The 2084 Precept Read online

  ***

  The 'En Passant' is a strange place, pretty run down, not very clean. I suppose you would have to call it a chess and bridge café, I've never seen any other type of customer there, not even a homosexual on the prowl. Open 24 hours, burgers and sandwiches, coffee and coke available. I walked past the bridge tables to the chess section at the back. A dozen tables, all laid out with a chess set and a chess clock, about half of them in use at this time in the afternoon.

  You can only find an opponent here if you are prepared to play for money which, unlike prize-money tournaments, means betting cash on each game. Most of the regulars have an appearance as dilapidated as the place itself, worn-out clothes, scuffed shoes, uncombed hair, and some of them not smelling too good either. That's because most of them are out of work, adroit specialists in the serious profession of welfare state manipulation—any system created by elected birdbrains is full of holes of course—with plenty of time to play chess each and every day for the rest of their lives if they wish, financed by the poor British tax-paying creatures. And many are immigrants, mainly from Eastern Europe, and most of them are also receiving unemployment benefits, or at least they look as if they are.

  But, make no mistake, these are all good chess players, some very good in fact, and there is a sprinkling of masters among them; national masters that is, not international masters or grandmasters, you wouldn't find them in a place like this. They scrape their living playing for teams in the major European leagues and on the international tournament circuit. So the guys that are here are here to earn additional cash, tax-free like the rest of their income. They never play among themselves, except for a bit of Blitz when bored. They are after the punters, very often businessmen who think they can play good chess but can't, weak club-level players at best who dream of one day beating an experienced opponent or two. Which they never do and never will. But they keep coming back, each time they put it down to bad luck or to an obviously weak move made at some point in their game, and it usually takes them a long time, years, before they eventually wake up to the fact that they are never going to make it.

  I am also a punter, but one who earns some petty cash here from time to time. I turn up occasionally when finding myself at a loose end in London. I am not a master but I am a strong club player and I have an international Elo ranking of 2265.

  Chess is the only game I know of where no luck is involved. It starts off exactly the same every time. There are 72,000 possible positions after two moves, 9 million possible positions after three moves, and 300 billion after four moves—I use the Short Scale version of the term billion, it`s a word the Americans have raped but it is indeed easier than saying one thousand million—and the number of possible positions in an average-length game of 40 moves is more than all of the quarks in the universe. Yes, quarks, those things which neutrons and protons are made up of and which, in turn, are the components of atoms, except hydrogen atoms of course which have no neutrons, and so we are talking a big number here. And if you find it difficult to believe any of these chess statistics, you can probably check them out nowadays on the Internet.

  When I saw that the only person not playing was Ivanovic, I was not disheartened. On the contrary, you only really enjoy chess when playing an opponent as strong as, or stronger than, yourself. Ivanovic was a master. Not quite as good as he used to be, certainly, but you never lose your master title. Ivanovic had definitely come down heavily in life and he looked it. He was a miserable kind of guy, one of those who hate other people, who hate the world and, in many cases, also hate themselves. He virtually lived in the En Passant, and he had the pasty white skin to show for it, and he did nothing else, absolutely nothing, except play chess. For money.

  "Hi," I said, "wanting a game?"

  "Only playing full games today," he mumbled back in thick-accented English, "two hours on the clock, £100."

  For my café chess I prefer Blitz, five minutes per game for £5 a game, but full-length makes for better chess and would probably give me at least a reasonable chance against him. Mind you, £100 was a bit steep, but who cares? "O.K.," I said, "I've got the time. Start right away?"

  He didn't say anything, merely nodded in a disinterested and bored manner, sat down, set both clocks, and tossed a coin. I lost and so I had the black pieces. A disadvantage but not a fatal one of course; however, as Black, you do have an initial task, which is to strive to achieve equality as soon as possible. Ivanovic started with e4 and I chose the Sicilian Defence. It suits my character, it's adventurous, it provokes the production of adrenalin. In many variations of this opening, Black can be subjected to persistent kingside pressures—which can reach hurricane proportions if not defended with great care—while at the same time obtaining plenty of tactical opportunities of his own for counterattacking on the queenside.

  To cut a long story short, the game followed one of the various lines of the Scheveningen System, a common Sicilian variation, and on the nineteenth turn I made a somewhat weak knight move, allowing White to gain some positional advantage. And that was all Ivanovic needed. He kept up the pressure and after spending another hour sliding down into a losing game, and knowing it, I resigned. No point in continuing, two pawns down and absolutely no compensation of any kind.

  Chess is unquestionably a good character-trainer. You can be in an inferior position for a prolonged period of time before it turns into a losing one and you can be in a losing position for another long period of time before it becomes a lost one. As my father and plenty of others used to say, losing is part of your education and it is good for the soul. Whatever a soul is, I haven't a clue, perhaps you know.

  And no, we chess players have nothing to do with those ghastly characters in novels who capture one, two, or even more of their opponent's pieces and then are actually allowed to continue until they checkmate him, upon which the opponent topples his king down onto the board. I will permit myself to say that such characters and their authors produce in me a strong desire to vomit, profusely indeed.

  I handed him the money, wished him a good day, accepted his grunt in return and went down the stairs and out into the fresh air.

  Fresh air, but the sun was gone and the rain was here. No umbrella, I should have known better, good evening England. I ran around the corner to a steakhouse, ordered a meal, a filet steak well-done (I know, I know, but that's how I like it). The wine was good, a simple Côtes du Rhône, a wine I always order if not wanting to spend too much; it is one of those rare wine-growing areas that seldom produce a bad bottle. It was dark when I came out of the restaurant and it was still raining, but I got lucky and found a cab to take me back to the hotel. I was no longer hungry, but I was tired. I had worked a lot of hours this week and today's four hours of chessboard concentration plus the wine had not changed things much.

  Into the hotel, checked the foyer for women on the way through, uninteresting, only one nice one sitting there with her husband (actually, it had to be her boyfriend, married people don't look at each other like that) and two other old ones painted up like red Indian squaws gone berserk.

  I also decided to give the hotel bar a miss. An early night was called for. Up to my room, teeth, shower, and into bed with my book of the day, a collection of James M. Cain's legendary novels. I was reading one of the short ones, ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice’, and managed to finish it before falling asleep.

  DAY 2

  The room service trolleys and other miscellaneous hotel noise pollution woke me at the fairly reasonable Saturday morning hour of 08.30. Nothing to do, no work, a piece of fun awaiting me in the early afternoon, and I would decide on the evening later. So I languished in bed for a while before getting up and commencing the shit, shave and shower routine.

  I looked out of the window, still raining, either that or raining again. I decided that the brown-check jacket and casual shirt would be good for the so-called meeting, brown slip-on shoes, relatively new like all my shoes and, also like all my shoes, size 48 or size 13 de
pending on where you come from in Europe, and possibly some other number in the USA.

  Why can't the human race standardize something as simple as that? Well, the answer is that it can't. That would not only require a certain modicum of intelligence, it would also mean they would have to actually agree on something, a rarity on this disordered planet as I am sure you agree. We can't even assent to driving our cars on the same side of the road. As you probably know, there are 72 countries in which you drive on the left and 125 countries in which you drive on the right. The only good thing is that no country has decided to drive in the middle. Tribal behavior. Amazing.

  I had my favorite breakfast of poached eggs on toast, more toast with butter and Chivers orange marmalade, and a cup of coffee, great stuff at this hotel, Lavazza. I finished at around eleven o'clock and went back to my room to collect the umbrella and fish out one of the copies of my résumé, always have a couple of pre-printed copies with me when travelling, you never know. I took the elevator back down, lit up a cigarette and set off in the direction of St. James's Street.

  Now that I had my umbrella, the rain had stopped. So much the better, I would walk the whole way. I turned into Pall Mall, walked along past the clubs to the end, past Trafalgar Square, Nelson's Column, bought the IHT at the Charing Cross kiosk and found a nearby café in which to read it. Only two major bombings today, thirty dead, add to that the deaths in seven other minor wars which continue to pursue their diversified and mysterious goals, more vehement anti-Jewish threats from Iran and so on and so forth, and it's still boring. Boring because such is our planet and it certainly doesn't bother me, there is absolutely nothing I can do about it.

  The coffee in this place was American-style revolting, colored dishwater, so I finished the sports section without ordering a second cup, paid the waitress who had mistakenly sauntered into my area en route to the toilet, and—unhindered today by any additional survey-takers—I lit up another cigarette and set off along the Strand, so named, by the way, because it used to border on the river Thames until, as with many other things, we cemented everything up.

  I arrived at the Towers with fifteen minutes to spare and wandered around for a while before entering the building, it being just as bad to be more than a couple of minutes early as it is to arrive late. The ground floor reception area was unmanned today, and so I just took the elevator up to the Obrix Consultants' suite on the first floor (second floor if you prefer), and pressed the buzzer.

  Jeremy Parker himself opened the door.

  "No staff today, I'm afraid," he said, same pleasant round face, same pleasant smile, "come in, come in. I'm glad you could make it. Let's go through to the meeting room."

  He was dressed as formally as he was yesterday, suit and tie, blue tie today. He was obviously taking this thing seriously. He led me past an expensive looking reception desk and down a corridor, pristine white walls, office doors opening off it, also white walls, white furniture too, laptops and papers on the desks, lots of files, it certainly looked as if there was plenty of activity during the week.

  He showed me through a double door into what was a relatively large meeting room with a boardroom table, eight well-spaced leather chairs on each side of it plus one at each end, a presentation screen and the other paraphernalia you expect to find in a meeting room. The walls and the furniture in this room were also white. It looked good, Jeremy certainly had a taste for style. Or maybe he had merely retained a liking for the white walls of his room at some psychiatric institution or other. Whatever. Water, soft drinks and glasses stood on a table in one corner. The view was not great, it was the building opposite, but there was plenty of light.

  All in all a pleasant room, a room generating confidence and seriousness for the sacrificial victims of whatever frauds were put into motion here. And if he wasn't insane, then frauds it must be. Surroundings such as these precluded the option of it being a bad joke.

  Jeremy motioned me to take a chair at the head of the table, and himself took a chair at the side, leaving one chair empty between us. Good practice, I thought to myself, we are not directly facing each other, which can be viewed by some as being somewhat confrontational, nor are we sitting side by side, which I don't like anyway, need my space.

  "Drink?" he asked, "I can make some coffee if you prefer."

  "No thanks, Mr. Parker, water will be fine."

  He fetched a large bottle and two glasses and I handed him my résumé, which, in my view, he read pretty quickly. Maybe he was a speed reader, why not?

  "So, Mr. O'Donoghue. First of all, thank you for coming. You will, I believe, be more than happy when I explain to you how easily you are going to be able to earn your fee, the fee I mentioned to you yesterday. But you will have reservations. You will see what I mean when I try to explain things, and I may as well start to do that right now."

  "Please do," I smiled, "I have a reasonably open mind, I can assure you."

  "Ah," replied Jeremy, "and precisely that is what worries me. You are going to find that reasonableness and rationality are in extremely short supply here. However, there is no doubt that I need your services, no doubt about that at all. And as we briefly mentioned yesterday, we are both reasonably intelligent people, and it is therefore perfectly clear to me that you consider me to be either insane or to be attempting some kind of fraud here. If you thought any differently you would either be stupid yourself or at best only mildly intelligent, and either of those categories would preclude a business relationship."

  He paused and looked me straight in the eye. I looked straight back. Let him waffle further. I am not one of those people who feel a need or an obligation to fill conversation gaps.

  "You are therefore here for fun or for the money," he continued. "So what I have decided to do, I have decided to transfer the €100,000 I mentioned yesterday to your bank right now. As I mentioned, you get to keep it, no matter what. This is a risk for me, a gamble, but one I can afford to take. There are no conditions attached, but I hope it will keep you here for what to you, no doubt whatsoever, will seem to be a meeting with a fraudulent or, alternatively, totally deranged person. Initially, that is, as I shall at least be making the attempt to convince you otherwise before you leave here today. Now if you would kindly let me have your international bank account number, I'll fix the payment now."

  Oh man, is he weird. Demented. Fully deranged. Maybe dangerously insane, you never know with these people.

  But he doesn't look it and he doesn't sound it, he might be one of those easy-going kinds of lunatic. But, like many lunatics, he is not stupid. He realizes I think it's a fraud and he is preempting my reaction to whatever weird argumentations he has up his sleeve by telling me that I might also think he's deranged. So, he's not stupid, but he's not particularly intelligent either. He should know that it is unlikely that any of this is going to wash with a person of normal intelligence. But…now this is real fun, and sure I'm going to stay and hear what his crazy or dishonest scheme is, and then I'm going to check my bank account in a couple of days' time. The money won't be there of course but…I am a member of the human species, and so I will be checking the account.

  I gave him the information and he took a laptop from one of the cupboards and tapped away on it. When he was finished, he looked up and said, "I would appreciate your sending me an invoice in due course, Mr. O’Donoghue. Please bill Obrix Consultancy Partners at this address. Simply describe the charge as 'consultancy services provided' for whatever period of time you deem to be proper and acceptable. In view of the remainder still to be paid, should you decide to continue that is, you may perhaps wish to have this first invoice cover a prior year period. For tax purposes. Instead of having it all in one year, you understand. Up to you, of course."

  "Sure…fine…, Mr. Parker," I said, "Good idea. Judicious." Play the game, enjoy it. There won't be any money and there won't be any invoice, so no problem.

  "O.K…I'm hoping for your patience now," he said. "You really aren't going to belie
ve a word of what I say…impossible I would think…although, as I've said, I hope that you will by the time we part company today. First of all, let me tell you that I own this company and all of its subsidiaries. What they do is unimportant, but I would be happy to explain them to you on another occasion, should you be interested. At the same time, I am a student. I am performing research for my doctorate. I have to write a dissertation. And part of the research for the dissertation is required to be supported by interviewee input. And this, hopefully, is where you will be able to be of some considerable assistance to me."

  "Exactly what will I be doing? That is a large amount of money you're offering, Mr. Parker, you know." Play the game, play the game.

  "Yes, I do know. And as I obliquely indicated to you yesterday, you don't have to do that much to earn it. In fact, all you have to do is to answer certain questions I will be putting to you in a series of meetings over the next three months—perhaps even less than three months depending on how we progress. A maximum of twelve meetings, perhaps fewer. That is all. Nothing else."

  "So why pay such a large amount? You could get someone else for a fraction of that kind of money, no problem."

  "Yes, I know I could. Obviously. But only if the subject of the dissertation were a normal one. Which it isn't. And I also have a need for a person of a certain level of intelligence, a requirement you so far appear to fulfill by the way. At the same time, the problem with a person of a certain level of intelligence is that he will be convinced there is something fraudulent about this whole scenario. Not that he would be able to determine what, or how, or in which way, but he would definitely be of that opinion. And, in addition, he could also classify me as being a person in dire need of psychiatric assistance."

  Repeating himself. Boring. And no way is it going to increase his chances of reeling me in to whatever this peculiar scheme turns out to be.

  "And," he continued, "even if he started—after all, the chance of another €400,000 without a risk is not to be sniffed at—it is less than likely that he would continue for the whole program unless…unless, that is…the sum of money waiting for him at the end were large enough to constitute an adequate enticement."

  "Well Mr. Parker, that obviously provokes my next question. May I know the subject of your dissertation, and could you please elaborate as to why it is apparently so crazy that you are prepared to pay a small fortune for what sounds like some relatively simple assistance?"

  He took a sip of water, and paused for a moment. And then he said "The subject of my dissertation is the Earth. The planet. This planet."

  "Well…O.K…but I still don't understand. I mean, exactly what is the overall subject involved, and what academic area are you working in? Which university are you attending, what is the big mystery in all of this? And why for that matter are you a student anyway—at your age and owning what seems to be a reasonably well-established group of companies?"

  "Ah," he said with that agreeable smile of his, "a lot of questions, only to be expected of course from a person such as yourself, and presumably you will have several more in that vein. So…allow me to get straight to the point." He coughed. "I am an alien."

  "You are an alien? Immigrant or just visiting? Which country? Legal or illegal?"

  "I note that you are thinking in U.S. terms regarding the common usage of that word. Indeed, the dictionary itself describes the word alien as 'foreigner' or 'foreign'. Which indeed, I am, but not quite as you think. I am, to be more precise, an extraterrestrial."

  Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no. So it's not a fraud after all, he's just insane, nutty as a fruitcake, totally bonkers, off his rocker. That is not to say that I have any major complaints, after all I was after a bit of fun and now I'm certainly getting it. What a story for the Green Tree pub. And my chances for the €100,000 have definitely risen a notch. This guy might be as crazy as the best of them, but he also appears to have money and he might really be mad enough to have transferred that cash already, who knows? Well, I don't know, and maybe he hasn't, maybe he just tapped away on his laptop to give me that impression.

  On the other hand…I am happy to take the chance. It's worth finding out. I have to be careful though. Lunatics, even apparently harmless ones, can be dangerous, turn violent in a second, you're dead before you know it, stay wary and on your toes, all of the time, oh yes.

  Meantime, it would be appropriate for me to switch into full actor mode, humor the guy, put my psychological talents to work, another of the skills which serve me well as a consultant. Well, well, well, who would have thought? What a Saturday!

  "An extraterrestrial?" I asked, as innocently as a whore telling you she's in love with you. "Now that's interesting. Interesting indeed, but…as I am sure you agree Mr. Parker…quite unbelievable. Surely you can't expect me to believe something like that?"

  "Oh no, I can’t and I don't," he replied with that smile of his, "not at all. I mean, who would? No indeed, but hopefully you will bear with me while I try to explain and, again, I hope to have convinced you in the end anyway. And by then, you will hopefully have been able to discard the thoughts you are harboring about whether or not I am a lunatic, or dangerous, or both." He smiled again, leaned forward a little, both elbows on the table, and said, "Now that is a reasonable goal for our meeting, wouldn't you agree?"

  Well, Mr. Jeremy Parker, I thought to myself, you are right about the dangerous bit, and I've already decided about the lunatic part all by myself, right up-front, sorry about that. And I took a drink of water to fortify myself for the effluence I was about to hear, a shot of whiskey would have been more appropriate.