ABIGAIL

Every night, at 10:30, Abigail’s father closes the front door, climbs into his rusty Toyota and drives away.

Today I’m pleased that Welcome to my world is able to present an exciting new piece of work by an author who, I’m positive, has a long future ahead of her – and may the gods preserve all those who get in her way.

So, I am forced proud to present the first ever published fiction by my daughter, Niamh McGrath (aged 5).

THE GOOD DOG

One day a dog went to the shop.

And what to you think she saw?

She saw sosijis. [In the words of that sage Roy Walker, "say what you see"]

She ran out of the shop with the sosijis.

But she didn’t steal them. They were free.

She was a good dog.

Of course other critics may be tougher but I particularly admire the strong moral code running through the piece. She gets that from her mother.

King Rook

I was born in a housing estate at the foot of a steep hill. The top of the hill is ringed with trees, ancient sessile oaks, wych elm and horse chestnut. The rooks owned the woods. These were big birds with heavy black beaks and bodies matt as coal dust but their hoods shone like satin and framed beaded eyes that saw everything.

Every evening the rooks welcomed nightfall with a great dance. The clamour, at first just one or two birds but soon dozens and then hundreds and eventually as many as a thousand rooks, swooped around and around in a black cloud as, in small groups, the birds returned from their day’s scavenging. In the valley below the housemartins and swifts zipped and flitted between the rows of houses but they flew in the shadow of the rooks.

Finally, at some unknowable signal, the rooks would drop from the sky to their roosts in the trees. For a few minutes the trees swayed and rattled as the birds noisily settled down and when all went quiet, night had come.

Nothing in the estate was safe from these birds. Cats, small dogs, rabbits – any kind of unwary pet or careless wild thing was a potential target. A ruffling of feathers, a chorus of rough croaks and something vulnerable would squeal. Afterwards the birds would stride casually across the road or on the little scrub of grass that was our playground and dare us to challenge them.

My mother was terrified of the birds.

I was the first baby born in our estate. It was newly built, a frantic response to the civil rights campaign for Catholic that was rapidly turning into the bloody Troubles – a door shut after that horse had bolted. My parents moved in while the houses around them were still being built and before people learned what it was like to live with the rooks. It was a bright spring morning and my mother left my pram in the garden – for all the shootings and the bombs erupting around them, that still felt a safe thing to do. She left me there and went back into the house to clean or cook or do whatever one of the thousand other things she did to make our lives that little bit better.

When she came back, just a few minutes later, a huge rook was sitting on the handle of my pram, staring in at me.

She screamed and rushed forward, waving frantic arms, trying to scare the bird away.

The rook just stared at her.

My mother stopped.

The crow looked at her, then back down at me, and then spread its wings and launched itself into the air.

My mother described the rook as a monster – vast as an eagle, darker than the night.

“The King Rook,” she’d called it and my dad had laughed at her.

But I know the King Rook is real.

He came back.

He came back and sometimes he took my things.

He took my Action Man from the garden, my toy car from the playground and my favourite tee-shirt from the washing line.

And I knew it was the King Rook because when he took something, he always left a gift.

A pyramid of snail shells, each one punched open and empty, the delicate skull of a rat, a pebble smoothed and polished by flowing water so that it shone like a jewel. And, one morning, planted in the centre of our tiny front garden like a banner, or a sign of ownership, a single perfect feather – so black that it hurt to look at.

They were magical signs. Signs that no matter how bad things got around me – and there were times when things got very bad – that I was protected. The King Rook was watching over me.

I have the collection of gifts spread in front of me now. If I concentrate hard, I can still feel the magic and the security. But it’s getting harder. My dad calls it rubbish, and sometimes I can see it with his eyes.

This is my last day in this house. Tomorrow I will leave for university. Tomorrow night I will be sleeping in a different country. I’ll come back, of course, but some part of me already knows this will never really be my home again. Part of me can’t wait to fly.

And part of me does not want to go.

It’s the end of September. The summer has been long and hot and even though you can already feel the days shortening, today has been warm and clear and the evening sky is bright and cloudless.

I wrap each piece of my collection carefully in paper and padding and place them in a plastic tub, then I put the tub carefully in the centre of my rucksack so it will be safe on the journey.

I go down stairs, give my mum a hug and go outside.

The rooks are coming home to roost, the first few already circling high above the woods, and tonight I want to watch them for the last time.

Tonight I am going to climb the hill and talk with the King Rook.

THE SPITFIRE

The Spitfire was a sleek metal thing with a space for a battery underneath that made the propeller spin.I had coveted it for months as it had sat in the window of Morrow’s toy shop – the tiny moulded plastic pilot alert, day and night, for Messherschmidts and Focke Wolfs that would never pounce.

Now, possessing it at last, I admired the plane from every angle, holding it gently with the tips of my fingers. It was a Mark V, with beautiful curved wings and a shark like nose tipped with three propeller blades. Pressing a tiny, almost invisible, button on the bottom released the undercarriage, which descended slowly and locked into place with a satisfying click.

The letters EBZ were stencilled on the side of the plane with the RAF roundel on the side and wings, yellow, blue, white and red.

I brought it down to land gently on the kitchen table.

“Happy birthday,” my da said.

“Thanks – ” it was all I had time to say before my brother burst in.

“What d’ye want with this British bollocks,” he laughed, sweeping his hand across the table.

The Spitfire skittered away from me, rose briefly, its propeller turning free and for a moment it seemed set to take to the skies and fly. Then gravity gripped it, it turned over and plunged nose-down onto the hard-tiled floor.

The propeller shattered, plastic shards flashing across the floor. The canopy split like an egg-shell exposing the pilot to the elements. The tail was bent and twisted.

My brother stood hand over his mouth, shocked at what he’d done, his silly grin turning sick. I turned to my da, who bent to pick up the pieces of my toy.

The Spitfire never flew again.

Friday Flash Fiction: Leaving The World

Sept sat cross-legged in the centre of an ordinary living room and pulled The World from his head one wire at a time. Blood ran down the pale skin on his back, staining the blue shorts that were the only clothes he wore, and spread across the wheat coloured carpet in a growing pool. The furniture, stylish, modern, tasteful, had been pushed into the corners. The screens were off. Pictures and paintings were turned to the wall. A small scattering of provisions and necessary tools surrounded Sept, everything else had been cast aside. He had prepared for this. He was ready.

He ignored the blood around him but every few minutes he had to stop to push back the flow of thick crimson that threatened to blind him. He didn’t need his eyes, he could finish this without them, but the stinging pain was distracting.

He ran a finger along his scalp until he felt the slight rise of skin that marked where a wire burrowed through and then he dug his long thumb nail (he’d grown specially for this moment) into the flesh sliding it forward until he felt the slight resistance that showed he’d hooked the wire.

He’d winced at first, each time he’d jammed the nail into his own scalp, but by now his head was dull, distant mass of pain and each new wound was barely noticed. The contents of the empty bottle of vodka at his feet had helped.

With his thumbnail under a wire, he’d follow it forward to the point where it met a connector and burrowed its way through his skull. Here Sept paused for a moment, closing his eyes, softly licking his lips, taking a longer breath, holding on to the moment of anticipation. And then he’d flick his thumb forward and there would be the slightest “pop!” as the wire was freed from its connector and a little bit of The World slipped away.

Sept could not let himself get distracted by this small step closer to freedom, for this was a moment of struggle. The wire, part-mechanical, part living thing was programmed to reattach itself and it would writhe with surprising energy. The thing wasn’t strong, but it was quick and Sept had to use both hands to shove it into the throbbing bundle that he’d corralled on the back of his neck with an old red rubber band.

And then the process began again. Working with his thumb, methodically from left to right, finding each wire, popping it free, tying it up and all the while the world slipped away. There were hundreds of wires, it was a slow job.

He paused. Reached for one of the bottles of water that he’d set out before him, took as sip, and then poured half the bottle over his head. He wasn’t worried about infection, but the blood on his head was clotting quickly, tangling his hair and forming a thick, crackling coating on his scalp that made finding the wires more difficult. Pink water sloshed across the floor, flowing up to the edge of a white rug and then ebbing, leaving behind stained woollen fibres.

Sept went back to removing The World.

Warning lights were flashing now, even when he closed his eyes. Screeds of system warnings scrolled up across his eyeline. He tried to blink them away, but the interface responses were sluggish. External links were powered down, but he kept having to deny emergency contacts to bring an engineer.

Pop! Pop! Pop!

The visual interface failed.

Sept sighed. The World was almost gone. Lights flickered as the system attempted to reroute. It came up for a second then crashed in a rainbow smear.

Almost done.

Pop! Pop!

He grabbed the thick cord of writhing wires, following them to where they came together on his neck, at the top of his spine. Here The World box sat and whirred at the interface between body and mind.

Sept gave the wires a gentle, experimental tug.

This was the most dangerous moment. The wires from The World box threaded throughout the body. If he got this wrong, the stories said, he could expect paralysis or even instant death.

He paused for a moment.

Did he really want this?

Suddenly the effects of the vodka seemed to leave him. All at once he was aware of the steel-sharp pain that ripped at his scalp and the tepid fluids pooled uncomfortably around him and the chill smell of blood.

The World was gone.

He was all alone.

And he wasn’t afraid.

Sept gripped the wires that connected his brain to The World and he yanked.

SIXTY SEVEN PARROTS

I came down the stairs in a rush, late for work again, hair wet, half shaved, hopping from one leg to another as I tried to scramble into my jeans.

My head hurt. Another night fighting to sleep only to wake panting, exhausted and soaked in sweat when dreams finally came. I went to the tap, swallow two ibuprofens and took deep swigs of water. The headache was mostly from dehydration but these days, if I drink water at night, then I’m up pissing three or four times and sleep is hard enough to come by.

I stood up, swallowing the water, and for the first time looked out the window.

Perched on the ledge, looking in at me was a bright green bird with a red beak.

I choked slightly on the tablets. Cough. Rubbed my eyes and look again.

There were two birds there now.

Parrots.

Staring at me.

I stepped towards the window.

The birds cocked their heads, welcoming me forward and inviting me to look beyond them.

The garden, an overgrown green patch, a battered shed and a stumpy apple tree was filled with parrots.

I opened the back door.

The birds shuffled backwards, wary but clearly not afraid.

I counted two dozen. Then three. I goet up to sixty-seven birds before my sleep-befuddled head registered the futility of counting. They’re dancing on the branches of the tree, hopping on the roof of the shed, shuffling among the long grass at the foot of the apple tree pecking lumps out of the windfalls.

Sixty-seven parrots staring at me.

“Pieces of eight?” I asked.

They shuffle as though they’d heard that one before and didn’t think much of it the first time.

“Sorry.”

I sat on the step.

I was late for work.

Sixty-seven parrots (more, far more) were watching me and I didn’t know what to do.

But they didn’t seem to care.

Scritch-Scritch

The monsters first came at night, which seemed natural. First there were stories – urban legends and the ramblings of madmen – then we heard the screams rebounding from the high walls of emptying cities, then blurred pictures and then we all saw them. They stalked the streets at night and we surrendered the world to them until the sun rose, praying not to hear the scritch-scritch of their approach.It was not such a hard thing to do. Many of us had always suspected that our mastery of the night was tenuous, had sensed that our attempts to tame the darkness with flickering gas or harsh neon had always been futile. The night belonged to monsters, what difference did it make if they were imaginary or real, human or other? These creatures were only taking back what we never felt we owned.There was fear and anger and resistance. We demanded that someone do something. We called on the government to save us. First the police, then the army, were set the task of winning back the night. Scritch-scritch.The monsters tore them to shreds. So we locked our doors, sealed our windows and huddled around our fires and listened. And we learned to live with it.Follow the rules. Stay inside after sunset. Keep doors and windows closed, locked, barricaded and blocked. Don’t cook. Keep a blackout. Keep quiet.

We became burrowers and troglodytes and we survived.We reached an accommodation with the things that were preying on us.

Scritch-scritch.But then they started to come in the daytime.First we heard them moving in tunnels and sewers.

Scritch-scritch.Then they began to move in the shadows. It was the poorest who suffered most. Those who lived crammed together where the daylight never really reached the streets and where packed tenement corridors never saw the sun.

But that was only the beginning. The monsters adapted and moved out.

Scritch-scritch.Soon they were slipping through the daylight, their oily, slickly-sleek coats tearing rainbows from the sunshine, globular eyes squinting against the light, ragged yellow rows of teeth or horns lolling down, tearing grooves in the roadway to mark their passing and always the scritch-scritch of their claws.Scritch-scritch. Move on. Scritch-scritch. Please don’t stop. Silence. And they pounce, wailing, drowning out the brief screams and the wet sound of tearing flesh.There was no longer an accommodation.

There was only the hunted and the prey.

Scritch-scritch.

 Anyhow, here’s what it is:

Rum and Slaves

The colour of the money passing through the accounts of DeGris and Languedoc may be as green as in any other bank, but the colour of its customer’s blood is invariably blue. The company began life as a goldsmith’s and issued its first cheque in 1668. Today it serves a liberal scattering of the world’s royal families and literally dozens of dukes, archdukes, counts and earls. A fortune alone is not enough to persuade DeGris and Languedoc to open its doors to a customer. Breeding, here at least, still counts.

From the street the bank’s London headquarters appear a model of understatement as it nestles, almost unnoticed, a stone’s throw from Threadneedle Street’s Old Lady. Three granite steps, worn smooth, lead to a pair of slim, unassuming doors that open onto a richly-carpeted and oak-panelled foyer that speaks of deep, deep wealth. When the doors close, modern London disappears and what remains is the sense of permanence, power and, of course, discretion. A few moments in one of the deep, comfortably worn, leather armchairs that are scattered across the foyer and the cares of the outside world fade. This, you are left in no doubt, is an institution on which you can rely.

William Betancourt DeGris, the eleventh generation of DeGris to lead the bank since the founder James, strides through this space with an unmistakable air of command. He is a remarkable character for a number of reasons. His straight back and firm manner leave no one in any doubt that this former Coldstream Guard, who signed on as an ordinary trooper and rose to the rank of major, remains a forceful character. It is revealing, his friends and opponents tell me, that he prefers to be referred to by his relatively modest military rank rather than the long line of titles earned or bought by his predecessors. It signifies that despite the inherited dukedom, earldoms and baronies, this is a self made man. It also points to the fact that, though he has forsaken the battlefield (he saw action in Northern Ireland, Tehran and the first Texan War) he remains, at heart, a warrior.

I am struck, at once, by his candour.

“Rum and slaves,” he says when I ask about the bank’s longevity. When I suggest that, in this politically correct era, many organisations would be circumspect about admitting to such a past he shrugs it off, confident that his clientele are immune to such modishness.

“Can’t change more than three hundred years of history,” he says. “And wouldn’t want to.”

DeGris and Languedoc, no one here refers to the bank by the City vulgarism DG&L, reeks of the confidence of wealth and age. It permeates every corner of the surprisingly spacious building. The walls are lined with a collection of gilt-framed oil paintings that would shame many galleries. Major DeGris pauses briefly before “his favourite of the Rembrandts,” stiffening slightly as though this energetic man might salute the old master’s work.

But any sense that DeGris and Languedoc might somehow be caught in a timewarp is quickly dispelled by a glance into offices where bright young men sit behind arrays of computers that look as though they might be overseeing operations on some far-fetched NASA mission. It’s no surprise, then, that the first group I am introduced to all appear to have PhDs in mathematics or physics from places like MIT and Cambridge. They’re a polite, almost deferential, bunch who look instinctively to the Major for a lead when I ask questions. Once started, however, seem quite happy to chat openly about what they do, though I confess I’m quickly left in the dark by their jargon and their enthusiasm.

We move on and Major DeGris laughs affectionately about “his boys”. When I ask, though about how an institution like DeGris and Languedoc comes to terms with working with in the twenty-first century, his smile fades.

“It certainly wasn’t easy,” he says softy. He pauses in front of a door, opens it and ushers me inside. After the plush opulence of the rest of the bank, DeGris’s own office is almost Spartan. There is a large, plain desk in dark wood, lit by an incongruously modern angle-poise lamp and a slim portable PC humming on his desk. The dark wooden panelling is interrupted only by a portrait of the bank’s founder, James DeGris, that one might almost assume was intended as an insult, so aggressively, stereotypical is the portrayal of Jewishness beneath the crackled varnish. The modern Major settled himself into a stylishly modern office chair behind his desk and caught me looking at his forefather.

“Not actually a blood relation, you know,” he says with a bright grin. “The third earl was a bastard, apparently.”

“Which explains your blond hair?”

“Exactly,” the Major laughs. “Illegitimate, but reassuringly Aryan.”

“So why keep him here?”

“Oh, he was the best of all of them,” the Major’s smile is disarming and his admiration for the not-quite ancestor on the wall is obvious. “A fierce little bastard who made himself so indispensable to the ruling class that they had to choke on their racism. He practically bankrolled the whole country after Charles the second bankrupted the place with the third Dutch war. Without his support, who knows what would have happened to the Stuarts. The Dutch pretender might have won. It was a close run thing.”

I nod politely, but it’s the present I’m really interested in.

“You took over the bank at a difficult time,” I say.

The Major pauses, then he nods, conceding that a history lesson is not what I’m here for.
“We’d lost our way in the eighties,” he says. “We’d got too brash, too fierce. Too many people had watched Wall Street and thought it was something to aspire to. We had to get back to basics.”

The Decision that changed the life Fabrice Colliseo

A life does not flow evenly from spring to the ocean, its passage is broken by rapids and falls, twists and turns. The choices we make define a life’s course. Some decisions take us over a threshold where the effort required to backtrack, to paddle against the turbulence and cross to another stream, requires more strength and dedication than most can muster.

Which decisions will plunge us over a precipice? We may not consciously take a decision at all, but drift into the maw of the momentous. But, even when conscious of the act of choosing, sometimes the greatest consequences spring from the apparently inconsequential. Some lives change by turning right instead of left, leaving when they could have stayed, or saying “I love you” but meaning “I want you.”

But a few people know, the very moment they make their choice, that their life has changed forever.

For Fabrice Colliseo that moment came early. He was barely out of his teens when he made up his mind kill a man. That man was Alfonso, clever, handsome and beloved Alfonso. Alfonso the priest. Alfonso, his brother.

Fabrice did not have his brother’s fancy education, but knew enough of theology to know that, having made his choice, he was as guilty of the sin as if he’d already dipped his hands in his brother’s blood. The actual committing of the murder was inconsequential and could wait for the perfect moment. But the knowledge that he now bore a mark that could not be confessed and could never be forgiven resigned Fabrice to his damnation.

So Fabrice was set free.

Fabrice had been a shy boy whose fear had turned sour in his belly and made the man withdrawn and untrusting. He had been morose when sober but bellicose in wine.

Now, reborn, Fabrice had nothing to fear since nothing could be worse than damnation. So Fabrice relaxed. He joked with neighbours, his laughter echoed around the high-walled streets of his home town, he offered a helping hand to all in need, he devoted time and money to good works and soon he became the most welcome visitor in any house in the town.

Though hardly handsome Fabrice was well set financially and his new demeanour and the high regard with which the people of the town came to hold him made him attractive. Soon he found himself with a pretty wife who was devoted to her husband. Their first child came quickly, and many more followed.

“What was it that brought so great a change in you?” Fabrice’s mother asked, with the boldness of the aged, one Sunday when all the family had gathered together and Alfonso had finished offering Grace.

“My brother,” Fabrice replied without hesitation.

“Of course,” she said. “Alfonso.”

The answer made Fabrice’s mother happy for it confirmed that everything that was good in her life flowed from her saintly, priested son. But Fabrice watched the way Alfonso bowed his head in mock humility and remade his vow to strike down his brother.

Years went by.

The mother of Fabrice and Alfonso died. She was ancient but still her loss was sudden. Fabrice held her hand as she faded away but her last words were for her Alfonso, then far away tending to some bishop.

Fabrice’s upward trajectory continued. His decency and honesty saw his reputation grow and he enjoyed both material comfort and the respect of almost all those who knew him. He was a man of standing now, not just in his own commune but in the whole department. Even lords from Paris were known to descend upon him for his advice when dealing with local affairs.

The fortunes of Alfonso did not quite wane, but his assured ascent did falter. Without the belief and the constant driving force of his mother he seemed to loose momentum. His rise within the clergy reached what his mother would have regarded as a rather paltry peak with his appointment as parish priest. His belly widened and his youthful beauty faded, his hair thinned and his skin became blotched in a way that suggested he was becoming too fond of wine.

Then came the scandal.

A girl, a maid in the parish house, ran through the streets weeping with her dress torn. Her father came to Fabrice. He was sorry to involve a good man in this, he said, but the town knew that his daughter was not the first to have born such indignity. Something must be done.

The bishop became involved and Alfonso was cast into that internal exile which the Catholic Church has had so long to perfect. There was to be no public humiliation, for that would damage the church. Alfonso was “ill” and that sickness would prevent him continuing with his duties as parish priest. The people of the town came together to celebrate Alfonso’s years of service and even those few angry enough to express their feelings in public bit their tongues out of respect for Fabrice.

But Alfonso knew that he was disgraced.

Fabrice offered Alfonso refuge in his own house. He moved the old priest into a room high in the eaves and fed him and provided all the wine the old man could drink. Alfonso brooded and spoke only to his brother. Fabrice became his brother’s keeper, his confidante and even his confessor. Alfonso was worn out, his mind was often confused and the disappointments of his life stacked up behind rheumy eyes to force out floods of tears at unpredictable moments. Before long his health failed and Alfonso refused to leave his bed.

Now, at last, it was time.

Fabrice climbed the stone stairs from the kitchens through his family’s rooms and the servants’ quarters. He carried a bowl of soup, a bottle of red wine and bread – his brother’s lunch. Alfonso’s room was higher still, up rough wooden steps. He pushed up open the door into the dim room, slivers of the afternoon light sliced the room capturing for a moment, swirling galaxies of dust.

Alfonso was asleep. Fabrice laid the bowl, bottle and bread on a small table and approached the bed.

He looked down on his brother and it occurred to him that he no longer had to do this. He had surpassed the priest. Looking down on the old man before him he felt only pity.

And yet he had made this choice long ago. The river had flowed this way for too long, its path was too deeply eroded for it now to leap its banks and start of a new course. The choice he had made had brought him happiness, strength and pride. This was the price that had to be paid.

He pulled a pillow from beneath Alfonso’s head.

The priest woke, smacking his lips, blinking and staring at his brother.

“Is it time?”

“Yes,” said Fabrice and lowered the pillow. “It is time.”

Stone must roll

The rusting husks of Soviet-era industry litter the Balkans. Shuttered chemical plants smear rainbows across ground water in Serbia, cold and rusting furnaces rot in Bulgaria, in Montenegro the wind howls through the girdered skeletons of dead factories and in Macedonia, in Bosnia and in

In Albania the decay is worst of all.

A country never far from the brink of bankruptcy and starvation even in Hoxha’s heyday, the collapse of communism and the rampant corruption of the supposedly democratic regimes that followed have hollowed out the country. Away from the coast (and the modest, tourist inspired wealth of the cities of Sarandë and Vlorë) into the foothills of the

On the reverse slopes vast, slow machines move with unswerving precision and direct vast powers. The site bakes in the summer but the winter lays thick blankets of snow that refuses to shift until late spring. The sun rises and sets, but the machines move onward. In snow, rain and heatwave, the machines move forward. Vast arrays of lights turning successive twilights and midnights into perpetual noons, and the machines move on.And at the centre of it all is one man, driving everything.

There is a cliché, when writing about men like Sebastian Syphus, they are supposed to be feared by their enemies and respected by their friends .

There is no such division amongst those who know Syphus.

He is universally feared. And the closer one gets to him, progressing through layers of henchmen and courtiers, the more obvious that fear becomes.

He has been described as the archetypal post-Soviet oligarch, a self-made man who has pillaged and murdered, crossed and double-crossed, raped his homeland and smuggled the wealth abroad.

And yet, knowing all this, to meet him in person is to be overwhelmed. He is more than impressive. He has charisma in the most ancient sense of the word. Here, one feels, is a man who has truly been favoured by the gods. Well over six feet with a broad, tanned face that splits easily into the most ingratiating of smiles. Rarely seen in a suit, he favours jeans and a simple tee-shirt, but he wears them like the most sought after of catwalk models.

He moves with grace but with the sense that he is restraining enormous physical power.When I first meet him, in a boardroom perched high on a mountainside so as to provide the perfect view of the struggles taking place on the slopes below us, he is working a room of investors and journalists. He recognises me and greets me warmly even though he is known to be wary of the press. He teases me about something I wrote about one of his subsidiary companies, garnering uproarious laughter from the pale looking men in his entourage, then slaps me warmly on the shoulder.

“We will have a show for you tonight, I think,” he says, and then he is gone.I am left breathless. It is only after several moments and a stiff drink that I remember I have a sheaf of questions I want to ask him. His adviser promises he will make time for me later, when tonight’s run is completed.

Looking at pictures of Syphus, there are perhaps two things betray his public persona as a lovable rogue. He has a tendency to wear too much jewellery – he is often encrusted in gold and diamonds, in rings, necklaces, watches and earrings. His critics – and there are few who would cast themselves in that role publicly – say it is a sign of his criminal past. Others claim he is simply a little gauche, as self-made men are wont to be. And then there are his eyes. He has the eyes of a movie star, like a young Henry Fonda or Paul Newman they are a pale but vivid shade of blue, but they are curiously still. A former confidante now living in fearful seclusion somewhere in

No one knows how many times these runs have taken place. Tonight’s is simply another in an apparently endless procession.

No one, so far as I can tell, is seriously expecting tonight to be the night when the work bears fruit. But everyone works as if it might be. It is undeniably true that each time Syphus and his company make a run they bring greater and greater resources to bear on their goal. More men. More money. Bigger machines. More powerful computers. Tonight’s run, like every run since the fall of communism and the incorporation of what was once a one-man business, can claim to be the most expensive, the biggest and the most likely to succeed ever attempted.

With just a few minutes to go before the final push on the final rise, I am standing on the boardroom balcony. The night air is pleasant after what had been a sticky Mediterranean day and the thrumming of the vast machinery all around me has a soporific effect. It’s like being in a womb. And then I notice that Sebastian Syphus is standing beside me.

“Amazing,” he says. “Isn’t it?”I nod.

“Astonishing,” I say. “But what’s it all for?”

One of Syphus’s men comes up and whispers in his ear.

“Tell them to proceed,” he says to his lacky. Then he turns back to me. “It’s about purpose, determination and defiance. It’s about doing something because we can.”

“I understand a lot of your workers aren’t paid,” I nod towards the men straining in the darkness. “Is that fair?”

“They came to me,” he says. “They begged for the job. I just found ways for them to be able to do it together. To make our work bigger and better. To make it more likely to succeed. These people understand what we are doing here. And there are a lot of people who feel their lives lack the kind of direction our work delivers.”

“You can’t deny, though, that they’re making you rich.”

Syphus gives me a grin that is entirely without humour, and runs his fingers unselfconsciously over the gold rings on one hand.“There are many who believe that my suffering has earned me the right to certain comforts. People have been very generous,” he chuckles. “And, I am a business man, I have taken advantage of a number of opportunities.”

There’s a screech off in the night. Metal bends and then breaks with a rifle-shot crack. Someone shouts. Now there are several voices raised. A wire under tension breaks with the comic twang of a rubber band being released. Then more go all at once and the sound takes on an eerie howling quality. A man screams.

Somewhere off in the night a rumbling starts. The earth seems to quake. A section of the lighting on the slopes below gives out and plunges a section of the bowl into darkness. There is another scream.

The rumbling gets louder. And louder still. And then it emerges, rolling clear of the mass of metal and machinery that had enshrouded it. The vast boulder is pale and white and it moves through the night like a ghost or, I catch myself thinking, like a great, terrifying, whale. It falls and then bounces, sparks fantailing from each contact, down the slope, away from the men and their machines. Then it rolls and rolls, far further than seems possible or natural for such a massive object, until it disappears into the darkness, leaving behind only the distant roar as it moves on.

I turn to stare at Sebastian Syphus, who has just seen month’s of work falter and crash, roll and smash it’s way back to where it all began. I expect to see some flicker of anger or disappointment or something. But of course there is nothing. Around him his entourage is fluttering and gabbling nervously. Syphus grabs the closest man by the arm and issues a string of instructions. Order is restored. They will begin the preparations for the next run tomorrow. There will be no break in the labour.

He glances at me. I form a question, but he cuts me off. He steps in close and speaks, it is almost a whisper. The sense of having this man’s confidence is frightening.

“Tell them this,” he says. “Tell your readers that we will not be beaten. Tell them that we are willing to go on and on until the end of time, if necessary, to complete this task. We will not be defeated. We will not be dictated to. We have our purpose and when we succeed we will have demonstrated that there are no limits on what humanity can do.”Sebastian Syphus turns to go. Then he stops and turns back.“Tell them that the work we do here will set them free, and we will not fail, even if all the gods in heaven descend and try to stop us. We will not fail.”