He walked across the room and took down one of the hunting rifles from the rack on the wall. Raising the rifle to his shoulder, he took aim at the priceless Gobelin tapestry, which hung over the hearth. He pulled the trigger and loosed off an imaginary round.
‘The exit wound often causes the most damage, doesn’t it? Last night’s election results in Britain, as I understand them, will help us ensure that the Brexit process does indeed cause the maximum possible damage. Remainers, like Tom Milbourne, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, will be encouraged by last night’s ambiguous election results to put a spoke in the Brexit wheel whenever they can. That is fine by me. The chaos and confusion will last for months, if not for years, and it will not be limited to Britain. Europe will be thrown into turmoil too.’
While Popov had been speaking, Galina Aslanova’s mood had sensibly lightened. She had been worried that Popov would be angry that his crucial Brexit scheme had, momentarily at least, been thrown into doubt. But the reverse seemed to be the case.
‘Do we have any preferred candidates as possible successors to Mabel Killick?’ Popov mused. ‘What about our friend Edward Barnard? He’s a safe pair of hands, surely. Much cleverer than he lets on. I think he knew right from the start I never darted that tiger. Or what about Harry Stokes? That would be fun!’
Popov pointed the remote at the TV to switch channels.
If June 8th had been a big day in Britain, with its startling General Election, it had been a big day in the United States too.
The huge TV on the oak table beside the fire showed Jack Varese addressing a rally in Pittsburgh, with Eddie Turner, Pittsburgh’s Mayor, standing next to him.
‘President Craig,’ Varese’s voice boomed across the crowd, ‘has just pulled out of the vital Paris Agreement on Global Warming. He says he was elected to represent the people of Pittsburgh, not Paris. But Eddie here tells me the people of Pittsburgh want to stick to the Global Warming Treaty, not torpedo it. Is that right, Eddie?’
When the Mayor shouted, ‘Darn right!’ the crowd erupted in approval.
‘Well, we’re going to impeach him, aren’t we, for endangering the planet?’ Varese shouted.
The crowd erupted again. ‘Lock him up! Lock him up!’
‘That won’t make any difference,’ Popov commented as he watched the screen. ‘Craig’s not going to listen to Jack Varese or Eddie Turner.’
‘What about Rosie Craig? Won’t he listen to his daughter?’ Galina said.
Popov shook his head. ‘There’s too much at stake. Craig wants an ice-free Arctic as much as we do.’
While Jack Varese worked up a head of steam sufficient to drive a small turbine, Popov switched channels again.
CBS’s Eric Longhurst was commenting on developments, not in Pittsburgh, but in Washington. ‘At a hearing that riveted Washington and millions across America, FBI Director Wilbur Brown, branded President Craig a liar. He said he believed he had been sacked because of the FBI’s investigation into Moscow’s meddling in last year’s presidential election. Brown’s explosive testimony lasted over three hours.’
Popov turned the TV off. ‘Pah! Fake News! God, how I hate it!’ he exclaimed. ‘They’ll be writing Fake Books next!’
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
The large Amur tiger lazed in the sun on the banks of the Ussuri River. From time to time he raised his head and licked his balls. Just to check they were still there. They hadn’t seen much action recently. Female tigers on the Chinese side of the frontier seemed to be few and far between. He looked upstream, then he looked downstream, then – to be sure – he looked upstream again. The coast seemed to be clear.
The tiger got to his feet, sticking his hindquarters into the air first, then pushing up on his front paws. He ambled down to the river and sniffed at the water. At this time of year, the flow in the Ussuri was sluggish, but still it was cool and refreshing. He would enjoy the swim. And there would be more females too on the Russian side. That was obvious. It wasn’t just the grass which was greener the other side of the river.
Later that day, Jang Ling-Go, director of Forestry and Wildlife in China’s Heilongjiang Province, received a message from one of the rangers. ‘Amur tiger seen crossing Ussuri into Russia at 11a.m. today. This is visual sighting, but please check with GPS too.’
Jang Ling-Go switched on the bio-monitoring tracking system.
Within seconds he had picked up the slow-moving pulsing blip that denoted the Amur tiger 127’s progress as it left the river and headed back into the immense birch forest of Russia’s Far East.
The steady pace of the moving dot indicated that this was a tiger with a very clear idea of where he wanted to go.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
STANLEY JOHNSON is a former politician, environmental campaigner, journalist and author of twenty-five books including ten thrillers, one of which, The Commissioner, was made into a feature film starring John Hurt. Stanley won the Newdigate Prize for Poetry and has awards from Greenpeace and the RSPCA. He recently received the RSPB Medal as well as WWF’s Leader of the Living Planet Award, both awarded for services to conservation. He is an Ambassador for the United Nations Convention on Migratory Species, and Hon. President of the Gorilla Organization.
In the run-up to the EU Referendum in 2016, he founded and co-chaired Environmentalists for Europe. Stanley Johnson was one of the first presenters of More 4’s The Last Word and he has also appeared on Have I Got News For You, The One Show, Pointless and, most recently, The Fake News Programme.
ALSO BY STANLEY JOHNSON
Gold Drain
Panther Jones for President
The Urbane Guerilla
The Marburg Virus [republished as The Virus]
Tunnel
The Commissioner
The Doomsday Deposit
Dragon River
Icecap [republished as The Warming]
Life without Birth: A Journey Through the Third World in Search of the Population Explosion
The Green Revolution
The Population Problem
The Politics of Environment
Pollution Control Policy of the EEC
Antarctica: The Last Great Wilderness
World Population and the United Nations
The Earth Summit: The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED)
World Population – Turning the Tide
The Environmental Policy of the European Communities The Politics of Population: Cairo, 1994
Survivaclass="underline" Saving Endangered Migratory Species [co-authored with Robert Vagg]
Where the Wild Things Were: Travels of a Conservationist
UNEP: The First 40 Years
Stanley I Presume
Stanley I Resume
Copyright
A Point Blank Book
First published by Point Blank, an imprint of Oneworld Publications Ltd, 2017
This ebook published 2017
Copyright © Stanley Johnson 2017
The moral right of Stanley Johnson to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved
Copyright under Berne Convention
A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78607-246-7 (hardback)
ISBN 978-1-78607-360-0 (trade paperback)
ISBN 978-1-78607-247-4 (ebook)
Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Oneworld Publications Ltd
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