I awoke on my back, in the middle of a haystack. After my inadvertent acid
trip of the day before, I felt wonderful, rejuvenated, at peace; my mind was
clear and sharp! I rolled over and was stuck by a little prick, and it came
rushing back to me - OMIGAWD! SUGIEN! Even now I almost turned for home; but
then I pictured him, his elbow in the bidet, knew I owed him everything and
could not abandon him in his hour of need. I guess it was a good omen that
I'd already found the needle. Now all I had to do was my ablutions, and sort
the wheat from my chuff.

Back on the dirt track the 666 had become, listening to the rhythmic drone
of one of the Viper's mufflers dragging along the road, my mind drifted back
to the Café Wa La!

I'd been treading water at my table for fifteen minutes when Garçon the
waiter swam over and took my order. "COFFEE!" I shouted, "Vooz
know...COFFEE!" and made the international sign for drinking coffee. An
Oberleutnant at the next table gave me an uncomfortably quizzical look. I
continued to peruse the menu and, when Garçon returned with the coffee, I
gave the code I'd been taught under hypnosis back in Moorgate (Essex):
"Quelles sont les fritures de liberté?". "Ah!" he said, arching an eyebrow
and gesturing with it towards a table in the middle of the Seine: "Vont avec
le grand masturbator, il est un expert en matière de fritures de liberté!".
I glanced nonchalantly in the direction he'd indicated, to a man who at
first sight looked seedy enough to be a collaborator. He was floating with
the buoyancy of a bag of wind, bobbing on the bow wave of a passing
bateux-mouche, leering like a pederast, with a french fry sticking out of
each nostril to the evident delight of the squad of Stormtroopers with whom
he was pretending RL friendship. That was the first time I set eyes upon
Sugien.

I nursed my coffee until Garçon slipped me a note. It told me to be at the
same table at noon the following day, but Sugien didn't show. Little did I
know then, that in not doing so he'd saved my life!

Two weeks later I hitched passage on a tramp steamer to Algiers, made my way
to Tripoli by camel then got a ride to Alexandria in an ambulance with a
Capt. Anson and entourage, only to learn I'd been seconded to a new Commando
unit (that would become famous as The Desert Rats) at present training in
the Western Desert. Imagine my shock to find, upon joining my new unit, that
the OIC was none other than the enigmatic fellow from the Café Wa La!,
(Capt.) Sugien!

It was a command that would lead to one of the most famous and decisive
incidents of the Second World War, when Sugien was captured by (and escaped
from), the Afrika Korps. In 1953 this brew-ha-rofl (in an excellent example
of American heroism being attributed to the British), saw Sugien portrayed
as a Scot by Richard Burton in director Robert Wise's movie "The Desert
 Rats". One glaring inaccuracy was how, in the movie, during interrogation
whilst having a gunshot wound attended to, Capt. MacRoberts does not say
"Phooey!" to Rommel, as Sugien did in real life. The incident is omitted in
it's entirety, thus rendering the suspension of disbelief ultimately
unsustainable. Once MacRoberts had escaped - without having said "Phooey!"
to the legendary Field Marshall, shaking him and undermining his authority
to a degree he would never quite recover from - the audience was waiting for
Wilson, Kepple and Betty to shuffle into shot!

Incidentally, Wise - who seemingly had a chip on his shoulder where this
capital fellow was concerned - was, after the war, inspired by Sugien's
unguarded and uncharacteristically unsubtle intimation that all who wish ill
of him end up murdered, to cast Paul Newman as boxer Cacky Sugiano in 1956's
"Nobody Up There Likes Me!" The story, about a punchy prize fighter who
makes extravagant threats to his opponents during the weigh-in but always
finds an excuse not to go into the ring, of course, bombed. It was obvious
who it lampooned; and Senator McCarthy - for whom Sugien was a role model -
was particularly scathing. Newman's career was fortunate to recover, and
tellingly, Wise died a mere forty-nine years later!

As an aside, it never fails to astound me the sheer number of movies this
man inspired! After meeting him pre-war, WC Fields based probably his second
most famous character on Sugien in 1940's "The Wank-Dick". That was followed
in 1941 by the adaptation of Sugien's First World War memoirs for the silver
screen, whereby he was portrayed by Gary Cooper in Howard Hawks' seminal
morale-booster "Sergeant Pork" (which title owed more than a little to
Cockney Rhyming Slang). In fact I planned on seeing, whilst in Ohio, the
tree in the woods outside Chillicothe on which is said to be carved those
famous words "P. Briunt cilled a bar on tree in year 1760 wich im abut
aterclock rund year".

I suddenly realised I was lost! Something something Amarillo, Gallup New
Mexico, Tucson Arizona something something something. Was I headed in the
wrong direction? Should I have turned left at Albuqueque?

I saw a sign for "White Sands National Monument". Ah! That rang a bell.
Wasn't it round hereabouts Sugien put together the Manhattan Project? I
remember hearing the rumour - later confirmed in the General's authorised
biography - that Grove insisted Sugien put an end to his top secret missions
to the European Theater and personally oversee the day-to-day running of the
effort to build the world's first atomic bomb; while Sugien was adamant he
retain the ability to leave for the front at a moment's notice, and that he
train up an assistant to do the donkey-work. General Grove, a man's man and
a career soldier of the old school, challenged Sugien to a bare-knuckle
fight to decide whether Sugien, or the young scientist attached to him on
Work Experience - J. Robert Oppenheimer - should remain on site until a
weapon was ready. With one punch Sugien turned the General's spine to jello
and it was Oppenheimer, not Sugien, who went down in history as the
Destroyer of Worlds!

Notably, the fist-fight incident was omitted from *all* cinematic versions
of this most important event of the 20th century, despite almost every
soldier in the Allied forces having heard of it. I guess Sugien's heroics
are so ultra-secret they'll never be subject to FOI. It's just reassuring
that for so many Americans, evidence is superfluous. Faith is all they need.
Even my hire-car Dodge Viper had a bumper sticker proferring the simple
acronymic advice "WWSD".

It was here, at White Sands, that Sugien's interest in the possibility of
self-replicating computer code as a weapon was born. And just as that
thought occurred to me I was woken out of my reverie by a loud clatter, as
the rear bumper fell off and bounced along the road! I pulled over, got out
and took a whiz on a rock. There was an ominous rattling sound, then bits of
snake flesh splattered into the air! I pissed on my shoe as I took a step
backward and looked around for any sign of animation. After about 10 seconds
I heard a rifle crack, then silence.