One of my regular jobs in espionage is what I call ‘the deathbed duties.’ Spies like to fact-check the passing of illustrious figures. It’s an eerie duty that puts the spookiness in spook. It all started because we once royally embarrassed ourselves. In fact it was one of our biggest boobs to date: Mr Alfred Nobel woke up one morning to read in the paper that he had snuffed it. The spy who confirmed his death got it wrong, it was actually his brother who had died. What’s worse, the confused French newspapers had run Alfred’s obituary instead of his brothers’. They had condemned to hell Alfred’s invention of dynamite, calling him ‘the merchant of death.’ Nevertheless, the boob had a bright side; Alfred realised he needed to better his legacy and so he invented the Nobel Prize. Now who’s laughing across the Great Divide?
Great ones have conquered or choked on their dying words. Freud died protesting ‘This is absurd! This is absurd!’ It was. I was there. I was in the crowd when ‘they’ killed Kennedy and close by when they came back for Oswald. John Maynard Keynes’ wistful last wish was ‘I should have drunk more champagne.’ Thoreau frankly embarrassed himself by muttering ‘Moose!…Indian!’ Marx, economical to the last, ended with ‘Go on, get out, last words are for fools who haven’t said enough.’ Da Vinci lamented ‘I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have.’ Too earnest, Leonardo, your humility makes a mockery of us. Wittgenstein’s swan song was simple and graceful: ‘Tell them I’ve had a wonderful life.’ Wagner was more honest: ‘I feel lousy.’
Steve Jobs’ final pronouncement was the most enigmatic of them all: ‘Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow.’ What on earth had he seen? Where was he going? Should we pack up our MacBooks and follow?
Spies disappear after death. There is often no trace of us and our last words are certainly not recorded. But, just so you know, I plan to take full advantage of rigor mortis by striking a last minute pose just before I die, so that on my epitaph it may be inscribed ‘one last joke on me.’