they pulled into the bus station in Montpellier, where Ennis got down leaving his djellaba behind him on the overhead rack. It was just before seven.
Stone
Rue Saint Firmin was in the heart of the old town. Ennis found the landmark he was looking for, an Arc de Triomphe built to the glory of Louis the Great. If he remembered rightly Stone’s place was on the street to the right hand side going down from the arc, at number 16. It was an elegant off white stone building typical of Montpellier, constructed in the seventeenth century, and from the outset an apartment building.
It was almost nine when Ennis rung on the visiophone.
“Who’s there?”
“The King of Ireland!”
There was a silence, he was being scrutinised, he slipped back the hood of his djellaba.
“Beggorah! To be sure it's you! Entre old boy!”
“Ennis heard a click and pushed the heavy coach door, entering into a porch he found himself standing before a steel gate, like in a prison he thought to himself, but it was to keep intruders out, protect the residents. He waited before the camera for another click then pushed the gate open. He was in what appeared to be a medieval court, he looked around and saw several floors with balconies in stone and sculpted pillars, then he took the large wide stairway in front of him, the steps were worn by centuries of use by long dead residents and their visitors.
There was little light and he could not find the switch situated at each floor losing himself in the dark. He could not remember which floor Stone lived on, it was years since he had last visited him.
“Where are you?”
The light suddenly blinded him and he was surprised by an enormous dog.
“What’s this beast?”
“That’s Caesar, the most stupid animal in all of France and Navarre!”
“It’s not dangerous?”
“No, you’re the dangerous one! What are you doing here for Christ’s sake man,” he said laughing.
“It’s a long story.”
“I don’t doubt that, the bastards are looking for you everywhere.”
“Who?”
“Who do you think! The police!”
“Putain de merde!”
“Well I glad you haven’t forgotten your French. Come in quick, don’t speak so loud, things aren’t like they were before.”
He showed him into a spacious living room with a grand piano in one corner and modern paintings on the walls that contrasted with the sculpted ceiling and wall mouldings.
“Let’s get rid of those clothes,” he said hold his nose, “you want something to drink, perhaps you should take a shower first?”
“Yes, a glass of water, then a shower.”
“I’ll give you some fresh clothing, not the latest fashion, but clean, after that we’ll eat something and you can tell me everything.”
He showed Ennis the bathroom and gave him a plastic bag for his old clothes.
“By the way, the beard, don’t shave it off for the moment.”
A quarter of an hour later he rejoined Stone in the spacious kitchen where he was preparing a meal.
“Here taste this!”
“What is it?”
“Taste.”
Ennis took the glass that Stone had filled with a brownish liquid from a carafe.
“That my friend is good for the digestion, a herbalist around the corner from here recommended it to me, it’s a plant from Africa.”
Stone was a bio fanatic and an amateur of miraculous remedies and exotic cuisine.
“Now we’re going to eat a decent breakfast, an omelette with ginger, and sweet South American potatoes. I haven’t eaten meat for years now.’
As Stone prepared the meal Ennis recounted the story of his flight from Median Hurriya. Then changing the subject he turned to Stone and his life in France.
“Where is the family?”
“In Paris, Claire has abandoned me,” he said in a ferocious tone.
“It’s true?”
“Seriously, she’s in Paris with the two girls.”
“How are they?”
“Fine…I don’t like the type Celine is fixed up with, a real fascist, he works for the Francophone morning news. Can you imagine it, in the middle of the twenty first century the news is controlled by the state, every word approved by Paris, the worse thing is this dictator wants to drug us with his government’s philosophy of well being!”
Stone, a no longer very young Scot had lived in France for the best part of his life, he was one of those very rare Anglo-Saxons who spoke French without the least sign of an accent. Stone had always been a rebel, he was a journalist turned writer, as a young correspondent he had covered wars and crises in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Levant and Arabia. He had abandoned the press in despair of all that he had seen and experienced to consecrate his life to international geopolitical analysis, hoping that he would find an answer or at least an explanation to the world’s problems. His works were published in Europe and the USA, but his opinions caused him endless problems with the powerful.
“Our problem in Europe with this so called Federation is that we think we are the only ones capable of organising the world, and above all with our so called Judeo-Christian values. After five hundred years of discovery and domination we did not see the others coming.”
They watch the TS London news. The president of Nova Rossiya was in London on an official visit at the invitation of the Lord Lieutenant of New England.
“Look always clowning, he is the king of nothing, like Pinocchio, speaking as though England decided the future of the planet, he does not even have the Scots as his subjects.”
Stone voiced in Paris Info and they half interestedly watched a report from Brussels on import quotas for China.
“Finally, what’s changed in the last twenty five years? I’ve been here over fifteen years already, in a building that’s three hundred and fifty years old, it’s true that my kitchen produces hot water or ice on demand, the equipment is in carbon fibre and I cook with nuclear electricity, but the furniture is still in wood. Of course there is the TS in every room, it’s different, but in reality it’s still the old fashioned television, like fifty years ago, with the same old shit.”
“You haven’t changed. Instead of complaining why don’t you pour me a little of that excellent wine you used to have.”
“Listen maybe you’re the King of Ireland, but if you’re not happy I’ll sling you out and then you’ll see how things are!”
He fished out a bottle and filled Ennis’ glass.
“Albignac wants us to shut up, enjoy ourselves, we live a in a country where we have everything, even growth has almost come to a standstill for our ecologist friends, everything is fine except for all the poor Horban bastards, we don’t work anymore, we amuse the planet, we invent fashions, they come to see us, just like a huge theme park, Galloworld! Anything we don’t like we throw out, next door,” he said pointing his thumb over his should.
“But that’s just what you wanted.”
“Not exactly, at least not me old boy!”
“But the majority had systematically elected governments who have closed their eyes to reality, until it was almost too late. The consequences are dramatic and now the time bomb is not over the water, but at our door.”
“The democratic model that existed forty years ago is finished. We are all so equal that the least difference tilts, but in reality we are all prisoners in this reality, watched, numbered, every step of our lives planned in advance.”
“Generations dreamed of this utopia?”
“Utopia? We can’t even park our cars where we want to, we are forced to pay every kind of tax God invented, we can’t choose how we educate our children, we can’t even be sick!”
“Not like ‘next door’.”
“Our freedom, liberty, call it what you like, has become a fiction. What’s more the government we have chosen now wants to punish non-conformists by withdrawing the only right the remains, the right to wo
rk!”
“Wonderful.”
“You know next door, our neighbours…I’m sorry I have difficulty using the name they have given it…there was a population of two million thirty years ago, you know how many they are today?”
“I don’t know, perhaps three or four million.”
“My arse, that’s what they say in their press, it’s more than twice that!”
“Why do they hide it?”
“They’re frightened, they wouldn’t have the aid from the Federation, in addition it would frighten the life out of the French!”
Ennis contemplated his glass in silence.
“What is worse, it’s us who finances them.”
“That’s the price of a peaceful life.”
“Peaceful my arse! Look at free Algharb! Free from what, from who? France? Algeria?”
“I suppose it was once one of the greatest cities of the South, France and Europe, full of promise, but now the promises are gone…. It’s true that it was always a Mediterranean city, never really at ease with the North, but today it’s future is with the south.”
“Now the managers and engineers have gone, it’s become a symbol of the failure of France’s North-South politics. It’s a kind of Bantustan that we have created in our country, when I say a reserve it’s not against those people there, but why in France?”
“Was there another choice?”
“Another choice! In their country of course! In their putain de pays!”
Ennis was surprised by Stone’s reaction, his vehemence.
“Let me give you another example. The Asmat of Papua Niugini, whose name means ‘humans’ that is human beings, consider all other tribes as Manowe or ‘food’, those who can be eaten. The world is made up of