Book 3 excerpt

“……A little bird told me something bad is about to go down here so I have come as if a misplaced errant knight to see if I could help” an Oxford scholar told Watson.

“I cannot see what good you can do” Watson told Oscar Wilde.

“It is Ismail Charles who is about to do the propaganda of the act isn’t it?” Wilde asked.

Watson started. “Yes. How did you know?”

Wilde surveyed the covert armed police hidden here and there around the lecture hall. Then he surveyed the gun in Watson’s hand. Then the fashionable young Irishman fussed with his carnation pinned to one lapel of his fashionable overcoat. The tall but oddly unhandsome Irishman sniffed the green carnation cavalierly.

“Ismail inhabited many exotic cliques and outre cabals where he experimented with diverse petit adventives of the mildly risque before returning to his dominating father’s dubious embrace after being sent down for alcoholism which poor Ismail naively assured me would be cured only by embracing a cult instead of a lover. I am normally tolerant of esoteric cabals myself being naturally esoteric and exotic. But Ismail was a troubled orchid of a youth. And the poor lad would cry when in his cups. Being a charitable soul having sins of my own I always forgave him despite the fact his nose got dreadfully red whenever he cried. But then rumors surfaced about these forgers being killed. So I investigated. And I confirmed that Ismail has been sighted at some, if not all, of the crime scenes. The forgers in question were the Fallen Angels of Oxford and Cambridge. Being a potential member of their circle of genteel damnation myself I never judged or condemned them for their fall from academic grace. Indeed I praised their charmingly petty criminality. If only Evil was always so beguiling banal! Some of their artful forgeries of esoteric provenances of doggy antiques were positively exquisite and …. Excuse me! Of course!

Crises requires the laconic!” Wilde explained as his one asset of true beauty, his deep grey eyes, flashed. “Alas! Laconic is not my penchant! So! Ismail Charles is a convert to Islam! But his father was not his seducer! Rather it was father’s aide de camp! A certain Gerard. Late of Oxford. An ex-athletic of an overrated sort. What Ismail saw in Gerard is beyond my normally brilliant imagination to comprehend. Mediocre looks and thinning bouffant. A penchant to fat which I can sympathize with though I do not sympathize with anything else about Gerard. I declare! Once anyone departs the charmed spires and meadows of Oxbridge their beauty evaporates entirely! The tedium of the mundane world will do that! Alas! I should know! I myself am reduced to a potential future of a dismal job of an editor of a magazine! Well! Anyway!

The dominate enemy you face is Mr. Gerard. Not Ismail! Ismail will be the frondeur. The decoy. Gerard will carry the real bomb. Before he was sent down Gerard was strictly a rower, rugby thug, and second rate cricket player with neither finesse or timing. All muscle which is turning to fat and no brains. Sportsmen! All beefy sweat and showers in the nude! You will be amazed how many of these noisy Siegfrieds and Lancelots bellowing of their glorious masculinity while taking boxing classes from that dreadful Marquise of Queensberry are sodomites! Including Queensberry! Teaching boxing in the nude no less!. Personally I never felt I had to resort to that sort of slight of hand voyeurism.

Gerard is also a coward. I won’t go into the sordid details because I don’t believe in either blackmail or else physical intimidation. Let’s just say that when he tried to teach me a lesson in Rugby vulgarity of thuggery I taught him a lesson in Newtonian Physics. I usually don’t lose my temper but Gerard is enough to try anyone’s patience. Anyway! But the key thing is this: Gerard will assume the economists he despises are also cowards because he is a coward.

So whatever Gerard is planning will hinge on the emotion of cowardice. That and self hatred of course! Anyone who embraces a cult that throws homosexuals off cliffs yet promises pearly boys in Paradise is a cult that attracts hypocrites and cowards along with no end of closeted sodomites! That or else the Catholic priesthood. All of that delicious lace and incense! Oh the closets that so many self liars inhabit! Gerard wants to dies because he hates what he is.

On the other hand Ismail is afraid of dying because he is not quite entirely sure there really is a Paradise or Heaven or Nirvana or Promised Land or misplaced Eden up or down or anywhere. It is not a case of being misplaced. Ismail fears that there is no place after the grave. And he does not hate himself for being homosexual. He simply does not want to go to jail because of it. Am I being of any help to you at all?” the tall but oddly unhandsome young man asked Watson. The Irishman’s intensely grey eyes meet Watson’s hazel eyes. “Shoot Gerard but not fatally and Ismail will run toward his lover instead of toward you! And then Gerard will kill Ismail and himself and save you the trouble. We always kill the thing we love as you and I learned at Brighton.”

“Yes. You have just helped me” Watson said softly as Wilde nodded. “Thank you Mr. Wilde…..”

“….Why did you bring them here you fool!” Lord Charles shouted as he marched into the ‘The Selimiye Ayasofya. The Conquest And Humiliation Of The Christian World’.

“I did not know where else to bring them!” Bags shouted all but hysterical. “They know where we are! These bastards left a trail even an ignoramus could follow! They are coming! What are we going to do?”

“Then you were an ignoramus to let them leave a trail straight here!” Charles bellowed. A black shadow moved in the far shadows of the bastion as the late afternoon light waned toward the West. The gathering shadows deepened but one shadow moved in those deepening shadows!

“What are we going to do?” Bags cried . “Gates is arrested! Rufus is gone! The rats are abandoning the sinking ship! This isn’t what was suppose to happen! You said we had thousands of followers! So where are they? You said we had an army of 5^th column fellow travelers! So where are they? You said the faithful would raise up! So where are they? You said…”

“Oh shut up you hysterical fool and let me think!” Charles shouted. “We will yet save the day with propaganda of the act!”

“What propaganda of the act?” Bags shouted hysterically. “The bomb blowing up some damn London School of Economics conference? Who gives a damn about that?”

“The propaganda of the act when the Mahdi beheads General Charles Gordon!” Charles retorted. “Beheading Britannia’s greatest living Christian hero! Proving to the world that Britannia is doomed and Christianity is castrated! The severed head of Gordon will usher in The Selimiye Ayasofya! The Conquest And Humiliation Of The Christian World!’! The beheading of Gordon will unleash the prophesy of the end of the world and the final predicted triumph of Islam! When the crosses are broken and every stone and tree cries out to slay the Jews! Then we will be ….”

“We can’t wait that long! The authorities are hunting us down! Now!” Bags screamed. Deeper in the growing shadows a shadow moved.

Without turning around Charles nodded. “Then we will become martyrs” he said calmly……

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