Free Fanatics: Zero Tolerance by David J. Ferguson Page A

self-pity: why does it have to be me? Why? It’s not fair! She was asking for it!
    He shuffled about for a few moments making abortive movements this way and that, then stopped and stared helplessly through the doorway, waiting to become a someone’s arrestee.
    Part of the way up the lamp post standing half-skewed outside the shop on the other side of the road, something small flapped: the edge of a poster.
    Something in his brain clicked into place. Of course, he thought. Of course. It was not only a way to get off the hook, but a means of making money, too. I’ll claim she was a Lemming. Her friend’s dead. No-one will be able to say any different.
     
    *****
     
    Carson Rodden was right about opportunity knocking, but not everyone understood that the opportunities presented by a situation like the current one were double-edged.
    A handful of politicians from South of the border (when they had stopped biting their nails and their bowels had begun to return to normal functioning) saw opportunity knocking; a dream which had resided in the province of Cloud Cuckoo Land for decades suddenly landed in their open palms. All they had to do was grasp it.
    “We just present it to them as a fait accompli, ” said one. “They need help; we haven’t been touched by the bombs. We send in help from our emergency services, and of course they’ll have to be accompanied by our Army. The situation is very volatile up North. By the time it’s all over, we’ll be entrenched too deeply to move, and we’ll be the de facto government. The Brits won’t be able to budge us without a major effort, which is the last thing they can afford at this time.”
    “They’ll probably be grateful to hand the Irish problem back to the Irish,” said another. “They’ve been hit very badly.”
    A third laughed. “They probably have no idea just how badly. I can just picture them, hiding away in their bunkers - it could be months before they work up the courage to come out!”
    A fourth man, who’d been on the telephone, slammed the receiver down bad-temperedly. “I can’t get through to the Taoseach,” he told the others.
    They exchanged worried looks.
    “If we wait, we’ll miss our chance,” said the first. “This could take up to a day to get rolling. I say we instruct the army to go ahead and deploy.”
    Everyone nodded.
     
    *****
     
    The Bureaucrat looked up for a moment from the form he was checking (his last “customer” had filled it in with the bad grace which had become routine here lately, skipping more questions than she had answered, so that it was all but useless for official purposes) and his somebody-give-me-strength glance landed on a sullen-looking man in his twenties. Not another one, he thought.
    It wasn’t his sullen expression that betrayed his errand to the Bureaucrat; very few of the people queuing at these desks felt as if they had anything much to smile about - they were there to help compile a list of the missing or deceased, after all. No ; the clues were in the way the young man kept fidgeting and quickly looking around him as if expecting at any moment to be denounced for something - in his air of pent-up nervous energy that looked completely out of place in these queues of people who showed only listless despair or vacant shock. It’s true what they say, the Bureaucrat thought: guilty people run away even when no-one is chasing them. He had a fair idea of what was making this one feel guilty. Ten to one it was the posters again.
    The Bureaucrat shoved a form across the desk, gesturing towards a pencil stub secured to the desktop with string and sellotape. “Mister -” he began. His tone made it a question.
    “McCandless. Barry McCandless.”
    “Mr McCandless, would you fill that in, please? I’ll be with you in a moment.”
    The young man looked at the form blankly for a few moments, as if it was completely irrelevant to his purpose. “Look,” he said, “the reason I’m here -” He hesitated