Banna Strand
The opening
of the garden door was carried out with a discretion that meant only one thing:
Professor O’Connell was meeting with one of his co-conspirators. Frank polished
the interior of the phial until it glowed, and having examined his reflection, which
appeared huddled against the interior surface, secured the airtight cap. He did
not want any stray bacteria compromising the transfer that was to take place;
to mar O’Connell’s Easter Offering of his mind and knowledge. The phial was
carefully set down beside the tools that had been selected from the professor’s
own collection. These would open the skull and remove the required substance.
He felt his heartbeat quicken in anticipation of the energising ritual that lay
ahead, rather as the diner relishes the flowing blood in a rare steak. He could
taste the cerebral foam and the musty assurance of the quivering nutriment.
But first he
must complete the other steps in his march to a perfect rebirth. He had to
ensure that none of O’Connell’s colleagues lived to threaten in any way his new
existence. He turned to the rows of test tubes and proceeded to fill each with
the greenish gas. This resembled the bone gas in every respect but one: this
gas would not melt the bones of its victims. Instead Frank had added a
substance that would enrage the subject and cause them, if under stress and
bearing arms, to inflict the maximum harm upon their enemies. The test tubes
all full and sealed, he packed them carefully into the rough sacks which Clarke’s
boys used to deliver the Sunday papers. This was the agreed method for getting
the gas into the strategic locations which the committee had identified. The
committee expected the gas to kill hundreds of British soldiers, police and
informers, leaving them free to take over the major buildings and proclaim the
new state.
Frank had
already identified the British informer who most concerned the committee, and
had used that connection only once: to impart the name of a diplomat and a
beach in Kerry to the authorities, and to arrange for O’Connell to be
unavoidably late leaving his house when the rising occurred. The door slammed,
and the sound of a bottle of single malt being dragged from the press, opened
and then heavily set upon the desk in the room below followed with the same
fortissimo. Frank wiped his brow to erase any hint of foreknowledge from his appearance
and went to meet O’Connell.
The professor
was pouring a second large measure when Frank entered the room. “I take it you
have received some intelligence. Is this drink a celebration of the day to
come?”
O’Connell
lifted the cut glass tumbler to his lips and drank with a sharp hissing sound
before looking at Frank.
“Hardly a
celebration. That liberal idiot has been taken in Kerry. The German’s are not
going to help us. The Lord alone knows what Casement will tell the British now.”
“Surely this
cannot stop the rising?” Frank sat down
opposite the doctor. “Are we not agreed that he nation will rise once Dublin is
secured?”
“That is the
hope, no, the belief of the committee, and many men have died to bring us to
this point. However, German arms and German troops to cower the constabulary
across the nation would strengthen us in our resolve.”
“But we have
the gas. I can manufacture a great deal more by the morrow. All we need are
couriers who know how to use it and the British forces will be more easily
routed than by rifles in the hands of the idealistic but inexperienced.”
O’Connell shook
his head, not in disagreement, but in an effort to dispel the fumes of whiskey
that filled his head. “Is that possible, Frank? I thought it took weeks to make
the vapour.”
“Indeed, it took
weeks to develop the system. However, the system now exists and I can produce
as much gas as necessary. Please tell Pearse. I will work through the night if
it will further the great cause.”
He professor
stood and grasped Frank firmly by the hand. “By God, I will. Mr Kørner. I thank
you; the people of a free Ireland thank you. This will not be forgotten.” With
that he was gone. Frank poured himself a small glass of the whiskey and enjoyed
its cloying aroma and heat on the tongue. Now his only concern was that O’Connell
would return here and not remain with the others until the rising began. In
that case he planned to tell whoever came to collect the gas that here was a
problem that required immediate attention from the professor. It would give him
less time, but he was still confident of success. It would be a long night, and
he needed to be alert. He had a book on the relative motions of bodies in space
by a German physicist. Ideas that he knew were to be imminently developed in a
new paper. He wanted to be able to grasp its burden and so set to the pleasant task
of revision. His thinking passed from English to German, and from mundane strategy
to cosmic processes. He was content.
Frank’s attention was wrested from the
calculations, based on familiar stuff by Poincaré. Someone was shuffling beyond
the garden door. O’Connell or a street urchin, come to collect the sacks of
bone gas? For a second Frank shared the fears of discovery with the
conspirators. Then he heard the heavy breathing of the professor; the professor
alone. The game could now begin in earnest. The key grated in he lock. Turning,
the cuboid of an iron alloy murmured in response and gave ingress to a
dishevelled but ecstatic academic. Ice, familiar Arctic ice crystallised in
Frank’s blood as he rose. One hand offered in greeting, the other weighing he
knife.
Air, blood and digestive enzymes
gurgled as Frank slit the throat. He manoeuvred the body into a chair and
applied the device to the left nasal passage. A single upward blow with the
mallet sent the blades into the brain. The pages of “Zur Elektrodynamik Bewegter Körper”
rustled as Frank set the blades spinning at higher speeds than the lobotomising
process they were designed for demanded. Now he broke through the other nostril
and inserted a thin rubber tube. He placed the other end of the tube in his
mouth and sucked until he tasted the bitterness of cerebral matter.
The foam that was O’Connell’s
forebrain was carefully siphoned into the phial. This was then placed in a
larger thermal flask, purchased by the former Frank from an excellent Parisian purveyor
of household goods for Meursault’s mental matter. Café Délice was a label that hardly
did justice to the liquid it contained, but for Frank this was as precious as
life itself: in fact it offered him he morning jolt of immortality. He removed
the body to a large trunk in the basement, bathed and dressed in clothes more
suited to his destination. Equipped with his precious cargo and a diplomatic letter,
the reward for the information supplied to the British informer, he walked from
the asylum towards the docks as he sun rose on the day of the Easter rising.
