Sidney Sheldon - The Doomsday Conspiracy

“Not yet, but we’re confident that the Star Wars technology will be up and functioning very soon.”

“We must do everything possible to hurry it. If it is a question of money …” The Saudi. Enigmatic. Withdrawn.

“No. There’s just a bit more testing to do.”

“When is the next test taking place?” The Australian. Hearty. Clever.

“In one week. We will meet here again in forty-eight hours.”

DAY FOUR

London, Thursday, October 18th

Leslie Mothershed’s role model was Robin Leach. An avid viewer of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, Mothershed carefully studied the way Robin Leach’s guests walked and talked and dressed, because he knew that one day he would appear on that programme. From the time he was a small boy, he had felt that he was destined to be somebody, to be rich and famous.

“You’re very special,” his mother would tell him. “My baby is going to be known all over the world.”

The young boy would go to sleep with that sentence ringing in his ears, until he truly believed it. As Mothershed grew older, he became aware that he had a problem: he had no idea exactly how he was going to become rich and famous. For a period of time he toyed with the notion of being a movie star, but he was inordinately shy. He briefly contemplated becoming a soccer star, but he was not athletic. He thought about being a famous scientist, or a great lawyer, commanding tremendous fees. His school grades, unfortunately, were mediocre, and he dropped out of school without being any closer to fame. Life was simply not fair. He was physically unprepossessing, thin, with a pale, sickly complexion, and he was short, exactly five foot five and a half inches. Mothershed always stressed the extra half inch. He consoled himself with the fact that many famous men were short: Dudley Moore, Dustin Hoffman, Peter Falk …

The only profession that really interested Leslie Mothershed was photography. Taking photographs was so ridiculously simple. Anyone could do it. One simply pressed a button. His mother had bought him a camera for his sixth birthday and had been wildly extravagant in her praise of the pictures he had taken. By the time he was in his teens, Mothershed had become convinced that he was a brilliant photographer. He told himself that he was every bit as good as Ansel Adams, Richard Avedon or Margaret Bourke-White. With a loan from his mother, Leslie Mothershed set up his own photography business in Whitechapel, in his flat.

“Start small,” his mother told him, “but think big,” and that is exactly what Leslie Mothershed did. He started very small and thought very big, but unfortunately, he had no talent for photography. He photographed parades and animals and flowers, and confidently sent his pictures off to newspapers and magazines, and they were always returned. Mothershed consoled himself with the thought of all the geniuses who had been rejected before their ability was recognized. He considered himself a martyr to philis-tinism.

And then, out of the blue, his big opportunity had come. A cousin of his mother’s who worked for the British publishing firm of HarperCollins had confided to Mothershed that they were planning to commission a coffee-table book on Switzerland.

“They haven’t selected the photographer yet, Leslie, so if you get yourself over to Switzerland right away, and bring back some great pictures, the book could be yours.”

Leslie Mothershed hurriedly packed up his cameras and headed for Switzerland. He knew – he really knew – that this was the break he had been looking for. At last the idiots were going to recognize his talents. He rented a car in Geneva and travelled around the country, taking pictures of Swiss chalets, waterfalls, and snow-capped peaks. He photographed sunrises and sunsets, and farmers working in the fields. And then, in the middle of all that, fate had stepped in and changed his life. He was on his way to Bern when his motor failed. He pulled over to the side of the highway, furious. Why me? Mothershed moaned. Why do these things always happen to me? He sat there, fuming, thinking about his precious time lost, the expense it would be to have his car towed. Fifteen kilometres behind him was the town of Thun. I’ll get a tow from there, Mothershed thought. That shouldn’t cost too much.

He flagged down a passing gasoline truck. “I need a tow truck,” Mothershed explained. “Could you stop at a garage in Thun and have them come and get me?”

The truck driver shook his head. “It’s Sunday, mister. The closest garage that’s open will be in Bern.”

“Bern? That’s fifty kilometres from here. It will cost me a fortune.”

The truck driver grinned. “Ja. There they get you by the Sundays.” He started to drive on.

“Wait.” It was difficult to get the words out. “I’ll … I’ll pay for a tow truck from Bern.”

“Gut. I will have them send someone out.”

Leslie Mothershed sat in his disabled car, cursing. All I needed was this, he thought, bitterly. He had already spent much too much money on film and now he would have to pay some bloody thief to tow him to a garage. It took almost two interminable hours for the tow truck to arrive. As the mechanic started to attach the car to his truck, there was a flash of light from across the highway, followed by a loud explosion, and Mothershed looked up to see what appeared to be a bright object falling out of the sky. The only other traffic on the highway was a tour bus that had pulled to a stop behind his car. The passengers from the bus were hurrying toward the scene of the crash. Mothershed hesitated, torn between his curiosity and his desire to move on. He turned and followed the bus passengers across the highway. When he reached the scene of the accident, he stood there transfixed. Holy God, he thought. It’s unreal. He was staring at a flying saucer. Leslie Mothershed had heard about flying saucers and had read about them, but he had never believed they existed. He gaped at it, awed by the eerie spectacle. The shell had ripped open and he could see two bodies inside, small, with large skulls, sunken eyes, no ears and almost no chins, and they seemed to be wearing some kind of silver metallic suits.

The group from the tour bus was standing around him, staring in horrified silence. The man next to him fainted. Another man turned away and vomited. There was an elderly priest there, clutching his beads and mumbling incoherently.

“My God,” someone said. “It’s a flying saucer!”

And that was when Mothershed had his epiphany. A miracle had fallen into his lap. He – Leslie Mothershed – was on the spot with his cameras to photograph the story of the century! There was not a magazine or newspaper in the world that would reject the photographs he was about to take. A coffee-table book about Switzerland? He almost laughed aloud at the idea. He was about to astonish the whole world. All the television talk shows would be begging for him, but he would do Robin Leach’s show first. He would sell his photographs to the London Times, the Sun, the Mail, the Mirror – all the English newspapers, the foreign papers and magazines. Le Figaro and Paris Match, Oggi and Der Tag. Time and USA Today. The press everywhere would be pleading with him for his photographs. Japan and South America, and Russia and China and – there was no end to it. Mothershed’s heart was fluttering with excitement. I won’t give anyone an exclusive. Each one will have to pay me individually. I’ll start at a hundred thousand pounds a picture, maybe two hundred thousand. And I’ll sell them over and over again. He began feverishly adding up the money he was going to make.

Leslie Mothershed was so busy adding up his fortune that he almost forgot to take the pictures. “Oh, my God! Excuse me,” he said to no one in particular, and raced back across the highway to get his camera equipment.