The Babylonian Mask

Chapter 11 — Margaret’s Cub

“Sam Cleave is the just the man for this, sir. I’ll get in touch with him.”

“We cannot afford Sam Cleave,” Duncan Gradwell answered quickly. He was dying for a cigarette, but when the news of the fighter plane crash in Germany came over the wire on his computer screen, it demanded instant and urgent attention.

“He is an old friend of mine. I’ll…twist his arm,” he heard Margaret. “Like I said, I’ll get in touch with him. We worked together years ago when I assisted his fiancée, Patricia, with her first piece as a professional.”

“Is that the girl who was shot dead in front of him by that arms ring whose operation they busted open?” Gradwell asked in a rather insensitive way. Margaret sank her head and replied with a slow nod. “No wonder he took to the bottle so strongly in the years after that,” Gradwell sighed.

Margaret had to chuckle at that. “Well, sir, Sam Cleave did not need much coaxing to suck on a bottle neck. Not before Patricia, nor after the — incident.”

“Ah! So tell me, is he too unstable to cover this story for us?” Gradwell asked.

“Aye, Mr. Gradwell. Sam Cleave is not only reckless, he’s infamous for a bit of a bent mind,” she said with a fond smile. “Which is precisely the caliber of journalist you want to blow open the covert operations of the command of the German Luftwaffe. I’m sure their Chancellor will be thrilled to know about it, especially now.”

“I agree,” Margaret affirmed, locking her hands in front of her while she stood at attention in front of her editor’s desk. “I will get hold of him immediately and see if he’ll be willing to knock some off his fee for an old friend.”

“I should hope so!” Gradwell’s double chin shivered as his voice escalated. “The man is a celebrated author now, so I am sure these insane excursions he embarks on with that rich idiot are not a feat of necessity.”

The ‘rich idiot’ Gradwell so fondly referred to was David Purdue. Gradwell had cultivated an increasing disrespect for Purdue through the recent years, due to the billionaire’s snubbing of a personal friend of Gradwell’s. The friend in question, Professor Frank Matlock of Edinburgh University, had been forced to resign as Department Head in the much clamored over Brixton Tower after Purdue had ceased his generous endowments towards the department. Naturally, a furor ensued over Purdue’s subsequent romantic involvement with Matlock’s favorite chew toy, the object of his misogynistic by-laws and reservations, Dr. Nina Gould.

The fact that this was all ancient history worthy of a decade and a half of water under the bridge made no difference to a bitter Gradwell. Now he was running the Edinburgh Post, a position he had attained with hard work and fair play, years after Sam Cleave had deserted the dusty halls of the newspaper.

“Yes, Mr. Gradwell,” Margaret replied politely. “I’ll get a hold of him, but what if I’m not successful in reeling him in?”

“In two weeks of world history will be made, Margaret,” Gradwell smirked like a Halloween rapist. “In just over a week the world will watch a live broadcast from the Hague, where the Middle East and Europe will sign a peace treaty to ensure the cessation of all military hostilities between the two worlds. A sure threat to that happening is the recent suicide flight of Dutch pilot Ben Grijsman, remember?”

“Yes, sir.” She bit her lip, knowing full well where he was going with this, but refusing to provoke his wrath by interrupting. “He got into an Iraqi air base and stole a plane.”

“That’s right! And crashed into the C.I.T.E. Head Quarters creating the fuck-up now unfolding. As you know, the Middle East obviously sent someone to retaliate by rogering a German air base!” he exclaimed. “Now tell me again how the reckless and sharp Sam Cleave will not jump at the chance to get into this story.”

“Point taken,” she smiled coyly, feeling deeply uncomfortable at having to watch her boss produce threads of saliva while he spoke passionately about the nascent situation. “I should go. Who knows where he is these days? I’ll have to start calling around promptly.”

“That’s right!” Gradwell roared after her as she made a beeline for her small office. “Hurry and get Cleave to cover this for us before another anti-peace prick gets a boner for suicide and brings about World War III!”

Margaret did not even glance at her colleagues as she rushed past them, but she knew that they were all having a good laugh at the delightful phrases Duncan Gradwell spat out. His choice words were an office joke. Margaret usually laughed loudest when the veteran editor of six prior press offices started getting excited about the news, but now she did not dare. What if he saw her giggle at what he considered to be a seriously newsworthy assignment? Imagine what he would thunder if he saw her smirk reflected in the large glass panels of her office?

Margaret looked forward to speaking to young Sam again. Then again, he had not been young Sam for a while now. But to her, he would always be the wayward and over-zealous news snout out to expose injustice wherever he could. He had been Margaret’s understudy in the previous era of the Edinburgh Post, when the world was still in the chaos of liberalism and the conservatives wanted to tighten the very freedom of every individual. Things had swung around drastically since the World Unity Organization took over the political administration of several former EU countries and several South American territories had broken away from what had once been Third World governments.

Margaret was not a feminist by any reach, but the World Unity Organization being predominantly run by women had showed a considerable difference in how they governed and resolved political tension. War efforts no longer enjoyed the favor they’d once received from male-dominated governments. Now, achievements in problem solving, invention and the optimization of resources profited from international endowments and investment strategies.

At the head of the W.U.O. was the chair of what was instituted as the Council for International Tolerance Efforts, Professor Marta Sloane. She was a former Polish ambassador to England who had won the last election to run the new union of nations. The Council’s main objective was to eliminate war threats by engaging in treaties of mutual compromise instead of terrorism and military engagement. Trade was more important than political hostility, Prof. Sloane always imparted in her speeches. In fact, it became a principle associated with her in all media.

“Why do we have to lose our sons in their thousands to sate the greed of a handful of old men sitting in office where war will never affect them?” she was heard proclaiming only days before she was elected by a landslide victory. “Why do we have to cripple economies and destroy the hard work of architects and masons? Or destroy buildings and kill innocent people, while modern warlords profit from our heartbreak and the severing of our bloodlines? Youth sacrificed to serve the unending circle of destruction is madness, perpetuated by the feeble-minded leaders presiding over your future. Parents losing their children, spouses lost, brothers and sisters ripped from us because of the ineptitude of aged and bitter men at resolving conflict?”

With her dark hair taken back in a braid and her trademark velvet choker that matched whatever suit she wore, the petite, charismatic leader shook the world with her seemingly simple cures for the destructive practices practiced by religious and political systems. In fact, once she’d been ridiculed by her official opposition for claiming that the spirit of the Olympics had turned into nothing but another exuberant fiscal generator.

She insisted that it should have been employed for the same reasons it was begotten — peaceful competition by which the winner is determined without casualties. “Why can we not go to war on a chess board, or on a tennis court? Even an arm wrestling match between two countries could determine which gets their way, for goodness sake! It’s the very same idea, only without the billions spent on military material or the countless lives destroyed by casualties between foot soldiers who have nothing to do with the proximal cause. These people kill each other, having no reason other than orders to do so! If you, my friends, cannot walk up to someone in the street and shoot them in the head without regret or psychological trauma,” she asked from her podium in the city of Minsk a while ago, “why do you force your children and siblings and spouses to do it by voting for these old-fashioned tyrants that perpetuate this atrocity? Why?”

Margaret did not care if the new unions were criticized for what the opposition campaigns called the advent of feminist rule or the insidious coup by agents of the Anti-Christ. She would support any ruler who stood against the senseless mass murder of our own human race in the name of power, greed and corruption. In essence, Margaret Crosby supported Sloane because the world was less heavy since she’d come to power. Dark veils that had covered age-old feuds were now addressed outright, allowing a channel of communication between begrudged countries.If it were up to me, the dangerous and immoral constraints of religion would be relieved of their hypocrisy, and dogmas of terror and subjugation would be abolished. Individualism is pivotal in this new world. Uniformity is for formal attire. Rules are for scientific principles. Freedom is about the individual, about respect and personal discipline. These will enrich each one of us in mind and body and allow us to be more productive, to be better at the things we pursue. And as we get better at what we do, we will learn humility. From humility comes amity.

Marta Sloane’s speech played on Margaret’s office computer while she looked up the last number she’d for Sam Cleave. She was excited to speak to him again after all this time, and could not help but cackle a little as she dialed his number. As the tone clicked into the first ring, Margaret was distracted by the bobbing frame of a male colleague just outside her window wall. He was waving wildly to get her attention, pointing to his watch and the flat screen of her computer.

“What the hell are you on about?” she said, hoping his aptitude for lip reading surpassed his hand signal skills. “I’m on the phone!”

Sam Cleave’s phone went to voicemail, so Margaret stopped her call to open the door and hear what the clerk was on about. Jerking open the door with a hellish scowl, she snapped, “What in God’s name is so important, Gary? I’m trying to get hold of Sam Cleave.”

“That’s just it!” Gary crowed. “Check the News. He’s on the news, already in Germany, at the Heidelberg Hospital where the reporter said the fellow that crashed the German plane was!”