The Da Vinci Cube

©2006 Ian Hobson

PROLOGUE

Some poor sod gets shot in a French art gallery.

CHAPTER ONE

Rupert Tuckbot was working on his new novel when he was interrupted by someone knocking on his Paris hotel room door. As he got up and crossed the room, wondering who could be disturbing him at such a late hour, he stopped dead in his tracks as he realised that the caller had knocked five times. Five was a most significant number for Rupert, as five equilateral triangles arranged to make a five-pointed star also contained the shape of a pentagon, which just happened to be the same shape as the birthmark on his left buttock, which just happened to be an anagram of his surname. Fearing that this might be an omen, he continued to the door and, opening it cautiously, he came face to face with Inspector Cludo, the celebrated chief of a special multinational law-enforcement unit for Crimes Requiring Advanced Police-work.

'Yes,' said Rupert, wondering what business a C.R.A.P. police officer might have with him.

'Monsieur Tuckbot?' The Frenchman's English was heavily accented.

'Correct.'

'Inspector Cludo,' said Cludo with a forced smile. 'Would you be so kind as to come with me to the Tuileries?'

Rupert looked puzzled. 'Why? Can't you go on your own?'

For a moment Cludo looked equally puzzled. 'Ah, forgive my akzent,' he said as he took out his ID card and waved it in Rupert's face. 'I am an officer of du lur, and I wish for you to come wiz me to the Tuileries Gardens. Der is something I would like to show you; in de new art gallery.'

CHAPTER TWO

The Loofah, a brand-new modern art gallery situated within the Tuileries Gardens, was made entirely out of 9,999 squares of glass and shaped like a dildo. 'What do you make of it?' Cludo asked. He and Rupert were standing in the centre of the art gallery looking at corpse that had obviously been arranged to look like a dead body.

'I think he's dead,' Rupert observed.

'Not the deceased,' Cludo said, pointing at the wall. 'The blood.' Strangely, the victim, who had been fatally shot, had used his own blood to paint a forty-foot mural containing a stylised image of the Mona Lisa doing a moony, together with the inscription:

10020030050010002000400080001600032000640001250002500005000001000000

SAINT WAIL ONE, OH LAME RIB TWO

P.S. TAKE CARE OF MY CAT

'Beats me,' Rupert said. 'The whole thing's rather odd.'

'Odd! Cludo exclaimed. 'You don't know the half of it. The man didn't even have a cat.'

'Yes he did,' said a female voice. Inspector Cludo turned angrily towards Catherine Dupre, a junior, but utterly brilliant when it comes to code breaking and such like, police officer, who was striding down the gallery towards them. Her English was much better than her superior's. 'He was my estranged uncle and he was the new caretaker here, and he always called me Cat when I was little, and he liked to leave me puzzles and treasure hunts, and the numbers are obviously a reference to his favourite British television program 'Who Want's to be a Millionaire?' because the first prize is £100 and the second is £200 and so on up to £1,000,000, hence the long number; and what's more the first line of text is an anagram of 'Who Want's to be a Millionaire' and the £1,000,000 prize is the Holy Grail of prizes, so the whole thing must be about his secret passion: the Holy Grail, as reputedly portrayed in Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, except it's not because if you look closely they're all drinking from bottles of Stella.'

'Brilliant!' Rupert said, kicking himself. 'I don't know how I could have missed it.'

'But zat is preposterous,' Cludo said, pulling a pistol from his coat pocket and pointing it first at Catherine and then at Rupert. 'You are obviously both in zis togezer and so you are both under arrest.' But Catherine was too quick for him. She kicked the gun out of Cludo's hand, grabbed a priceless work of art from the wall and brought it down hard over his head and shoulders, trapping his arms against his sides with the frame and torn canvas, then speedily ushered Rupert out of the building and into her waiting Renault Cleo.

CHAPTER THREE

Rupert was at a loss to know what was happening. An hour ago he was happily working on his new novel, which was sure to a best seller, due to the highly controversial subject matter - namely that Jesus Christ was in fact a bisexual, transvestite alien from the planet Danglemea, as secretly portrayed in several works of art by Pablo Picasso ' but now, here he was being driven at high speed through the streets of Paris in the middle of the night by a lunatic French policewoman who claimed that he was a suspect in her uncle's murder. The whole thing would almost make a good novel were it not for the absolute absurdity of it.

'Where are you taking me?' Rupert asked.

'To an all-night drive-in bank where my uncle has a safety deposit box,' Catherine replied as she swerved to take a left turn. 'I know he has one there because I overheard him discussing it with his cleaning lady when I accidentally discovered them having ritual sex in the basement of the house where we used to live. I think that the sequence of numbers on the art gallery wall must be the combination to the box and that it must contain a vital clue to the location of the Holy Grail.'

'However did you work that out?'

'Easy. The second line of text: 'P.S. TAKE CARE OF MY CAT', is clearly a message to me to take care of M Y,' Catherine replied. 'M being a code word for money, and Y being a symbol representing the Holy Grail, therefore the Grail, or clues to its location, must be in a place where money is usually kept, i.e. my uncle's bank.'

'Brilliant!' Rupert exclaimed, looking at Catherine and finally admitting to himself that this young Frenchwoman had an intellect superior to his own; and nice tits as well. He clung to his seat as she took another left turn at a dangerously high speed before braking and pulling up beside an elaborate looking ATM inside the all-night drive-in bank.

Catherine wound down her window and punched in the sequence of numbers from the art gallery wall and immediately wheels were quite literally set in motion, and with a few seconds a large steel box popped out of the machine and landed in Catherine's lap. She carefully opened the box only to find another box inside. But this box was handcrafted in balsa-wood and typical of the sort of crap her uncle used to make in his workshop, but as she was about to open it there was a wail of sirens as the police arrived to surround the bank. Catherine threw the steel box out of the window and hit the gas pedal. 'We can get out through the rear exit,' she said. 'I wasn't expecting Inspector Cludo to find us so quickly.'

But Rupert wasn't listening. He had taken the balsa-wood box from her, removed the lid and tipped out its contents. 'Amazing,' he said as he held up the brightly coloured object in his left hand. 'I've not seen one of these for years.'

'What is it?' Catherine asked, glancing at the plastic cube held so reverently in Rupert's hand. The cube was about three inches square and each face was divided into squares of different colours and there seemed to be about six colours in all.

'It's a Rubik's Cube.' Rupert began to rotate the faces of the cube, trying to rearrange the squares on each face so that each of the six faces contained only squares of the same colour. But he soon gave up. 'It's no good,' he said. 'When I was twelve I could do this puzzle in fifteen seconds flat, but not now. We need to find an expert, plus it might be a good idea to get off the streets before the your colleagues catch up with us. So we'll go and visit my friend Sir Tea Leafpot, the renowned English, very-rich-and-famous, expert on the Rubik's Cube and its connection to Leonardo da Vinci and the Holy Grail, who, very conveniently, just happens to live in a villa on the outskirts of Paris.'

CHAPTER FOUR

Rupert glanced at his watch as he hammered on Sir Tea Leafpot's front door. It was almost three in the morning.

'Who the fuck's that!' said a voice from a first floor window. 'Don't you know what bleedin' time it is?'

'It's Rupert Tuckbot,' Rupert answered. 'And I've got a Rubik's Cube with me.'

'Oh well, in that case, give me five minutes to tie on my wooden leg and I'll be down to let you in.'

'Well, Rupert,' Sir Tea said, a few minutes later as he opened the door wide to his unexpected guests. 'You didn't tell me you had a nice bit of French crumpet with you. Bonsoir Mademoiselle. Now what's this about a Rubik's Cube? Don't tell me; you're obviously in search of the Holy Grail. And, by the way, did you know your faces are plastered all over the television and that you're wanted for murder?'

Just then a seven foot tall man with a deathly white face and pink eyes and dressed in a purple monk's robe that was dripping with blood leapt out of the bushes and tried to grab the Rubik's Cube, but Sir Tea was too quick for him. With one seamless movement he unstrapped his wooden leg and bashed their assailant over the head before toppling over on top of him.

But just then the police arrived to surround the villa, so Sir Tea suggested they retire to the roof where he had a helicopter and pilot standing by in case he should want to nip over to England for Mars Bars or other delicacies not easily obtained in France. And with the seven foot tall man with a deathly white face and pink eyes and dressed in a purple monk's robe that was dripping with blood bound and gagged and stowed in the cargo hold, they flew off to England.

CHAPTER FIVE

During the flight Rupert and Catherine recounted the night's events to Sir Tea, starting with the death of Catherine's uncle and finishing with their arrival at Sir Tea's villa and the attack by the seven foot tall man with a deathly white face and pink eyes and dressed in a purple monk's robe that was dripping with blood. 'Who the hell is that man in the monk's outfit?' Catherine asked Sir Tea, gesturing towards the cargo hold.

'My guess is he's a member of Octopus Dye, an ancient group of fanatical, purple-robed monks, dedicated to the destruction of the Holy Grail. Speaking of which; let me have a look at that Rubik's Cube, please.' Sir Tea took the cube from Rupert and began to rearrange the squares. 'Did you know that Leonardo da Vinci designed the first one? It was part of an art form he was working on called Cubism; though he soon scrubbed the idea as he figured it would never catch on. Bugger! I never could unravel these confounded things.'

'But I thought you were an expert,' Rupert said.

'No, not really. I always used to find twelve-year-old boys and persuade them to come back to my place to do them. At least, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. By the way, have you noticed that some of the squares have letters engraved on them? If we can just get them all back into their original positions, I'm sure they will spell out a coded message.'

'Let me try,' Catherine said, taking the cube form Sir Tea and giving it a few twists until, miraculously, each face of the cube contained only squares of the same colour.

'My dear,' Sir Tea said, 'you really are a treasure.'

But just then the pilot announced that the police were waiting for them at the airport and that they were being tailed by two RAF Harrier jets, so they diverted to London and crash-landed in Hyde Park, where unfortunately the pilot, who by an amazing coincidence was in cahoots with the purple-robed monk, assisted him in his escape and the theft of the Rubik's cube as well the kidnap of Sir Tea Leafpot.

CHAPTER SIX

'Do you ever get the feeling we're in the middle of a Hitchcock movie?' Rupert asked Catherine.

'I hope we're nearer the end than the middle,' Catherine replied. 'I can't take anymore plot twists. Speaking of twists, I gave the Rubik's cube a few before the mad monk snatched it from me, so that means we're ahead of the game. Come on, let's find an Internet café; it's time we Googled it.'

'You mean you read the coded message?' Rupert said, as he raced across the park after Catherine. 'Yes, it said: A RELIC OF THE END OF DAYS A GRAIL UPTURNED WILL SHOW THE WAY.'

After an hour in an Internet café, Catherine and Rupert felt sure they had the first two lines sussed. The 'end of days' was the Millennium, and its 'relic', 'a grail upturned', was the Millennium Dome. That just left three questions: How would it show the way? Where would it show the way to? And how the fuck were they going to get past the security guards and into the Millennium Dome to find out?

CHAPTER SEVEN

Fortunately the guards were having a tea break so they were able to get into the Millennium Dome unseen. 'What are we looking for?' Rupert's voice echoed as he stepped in through a side entrance and looked around the cavernous structure.

'Good question,' said Sir Tea Leafpot as he came up behind them and they turned to face him. He had the Rubik's cube in one hand and a gun in the other. He offered the cube to Catherine. 'Perhaps you would be so kind as to do that little trick again. I've been twisting this bloody thing for the past hour and I still can't get all the colours back into place.'

'I don't understand,' Catherine said as she took the cube. 'We thought you'd been kidnapped.'

'No, that was just a little ruse of mine to hide the fact that I am the really bad guy in this idiotic plot. Now come on, get twisting or I'll blow Rupert's brains out.'

Catherine quickly twisted the cube faces until the colours were once more correctly positioned and the coded message clear. But at that moment the purple-robed monk entered the dome and grabbed the gun from Sir Tea and held it to his head. 'You thought I was working for you,' he said in a voice that made him sound like Frankenstein's monster, 'but you were wrong. Now the secret of the cube is mine.'

'No it's not,' said the helicopter pilot, who had followed the monk in. He grabbed the gun and pushed the monk and Sir Tea over towards Rupert and Catherine. 'These fools thought that they were the real bad guys, bit it was me all along.'

'No, Monsieur, it was not!' Inspector Cludo announced as he arrived on the scene and grabbed the gun from the helicopter pilot. 'I am the, how you say? The real villain of the piece. And now the cube is mine and you are all going to die.'

'That's what you think,' Catherine screamed as she threw the cube high into the air, distracting Inspector Cludo. And as he looked aloft she leapt forward, grabbed the gun, then caught the cube, and then pulled off her wig, revealing that she was in fact a twelve-year-old boy.

'So that's how you were able to unravel that confounded cube puzzle,' Sir Tea said.

'Stop!' Rupert screamed as he dropped to his knees and began to tear his hair out. 'I can't take any more of this.'

'But what about Holy Grail?' Sir Tea replied. 'We're still no nearer to finding it.'

'Fuck the grail!' Rupert shouted. 'Let's just get the epilogue, please!'

'Good idea,' Michael Palin agreed, as he entered the dome with the entire cast of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. 'This story's getting far too silly.'

EPILOGUE

Rupert's book was a great success and thought likely to become an all-time best-seller. He'd edited it to include a twelve-year-old transvestite who was a direct descendent of Jesus Christ, and also included a key to the finding of the Holy Grail in the form of Rubik's famous cube puzzle, though he decided to credit its invention to Leonard da Vinci to avoid any claims for royalties from Rubik.

Of course, some religious groups were severely pissed at the Jesus Christ stuff, but that just helped to sell more copies. It's understood that The Monty Python team are negotiating for the film rights.

THE END