CHAPTER NINE
THE RAIN was drifting across the trees of Regent's Park in silent undulating veils. Sebastian sat before the great mahogany board set up beside the window and considered his position. Exposed, he decided, but not precarious. He shifted one of the ceramic and ivory counters towards him, protecting his most vulnerable piece. He had been playing for five hours without pause.
Strict but fair. That was how he would describe himself if someone asked. Disciplined. Moral. And bold, as bold as Prometheus thrusting his unlit torch into the sun.
But of course, many people feared crossing paths with the truly unafraid. There were those who saw him as a threat. Many lies had been told, but in his mind the truth and the lies were quite separate.
It was true, for instance, that he had been invited to leave university. It was true that he would have graduated with honours had he stayed. It was true that there had been some unfortunate business with a hysterical young woman, and that this perceived – and publicised – blot on his escutcheon would prevent him from ever attaining a position of power. It was true that the death of an interfering journalist had become linked with his name, providing a source of future embarrassment and another skeleton for the family cupboard. The fact that he would eventually inherit his father's title meant further disruption to his political prospects. He had been forced to consider a less high-profile entrance into the state arena.
It was not true that his family cut him off without a penny. It was not true that he kept the company of common criminals. It was not entirely true that he had squandered his family's allowance on parties and drugs. It was not true that he had been forced to resolve a stimulant dependency (he had chosen to admit himself to the clinic in order to tackle a genuine psychiatric problem). It was not true that he had become the 'fin de siècle wastrel' recently described in an unflattering feature entitled 'The New Bad Boys' in the Guardian. It was not strictly true that he had had a nervous breakdown when the aforementioned hysterical girlfriend had died in so-called mysterious circumstances on his grandfather's Devonshire estate.
These days, at the grand old age of twenty-eight, his greatest pleasure in life – apart from his league meetings – was the creation of, and participation in, games. All kinds of games. Strategic puzzles. Peg and board amusements. Elaborate ritualised entertainments. Linguistic riddles. Intellectual anomalies. And sometimes, more overtly sexual charades involving the hiring of prostitutes and the testing of their personal tolerances. As a child he could complete The Times crossword in under seven minutes. He quickly worked his way through Scrabble, go, pta-wai, mah-jong, sabentah, poker and bridge. Then he began to invent his own games. As an adult it amused him to add new layers of role-playing and gamesmanship to an otherwise dreary life. And the best part of playing these games, of course, was setting the rules yourself.
He had already attempted to involve Vince in his game playing, although the boy had no natural skill, no guile. Those honest blue eyes were picture-windows to his soul, incapable of hiding secrets. As opponents they were poorly suited. Some kind of handicap would have to be applied. He had studied his quarry at lunch the other day. They were dining at L'Odeon in Regent Street, a restaurant far too modern for his tastes but selected to impress the boy, and he had asked Vince what he was really writing about, and the boy had fiddled with his microphone-gadget nervously, unable to hold his eye, fobbing him off with some nonsense about the state of the capital. He should have recognised the signs then and interrogated Vince more thoroughly.
Unfolding his long legs, he leaned across the mahogany board and shifted another white piece so that it imprisoned his opponent, then removed the appropriated counter to the brass railing at the edge of the board. He sat back and surveyed the battlefield. The war was all but won. The best way to capture an enemy was to let him think you had no interest in capture at all.
It amazed him to think that the boy had no inkling of how he was being used. Proles were like that: broadly honest, reasonably decent, breathtakingly naive. Indignant, of course, upon the discovery of any detrimental deception. But ready to empty their purses before you, should you call upon their assistance.
He felt sorry for Vincent. The boy would never get to the heart of the matter. It simply wasn't something you could catalogue on paper. It was far too perverse for his algebraic thinking to comprehend, a perversion of character, family and finance that ran deep inside and underground, to the very core of the nation. It only surfaced when those close to power found a way to control and make use of it; why else, he wondered, shoving aside the board, would organisations like the League of Prometheus be allowed to exist?
Too bad the boy wasn't a bit brighter. He rather relished the possibility of being found out. But that, of course, would defeat the entire purpose of the game. He did not want to have Vincent killed. Indeed, with no other candidates in sight he could not afford to. His fellow Prometheans would not allow him another chance to make good his promise.
The rain was clearly in for the day. The finale of Der Rosenkavalier came to its melancholy end. With a sigh, Sebastian heaved himself from his armchair and switched off the tape. He wasn't sleeping well. Lately his mind was filled with visions. Everything was coming to a head. Anger burned dully within him, and nothing, it seemed, not even the game, could assuage it.
CHAPTER TEN
IT TOOK a lot of phone calls to track down Caroline Buck-Smalley. She had dated Sebastian Wells during his Oxford days, and had been photographed (and labelled with a helpful caption) arriving at a charity auction with him, draped in a Union Jack. Caroline now handled PR for her mother's Knightsbridge dress business, and was reluctant to discuss anything else. Figuring that dishonesty was the best policy, Vince explained that he was writing an article about Sebastian for The Tatler, only to have her demand that a formal request for an interview be submitted in writing.
Vince argued that he would miss his deadline for the next issue, and just needed a couple of quick answers.
'Look, Mr Reynolds, I simply don't have the time to waste on this sort of thing,' she heatedly insisted, 'besides which I can tell you very little about Mr Wells, beyond the fact that he enjoys playing extremely childish, spiteful tricks on people and would rather spend his weekends with his pals figuring out stupid character-testing rituals than doing anything useful or constructive.' The line went dead.
Texts of the following speeches and monographs by the Hon. Sebastian Wells are available upon request:
A Question of Race: Nationality and Identity
Why There Must Always Be An England
Breaking the Jewish Power Ring
The Murder of Innocence: Tackling the Abortionists
Prometheus and Power: Responsibility to the People
He accessed the last article; he had read the others.
The name Prometheus is a Greek corruption of the Sanskrit word Pramantha, meaning a fire-drill. The symbol for this invention is the Swastika.