Being Tuesday, Kevin had another big decision to make. Should he have his lunch at the university or at the Richmond pub?
He was reading a book on another of his Victorian heroes Isambard Kingdom Brunel, but his mind kept wandering - one minute to what Larry Brown had told him earlier and next minute to Mohamed El Badry’s claim about a solution to over population. “We have a solution, Kevin.” Kevin had liked the sound of that, so asked who
“we” was.
“My company, my associates, my researchers, my agents, and my distributors - we are ready to move,” El Badry replied.
He’d told Larry this and Larry was in touch with the WHO, but Kevin’s imagination was now turning to what might happen if he, directly or through the Malthus Society, was implicated in the plan.
Words and phrases like mass murder, annihilation, ethnic cleansing, and genocide kept coming into his head, and each time he’d spoken to Larry, it sounded more and more plausible, even though the name of the doctor in Nigeria was not El Badry but Dr Mustafa. It was all very unsettling.
Could he expect a knock on the door or, worse, the breaking down of the door by police with battering rams at 3 am? Perhaps Tunji was right, and word had already got out of something going on and he was already being watched. Should he go to the police before they came to him? Should he and Tunji warn them in advance and begin a process of denying all involvement and pleading total innocence?
The problem was that he himself had started to advocate the use of radical solutions. If anyone wanted to check his opinions, all they needed to do was check the Malthus Society website. The evidence against him was all there.
Was El Badry merely being supportive of the objectives of the Malthus Society by helping it deliver on its stated objective of reducing the human population by about four billion?
Kevin was no longer sure he wanted this sort of support, and four billion was an awful lot of people. And he didn’t like El Badry. El Badry had looked, sounded, and even smelled like a wealthy rogue.
He was exactly the sort of rich foreign businessman Kevin had declared a deep hatred for in his youth. And things had all happened so suddenly. His strategy had always been a slow build up towards, perhaps, mass demonstrations by youth across the globe and then the final recognition by politicians that he had been right all along and something needed to be done about the ridiculous number of people this small planet was now expected to support.
Another cold sweat came on so he held his wrist to check his heartbeat and decided to buy a fresh battery for his blood pressure monitor. But one thing was now clear. He’d go to the Richmond for lunch.
He called Tom Weston to make sure he’d be there. “How about a pint or two and egg and chips on me, Tom? I need to pick your brains.”
***
“Bless my soul,” Tom said after Kevin brought him up to date with everything, including his chat with Dr Larry Brown at the American Embassy.“What the hell should I do?” he asked his old mentor.
“Mmm,” said Tom as Kevin wiped egg from his plate with the last of his chips. “No idea. Go to the police?”
“I decided against all that.”
“Talk to Larry again?”
“What the hell can he do to protect the Malthus Society from getting tangled up in all this? Am I being neurotic? Should I just relax like it’s nothing to do with me? To sit and watch what happens?”
“Yeh,” said Tom. “Sit for a bit. That’s what I’d do. Something will crop up.”
It seemed like a good idea. “Want another pint, Tom?”
“I could be persuaded.”
Tom pushed his glass towards Kevin but then grabbed him by the shirt sleeve. “I checked out that fellow, David Solomon,” he said.
Kevin stood, with beer glasses in hand. “And?”
“He’s a nutcase.”
“Why?”
“I read some of his stuff.”
“You told me that before.”
“Not that stuff - stuff he wrote for the club in Boston.”
“What club?”
“The Malthus Club in Boston, you young fool.”
“What did he write?”
“An article titled ‘The Day of Reckoning.’ I read it again last night.”
“Why does that make him a nutcase?”
“See what you make of it,” Tom fumbled in the inside pocket of his old jacket with the leather elbow patches he’d worn since his teaching days. “Here,” he said, handing over a pile of paper.