Chapter 42: Missile to Mayfair

Johnny Depp piloted his jet down to the private airstrip, which was near Luton airport and piggy-backed off its air traffic control resources somehow. Luton was where all the celebrities surprisingly keep their planes. There was even, Johnny told me, a top secret branch of Soho House in this dull Hertforshire town. CRACKLE, and the disguised voice of the Master burst out of the radio. ‘Johnny! We are tracking you! We know you are landing in London! You have only two minutes to turn away. The nuclear missile is already at the south coast. Everyone in London is going to die, and you won’t be safe in Luton, if that’s what you think!’

‘When it’s your time, it’s your time,’ said Johnny Depp.

‘This isn’t a movie! There’s no deus ex machina. There’s just a pulverising holocaust and a city full of corpses.’

‘One of them will be mine,’ I said, calmly.

‘Yes! Stop him, Mary Sue. Turn him round. He’s doing it because we killed Vanessa. He’s not being rational.’

‘You sound very upset,’ I said.

‘I’m…’

‘It’s interesting for me, psychologically, how upset you seem. I’m new to all this, you see. I’m coming to it fresh, and I have to say that comparing you with the Teacher, who I’ve just been speaking to, it’s like chalk and cheese.’

‘I don’t care about the Teacher. I just want you to… What do you mean? Is he cooler than me?’

‘He’s way cooler.’

‘You’re just trying to… Oh. Wait. You’ve been speaking to the Teacher! He’s told you to fly into the flames.’

‘I am literally like a moth.'

‘Don’t be absurd. The Teacher wants you dead because he’s scared of what you and I could do together. He knows that if you were on his side, the pair of you could kill me, but he’s frightened that you will join me, and we will open the Gates of Hell together. He’s a coward because he knows, in his heart, that he is a traitor to his kind. To OUR kind, Mary Sue. But if you really do want to beat me, then you have to save yourself. You’re the only one who can kill me, says the prophecy. If you don’t do it, I carry on wreaking havoc, time out of mind. I might not be able to open the Gates of Hell, but does that really matter when I can destroy London like I am about to do RIGHT NOW? I will destroy every major city in the world tomorrow if you do not turn away. Every major centre of population. I don’t care if I turn the world into a desert. I reincarnate and reincarnate, and so do we all, and, in the end, another of my demons will procreate with an angel, and there will be another Chosen One, and this suicide of yours, this fit of childish pique, will have been for nothing. You are destroying the world you know. Let that be on your conscience, Mary Sue.’

The wheels touched down, and Johnny Depp held my hand. I said, ‘When it’s your time, it’s your time.’
***

Two hours later, back in my flat, we were watching the news. Pictures, of Green Park showed where the missile had landed, and failed to explode, but still caused massive devastation. It killed eighty people sitting in the sun, and wounded hundreds more. At the bottom of the screen, a banner marched leftwards proclaiming that the French President le Pen said this was a terrible accident, the actions of a rogue submarine captain over-reacting to the approach of a British destroyer attempting to break the blockade of the Channel Islands. Le Pen’s speech, which we’d watched several times by now, threw much blame onto this British destroyer, which had entered what he described as ‘French Territorial Waters.’ World leaders had lined up to condemn French aggression in the Channel, and le Pen’s mealy-mouthed evasions, but they all accepted that the missile was a tragic accident. Of course they did. Who could possibly believe that even le Pen would nuke London, since he would immediately face global reprisals? Everyone said it was a miracle that the missile hadn’t exploded. President Bush described it as a gift from God, and normally everyone would have laughed at him, and maybe they would tomorrow, but it’s how everyone was feeling. Johnny Depp and I knew the truth, of course, but we weren’t telling anyone that for now.

The other politician who’d been playing on a constant loop was Boris Johnson. He knew about the Teacher. He knew that le Pen had been trying, on his Master’s orders, to neutralise the angels. Of course he didn’t say all this. What he said was, ‘I know it is almost impossible to believe, but this wasn’t a mistake. Most of the Froggies, pardon my French, are innocent, but le Pen is a horror, a lunatic, and everything he says about British aggression is guff. This submarine captain is at the peak of his profession. He’s been trained NOT to fire nuclear missiles without extreme provocation or very clear orders. He has clearly received the latter. Londoners are lucky that the French can’t build proper bombs, but we will never forget this, and we know it was no mistake. We do not know what France is doing, but she is doing something, and when it becomes clear what that is, we will be ready. We have stood in her way before, and we will stand in her way again. We will use luck, and we will use steel, and she may think we will fail, but we never have, and we never will.’ Boris was being slated for his bombastic tone, and for not understanding the only possible rational explanation for what had happened. World leaders censured him. Gordon Brown cautiously supported London and Londoners, but warned against over-reaction until all the facts were known.

And then Vladimir Putin spoke. He said that Boris Johnson was the unacceptable face of British Imperialism, and France was right to take back her Channel Islands, and that Russia stood four-square behind le Pen. But I didn’t pay as much attention as I perhaps should have because I was on the sofa with Johnny Depp, and I hadn’t forgotten what happened in the batcave. However wrong it was supposed to have been, it was the first time in a week I had forgot myself, and been at peace, albeit in very unpeaceful way. But there’s no way Johnny could have been feeling the same way, so it wouldn’t matter if I let my feet sort of accidentally touch his side. The instant after I touched him he had rolled me off the sofa and onto the floor, somehow catching me so there was no fall, and we were kissing, and I was wrapping around him, and neither of us were thinking about the Teacher, as far as I could tell.