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  Ezekiel 38 and 39 clearly describe the coming Arab–Russian coalition. America, weakened by liberalism, would be sidelined while the New Allies would fight against a Chinese army of two hundred million soldiers and countless clones, currently stored underground in neat ranks, like the terracotta warriors on which they were modelled. All these orientals, flesh and metal, would march east towards Armageddon until the day of the Ultimate Invasion, from Heaven itself. Paul ecstatically mouthed the words which he knew by heart from Revelations 16.

  Hailstones weighing a hundred pounds fall from the sky

  Coastlines shift

  Mountains fall

  And He will arrive

  And the 144 000 will be saved.

  The tears that Paul wiped away were those of joy. The coming end times were nothing for a soldier of the Lord to fear. Especially when The Way, established to guide believers, was thriving, with donations from its ever-increasing flock all wisely invested in NICE. Every item the company manufactured was guaranteed to further the prophesied thousand-year war of peace, after which the Elect would be the last men standing.

  Rising awkwardly, his knees gratifyingly numb, Paul folded back the bedcovers, briefly missing Kirstin, who usually did this for him. Glancing at his watch, he calculated that there was still time to do a little more of God’s work before he snuggled down for a well-earned pre-banquet snooze. He started up his laptop. The ship’s wi-fi was maintained by Kirstin’s chosen newbie, who seemed to be working out well as a replacement for Victor.

  Paulie opened the text he was working on for the next Global Interfaith Conference. This paper would cause a sensation, for he had discovered the true identity of the Anti-Christ. Kirstin, who usually expressed silent approval for his texts, had suggested that this one might need a little more work.

  ‘Maybe just tone it down a little, Paulie?’

  So Paulie now set about humouring his wife by moving a few commas around. Changing the typeface. But the text, being the Truth, remained unaltered.

  Have you not felt the breath of the dragon? His coat of arms, the Red Dragon of Satan, is described in Revelations 12:3. He is tolerant of false religions, wanting to unite everything from papism to Wicca and Islam under his cloak. He brazenly displays his coat of arms, the Red Dragon of Satan (12:3). The body of a leopard, mouth of a bear, eyes of a man. His family guards blatantly wear bright red and have bearskin helmets.

  His ancestral home, Windsor Castle, lies upon an ancient ley line, established in pre-Christian times for astronomical and mystical devilry. Windsor Park was once home to the horned god of the witches and to the cult of the huntress Diana. And with the royal ascendancy of the harlot, Princess Diana …

  He scrolled down to the conclusion, but felt it needed no alteration.

  Why will the Queen not appoint this Satan, with his papist consort, her successor? Because there will never be another king of Britain. He is being deliberately kept for a higher role. As king of the New World Order, he will destroy holy Israel. Look closely at the flag of the European Union. It was designed in 1955, when the organisation was called the Council of Europe, by a man who is on record as saying that it was inspired by the Twelve Stars of the Halo of Mary, the pagan mother of the papist church. The president of that council, the forerunner of the coming New World Order, proclaimed that what the world needed was a man: ‘Of sufficient stature to hold the allegiance of all people. To lift us out of the economic morass into which we are sinking. Send us such a man and be he god or devil, we will receive him.’

  And so the royal houses of Europe, traditionally papist, will lead once more, by popular will. They will unite the world, with one economy, under the rule of papism. Royalty have been secretly installed by Opus Dei and the EU, poised to rule in Satan’s name.

  In the wake of current Islamic terrorism, people will want a return to Christianity as a solution. Will embrace this new version which promises to unite all creeds. A perverted form of Christianity, accepting of homosexuals and women priests. Once disparate groups are united, the scene will be set for the breath of the Anti-Christ to scorch them. Hear his seductive chatter about world peace and unity. Can’t you feel the breath of the dragon here at this Interfaith Conference?

  Feeling as if he were descending from a sacred mountain, Paulie saved and closed the file. He could hardly wait to deliver this headline-making bombshell. Surely his paper would bring about the dissolution of interfaith itself? They would stand exposed as a part of the very conspiracy he was about to unveil in his prophetic vision.

  There remained only one more matter to attend to before his snooze, trivial in comparison with his great work. With a sigh he dutifully took up the notes that Kirstin had prepared for him to read at the ballroom banquet. What was the topic again? Ah yes, he had agreed to introduce that female writer, Monica … Frequent, wasn’t it? Easy to remember. He had never read her novels, or even heard of her, but his wife assured him that she wrote about the importance of fidelity in marriage. And they both believed in that. He had only to read out his wife’s words, which were brief enough and all in order.

  What could go wrong?

  ME #3

  People always say that youth is the time of highest emotional intensity. I beg to differ. In early middle age, I am finding the pleasure of delayed revenge overwhelmingly stimulating.

  After the Ghost Tour, Captain Kirstin sent me my first red alert. When I saw Ariadne on screen, from three different angles, it was disturbing. Intimate, candid scenes of a woman who thinks she is alone in her boudoir. The captain replayed the footage of the cabin over and over, instructing me to raise my hand if I spotted Ariadne concealing anything, no matter how small. It might have helped if I had the least idea what I was supposed to be watching out for. But for reasons so far unknown to me, the captain had not confided in me. What more did I have to do to win her trust?

  She told me that the failure to locate the object in Ariadne’s cabin meant that Plan A had failed.

  ‘Time for Plan B,’ she said.

  And for the first time she explained what that actually was.

  As I listened, I had mixed feelings. We were replaying the shower scene while she spoke. Ariadne moved so modestly, her hands over her private parts, that it was as if she sensed she was being watched. I admit it was arousing to see her again, naked, or with a towel failing to conceal the wild forest that I had not managed to explore fully. If only …

  Twenty years ago, soon after she had moved into the apartment block, she had reached out to me. Behind my screen door, I found a brightly coloured invitation for coffee. It was a handmade collage of tiny fabric scraps, shaped to form an intricate picture of two women, dressed thirties-style, having tea and cakes. Very feminine, and so detailed that I was flattered. She had clearly spent hours with her tiny scissors and craft glue, creating it just to impress me. I had been systematically snubbed in my attempts to befriend my other neighbours, so I was very pleased with this attention, even though she was not my type at all. Her look was too theatrical, her outfits and make-up so stylised that they overshadowed any natural charms she might have. I did not really go for the flapper look with its jangling beads and sharp-edged sequins, nor the gathered fifties skirts with stiff petticoats. But she had no visible piercings, not even earrings.

  Our date was nothing like the illustration on her invitation. We chain-smoked and she did not touch the store-bought hummingbird cake she served. Smoking, she said, was an important part of what she called her California diet. I love to see a woman smoke, that small fire so perilously close to luscious lips.

  I had a small disappointment when she confided that I was the only tenant who had responded to her hand-made invitation, thus revealing that I was not her only intended invitee. I retaliated by not telling her that the others had thrown theirs out unread, as I almost had, mistaking it for the junk mail that accumulates behind all the screen doors. It was all to the good, because it meant that she was down on our shared neighbours.
r />   It took several weeks to get her into my bed and down to her undies, but when I saw the luxuriant tropical playground overflowing her knickers, I fell instantly in love. And in that first flush, indiscreet pillow talk was inevitable. Beware pillow talk at midnight on the first passionate night together. She was an outsider like me and she had her own way of taking revenge on people who had let her down. Two like minds. Or so I thought.

  Over my bed was a spectacular enlargement of Dad’s first bushfire, lighting up the night sky. She admired it, so naturally I began talking about Cracker Night, because it was coming up to 5 November. We were both old enough to remember the excitement of those huge backyard bonfires which had died out in the early 1980s when restrictions were put on the sale of fireworks. I told her I wanted to found a new libertarian political party to fight the nanny state and bring back Guy Fawkes night. She thought it was a good idea and so I told her the whole story, just like I used to at all those writing groups. The difference was they had never known my work was autobiographical.

  Back then my dad used to supply firewood in Araballa. The wood guy, everyone called him, and from March to September he was everyone’s friend. I used to help him deliver common, the quick-burning type, and less often, because of nanny-state restrictions closing down the forests, red gum. October to March he got a bit restless at home with Mum and the littler kids, so we took off on the road, looking for new spots to cut wood where no one would notice. We camped in the wild and for fun he taught me how easy it was to start fires in hay bales and old sheds. Our favourites were abandoned railway stations made of weatherboard. He was a purist and never used anything but his old silver lighter. Then we’d drive to the nearest hill and watch the fire embers flickering in the night sky.

  On Cracker Night, Dad and I loved the biggest bangers best, those massive rainbow explosions shooting sky high. We always had the best fire, and everyone thought that was natural because he was the wood man, and burned real firewood instead of the household refuse you were supposed to use. Old boxes, bits of fencing, cots, rotten house stumps, cereal boxes and newspapers.

  The bonfires were supposed to be lit at sunset, around six thirty, but our whole street was on edge from about six, each wanting to be the first to beat Dad’s. But there was always something wrong with other people’s fires. They were all damp one year. Another year, some animal kept hollowing out the centres, a few bits at a time. We were never caught, Dad and me, because our night raids were small but regular and Dad knew how to arrange the fuel load to slow the burn. So we always had the highest fire. After a few years the neighbours lost faith in their fire-building skills. Dad was so happy when they gave up even trying and just came to our place to watch the wood man’s blaze. He’d get in crates of beer to console them.

  Well, back then, they were fires we could legally lay claim to. Our skill was recognised and applauded. Before they banned Cracker Night.

  It was the death of Dad. He only lasted one more year. Heart attack, they said, but it was on 5 November so I still blame it on the nanny state.

  After his funeral I drove around wildly until I found just about the last untorched old railway station and lit my first solo fire. Each generation improves on the one before, says the theory of evolution, and it was true in my case. I used Dad’s old silver lighter for the first time that night. The blaze blew out the windows of the waiting room on the other side of the track.

  As I watched the flames throwing out embers, preparing its path into the scrub behind, it seemed to be strewing the way ahead with luminous red roses. I bawled my eyes out.

  In memoriam, Dad.

  I knew the story off by heart, of course. Well honed, as they used to say in the writing class. I knew it was a real tear-jerker back in the days of the writing classes, so naturally I expected this girl lying next to me in bed, with only one last layer of underwear to peel off, to be sympathetic.

  I admit it. If I have made one mistake in my life, it was in trusting her.

  7

  SOUL SISTERS

  Ariadne Jones had refused the free cocktail voucher and after the Ghost Tour had retreated once more to the sanctuary of her cabin. Her curtain was drawn and the only light was from a flickering votive candle on the shrine at which she was praying.

  Having completed her devotions, she leaned back on her bed and took a sip from the bottle of tonic water. It was the only thing that relieved the nausea that rose in her every time she thought of the huge public dinner in a few hours. She was determined to manage a few mouthfuls tonight, as long as no one was watching. She had learned the hard way what foods she could eat. Just as she had learned not to speak to anyone of the oddly visceral, ecstatic, mystical visions she glimpsed when she was almost fainting with hunger. The spiritual lightness. One day she would soar away like St Teresa. Or like …

  The shrine by her bed consisted of a silver-framed portrait of Princess Diana, before which was the votive candle. Hers were the first eyes she saw in the morning and the last before sleep. After she had got through the dreaded banquet. She ran her finger over Diana’s face, imploring her help.

  Long ago, in the heat and sweaty haze of a war-zone hell, Princess Diana had stepped from the helicopter, dressed casually in a tailored safari suit, looking cool under the tropical sun. Cameras flashed. She paused for a choreographed moment at the entrance of the makeshift tent hospital.

  A woman dressed like an extra from a World War II movie — starched white cap, full-length apron stamped with a red cross — caught her eye. She was the only woman, apart from the princess herself, who had mastered the secret of layering pancake make-up with face powder so that it did not run in the sticky tropical air. The princess nodded to one of her adjutants and then to the retro nurse.

  And so it was that Ariadne Jones had been selected, in preference to the hospital manager, to show Diana around the children’s ward filled with the latest victims of land mines disguised as children’s toys.

  With Ariadne Jones at her side, and her back to the ever-present cameras, the princess leaned over the shy young patients. Embracing. Kissing. At the last bed in the long row, Diana had whispered to Ariadne, her breath warm and minty: ‘I see by your aura that you are a good person, so listen. Forces are at work against me … no, don’t look at me.’

  And she surreptitiously slipped a small envelope into the pocket of Ariadne’s white apron.

  ‘They want me dead. If the worst happens, open it and tell everybody the truth.’

  The cameras had missed that whisper to the insignificant underling. The deft transfer of the envelope had been hidden by Diana’s strategically placed back. Having accomplished the subterfuge, she swung round to her entourage, producing her famously coy smile while gesturing behind her back to Ariadne. Telling her to move away.

  Then the princess, in slow motion, began fitting a protective glass face mask, sending the flashes into a frenzy. Her reputation as a cunning media manipulator was clearly justified.

  Six months later, Ariadne’s volunteer nursing aide year ended. She was coming home in a taxi from Melbourne Airport when she heard the news over the radio about Diana’s car crash in the Alma Tunnel in Paris. Ariadne started crying, and the taxi driver was moved to focus more than usual on his own driving.

  ‘Somethin’ fishy there for sure, love.’

  Arriving back at Lone Pines, she ignored colleagues bearing welcome back flowers and headed straight for her unit, thus cementing her reputation among the staff as weird and standoffish (but good with the oldies). Locking the door behind her, she opened the envelope for the first time, and was disappointed. Just a floppy disk. But Diana had intimated that there was a plot against her, so perhaps the disk contained an accusation from beyond the grave, as they say in the movies.

  Sitting in the overheated stillness of the Lone Pines library, she opened the single file called ‘Summary of White Box’ and was soon blushing at Diana’s shocking accusations about the sex life of her royal husband. Swingers’ parti
es. Frisky footmen. Drug-fuelled orgies after fox hunts. The most scandalous claim involved Prince Philip, the Queen and those pampered royal corgis. Since then, Ariadne had never been able to look at a photo of those dogs in the same innocent light. These accusations of bestiality were interspersed with nonsensical lists, business reports, invoices and receipts for companies she had never heard of. Had the princess used an obsolete business file to make her revelations more difficult to find? And how was it all related to Diana’s death? To the ‘forces at work’?

  It was so disgusting that anyone except Ariadne might have dismissed it. But the princess’s paranoia fed into Ariadne’s own. She recognised Diana as a kindred soul. They had both been betrayed and rejected. She wanted to protect the princess and she sensed that these revelations would perhaps be used to demean her. So, although she had promised to reveal it if the forces got at her, Ariadne decided to wait and see what evidence emerged in the forthcoming inquest into the car smash in the Alma Tunnel.

  She followed the London investigation closely on SaveDiana, expecting to see the forces exposed any day. The website spelled out the obvious motive for the assassination. Diana was seen as abducting the heirs to the British throne, intending to bring them up surrounded by affection, away from England. Away from suitable ‘kingly’ discipline. She had stated as much. The cover-up by the ‘forces at work against her’ was outlined in dot points on the SaveDiana site:

  •Eye-witnesses stated that the Mercedes was diverted into the tunnel pillars by cars blocking entrance to other safer lanes.

  •No photographers followed or harassed the Mercedes into the Alma Tunnel.