. A thousand names and a thousand deeds - a phonebook of unpenalized transgressions.

'Add your own to this, and make copies,' he says, 'Then get the other men to do it. We're nearly there'

On the last page I see a name that Nicky had mentioned.

'I thought he was dead,' I say.

'He is.' says God.

'You don't need to be alive to be shamed though do you? Stalin wasn't half the bastard he is now when he was alive.'

I'm too tired to ask questions anymore but like he said, I'll do it, just as I'm told. I just want to know if this will make a difference. I'm just going to keep going. I'm too deep in and it's too hard to understand how all this started and why I agreed. I've been promised something at the end of all of this but now I'm struggling to remember what that was.

It's early morning and the phone rings and he calls me here and I think now that he knows. He must know. He always knows. He knows I took Molly to the doctor. He knows I got the bus, he knows the doctor checked me out and now I have a little bottle of Zoloft in my pocket and another of disipramine hidden on the top shelf at the back of the bathroom cabinet at home. He knows all this I suppose because he always knows this. He knows every move I make and I should know better. Early in the morning and I still haven't slept. It's important to remember the doctor had said that all the SSRIs may cause nausea, headache, anxiety, dry mouth, insomnia, and a variety of sexual dysfunctions - but they probably won't. I didn't sleep a wink. I didn't bat an eyelid all last night and now I'm here in this café waiting for God. I'm drinking coffee to try to perk me up and I'm working out an apology in my head.

I had to go... she's my daughter

You'd do the same thing.

What sort of father would I be if I'd said no.

You have to understand...

I'm doing this all for her...

Please don't kick me out.

I need this.

God tells me he knows this is hard for me. That this, just like everything else in life is a balancing act. A simple act of weighing the correct amounts of weight to all sides. It's just a matter of equilibrium. It's a matter of perfecting the art of perfection. It's a matter of poise, of twisting with the wind without getting caught up in to. Of riding the storm.

***

When I took Molly home from the doctors and told her mother that he would call her when the results came back she looked at me as though I hadn't finished the job - as though she'd asked me to mow the lawn only to walk in a half hour later and find me sitting with my feet up, the grass only halfway cut. As though I got bored. I went home and I sat with Benny and Clement while Morrow washed milk bottles in the sink. There's over thirty of them now. Morrow's been sneaking out at night to steal the empties from our neighbours doorsteps. And there's more to come. Benny told me how God rang when I was out and Morrow answered. He wanted to know where I was. Morrow told him I was asleep.

'I don't think he believed me,' Morrow said.

Clement and Benny play chess. Benny's getting better. He lets me read his diary. I pick up the one penned by Stephanie - I figure it'll be the most entertaining. He writes in big letters, the way a kid does, all rounded edges - comic sans handwriting, barely fifty words to a page.

January 18th

We got to the hotel really late because we were travelling all day. It's a big hotel and the room is nice. It has one of them big shandoleers on the roof and the whole place is full of rich people like us. Ben is such a gentleman, he carrys my bag upstairs for me. He's so strong because he can carry his bag and my bag at the same time. I give him a kiss and he says we should get something to eat. I didn't notice I was hungry and I'm glad Ben said something because I would have just have forgot to eat if he hadn't said something. We had dinner in a really fancy restaurant and Ben had a big steak and I just ate some soup. And then he takes me dancing. He's such a good dancer, and everybody in the whole place made a big space in the middle of the floor so they could watch us - that's how good he is at dancing. Then because we were tired we just went home to the hotel. Ben's lying in bed now and when I'm done writing this I'm going to go make love to him. He's really good at doing that too. I love him so much. I would kill myself if anything ever happened to him.

I watch Benny as he takes Clement's bishop and Clement's face as he struggles to believe it. Benny's getting better.

'Check,' he says.

Clement lifts his queen to take a knight at the opposite end of the board before Benny reminds him that the queen can't move like that - only kings can - it makes more sense that way.

I hear the phone ring in the kitchen and it's answered before the second ring.

'We need more bottles,' says Morrow, standing in the doorway in a pair of marigolds \- a picturesque domestic terrorist. 'He says we need a lot more bottles.'

We need at least a three hundred more. The four of us. We sit like startled lambs. We are the Supplies Unit, God had said and our mission is to steal a milk float.

'What are the other units?' I ask and Morrow says he doesn't know, but they must be doing something.

A milk float \- we've to find one, hijack it and drive it to some address Morrow has written down on a post-it note.

Black Caterpillar leather, steel toe cap boots; Pit-Stop

Black Adidas Sports socks; Lifestyle

Navy Blue Nike Hooded Sweater; JMS Sports

Grey Levi 501s; Kennedy Men's Wear

Upstairs I get dressed and I pull the gun from under the bed. The gun - a 9mm semi-automatic Smith and Wesson, seventeen rounds to a magazine and weighing seven hundred grams - barrel length of four and something inches, short recoil operated, locked breech pistol - Browning-type locking. The pistol is striker fired, with a double action only trigger. I hold it my hand and think of snot on silver tape and pinholes for air, I think of blocked sinuses and rag cloth bags. Downstairs Clement cuts eye holes in my black New Era wool beanie hat from Foot Locker.
Chapter 14

When the smoke clears on the playing field they see you. One hundred yards from the fence and you hear your name being called. Over your shoulder you see a figure in black jumping the steps and slipping on the wet grass. You run, as quick as you can, all four foot fuck-all of you scampering like a pig towards the service station, towards the school, towards home. The closer you get the bigger it looks. He can run much faster than you - his legs are twice the size of yours. You know this and as you get closer you anticipate your jump. To jump or to burrow. The wire mesh fence isn't rooted in the ground, you could dig underneath, you could crawl under, it would snag your clothes but you'd still get through. He couldn't crawl under, he's too big. You can crawl under and be away - you could try to jump, you could jump up half it's height and try to climb the rest. Twenty yards to the fence and you turn again and he's already on his feet and he's bounding across the ground, his legs making massive strides and he's gaining speed. If he catches you, you know fine well he wouldn't think twice about... You decide to jump, to climb it. Ten yards and you decide the spot you'll take off. Your heart is like a hammer in your chest - your breathing so loud it scares you. That spot - you're aiming for that one spot and you'll put your foot down and you'll jump. Ten yards and one more look around. He's bigger now. You can see his face. You can see which one he is - the rosary by his side bouncing on his hip. He's not shouting now, he quit calling your name, he's running like a sprinter, his arms moving perfectly in time - this is as fast as he can go. Three yards and you know your next step plants the foot and then you jump. The ground's wet, and you've thought too long about it - so that you plant too hard and your head falls forward and you stutter - arms falling back behind you so all you taste is mud and dew. At the fence you dig, pulling the wire up but it's tight and giving no slack. You pull it up and the whole fence rattles but there's barely a enough room to squeeze an arm through. You yank hard again, you feel the fencing bend and loosen - an arm will fit, maybe a leg - not your head - your head won't fit - you need to tug again and you pull, you pull so hard your teeth feel like they'll break and your head is blood red... You can hear his breath and the sound of his feet beating the ground. Your head - your head will fit. On your knees you stoop under it, your head is through and you're half way there - the air is different this side of the fence and the grass feels dry and warm - and you're already thinking about Saturday morning cartoons - about ice-cream floats and fish finger sandwiches, about sleeping under warm covers. You wriggle and you've freed your chest and all it is now is to pull your legs through and you're gone... and then the sound of him on you - he's a yard away and he crashes into you and his arms grip around your hips - adult hands - not your father's - and the grass in your own hand tears as you fight and kick and wriggle - his hand under the fence so you can smell the pepper of his cologne and a there's a clump of your hair in his hand.

Did they know that if they put a cock in your mouth you wouldn't think twice...

Truth is... I never got fucked.

There's worse things you can do to kids than fuck them.

Where would you have run? If you'd gotten under the fence you little shit, where'd you have run to? You can't run home - your mother doesn't live there anymore. Your mother loved your father so much she didn't last a week without him. Did you not wonder why she didn't come to see you - did you, you little shit? Did you not wonder where your mother's been all this time? Did you not wonder why she didn't come to visit? Your mother loved your father so much she took a rope and tied it round the banister at the top of the stairs... she tied it round the banister and she drank a glass of bleach and she slit her wrists. Do you know the best way to slit your wrists you little shit? Do you? Do you, you little shit? You cut right down your arm, you don't cut across, you cut right down, from your wrist to your elbow. Do you know that? Do you know that you little cunt? Do you know the best way to hang yourself - do you know that if you make the rope long enough and measure it out just right you won't even choke? You measure it just right you'll snap your neck once it tightens and you'll be dead before you even get the chance to suffocate. Do you know that it's all your fault? Your mother - and a lovely woman she was - she was the finest of woman is what they say - they say you couldn't fault her - that you couldn't have a bad word to say about her - well did you know she loved your father very much? Did you know she told him that if he were ever taken away from her she'd kill herself? Did you? You didn't know that did you? You had no idea you little shit, you little cunt - you had no idea - well you know now. We wanted the best for you - we prayed for you - that God would save your mortal soul - your rotten evil mortal soul. We prayed he'd have mercy and forgive your sins so you wouldn't burn in the fires of hell with all the other murderers and rapists and he said he'd save you. Did you know that? Did you know he said he'd save you - he did. He did - he told me just that very thing. And do you know all that you had to do? All he asked was that you be a good boy, be a good little boy, like the baby Jesus and do as you were told. And he told me not to tell you that. Do you know why he told me that? So that he'd know you were a good little boy all by yourself. All he asked was you be a good little boy... and do as you were told.

... but you didn't did you... did you?

Did they know you wouldn't think twice...?
Chapter 15

Benny's excited. He's the first out the door and he's clearing a space in the boot of his car. It's four in the morning and the phone rings as I try my beanie on for size and see if the eye holes Clement has cut line up.

'Why are you still at home?' God says.

'Why are you ringing?' I ask.

'To make sure you've left the fucking house that's why.'

He tells me we've to go to the corner of the Cromwell Estate and wait there... and to get a move on.

'Are you bringing the gun?' he asks.

'I dunno,' I say, searching for my long coat.

'Bring it,' he says. 'Just in case.'

Benny blasts the heater and turns the radio on loud, some late night phone-in that Morrow, sitting in the front seat answers back to when the presenter speaks, as if he's the one being interviewed.

'They'll cripple this country,' he says to us.

'Nah,' says Benny, 'We'll do that.'

I get the feeling Benny knows something we don't. We snake along the streets, Clement announcing their names as he searches for our corner. Garret Avenue, Wolsey Place, Pemborke Mews. Benny's banged up tin can car, me and Clement squeezed into the back. Benny opens the glove compartment and hands us all gloves. For prints, he tells us.

'There it is, there it is,' Clement says as Benny turns a corner and we park.

'Now what?' asks Morrow.

The fake air gets to my head and I crack a window, the cool morning air spilling into the back seat. Benny asks, shouldn't it be light soon. I tell him it won't. I look at the clock and guess we have another two hours before the morning breaks through.

'So how do we do this?' says Morrow, 'I mean, have any of you any experience in this sort of thing?'

'Experience?' says Clement sounding agitated, 'I'm a dentist.'

Morrow, his face scrunched up like a teenager tells Clement that there's no need for the sarcasm. I tell them to follow my lead and Benny laughs.

'Look,' he says, 'it's pretty simple. 'We need to take the guy with us. We can't just steal the thing and drive off. I mean, what do those things do - top speed I mean, what? Twenty, thirty mile an hour? We grab him, tie him up and put him in the boot. We can't just let him go walking off.'

Benny's been briefed.

'Clement, you can drive can't you? You drive the float and I'll follow in the car.'

I had to hand it to him. He almost made it sound like it was his own idea.

'We can ditch him once we're safe and meet up with you at the address God gave us.'

'You mean Greg?'

'Whatever,' Benny says.

And I thought I was the one managing this whole thing.

Morrow stands outside and smokes... he runs to the end of the street and keeps a look out. Clement asks us why we need so many milk bottles. Truth is, we don't know. We thought maybe thirty would be enough. We thought this was a small operation. There's a list, and we all have a copy and it shouldn't need this many. Three hundred bottles, three units, one hundred a piece. God worked out early on that we only really need two guys to a building, going by those numbers, we'd be hitting, all twelve of us, one hundred and fifty locations.

'That's a crazy number,' says Clement.

'Possible though,' says Benny with confidence.

'It's fucking risky,' I say.

'Can we assume the list has been revised?' says Morrow.

'This whole thing's risky,' says Clement as he gets out to stretch his legs.

We've been waiting here maybe twenty minutes. Benny's holding the steering while tight, the beanie hat loose on his head ready to pulled down in to a mask.

'You have to wonder about them.' he says.

'Who?'

'Milkmen.'

'Milkmen?'

'It must be nice being a milkman. You get up everyday at three in the morning, you drive around slowly for a few hours and there's nobody around. No one telling you to hurry up, nobody giving you any orders, barking stuff at you. It must be really, I dunno... peaceful.'

I think about the poor fucker we're about to jack. He's probably quite old. There isn't too many people delivering milk to doorsteps anymore. He's probably driven this route for twenty years, maybe more and I bet he's never got held up. I bet he's never been pulled off his float at gun point, a bag thrown over his head, gagged with a sock, his hands tied behind his back and thrown in the boot of a car. I hope we don't fuck him up for life. I hope when it's all over and we let him go, I hope he isn't scarred by the whole thing - too frightened to drive his milk float again. I mean, the chances of it happening are slim anyway so I figure that the chances of it happening twice to the poor guy must barely be worth considering. Nobody steals a milk float. There's no cash on a milk float.

'Is there?' I ask.

'I don't think there is. Maybe on one day there is, when he's collecting his money once a week, but he probably only does that on a Saturday or something.' says Benny.

'Do you think this will fuck him up?'

'I dunno,' he says. 'I hope not, I mean, maybe. I hope not though. We'll just be real gentle with him okay. I mean, let's not beat him up or anything.'

'Okay,' I say.

'And we can tell him we're sorry. God wouldn't mind would he? If we said we were sorry?'

Clement flings open the door on my side.

'He's coming,' he says.

Morrow's running up the street waving his arms. The four of us, back in the car as the milk float slowly turns the corner and comes to a stop, it's headlights shining straight in our eyes.

'Do you think he sees us?' says Benny.
Chapter 16

'I want you to keep talking.' God says. 'It's good for you. It will make you feel better.'

You're twelve years old and you think you killed your mother. You think you killed her just like you did your father. Two birds with one stone. You made a run for it and you got caught and now all you can do is sit and take the beating. They wouldn't dare do anything else because they know what you're capable of. But they'll beat you... you're not strong enough to beat back and there's always more than one of them. They search you first and empty your pockets and then it's the belt and it's always on your back. It's for your own good they tell you. Punishment here might just suspend the punishment coming to you later.

'A lie told often enough,' God says, 'becomes the truth. - do you know who said that?'

'No,' I say.

'Do you want more tea? I'm going to have another cappuccino?'

'No, I don't want tea.'

'Where were we?'

She was never really dead. She was as good as dead, but she was never really dead \- not really. They don't let them come to see you for a while. You're in protective custody \- a special case - people don't know who you are. They tell her that it would be best if she didn't attend the trial. That if she did, they'd know who I was. So she did as she was told. She didn't come. At first she wanted to. She wanted to come along and she wanted to tell me it would all be okay - even if she knew she would be telling me lies.

'It's a difficult,' he says.

'She could have tried harder.'

'She was grieving.'

'And I wasn't?'

'It's not the same thing.'

She left it so long she couldn't face to come and see me. She was a mess. She was on Prozac first and then pretty soon after it was on to Parnate, Nardil and Marplan. None of them worked. This wasn't some chemical imbalance that could be plugged. There wasn't a blockage. This wasn't an endorphin issue. You can't prescribe for a broken heart.

'So you accept that she loved him.'

'Of course she did.'

'Liberty is so precious that it should be carefully rationed - do you know who said that?'

'No.'

She loved him very much even though he beat her. I don't know, maybe it wasn't real love. I don't think it was. You can love someone who you hate. You can depend on someone even though they're never really there for you. I think that's what happened to her. I think she needed him, in some way at least.

'Did you consider that she hated you for what you did?'

'Yes... But so much that she would leave me alone to these people?'

'I'd argue it did you the world of good.'

'You'd be wrong.'

I still don't sleep beneath the covers - even when I was married I wouldn't do it. It's hard for someone who loves you to see you wrestling with nightmares day in day out, even if it only manifests as trivial things. You can't shut some things off. The brain doesn't work like that. Sometimes you just have to accept the way you are. No good can come from something like that.

'Terror can reinvigorate people. Real terror - nation wide terror can reinvigorate entire nations if you let it. - do you know who said that?'

'No.'

'You should read more. Read up on the French Revolution. You'd find it interesting. I'll give you a book.'

She finally comes to see you. You've been there four years and she comes. She barely recognises you. She has tears in her eyes and she clutches your face. She runs the back of her hand against he stubble on your cheeks - that two day old stubble that's hard and tight because you wash only with soap.

'What does she say?'

'Nothing. Nothing much, you just sit there across the table from each other and you hold hands. And you forgive her instantly because you've forgotten what it's like outside. You forget how normal people are, how they look, how they have a softness in their eyes that is distant and beyond you.

'Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted. - any ideas?'

'No...'

So she comes to see me now all the time. She comes every couple of days. She gets a bus - it takes three hours to get there and she'll only see me for twenty minutes but she'll do that every two days. She starts to live only for me. She moves from Parnate, Nardil and Marplan back to Prozac - then on to Xanex, then just Valium - then St John's Wort - then it's just the odd Valerian root extract pill with a meal. She gets better.

'And what about you?'

'What about me?'

'Do you get better?'

'Is that some sort of joke?'

'It's not impossible \- Jesus Christ, you should see Nicky, he's like a fucking Zen Buddha these days.'

'Yeah well, I'm not Nicky.'

'How's Molly?' God asks.

I feel a cold bead of sweat under my arm and sink in to my shirt. The waitress brings his coffee and we sit silently as she places the saucer.

'What do you know about Molly?' I say choking on the words swollen in my throat.

'Nothing,' he says, sounding like he means it, 'Why, what's up?'

'Nothing,' I say.

I'm being paranoid again.

I need to sleep.

I'm losing it.

'You're nearly there,' he says, 'Not long now and we're almost done.'

'You've been saying that for a long time.'

'Don't get stroppy. Was there any problems with the milk bottles by the way... ?'

Chapter 17

Our milkman's name is Alan Bradley. He's gagged and bagged and in the boot of Benny's car being driven away. I'm next to Morrow in the milk float and we're crawling through the streets. I have Alan Bradley's wallet in my hand and I root through it and find pictures of what I assume are his kids - there's a loyalty card for a supermarket, a credit card - some receipts. Poor Alan Bradley - tied at the hands and feet and curled up tight in that cramped little space. He probably thinks he's going to die, he probably thinks we're going to kill him and he's right now laying there and trying to figure out why. Why would someone want to kill him - innocent Alan Bradley?

He didn't even see us. He had left milk at someone's door and when he got back to his float I was standing there, the balaclava pulled over my face, the gun shoved in his. He didn't say a word, meekly holding his hands up as Clement pulled his arms behind his back and Morrow wrapped the bag down over his head. It was perfect. It couldn't have gone smoother \- Benny opening the boot as we piled him inside. He muttered something but I couldn't hear what it was as Benny bound his feet with cable ties. Benny and Morrow drove off and we boarded the milk float and drove out of the estate and towards town.

The 'meet' is an underground car-park. It's near six when we arrive having inched our way through town. Benny and Clement are waiting on the lowest deck - entirely deserted of cars save for Benny's brown tin can. We pull up next to them and Benny opens the boot, pulling the milkman out and standing him to his feet.

'We're not going to hurt you,' I say.

He whimpers, his body creasing up as though he expects a blow to land.

'We only want your milk,' says Clement.

Alan Bradley tells us to take it, just not to hurt him.

'He said we're not going to hurt you didn't he,' says Benny.

We unload the crates into the car. We fill the boot but we're not even half way there. We load the back seat, then the passenger seat, then it's just squeezing bottles in where ever we can find room. Under the chairs, on the floor, we squeeze two in the glove compartment. In fifteen minutes it's full, all three hundred bottles.

'You're going to have to walk,' says Benny.

'What about him?' says Clemet pointing at Alan Bradley.

I sit him back in his milk float, his hands still tied behind his back, his legs still bound and bag over his head.

'You're not going to be fucked up by this?' I ask him.

'I don't know,' he says.

'There's no need to,' says Benny. 'We didn't hurt you did we?'

'No,' he says.

'Then don't be fucked up by it okay. You have to promise.'

'Okay.'

'Promise,' says Benny. 'Say it.'

'I promise.'

'What do you promise?'

'I won't be fucked up by this.'

We leave him there, sitting on his milk float, his head slumped down on his chest, relieved he's still alive - telling himself he'll be just fine.

***

At home I cook breakfast. We have probably the best meal we've had in weeks. None of us have been hungry, we've all complained about our lack of appetite - our lack of sleep. We eat fried eggs, sausages, pancakes, bacon, hash browns, toast, tomatoes - we eat like we'll never eat again, not a word said, just the four of us chomping down, the way homeless people do in movies when presented with a proper meal.

God rings to congratulate us - he tells me he's proud, that it was a perfect job, expertly executed, that we're proper soldiers. He tells us to celebrate, that we should go to a bar, that we should have one last night of fun because after this there won't be another chance.

'Go out, get drunk, start a fight, do whatever it is normal guys do,' he says.
Chapter 18

There are three hundred empty milk bottles on the kitchen floor. There is thirty gallons of petrol in canisters in the hallway. There is one hundred dish clothes ripped in to three hundred strips on the dining table. There are five rolls of duct tape on the draining board and Morrow is wearing a pair of yellow marigolds as he slowly begins the task of filling the bottles. After an hour he has all three hundred laid out on the kitchen surfaces, all filled three quarters way full and now he's prepping the wicks. He's poured sugar in each bottle. When the petrol burns it melts the sugar and everything will burn so much better. Hot toffee napalm. He plugs each bottle and fixes the cloths tight with the tape. I leave them to it. Morrow in the kitchen, Benny staring into his diary as though he doesn't know where to begin and Clement - Clement sits in front of the television watching the rolling news channel. 'It's all kicking off in Israel,' he says as I leave.

It's Sunday, so I go to see my mother. Her diabetes have gotten worse so that she's finding it difficult now to get around. They've started taking her on the elderly citizens bus to church. Those yellow buses with the wheelchair lift mounted at the back. Some guy shows up each Sunday morning and helps her on, a bus load full of people just like her. On the bus they chat and gossip, they talk about their families and their grandchildren. They eat boiled travel sweets from tins and they look forward to this expedition every week like kids do weekend trips to the park.

I've begun cooking for her, on Sunday's anyway. She buys groceries each week, a leg of lamb, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, sage and onion packet stuffing. She buys enough to feed a family but insists I cook it all - her dining table full of platters and serving dishes. We sit each Sunday lunch time in front of these mountains of food, staring over the top of mashed vegetable peaks at one another. She'll barely eat a thing and I'll try to stuff as much as I can away, simply so I don't throw it out.

I'm in the kitchen and I've peeled an entire bag of potatoes and maybe ten or twelve large carrots. The lamb has been in the oven for over an hour and isn't half way close to being cooked through.

'There's an awful lot of food here,' my mother says when she comes to check my progress. 'It's a shame we don't have someone to share it with.'

'It's better to have to much than too little,' I tell her.

'I wonder whatever happened to that Greg fellow?' she says. 'Do you ever see him?'

And with that the door knocks. Answering it, he stood one hand against the frame, some an unforgiving look of petulance.

'This isn't exactly what I meant by going dark you know,' he says. 'You still don't get how important it is that you do exactly as I say.'

'I'm not your slave.'

'No, very true.'

My mother hears his voice and comes to the door.

'Speak of the devil,' she says.

'And he will appear,' says God with a smile.

God is the perfect dining partner. He pulls my mothers chair out for her. He cuts the meat and spoons vegetables on to her plate. He tells her again what a lovely home she has and that he's sorry he hasn't been to see her in so long. He tells her he's been away on business and how he's missed their little chats. She tells him that she's missed him too, that she used to enjoy him coming to see her. She tells him that she still takes walks in the park when she can, and still visits that nice restaurant he used to take her too - the one with the mismatching furniture. As they recount like two old friends their times spent together I can't help but feel enraged. Jealousy isn't the word, but it's what best describes this strange feeling of exclusion - as though he'd stolen her from me for some brief period and it was only now that I was being made aware of the details of their sordid affair.

'One thing's for sure,' he says as he cleans our plates in the sink against my mothers insistence, 'It's certainly nice to see you again.'

My mothers contagious yawns extend to me and I feel myself becoming dozy as the food in my stomach begins to digest. God remarks that it's good to see I have my appetite back. He sets out three glasses and takes a bottle of wine form his coat. My mother, failing with her attempts at discouraging him from pouring her one sips on it tentatively. She doesn't drink - or at least I've never seen her drink before, her mouth wrinkling up as she sucks a pinhole amount through tight pursed lips and with a placatory and unconvincing smile tells him how nice it is to drink good wine for a change.

'Do you still go to church?' God asks her.

'Oh yes,' she says with defiance, 'Every Sunday \- I never miss it.'

'Can I ask you a question then?' he says, 'If you don't mind.'

'Of course,' she says a little hesitantly.

God runs a finger around the rim of his glass and I can hear ever so slightly that high pitched chime pealing in tone as he circles it gently. His head stooped down, he doesn't even look at her when he asks.

'Why do you still believe in God?'

My mother, she looks at him as though he's a stranger now - as if his face changed as he spoke - as though she recognised now this impostor in her home. She takes a moment and composes herself, hiding as best she can the palpable displeasure clearly revealed now on her face. Placing the glass down, a demonstration of annoyance - like she's handing back a ineffective bribe she clears her throat and tries her best - cutting right to the chase.

'Well, you tell me why we're all here?'

God smiles, his finger and thumb now stroking the stem of his glass. He looks to me - the look someone gives you when they know you're both in on the same joke the rest of your company isn't privy to.

'I only ask you see because I don't see what you get from it. I don't think he's ever treated you very well.'

'He has a plan for all of us,' my mother says.

'You really think so?'

'I do,' she says confidently.

'Or are you just scared?'

She looks towards me and I tell God that I think we should change the subject though I know that this isn't something he'll easily relent upon.

'And what should I be scared off?' says my mother.

'You tell me,' God says lifting the bottle towards my mothers glass, her hand coming down firmly on the rim.

'I can believe what I want,' she says.

'I don't think that's true,' God says immediately.

'Oh you don't do you?'

'That's enough,' I say sensing my mother's growing anxiety but God continues, brushing my comment away with a waving hand.

'What do you think of the church?' he asks her.

'What do you mean?' she says.

'Do you believe in the one true and apostolic church... that's the line right? The one true church.'

'I do,' she says marrying into this proposed discussion.

'And do you believe it is run by righteous men?'

His tone now sits somewhere between that of a preacher and a politician. The sarcasm in his voice bullying my mother into committing answers.

'I do.'

'What do you think of all the horrible things they have done?'

'What horrible things?' she says.

'You know what I mean.'

'I certainly do not,' she says.

'Oh but you do,' he says, a smile growing to crease his cheeks.

My mother looks to me pleading - she looks to me for help but right now I want to hear what she has to say. Just so I know.

'How about you answer this question then?' he says, 'What's God ever given us?'

'He's taught us what's right and wrong, if there was no God we'd be... be all murders and thieves and rapists,' she says, the last word breaking on her lips as though it were trapped in her throat as a peeling, almost joyous laughter erupts from God's mouth behind the rattle of cutlery as his open palm bangs the table top for maximum effect.

'I think you should leave,' says my mother.

I collect our coats and I kiss my mother goodnight, I tell her that I'll come to see her soon. God waits for me in the garden and I tell my mother not to worry about what he had said. I tell her he's a bad drunk who can't hold his drink and that he can get like that sometimes. I tell her I'll come to see her during the week. She tells me she loves me.

In the garden God is looking very pleased with himself. He stands with his hands outstretched as I hand him his coat and tells me he enjoyed his meal. He puts an arm around me as we stroll along the street.

'You should know,' he says, 'It wasn't my intention to annoy your mother, but I needed you to see something.'

His tone is placid and soothing, steering my around a corner as he slows our walk.

'All I saw was you bullying a defenceless old woman.'

He stops. He roots in his pocket handing me the wine bottle from the table as a peace offering.

'You can't just think this is all about revenge. There's something much bigger than you know going on. This isn't merely about wiping the slate clean. This is about power.'

'Power?'

'Yes, power. Your mother. She's not defenceless - everything I said to her, all the points I made were valid. She has the greatest defence mechanism anyone could ever have. Your mother has blind faith.'

'That doesn't excuse what you did,' I say. 'That's my mother. You can't speak to her like that.'

God's not interested in hearing me speak.

'Your mother has such blind faith she's willing to stick her head in the sand and ignore everything that's ever happened to you.'

He's preaching to me again.

'It's her way of coping,' I say.

'Did you tell her everything?'

'Yes.'

'She knows they beat you? She knows about the other boys and what they did to them at night?' he asks, his eyes narrowing so that he looks at me now with something approaching pity.

'I told her everything.'

'Yet she still believes in what these men stand for.'

'She believes in the church,' I say.

'She does. And that's what power is. That's more power than a government has. At least when you have a bastard running the country you have the option to get rid of him. Blind faith like your mothers lets these fuckers get away with whatever they want.'

He turns his back and walks away shouting over his shoulder that I'm not to leave the house again until he calls. He says I'm putting everyone at risk.

'You said this is bigger than I know. What do you mean? Bigger how?'

He waves away my question with a flick of his wrist and disappears around a bend.
Chapter 19

It's late when I get home. Marcus and Nicky are in the kitchen. Morrow's counting milk bottles out and dividing them up. He counts out one hundred and Nicky and Benny load them in to boxes and carry them outside to Nicky's car. One hundred more for Marcus - counted up and loaded out.

'It's coming man,' says Nicky. 'Any day now and we're on.'

Benny's psyched, bouncing around the kitchen trying to help but succeeding only in getting in everybody's way. Marcus says he got a call.

'We're close. It'll be soon,' he says and places a hand on Benny's shoulder.

Marcus got fucked.

When they leave Morrow boxes the remaining bottles and hides them under the stairs. He throws his rubber gloves in the bin.

We sit, the four of us in front of the fire. Clement pokes at it and turn the logs and the fizz and crackle of the wood seems to demand now our full attention. I think over everything. I think of my mother and how God berated her - of how I was content to let him do it. I think how, if I'm honest he was right when he said she had buried her head in the sand against the acts committed against me. I think of my wife and tell myself I don't still love her loud enough - as always in the hope that soon I'll start believing it. I think of Molly.

I think of the words, there's something much bigger than you know going on \- and I try to take comfort somehow in that idea \- regardless of how indefinite and ill-defined it seems. I look at Benny sat right up close to the fire, the light flickering on his freshly shaved head - beads of sweat forming to make a lucent film across his chiselled skull. He sits transfixed by the licking flames - his diary on the shelf above him - and I think how I haven't seen him write a word in days.

'If this all gets fucked up,' whispers Clement as though he doesn't want his words to be heard and destroy the tranquillity of the room. 'Will one of you find my wife and tell her...'

He tails off - and I assume he had began to speak without knowing what he wanted to say.

'... tell her to go fuck herself?'

***

In the morning the phone rings and I'm called for. God gives me what he says are his final instructions. I collect the list of names - now amended to include those of the priests that the men who live in my house blame for the state of themselves. There's thousands all written up now in tiny print so that they fit on both sides of a page. I send Morrow out to make fifty copies. Benny backs his car in to the drive and we load the box of bottles from under the stairs to the back seat. We take our suits and lay them out flat in the boot of the car, one on top of another so that they won't crease - we don't know why - we've never known why the suits were such a big deal. I send Benny out for paint - black matte and tell him to paint his sky car.

'It's tonight isn't it?' he asks, but I can only tell him I don't know.

I wash our clothes, our black hooded tops and grey jeans. In the kitchen I get Clement to chop potatoes and send Benny out for steaks, onions, garlic and a good bottle of wine. 'Consider it your last supper,' God had said.

I call Molly's mother to ask how my daughter is but there's no answer. When I hang up the phone rings and a voice I don't recognise asks to speak to me. It's the cops. They want me to come in.

'It's regarding the... eh.'

'Kiddie porn?' I say.

I figure that I've little choice other than to go in. I collect my coat and head for town without telling Clement. I'm hoping I'll be back within an hour. I've barely turned the corner when a car pulls up beside me. The window rolls down on the passenger side and God tells me to get in.

'They can pick their moments can't they?' he says, 'I just got word.'

'How did you know?'

'I told you, I've got a guy.'

We drive and God tells me it's a formality. It's nothing but an apology. That they're simply going to confirm what we already know.

'They've realised they've got nothing on you.'

He's right. I wait for a while before being shown in to a room where the two cops who had interviewed me before run through the facts, or lack of for that matter and tell me they've already gotten in contact with my work and I'm free to go back in the morning. I do as God tells me, I tell them that I can't go back, that I'm not ready, that this whole thing has left me acutely wounded, that there's now indelible scars deep within my very being, rendering me, if I'm honest with myself - truly honest, a gibbering bag of anxiety and nerves. I tell them about the sleepless nights, the inability to eat, my liquidised bowel movements. They tell me it's not their problem, that they don't care - that it's up to me because as far as they're concerned, the matter is dealt with.

'Apathy is everywhere,' says God. 'People don't care about people - not really. Not if you really think about it. These people, their job is to protect us -they're not very good at it.'

We move through town as the evening falls. The street lamps flicker on as God drives us east.

'I want to show you something,' he says. 'You're not going to like it but it's important that you know.'

I'm like a piece a battered meat and have taken as much of a pounding as I think I possibly can. There's nothing he can do, nothing he can show me that's going to generate the slightest of changes in me. I don't think, not even if I tried that I could feel anything other than indifferent. I've upped my dosage of disipramine and I've started popping three at a time twice a day. I'm numb. My body works fine. It sleeps now, it eats without being forced to. I have no conscience, I don't check myself anymore. I'm past caring I tell myself, whatever this is, whatever he has, it won't change a thing.

We drive now so that I recognise the roads and I anticipate every corner he takes as we make our way to where my wife and daughter live. A full and tight knot wrapped in my stomach pulls tight and that hollow feeling and that hot invisible sweat comes on.

'It's the little things that really matter... when you think about it,' God says.

There's a man in my garden - my wife's garden and he's playing with my daughter. She's running towards him and he's picking her up and pulling her up above his head, holding her in his arms. She's laughing. We watch as snow starts to come down and he runs over the lawn with her catching snowflakes on their tongues. I see my wife in the doorway, wrapped up in a sweater I'm sure I bought her and she's calling for them to come inside. This man, he picks my daughter up hoisting her into his arms and they walk inside, her arms around his neck.

'Do you know that man?' asks God.

We've parked across the street and a few houses down. The snow falls heavier and so we're hidden now beneath a windshield of heavy white.

'Who is he?'

I see my breath escape and disappear in front of my face. From my window I see the curtains draw and the flicker of the television set behind them. We sit a while and I see the plumbs of smoke rising from the chimney pot and I picture the scene - this man in front of the fire, filling it up with logs and coal, my wife patting a space for him to sit in between her and my daughter. I see him sit down and my daughter's head fall against his shoulder and my wife's head resting on a pillow in his lap.

'His is name is Adam Murray. He's an accountant. He works for his father who gave him a job when he left school and now he's a partner in his firm,' God says. 'He's well off, he has money, he has a nice car, a nice house. He's been seeing your wife for six months. Molly knows and she's been told not to tell you about him. Her mother asked her to promise.'

'I wish you hadn't shown me this,' I say.

The car is cold. The snow is collecting in the window of my passenger side door and is creeping up the glass so that we're boxed in. The fan heater whirls.

'I hit her one night,' I say forgetting myself feeling for some reason as though I need to offer God an explanation, 'I see this man and I want what he has. He has what I had, what I lost. He's taken my place. He's who I should be.'

'It's too late,' God says.

'I hit her. She was shouting at me and I hit her.'

'What did she say?'

'She told me... that she hoped I'd rot in hell.'

I know this isn't one of God's tricks. This isn't like how he burned Morrow's computer store to the ground, or how he made sure Clement would know his brother was fucking his wife. This isn't like the kiddie porn that would mean I wouldn't have to go to work. There isn't something here for me to figure out - some mystery to solve. This is just how it is.

'It's the little things,' says God.

The little things. Little things like a family and a woman who you love and how you're too fucked up to cope with any of those things. How you're too much of a fucking coward and an idiot and basket-case to hold on to something as perfect as you had it and that fell in your lap without you even chasing it. The little thing how you don't know how good you have it until you let yourself take over - who you are and the things you can't let go or leave behind, they begin to own you. Because there isn't enough room for what you want and what you are to share the same living arrangements.

'Are these men really to blame for who we are?' I ask God.

He starts the car. The wipers tossing the snow from the windshield in seconds so the dark evening light falls on us.

'I won't pretend you can't shoulder some of the blame,' he says. 'But some of the blame just isn't yours either. You shouldn't be carrying it's full weight.'

The car pulls off. I want to cry, there's tears there, they sit right behind the eye lids but I know they won't fall.

'Give us the child for eight years and it will be a Bolshevik forever,' he says. 'Do you know who said that?'

'I don't know,' I say.

'It's not important,' he says and he drives me home.
Chapter 20

We sit at home and we wait. My three men sit at the table while the potatoes in the pot boil and I heat oil in the pan and add onions and garlic. Clement has set the table using a dining set he found still wrapped in it's packaging in the cupboard under the sink and Morrow opens the wine and pours each of us a glass. I fry three steaks medium rare and one for Benny I burn to a crisp having removed the gristle.

We toast and sit in candle light and eat. We're in good spirits. I think of the other groups. Across town another eight men are doing just as we are. Ready, waiting and anticipating. I feel confident and fearless, as though we're on the verge of greatness. No more conversations, no more group meetings or briefings. All there is now is the act itself.

With our dinner eaten Clement washes up and we clean the house. We tidy everything and clear the fridge of perishable foods just as we were told. Benny says he can feel butterflies in his stomach. We know any minute the phone is going to ring. We haven't been told anything but we know, there is no doubt, we're all sure that it happens tonight. In the kitchen Morrow turns the radio on and searches for music and I pour the last of the wine in to our glasses.

'I want to make another toast,' says Morrow and he stands to his feet. Standing with him, we watch as he closes his eyes.

'I want to thank you all, the three of you. I don't know why we're here, not exactly, but you've helped me and you've given me strength and you've been good friends. Tonight, we finish what we started a year ago. I feel, for the first time in years, long hard years, that I'm worth something, that I have a purpose, that I can make a difference and that I can change things,' he says.

We raise our glasses.

'To change.'

And we echo is words.

Benny wants to play me one more time at chess. He hasn't beaten me yet and is begging I give him the opportunity. He clears a space on the table and lays out the board and insists on playing as white. Clements and Morrow shift round and Benny makes his first move. He speaks.

'Do you remember the day we went to church?' he says very seriously as I place my hand on a black pawn and move it to meet his.

'Yes,' I say.

'Do you remember the altar boy?' he says.

He moves another piece - his masquerading king to H5. In his voice there is a quiver - a relish.

'Well, do you remember how I closed my eyes when the bell rang?'

I move a piece almost instinctively, waiting for what is coming next, fearing it even.

'Do you know why that was?' he says a sly smile cutting a mark on his face as his hand moves across the board to his bishop. 'Do you know why I kept staring at that kid?'

There's pleasure in his voice, as though it's feeding on the lack of in mine. And I feel a confession coming on. I'm watching Benny's eyes. They don't move from mine. I block his king sacrificing a knight. Benny smiles and looks down at the board. When he raises his head, his smile has changed. It's warm again and I recognise his face.

'You fucker,' I say as his king moves in and Benny plucks away my pawn, my last remaining defence of the queen.

'Checkmate,' Clement says in disbelief and Benny laughs. He bounds round the table and gives me a hug.

'What? Do you think I was going to say I wanted to fuck him.'

'Frankly, yes.' I say.

'Do you know what they call that move?' says Benny.

It's the oldest trick in the book. Checkmate in four moves. Most players know it - I know it, but you never expect it. If you're not concentrating someone can pull that on you and as you react instinctively to the moves of the other player you don't realise you're being sucked in to a trap.

'Fool's mate.'

Benny clears away the chess board and pockets my queen, a little trophy for his victory.

'For luck,' he says and winks at me.

***

It's near seven o'clock and the telephone rings. It's an old phone. It's fastened to the wall in the kitchen. It has one of those spinning dials that chimes when you turn it. It rings and the sound echoes in the kitchen above some story Clement is telling about a time he got high on strawberry flavoured laughing gas.

'That's it,' says Morrow and he rises to his feet.

I answer and God speaks.

'Are you good?' he says.

'We all are.'

'Did you enjoy your dinner?'

'We did.'

'Are you ready to go?'

'We are.'

'In your letterbox is an A4 envelope. Everything you need to know is in there.'

I motion Benny towards the door and he returns opening the letter.

'You got it?' asks God.

'We have it.'

'Good,' he says. 'This is the last time I'll speak to you. You'll know why soon enough. You have until dawn.'

I go to speak, to ask him why but all there is is the empty dial tone of his hung up phone.

Benny passes me the envelope. There are instructions inside, a list of locations and a map with each circled in red. The list is long - fifty locations in total, all within a fifty mile radius of one another. At the very start, back during the first group meetings, the list was short, it had maybe a place names - now it's grown. I assume the other groups have similar packages. Three hundred milk bottles, two for each location, that's one hundred and fifty churches. Fifty each. It's seven o'clock now. One hundred and fifty churches burned by dawn.

'It's not possible,' says Clement, 'We'll never do it.'

We get dressed. Black t-shirts, the hooded tops, dark grey jeans, the beanie hats, gloves with rubber grips on the finger tips and palms. We take bottles of water and cloths with us, a first aid kit, rubefacient heat rub and some food. We leave our wallets behind and restore the factory settings on our phones.

'Memorise each others numbers - just in the case anything goes wrong,' God had said.

We take the fifty copies of the pages of names and put them in the back seat of the car. The instructions - they're laminated pages in large bold writing. They give us play by play commands. They tell us which churches and in what order they're to be taken out. The first is ten miles out of town. We are to hit fifty in total - zigzagging east and west heading south. I calculate we'll have to drive roughly two hundred miles before it's done, maybe a little more. Morrow will navigate, Benny will drive, me and Clement will sit in the back and try not to throw up. With the car packed and the men ready I go to my room. I take the gun and what's left of the magazine clips and place them in a bag. I look around. There's nothing of value here. Downstairs the men are waiting for me. I hear Benny turning the motor over. I go to Molly's room and on the bed I leave a note I have written, just in case.

My darling daughter,

Daddy's had to go away and I'm sorry that I never told you why and where. You should know I love you very much and that everything I do, I do for you. You are and always will be the little candle of light that guides me home.

All my love

Daddy
Chapter 21

It's been dark proper for barely an hour. On my lap are the fifty pages of names. Clement sits next to me and I can feel the shake of his leg through the back seat. Morrow directs Benny, telling him we're close. We're in the country side where white hedges line the unmarked roads as Morrow studies the map spread out on the dash in front of him. Benny complains how with the overhead light on he can't see the turns in the road until it's almost too late. I can hear the clinking of the bottles in the boot when we hit a bump in the road.

'It's a full moon,' says Clement.

It's not, but I don't correct him. It's a clear night and the near full moon basks everything in a pale and soft light. Against the sky and as Morrow speaks I spot a cross on a steeple on a hill through a pocket of branches.

'There it is,' he says pointing and I begin to wonder at what temperature marble burns.

Slowly snaking through the last few turns my stomach knots up and the quiet silence that had filled the car turns to needless chatter.

'We all good?'

'Everyone know what to do?'

'Remember what we were taught...'

'This is it then,' says Clement and winds the window down. At the front gate Benny stops and I get out. The air is cold. There's no wind and up this high I can see down on to a village. The radio warned people not to leave their homes unless their journeys were necessary and down amongst the cluster of tiny stationary orange lights I search for movement. There's not a soul. The ground is white underneath and fresh. There are no footprints, no tire marks - we are completely alone. I open the boot and take the set of bolt cutters to the large and ornamental gate that blocks the driveway to the church. There's nothing to cut. The gate is closed but unlocked and through the window Clement passes me one of the lists. I fix it to the railings with tape - all the names, all the transgressions now made public and so it's simply a matter now of making a scene.

Benny pushes the car forward ascending up the long driveway to the church's doorway. He turns the car to face back towards the road. From up on this hill I can see the road we drove for maybe a mile or two back. The night feels airless and perfectly still. The muted chomping of our feet in fresh and thick snow is amplified and through the black woollen faces of the three men I can see their breaths as the vapour bleeds through their masks. The church is dark. The snow, if anything is even more perfect up here save for the tiny prints that only a bird could make. In a bush something rustles before scuttling away and for a moment we stop, as if to enjoy the silence.

'Just like last time,' Benny whispers. 'I'll go first and as soon as you hear the glass smash you throw okay?'

Morrow opens the boot of the car and lifts two milk bottles out. He hands one to me and one to Benny.

The church is a perfect work of architectural symmetry. It's a small venue and I position myself with Morrow on one side and Benny and Clement retreat to the other. I hold the bottle and in front of me I'm faced with two stained glass windows, each ten foot from the ground.

'St Francis or St Jude?' says Clement.

'St Jude?' I ask and I light the wick. Morrow had each one doused with a little petrol and had left them to dry so that the flame burns steadily and controlled.

It's seconds before I hear the glass smash on Benny's side and the face of St Francis glows with a white rabbit cradled in his arms flickering orange.

'The patron saint of lost causes,' says Clement and I thrrow piercing a hole straight through Jude's abdomen and behind me Clement starts to move. I hear Benny and Morrows footsteps. I see the fireball erupt behind the glass. The motor of the car ruptures to life and Benny calls my name. I move. In the car Clement pulls the balaclava from his face and looks at me with wild eyes and near manic grin. Morrow turns to face the back seat and his eyes sparkle with life. The tires screech in the snow and the car pulls away skidding violently to one side before righting itself as Benny calms and freewheels back down the hill towards the open gate. And I'm wondering then again if marble really burns.

If we're lucky the fire will catch the pews and once it's eaten through the varnish should burn steadily. The smoke should cake the ceiling with soot. If we're luckier still there'll be carpet and that will catch. Confessionals - they're always wooden, the confessionals should burn no problem. If fortune grants it, the fire should reach the main door - that large arched doorway - ten foot wide and burn through it.

'We should have used more,' says Clement. 'Two will never be enough to burn something that size to the ground.'

Our jubilation gives way to the consideration that this might not work so well. If the fire doesn't catch anything there'll be nothing but two large scorch marks on the ground. Petrol burns quickly, even when mixed with sugar...

'It'll catch the pews at least, I say.

Looking back up the hill as we near the gate I see thin streams of smoke rising from each side of the building where the windows were smashed - but that's it, there's nothing else, no blazing inferno, no flames fanning to lick the walls - no spectacle.

'It's not working,' says Benny.

'We'll go back,' says Clement. 'We'll throw more.'

Benny stops the car.

One hundred bottles, two per church, fifty churches.

We get out, the four of us standing staring back up the hill towards the church that continues to stand resolutely still. All this planning, all the consideration and forethought looks right at this moment hopeless. Out little fires burning inside making not the slightest mark on the exterior. A minute, maybe two and we wait in silence until Benny curses and bangs hard on the bonnet of the car as the realisation that whatever grand occurrence we had anticipated in the months leading up to this moment are fading to disappointment. And then... just when it looks like the last of the smoke has meekly bellowed from the churches side... it comes.

Minutes later we're tearing our way through the winding white roads of the country side to our next location. The whooping inside the car as Benny hammers the horn and Clement grabs me round the neck in a playful choke hold, Morrow wraps the ceiling with his hand shouting how we fucking did it.

We must have hit something, some mains, a generator, a fuel tank - something. The explosion that hit from inside, that blew the front door clean off the building so it landed barely ten foot in front of us - that took with it what must have been a ton of rubble and chunks of broken granite, shards of glass, lumps of jagged marble - it must have been a fuel tank... something. Petrol doesn't burn that long. Benny started the car, shouting at Morrow and Clement to get up from the ground. We all hit the deck - a mouth full of snow while crumbs of debris peppered the ground around us. Through my fingers I could see only smoke. As it thinned into the air I saw clearly that the two patches of fire inside had caught the pews. The front of the church, the entire wall was blown out and roofing above it was bending towards the ground. Slates and tile trickled down over the crumbling rubble. Clement pulled me up by the arms as we piled in to the car and Benny, his foot down hard screeched away as one side of the church began to bulge and the ceiling buckled and the large wooden cross, the centrepiece of the crumbling ruins that sat at it's highest point fell to wedge itself upside down in the ground.

With the overhead light on you see only your reflection in the car window. It's only when you look hard or hold your hand up to make a shadow you can see what's outside. Benny still with his beanie hat pulled down over his face drives without a word \- his body tensed up rigid, his knuckles tight on the steering wheel. Morrows whispers for him to relax and he slows his speed. If we were to get pulled over now everything would be for nothing - all our work fucked to hell - and Clement reminds Benny of just that fact.

'What happened back there?' Clement says.

I tell him we must have hit something, a power source, a boiler or something. Morrow turns and smiles at me.

'That building was rigged. You don't make a hole that big by accident. There was something in there waiting for the fire to catch.'

If there was time we could have a discussion, air our questions - we could indulge in a session of pondering and hypothesizing. We could theorize - bullshit ourselves - but as it is, Benny with his foot flirting closer and closer to the floor keeps us moving steadily faster. Morrow's finger trails along the map and his eyes dart between it and the road signs that pass as blurs.

'The next one's minutes away,' he says.

The next one . Number two of fifty. With the last still crumbling we're closing in already on the next. This is just as God planned it - quick, cool, uncomplicated and relentless.

'That's it.' says Morrow pointing forward through the windscreen.

We're driving for barely ten minutes and already I see up ahead now as the hedges turn to houses and the roads grow white lines in their middle a town, not even - a village - and again a church.

'I never knew there was so many,' says Clement. 'They're fucking everywhere.'

I can feel the momentum in the car - there's no crazed excitement now - no cheering, no nonsense talk to fill the empty air. Morrow pulls the hat down over his face and Clement in sync does the same - Benny still hasn't shown his face. He's ready - good to go - hasn't spoken a word - Benny's committed - a proper soldier.

Nobody fucks with Benny.

God had said that the churches in built up areas would be the hardest to hit. The first one - if I think about it - it was easy because in reality there was no risk. With no one around there's nothing to worry about - not really. Your imagination's the only thing that's going to give you reason to worry. Mostly you fear what's in your head. Now as we edge into the village Benny's speed slows. We pass a pub, a set of shops, we stop at traffic lights and a bus stop with maybe half a dozen people stood shivering in the cold.

'I don't like the look of this,' says Clement as we near the church.

This one is much smaller than the last. It is on the high street. There are no gates. Six long steps from the pavement and you're at the large church doors. Two gardens run down each of it's sides fenced off with tall and spiked railings. It's a quarter to eight. If we want to be on schedule we need to have this thing lit up within the next few minutes and then the third, another church five minutes drive away burning by eight o'clock.

'We need to do this now,' says Benny with authority.

Morrow fetches two bottles from the boot as I tape a list to the railings.

'I'll keep the motor running,' Benny says. 'Don't fuck about.'
Chapter 22

As my father lay on the kitchen floor and the blood crept slowly over the tile I began to think about how his heart would still be pumping - how the valves would still be resolutely churning the stuff out in the good but hopeless faith that their hard graft was being put to use. The blood would be flowing steadily through him until it would come to the wound where it would spill out and on to his chest, through his shirt, over his stomach and down into his underwear. But the sight of this blood wasn't the thing that stayed with me. The blood didn't keep me up at night. The look on his face - of when the shock that a knife had pierced his chest had subsided was what did - the look as he realised his life was suddenly slipping away and that it was his own little boy, his own flesh that had been the one to see to it. He stared at me with terrified eyes. I could see in them how he struggled to come to some sort of peace with himself. He told me he was sorry. It was strange. The word gargled from his throat bringing with it a deep red bubble that burst on his tongue, the blood turning to brown as it streamed thick and slow from the corners of his mouth.

Sorry

Sorry is the only word I have for Clement as I cradle his head on the back seat. He took a bullet right in his stomach and I imagine he's got no more than a few minutes left.

'No,' says Benny, 'No, it can take a long time to die. It hasn't hit any vitals... it missed his heart right?... Right?'

It missed his heart. I didn't come out the other side. It's still in there nestled somewhere in his liver maybe, in his gut - in a kidney.

'If it's in his liver, he's fucked,' says Benny.

'It's in his stomach,' I say and Benny, Benny's driving like a madman. The sun is rising and the streets are slowly coming to life and all across the morning sky is black smoke in all directions. And here we are, in the heart of it - right, slap bang in the middle of the whole fucking thing. Clement never said he'd take a bullet for me, but that's what he did. He took a bullet for me and now it's in his stomach.

'Don't move him,' shouts Benny.

And I say, 'We need to get him to a hospital.'

'We can't,' says Benny.

The blood is forming in pools on the backseat and I put pressure on the wound making Clement scream as my hands try to dry with muddy brown stains only to be cleansed repeatedly in waves of red.

'If we take him to hospital we're dead,' says Benny.

And I think how I don't think I care. Morrow's still lying on the footpath outside the last church - number fifty. It's eight in the morning and the three of us in the car and Clement has a bullet in his stomach and he's going to die.

Morrow got clipped as I threw the first bottle and it smashed a hole straight through the head of Saint Anthony and when the cops shouted freeze... and Morrow, Morrow standing barely ten foot from me turned and threw his bottle right at them. They opened up, I don't know how many rounds but I know they caught him bad because Morrow's body moved in three different directions before he finally hit the ground.

Clement took a bullet for me as he pulled me on to the back seat. The cops aren't following us. Benny reckons they're probably too shit scared that they killed Morrow.

Morrow is dead and Clement will be soon if we don't get him to a hospital.

'But we can't,' says Benny again and there's a selfish panic in his voice .

St John's Hospital is ten minutes drive and there's not a thing I can do for Clement. I tell Benny this and though it hurts for Clement to hear us talk about it, I tell Benny that if we don't get him there soon we're going to have a corpse to deal with. Clement tells us not to let him die and that he won't grass us up and that we don't even have to take him in. that he'd settle for being dumped in the car park.

'I just want a fighting chance,' he says.

All Clement wants is a fighting chance. A chance not to die. We hit every church we were supposed to, every single one. The only wasted bottle was the one Morrow threw at the cops. The churches, they all went up - all of them, and they didn't just burn. We didn't need to hope the fire would catch on a piece of carpet or on wooden pews. Every church, from the first to the last, they all came down. They were all rigged, every one of them. We were never meant to burn them to the ground, that was never his plan - all we had to do was light the fuse and the explosives - whatever they were did the rest.

'If we dump him and nobody sees him he'll freeze to death,' says Benny.

St John's car park is empty. The snow is fresh and near untouched, a perfect blanket of white save for the tracks of no more than maybe dozen cars.

'We have to take him in,' I say.

Benny swings the car to the front entrance and keeps the motor running. Clement winces hard when I take hold of this shoulder and hoist him up.

'If you're not back in five minutes...' says Benny.

'Then wait longer,' I say.

'My suit,' says Clement. 'Bring my suit.'

I penguin march Clement inside holding his suit by the hanger, the blood from his stomach trickling out from one leg of his trousers. A warm gust of air greets us as we stumble inside. People in the reception area look up and I call to a young woman at the desk for directions.

'You're going to be okay,' I say and he tells me I don't have to lie to him, that he knows he's fucked, but he won't rat us out - he promises.

I follow the signs - a long empty corridor, a trail of smudged blood following as Clement's feet drag across the floor.

'I'm sorry,' he says again and I push us through large double doors into the bustle of the emergency room.

A nurse runs towards us. She calls for help over her shoulder and a doctor comes running.

'It's all kicking off in Israel,' says Clement and points a hand towards a television set in the corner of the room.

The nurse and the doctor take his weight and a gurney is wheeled out. Once laid back on it a hand brings a mask comes down immediately over Clement's face.

'It's a gunshot wound,' I say, 'It's in his stomach.'

'You need to stay here,' says the nurse, 'I'll need to talk to you.'

Clement takes hold of my hand and squeezes it. He nods at me - some sort of reassurance before he's wheeled away and so I'm left alone, standing in the middle of the floor holding Clement's suit - a room full of eyes watching me. Some guy holding a bandage to his head looks at me and then to the television and then back to me again.

The television. It shows the crumbled remains of a church still smoking. A reporter speaks into the camera but I can't hear what's being said, the volume's turned down low. The church in the background, it's not familiar - it's not here - not this country - it's somewhere else. The sky is bright blue, the reporter wears an opened shirt, his sleeves rolled up, his eyes half closed against the glaring sun. The feed cuts and another is picked up. Somewhere new - a different reporter, a woman this time - dark skin, behind her the burning remains of a building. This reporter, she's out in the desert somewhere, a gust of wind brings sand up around her. And then another reporter and a new location. It's in America somewhere - you can tell by how the reporter looks. He's frantically speaking, wild eyed and enthusiastic. The ticker tape at the bottom of the screen appears and reads Ohio.

This is much bigger than you know...

I back through the door, the nurse calls after me and I turn and I run.

I jump in the car and Benny, Benny has the radio turned on.

'It's not just here,' he says, 'It's everywhere.'

'Drive,' I tell him.

'It's everywhere,' he says again, 'All over England, America, France, fucking Australia - Catholics, Protestants, the Evangelicals. They're burning fucking mosques in Pakistan.'

I don't know where to start. But we need to get hidden. We need to hide.

'They're all saying the same thing,' Benny says, 'The one's that got caught. They're all saying that God told them to do it.'

We need to dump this car and we need to change our clothes and we need to figure out what we're going to do. And then we need to find God.
1 YEAR LATER
Chapter 23

The room where we sit is wooden and has no windows. Outside the day time is too hot to work in so there's break for two hours at noon to let the sun cool. I sit now with the other men and drink light beers and they talk about the heat and how the ground is too dry and the dust gets in their sinuses. At night one says he blows his nose and the dust is in his mucus.

I travelled north from Wollongong and arrived in Gold Coast a month ago. I'd been told it was best not to take buses. It's a six hundred and fifty mile trip and should take about fourteen hours by car - it took me four days and nights. The last man to pick me up was Lesley. 'Call me Les,' he'd said. He ran the vineyard and he said he'd give me a job for a few weeks and that I'd be taken good care of.

'Don't worry,' he'd assured, 'You won't be surrounded by any shit kicking Yank or Brit kids. I only use real working men.'

There's a dozen of us. Work starts at dawn and we work till dusk. The days are long here. It's fifteen hours most days but we eat well and can drink our fill of wine at night. The men are good mostly. There's a lot of passers through. I've been here barely four weeks and only three of the men I'd started with are still here. There're two aborigines, last week there were four, and they're not to be let to drink. Les says they can't handle it and he's seen too many fights start because they can't hold their booze. It's not racism, he'd said, it's something in them, some sort of intolerance - a natural thing, he said. At night when we drink they go off out into the fields and sniff aerosol cans.

'Hey Irish,' one man says to me - they've taken to calling me that on account of how I look. Nearly a year in the sun and my hair has grown out long and been tinted red and my face has freckled. 'Hey Irish,' he says again, 'Where you from anyway?'

I've been lying since I got here. I was told it would be the best thing to do. My passport says that my name is Terrence Elliot and so for the most part, I've used that name. But I was told if I were to go some place new I should always change the details - give different names for myself, different information, tell different stories about who I am and how I got to where I was. 'It'll be harder to track you if someone does come looking for you,' he'd said. It's better that they call me Irish here rather than Terry.

I know sooner or later this will catch up with me. I can't keep moving around and telling people different things, you can't live that many lives at once. I ran out of money eight months ago and so I've worked since then. I should have been smarter - I should have worked sooner. When I landed I stayed in a hotel for a month. I stayed there and got room service and ate well and watched the news - waiting to here my name announced - but it never was - and hasn't been, not yet anyway.

'You picked a hell of a month to start picking grapes Irish,' says this guy to me again - he's big, an almost perfect stereotype, blonde hair, tied in a pony tail and shaved in at the sides. His voice is thick but peels to a screech when he gets excited. 'It's the hottest month I've ever know.'

'It's the global warming they're all talking about,' says another guy.

'That's the least of our worries,' says another and some of the men nod seriously.

It's thirty eight degrees outside. In this hut there are buckets of water laid out on the floor for the men to dip their feet and basins on the counter tops for pouring on their heads.

My body is different now. It's hard, I have arms like I never thought I'd have and a strong back. I can work longer and faster than any of the others. I get six hours sleep a night and I sleep well. At the end of the day my body is tired and there's not a lot of time to think once my head hits the pillow. I feel resistant and desensitised - unbreakable. These are good people and they talk very simply and without sensation. They become passionate only about the most trivial of things and this in itself helps me more than I can measure. 'You live to work and work to live,' someone had said, 'And that's all there is to it.' And if anything, it makes a welcome change. But it won't last forever. Once I stop and move on, just as soon as I have enough money to make it further north and be comfortable for a while I'll struggle to sleep again. I'd have never gotten used to this exile if it hadn't been forced upon me.

One of the men come in from outside and says that they've caught another one - he says how he just heard on the radio. One in Italy or France or one of those fruity European countries. He was hiding in a wine cellar. He says they caught this one guy and now they reckon there's now maybe only fifty of them left.

'Only fifty?' says one guy, 'And to think they said there was thousands of them at first.'

'Do they know his name?' I ask.

I pick up my beer and hurry to the door of the hut. There's a wind up radio and it hangs across a washing line. It's dying as I walk close to it - the sound of some voice slowly speaking so it sounds like all the words are long and begin with the letter W. I turn the handle and the radio station picks up again. I've missed the news and music is playing.

'What are you so interested for anyway?' says one of the men but I've no time not to answer - Les's ute is rumbling through the gate and so it's time to go back to work.

Churches continue to burn every day. In the year since it all started what churches are left, the people burn them now. When they get caught they don't say that God made them do it, they say they took it upon themselves. This great movement continues to roll with the momentum we started. More and more men and woman have take up this silent call everyday and it seems as though there'll be no end. The people they find are for the most part religious men. They are men who once kept holy the Sabbath day, and now they burn their own buildings because they believe it's what God wants them to do. Some claim that God came to them in a dream and insisted upon it. Nuns have burned themselves out of their own convents, a Rabbi was caught having started a fire in his temple and was found in a bar only hours later drunk and merry.

In the field I pick the grapes. They're mostly good out here, there's no rot on any of them. After a few days you get to know what's ripe enough or not without even having to feel them. Les comes out with me and he works by my side.

'How long you thinking of staying with us?' he asks.

The truth is, I haven't even thought about it. I haven't been paid yet and I'm still not sure how much I'm owed. I think maybe a thousand dollars - and if that's the case, then I suppose I'll stick at it out for another two weeks. I'm thinking a thousand would be enough to get me where I want to go and comfortable for a while at least.

'Depends how much you owe me,' I say.

Les smiles and tells me not to worry, he's not the sort to screw his guys over - that I should ask any of the men - even the abbos - he's never short changed anyone.

'You've been here, what?' he says, 'Must be a month at least.'

I tell him how it's been twenty seven days and that today's the twenty eighth. He smiles at me again and nods - like he trusts me, like I'm telling the truth.

'And you've worked every one?'

'Yes,' I say.

'So what's that?' he says putting down his sack - he only comes out and works with us for the company. His wife is dead and it's only him and his son. 'That's twenty eight by...' his voice trails off - like he doesn't want me to know that he's just about to pluck a figure straight out of his ass.

'I make that about twelve hundred dollars,' he says.

'Sounds good,' I tell him. It's not, good I mean, it's criminal, but what can you expect? Half the guys here shouldn't be working in the first place. If you were Australian, you'd have cause to complain. But I'm grateful. He could have paid me a lot less and gotten away with it.

'I think this might be my last day then,' I tell him.

'It'll be sad to see you go,' he says. 'There ain't many workers like you.'

'I appreciate that,' I say, and I mean it.

Les tells me he'll square me up later that night if I come and have dinner with him in the evening. He says he'll drive me to the road in the morning, that he likes me, that he'll be sorry to see me go, that his son is a good cook and he's gone hunting this afternoon for 'roos.

In the evening I do as I'm asked and I go to Les's house on the outskirts of the vineyard. His son is in the kitchen and the table has been set for three. It's a modest house and lightly decorated with no woman's touch. It feels how I used to live. Les greets my like a friend and rests an arm on my shoulder as he walks me inside. He wants to show me his guns.

'It was my father's,' he says, taking a piece from a wall bracket and handing it to me. It's a long barrelled shot gun, beautiful really - it looks as though it's never been fired - an antique.

'You know what that is?' Les asks, smiling on it with pride. 'It's a Winchester Model twelve, twenty eight gauge, it's the rarest gun in the twelve collection.'

I try to look impressed.

'It's a lovely weapon,' I say.

'It was my father's. I killed my first 'roo with that rifle, and Jeremy his.'

Jeremy his son, waves over his shoulder and apologizes for not shaking my hand. He's at the counter preparing the steaks and has blood stains up his arm to the elbow. Les pours wine and we sit and we talk until dinner is ready. He tells me about the wine business and asks me to reconsider my position, that he'd be happy to take me on in a more financially appropriate capacity.

'I like you,' he says, 'You're not like the rest. I could do with someone like you, not as a picker, but helping me in a more managerial role so to speak.'

It's a good offer and I know he means it. If I thought it were safe to stay in one place for anything longer than a few weeks I'd be happy to stay but the truth is, I don't know how secure I would be. I've no idea who's looking for me, if even anybody is, but I'd told myself and been advised not to stick around too long. One month is plenty of time and even at that, I'm pushing what I'm comfortable with.

'Well if you change your mind twenty miles, hell even two hundred miles down the road,' Les says, 'don't think twice about turning back. There'll be a place for you.'

In the barn at night we mostly eat cold meats and breads and drink the cheap white Semillon. Les brings two bottles of Pinot Noir to the table and pours three glasses.

'It's good with steak,' he says, 'Jesus, it's great with anything. It's the best wine for a thousand miles in all directions.'

'You could make a good life for yourself here,' he says, 'The town's only twenty minutes drive and I could get you a car in a few weeks for the price of a few days work. There's a mate of mine and he's renting houses and I'd make sure you got something decent and weren't jipped on the price. He has a daughter - I think you'd like her.'

Dinner is served and the three of us eat. It's a proper meal, I haven't eaten one so good in a long time and I try as best I can not to seem like that's the case. In the morning Les will drive me to the road if I've decided I still wish to leave.

'The offer's always there,' he says, 'God knows a man can't keep moving forever.'

The radio plays in the background and a news bulletin begins. Les is speaking and stops dead as the voice of the newscaster announces that another of the men have been caught. The three of us sit in perfect silence to the news that a man was shot dead as he tried to escape from a fourth story apartment in Buenos Aires. The police entered his home to find him alone. His only belongings, a suitcase containing a three piece, plain black, matte Armani suit and blue silk Fedora tie. The three of us, deadly silent... completely silent.

Les looks to me and then his son and back to me while my eyes scan to theirs in the same manner.

... And then, quite clearly in his eyes some shift... some clear and unambiguous shift, a clicking into place - the discerning exposure of a magic eye picture, and Les says...

'You're one of them.'

The nonsense turning to a sailboat...

'No...' I say.

'You are.' he says, 'My son. Jeremy's brother, he was one. They killed him.'

'I'm sorry,' I say, 'but I don't what you mean.'

'Don't lie to me,' Les says, 'You were one of them.' His voice changing, he lets anger take hold. He stands fists clenched tight around his steak knife. His son, a broad young man, roughly my age with wide shoulders and large hands doesn't say a word - his face stiff. I back away from the table, pushing my chair on to it's back legs and rise to my feet repeating that I don't know anything.

'You're going to talk to me Irish, and you're going to tell me all about it... about how you fuckers got my son in to that mess.'

I step towards the doorway. Jeremy rises to his feet and Les moves steadily towards me, his eyes fixed on mine, the knife tight in his hand. The gun on the wall, I wonder if it's loaded and I take the chance that it is and make a dart for it, cocking it and pointing down the barrels in to Les's chest not a second to soon as he's almost on top of me. He stops and his hands rise above his head, his eyes cast down running along the barrel to where my finger rests on the trigger. Jeremy shouts not to point that gun at his father. I prod the barrel in to Les's chest.

'It's not loaded,' he says.

I pump it and it clicks and I blow a round in to the floor at Les' feet.

'Get on the floor,' I shout.

'You killed my son, you and your friends,' Les says.

'That was nothing to do with me,' and I point the barrel towards the floor.

I have the two of them walk outside and in to their garage. I keep the gun pointed in to Les's back, my finger loose on the trigger.

'Who sent you?' Les asks.

'No one did,' I say.

'You fuckers got my son killed, my oldest son, my first born, my little boy,' Les says as I nudge him through the yard and inside.

'Close it,' I say, and Jeremy pulls the garage door shut, my gun still stiff in his father's back.

I have them search for rope and have them tie each other's hands together and then I bind their feet.

'I'll find you,' says Jeremy, 'I'll find you and when I do I'm going to rip your fucking heart out.'

The keys to the Ute are in the ignition. I start the engine. I don't know how to drive but I manage to get it into gear and moving. I drive slow out through the gates and take the trail to the road. I stop as the dust turns to asphalt and I turn the engine off. I think now, that everything changes from this point on. Once someone finds Les and his son or they free themselves - whatever comes first, it won't be long until I'm caught. They know my face, they know my accent and can place me. There's not many of us left. It's not difficult to find out who I am. My face, just like so many of the others will begin appearing in the newspapers and on the television. I've been lucky to this point. It hasn't happened. When the hunt began, the first thing they cops did was look for all missing persons - they were the first suspects - anyone reported lost, men who suddenly stopped showing up for work, who didn't come home to their wives. No one reported me missing. The people at work, they still think I'm just someone who likes looking at pictures of little girls - too ashamed to show my face at the office. My wife, if she does suspect, she wouldn't rat me out - she wouldn't do it to our daughter. My mother - I don't know, I think maybe God spoke to her - lied to her. If these men come looking for me, if they go to the cops, I have maybe a few weeks before I'm caught. Once a guy's face comes out it's not long till they're dead or in custody. The lucky ones are caught - they stand trial, all dressed the same, those three piece black matte Armani suits. The dead ones - they always find a suit nearby, in a locker, in a holdall, in the cupboard of a motel they're staying in. They bury them in the suits - I think that was always the idea - right from the start. Mine is with me, here in a bag on the passenger seat. I don't have a choice, I tell myself this loud so I believe it and I get out of the Ute and walk back the way I came.

The evening is cool and quiet. Here at night it seems like you can hear every sound made within a hundred yards. There's a breeze that comes rolling over the vineyard and the smell of wine being fermented carries on it and spreads for miles around perfuming the whole property. The house is still, the light in the garage is on and as I get closer I can hear Les and his son shouting for help.
Chapter 24

We got out of the city as quickly as we could. We drove out in to the country side, out to the hut where we'd taken Nicky the day we tied him to the chair and God told me to blow his head off. We talked about Clement - about his wound and we decided that he'd be okay -that'd he'd live, that we'd probably got him to hospital in time.

'We did all we could,' Benny said.

The hut was too cold so we slept in the car.

'I never really believed that he was actually God,' said Benny.

'And you do now?' I said.

'I suppose so,' he said, 'I mean, it makes sense doesn't it.'

In the morning when it was still dark we drove to the coast. We listened to the radio. Three thousand churches in Europe alone, ten thousand in America - these were early reports. Catholic and Protestant, Baptist, a few Amish - Jewish and Hindu temples, Mosques in Pakistan and Afghanistan. There were Buddhist temples in Asia that were now nothing more than mounds of rubble. There were burnings everywhere - in every city, every town. There were guys already caught. Hundreds of men already in custody and hundreds more killed in action. They all were saying the same thing. 'God asked me to do it.' We drove the car out on to the beach early in the morning and set fire to it and walked up along the sand dunes and back towards the town.

We had no money. Not a penny.

'We're going to have to do something,' Benny said.

There was a corner shop. I had the gun. There was an old woman opening up for the day and I followed her inside and shut the door behind her and told her to empty the till. I showed her the gun held in my hand and tucked into the inside of my coat. I had the balaclava pulled down over my face and she was very good about it. She didn't scream, she didn't shout or cry or panic. She opened the till and she gave me all the money she had. There wasn't much and I told her I was sorry and she asked me if I was 'one of them'. I told her I was. She opened a safe without being asked and she gave me a thick roll of notes and told me that she doesn't like to give it to the banks, that she keeps all that she earns on the premises. She asked me if it was true that God was angry with us. I told her he wasn't, that we didn't know why he wanted us to do those things. I asked her if she was insured. She said she was. She said she'd have to phone the police but would wait for a while. She asked me to tell God that she was sorry. That she wished he wasn't so angry with us that he would want people like me to burn all his churches to the ground. I told her not to worry and I told her again that I was sorry about the money.

We booked into a hotel that looked out over the coastline and Benny turned the television on. I laid the money out on the bed and counted it. There was a lot and I felt guilty and sick but then more than that, I felt relieved.

'I need to go to see my mother,' said Benny.

'That's not a good idea,' I said, 'We don't know if they're looking for us yet.'

The local news station reported the death of Clement that evening. The nurses called the police and they had waited by his bedside to see if the doctors could revive him long enough for him to give them a few names. It never happened and Clement died a couple of hours after we'd left. But they had footage from cameras in the hospital of a man carrying him inside. I watched and in grainy black and white I saw myself drag him down a corridor.

'They can't see your face,' Benny said.

It was impossible to identify me - the quality was bad, the cameras must have been old, but Benny - Benny was fucked. A camera in the car park picked his face out perfectly once I'd waddled Clement inside. Benny had gotten out of the car to smoke and get some air. He sat on the end of his bed now and cried as the appeal to anyone who might know his face to come forward was announced.

'I'm a dead man,' he said and put his face in to his hands and wailed like a child.

I knew then I couldn't stay with him and Benny knew it too. I told him I was going to take a walk, go out and get us something to eat and that he should stay in the room and lock the door.

'We need to eat something,' I told him, 'we'll eat, we'll get our heads together and we'll come up with a plan.'

'Okay,' he said and wiped the tears from his face.

I told him to get some sleep.

It was early in the evening and the sun had gone down and a cold wind blew over the water and on to the seafront. I walked with my hands in my pockets and tried to think as best as I could what there was that I could do. I still had a telephone in my pocket and I thought to call someone - one of the men, Nicky or Marcus maybe. I had memorised all of the numbers. I could call any one of them but I didn't know who had been caught and who hadn't. I thought of phoning my wife. I thought to ring her and tell her the truth and ask her to tell my daughter that I was sorry. I thought about Benny and how I knew I'd have to leave him.

I walked along the promenade and in to the first bar I came across. I drank a beer. There was a television mounted on the wall and although the bar was full there wasn't a word being spoken. People ordered drinks with a nods and flicks of wrists rather than break a silence that was focused entirely on the flickering box in the corner.

'I don't even know what to think,' whispered a voice, 'I never believed in God, but now I'm not so sure.'

Theories were offered up by meek voices and each was discussed and considered with equal measures of scorn and concern.

'Whatever it is,' someone said, 'Everything's different now.'

I drank more, maybe one beer too many. As the sight of yet another burned out ruin flashed on the screen I began to feel in some bizarre way proud that I had been a part of it. I looked around the faces, this room full of confused, frightened and doubtful men, convinced nothing could ever be the same again - on the crest of some wave that was threatening to change the world forever while at the same time making ignoramuses of them all. It felt good to know that I was in some way responsible - that I had been chosen. I felt convinced and steady - I felt ten feet tall.

'Another beer?' the bar tender asked and I smiled enough, maybe enough even to give myself away and so I left.

Benny had run a bath and cut his wrists. He was dead long before I got back. His body was already cold despite the warm and red soapy water he lay in. He left a note. It said that he was sorry - that was it. The television was still on. It showed Benny's face, this time a picture and they knew his name. Someone had come forward, someone recognised him and had given the cops his name - they said it was mother. His own mother ratted him out and so Benny ran a bath and cut his wrists and died with tears in his eyes. In the morning they'd find him - the landlady would come in to the room and find his body shrivelled up like a prune and she would call the police and then Benny would be on the evening news again. I lifted him out of the bath and dragged him to the bed, his heavy, limp body. I dried him off and took his suit from his holdall. I ironed it and I dressed him and lay him down on his back. I told him I was sorry.

I fell asleep and woke up early. The sun was coming up. I left the room with Benny lying on the bed. His skin was whiter now and with the morning light it had taken on an almost translucent quality. I fixed his tie straight and folded his hands over his chest. I took the money and stuffed it in my bag with the gun. Downstairs I paid to rent the room for three nights more and asked that we weren't to be disturbed, that we didn't need the room to be cleaned or the bed linen changed. I needed to get out of town. Once they found Benny it would be suicide to be within a hundred miles of this place.

I walked to the station. I thought how at any moment my face could be on the television. It had barely been a full day and already the three men that had stayed in my house, our little unit, they were all dead. In one hour a bus was to leave that could take me back to the city \- back home. I figured that I was in as much trouble there as I was anywhere else. It would be a stupid move and I knew it - I didn't care. There was nothing there of any use to me and I paced the station back and forth and tried to think as clearly and as sensibly as I could. The phone in my pocket rang. I answered it but I didn't dare open my mouth to speak.

'Hey,' he said. I recognised the voice. It was as calm and controlled as ever and it made me angry that he still played out this façade.

'God?'

'We need to get you out of here. Where are you?'

'Benny's dead.'

'Really?... But you're okay?'

'Yes,' I said.

'Where are you?' he asked again.

I wouldn't dare tell him.
Chapter 25

They shut up pretty quickly once I walk in. They're still sitting on the floor, they've struggled so much that the ropes around their wrists have gotten tighter and Jeremy's hands are cherry red.

'I'm going to be straight with you both,' I say, crouching down in front of them. 'I've come back because I really can't afford to let either of you live.'

'We won't say anything to anyone,' says Jeremy, his resentment melting to fear.

'That'd be nice to believe,' I say. 'But we all know that's not true. You're still both very angry about your brother and so I can't take the risk. I'm sorry, but that's just the way it is.'

Les swears he won't do anything, that he won't follow me or call the police, that he'll forget I ever came around here and I feel sorry of them. I ask Les about his son.

'You should at least know it was nothing to do with me,' I say. 'He's dead, but it's not my fault.'

He wanted to get married to a Hindu girl. He loved her very much but the church wouldn't let them marry. Her visa ran out and she had to go home. That was it.

'He was going to move away, he was going to go and be with her, but he got caught up in this mess,' Les says now with tears in his eyes.

'How'd they find him?' I ask.

'With a couple of other guys a few days later. He came back to house to collect some things and tell me he wouldn't be around for a while, he was scared, he said that he was in trouble, that he'd burnt a bunch of churches out in Ashmore, that he didn't know that there was going to be so many - that it was everywhere. He went off and the cops found them hung up in some factory or something. One of them started shooting and the cops shot back - and that was that.'

'You understand,' I ask, 'That this isn't something simple that you can try to understand. It's important you know that. It's important you know that none of us knew how big this was, that it was global.'

'Then what is it?' Les says. 'Is he angry? Is that it?'

'Who?'

'God,' says Les.

'I don't think so,' I say, 'I think he's just passed caring about us.'

'Well you should know,' says Jeremy. 'You're all saying that God asked you to do it.'

'He did,' I say.,'But he didn't tell us why.'

I don't want to kill these two men. They're hurting and they're upset and it's fine to be like that. It's only human but if I'm caught, I'm dead or I'm going to prison for the rest of my life. None of the men who have been sent away have lasted very long. Most have killed themselves. Most are ordinary men, they're not fit from prison - not the sort of prisons they're being sent to. High security facilities, twenty three hours a day in a cell with no company. Mostly they're kept apart from the other prisoners. I think it's so they don't poison the minds of the others. They don't understand us, they're afraid of us and even if we do give up the others once we're caught, it makes little difference. Life sentences reduced to minimum fifteen years is the best any of the courts will give a guy for helping them - if they're lucky.

'They say there's only maybe fifty of you left,' says Les.

'I don't know if that's true,' I say. 'But there isn't many.

They calculated the number of men that it took to take these churches down. It seemed everyone worked the same numbers we did. Twelve guys to one hundred and fifty locations. There's a list of names apparently and they know they've gotten most of us, that there's only a few of us left - running scared. Ordinary guys, dotted God knows where across the globe doing just as I'm doing. It took about six months and they reckoned they were down to the last thousand. For six months there was hundreds of guys getting picked up everyday. Some were ratted out by friends or family, some were fucked over by the guys that were in their unit on the promise of shortened sentences - in some countries on the promise they wouldn't be executed. Lists of names everyday of guys caught - it was impossible to keep track. As the months went on the numbers decreased and in the last few weeks they've maybe only found ten or twenty guys. It's harder now, harder to find us now that we're so few in numbers. The only way we can get caught is through bad luck, through fucking up all by ourselves - just like now.

'So you see,' I tell Les, 'I don't want to do this, but you've left me no choice.'

I think he understands. Jeremy cries now and Les comforts him, telling him that it will be okay, that soon they'll be together - that he'll see his mother, that Les will see his wife. He tells him they'll be together again, a family, the two of them with their son and brother, their wife and mother.

I tell them again that I'm sorry but they don't look at me and though their hands are tied they cling tight to one another, their foreheads coming together and Les tells his son that he loves him. I stand over them, the barrel pointed in the small space between their heads and I feel my finger begin to squeeze around the trigger.

In the house I take as many rounds for the gun as I can carry and some bottled water. I find some money in a drawer, a couple of hundred dollars and then some more in the wallet of a coat. I take the bottle of wine from the table and walk back up the path to where the Ute is. I can see the light of the barn where the men are drinking and eating in the distance. I can see figures outside kicking a football to one another. I struggle with the Ute again, finally getting it moving and I drive slowly south.
Chapter 26

'It's important though,' he said. 'It can go a long way to making you happier, I mean that.'

The world is falling to pieces around us and he chooses now to give me his advice on woman.

'A man can not live on bread alone.'

We arranged to meet in the café but today we don't sit by the door. I had arrived first and insisted on the table in the far corner of the room. He sat with me, his back to the door, my eyes darting between it and him.

'You know you can get this lubricant gel that tastes like Piña Colada?'

I took the bus and I met him. It had been two days since the world awoke to the burnings and they'd already caught hundreds, maybe thousands of men.

'Condoms too. Cocktail flavoured prophylactics,' he said with a smile. 'What's the world coming to?'

Benny's dead. Morrow's dead. Clement's dead.

'Is spermicidal lubricant gel a prophylactic? I suppose it is,' he said.

I wondered who else. Nicky? Marcus? Teddy?

'Nicky got out,' God said. He's disappeared. I don't know about some of the others. They're probably dead.'

'How do you know?'

'You should count yourself lucky. The more dead men the less chance there is on you getting caught. You can't be a Judas if you're dead.'

God told me Nicky got away. Teddy killed himself, Daniel got shot when he opened up on the cops. Bailey was caught and hung himself in his cell before he got a chance to open his mouth.

'These are ordinary men,' God said. 'You all are. You're not trained. You're not militants. You're all just regular guys.'

'But we're not regular guys,' I said.

'You're weaker than most,' he told me. 'Not all of you granted. You're still here and you look strong.'

I didn't feel strong. I felt tired and weak. I needed a few days I thought. I needed to let this all sink in so I could make sense of it. So I could come up with some sort of plan.

'I'll take care of you,' God told me. 'Give me a day or two and I'll take care of you just the way I took care of Nicky.'

'Why us?' I asked.

'Because you're not like the others. You have hope and you have dreams and you have wants and needs and you have the strength to achieve them. You're both young, you have a whole life ahead of you.'

'You trust us?' I asked.

'Even if I didn't,' he said, 'Neither of you are of any danger to me. I want to help you. If you're still alive in two days meet me here at noon and I'll see you're taken care of.'

I left then and walked the streets. I didn't know where to go. I had some money left. I booked in to a hotel and stayed up all night watching the news. I couldn't sleep.

I sat on the end of the bed, the television dousing the room in flickers of light as the twenty four hours news channel churned out image after image of burnt out buildings. Two days since it happened and they're talking about how world has changed. Faces of men puncture the stories of suicides and deaths, of people being ratted out, people given up by the people, wives tipping off police about their husbands, husbands on their wives. In Mexico there was an entire group made up only of woman. In Pakistan a group didn't burn their mosques but blew them up and when they came to the last of those on their lists they took themselves with them. There's no unity of culture here, this isn't about any one God. This is an attack on an idea. God had said you can't kill an idea but you can dilute it so that it's weak enough to be washed clear away.

I sat on the bed and I couldn't sleep. My heart beat fast and the hairs on my arm stood to attention and across my neck I could feel that cool chill of faintly administered adrenaline.

The local news station got hold of the lists and forwarded them to the newspapers. Every name and every wicked deed would be there for all to read in black and white in the morning. And on top of this news I lay back on the bed and I drifted off to sleep as easy as a new born baby.

It was a strange thing to wake the next afternoon. The dull empty ach of exhaustion that had housed itself resolutely in the front of my head just behind the eyes had lifted and I felt strong again. I turned the television on and watched listening for my name. After an hour and content with my anonymity I took the elevator to the ground floor to the dining room. I ate a lunch and back in my room I ran a long shower. Dried off in a towel I stood in front of the mirror naked and looked at myself. I looked deep in to my eyes searching for fear, searching to see the cracks. There was nothing. This strange courage that had seemed to wrap itself around me the moment I woke was not a façade, it wasn't a smokescreen for some internal struggle that would arise and cut me down just as soon as I had convinced myself that I was free from self destruction. I felt new and cleansed. I was a clean slate.

***

In the hotel bar that evening I met a woman - I met a girl. She was young, maybe only twenty years old. She was blonde. She was not a woman I felt I would fall in love with. In the morning when we were done I bought her breakfast and told her that she shouldn't come to my room looking for me again. She told me that that was a horrible thing to say and that it made her feel cheap. She told me that I could be so lucky for her to come to my room again, she told me that she wasn't a toy. We had lunch in bed. She told me that she was a Cancer and that her favourite musicians were Patti Smith and Sinead O'Conner and her favourite film was always different every time she was asked. On that day she couldn't think of anything so she just said it was Casablanca even though she'd only seen it once and didn't get what all the fuss was about. I liked her.

She asked if we could take a walk in the park. We strolled arm in arm and she asked me if it was strange that she had been so insistent the night before. I had been sitting alone at the bar, one eye on the television and she sat down on the stool next me.

'It was strange,' I said, 'That you sat down where you did when there were so many empty stools.

There had been only a handful of people in the resident's bar. There was a couple sat at a table near the window - a middle aged man who read a newspaper while the woman sitting across from him sat looking on in his direction. She drank heavily from a bottle of wine and applied fresh red lipstick with each glass she finished. There were two men who stood next to each other harassing the barman for his take on the whole 'churches thing', but other than that the bar was empty and between myself and these two men there were plenty of empty stools on which she could have sat. It was strange then that she chose to sit were she did and I had told her so.

'It's not something I would normally do,' she said.

We walked for a long time. We didn't speak much and as the evening came down we went for dinner.

'I slept with you because I think the world might be coming to an end so it doesn't really matter does it?'

'Why would you think that?' I asked.

'It makes sense that it would,' she said.

She had stuffed chicken breast with baby potatoes and string beans and I ordered a special, a pan fried fillet of beef and we shared a bottle of sparkling wine and walked back to the hotel. She told me that she liked me and I told her I thought she was a very special person but in the morning I would have to go and I doubted I would see her again. In bed she lay across me and twirled a clump of my chest hair around her little finger and I put the television on and listened for my name.

'You're very interested in all of this aren't you,' she said.

There was a Baptist church in New Orleans that had been rigged with so much explosive that the head of a statue of Saint Denis was found in a flowerbed at the bottom of a garden nearly half a mile away.

'Do you think this is it?' she asked with her hands gripping on to my shoulders as she climbed up my chest to face me. 'Do you think this is the beginning of the end for us?'

On the local news they had begun to talk about the list of names they were finding fastened to the gates or taped to walls. They had published them that morning and the now you could go online and see the whole thing for yourself.

Her back was soft and she hummed like a cat as I gently ran my fingers up her spine and clutched gently around her the neck.

'I think I could love you,' she said and I kissed her forehead and she told me she wouldn't say anymore about it but that she'd like me to know.

'You're a strong person,' she said. 'I feel safe here.'

On the screen a priest stumbled in to a car with his hands covering his face as cameras flashed around him and microphones pointed accusingly towards him amongst a rabble of unanswerable questions.

'Do you think you could love me?' she asked.

It wouldn't be fair to answer her, no matter what my answer would be and she smiled, a put on grin that hid a twinge of sadness I was sure. I kissed her neck and she looked in my eyes and told me that what she saw was beautiful and all messed up. We stayed like that for hours until the sun softly bled through a crack in the curtains and her skin that had been so pure and perfect in the flickering light of the television began to pimple and become pale and so she burrowed down under the covers and fell away to sleep.

I slept for an hour and woke up to find her as still as she had been when I had drifted off. I gently pulled myself to the floor and dressed. I took my bag and hung her clothes on the chair and as I leant down to kiss her quietly goodbye she opened her eyes and put her arms around my neck and pulled my close. I felt like a father.

'You're going now?' she said.

And I told her I had to.

'You're one of them?' she asked.

'Yes,' I said.

'I won't tell on you,' she said. 'But maybe you can come and find me someday.'

Chapter 27

I buy hair shearers in an all night chemist and I dump the car in a car park by the train station in a town twenty miles south of the vineyard. In the bathroom of a bus depot at five in the morning when I'm sure there's no one around I stand in front of the mirror and shave quickly. I flush the hair in to the toilet and I take a bus heading north. In the morning once the men have grown impatient for their breakfast to arrive they will walk to the house and find Les and his son in the garage.

With my head shaved I feel like how maybe a soldier feels. On the bus in the early morning we pass the vineyard. It's quiet and the men haven't woken yet. They say there's only fifty of us left and I know this is the kind of thing that gets us caught. I tell myself I was left without a choice and I know that it's true. I don't need to spend time mulling this over. This isn't a considering morality thing. I had no choice and so I don't feel the of regret I would if I had acted from fear.

My plan now is to head north and start again. It should take no more than a couple of hours to reach as far as Brisbane and in the city I can get lost. The vineyards and fields are good to work in. Out in the countryside you feel free and peaceful but with so few people around it's hard to disappear. I fall away to sleep as the sun rises to turn the fields from green to yellow and the pale morning sky fills up to blue as shadows begin to creep long across the ground.

In the city I can get lost. I can rent a room and find some work and can be comfortable for a while. I can have warm showers everyday and a proper bed. I can watch the television and access the internet. I can see how things stand.

In my sleep I fall away in to dreams. When I wake this barely conceivable image of Benny on an altar. Wrestling in a half sleep I hear myself moan loudly, a noise that startles me awake and I look around the bus of mostly empty seats for a face I recognise. This is where is starts. I fall away again, guessing it's maybe a half hour to Brisbane and in my dreams Benny comes to visit again. We are in a room, my kitchen I think and we're talking. We're talking about running away, maybe away, I don't know. Then we're in a race - a marathon and Benny wears a bib with a number. We're running in a crowd of hundreds, maybe thousands and he begins to slow... In this dream he has a full head of hair and is much thinner than I remember him to be. His pace slows to a walk for a time before he falls on one knee. Up front I can see the finish line and behind Benny over my shoulder and over his I see the horde coming. He calls for me to wait, to help him, he says that we can both go together if I only help him. But I don't, I run... I run to finish line and the tape breaks across my chest. And God's there... and he tells me Benny's dead.

I find a hostel where I can stay a night for only fifteen dollars so I pay for three and on the bed I count the money out. I've to sleep in a dormitory with eight beds - with six other guys. When I open the door the room is empty of people though each bed bar one - my own, remains unmade. I have nearly fifteen hundred dollars. In the mirror of the communal bathroom I shave my head again, righting all the imperfections and I shower and I leave my phone to charge for the first time in weeks. It's noon outside and so the day is as hot as it will get and the air is sticky. On the bed I lie and dream of sleep but it's hard now to think how it will come. I lie on the bed and I miss the vineyard and wish that today I had simply woken in the house early and had breakfast in the courtyard with the men before walking out in to the grapes.

There's a day room where a television is on. There's no one around. I figure that mostly the people staying here are kids and tourists who empty from the hostel during the day only to come back drunk in the evening. I wait for the news and again, and as always I wait to hear my name. A report on the men discovered in the wine cellar in Marseille tells how they were found, one of them had gotten drunk and spilt his guts to a woman he had hoped to sleep with. They had stayed, all twelve of them in this cellar in the foundations of an old cottage for over a year, making nightly excursions into the town to buy food. The wine had run out and one man, Lillian Gourcuff, an alcoholic had left the cellar quietly in the evening and gone to a bar. He mugged an old man in a dark alley and took all the money from his wallet, one hundred Euros and drank beer until he fell over and when helped back on to his stool by a young woman who took his fancy, he let it slip. He's already dead. Still drunk, he hacked his wrists to pieces within an hour of being in a cell with a piece of broken tile. They're going to try the other men. And in a few hours they'll be up in a courtroom and just like the rest, will line up together dressed less than immaculately in crumpled black matte suits and tell everyone there when asked that it was God who made them do it. Every time those words are said, what it does is galvanise this notion that the world has changed forever and there's not a thing anyone can do about it.

And so, it feels even more so now, that it's not a matter of if but a matter of when. They say there's only maybe fifty of us left, but they've been saying that for weeks now and there's been a lot of us caught this last while. And I start to wonder what they'll do when it's down to just the last of us. Maybe they'll stop hunting and if they do, I want to go home and to see my daughter. I need to keep strong. I need not to put myself in a position again where I have to kill some one. Les is a good man. No one deserves to die to protect me, because I'm not a man anymore. I'm an idea. I represent something unattainable and incomprehensible. I'm a lunatic, a sort of celestial anarchist, hell bent on the destruction of holy orders. But we don't know how much we're loved or loathed. There is support for us but it's not public. It's not on television, it's not on the newspapers. Any support there that exists is being choked out.

In the beginning it was different. The atheists came out in support, well at least until we started getting caught and stating the reasons we had done what we did. They spoke of a wonderful global conspiracy to choke out the submissive stranglehold that organised religion had exercised upon the world. They talked of people taking control. They applauded us. Their editorials lined the leftist broadsheets and tabloids the world over and the internet was a sea of nothing but unbridled and joyful hysteria. It didn't last long. Soon this outspoken media began to hush. Columnists and bloggers began to resign against the backdrop of their own sex scandals, dodgy financial dealings and other assorted misdemeanours and almost overnight the forum for the argument of our morality shifted from the private and public press to internet comments sections below videos of our handy work - videos of news feeds that within weeks disappeared from sight and were replaced by the words 'Removed due to copyright infringement' or something to that affect.

On the television, Lillian Gourcuff's picture shows him crouching next to a young boy of maybe seven years old. He is on a beach dressed in Bermuda shorts and has one arm around his son and another around a dog that is reaching up to lick his smiling face. Gourcuff doesn't look like an alcoholic. He looks like a family man, in fact, it's clear that he's a family man. It's been hardly a day since his arrest and I can only assume that the police were given the picture by his wife - the mother, no doubt of the young blonde boy in the picture. He has long hair, a moustache and his smile is genuine, as though it were taken just as the taker had said something to make him laugh. I turn the television off. I'm hungry and in the restaurant across the street they're still serving breakfast.
Chapter 28

'I won't tell on you she said,' I told him, 'But maybe you'll come and find me some day.'

'Well it's certainly a nice sentiment,' he said. 'It's a shame it does us no good.'

'Why?' I asked. 'Do you think I'll get caught.'

He ran one finger around the rim of his cooling cappuccino and told me that honestly, he didn't know.

'Woman are very important to us,' he said, 'Without woman, we're only half there. But the same goes for them too.'

The café is cold. They've sat us by the door again. I drink tea. I have all my things with me - the essentials - all that I will need, crumpled and stuffed in to a single bag. A life time of accumulated bare necessities.

'Look into another person's eyes and you share a moments that isn't about time or place, you share for a brief moment a consensus that you are both as fucked as each other,' he said, 'That one day you'll both be gone. That moment, when you catch yourself deep in someone else and your heart moves - not because of love - it's not that at all. Everybody's eyes, no matter who they are, they hold the key to who we are.'

I nodded at him. He told me to meet him here in two days if I were still alive. I had made it and I was tired.

He said, 'In another's eyes you see your death and you see theirs and with that you see what it is to be human. You see fragility and you see a necessity not to waste. It is possible to see in the eyes of another what it is to be alive. You can see infinity, you can see possibilities and hope. You can see how useless you both are but the great things that can be achieved. You see then what it is to be human. Fragile, hopeless, hopeful and beautiful. You see life behind the tissue. You see, as close as you ever will get to God. Love? Love is seeing just that - every time you look at one other person who's eyes continue to mystify you. This one other person that holds all that is pure and true about who you are because you see the divinity in their eyes that exists in everyone else, and what you know deep down exists in you.'

I didn't have time for this. On the television that morning they had already said they'd caught a thousand of us.

'Benny's dead,' I said.

God called the waitress and had her warm his coffee. A thousand of us caught already and they still don't know how many we were.

'There's going to be a lot of you who won't make it to the summer time,' God said.

'It seems that way,' I told him.

He was being aloof. He was not his usual self. He seemed unconcerned, he took the same tone I had known him to when he was teaching us something he felt we should already know. He spoke to me in the same manner I had watched him speak to my mother across her dinner table.

'There's a time of strange purity on earth,' he said. 'Do you know when that is?'

I told him that I didn't.

'It comes with the death of one man,' he said. 'When the Pope, whoever he may be dies, there is a period, while the bishops and cardinals - whoever they are, come together to find their new leader. This can take weeks, it can take months, and not until plums of white smoke bellow high above Vatican City, is there one man on earth who claims to be infallible. In a strange sense, the people on earth are spiritually equal, pure and human. There isn't one amongst them who claims to be anything other than that.'

The waitress brought his coffee back and he tasted it the way one would a glass of freshly corked wine before nodding at her with his approval.

'Don't you think that's wonderful?'

I smiled, this false placating clown's grin. I just wanted him to get to the point, but he seemed less than inclined to do so.

'Of course, that isn't strictly true,' he said, 'Do you know, that at any one time, there's at least thirty people on Earth claiming to be Jesus Christ?'

'I didn't know that,' I said.

'It's true,' he said, a smile piercing just above the rim of his cup. 'Now, although they may claim to be Jesus Christ, and pardon me for saying so, who's to argue that they're not. But the difference is, and it's an important distinction, is that nobody else believes it.'

'So what?' I said.

'So what's the harm?' he said, 'They're as harmless as me and you.'

'I think we became harmful,' I said, 'There's a lot of people who would think so if they knew what we did.'

'And what did we do?' he said.

'I don't know,' I said honestly.

'We did a very great thing,' he said, 'But it's going to get tough for you now. It's going to get tough for all of you from here on in.'

In the corner of the room I could see a woman with a baby.

'I'm going to send you away,' he said. 'I'm going to take care of you.'

She was breastfeeding. She had the child tucked snugly under her arm and I could see that it's eyes were closed tight. I looked away as she realised a set of eyes were upon her.

He said, 'The beauty of this whole thing is that it gives us the opportunity to see what it is that we are... what we truly are - undivided and human. Beings without the weight of celestial nonsense. The opportunity to see what's left of us once the collective imagination that dictates and defines us as a whole disappears and all we're left with is the sustainable and obvious truths.'

'You've rehearsed this,' I said.

'No,' he said. 'I don't need to.'

'You're being very dramatic,' I had said.

'You're not complex - you're young - you don't get it - you create legends and myths to explain the things you know exist but don't understand - can't hope to - what's beyond you,' he said.

'You said you'd take care of me?'

'You get to see who you are. It's a test. And you sink or swim and even in drowning you live a greater life than you could hope to - because until now you've been swamped in ignorance.'

'Are you talking about me in particular.' I asked.

'We are human,' he said, 'And there's great beauty in that \- and we don't see it - but we should. Because if we must be impressed, if we must be in awe - it should be at who we are - not at what we aspire to be by the rules defined by the over imagination of ignorant men who never appreciated the wonder of who we were in the first place.'

'This doesn't help me,' I said.

'But who can blame them when we behave so much like animals?'

'We are animals,' I said.

'Indeed we are,' he said, 'And we should start remembering that.'

He opened up his inside pocket and across the table he slid a small book - a passport.

'There is comfort in adhering to your instinct, that is I mean, to act like an animal. That's why everyone given the choice, would fuck their lives away. There's a lot to be said about the peace that fucking can bring to the human spirit. It's also a good indication of how poorly evolved we are. We have no place looking to attain celestial grace when we spend most of our time wanting to fuck.'

'So you're saying sex is wrong now?' I said.

'Quite the contrary,' he said. 'It's at just about at our level.'

The passport had my picture in it and the name read Terrence Elliot.

'You're on a flight,' he said, 'It leaves in four hours. You need to be at the desk in two.'

'Where am I going?' I asked.

'You're going to Australia,' he said, 'It's far enough away and big enough for you to get lost in.'

I left the café and went straight to the airport. God told me that it would be best for me that I kept moving. He told me that for a long time there will be a lot of us who were going to get caught. He told me to keep moving, not to stay in any one place for too long.

'People will get scared,' he said, 'Once they realise they're not privy to something and they find themselves scavenging for answers, they'll quickly come to fear you. Not because they're scared, but because they will be told to be - Because you knoew more than them.'

I emptied my bank account and took a bus to the airport and in line for the flight with no luggage to declare save for the bag across my shoulder my heart beat like a hammer. I slid Terrence Elliot's passport across the desk and thanked the lady as she slid it back and wished me a pleasant flight. Against the sound of the jet engine thundering to life and the weightless sensation of the plane taking to the air I breathed out and felt my shoulders fall back against the seat and I knew then that at least for a while I would be safe.

In Melbourne airport I found a world in the same disarray as my own, but here I felt no guilt for any of it. As if it weren't my actions. On the televisions the same stories dictated the air time, but here, the burnings where foreign somehow, not my mine, as though it were nothing to do with me. As though I hadn't been involved. I could, when asked administer the same discontent and bemusement as anyone else without the sensation that I had something to hide.
Chapter 29

When I return to the dorm my phone is ringing. On the bed it buzzes on top of the sheets and the screen flashes blue. There's no number, just the ringing and the buzzing. When I pick it up it stops. I sit down and I stare at he screen. Through the curtains the street is quiet. There's no police converging on the pavement, there's no swat team assembling, there's no snipers on the roof across the way that I can see.

I take a walk. I bring the phone and I go out in to the street and begin to familiarise myself with this new city. I'll need to work. The money I have won't get me far and I'll need to find a job - something that pays cash. While ordering a coffee the phone rings again. I ignore it. I'll answer it eventually, but not yet. We haven't spoken in a year and I can only now assume that it's him. I've become used to this. I've become accustomed to moving around - to not settling. I've taken good care of myself and I haven't come close to getting caught. I've been fine all by myself. He told me to travel north, that the best thing to do would be to move slowly along the coast. 'If you keep moving they'll never find you.' he said. I think how he probably knows where I am.

I buy a newspaper. The front page carries a story on Brisbane City Council's final discussions in to whether or not to set aside money for the rebuilding of a Protestant church gutted by the fires last year. This is nothing new and the argument is simple. If they rebuild the likelihood is that the time and money spent will transpire to be entirely in vain. They've tried this - these rebuilding exercises all over the world. With some of the churches they've succeeded but for the most part they've never gotten near to completion. I read that in Maryland, USA they got a whole church finished with only the roof to go before someone came along in the middle of the night and bulldozed a wall through. In a town outside Berlin the foundations weren't dug properly and the structure collapsed half way through the build, killing four people. They arrested the site manager and three others and charged them with gross incompetence. There was nothing incompetent about it - it was perfect.

And yet they still debate over this. And in this case, they've decided to rebuild. 'We shan't be held to ransom,' said a spokesman. To rebuild is a waste of money. Someone will burn it to the ground again, probably before it's even halfway finished. The real beauty is that it won't even be one of us. It will be a regular guy. Someone who has a family, a job, a proper life, someone who never got a visit from God. Some poor frightened bastard who believes that it's God's wish, whoever God happens to be, that these churches remain just as they are, charred and broken relics of an age we're growing out of. 'Like children cast from the womb,' said God. 'With eyes opening truly for the very first time.' These people, they are true agnostics and they are militant in their beliefs and in their actions.

I drink my coffee and look out on to the Brisbane river. I wonder about Molly. I wonder if she's changed and if she misses her daddy. She'll have started school by now and I hope she likes it. I know that she would. She can read already. I read to every night that I was with her and so I know she'll be fine. I wonder what they told her - my mother and my wife. I wonder where they told her that her daddy had gone and I wonder if the accountant is being a good father to her.

In the hostel that night I sit with two Chinese guys and a German girl in front of the television. They're young - mid twenties all of them. She reads a tattered book and the two Chinese guys speak to each other so that I can't understand them. They ask me if I mind that they speak in Chinese - they tell me they only do it because their English is not very good - but that they know how it can seem rude. I smile and tell them not to worry. The German girl asks me where I'm from and what my name is and I lie to her. She tells me she's pleased to meet me and when she gets up and says goodnight one of the Chinese guys nudges me and winks.

'She like you,' he says, 'You go after her.'

I laugh at him, at his stupid smile, the way he winks as though giving me sage and tested advice.

'I know,' he says. 'She want you put it in her ass.'

The other guy, his name is Deshi switches the television channels in a loop, not stopping for more than a second or two on each of the seven channels. He wears sunglasses, that T-shirt of Che Guevara, he sits with his legs wide open in a V, his lower lip hung down - perfect Americana cool.

'Deshi cool guy,' says his friend.

I nod.

'My name is Heng,' he says. 'What your?'

I think a moment before recalling the new name I had given myself only minutes before.

The television, switching between channels and I spot for a second on the screen something I recognise... Deshi continues to turn the channels over...

music...

a football game...

a weather report...

a cop show...

a commercial break for a cheap flights to New Zealand...

I wait for another glimpse of what I thought I saw. Heng is talking in my ear, something about German girls. Deshi's flickering carousel continues and I see then police tape across a gate, a woman standing in front of it with a microphone, the vineyard. I hear the words, 'Police are looking for this man and are appealing...'...

music,

football,

weather,

cop show,

commercial break for sugar free breakfast cereal.

Deshi's open mouth - he isn't even looking at the screen - and then there it is. A sketch, a police sketch - in colour. A beard, patchy red pencil scrawls, long red hair scribbled on a freckled and burnt face - a cartoon interpretation of my own with dark eyes and closed stiff lips. The phone buzzes again in my pocket. Music... football... weather....

Deshi says, 'He look like you. No hair. Only difference.'

Heng says, 'You want come get drunk with us?'

In the bathroom I search for red hair I may have missed. Red hair I may not have flushed.

Heng says again, 'You come?'

I tell him, 'No.'

He pleads, 'Come. We get girls. You gotta relax.'

He's shaving his already smooth face in the sink.

I ask him what he's doing in Australia.

'Big secret,' he says.

Late in the evening they come back to the hostel drunk and I can hear them in the hallway. I spent the night wandering the hostel corridors. Lying on the bed I am struggling to sleep. I scrape the peeling blue paint from the metal bedposts with a fingernail, I pick at the crumbling plaster in a pinhole in the wall until it's big enough that I can fit my thumb in it. The room is quiet. Three people left earlier and now Heng and Deshi's bags sit on the floor next to a set of bunks. There is a young man snoring loudly and with broken regularity across the room so it's hard to sleep. I'm falling away when I hear them come in, their loud chatter in the hallway as they giggle their way inside and one crashes against a locker. Heng sees my eyes open.

'Should have come,' he says, 'We get the girls.'

'I'm glad,' I say and roll on to my side.

'Big boobs,' he says before Deshi shushes him and they both climb in to their beds.

It's three in the morning and my phone has twenty six unanswered calls. I ignored it all evening as it rang silently in my pocket. I relax, I slow my breathing and I try as best I can to avert my thoughts to something that won't endeavour only to keep me awake. In the morning I'll have breakfast in the café I passed in the afternoon, the place with the picnic tables outside, the one that serves a cooked continental breakfast of smoked bacon, Portobello mushrooms, roasted plum tomatoes and scrambled egg, all with a thick slice of toasted granary bread. I'll drink a cappuccino with chocolate dusting before I order and a glass of fresh orange juice during. I'll buy a newspaper and read only the sport section while I wait. This is how I go to sleep in the city. I lie still and try to relax and imagine what I'll have for breakfast. They serve from the breakfast menu until eleven in the morning and when I'm done I'll smoke a cigarette and finish whatever article I was halfway through and I'll take a walk along the river and see if I can find a bar I imagine I won't hate to work in.

Heng speaks seriously in hushed Chinese as I hear him right himself in his bed and Deshi answers him with abrupt solemnity. I hear them fall away to sleep with loud breathing and across the way the snoring has stopped. In a while I slip away to sleep thinking of a lunch of creamy white wine sauce on rigatoni and long black coffee.

Chapter 30

Something's happening downstairs...

There's shouting....

There's the scream of the young Cantonese girl who works the front desk...

There's footsteps on the stairs...

Clomping footsteps...

A dozen men...

Heng is on his feet and he's waking Deshi. Deshi is out of his bunk and in the dark he's reaching for his bag. I ask what is happening. Heng is changed to his clothes in seconds and has opened the window.

'Shut fuck up,' he says to me.

It's a second floor window and he's looking down on to the street. With the curtains drawn back I see flashing blue light lick his face. Heng grabs his rucksack from the floor and fastens it to his back. He shouts at Deshi who is on his feet now, one leg in to a pair of jeans. He pulls a gun from his bag. With the window open the room is bathed faintly in the light of the street lamps and I can see the panic in his face. Footsteps in a half march - half run, move swift and loud closing down on our room. A voice shouts an order to breach. On the floor, at the crack of the door I see the shadows of feet lining up. Heng climbs on to the ledge as Deshi walks back towards him, the gun pointed up and straight towards the rooms entrance. As the door crashes open Deshi opens fire, a barrage of bullets from his semi-automatic pistol. Heng jumps. I see a police officer fall to the ground, the rapid pfft pfft pfft sound behind the loud, quick cracks of gunshot as three bullets strike his chest. Deshi turns for the window. I duck, clambering in against the wall, still tucked up in the sheets. I watch as Deshi's back explodes in spots with round after round of silenced sub-machine gun fire. Then the room is full. Six, maybe seven heavily armoured officers dressed in black pulling us from our beds and waddling us out in to the hallway. Stepping over the fallen officer in my underwear, his face pale white I look over my shoulder to where Deshi is lying, already thick, black looking blood is forming in a pool around him. His bag, half strapped to his shoulders lies open by his side. His belongings scattered around him, clothing, socks, a wash bag and amongst the mess I swear I see one of those plain blue silk Fedora ties.

Three of us against the wall in the hallway in our underwear. With our hands on our heads. On our knees. I'm thinking about all those war movies I've watched. The Great Escape, The Bridge On The Rive Kwai. One of the men, some kid, he's in a vest and a pair of light Y-fronts that are turning navy blue around the crotch and he has tears in his eyes. They drag Deshi's body from the dorm and out past us down the hall trailing a drying maroon swear behind him. There's a medical officer attending to the fallen cop in the doorway telling him he'll be okay, that two rounds hit his vest and the other's lodged in his shoulder. Two cops stand over us, only half attentively - they're worried about their friend bleeding out on to the linoleum of the corridor, a deep red blood that turns to black against the dark wood of the dormitory floor.

'We need to move him,' says a cop and our two guards tell us not to move, that they'll be right back.

Out in the street Heng is running. His friend is dead. He's got a rucksack on his shoulder that I'm guessing contains the same thing mine does - one black suit, one blue tie, one change of clothes and a wash bag of basic cosmetics. Heng is running for his life. They say they've arrested thousands of us. Heng will be next. Once they find you, you don't last long. Within twenty four hours Heng will be dead or in prison, but it's more probable he'll be dead.

We kneel now in silence, the three of us, a little pool of piss maturing at our knees from the poor kid who's still crying. I hear the buzz of my phone on my bed. I get to my feet.

'What are you doing?' says the boy, 'They said not to move.'

I answer the phone and a voice speaks... A voice speaks.

'Where are you?' it says.

'Brisbane.'

'So it was you?'

'Was me what?'

'From the vineyard?'

'Yes.'

'You know they're looking for you?'

'Yes.'

'I saw you on television?'

'Where are you?' I ask.

'I'm close. Are they close?'

'Yes.'

'How close? Where are they?'

'They're in the building.'

'Run. Run or they'll kill you.'

'There's complications.'

'I'll call you in an hour.'

'They're not on to me.'

'Fucking run.'

The high pitch of his last order scrambles me to life. On the floor in my bag is everything that will get me killed. I dress. One leg in my jeans...

'They're coming,' whispers the boy.

Two legs.

'I can hear them.'

My boots.

'Get back here.'

My bag.

'They'll kill you if you run.'

I'm at the window.

'Fuck, fuck, fuck...'

It's a long way down...

Chapter 31

My ankle buckled when I fell. I hobbled, a sort of duck waddle around a corner and as a bus passed I hopped on and in fifteen minutes I was in the suburbs. I heard the police calling behind that they had a runner. On the bus I was alone. I sat at the back and saw police cars flash past me. I kept my head down until we left the city limits and the roadsides became dotted with gardens and pockets of shop fronts.

Right now, I'm in someone's garden. I'm lying in a flower bed and the sun is starting to come up. The voice on the phone said he'd call in a hour. By now they'll have my passport. You have to hand it in at the desk when you check in and the Cantonese woman keeps it in a safe under the counter. They have a name now to go with the police sketch, to go with the passport photo, to go with the images they'll take from the CCTV images from the camera that hangs above the hostel front door. Terrence Elliot will be a wanted mans, my photograph will accompany his name on the morning news.

You don't last long once they find you...

And so I wait here in the bushes with the sun slowly rising and the street turning from black to grey to blue.

I'll be dead within twenty four hours.

I tell myself that I still have a chance. They say there's only fifty of us left, but I think how they've been saying that for a long time. Minus Heng and Deshi, that makes forty eight, but I think how it must be less. I think, how would they know? How could they possibly? So many of us killed ourselves the first moment we got. Like Benny. As soon as we were alone for the first time we slit our wrists, ate the contents of a medicine cabinet, hung ourselves from a tree - drank bleach until it ran through us. How many of us died then? How could they tell these deaths apart from those random suicides that happen every day? They say they find a suit but how many threw ourselves off a bridge or into the ocean weighed down with stones tied to our shoes and dressed appropriately for the occasion? How many of the men panicked and didn't even think to bring with them as they fled something as trivial as a suit they intended never to wear?

The phone rings.

'Where are you?

I tell the voice I'm in the suburbs somewhere?'

'Give me an address,' it says.

I stagger from the bushes and find a street sign.

'Somewhere called Mulberry Mews,' I say.

'What suburb?'

'I don't know. It's a few miles out from the city, not far.'

'I'll find you. Hold tight. I'm driving a blue, Holden Commodore.'

I know this voice. I've heard this voice before. It's familiar but distant and different. It's calm. It's collected. I know this voice. I knew this voice before it sounded like it does now. I knew this voice when it was young and petulant.

'Are you still there?' it asks.

'I need to get hidden,' I say, 'The sun is coming up.'

'Look for me,' says the voice.

This voice. Like the lyric you can't remember under the tune you can.

The tip of my tongue.

This voice... like a fucking Zen Buddha, calm, collected, not like it's old self.

'Nicky?'

'Yeah. Wait for me. I'm close.'

Chapter 32

Nicky looks as though he's been carved from polished stone. His skin is darker than before, his arms are perfectly sculpted, his stomach a washboard - he looks taller, or is taller than I remember him. He tells me to lie under a blanket in the back seat and not say a word. There's an assault rifle of some kind on the floor, urban camouflage finish, a red dot site, a magazine already loaded. It's been plenty fired, the barrel is stained and charred.

'Don't say anything,' he says as the car moves steadily back towards the belly of the city. I'm in the back seat, a cloth bag over my head, a man I don't recognise sitting beside me, his hands holding my head down and the bag in place. I'm wondering if this is Nicky's revenge.

We drive for ten minutes, maybe more, probably less. I know we're in the city now. I can here the bustle of the streets and people speaking when we brake in traffic. The hand on my head pushes down hard as the car makes a sharp turn and I hear a gate open. We come to a halt and the engine stops.

'We're here,' says Nicky, 'Get him out.'

I'm walked with one hand in my back. The ground under foot turns from asphalt to concrete. I'm walked along a corridor of linoleum and through a door to hard floor. I can hear the echoes of my footsteps against walls and I'm sat down in a hard plastic backed chair.

I put my hands out so that they rest on a table.

'Can I take the hood off now?' I ask.

'Sure,' says Nicky.

He's sitting across from me, a grin of all bright white teeth.

'Hi,' he says.

This is a little room. An office of exposed brick and unpolished and dusty wooden flooring. There's a door behind Nicky and he ushers the man out so that we are alone. I think of all those espionage movies I've seen, the ones where they interrogate a suspect, the ones where they pull out his fingernails with a pair of hand pliers or clamp jump leads to his feet and sit him in a bucket of water.

'I thought I'd never see you again,' he says, 'You did a good job of disappearing.'

I think of what it would be like to have my little finger cut off with a kitchen knife.

'And then yesterday morning I was watching television...'

I thinking of burning matches wedged under my toenails.

'... and I recognised the face. It took me a minute, but I knew I knew that face.'

A soldering iron burning on my nipple turning it liquid red.

'Do you remember how he told us to memorise all of our phone numbers in case anything happened?'

My body dumped in the Brisbane River, sinking to the bottom only to rise to the surface after a few days bloated and blue.

'I thought to myself, why not ring him? Just to be sure. I told myself, it couldn't be, but look. Here you are.'

'God told me he took care of you,' I say.

'He got me a ticket and a passport,' says Nicky, 'They say there's only fifty of us left. But that's not true.'

'There's more?'

'We think about three hundred,' he says.

'How'd you figure that?'

'I've worked it out,' he says, 'It's great to see you by the way.'

'Why would they lie? Why would they say there's less of us than there are?'

'To dishearten us,' says Nicky, 'But they haven't managed it yet.'

He tells me that over that one night there were thirty six thousand locations burnt, blown up, bulldozed, whatever.

'Every group worked just as we did,' he says. 'One hundred and fifty locations split between twelve guys. That's an average of twelve point five locations per person. So the calculation's easy - thirty six thousand divided by twelve point five is two thousand eight hundred and eighty. That's how many of us there were. So now it's just a matter of simple subtraction. By the end of the first day do you know how many of us were left? Only two thousand. The first day alone and over eight hundred of us were killed or arrested... but mostly killed and mostly suicide.'

Nicky speaks how God spoke, as though the words are rehearsed, as though he's a teacher speaking to a new student, the same language he's used countless times before, the same technique.

'When they started killing us they did so because they were scared,' he says now. 'Look around you, look at how the world has changed. They can't stop us.'

'But there's so few of us left,' I say.

'But everyday more people take up our cause,' says Nicky. 'The only thing holding them back is a lack of leadership.'

The door knocks and a young black kid enters the room. He whispers something in Nicky's ear.

Nicky says, 'I'm sorry if I scared you. It's important that we keep this place a secret.'

'Where are we?' I ask.

Where we are is an abandoned office building. There's no daylight, all of the widows have been boarded up but there is electricity and hot and cold running water. The building is old and the floor creaks wherever you walk. Nicky tells me I'm free to move around and that I should introduce myself to the other men. He tells me that we're not far outside the city's central business district, he tells me that I'm free to leave at anytime. I'm shown around a large open planned office with flaking wallpaper and cracked rubber flooring. There are bunk beds for twelve men with clean bed sheets. There is a television, a large flat screen that runs the news channel in front a dusty looking sofa. A young Asian kid in a vest and cargo shorts watches it with a notepad on his lap. Nicky walks me up a flight of stairs to a kitchen where a middle aged man is chopping vegetables on a workbench and adding them to a large pot bubbling loudly on a stove. There's a fridge and a freezer, a microwave, some thrown together shelving.

'We stole most of this stuff,' says Nicky. 'Come on, I'll show you my office.'

Nicky's office is decadent. There's a long and expensive looking walnut desk, a filing cabinet, a television, a desktop computer with a widescreen monitor. The floor is carpeted and hung on the wall behind his leather upholstered swivel chair are three black Armani suits.

'Do you like it?' he asks.

Nicky's running the show.

'There's ten of us in total,' he says. 'Three originals and seven others who took up the cause. There's a power structure. I'm head. Then the three other originals are commanders, then six soldiers.'

'You're head of what?' I ask.

'We only started something that night,' he says, 'It's all fine and well to start something but there's no point if you're not going to finish it.'

He its in his chair and searches in a desk drawer. He places a gun on the table and fishes out a packet of cigarettes.

'Did you see what happened in Britain after all of those burnings? Did you see how the Labour party announced a change of strategic thinking and swung wildly left? Did you see how in Washington the communist party marched on congress and picketed outside the White House? Did you see how they burned the Koran in Pakistan? Did you see how people's attitudes changed? Did you see how people stopped being frightened of saying what they really meant? There's rumours now that they'rewriting the American Pledge of Allegiance. Did you see what we did?'

'I've seen it,' I say, 'It's anarchy.'

'The denominations are cracking,' says Nicky, 'Soon there's going to be nothing left for them to hold on it. Once there's no religion there's no God. Once there's no God, then no man can act in his name.'

'There's no God?' I say.

Nicky looks blankly towards me.

'If there was, he's gone.'

'So what's this place?' I ask.

'We have cells,' says Nicky. 'We control two in Australia, three in mainland Europe, six in the US, we even had one in Beijing.'

'Deshi and Heng?'

'Deshi and Heng were the only two survivors from a raid on their HQ last month. They were coming to join us. The Chinese found out where their cell were hiding and rounded them up in the middle of the night. Deshi and Heng weren't there, they were out drunk in bar.'

'So how'd they know to find you?'

'We have a way to keep in contact,' Nicky says, 'But I need to know if you're in, or if you're out. And I need to know how you knew the china men.'

'It was coincidence.'

'Are you sure?'

I tell Nicky all about Heng and Deshi, about the raid on the hostel, about how Deshi was killed and how Heng escaped.

'I want you to join us,' says Nicky, 'I want you to be my confidant. I always liked you.' He speaks to me as if a teacher. The gun on the desk is the same as the one God had given me, a 9mm semi-automatic Smith and Wesson. It has seventeen rounds to a magazine weighing seven hundred grams unloaded with a barrel length of four and half inches.

'You still believe in everything we did, don't you?' he asks.

'Of course,' I say.

It's short recoil operated, a locked breech pistol that uses Browning-type locking. It's striker fired, with a double action only trigger.

'Are you in?' he says.

I'm thinking how this isn't a choice.

'I'm in,' I say.

'Good,' says Nicky, 'We've work to do.'

I eat with the others in the day room. On the television they keep showing my face and the Asian kid notes down everything that the reporter says. There are eleven of us in total. I sit at a table with Nicky and the two commanders. One is an African, a young man - a kid who tells me to call him Charlie. 'They can't pronounce my real name,' he says, 'So it's best you just call me Charlie.'

On the television they are interviewing the men from the vineyard. One man tells the camera how he thought there was something strange about me, that I was distant, that I kept to myself. They show my face repeatedly.

'They haven't made Deshi public yet,' says Nicky, 'But they will. If they can't find Heng in the next few hours they'll run the story.'

The other commander is a woman. Mid forties and athletic. Cassy from Sydney. She tells me how she went on the run after her group got caught a week after the burnings. She laughs when she tells me how she met Nicky at two o'clock in the morning outside a Baptist Church in Wollongong. She showed up with five Molotov's to find Nicky fixing homemade explosives around the doorway.

'And the rest as they say.'

Nicky's been slowly recruiting people.

'You can see it in them,' he says, 'You can tell the ones who are up for it.'

At first it was just the three of them.

'Do you see that Asian looking kid?' says Nicky, 'Do you know how we found him? I read in the newspaper that rebuilding work was about to start on a mosque. So we staked the place out. We sat day and night as the builders worked on the restoration.'

'Six weeks,' says Charlie.

'Two months,' Cassy says smiling at the recollection.

'Day and night we sat in a bush just waiting until finally, this scrawny little kid shows up with a petrol can and a box of matches.' says Nicky.

'It would have burned,' shouts the kid from the sofa behind the jeers of his three commanders.

'He didn't have the first idea what he was doing,' says Nicky, 'But we're teaching him. He's a good kid. He's enthusiastic.'

'You're going to do us proud tomorrow aren't you Sam,' Charlie says to him.

'Whatever you say boss,' he says.

'What's tomorrow?' I ask.

'Your induction,' says Nicky smiling, 'We're going out.'

'But they're looking for me,' I say.

'And they'll be looking for you just as much next week as they are right now,' he says, 'You going to hide your whole life?'
Chapter 33

I can't sleep again. I have my own room - nothing more than an old stationary cupboard - barely ten foot long or wide. They dragged a mattress up two flights of stairs and I lie now on the floor below shelving that still holds old files and printer paper and I think about my daughter.

I miss her. I miss her more than I thought would be possible. I think of how on her first day of school she must have cried. I picture her, her little hands holding a red lunch box and her mother having to carry her from the car to the entrance when she would have refused to walk. I picture her holding tight to the inside of the car door and kicking hard with her legs. I think of how I would have spoken to her if I had been there. I imagine telling her that she was a brave girl, I imagine telling her a white lie - that I'd be right outside the gate - that I'd wait there all day until she was done. I can picture her clearly - her face blotched up with tears, warm little tears that would melt away on the back of my finger as I hold her face gently and tell her that inside the school there's lots of little boys and girls just like her who want to meet her. I'd have told her that inside they have paint brushes and big sheets of paper and she could maybe paint me a picture that she could bring home. I'd tell her that there were lots of books - books with stories even better and more exciting than the ones I read to her at night.

As I fall off to sleep I imagine driving home with her - with her mother and the three of us inside our home where my little daughter chatters incessantly about her day and how wonderful school is and how she can't wait for the morning to come. I imagine fixing a painting to the fridge door and taking her photograph beside it - a smile on her face, a big teethy smile. I imagine her losing her milk teeth and telling her to bite down on an apple - I imagine packing her lunch, I think of picnics with her \- the three of us in the park - about playing games with her on Saturday mornings - about my wife, about lying in bed with her again, about how she used to lie naked on her front and turn her head to smile - about how I used to run my hand along her back...

In the morning I shower. We have breakfast in the day room and we gather around and watch the news. The police report that they have no new leads as to my whereabouts and are now reaching out to the public. They've run the Deshi story. He's been identified. Heng still hasn't been found.

'He's lasting longer than most,' says Nicky.

In Nicky's office we have a meeting. I sit by Charlie and Cassy and Nicky takes his place behind his desk.

'I'm bringing him in,' he says, pointing at me, 'Have you any objections?'

Charlie and Cassy shake their heads.

'I know this man, and I trust him,' he says. 'He's to be my confidant. The chain of command remains intact. You're neither his superior nor his inferior. We need a tight nit group.'

Nicky has my suit, he had one of the men iron it and he hangs it on the wall beside the others.

'Now we need to talk about the Heng situation,' he says. 'He hasn't made contact yet.'

'Why is he so important?' I ask.

Cassy speaks, 'His group worked similar to ours. He was one of three commanders, Deshi was the head. There was only four of them left - all originals, but they had a network of people much larger than ours. Heng is the only contact to them we have left.'

'A network?' I ask.

'We have seven soldiers,' says Nicky, 'Heng had five hundred. If we can't find Heng, all the work, all the organisation, all the recruiting, all of it was for nothing. If we want a coherent global movement, we can't afford to lose our most powerful Asian cell.'

'Can't we contact them?' I ask.

'No,' says Nicky, 'The only correspondence allowed is between the commanders and heads of any given cells.'

'How do you keep in contact?' I ask.

'E-mail,' says Charlie.

'Isn't that a little insecure?' I ask.

'No,' says Cassy. 'We don't send e-mails, we just write them. There's an e-mail account - if you want to make contact, you write an e-mail and save it - you don't send it. The heads and commanders of each cell log in every day and read the unsent messages. There's no information sent in any way - it's as close to one hundred percent safe as we can get. We need Heng to contact us so we can pick him up.'

'So how many originals are still on the run,' I ask. 'I never knew any of this.'

'There can't be many,' Charlie says.

'About two hundred and fifty,' says Nicky, 'The others are doing just as we are.'

Nicky tells me that once Heng's group were rounded up the soldiers in his group began disappearing within a few hours.

'Someone spilt their guts,' Cassy says, 'That's why Heng and Deshi put themselves on a plane.'

'We have to consider the idea that we've lost China already,' says Charlie.

'That's why we need Heng,' Nicky says. 'He'll know best how compromised they are, who he can trust and how best to rebuild.'

'Why can't he just write an e-mail,' I ask.

Nicky smiles.

'Would you want to take a walk to the internet café at the end of the street with the entire police service and god knows who else looking for you? If so, be my guest,' he says. 'He's probably hiding up a tree somewhere.'

'So we wait?'

'It's all we can do,' says Nicky.

***

I sit with Sam, the Asian kid who it seems is rooted constantly to the sofa in front of the television. He throws peanuts in his mouth as Deshi's story rolls across the screen again.

'Don't you get bored?' I ask.

'Nah,' he says.

They got hold of a photograph. Deshi's at a party holding a bottle of beer and smiling broadly to the camera. There's a woman with him who's face has been blurred out and his arm is wrapped around her - their faces are close together - a couple. They say that the police officer he shot is recovering following surgery and is expected to pull through - of the three bullets that struck him, two hit his body armour and the third got lodged in his shoulder.

'How'd they find him?' I ask Sam.

'Who knows,' he says. 'It could be anything.'

'Haven't you thought about it?'

'It's not my job to,' he says.

It's a hot day. I watch a swarming sea of dust dance through a thin belt of light made by a crack in the wood that covers the windows. I think of how I can't see myself staying here. I think of what God would make of all of this. I wonder if this is what he intended, if this was this what he wanted from us. I think of my daughter - I know I'm thinking of her more and more now and that it's probably not a good thing. I wonder how long I have left... once they know who you are, you don't stay hidden for long. I think how I can't afford to risk going it alone.

'Sam?' I say, 'Last night, Charlie asked you if you were going to do him proud.'

'Yeah?' he says.

'What did he mean?'

Sam points at the television ...

Brisbane Council's final discussions in to whether or not to set aside money for the rebuilding of a Protestant church are to take place tomorrow morning with their decision set to be announced on Monday. 'The city and it's people of faith, will not be held to ransom,' said a spokesman for chairman Andrew Gardner.

'They're not going to have that meeting,' says Sam.

Nicky calls us together in the dayroom a few hours later. The evening has come down and the men sit huddled around the television eating dinner. I stand on Nicky's right hand side with Charlie and Cassy.

'We're a small group,' says Nicky, 'But we're strong. Some of us are going out tonight. As always, we intend to return, but if events conspire against us and it turns out that we don't... you know we've got your backs.'

'Yes sir,' say the men.

'We don't ever rat each other out,' he says. 'We're strong and this is our family. In this family we take care of each other. We're brothers and brothers look out for one another. We don't ever rat each other out no matter what they threaten us with, myself included.'

'Good luck sir,' say one of the men.

'What's happening?' I ask Nicky.

'You need to get changed now,' he says. 'You're coming with us.'
Chapter 34

Black Caterpillar leather, steel toe cap boots; Pit-Stop

Black Adidas Sports socks; Next Store

Navy Blue Nike Hooded Sweater; Rebel Sports

Black New Era Wool Beanie Hat; Stopwatch

Grey Levi 501s; Martial Apparel

The holes that have been cut in the beanie hat are too close together. In the back of Nicky's blue Commodore I pull at it so it sits in place. Charlie drives and Nicky sitting next to him in the passenger seat speaks,

'It's the paranoia of others that will get us caught. That's what happened to Deshi and Heng, I'm sure of it. The fear of God is easy to put through people. Once they are scared people become the eyes of government. The profiling at airports, the television spots, the radio messages - they've turned us into terrorists,' he says as the Commodore turns off the motorway and cruises through a leafy suburb of grand looking houses with long driveways and ornamental security gates.

I stood only an hour before at the sink in the kitchen fastening torn rag cloths to two soft drink bottles stolen that morning from the yard of an Italian bistro, I poured them three quarters full with petrol siphoned from a car in a twenty four hour car park at four in the morning the previous night. I added sugar and I fastened the bottle caps with elastic bands and placed them in to the back seat of the car.

Nicky says, 'Deshi's dead and Heng may well be soon because someone thought they looked suspicious, maybe they overheard a conversation, maybe they spoke in Chinese and thought nobody could understand what they were saying - or maybe they were stupid enough to run their mouths off because they thought that they were safe here.'

'Do you think they torture us when they find us?' asks Sam.

'The truth is,' says Nicky, 'Is no one knew what was going on. But governments didn't sit to ponder upon it. We were criminals in the eyes of the law and those laws stated that the burning of religious buildings and artefacts was an attack on human rights to freedom of expression. But of course, that was hardly why the response was so brutal. We attacked something that the governments of this world needed - we attacked the greatest reason for anyone to be a good and decent person, we attacked the very idea of morality. What is God if he's not judge and jury? Noting, he ceases to be, without him we can do what we want, we can decide ourselves what is just and what is not - we are the keepers of our own free will.'

Sam sits next to me a Molotov in each hand. I watch him as he runs a finger along the contours of the glass.

'I don't have a lighter,' he says.

The car rolls to a stop and Charlie turns the engine off. I crack a window and on the crest of a warm breeze I hear the shouts of a mother to her children to come inside. In a house through a mesh of tree branches I see a woman in a nightgown kiss her husband who turns her around and holds her tight, running his hands over her stomach. In the air I can smell the dying charcoal embers of a barbeque and the meal that had been cooked on it. It's a well to do neighbour hood with tyre swings hung from trees and paddling pools in the gardens.

We sit for a long while, an hour maybe with the radio playing. We wait as the suburb falls to sleep and when only the light of the street lamps remain Nicky tells us that it's time.

Andrew Gardner lives in the last house on the left, a large house with a red brick wall. Nicky, Sam and I creep in the darkness. Behind us I hear the car engine quietly rumble to life as Charlie backs up so the Commodore faces back towards the motorway. I carry one Molotov and Sam another - Nicky taking point until we reach the ten foot wall at the bottom of Andrew Gardner's long driveway.

Nicky wants to send a message, he wants to wake him in the middle of the night and pull him from his bed. We're going to torch his car, his vintage 1972 Porsche 911S, mint green, Targa Top Coupe. We're going to stand him at the window of his bedroom and make him watch it light up and scorch a permanent mark in his driveway and we're going to tell him that with enough petrol anything can burn.

With both bottles in my hand I stand by the car and Nicky and Sam move around to the side of the house. 'I'm going to pull him to the window,' says Nicky pulling the handgun from his waistband, 'When you see us and I gave you the nod you torch the car.' So now as I wait I hear the sound of muffled breaking glass. I see in the window above me the light from what must be Andrew Gardner's bedside lamp flicker on and seconds later his silhouette standing tentatively against the thin blind behind the glass. On the ground floor I see the dark figure of Nicky and Sam move quickly through his living room. Andrew Gardner, at the window pulls back his blinds to see me standing in his driveway. Some initial terror shoots across his face and gives way instantly to anger as he pulls at the handle and opens the window. He shouts something that is lost somehow in the quiet night time air as Nicky enters the room behind him, the gun pointed towards his head.

And the room is silent with Andrew Gardner's back now facing me and his hands raised in the air. Nicky speaks quietly behind the barrel of the gun no more than an inch from the tip of Andrew Gardner's nose. I can hear him being asked what he wants, I can hear Andrew Gardner's plea that Nicky takes whatever he came for - to take the television, the money in the safe, his wife's jewellery - I can hear Nicky tell him that with enough petrol you could burn the Sydney Opera House to the ground.

Nicky pulls the mask from his face and I see his smile. His grin is all big white teeth and unabashed amusement. Andrew Gardner, the gun in his back turns to face me and Nicky nods. I throw one bottle through the windshield and another on the ground so that the fire will burn from underneath. I can hear a woman's - his wife's scream. I hear Sam issue a hostile threat that quells it and I hear the fizz of the fire taking hold beside me.

The mint green paint on the car bubbles brown and the upholstery fizzes and pops. The puddle of fire underneath punctures the tyres and in seconds the Porsche is a solid ball of yellow heat. I hear the Commodore's engine rupture to life and I turn to see it reversing at speed towards us. I retreat back as the petrol tank explodes, a glare of white, a wave of dry choking heat and in the window Nicky's faces burns orange. He's laughing and Sam's shouting for him to leave, 'We have to move... Boss, we have to move now.' Nicky's face stiffens cold and he points the gun to the back of Andrew Gardner's head... it's inches away... close to touching... I hear his wife scream again and Nicky with consummate cool, as though he's been doing it his whole life - barely flinches as his trigger finger squeezes and Andrew Gardner, drops to the floor.

Sam is running through the door and stops beside me as two shots more are fired inside the window above and the screaming stops. The Commodore's engine is revving hard. Backed up in to the driveway Charlie half standing at the driver door bangs on it's roof. Through the flames the mint green paintwork is blistering in hot burning boils, the tyres melt steadily turning the rubber to glue on the concrete.

'He's gone crazy,' says Sam as he rushes past me.

***

The air here is dusty. There is sand in the cracks of the pavement and if I listen hard I can hear the ocean. In the passenger seat Nicky sits quietly. He runs his finger along the barrel of the gun and whistles a tune slow and deliberately. Behind me I see smoke pluming upwards against the clouds, thick dark smoke that thins to grey against a dark skyline punctured orange. I hear a siren move towards us twinkling blue. It's sound increases as it closes in - an ambulance maybe. It moves at speed, then behind it comes another - the sounds of two in unison becoming one, an even drone as they gain ground toward us. They pass - tracer lights of red, white and blue, their sounds regressing in the distance as over my shoulder I watch them disappear around a bend. Two police cars pass. Charlie's dark skin gleaming against their lights as they go, 'We have to get this car off the road,' he says.

In a quiet place we dump the Commodore. Charlie gathers paper from a rubbish bin and piles it high in the front seat. He lights it and we wait for a few moments so that we know the fire will take hold.

'It's best if we don't walk together,' he says.

Nicky hasn't spoken a word. He nods and he and Sam take off towards a train station that will take them back to the city. I run with Charlie until we hear the blast of the petrol tank.

The night time air is different here than it is back home. At home, even in summer when the days are hot and sticky, it's cold enough at night that you need to wear a jacket. Here the air is warm and clean. There is a freshness to it that even now, a year later, it's novelty I find myself still appreciating. Charlie's large frame ambles ahead of me, we walk through back streets and alleyways - quiet places were I can hear the crickets and rustles of birds in the trees. He walks as though I'm not here, as if he is alone - fending for himself.

'We're not victims anymore,' he whispers once we've walked maybe a mile in silence. Charlie is a big man, an ogre, like Benny was. His Africana voice is southing, a calm tone - smooth like silk. 'We are not victims, are we?' he says again, stopping to hold my arm so that I'm forced to turn and face him. His deep white eyes blemished with tears, little orbs of ivory against the dark chiselled shadows of his face. The calm and confident demeanour, the almost intimidating composure he'd shown in the few hours I'd known him, evaporated now and in it's place I see fear and humiliation. 'We don't need help,' he says, 'We're the cause for concern now. We are bad men.'

'We aren't to blame for what happened,' I tell him.

'I believe there are evil things,' he says, 'I believe that evil exists. Where I lived many people die. They die because they are afraid of their God. They die because their God tells them that there are things they shouldn't do. But it isn't God that told them this, it is other men.' His arm clutches mine hard, 'So I burn their churches. I burn them so that they don't have the power to hurt my brothers. But this man tonight, he is someone's brother, and his wife is someone's sister. We are evil men now.'

Charlie never got fucked

'Who was your God?' he asks.

I tell him I don't know.

'My God was a good man,' Charlie says, 'He made me strong, he showed me that there is beauty in us. He told me I was a God.'

'He sounds familiar,' I say.

'He was a good man,' says Charlie, 'I wish he was with me now.'

'Who was he?' I ask.

'It was God,' says Charlie, 'And he will be ashamed of me now. I tried to do a great thing but I'm corrupted now by an evil man, and so I am an evil man too.'

'What did he look like,' I ask.

'He was white man,' says Charlie, 'He smelt very bad.'

The night time sky is fading and the first light of the morning rises. I feel that we will be safe now as the houses turn to shop fronts as we reach the city's edge.

'Have you ever killed a man,' he asks and I think of blood on tile and tell him that I killed my father, a revelation he takes on board without the smallest hint of surprise.

'I could never kill a man,' he says, 'Even if my life depended on it, I could never kill a man.'

I think of Nicky, his head wrapped in cloth on a chair. I think of how I pulled the trigger and the clicking sound of the empty chamber that followed. I think of the courage I showed... There is fear in me now. I have more reason to be afraid than ever before. Charlie says you should never corner a frightened animal. A animal afraid will react in a manner that defies all sense, all instinct, all intellect. Fear can cripple the simplest and even the greatest of minds.

'It takes a strong man to act despite fear,' says Charlie.
Chapter 35

They make you see a counsellor. You get out after years of waiting, years of wanting once again to be normal and they make you see a woman. Every week, a woman who wears the lightest white blouse on top of a too purple bra so that you can imagine almost perfectly the exact shape of her breasts. You spend an hour with her each week, she dresses the same, always the same clothes right down to her stockings - those ones with the pencil thin line running up the back, her hair is always tied high on her head in a knot - the reassuring consistency of appearance - as though she exists only for this - you imagine what she would look like with her hair let loose. She's a character - an idea, she's not a person, but those breasts - you can't stop thinking about those breasts. The blouse is so thin that you can see the floral patterns of the bra underneath, you can see the outline of her nipple. The bra's one size to big for her and she has one button undone too many so that when she leans forward you can see how her breasts would droop if she lay on top of you - nearly the whole breast is visible, one week you're sure you saw the red pigment of the areola peeking through.

'I'm getting tired of waiting,' I tell her.

'It's all in your imagination,' she says.

I go for nearly a year and by now I know I'm not getting my hours worth. My appointment is scheduled always for two o'clock, each week from the beginning, and it's now it's later and later before I'm finally shown in to her office. The first week I went it was two o'clock sharp, the next - a few minutes after two, then later again the next week. It's gets then that I don't begin my sessions until nearly two thirty.

'I'm busy,' she says, 'It's not realistic that I run at a schedule as punctual as you would like.'

'You're fucking with me,' I say, 'And I don't like it.'

You're sixteen years old and all you have to look forward to is coming to see this woman. This woman who've you've spilt gallons of thoughts over since you met. She tells you repeatedly that she's not your mother and she wants you to stop projecting.

You're pretty sure she's fucking the guy at the front desk. His name is Adam and he looks at you as if he thinks he's better than you - as if you're a retard, a fuckwit - some little squirt whose brain is all fucked up, some drooling nut job who likes torturing animals or tossing off to the contents of his mothers underwear drawer. He sits at the desk and he makes you sign the register when you come in. You wonder what he thinks when he sees your handwriting - you look at all the other names and how they're scrawled and compare them to your own. He says good afternoon and tells you to take a seat and he hides behind a computer screen but you catch him slipping glances at you.

'She'll see you now,' he'll say and then you'll sit in the office and again you're forced to wait. You can hear her in the room next door - in that room she applies her make-up, she fixes her clothing, you imagine her unbuttoning that button and pulling the blouse off the shoulder so you'll see the bra strap.

'How has this week been?' she'll ask and you'll lie to her and tell her that it's been fine - that you're feeling better. She'll ask you if you still find it hard to sleep at night. You tell her that it's more difficult than ever and she'll probe again and ask what it is you think about when you're trying to sleep. You don't tell her anything. You don't tell her about how they hurt you, how you could hear the moans of the boys next to you at night - how you knew that they knew that you wouldn't think twice if they even dreamt about putting their cock in your mouth. You don't tell her about the fresh grass on the other side of the fence or that hard hand pulling you by your collar back under when you were so close to being free and away to home. She thinks you still have nightmares about your father and when you can only argue that truthfully you do not she'll tell you that it's okay to tell her, that nothing leaves this room - that you're safe here.

She'll ask you again, for the twentieth week running to describe what happened that night when you sank the knife in deep and twisted hard to the right and you'll describe in perfect detail exactly the events which you described the week before - and the week before that - and before that - and so on and so on. It's so you're remembering a memory of a memory - contorted and wrong, the details out of place.

She'll tell you that you have to commit to telling the truth - that the truth, no matter how hard it may be to swallow is always where the light and hope of the individual lies. The truth is only difficult to tell once, after that you're stating only fact. That a lie told often enough can become the truth - but only to the person that tells it.

You tell her eventually, and it takes all the courage you have that you love her and she tells you that's normal. You tell her she couldn't possibly understand and she looks at you with cold eyes and tells you that it's nothing more than transference neurosis \- it happens all the time, she says.

She tells you that you have to build your relationship with your mother -start from scratch she says, you've been through a lot.

And so you take walks with your mother in the park every day and lunch in a café that serves a chicken pie you both like. You go to the library together, you cook dinner, you buy a dog and sit down with a sheet of paper and pen and spend hours choosing a name. It comes then that you're eighteen and she decides you should go to university - 'Your grades are good and it's a sin to waste potential,' she says.

You study for three years and in your final you meet a woman - a girl and you decide that you love her, you decide this very quickly and when you do you want only to be with her. You get married and she doesn't mind that you're a bit screwed up, that you have tics and habits that at times defy reason and she tells you that you're the most important person in the world to her because your flaws make you perfect... because there is beauty in waking up in the ash of shared cigarettes smoked in bed.

You find it hard still to sleep at night, even with her arms around you... even with the comfort of hearing her breath even with the soothing airy moans that escape her mouth as she tosses lightly in half dreams. You still don't sleep beneath the covers lying instead - even in winter, clothed in warm pyjamas. She says she doesn't mind but in the heat of a dispute she'll use it to diamond coat an argument so that it cuts deep and leaves you feeling ashamed.

When the fighting is at its worst and there's talk already of a break from one another - a period of diplomatic reflection, she learns she's two months pregnant. You live then only to see that this woman remains safe and warm and fed and at peace. As each week passes and you see her body change, you see, despite how she looses her figure, despite how tired she is, how increasingly intolerant of you she becomes - how you love her even more. You love her even more and nothing she can say can spoil that.

She has a little girl of just over five pounds in weight. She's very small and she looks just like her mother. You meet this little person and you never thought it was possible - that all those things that people say about how everything ceases to be important, even your own well being - you never thought it were possible to love something so completely. You've known this little person no longer than five minutes and there's nothing you can conceive you wouldn't do to protect her. It's important then and you make a promise that you tell yourself is the only promise you're going to ever have to keep - you promise that you will never, ever do anything to fuck her up.
Chapter 36

The day room is quiet - empty save for Cassy who sits with Sam on the sofa. The story has broken on the news. On the screen in the daylight we can see the fruits of last nights labours. There's footage of Andrew Gardner's body being taken, wrapped in a white sheet on a gurney from his home. Cassy holds Sam like how a mother does a son with a grazed knee. He's been crying, his face puffy and red. His back stooped down, his teacup filling with tears. Andrew Gardner and his wife were dead by the time the police arrived. I see how the Porshe was scorched to the driveway and how the flames burnt a black stain up the side of his house. We didn't know - of course we didn't, but Andrew Gardner's nine year old son was sleeping in his room. He walked in to find the bodies of his parents laid out on the floor. They're saying how is fingers had to be prized open when they pulled him off his mothers body.

'You both should eat,' says Cassy.

In the kitchen Charlie and I sit while she fixes soup and bread and tells us that she sent the men out in to the city for the day to steal supplies. This whole operation is fuelled by shoplifting and petty theft. We, these soldiers of a new age, these theological revolutionaries are fed on packet soup and peanuts. We share one toilet between near a dozen of us and we ration the toilet paper to one roll per man per week. We have breakfast, we don't eat lunch and in the evening we eat a meal that would leave a child still asking for more. This soup is thin and made from flavoured dust. It should serve two people but there's three of us and the vegetables are dry and hard.

'Where is he?' I ask and Cassy shakes her head, a plea not to ask questions.

Charlie doesn't finish his meal. I barely touch mine. Downstairs I can hear Sam whimpering.

'The meeting has been postponed,' says Cassy.

Charlie hits her. He stands to his feet and hits her hard with an open palm across her face.

'Of course it's been fucking postponed,' he says.

You kill your father... and it's mostly an accident... an accident up until the point you realise you've sank the knife into his chest, an accident up until the point you've twistied it at a right angle. Nicky always intended to kill that man... it wasn't a accident. Nicky wanted to up the stakes.

'He showed them we were serious,' Cassy says.

'He showed them we are barbarians,' says Charlie. 'That we are crusaders. We showed them that they should fear us.'

'It's the only way,' she says, a perfect imprint of Charlie's hand glowing red on her cheek, 'We have to show them there are consequences.'

'That's never what this was about,' Charlie says, 'This was not about fear - this was about freeing people. This is not what I signed on for.'

'So what are you saying?' she asks. 'Do you want out? Is that it?'

'I don't see how I can stay,' Charlie says, 'This isn't what I wanted. This isn't what we discussed.'

'Nicky's in charge,' she says, 'We do what he wants, we don't ask questions.'

'My God told me something,' Charlie says as he walks to door. 'He said that the noble and virtuous are not inventions of religion, that it is men that decide whether they are good or not. This is not noble and this is virtuous. This is just evil.'

'Our God's are gone,' says Cassy, 'They've abandoned us. Nicky's just helping us to find our way.'

'Nicky's not God,' Charlie says.

He tells us he needs to think. That he's going out.
Chapter 37

I wake with tears in my eyes. In my stationary cupboard even when it's light outside the room is pitched in perfect darkness. I think of those prison movies I've seen. Nicky's been locked in his office for two days and Charlie still hasn't returned. It's been fifty eight hours since Andrew Gardner had his brains blown out.

I hate now that I'm frightened, I hate now that my actions for the most part seem so fruitless. I hate that I feel ignorant - that I don't matter - that I've lost all conviction, that I don't care anymore... with no faith in what I'm doing I seem now to matter less.

We lost one of the men on the expedition to town. When no one was watching he made a run for it. With Gardner's death the rules have changed and so I can only imagine that soon there'll be more to follow.

My fear now, my only fear is that I'm caught. I don't fear prison as much as I fear the solitude. I don't fear death.

There's rumours in the building that Nicky's killed himself. The door to his office is locked and he's not answering when someone knocks. Cassy says he'll come out in his own time. A part of me hopes that he's dead - I don't know - somehow it would be easier if he was.

I woke with tears in my eyes because now when I sleep I only dream. In my dreams God is always there. I woke this morning convinced he was sat next to me in the dark. I dreamt he spoke to me. These dreams, they don't fade - there's no concern that they will whither away during the day. I remember them in full, not as punctured memories that wilt as time passes. He spoke to me and he told me that if you want to have a tree in your garden you must plant a seed - you don't steal a tree from the forest in the middle of the night - that's not your tree. You plant a seed, you watch it grow. In winters it may look as though it has died but there will be as many summers as there are winters and soon, once the tree is big enough, even the harshest winter won't be cruel enough to stop it from standing tall.

Sam still watches the news. He tells me this morning that the police have decided that I was responsible for Andrew Gardner's death - that they believe it was me - that it was I, Terrence Elliot that murdered him. Apparently I worked alone, breaking into his home, killing him and his wife and torching his Porshe and fucking his kid up - probably for life. Some kid that will for years to come not dare to sleep below the covers. He'll wake each morning and before he opens his eyes he'll see as plain as if it were in front of him again a pool of blood soaking in to the carpet.

I regret now that I answered the phone. Without Nicky, without these people - this haphazard operation I feel I could have gone on alone. I had told myself, that in a few months from now, if all was quiet, if all was done and I felt safe I would return home. All I wanted was to be a decent father. I regret everything now. I regret being coaxed in to this - all of this, everything. When I watched those churches burn I felt exhilarated. It wasn't simple revenge but it's the best word to describe the lucid sensation that I was taking something back - that I was righting a wrong done on to me, done on to so many of us. If he asked me now if I knew why I did it I could answer that I did everything for myself and for my daughter. I could tell him quite honestly that my intentions were selfish, that I was never a big picture kind of guy.

These men I share this cracking building with, this hideout of damaged souls - this angry population, they have a goal. They have an end in mind though perhaps not in sight. I can't see now how this ends. Other than our deaths I see little in the way of conclusion for any of us. It feels now as though my time here is ticking steadily towards a finish - that I'm getting closer to the end. I wake now with tears in my eyes because I'm relieved that today I still have hope.

Something that looks like my face is plastered on the television throughout the day - a crude imitation of me where I have dark eyes and thin lips. The camera footage from the hostel is grainy and grey, it's near impossible to know that it's me, but this image, this black and white, charcoal image inspired by the fleeting recollections of those that came across me is clean and concise. Some channels run a colour version in which my freckles are deep orange and the hair on my head - or what's left of it is blotched and scarlet red. My face is empty and people are told to fear me. On the news they tell them that I am dangerous, most likely that I am armed. I haven't killed a soul. I watched Lesley's eyes widen and the knuckles of his son's hand turn white in a hard grip on his fathers lapels as I faced them down the barrel of the shotgun.

I couldn't kill a man. I couldn't kill an innocent man and now it's most likely that I'll be dead soon because of that fact - that weakness. I asked them, please, to understand that I was not a bad person, that if I had the strength of character maybe I could do it. Maybe I could look them in the eye and I could pull the trigger. I left their farm house that evening and I apologised for stealing their truck - for stealing their money. Lesley thanked me and told me that he hoped I would find peace. I told him I was sorry, that I couldn't untie him, but that I was sure in the morning once the men became hungry for their breakfast they would come and find him. He seemed to understand, to see something, in my eyes maybe. He missed his son. He wanted more than anything to have him back. I told him I was sorry - that it was nothing to do with me.

In the kitchen I have coffee. The shoplifting expedition in to the city heralded good results. We have coffee now. We have muffins and bread. In the cupboards we have butter and milk, vegetables and fresh fruit and meat. We'll eat well now for a few days until it runs out and once again survive on what little is left.

I sit with Sam and he tells me that he feels better and that he wonders where Charlie is. With Charlie gone it feels as though I've lost an ally - someone as doubtful as me. I could maybe move on but for now I'm safe. I don't think I would last all that long if I were to go. The men who returned from the city said that my picture was stuck up in shop windows and pasted on billboards. They say I shouldn't leave the building - that I wouldn't last a day.

One of the men is painting in the corner. While most were in the supermarkets and chemists stuffing whatever goods they could get their hands on in to long coat pockets he stole away quietly and stole himself a set of brushes and paints. He stands now, a large sheet of paper taped to the wall and paints a landscape of green fields.

'He's been at it all morning,' says Sam, 'He says he used to paint in college and never thought until recently how much he missed it and how it might be nice to take it up again, now that he has so much free time on his hands.'

I watch as this man, no older than maybe fifty years of age dabs delicately at his improvised canvas, his face deep and serene in concentration. He looks now like no one else here. His face, a beautiful distraction against all the other faces - faces itched almost permanently with lines of anxiety, faces scrawled with tension as though they know a blow is coming. This man, he could be standing anywhere. With how his face looks he could as easily be stood at the end of a pier as twilight breaks on a summer evening, squinting against a low sun with a hand that moves in tactful and sweeping strokes. To look at him he is a million miles away from here stabbing with precision and rejuvenated vigour - stood in a second floor bay window of a town house in the morning with a cat purring gentle circles at his feet while his wife brings him coffee and coos over his ever burgeoning canvas. I wonder who he was - I know nothing about these people. They've been recruited, just as I was, just as Nicky was - just like how God did it. I wonder where Nicky found him.

Cassy comes in and tells me Nicky's opened his door. He wants to see me, he insists upon it.

'Charlies's gone,' I tell him.

Nicky hasn't slept. His eyes are wild and tired, as though he's slept only in nightmares - as though he woke with flailing arms in a sea of half baked dreams. In front of his desk is a video camera on a tripod.

'Where is Charlie?' he asks.

I tell him I don't know, that he left a few days ago, said he needed to think.

'He's probably dead already,' says Nicky.

'So what next?' I ask.

Nicky says, 'Things are different now,' and he seats himself behind the desk facing the video camera - as though addressing it and not me, 'The rules have changed. The parameters by which we've worked before have widened.'

I'm wondering what the video camera is for.

'They're not happy with me, are they?' he asks.

'I think some of them way be wondering what you're thinking.'

Nicky says, 'They'll know soon enough.'.

He turns to the wall where our suits are neatly hung. He fixes them straight, brushing his hand down the lapels. His desk is tidy - completely clear save for the gun which rests in it's centre.

'I need you to help me with something,' he says, 'We're making a statement.'

I stand behind the video camera and Nicky takes his seat.

'Just press record,' he says.

He sits straight, his hands on the desk flat. In the viewfinder he is framed in perfect symmetry by the four suits on the wall behind him, two on each side. I can see the gun - it is laid out plainly in sight, Nicky's hand resting lightly on it. He nods and I press the little red button and the tape whirls and he begins to speak - a long soliloquy committed to memory, delivered with gusto but without sensation or feigned histrionics.

My name is Nicholas Fusco. The events of January 25th last year were but a reaction to the continuous unjust actions and oppression being practised against us. It is incumbent of the people to wake up from their sleep and rush to devise a solution to this problem that threatens mankind entirely today. As for the people who condemned that operation and the continuing operations I ask them to look, not at these events in isolation but to regard them as a reaction to past events. I ask people to look at the cause. Their attitude, despite what they may think is not in accord with a rational religious perspective. They see the world and its media criticise us and our operations and so they stand up in criticism also. We are not terrorists. Governments may paint us as such, they may tighten their hold on the media outlets that publish anything other than their own censored views, but we are strong in our beliefs and we are not afraid. The continued burning, bombing and destruction of religious building and symbols will continue. To all governments, be aware that there little you can give us, there is little that we want from you, there is nothing that you can bargain with. We demand only that you no longer seek to provide these religions with the financial support to support and strengthen themselves. We are too far evolved, we are too intelligent to believe in a being that for too long has been the soul cause of war, famine and prosecution the world over. There's a time of strange purity on earth and it is this purity that we strive for. This time of spiritual clarity comes with the death of one man. When the Pope, whoever he may be dies, there is a period, while the bishops and cardinals, whoever they are come together to find their new leader. This can often take weeks, it can take months, but not until the white smoke bellows above Vatican City, is there one man on earth who claims to be infallible. In this sense the people on earth are pure and human and spiritually equal. We aspire to this goal... a permanent state of spiritual equality. We the people, stand up now and proclaim, that we are not victims anymore - none of us, we are not men who need help, we are the cause for concern. Andrew Gardner was assassinated by myself and by myself alone two days ago in Brisbane, Australia - he is the first and thus far only human causality of this conflict. There may be more, the number of which is entirely up to you. Today is the third of March. This tape will be posted to the BBC in London. It will take six days for the tape to be received. In that time the following churches will have been attacked and destroyed. Saint Paul's Cathedral in London, the Eglise Protestante Chinoise in Paris, the Synagogue of Casale Monferrato in Milan. More will follow. My name is Nicolas Fusco, leader of the Spirit of the People's Army. I am your cause for concern.

He tells me then to leave and that he'll call me when he needs me again, 'It's me and you,' he says, 'We're going to run this whole operation.'
Chapter 38

Within days the full extent of Nicky's prophecies becomes clear. St Paul's is the first to go. I watch television with the men who cheer at the sight of the blown out dome. This wasn't a burning. You can't burn something that big to the ground with nothing but petrol and a prayer that some wood will catch. Not that you have to, not that that's the point anymore. They planted C4 explosives on the central dome and on the clock tower and detonated them remotely. This great cathedral, the seat of the Bishop of London, the most recognisable of London landmarks now with a facelift that makes it look like any other church. The explosives went off at noon, a party of fifty tourists were taking pictures from underneath when the dome blew; Fourteen injured, three seriously.

This, the most extravagant demonstration of our resilience - the most devastating reminder in nearly a year that we haven't gone away - that we are still strong, still united and maybe still crazy enough to keep going, to not give up until we get whatever the hell it is that we want.

Nicky says he read that when a Sufi Muslim became aware Egyptian peasants were making offerings to the Sphinx imploring for a good harvest he was so outraged he had her nose chopped off.

'Imagine blowing a hole in the belly of the Reclining Buddha of Wat Pho,' he says, 'Imagine waking up to find Christ the Redeemer of Rio without a face or cocks drawn in biro on the heads of the apostles of Di Vinci's Last Supper.'

Of course Nicky knew this would happen, he knew all about St Paul's, about the C4, about how the leader of the London group made a concerted effort to recruit a chemist and how he's busy now working on manufacturing enough Semtex to send to our people in the United States so they can bring down Washington's National Cathedral. He knows every move. In the e-mails he reads the plans, he has knowledge well ahead of time of every bombing, burning and expedition. It works both ways. Nicky says it's about streamlining - a collaborative effort. I ask what they intend to achieve with the tape.

'We need a face,' he says, 'We need someone for the people to root for, someone to publicly champion the cause.'

'So you volunteered?' I ask.

'Not exactly,' he says. 'No one knows about the tape. Just you and me.'

The mood is different now than when I arrived. Nicky's presence with the group is sporadic. When he joins us in front of the television the men fall silent, like school children whose teacher has just walked back in to the classroom. We may only be a handful but there's no doubt that we're not alone. There's no doubt that there isn't little pockets of men and woman everywhere working entirely unaided and without supervision and it is these people that Nicky wishes to appeal to.

'They need a leader,' he says when I show him a three inch story in the newspaper about how one hundred burning bibles where found on the steps of Sydney Town Hall, 'And I don't mean instruction or coaching, I mean they need to feel like they're an important part of a larger plan. They need a figure that represents their cause, that defines it, that gives them a voice. They need someone to risk exposure - someone that sacrifices themselves.'

'A martyr?' I ask.

He says, 'A sacrificial lamb.'

The Eglise Protestante Chinoise in Paris is small, a shop front on a quiet street. The day after St Paul's a car bomb on the street blows the doors off and four petrol bombs burn the interior beyond repair. Smoke bellowed through the streets, a run down part of Paris where you imagine the smell of sewers on hot French evenings can be tasted in the throat; Two injured, one seriously - a cleaner and her son.

'The French are a small operation,' says Nicky, 'But they don't do things in half measures.'

On television they debate whether the attack was racially motivated, the say the attacks are probably not connected, that it would be a waste of time surely to consider the notion of such bi-Partisan terrorism. Why attack such diverse targets? The lavishness of St Paul's, the dilapidated Eglise Protestante Chinoise? Nicky smiles and says, 'They'll know the truth in a few days. Soon there'll be none of this confusion. I'll be able to claim responsibility for everything we do the world over.'

I spend my days with him in his office. He sits in front of his computer, every few minutes checking the e-mail account. A steady trail of e-mails have inquired if Andrew Gardner's death was anything to do with him. Nicky hasn't answered. He hasn't answered any mail for days and they've started to wonder if he's dead or alive.

'The Spirit of the People's Army,' he says, 'It's the only way we can move forward, the only way we can end this.'

'And what's the end?' I ask.

'It's not clear yet,' he says.

A day later and the Synagogue of Casale Monferrato in Milan is mostly smoke damaged, the four men who started the fire were arrested within a few hours and the general feeling is that it was a botched job. The fire did little other than burn some furniture and destroy some of the elaborate Baroque artwork. The men were found in a bar patting each other on the back and talking too loudly - they were arrested with soot on their faces and the smell of petrol still on their clothes; No casualties.

'It doesn't matter,' says Nicky, 'As long as the intention was there and the message was clear. Soon they will ask what it is that we want. They'll ask what it is that we demand.'

'You make it sound like we're holding hostages,' I say.

In the office while Nicky sleeps I sort through the newspaper cuttings he's collected. There are hundreds of clippings and even more printed material from the thousands of inches that appeared online, a library of deeds he intends to account for. The men have become restless, they complain as we watch the chaos in Europe that we ourselves must make a statement. Cassy argues that with the death of Andrew Gardner still dictating the newspaper front pages we shouldn't be so hasty to emulate the Europeans with an elaborate gesture of our own.

'There's enough heat on us already,' she says and I think how she doesn't know the half of it.

Nicky wakes me early in the morning and takes me to his office. He says the tape should have arrived in London by now and that we should expect something any day now. He doesn't have to wait long. We sit in the office all morning barely speaking and at noon the story breaks. Interrupting an interview with the Australian Prime-Minister the Channel 7 news runs the story. On the website of the BBC the video is uploaded and can be watched repeatedly - every word open to viewing and scrutiny by an indecipherable number of people. Within minutes Nicolas Fusco is a household name, the poster child for the Spirit of the People's Army.

In the day room as the men watch his address on television Cassy looks at me with pleading and angry eyes. She corners me in the hallway pinning me against the wall.

'What the hell is going on?' she says.

I tell her, 'Nicky will address everyone soon.'

'I'm out of the loop?' she asks, her ego clearly bruised, 'Is that it?'

'He asked that I keep it close,' I say.

She tells me that, it's her life too, that this wasn't a risk she was willing to take.

'This will get us all killed,' she says struggling through tears, 'We've always been so careful, we've always said that once they know who you are, you don't last long. He's killed us.'

She thinks I'm in on this and although I am, I tell her that it wasn't my decision and that I didn't know that he was planning it.

'He let you off the hook with Gardner,' she says.

I call a meeting but by the time Nicky arrives two men have fled the building. When he's through and he's explained his intentions - the whole 'sacrificial lamb' thing, the men that are left look no less traumatized and no more convinced. When I came here, only weeks ago eleven people in total occupied this building, now there's only seven of us.

'This is fucking suicide,' one says, 'We'll all be dead within a week.'

'You're all dead anyway,' Nicky says, 'Or as good as.'

Cassy announces she's leaving and in the morning Sam goes with her - an indifferent, almost formal parting of ways. By the end of the second day, it's only me and Nicky left. The exodus happened overnight, by the time Cassy said her goodbyes and Nicky took her suit from the wall and packed it in a holdall the building was empty. The men had gotten together and talked it over. Cassy tells me that if I had sense I would run. I tell her I've nowhere to go. So now in his office we sit with each other. Nicky watches the computers. The e-mails flood in.

'Are you leaving too?' he asks.

'Where would I go,' I say.

'I don't know.'

'I wouldn't last a more than a few hours,' I tell him.

'You may have to take the risk,' he says pointing towards the television, 'It seems that the stakes just got a little higher.'

The Australian government are offering an up to fifty thousand dollar reward for information regarding Nicky's whereabouts.

'There's a split forming,' he says as he taps his fingers on the desk, 'The American's are glad I've done this, they think it's a good idea. The Europeans seem to think I'm on some sort of ego trip or that I've lost my mind.'

'Which is it?' I ask.

'They're going to come after us hard,' he says, 'That whole dead Pope thing must have rattled them.'

***

As the hours roll by I wonder now what our next move is, what it possibly could be. There's no real options, no clever manoeuvres, no solution to our problems. Yesterday we were eleven men, today we are two. Now I think that this can maybe only end with our deaths and if not death, then a life worth less than that. I don't want to die. There's nothing for me in death. Death offers me nothing because I'd never get to see the fruits of the labour I unwillingly forced upon myself. If anything, I'm too interested in seeing how this all plays out. I don't want to die. I want to live. I want to get better at life. I want to live.

'We're running low on food,' Nicky says.

With the men gone his self imposed exile in his office has ended and so we sit now in the day room watching television. We sleep in shifts so that we don't miss anything. We check the e-mail account once every half hour for new information. Nicky wants to keep on top of things, he wants to know what the other groups are saying about him.

'We've got food that will last us for a day or two but it's nothing substantial,' he says.

I haven't left the building in nearly a week. With Nicky attributing himself to Andrew Gardner's death he says it's probable they aren't looking quite so hard for me anymore. They know he's still in Brisbane. The roads are check-pointed in and out of the city. You can't take a bus or train without photographic identification, on television the airport resembles a military base with shots of armed soldiers mingling with tourists dressed in corked hats in the terminals.

'I doubt you're a priority anymore,' he says sounding more than a little self-satisfied. 'You have to wonder why they're so frightened of us. I've only killed one man. This is an attack on the nucleus of an idea, on the birth of a revolution. In a way, they're playing right in to my hands. This is how you convince people.'

I think of Che Guevara, think of Malcolm X, think of Vladimir Lenin.

Nicky says they truly fear us... that a man with a gun can control one hundred without one.

I think of that line I read about how it is that two men equally fear an empty gun, the one who holds it and the one who it's pointing at.

'We need to eat,' he says. 'You need to go out.'

.
Chapter 39

I wait until dark. I leave Nicky in front of the computer bouncing e-mails back and forth to the leader of the French group who's angry that his efforts on the Eglise Protestante Chinoise have been hijacked and Nicky's taken the credit. I read what he has written and it's difficult not to agree.

Nicholas,

Our efforts are ours and ours alone. We have worked hard and have built up a small and strong group of men. We want only to copy the teachings of our God. We wanted to do things as he said. We want to remain anonymous. We want no face to this operations, no one who stands like a leader. This undermines us and our God. He said that we can all be Gods and that men are equal and the same. You show that this is not true now. You wish to be the most important person. You wish to be our God. You are not our God. You must stop what you are doing.

Matthieu.

The American group working out of Washington take Nicky's side and I leave him in the midst of an argument conducted back and forth between our continents.

Matthieu

Nicky has done a great and brave thing. We can't fight this war without a face, without someone who is willing to forfeit their safety. He is an inspiration to us and already an inspiration to many over the world who agree with our cause but are too frightened to join us. Do you know they are selling T-shirts with his face on them in the stalls at the Eastern Market on Capitol Hill? This is a great thing he has done. He has unified us, he has brought coherency to our fight. We are stronger now because of him.

We lost China over a month ago and it seemed that all was lost in Asia, but now surely it won't be long until China becomes a player again. Soon I anticipate every country in the world will have their own groups and bands of men and woman who will fight for our cause.

Like you, we have not seen our God for a long time. Like you, we wish to keep the teachings he gave to us strong and so it is important that we have someone who can bring his message to the people all over the world. Millions of people will join us now and work independently and alone. There will be so many of us now that soon I feel it will be safe to go home to our families. Surely this is what we all want.

God bless you,

Calvin.

Leader of the Spirit of the People's Army, Washington Division

***

Nicholas,

It was with great relief that I and the men of the Spirit of the People's Army in Rome met the news that you are safe and well. We have discussed at great length the question of your decision to make your presence known to the world. At first I was angry and distressed. We felt that you had made a decision of great importance on our behalf but without our consultation. After much debate we have decided that we support you and the direction in which you wish to take. The men here agree that it is important that we are united and strong. Soon we will have news regarding the question of the Pope. Spiritual Unity is the most important aspect of our fight. The men and woman of the Spirit of the People's Army, Rome Division wish to make it known that we are working hard on achieving the single greatest act of our defiance.

Giuseppe

SOTPA; ROME

***

In the dark I slip out and in to the city. There is an all night supermarket near by and I walk quickly along the streets hopping in and out of shadows avoiding the puddles of street light. I think how easy it would be to not return. I could take a cab out to the suburbs and walk over the fields and country side avoiding the roads. By morning, with luck I could be outside of the city and I could move south. With luck I could hitch a ride with someone who didn't recognise my face, travel back to Melbourne. I could stow away on a cargo ship. I could maybe, in six or seven months navigate my way home if my luck held.

I wear a long coat with deep pockets, enough to bury food that would keep us maybe for a week. I could easily hide a packet of rice in one pocket, pasta in the other. In the inside pockets I could stow I'm sure a packet of ham, bacon, some tomatoes for making sauce.

Inside the strip fluorescent lighting hurts my eyes. I see a man of middle age with a basket in his hand buying single helping meals, a small toothpaste tube, a two pack of toilet rolls. I think of Morrow and I think of the potential and how perhaps it would take very little to fuel his imagination with promises and possibilities.

I move through the isles so that I'm out of sight. I notice on the ceiling the domed glass encasing of a security camera. Inside I see a red light flicker and move. Pushing my chin down to my chest I feel my hand rise from my side and watch as it inches itself gently towards a shelf and a bag of plain white rice.

'What are you doing?' he says and in the air I notice that familiar odour, 'Your mother would be so disappointed.'

He's smiling...

'Do you hate them?' he says

'No,' I tell him, 'Not anymore.'

'Correct answer.'

'I'm glad you approve.'

'Do you know why you don't hate?'

'They don't frighten me.'

We load two baskets with enough groceries that should make simple meals for nearly a month - breakfast, lunch and dinner. We buy cigarettes and toothpaste and the most expensive instant coffee we can find.

'It's important you eat well,' he says as he pays the cashier and hands me the bags.

I feel safe with him. We leave the supermarket and walk in silence. A police car passes slowly and as I shift into a doorway he chuckles - a sort of empathetic and considerate sound that puts me at ease. He tells me not to worry and pulls gently at my arm so that I join him in a confident stride along the pavement.

'You've got yourself in to some mess kid,' he says.

I tell him that I know. I tell him I was doing just fine until the incident at the vineyard.

'You could have killed those men,' he says, 'It would have been the smart move.'

'I couldn't kill a man,' I say, 'But I wanted to. I knew it would have been best if I did.'

He tells me it takes a strong man to act despite fear.

He takes me to quiet bar, a place he says where I'll be safe for a little while, a place without a television, a room where a young man reads a book and an old man chastises him telling him that reading will get you nowhere... that there's no answers in a book. He buys me a beer and I sit with my shopping at a quiet table by a fireplace and all along the bar there are men who are tired looking and who don't speak to one another.

'Does this look familiar to you?' he asks and I tell him that I've never been here before.

'That's not what I mean,' he says.

The men here are tired looking and quiet, they drink beer in silence and now and again excuse themselves to the bathroom. Excuses that for the most part are unnecessary, that do little other than break the silence of a room which seems happy to stew in silence. I've never been here before but I know the feel of this place.

'This is where I found you,' he says, 'Where I found all of you. These men, they drink at night to forget their day and to disregard the idea of tomorrow. These men don't look for answers in the bottom of their glasses, that's just a cheap cliché - they look for comfort. I could if I so wanted pick any of these men and in a matter of minutes they would agree just as you did to do whatever I said, whether they believed what I told them or not.'

'Why are you telling me this?' I ask.

'Because you should understand why you did what you did,' he says.

'I did it for me, to feel better, you said you'd make me strong.'

'I promised you something,' he says.

'You told me that I could have a better life.'

'I did,' he says conceding with a grin, 'Revolution is a promise but mostly a broken one.'

'You said to do just what you asked.'

'And you did. You were a perfect soldier'

'But I never signed up for this.'

'Why did you follow me?' he asks.

'Because you told me I could be happy.'

'But were you ever sad?'

'Yes.'

'Wrong.'

'Wrong?'

'You were afraid... you were never unhappy. You were afraid of yesterday, today, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, life, death, love, happiness, you name it, it scared you.'

'It sounds like I was unhappy.'

'What are you afraid of now?'

'Nothing I can think of... I miss my daughter.'

'The simplicity of that is beautiful, don't you think?'

He speaks like he used to, as though he's deliberately not telling me something, the tone of a teacher who wants you to figure out some equation all by yourself so that he's confident you know the rules by heart. I only want to know how I can get myself out of the mess that I'm in.

'You know Nicky's not got much time, don't you?' he says, 'He's done a very stupid thing.'

'I thought you would have approved,' I say. 'Isn't this what you would have wanted.'

He squints at me, his eyes both disapproving and disappointed. He buys me another beer.

'Nicky's right,' he says, his voice quiet, 'His theology is perfect, but he can't possibly convince everyone, not if people are acting out of fear. Fear sooner or later leads to revolt. Revolution is caused solely by people who wake up to the idea that they stopped having a choice.'

'So that's what this is about?' I say.

'Revolution, yes. It's all it's ever been,' he says with a smile. 'Revolution is caused by the fear inside people that tells them they are no longer responsible for the life that they lead. See Castro, see Martin Luther King, see the French Revoution, see Lenin, see every drop of blood ever spilt in anger and in vain.'

'You started this,' I say.

'I did,' he says. 'But I never told any of you to kill anyone and certainly not in my name.'

'When we're caught, we tell them God told us to do it.'

'But you don't believe in God, do you?'

'Then who are you?' I ask.

'It took you a long time to ask that question,' he says. 'Why did you wait?'

'Because it didn't matter, not until now.'

'I'm an idea,' he says. 'I am an alternative. You first joined me because you were afraid... you wanted inclusion, an answer... you answered yourself a calling... you joined and were faithful, blindly so. I never gave you an answer, only questions.'

'How long does Nicky have?' I ask.

'Not long. They'll find him, probably soon. And they'll kill him. They won't ask questions. Nicky's as idea now too and they'll try to kill it. There won't be pictures of him in his suit, we won't see him in court, we won't even see clear and concise evidence of his death. These people that follow him, now answer a similar call to what you did... they have faith in Nicky... Nicky is a God to these people, a father. What are you?'

'I'm just trying to stay alive,' I say, 'And you still haven't told me who you are. I don't see that there's such a difference between what Nicky's doing and what you did.'

God says, 'You can convince a man of anything if you show him his fears. If you threaten him with what he fears he will act only out of desperation... if you show him how to act upon his fears, he will act for the benefit of himself... you encourage him, practically force him to embrace life.'

I'm being preached to again.

'When you all first got caught you told the police that God told you to do it. You gave people a question to ask themselves.'

'You wanted to destroy something.'

'True. But it's not up to me. It's up to them. You ask a question. You get an answer.'

'Nicky answered it.'

'Nicky's got it in to his head that salvation for men rely on their ability to chose him over another. Many love him... but history tells us that many people loved a great many men because they were made to feel that in those men lay an answer... and if not an answer, then pure and simply safety.'

'They're going to try to kill the Pope.' I say, the whole, strange time of purity on Earth thing.'

'They'll replace him. He's an idea too. He offers something at least, salvation, life after death, that whole thing.'

'And what did you offer?'

'I just want everyone to appreciate what they have. I'm as much against what Nicky's doing as I am any priest, rabbi, monk or ayatollah. But I don't want to see his death, because that's not going to solve anything.'

'I want to save him,' I say.

'Good luck with that,' he says, 'But even Jesus to his credit, died with more enemies than friends - at least he had the good sense to know that no one man can change the world in his lifetime.'

We leave. God carries the bags and we move quickly back through the city to the office building. At the gates I slip inside and he tells me to take care of myself.

'Why did you track me down?' I ask when he turns to leave.

'To tell you that you still have a choice,' he says.

'Can you help me get home?' I ask.

He tells me that I'm not being realistic, that it's too early to say.

Chapter 40

Inside I pack the fridge and cupboards. Nicky is in his office. He calls for me when he hears me rustling upstairs. There's an e-mail he wants me to read...

Nicky,

It is Heng. I am not dead. I am safe. Are the police still looking for me? Deshi is dead. You know this already. You need to and come find me. I can help you.

Heng

'This is fucking massive man,' Nicky says, 'With Heng on board we can mobilise Asia. That's every continent man, every one. We can hit them at all angles. They won't know where to look.'

'It could be a trap,' I say, 'It's been a long time, they could have gotten to him.'

'It's a risk worth taking,' he says.

He's bouncing around the room, speaking with vigour - not listening.

'We should eat something,' I say, 'I'll cook and we'll talk it over.'

'We should move now,' he says.

I tell him I want to eat.

When he asks how I stole so much food I tell him I mugged an elderly woman and snatched her purse. He smiles, watching me in the kitchen boiling potatoes and buttering the pan to fry pork chops. When the food is ready, a proper meal I turn the television off and insist we sit, just for a while and ignore the news, ignore the e-mails and just talk.

With the television turned off, I think probably for the first time since I arrived, the day room falls in to an unfamiliar darkness. Through the crack of the wooden beams that board the windows, street lamp rays illuminate lightly little pockets of space. I light candles and we settle at the table and eat in the low peaceful glow of at last, a quiet room. Nicky's mood changes immediately. Without the constant humming of the television, the drama that of the rolling news station, he relaxes \- as if it alone had been the source of all of his boundless, contagious and nervous energy - feeding him relentlessly with enough fuel to forgo the trivialities of proper sleep or food.

With our plates piled high with pork medallions and potatoes we are silent for a little while and I enjoy the now unfamiliar sensation of a meal in which I don't feel the need to savour or appreciate every bite, blissfully aware instead that I will struggle to finish what's in front of me.

God says Nicky won't last long. Nicky knows it already.

'Are you frightened?' I ask once I've eaten as much as I can.

'Only if I stop to think about it,' Nicky says.

I give him a cigarette and boil the kettle for coffee.

'They'll find me sooner or later,' he says, 'Probably sooner.'

'Going after Heng is a big risk,' I tell him.

'He's important,' says Nicky, 'The work he's done can't be put to waste. I won't let it.'

I tell him that I think it's strange that he would suddenly rear his head, that it's been weeks, that we must consider the idea that he was caught and they turned him.

'I'm willing to risk it,' he says, 'We both know I won't last long, I may as well try to achieve one last thing before they catch me.'

Looking at him, a kid barely in to his twenties, it's hard not to admire him. On the FBI's most wanted list he shot straight in at the top spot. No one knows anything about him. He doesn't have a family to go home to. He's living now only for himself.

'I hope they kill me,' he says, 'I don't want to be arrested.'

'We don't know for sure they'll find you,' I say.

'I've been thinking, that if they kill me, I won't really be dead,' he says finishing his cigarette. 'I've been thinking that if you die at the hands of your enemy they only kill the weakest part of you - your flesh and blood, not your idea. I'm an idea now if you think about it. If they kill me people will act on it, I can live forever.'

'The same can be said for the Pope,' I say.

'Maybe,' says Nicky, 'But it depends on which side is most willing to die for what they believe. When we burnt the churches and were arrested, we told them that it was God that told us to do it. That made a lot of people doubt what they believed. Now imagine the man who kills the Pope gets caught and when he's asked why he did it, he has that exact same answer.'

'What if he doesn't get caught?' I ask.

'You haven't read the e-mails today have you?' he says, 'The guy's not even going to run once he does it, he wants to get caught.'

'And you want to die?' I ask.

'I'm just a fucked up a kid who got a chance not to be fucked up anymore. I don't know why you got involved, but I only ever wanted revenge and I still do. It's all I've ever wanted from this... because I'm not done with them, not yet. You might think this is a revolution but it's just revenge to me.'

I imagine him held beneath covers, his arms pressed by his sides and his feet pinned so they can't kick. I see in his eyes him living this all over again...

'I don't care who he was....'

I see him crying all over again...

'Fuck God,' he says, 'What good did he ever do for me?'

God said if you show a man to act upon his fears he will act for the benefit of himself.

'I want to make a tape,' Nicky says, 'And we're going to send it this afternoon. '

Nicky goes to his office and in an hour he calls for me. He asks that I read what he has written, handing me a page of scribbled notes,

My name is Nicolas Fusco and I was assassinated. I was never given the opportunity that was rightly mine, to speak in public, so you could hear my side of the story. I have been painted as a bogey man, a terrorist, an extremist and a murderer. Over a year ago I was visited by a man who called himself God and he asked me to burn his churches to the ground. This man, he laid claim to all of the churches, temples, mosques, every venue the world over designed for prayer. They were his, he owned them. God wanted them destroyed.

I took up his calling along with thousands the world over, not because we wanted to destroy something but because we wanted to build. We wanted to build a world where we didn't look to the skies for answers but in the eyes of others; a world where divinity was in touching distance, real and physical touching distance of us all.

These churches were not the churches of God, but the churches of man. In these churches there can be no equality, there are no answers, there is only suffering and fear. To replace the external God with the inner humanity that exists in all of us we can create a world in which all are equal.

This is what God wants. I am a servant, not of his, but of his idea... and men have killed me for it.

It is his wish that we do not believe in God, but that we believe in the possibility of anything.

These men that are left will continue despite my death to ensure that the will of God is done. I appeal to everyone to not fear us the way in which the people of power do, but to join us, to help us, to assist us in doing the work that must be done.

My name is Nicolas Fusco, leader of the Spirit of the People's Army, and I was killed by men because I did the work of God. A God who asked not that I believe in him, but in the myself and in my fellow man. It is within ourselves and it is here on Earth that we can find the false divinity that is promised by the men whose churches he wishes us to destroy.

We set the camera up, Nicky sits at his desk and when I press record Nicky nails it in a single take.

I ask Nicky, 'Now what?'
Chapter 41

My new name will be Daniel Roth and Heng says that we'll pick up the passports once we reach Perth. We left Brisbane late in the evening and now as morning breaks we've reached Cobar in New South Wales. It was easier than we expected getting out of the city. With the roads open again it was easy to slip through the suburbs unnoticed and find the highway in a hatchback we stole at gun point. We posted the tape as we left the city. It will take six days to reach London.

Heng says he'd been living rough for weeks sustaining himself on food he found in rubbish bins at night time - he didn't dare go in to shops, he knew they were looking for him. He has fifteen hundred dollars in cash and he says that there is at least a thousand men back home waiting to hear what he wants them to do next.

Nicky... Nicky wants to make one more big statement. We're going to try our luck and we're going to try to get to Europe. The Italians have the best operation. They have the most money, the best security, the tightest network. They're going after the Pope and Nicky wants to be the one to pull the trigger. He's not going to run, he's not going to put up a fight, he wants to be shot down in front television cameras, in front of millions so that he lives forever.

In Perth we'll meet with the Western Austrlian branch of the Spirit of the People's Army and they'll help us get on a plane. They think we're heroes. 'Anything we can do sir will be a privilege and an honour', Alan Frasier wrote in an e-mail, 'We'll be waiting for you. We won't let you down.'

With the sun coming up we move off the highway and on to country roads, heading out in to the outback. Nicky's been driving all night and needs to sleep. He shaved his head completely bald and grew a beard which he cut in to a handlebar moustache and so he doesn't look much like he did. He wore blue contact lenses when he had his passport photo taken and then we mailed them to Perth so they'd be ready when we arrived. I say that I'll drive for a while and we rumble over dusty roads and Nicky lies on the back seat.

Heng's English is better than he let on. He speaks near fluently and with a half American accent. We drove a few miles out of the city and picked him up on the coast. He'd been living under a pier. He was afraid to come out during the day, finally forcing himself to do so, to find an internet café where he could reach us. He'd gotten sick. He says the night time can be cold and at one time he thought he could easily die. That at one time he wouldn't have cared if he did, that one night he fell asleep in the sand and hoped he wouldn't wake up. He sleeps now on the passenger seat beside me, his mouth wide open and drooling.

An hour passes, maybe two and the day becomes warm. I stop the car to stretch my legs and look out over yellow coloured, dry looking fields. In the distance I can see the highway and the cars passing quickly. It will take another day at least to reach Perth, maybe two if we stick to these country roads. If we can reach Port Agusta, just north of Adelaide by evening we can be half way to Perth come the morning time.

Nicky wakes in the back seat and asks where we are. I tell him I don't know, that it's hard to keep track. He tells me that we should eat. We move the car off the road and in to a clearing in the bush. We have coffee and sandwiches, beer and potato chips. We eat. I watch Heng who still eats as though he's starved. Nicky asks him why he joined up, who his God was, about his parents.

'Our God was a white man,' he says, 'Like yours. He found me at work. I worked in a garage washing cars. He asked me if I was happy. He took me to a café and he bought me coffee.'

Heng's father ran an illegal prayer group from his home. He had a Bible and with thirty people crammed in to his kitchen sitting on the floor he would read to them and they would pray together. Heng says he remembers the night they came for him, he remembers the door being kicked in and the congregation scattering through the house and his father being dragged outside.

'They beat him,' he says, 'They beat him bad and when they left my mother sat him on a chair and dabbed at his face with a wet towel. They told him to stop, that they would be back if he didn't, that they would do much worse things to him the next time.'

Heng's father didn't stop. The prayer group continued, his wife pleaded with him.

'She said to him, what's more important, your family or your God?' Heng says, 'And he told her that we were his family and that he loved us, but that God had a plan for him and that he was married first to God and second to my mother.'

They came for him again, a month later, Heng was only ten years old when he watched from his bedroom window as blow after blow came down hard on his father's head in the garden.

'He never woke up,' Heng says, 'They were wrong to beat him, they killed him and I hate them for it, but he cared more about God than he did about my mother... about me.'

Heng didn't burn just churches. He burnt houses, he petrol bombed the homes where theses underground congregations gathered and when the night had ended he went after the police. He burnt police stations to the ground, government buildings, he started riots. He got up in everyone's faces... he did more than was absolutely necessary. He needed the excuse.

'It's just revenge, man,' he says, 'That's all this has ever been.'

These kids, Nicky, Heng whoever they are, they're not smart, they're not worldly, they don't know why they got picked up, they don't care to think why some guy would come along and tell them he can make things better. They just wanted what he promised, they want to feel better, that's it, it's about taking back the hurt, replacing it with something... 'Revenge is all it's ever been,' says Nicky, 'It's all we have. It makes us strong.'

This revenge, this thing that makes us strong, this thing that fuels us - this reason it seems that so many agreed to do what we've done. I feel none of it. We've developed a consciousness, we've cultivated an idea, one to be debated, maybe even considered but it's not a real revolution, it's not forged out of a considered need. These weren't the actions of intellects that understood the necessity for change and could define with ease exactly the problems and restrictions of the society in which they lived. These men, Nicky, Heng, me, we've done this because we were promised something - promised a better deal - some ill-defined improvement on who we were - who we are. We're suckers, every one of us, a tiny cog in a wheel so complex and so large that we can't possible understand how it turns. Nicky and Heng, it doesn't matter to them, the answers they want, they're right in front them, they stare them in the face. Revenge - that's all this is, the cornerstone of this revolution. Taking back the hurt... fuck an answer, fuck righting a wrong... this about what happens when two wrongs come together. An eye for an eye.

We think better than to move on again in daylight and instead we wait for dark. We wait until the stars come out. This far from the city the stars are bright. The moon is large and lit up well enough I can see the pimples on it's face. The night is cool and clean and quiet, quiet so that even softest footstep seems to echo against some invisible wall just behind the dark. It's a strange thing, I sit in the car and no one speaks. Nicky lies on the bonnet and I think of what thoughts must be going through his head. He says that now his thoughts are only of death, that death is all he thinks of. I ask him if he is frightened and he tells me he's not, that he feels as though there's nothing left inside him, nothing weak enough to fuel a flame of fear. He says he feels like a God. He says that you waste your life if you don't live it with the hope of living forever.

'They'll talk about us in years to come,' he says, 'They'll talk about us in books and in classrooms like myths. They will talk about how we defined the turning of some tide, some readjustment... they'll talk about a beginning and a movement, about how we birthed an idea. When a kid asks his teacher in history class why we don't go to church anymore they'll hear our names...'

Nicky Fusco...

Heng Wu...

Benedict Waters...

My own... maybe

We rejoin the highway and in the back seat I fall away to sleep and thoughts of Molly. When I wake I guess I've been asleep no more than an hour, as though I haven't slept as though I fell away to sleep with a thought that was broken and in waking was only half mended so that I have now two broken pictures of one dream. Everything now feels unreal.

A sign post tell us we're still a days drive from Perth and in this darkness we follow this endless white line, a treadmill of asphalt, a never changing landscape, like a cartoon character running in a hallway, all the pictures on the wall the same, where nothing changes - everything repeating over and over - like we're not moving, so that all there is, is time to think.

'I want you to know that I love you,' says Nicky. 'I want to tell you this because I've never said those words before.'

Nicky's going to die and Nicky knows it. Nicky doesn't want to die for nothing and I tell him that I love him too. I tell him he's the bravest man I've ever known... though I know it's not true.

In Perth they'll set us up with what we need. The Western Australian Branch of the SOTPA are a small group. They've got little to offer. They do the best they can - they burn a church hall, spray-paint cocks on walls, some inappropriate act - they might burn some books but they've got no balls...

'They've got money,' says Nicky, 'More than they know what to do with...'

They can get us on a plane, get us passports, we can, with their help get ourselves out of here and then in years to come the men of the Spirit of the People's Army in Western Australia will have a place in the annuls of our history. That's what most of them want, what most of us want, some reason to be, some importance, some way to live forever. This need to live on past death, this want to be more than just a name - they made us weak and now we're strong - that's the idea, we can be so strong, so capable that we can take all that they took from us back and leave them crippled.

'There'll be nothing left of them soon... we'll cut them off, right at the source. This a war, a spiritual war for the tenure of people's souls,' Nicky says.

We keep driving and as when the sun comes up on the second morning we decide to risk it and stick to the highway. We travel fast, the needle on the dial flirting with the speed limit, probing at it, inviting us to get caught. We drive all day, moving along the coast so that the ocean comes in to view now and again. I think how that soon we will leave here and I will be closer to home and closer to death. I won't let them arrest me. I couldn't take prison, I couldn't have it so that I spent my days alone in the dark, an hour a day of sunlight in a yard and then back to live alone with my thoughts - thoughts of my little girl and wondering what she looked like, if she remembered me, if she hated me... if I fucked her up.

The Pope will celebrate Mass on Easter Sunday and so it's up to Nicky how it is he wants them both to die. Nicky's not going to live past next week. In three days we'll touch down in Rome and in a week they'll both be dead. Nicky knows this. It's what Nicky wants.

Chapter 42

They're telling us it's an honour. They tell us that it's a privilege and that they've put in everything in place... that they're proud that they could play some part - that they won't let us down. My passport says my name is Daniel Roth and that I was born on the eighth of July. The flight leaves in the morning and we should be in Rome within a day.

There's a safe house in a suburb where we can shower. In the dark we follow a trail of cars through the city and park in a quiet street. We are greeted by a large group of men, all excited to see us, all of them giddy, their faces a picture of unabashed enthusiasm. They drive our car miles away and burn it. They tell us we are safe here. I don't speak, I don't want to know any of these men, I don't want to hear names, I don't want to know their stories and how they got here. I don't want to hear whether any of these men got fucked or not.

They have rooms for us, each with a bed of proper sheets and quilts. I take a long shower and some one prepares a proper meal with beer and wine. We sit around a table and the men make a toast to us. 'To the revolution,' they say and I feel embarrassed.

I sleep. I leave Nicky and Heng talking with the men and I go to my room and I sleep with a full stomach. In the morning we will travel to the airport. They've bought us tickets. We won't sit with each other. We won't enter the airport together. We'll travel in separate cars come morning. We'll meet together in Rome at the Altare della Patria, if we all make it.

In my bed there are no dreams this night. In a while there is only sleep. It is not a full sleep \- a half sleep so that thoughts linger and swell oddly - half baked images become strange and bloated with time - strange images that come to mind as horses and lizards - a half sleep as the light of the brain dims so dark sleep comes on.

I wake in the dark to a knock on the door and a figure pushes half inside.

'Time to wake sir,' it says, 'The cars are arriving but there's time to eat.'

The men have fixed porridge. There are fruits and nuts and strong black coffee. The kitchen is busy and once we have eaten - the three of us sat around the table, a dozen eyes watching us in silence putting porridge in our mouths, we dress.

We wear our suits with different coloured shirts - no waistcoats, stuffing the yellow ties in to our pockets. We all shower, spraying on deodorant, aftershave - light pepper scents. We trim our nasal hair, we moisturise, our skin moist and slick - this is so we look like men who might have a reason for getting on a flight to Rome.

My passport has that new book smell of unfingered paper - it looks as though you could wet your thumb and rub at the ink and smudge your name. Your name, Daniel Roth - a well dressed, pleasant smelling accountant who now lives in Perth and travels every second week to Rome on ill-defined business excursions.

We travel in three separate cars. I sit in the back and a man drives. We drive in silence until he speaks.

'Is it true,' he asks, 'That you're going after the Pope?'

I tell him that I can't answer that, that it's nothing he should concern himself with. He tells me that he's pleased to be a part of this, however small that part may be. He tells me that the Western Australian branch of the Spirit of the People's Army have big plans, that they're going to take down someone big - 'Keep an eye on the news,' he says, 'You'll see what I mean.'

I see the airport come in to view as we move steadily along the highway. Nicky's car up in front, Heng's behind me. In the car park I loose sight of both and the driver tells me I'm on my own from here. I take my luggage, all packed in an expensive leather suitcase and wheel it inside to the terminal.

It's early morning and the flight leaves in an hour. I move to the check in desk, my passport in my suit pocket, I feel my hand shake as I reach for it. There's no queue, no waiting \- I walk straight up and a young woman says 'Good morning.' I hand her my ticket and she asks what the nature of my trip is... I tell her 'Business,' and she smiles, pushing a boarding pass across the counter, 'Have a pleasant flight sir,' she says. I tell her I will. I leave my luggage and move to the gate, I pass through security where a large man with a tattoo of a cross pats me down. I move through a metal detector and as I pick up my watch and phone from the basket and move away a voice says, 'Good luck on your business trip sir,' and this big security guard is standing there smiling broadly at me - nearly enough I think to give me away.
Chapter 43

What I miss most about my daughter is that no one tells me anymore that they adore me... maybe not even say it out loud, but in her eyes the words are there... that look you can't fake, that must be forged out of something very real... it's like missing a limb.

'If you have an idea, if you birth it,' he said. 'You have a responsibility to take care of it, to do as best you can to make sure it is never corrupted, like you would the mind of a child. You must kill at the root any thing that threatens to destroy your idea, even tarnish it.'

Our first meeting, God standing over us and this is what he says. Twelve of us, gathered together in some church hall in the west of the city.

I remember this now...

'All we want in life, really, is to be loved,' he said 'And if we can't be loved, we will create love, we will create the conditions for it.'

He was an ideas man, he had said. He said that we were all now in the business of ideas.

'Know deep down gentlemen,' he said pacing the room like a drill sergeant over new recruits - as though he'd rehearsed this act a hundred, two hundred, a thousand times, 'Know deep down, despite appearances, despite all the destruction we will cause, that our idea is not to be afraid. That love, taken care of well enough can destroy fear - destroy hate.'

I can't see Nicky. I sit at the back of the plane next to a man who immediately falls asleep once we've taken off. He snores through his nose, this long gargling sound of air wheezing through the mucus in his nasal passage.

'That old cliché,' God said, 'About how you must learn to love yourself before you can love anyone else is a lie. There's no method to love. Love is madness - indescribable, the most imperceptible of sensations. To attain love is to attain God.'

It will take fourteen and a half hours to reach Rome. It will be early evening by the time we land and then two days until Easter Sunday. We will liaise with the Roman branch of the SOTPA and we will be taken to a safe house. We will spend two days working through the plan and then on Sunday we will do it - Nicky will do it. And then... there is no then.

'You're doing exactly the thing you would do if you had the balls,' he said when someone asked, 'You don't have the balls, I'm giving them to you. I'm giving you no choice but to do exactly the thing you want to do - to man up - to not be afraid of the consequences. That's what living is.'

I try to sleep but as I dose off a hand nudges me and a hostess asks if I'd like some coffee.

'There is no Santa Claus. This is about living in a world without hate - it's about evolution. Invisible fathers destroy us and suck up our God given freedom to a life without fear.'

'I do now,' I tell her knowing that sleep will never come and she pours me thin coffee in a plastic cup.

I remember how he walked in that church hall that night - with this air of uncertain dignity.

'Follow me or don't,' he shouted, 'Ignore this and go back to your life... and in a while I'll come and see you again and ask how you are. But I already know... you'll be walking around, going to your shit job, living your life and you'll be dead. Stone fucking dead.'

They show a movie...

'It's only the lost who revolt. If you're not lost you're not looking for something.'

They serve a breakfast of runny scrambled eggs and toast with orange marmalade.

'I can be all things to all men, but it's up to them what that is...'

The captain tells us we're flying over Indonesia...

'There comes a strange time of purity on Earth... do you know when that is?'

My ears are popping...

'We are the cause for concern.'

That grey scrawl in the distance to our left is the city of Dubai...
Chapter 44

This couldn't have been easier. It couldn't have worked better. No one suspected us, there was no second glances at the passport photographs, there was no stepping to one side for questions by some guy in a uniform, there was no hiccups - not a single one.

And Rome is beautiful, like a painting... it looks how you imagine it should. The streets are sun kissed and the pavements are clean... Dry polished stone. I take a cab from the airport and at the Altare della Patria after waiting for barely a few minutes I am bundled in to a car where Nicky is waiting with Heng in the back seat. They smile at me, the three of us grinning, like we can hardly believe we've made it. The man who drives is old, maybe sixty years old and is gentle looking. He tells us that we are in good hands and that he imagines we must be hungry, that he is taking us to a safe place where we can eat.

We drive for a few minutes and soon we are in an underground parking lot. We take an elevator and the doors open to marble floors, an apartment block, a penthouse with a balcony that runs around all corners of the building. Inside there are men who greet us with hugs and kisses on the cheek. They are older men, they are not what I expected. They are not like the rest of us.

They cook for us, a meal of pasta and breads. We sit at a large round table and they tell us that they have worked hard to put everything in place. They speak to Nicky with reverence, as though he's some saintly figure, a celebrity, a deity...

Once settled and the table is laid out we sit down and eat with wine.

'We were taken for fools,' one says, 'For years we served these men, we gave our lives to them, we sacrificed so much and then, and then when you burnt these churches to the ground we realised we had been wrong.'

These men believe in God, they believe in a one true God and they believe now that he is unhappy with how they lived their lives. There is a sadness about them, a sobriety in their faces that doesn't exist in any of the other people I've come to know.

'We want to do as he wishes,' another says, 'It seems that you all are his messengers.'

He tells us that they thought long and hard about all of this... that they had many long discussions, some lasting in to the small hours of the morning.

'Morally it's been very hard,' one says, 'Death is a horrible thing. The decision that someone should die for the benefit of others is a decision that can only be made by God. We believe now that God has made this choice.'

He reaches an arm out and takes hold of Nicky's hand. He squeezes it. Nicky, with a mouth full of olives swallows and this old man looks deep in to his eyes.

'We believe you to be an angel,' he says sounding like he means it, 'There are many angels, many angels who do many things... you my child, are an angel of our Lord, an angel of death and we must help you.'

These aren't ordinary men. These are not originals, they weren't there that night. None of them got the visit from God, but they all believe strong enough, they have enough blind faith to do exactly what we want them to. They've been lied to, they say and it's plain to see that it hurts. No one will listen anymore. Once they had the ears of people who took their words as a gospel truth, when we burnt their churches we took away from them everything that they had. They still believe in God... if anything, they believe it more now than ever... but they were wrong. Their allegiance hasn't changed but their view of the guy theey're following has. He changed the rules, he made us do what we did and now they have to get in line.

'We only want to do his work,' they say, 'And so now, we follow you.'

Once the meal has finished they want to speak to Nicky alone. I take a walk.

Out on the street I can see the walls of Vatican City. I sit at a table on the street and drink coffee and watch as people pass in the fresh spring evening. The murmur of voices is comforting. The city is busy. Good Friday and the streets are hectic with the voices of tourists and pilgrims. I walk two streets and don't hear a single Italian accent.

I have a plan. I'm closer to home than I have been for over a year. The air is different here. A breeze that sweeps up the street is familiar, as though it were a stray wind from home that found me. I know now that I'm going home. I have money, not much but enough that would see me on a plane. I can go to the airport and I can be on a flight. If I time it right, I can catch a plane as Nicky makes his move in St Peter's Square. I can land and I can watch the aftermath on television. I can slip away and then all of this will be over. A spectator from here on in.

In an internet café I search for news from Brisbane. I search for the name of Terrence Elliot and all that I find is what I've already read before. If they're still looking for me they're not doing so with any great purpose - it's Nicky that they want anyway.

I go to a bar and a man comes up and sits beside me.

'I'm sorry,' he says, 'I was following you.'

He's one of the men from the apartment - he had been in the kitchen cooking when we arrived. He's old, maybe seventy years of age. His skin is wrinkled and tanned. He speaks softly. He asks if he can sit.

'I have so many questions,' he says.

He buys me a beer and he introduces himself. His name is Pietro and he was a priest - is a priest. He says he works at St. Peter's Basilica and that he has done so for a long time.

'Can you tell me about him?' he asks.

'Who?' I say.

'About God.'

I tell him everything... I tell him about the meetings, about the suits, about the café, about how he scolded my mother at dinner, about how he brought me out to a cabin in the countryside one day and had me hold a gun to Nicky's head - about Morrow and his shop, Clement and his wife - about how I suspect he put child porn on my computer. I even tell him how bad God smells. He doesn't speak - for an hour, maybe more, I talk recollecting everything... from the first time I met him, when he helped my mother off the bus to the grocery store in Brisbane where he told me I wasn't being realistic if I thought I could go home. Pietro sits transfixed by everything I say. I can see that he's searching for meaning in every act described.

He asks, 'Why did he want you to show you were not afraid to kill Nicky?'

I tell him I think so that he knew what lengths I would go to. I tell him that God, more than anything, wanted to know that I didn't care about anyone - enough not to make a sacrifice for myself.

He asks why the lists of names that were fastened to every building that was burnt.

I told him so that evil man couldn't hide.

'You have family?' he asks.

I say, 'I do. I have a little girl.'

'Will they catch you?' he asks.

I tell him that I don't know. I tell him how God always told me that I would most certainly be caught.

He tells me that in the end, despite what happens, whether I'm caught or not I will be rewarded in heaven. He smiles at me, he puts his hand on mine and bends his head to kiss it.

I tell him, I don't believe in God.

***

In the morning Heng decides he wants to leave. He says he wants to go home, to reassemble his men, and prepare for the next big push. I think he's scared. I can't blame him. I'm scared, and Nicky has been looking increasingly terrified. Over breakfast, none of which Nicky touches Heng says that it's important that things don't fall apart. It will be impossible for us to leave Rome by plane once Nicky's body has been identified. The airports will be like military bases.

I feel distant from all of this. We say our goodbyes and Nicky pleads with him to reconsider, to not let us down, not now, not when we're so close. But I feel no remorse in seeing him go. I fumble out some words and utter something only half profound, something half baked that I don't mean - not a word of it. He puts his arms around me and tells me, a whisper in to my ear, that there's maybe only fifty of us left and we are responsible for seeing this through. 'It's our duty,' he says, 'To make the best of Nicky's sacrifice.'

Nicky doesn't have to say anything but he does anyway. He tells me he's frightened.

'I've one day left man. One day and then I'll be dead.'

With death around the corner he says that time passes like grains of thin sand.

The men have left us and so we sit now indoors with the curtains drawn and drink coffee. He still hasn't eaten. The priests drew up a plan long before we got here. It's simple, so simple it's almost difficult to believe it can work.

'You know you need a ticket, right?' says Nicky, 'I'm serious, like how you do at a football game or a rock concert. It's fucking strange man. Don't you find that strange?'

You need a ticket and you need to queue early. We'll be there at six a.m. and we'll run to the security barriers. We'll try to be first through the stalls and then it's a dash across St Peter's square, right to the other end, up to front so we'll be squeezed tight against the barrier and only maybe forty foot from the altar.

Pietro gives communion. A dozen priests, as the service comes to a conclusion walk the barrier and hand it out and we'll get ours. Pietro has told Nicky where we'll need to stand. He'll find us. He'll walk along the line and he'll come to us and he'll slip Nicky the gun.

'Can you hit from forty yards?' I ask.

He says he can't miss. He says he's too good a shot... and he sounds upset when he says it.

Nicky's not worried about security. He shaves his head in the bathroom so that it's baby bald. He says they'd never be looking for him here.

I try to get him to eat again, but he won't.

'What do you think of me?' he asks.

I tell him I think that he's brave. I tell him... I don't know what I think, if I'm honest.

'This all feels so unreal,' he says, 'This all feels as if it's happening to someone else. Like I'll wake up soon... it feels like a memory.'

The façade, if that's what is is has dropped. I see the child who started a fight in a bar that he couldn't finish.

'I'm going to die,' he says, ' They won't let me live - there won't be a trial. And then what happens. Where do I go?'

I cook tomatoes slowly in oil with onions and add plenty of salt.

'I'm going to be famous. I'm going to live longer than you. I'm going to be a part of history.'

His voice is sad.

'I don't know why I cared so much. I don't know what I'm doing, not really. I've just kept going. I started this... I made this happen. I'm going to die and I'm not sure I know why.'

I boil water to cook the pasta.

'Do you think that he is God?' he asks, 'Do you think there's a chance that he is?'

I tell him I don't believe in God.

He says, 'But do you think there's a chance that he is?'

I chop basil and add a cup of sugar.

'I keep going because there's nothing else. I've no other choice. I do this because I started something and you should finish what you start. I'm chasing the end...'

I get him to eat.

'I don't want to die but...'

I pour wine.

'... I can't live like this.'

Nicky got fucked.

'I didn't want any of this. I just wanted to feel better.'

Nicky wants to feel better and all that I want is to go home.

'Will you stay with me?' he asks, 'Right up until the end?'

I tell Nicky that we can make a run for it, that if we go now, take a plane we can go home - go back to our lives.

'Tell me what I'm doing is right,' he says, 'Tell me that what I'm doing is for the best...'

'But you can go home,' I say.

'Tell me that I'll live forever...'

'You're just a kid.'

'Tell me I'm not a man, tell me I'm an idea...'

'You can start again...' I say.

'Tell me I've got no choice...'
Chapter 45

They've got Heng. Four o'clock in the afternoon and with Nicky asleep I watch television and they say that they picked him up at the airport. Nicky took a sedative and Heng tried to leave on a flight leaving for Beijing but never made it through customs.

They say there's only maybe ten of us left... but we know that's a lie.

They have his passport photo and his name is Heng Tsu. His passport was a forgery and it said his name was Lin Yung-fa. They have him and they're going to question him.

The priests come back to the apartment and they tell us that they're frightened, they ask me what I think will happen. They want to know if I think Heng will talk. With any luck they say, Heng will hang himself in his cell the first chance he gets.

'They'll break him,' says Pietro

Nicky wakes and we decide not to mention it.

Pietro went to see a man in prison who burnt churches westwards from the town of Fiumicino to the centre of Rome. He was found in a farmyard sleeping in horses stables six months after the burnings. In Italy they call that night Notte Del Fuoco - The Night of Fire. Pietro says they broke him within a few hours. He told them everything - the names of the people he had worked with, he told them who was left and where they were hiding. He told them, when they asked, after they had placed him on a bench, covered his head with a towel and poured water over him so that he thought he was dying, that God had made him do it.

Pietro says he was an original - he got the visit from God, just like we did and he burnt his share of fifty churches around the outskirts of the city and they found him in a farm house. They broke him in four hours and he gave the names of everyone he had worked with.

Nicky wakes and turns the television on. Heng was stopped and searched. In his bag they found a blue Fedora silk tie. He was already wearing two parts of an Armani three piece black suit - he'd stuffed the waist coat in to in his hand luggage. He made it easy for them. Within a few minutes they knew who he was without having to ask.

Nicky doesn't say anything for a while.

'Maybe we call this off,' someone says and I agree - a little to loudly.

Nicky says that if they find him they'll torture him worse than anyone else. He asks us to imagine if we can what it would be like to find the head of an organisation that you knew had the capability, the want and the motivation to destroy your way of life - your way of thinking - he asks us to imagine the lengths we would go to squeeze out every ounce of knowledge from that man.

'They'd take you as close to death as they could without killing you and then once you'd split your guts they'd put their arm around you and tell you, you were a good boy. And they'd make sure to let you live. Just to punish you.'

'We must go on with the plan,' someone says.

Someone says... I don't want to know who these men are... I don't want to hear names, I don't to hear back story... I don't care who they are, why they're here, what possible reasons they have to help us.

If Nicky and I are honest with ourselves, the truth is we are lying to all of these men. They want so much for this to be seen through to the end. They're speaking now of a faith that insists that this is a test, some examination of our collective strength. In reality it is doing little other than allowing them to overlook what is abundantly clear. The police are closing in. This apartment isn't safe now. They'll break Heng - they'll break him fast - they break everyone. And then they'll have us. It feels as though they're close. Behind the curtain and on the street cars pass, people pass and it feels so not unlikely that I'll hear a dozen footsteps at any second on the staircase. The police releasing the story so quickly, feeding it to the media within an hour of Heng's arrest shows they're scared. They know something's big about to happen and they're trying to frighten us.

Nicky says, 'Maybe he won't talk.'

I say, 'That's a big 'if'.'

And the priests say we can't give up now that we've come so far. They remind us how we've been taken care of to this point. They tell Nicky that he's a messenger from God and so I'm beginning to wonder if they know who Andrew Gardener is.

We don't discuss it for long - faith or not you don't take chances - you don't leave your fate in the hands of a God in a situation like this. We pack up our things, we take the computers. We carry in bags anything we think we might need - we pack a lunch. The priests say they can move us to a church where we'll be safe. I light a dishcloth and start a fire in the kitchen and wait until the flames catch the curtains. Nicky starts a small fire in the bedroom so that the bed will go up. When we can't see each other for the smoke we leave.

***

Heng doesn't know much. He knows we're going after the Pope but he doesn't know how we intend to do it. If they break him in time there's a chance we think that the whole thing might be called off. Pietro disagrees. We sit in the vestry of a small church inside the walls of Vatican City and watch the evening come down. Everything lit in candlelight - we're not allowed to turn the lights on.

'You won't be disturbed here,' one says and they tell us goodbye and leave us to ourselves.

Pietro stays and he and Nicky talk everything over again. When it's time for him to go there is tears in his eyes.

'I will see you both tomorrow,' he says, 'And then all of this will be over and you will have done a great thing.'

In the candlelight of the vestry we are still. Outside we can hear voices and people moving around... I think of how dangerous it is for us to be here. We are inside the city... there's no leaving here now and Nicky knows it. If the thought was in his head to run, to call this whole thing off and regroup - it's pointless now. We've gone too far.

'By this time tomorrow,' he says, 'I'll be dead. Where will you be?'

I say, 'I don't know. Arrested maybe.'

'What will you tell them when they catch you,' he says.

I say, 'I'll tell them God made me do it?'

He smiles.

'And will you make them believe you?'

'No,' I say, 'But they'll trust I believe it.'

I try to get him to sleep. I offer him another sedative but he refuses. He tells me that it's a strange thing to have death so close - to know that you're going to die.

We drink altar wine and try to get drunk.

'You don't have to do anything,' I say, 'You still have the option of stopping this. You don't have to take the gun when Pietro hands it to you tomorrow.'

Nicky says that if he doesn't, he'll die soon anyway.

'They'd catch me. Maybe not tomorrow, but they'll find me sooner or later ... but you know as well as I do, that everyone gets caught eventually.'

Nicky won't sleep. The vestry is like a school locker room. A small room with a bench that runs along three walls with hooks for hanging clothes. I leave Nicky lying down and walk out to the altar. It's a small church. I can't help but wonder how easily the pews would burn if they were lit. I walk up the aisle and hear my footsteps loudly on the polished stone floor. My thoughts are loud here. In a church alone, your thoughts can be almost deafening. And this voice in your head is not your own, it doesn't ebb and flow like normal... as though it were the voice of someone else. The voice booms - it speaks in heavy tones but is composed.

The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants what must soon take place; and he made it known by sending his angel to his servant John...

You hear those words loud. You've never forgotten those words or how they echoed after the hiss of smacked lips in a speaker mounted high on the wall set to a volume fit to blow.

Alone here you feel as though you're being watched. You're not of course. There's nobody here, but like a habit you can't break, like how you try not to bite your nails, it's impossible not to feel as though there's eyes fixed neatly on you. It's a habit like any other. Something ingrained and constant - a reaction - waking in the morning to find you've bitten the inside of your mouth and now you'll spend the rest of the day picking at. You'll twirl the flesh with your tongue enough to loosen it that you can bite it between two teeth.

These pews would burn fantastic. The wood isn't even varnished. A little petrol and the whole lot would go up. There's drapes that run along the walls - even in the dark I can see the cherry wine red and can imagine clearly the flame that would catch. The ceiling \- more wood. And a confessional box carved in oak. I light a candle from the altar and I sit on it's step and I look at the cross. The cross would burn. I wonder then what temperature a bronze Jesus would melt with bubbling tears.

Nicky says that it feels like Christmas time. When he was young he says, he couldn't sleep on Christmas Eve. He told himself that if he just fell off, if he could clear his head of thoughts then he would sleep and the next thing he knew it would be morning time. Sleep is like death, he says. But I never wanted to sleep. You sleep and you think of all the hours that you're as good as dead. That it was hard to sleep when you thought of sleep like that. As a little boy he only wanted to sleep so that in the morning, after Santa Claus has been and gone he could wake and everything would be different then.

He couldn't sleep because every noise sounded like footsteps on the roof. He swears blind that once he heard the sleigh bells passing over his house and he froze up in bed afraid that if Santa Claus knew he was awake he'd never come down the chimney. 'The whole, he knows when you are sleeping thing, really got to me,' he says.

He didn't want to sleep because sleeping is just like death and now he says that it feels like Christmas time. In the morning, if he does sleep he'll wake in sunshine and he'll know that he will walk to his death.

I lie across from him. He tells me I should sleep and I can see his smile in the darkness.

'Sleep,' he says, 'You'll need your strength. Tomorrow you're going to have to run for you life.'

I drift off and fall away to thoughts of creamy white smiles and Knickerboker glory ice-creams... of bright blue eyes, of blonde curls and sitting in dark cinemas watching cartoon cats chasing mice...
Chapter 46

Nicky's shouting stop and I'm telling him not to worry. I'm telling him it's a good plan. My nostrils sting and with the stale and bitter taste in my mouth - like strong pepper, my whole head feels hot and sick. I woke to find him sleeping so now I'm dousing the pews and running a trail up the aisle to the altar just below the cross. I've already wet the drapes and splashed the large wooden door. With what's left I soak the carpet in the vestry.

I found a car in the yard when stepping in to the morning to smoke the last of our cigarettes. Nicky's following me around as I'm shaking the tin can dry, his hands around his head saying something about not pushing our luck - I'm trying not to waste a drop. I tell him it will make a good distraction.

When I'm done and just about to light a match Nicky whispers to be quiet.

'Listen,' he says and I stop. In the distance I hear a siren, then another, then a third and soon the air is full of noise - they get closer - some come closer, some move further away. This swarm of alarm bells like buzzing bees.

I light a match and toss it to the floor. It catches like a wave - spreading out over the wood.

'We need to go now,' says Nicky as I watch the fire surge towards the altar and catch the cross and tickle at the His feet. The pews light, they're burning. It's a good fire, it will hold.

When I woke to the sun in my face I walked outside still half asleep and saw a car. There was no one around. With the early light of the morning, the first rays of the five a.m. sun shimmering on the bright blue bonnet, bouncing a glare in to my eyes - the car looked almost angelic. I took a length of hose and a metal can and emptied the tank. It took near half an hour and my mouth was stale and bitter once I was done.

Now through the vestry and in to the yard, exiting the church through an already black cloud of smoke I expect to see police. I expect that this is perhaps our last stand - some sick parody of a western matinee your father took you to as a kid. But there is nothing. There is silence.

There is only silence - and smoke. In this empty courtyard there is smoke overhead. It floats high in the sky \- a thin blanket of grey. I see speckles of ash and they falls around us. We follow the cloud like how children with heads titled upwards chase a lost balloon and outside the walls the smoke spreads for miles around so that all of the city is dark - a rain cloud of ash and soot punctured only here and there by thin rays of sunlight.

Of course we've seen a skyline just like this before. Nicky looks at it and says that it's perfect.

'Did you know about this?' I ask.

Nicky says this wasn't us. All of Rome looks ablaze. I count ten, maybe fifteen fires - plumes of smoke rising upwards joining this great darkening cloud that stretches for miles over the city.

'This is what we all wanted,' he says. 'Ordinary men doing this for themselves. Right under our noses.'

He seems invigorated. Whatever doubts he had, whatever fear I had seen in him - however much he thought he may not want to go through with this - any signs of such reservations have vanished. We hear sirens again and behind us the church is leaking smoke.

'We should move,' I say, Nicky still marvelling at the skyline - a child on Christmas morning when he realises Santa came and he got exactly what he wanted.

We stroll from the courtyard and search for a busy street. We join a large group of tourists moving towards the square and all the talk is of the fires. Nicky and I fall in line behind when we hear English voices. They're asking each other if they think the mass will go ahead. They're asking if anyone had been hurt in the fires - had anybody heard? Was it SOTPA? - It must have been SOTPA. Who else would it be?

We keep our heads down, and up ahead we can see the square. It's empty but people have started to gather.

'We have to show these people that we're not afraid of them,' someone says and people nod and say that they can't be held to ransom - and someone asks if they think it's safe. Maybe there's an attack planned. Someone says, 'They don't kill people, they only killed that one guy in Australia. One guy. Only one guy they killed.' They're sure we wouldn't kill people - not innocent people - not someone like them.

Six a.m. and there's maybe a hundred people here already. Italian police stand at the entrance - a metal turnstile and people wait patiently in line. Men in high visibility jackets move through the crowd answering questions and we hear someone say that they're waiting to hear if everything is going to go ahead. We join the queue and wait. I try to leave a little distance between myself and Nicky. If he gets caught now I don't want them to think that I'm with him.

Somebody asks a cop if they're going to let us in and the cop says that they're waiting for instructions.

'He's probably in his palace asking himself if he has the balls to show his face today,' says Nicky.

I tell Nicky that it might not happen, that maybe he won't have to go through with it. He tells me that it's not what he wants. He says he's ready, that it must go ahead.

'We should think about a backup plan,' I say.

'No. There's no way he's not coming out,' he says. 'There's no way he's going to let us win. He'll want to send a message.'

At six thirty it begins to rain. Large droplets that soak us through. The smoke is clearing over the city as the fires extinguish. Someone says they heard they burnt a church inside of Vatican City and Nicky smiles and whispers to me, 'We gave them a little bonus, huh.' By seven o'clock grey rain clouds bask the city in darkness and if there is smoke left still in the sky it's impossible to tell. A voice says, 'It's like it never happened.'

By seven thirty the crowd has grown and there's maybe a thousand people waiting to get inside. A murmur runs through the crowd that they're going to open the gates and air around us becomes giddy with chatter. The police are replaced at the gates by men in swat uniforms with semi automatic weapons and the first of the people are patted down and waved inside. Nicky takes hold of my arm and says quietly, 'This is it. If I don't get through, will you do it?' I tell him I will, but it's a lie. I want to run, I want Nicky to pass though the gates and as he goes I want to turn and walk away. He pushes me forward and I walk in front of him approaching the turnstile. I'm ten, maybe twelve people from the front and I'm moving - little baby steps. I wonder if my hair has grown too long...

'Sir, raise your arms.'

I lift my arms to a cross and hands run along my arms and search around my waist and legs. This man, he looks in my face and I think maybe for a second he's got me. I'm waved inside and I turn as Nicky goes next. I'm thinking there's no way now he can get through. He's famous. His face is well known even without the beard surely he would be recognised. His head is clean shaved, his face the same. He looks like he has lost weight... and they let him pass.

In the open square we move quickly towards the front. The blood in my veins feels hot, my legs like jelly, my heart, like a jackhammer. Nicky bounces around me, he grabs a hold of my shoulders - 'Holy shit, man,' he says, 'We made it, we fucking made it dude.' Like a teenager at his first rock concert bouncing towards the front of the stage, a half walk, half run - beaming.

It will be hours yet. We reach the front, we barge through some people so our elbows can rest on the metal barriers. We're so close we can see the golden angels engraved on the chair on which the Pope will sit.

'It's further away than I thought it would be,' Nicky says.

I can see the golden altar. A runway of maybe forty feet runs up a gentle incline flanked by yellow flowers towards it. This runway runs through the square splitting it in two \- dividing the congregation.

'He drives through the square and up on to the altar,' Nicky says, 'He'll pass us, we'll get a good look at him.'

To the left side of the altar are wooden pews... 'That's where Pietro will be,' Nicky says.

Wooden pews, decorated with extravagant carvings and red cloth.

'I guess he'll be maybe sixty foot away when I make the shot,' he whispers.

Nicky's going to shoot him as he gives his final blessing. As the Mass ends and the Pope takes to the altar Nicky will do it. He says that people will scatter and he will be left alone standing in the open.

'They have snipers everywhere,' he says pointing to the roof tops. 'I guess I'll only have a few seconds before they take me out.'

When he takes the shot he tells me I should run. As people panic and run for the exit I should get lost amongst them.

'Get out of the square, then get out of Rome. And go home,' he says.

The rain comes down heavier than before and soon we're lost under a blanket of umbrellas. It's good cover. Now all it is, is to wait.
Chapter 47

One hour and counting. One hour until the Pontiff takes to the stage and the mass begins. Two hours until he's dead. Three hours and God knows where I'll be.

The rain has stopped. With the morning getting later the sun rises and day is turning hot. There are people singing hymns, a great chorus of sound and Nicky is standing beside me smiling. He hasn't spoken much, he looks dead ahead - a Zen Buddha, he focuses on the stage, the altar. I imagine him imagining taking the shot. I imagine him taking the shot and it hitting square in the chest. I imagine the people around me and how they'll react. I can see how Nicky will be left alone when the panic begins, left out in the open, the gun still pointed straight out from his chest and then the gunshots from the snipers. They'll hit before I hear the sound. I'll hear the shots from the rooftops and as I turn back Nicky will be on the floor. I wonder if he'll call for me when he realises he's dying. I hope if anything that he goes quickly, that it's painless. I hope the sniper doesn't think better and realise that they'd want to take him alive. I hope the sniper shoots to kill.

Two hours and counting and then I'll have to run. They've said there's only a few of us left, but we've grown in numbers and so now it's impossible to tell. There's thousands of men, all with this same petroleum spirit. They are everywhere - in every corner of the globe. They burnt Rome this morning. While it was dark, fifty, maybe sixty men snuck out in to the night and if they worked it like we did - four men to each location, they would have burnt four churches each. News came through. Seventeen churches in total. I bet they're wondering who burnt the last.

It just goes to show. You plant a seed, you watch it grow.

You plant and seed and watch it grow and soon you have a tree that not even the harshest winter can topple. I feel tired now, like I've done my bit, like I've been there, done it - I have the war stories to tell. This is it now. I tell myself, once this is done, then so am I. It won't matter what happens. I'm going home. I'm going to go back and try to be a father and if they catch me - if I wake some morning to the sound of footsteps on my staircase - the sound of sirens surrounding my home, it won't matter. I've nothing left to give, I'm tired of running.

Forty five minutes and counting and the crowd has become restless. There's a murmur going around that he's not going to show and then a verse of some hymn I don't recognise.

You plant a seed and watch it grow. I feel like I'm only half there...

Forty minutes and counting and Nicky tells me there's seven snipers that he can see. 'On the balcony,' he says, 'Can you see him?'

... like a hangover, as if I've woken and my brain has swelled in my head, pushing and squeezing against my skull...

Thirty minutes and his hand is twitching and he whispers that he thought he caught a glimpse of Pietro.

... so that everything is just a little unreal, a half painted picture.

Twenty minutes and I've counted ten snipers. Nicky says he can see at least fifteen - three, he says have a good shot on him.

... but not a dream,

Ten minutes and the cheering starts again and people are saying, 'He's coming...' Through the crowd, over thousands of heads and shoulders I see the small white motorcade making it's way in to the square. Loud music plays, a trumpet, a fanfare and he's getting closer.

... the feeling of waking and opening curtains to a sinister daytime. Where everything is tainted in grey outlines.

Five minutes and he's close... I can see the lines on his face, the contours of his skin, the colour of his eyes.

... the sensation that no good can come from anything.

***

This mass, these words - even in Italian I can recall the rhythm, the familiar beat of the voice, it's peaks and troughs so that I know exactly what's being said - it's so I don't even have to listen the translation of mostly lost English in microphone feedback, the booming sound of a voice that carries - that doesn't resonate against a wall - so that it's loud but weak and hollow.

The sermon, I listen. He speaks of purity on earth, he speaks of coming together as people, of not being afraid, of living according to a creed. He speaks of great human strength - that old cliché of overcoming adversary.

I find myself kneeling, standing, kneeling, standing - toothless in the momentum of the crowd around me. Nicky stands. He doesn't flinch. Even when everyone around us drops to their knees he remains steadfast. He stands above us, his eyes closed - he looks deep in prayer - he's picturing the last moments of his life.

I can see Pietro. He sits by the altar on the edge of a pew shared by a group of twenty strong priests and clergymen. He looks towards me, careful to catch my eye - a knowing, almost flaccid nod of reassurance. I think of how he can feel the gun on his hip... that heavy load weighing to one side - of being careful - of heavy books to counterbalance weight. I think of how naïve he is.

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty...

God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God,

begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father...

For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven; by the power of the Holy Spirit...

He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

He has spoken through the Prophets...

We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church...

We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

And I feel him then, on my shoulder. I hear him whisper in my ear... the smell. I notice the smell. Even in Rome at Easter time, with the sun bright and in the warm of a noon high sun - the smell, so that it's the worst it's ever been.

'This can't happen,' he says.

I'm kneeling face forward - in front of me Nicky stands. He speaks again.

'Look at me,' he says... 'Look at me.'

I won't.

'It seems you both missed the point.'

Barely audible, 'I just want to go home,' I say. '

Lord God, Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: have mercy on us...

For You alone are the Holy One, You alone are the Lord, You alone are the Most High, Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, in the glory of God the Father...

'You have to stop this,' he says.

I whisper, 'I can't.'

'Then what good are you?'

He's breaking bread...

They're bringing out the wine...

... thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil...

All eyes down. Heads to the floor, even Nicky...

Standing now, he's behind me, his hand on my shoulder...

'This can't happen...'

I knew he'd be here. Like every other day. I always expected to see him. I felt he was close, forever nearby, watching me, keeping an eye out. And now he's here - of course he is, he wouldn't miss this.

Here it comes, that time of strange purity.

'This won't solve anything,' he says, 'Think about it, think about what will happen when they know for certain that you're all violent men. Think of what happens any time blood is shed.'

Pietro's walking towards us, a gentle surge as people move forward clambering to be fed. Nicky's grasping tight to the barrier, Pietro sees him - he walks close by and moves slowly along the line placing the white communion in outstretched cupped hands inching slowly towards us.

'You have to stop this,' God says, 'Stop it. You have to stop it.'

'He's made up his mind,' I whisper and Pietro is next to us now. He's standing in front of Nicky, his robes touching the floor, a big baby is swaddling white. He's holding out the host and Nicky's hands reaching forward. Pietro's eyes half closed, he's whispering 'Body of Christ' and Nicky's saying 'Amen' and Pietro's dropping the host. It falls to the ground, the little white discus and he's bending down to pick it up. Nicky kneels. The two of them facing one another, knees to the floor, the robe like a pool around Pietro's knees and I see Nicky reach under it and a flash of silver in a moment as Nicky's hand finds the gun and holds it to his side, stuffing it quickly, perfectly unnoticed in to his pocket.

'What happens?' God says, 'What happens when he pulls that trigger? The man is an idea, you can't kill him by putting a bullet in his chest.'

I'm not listening now.

'This will destroy the work we've done.'

He's talking louder... too loud.

'The Pope mustn't die like this.'

Like he wants us to get caught...

The Pope, he's sitting on his throne, Nicky turns to me. 'I'm doing it now,' he says. 'You should go.'

'You don't have to do this,' I say. 'We can run.'

'It's been a pleasure,' he says.

His hand, reaching in to his pocket. I make it about sixty yards. The Pope, he's completely still, and Nicky's arm pulling up, the gun, it glints bright in the sun. I'm moving backwards as the first of the screams ring out around me.

God moves, he brushes me aside and with Nicky's arm stretched out straight I hear God say loud, calm... peaceful, 'You fucked up kid.' A gun now to Nicky's head, the end of the barrel pressed against his skin, deep in to his hair.

People scramble around us, movement, a cluster of bodies pushing back and so Nicky and God stand alone, Nicky's arm stretched out the gun pointed forward, God's arm holding firm - a right angle firm against the side of Nicky's head.

Nicky shouts, 'What have you done?' and the screams ring out around us and I see the first of the snipers turning their guns towards them.

'How do you kill a God?' God shouts, 'Nicky, how do you kill a God?'

I'm in the crowd, I'm lost in them, moving back with the momentum of flustering of arms and legs, of shriek and cries.

Two shots. Two deafening and hollow sounds... two seconds apart. And in between God shouts loud and clear...

'Are you listening?'

Nicky, a heap on the floor, a hole in his head and God, his own gun now pointed on himself wedged violently under his chin, he looks for me in the crowd... 'How do you kill God?'
Chapter 48

And so you run. They open the gates when the trampling begins, people stomping on people, the fallen under heavy footsteps - children, woman, the elderly, hundreds caught up in the rush and they say no one died and it's a miracle... a straight from God miracle. They open the gates and in to Rome you spill out in the midst of a thousand others.

You get out of the city. You've got some money, not a lot but enough and you grab a cab and tell the man to drive. 'Andare,' you shout and bang the seat.

In the countryside the night comes in and you sleep in the woods. In the morning you travel to small town to eat breakfast struggling over an Italian newspaper where you scan the columns for your name.

They're saying that his name was Nicolas Fusco, the leader of SOTPA... and the other man, they don't know who he is.

You get out of Italy. You travel north and take an overnight train from Bologna and spend the journey in the smoking carriage in a hazy cloud on the way to Berlin. In Munich you buy an English newspaper and stretch your legs, and they still don't know who the man is. They're saying that the he saved the Pope's life. They're saying it's a miracle. They're saying this man was sent from God.

They're not looking for you.

They scanned the crowd, they've looked hours of footage from a dozen different cameras and they want to speak to anyone who had stood near Nicolas Fusco.

In Berlin you take a train to Amsterdam and you get lost in the red light district. There is a picture of God in the newspapers, an artists impression informed from what remained of his blown out head - it's a perfect recreation. You book a room and you stay for three nights of neon red, the sounds of the streets and English voices where they're saying that the SOTPA are to release a statement soon.

You sleep to the sounds of murmurs and grunts from the brothel next door. Your headboard rattles with every little movement you make and through a paper thin wall you can hear every nuance of sound. You fall off to sleep to pictures of breakfast in the café downstairs, of warm bagels, cream cheese, orange juice and strong coffee.

The image of God, this charcoal depiction adorns every newspaper, website and the world over no one claims to know him. This stranger, this angel sent from heaven to save the life of Pope Adrian, an instant hero, a perfect champion, faceless and voiceless.

On the third day and in a bar a television in the corner's volume is turned up high with the breaking news. A Spirit of the People's Army, a man in a balaclava reads a statement. He reads quietly. He looks all at once sinister but dejected. His voice trails, the words come slow, an American accent. He says that they have chosen to disband with immediate affect. With God dead - amateur footage leaked on the internet, it's clear they can't go on. In an internet café you log on to the e-mail and read the correspondence of panic and disbelief - the regret. They're saying now that they were wrong. That they had misjudged what God had wanted. Why else would he kill Nicky?

And so you wonder, is it safe to go home?

You take a train to Paris and in a dormitory of six beds you lie beneath the covers and imagine what it would be like to return to home. You picture ringing the bell, the man your wife had lived with having left and when she opens the door you see quite clearly that there is only love in her face. And she says to you, the most beautiful words you could wish to hear, 'I fucking cried for you.' And you hold her, and you hear your daughter call from inside, 'Is that you daddy?' when she hears your voice and she runs to you. You hold her close, her hair tickling on your chin as she runs her hands across your stubble and you kiss her on the head and you stand, with your two ladies one in each arm and you whisper that you missed them.

You imagine then that life is good. That you spend your mornings lying in bed and it's always summer time when you wake to bask naked in sunlight. You spend an afternoon once a week in a café and one day while you sit drinking tea the door opens and in from the rain behind a cool breeze this man sits down and he asks you, 'Did you cry when they kissed you?'

You wake in the dorm at six in the morning. You walk out in to the garden and the clouds over head are fluffy and white. In the air you can smell something. You think at first that they've burnt coffee in the kitchen but overheads a grey mist begins to swirl and darken. Speckles of ash fall around you and you hurry outside, through reception to the pavement where people are gathering.

You peer through smoke that comes now as a cloud bellowing through the street. This cloud is hot with ash that still sparkles and far in front of you a fire is blazing. You rush upstairs and on to the roof and out across the Paris skyline thick plumes rise upwards. You count maybe fifty, maybe one hundred but probably more - and if they worked as you did, four men to each location you think there must be at least twelve men now running for their lives through Paris streets and out of the city.

And it's the same all over, they're burning Rome again, London, Sydney, in New York they say they burnt down four hundred - it was explosives this time. In Beijing, in Texas and in Dublin they destroyed a convent and there were nuns inside sleeping. They're saying now that hundreds are dead - but it will rise soon to thousands. They've burnt the Louvre and the face of the Christ in Rio is missing his arms.

And there is a tape...

These men they say, they have no decency. These men who answered a call and they're saying now that it was not a God that made them do it. These men now who run for their lives, who have grown in numbers - who planned this in what could only have been days.

His name is Nicolas Fusco, leader of the Spirit of the People's Army, and he was killed by men because he did the work of God. A God who asked not that he believe in him, but instead himself and in his fellow man. Nicolas Fusco, this great invisible father.

... you can't kill a God, he had said, just like Santa Claus, like the Easter Bunny. These men, they are not victims anymore - none of them, they are not men who need help. They are the cause for concern and they are strong and they are growing and there's nothing you can do about it.

And you tell yourself again, that soon you will go home and you fall asleep to thoughts of creamy white smiles, of golden curls, of bright blue eyes.

THE END

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