Science Division and OhZone. Not only had Blanka been tagged Queen Boudica, but OhZone agents were nicknamed the Iceni
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(after her namesake’s first century woman-led tribe of Britons who gave the Roman Empire a seriously bloody nose).
C looked at them on another monitor with alarm. They were larking about, as they filed through security and surrendered their cel phones to the concrete building.
I’m glad those bitches are not friends! he thought. Or, God forbid, lovers. I don’t want to be up against the pair of them.
He’d see them at a conference on the new Novichok perfume weapon the fol owing day, but Bio was solidly on his side.
Blanka.
Blanka Maguire rode the elevator up to Floor 12, her thoughts drifting skywards.
Focusing, Blanka looked in the mirror and wiped strands of blonde hair out of her blue eyes. With the slightest of sighs, she contemplated her American genes—a combination of Russian, Irish and British, (paternal genes unknown)—as wel as the AI, and the AI-backup (‘Hebe’) inside her body. Adopting what she regarded as her ‘Nancy Drew-in-London voice,’ she spoke aloud to her AI-backup:
‘What cheer, Hebe?’
What cheer, Nancy Drew? Hebe replied, inside Blanka’s head. Do you think you have a chance to beat the Major this afternoon?
Blanka just smiled. Hebe was referring to Blanka’s weekly chess match with the famous Russian chess grandmaster and defector, Major Grigori Grinin.
Hebe spoke in the voice Blanka had given her: a cross between C’s long-suffering secretary, Miss Banks, and the movie
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voice of English writer Agatha Christie’s elderly sleuth, Miss Marple. In her internal voice play, Blanka wrapped up decades of womanhood in the two cultural icons and mythic heroes: Nancy Drew and Miss Marple.
In the mirror’s reflection, Blanka caught sight of the set of blood red Rosary beads wrapped around her wrist. Raised as an orphan at a Catholic convent, Blanka had remained a devout Roman Catholic. Now, however, she felt increasingly that something was missing from her life; and she suspected that rather than her leaving the church, the church had left her.
At Blanka’s birth in Norfolk, Virginia, her 15-year-old birth mother, Kitty, had named her Boudica Valentina. Later, Kitty, in her short, tragic life, had been instrumental to the discovery of the most valuable archaeological artefact of all time—under the shallow seabed of the Aegean—the 70-ton Bronze-Age Goldheart. Upon her death, Blanka and Will (her half-brother, still a teenager) had inherited a quite staggering fortune.
In the world outside Intelligence, Blanka was known as much for her philanthropy and devotion to the conservation and protection of animals, as she was for her success as a bass guitarist, and DJ on the music scene. But at 18 (because of her grandfather, U.S. Admiral William Virgil Maguire) she had pledged allegiance to the more savage gods of Jason Bourne and James Bond.
Blanka strode out the elevator, struggling to muster a smile as she turned away from the spiral staircase that led to Floor 13—C’s offices and private dining room.
Then she remembered the Dream Lover heeled court shoes she was wearing! She’d bought them the evening before in Carnaby Street. She was showing them off to a couple of girlfriends at lunch—on the way to her game with Major Grinin.
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More pictures of Blanka’s shoes by Irregular Choice at
Pinterest.com/raechelsands
‘Blanka, awesome shoes!’ cal ed Debbie, from the document shredder.
‘Thanks,’ said Blanka, blowing her a little kiss.
She walked lightly through Floor 12 in the direction of the OhZone office, exchanging smiles with other staff on the Russia Desk, including her particular friend, a tall Irish woman; an agent known to everyone by an adjective that was also an adverb— Nearby.
Nearby had worked for MI6 less than four years but, with an astounding talent for Russian, she had risen through the ranks of its most important bureau, the Russia Desk. With her quiet efficiency, and time for everyone, Nearby was universal y liked at MI6—except by one newly trained and programmed AI agent.
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Felicity.
The same day that Blanka was riding up the elevator, a tall woman who strikingly resembled Nearby—raised as an English boarding-school girl—sauntered into the elevator from the South America Desk to ride down.
Felicity Robinson pressed the button for level -3, and entered the secret ‘go to and wait’ code C had given her. She was to receive a pair of pistols special y made for her. Two hand-print-coded, .45 calibre, Sig Sauer P321s.
As the lift descended, she took an expensive eau de toilette from a Bulgari bag—Didier Potters’ La Bombe— and sprayed it on her hair. The day before, she’d graduated from the OhZone Academy in Paris—against the wishes of Blanka, the CIA, NATO, and the people who ran the laboratory.
Today, when she’d approached the chief firearms officer, Arms, at his desk, he shook his head.
‘I don’t have time for you now, Robinson,’ he said. ‘Your practice is at 16:00. Come half an hour early to unwrap them if you want.’
As Felicity waited for the lift, he’d passed her, and laughed, seeing her checking her make-up in a compact.
‘Your better half, and I mean Nearby,’ he teased, ‘would never wear that shade of lipstick.’
Nearby: the name instantly rankled. Nearby was her dead ringer and Blanka’s office pet, everybody’s pet. With matching physiques, and nut brown hair, they looked as alike as two peas in a pod.
‘Pfft,’ she said aloud. ‘She has no idea what looks good on her.’ She was going to add, ‘and couldn’t get a decent fuck if she
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tried,’ but stopped.
Arms had disappeared into the men’s room.
At lunchtime, she’d trudged home to her house in Balham, and decided to try on a summer blouse, leather jacket, jeans and boots she’d bought in Paris, and a new shade of lipstick.
With a few minutes to spare before her 4 p.m. practice, Felicity looked in the elevator mirror, took out the new pink-red lip gloss, pursed her lips, and applied more. Brushing her tongue against the inside of her lips, and tasting the sweetness, she silently contacted her in-board AI:
What do you say, Hebe? How do I compare with Nearby?
In its German accent, Hebe replied in Felicity’s head.
You’ve got 25 mil imeters on that Irish bitch!
Felicity wanted her Hebe to sound quite different from Blanka’s, and she’d painstakingly programmed it so the voice would please her every time it spoke. She loved Hebe’s voice nearly as much as her own.
You are 100 pounds stronger, La Bombe, Hebe continued, employing the pet name she’d been told to use. And far more powerful.
Before Nearby’s sudden appearance, Felicity was regarded as the best looking woman in Vauxhall Cross, an attribute she had used tirelessly to her advantage. With Nearby’s arrival, Felicity not only had a lookalike, but a rival. She was horrified to watch Nearby rise above her to a more senior position on a more prestigious desk.
Fidgety and restless, Felicity watched the lift doors open, revealing the corridor on level -3. She took a hairbrush from
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her bag, brushed her hair, and considered it in the mirror.
None of that matters any more, said Hebe. We are OhZone—
you’re an OhZone. The most powerful woman in the world!
Obediently, the elevator doors remained open.
‘I must look my best, and smel my best,’ Felicity said.
She sniffed the perfume on her hair approvingly. Then she exercised her face muscles.
‘Hair down is too much, I think. He’d go more for the office-erotic lo
ok.’
And she tied back her hair. Then she returned her mind to Hebe.
How do I look?
You are the most beautiful, Hebe replied, on cue.
Of them all? quizzed Felicity, quoting the famous rhyme, and laughing aloud.
Of them al , said Hebe, with emphasis.
Felicity laughed again, and felt that, somehow, her Hebe was smiling too. But could she smile? She didn’t have a face, did she?She eyeballed her reflection, then breathed heavily on the mirror, steaming it up. After a few moments, she leaned in, and drew a flower, partly revealing her face in the mist.
‘Pretty flower,’ she said aloud to the image. ‘See now, Hebe, you have my pretty face! And I’m smiling—so you must be smiling too!’
She pursed her lips, and kissed the mirror.
‘Mwah.’
Pressing the button to undo the wait code, Felicity stepped out of the lift, and strode into the MI6 firing range.
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OhZone.
The OhZone upgrade—to human-AI hybrid—was a 1990s brainchild of two diving buddies from Harvard Med School.
One was African American Dr Ray Oxberry—the confidante of Blanka’s murdered mother, Kitty. The other was white prot-estant American, Professor Max Hart—who went on to marry Kitty, and thus become Blanka’s stepfather.
OhZone was named after the highly unusual OH- ions and ozone in the luto-hemerythrin rings of an agent’s blood—giving it a distinct purple hue—and giving the agents the unique moniker ‘purple-blood.’
Original y sited in Rome, the lab was moved by Dr Oxberry (after the 1999 murder of Blanka’s mother) to its present location deep under the medieval centre of Paris.
Before Felicity, only six candidates had ever passed through the half-a-billion-dol ars-a-pop, six month OhZone program, so competition was stiff.
O h Z o n e ( ℧ ) - Agents In Service
3
CRUSOE ROBINSON
M
ASIS/
MI6
4
COMMANDING OFFICER: BLANKA MAGUIRE
F
CIA
5
EXECUTIVE OFFICER: SOKOL COMAROVA
F
MI6
6
ON PATERNITY LEAVE: DAVID MU
M
CIA
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When one of the original OhZones was kil ed in a plane wreck, it became necessary to select and process a new AI-human hybrid.
OhZones were numbered in order of graduation from the OhZone Academy, and the new agent would take the prestigious
‘7’ designation.
There were over 30 entries from the Intel igence agencies of the NATO and other countries who funded the program.
Shifting politics was a major consideration, and objections from the al ies reduced the list to 12.
The candidates were vetted in several ways, including the nine-point CU. Another invention of Hart and Oxberry, it predicted the likelihood of candidates becoming a psychopath, when given the greatly enhanced physical and mental powers of the upgrade. Using brain scans and tests, the CU ‘cruel and unempathic’ test was developed on convicted serial kil ers, and faithful y read 7 to 8 for all those convicted of serial killing, torture, and ethnic cleansing.
When Hart was asked in an interview about CU, he said, ‘It quantifies how poorly Homo sapiens actually rate as the compassionate caring species we like to pretend we are.’
During the il ness of OhZone’s biggest sponsor, CIA Director Admiral Keith De Leon, C manoeuvred the other agencies so that his new protégée, Felicity, got through to the short list of four, along with the ever-popular Nearby.
In seemingly unconnected incidents, the Canadian candidate fell pregnant unexpectedly, and the sole male was kil ed in a car wreck. The remaining candidates were both from MI6.
Felicity’s CU score of ‘8’ would have torpedoed her application, but an influential contact of C had discretely breached OhZone’s cyber security, and altered her CU score to a ‘4,’ before Hart and Oxberry saw it.
Nearby’s score was a ‘0’ (no tendency), and this was also a
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problem: she was too meek. In fact, Nearby was not firearms trained, and had never raised a hand in violence. So the defining issue became whether Nearby could be trained to kil .
A hearing into her ‘pacifism’ was arranged before three MI6
directors: C, Russia and (the newly promoted) Bio.
Hart flew in, from New York, to attend as an observer alongside Blanka. They watched as Nearby responded to questions with her usual directness.
Are you loyal to Queen Elizabeth and to The Office?’ Russia asked her.
‘I am,’ Nearby answered.
‘When you’ve been “firearms trained,” wil you shoot to kil if ordered to?’ he said.
Nearby looked at Blanka. C glared at them, and shouted.
‘When you’re on your own, without Queen Boudica, will you do as you’re commanded?’
Nearby’s eyes watered, and Russia repeated his question slowly. At first Nearby was silent, then she whispered.
‘Shooting at a t-target… it’s not the same as shooting at a hu-hu-human…’
Russia, deeply disappointed, frowned and turned to Bio.
Bio prompted Nearby.
‘But if you were ordered to?’
Nearby was shaking. ‘I-I-I’m not sure. It w-wouldn’t be easy for me.’
C laughed in her face, ‘Not sure! Wouldn’t be easy! You’ve got to sweat at Intelligence my girl, and follow orders to the letter. ’
When it was announced that Felicity would become the next
‘purple-blood,’ a joke quickly made the rounds: ‘They didn’t ask Felicity if she would kill when told to. They asked her if she would stop killing when ordered to.’
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For over a year, Nearby had shared a shower room with Felicity at the MI6 spy hostel on the Edgware Road, not far from Marble Arch (how kind of The Queen, thought Nearby, to provide a hostel for the junior spies of her realm).
Felicity’s smal swastika tattoo was discretely concealed in a larger one, but the anthem of anti-Semitism was there all the same. When C’s fast-track protégé moved out of the hostel to her own house in the suburb Balham, suddenly able to afford the mortgage, it was no surprise. Nearby had overheard Felicity say to Prosthetics John (of the MI6 prosthetics laboratory) that she would ‘sort out’ the black couple living next door there, if they annoyed her.
Later at Blanka’s house, over a cup of one of Blanka’s unique tea blends, Nearby explained to her and Hart what had gone wrong.
‘I felt sick. Debbie had told me ‘bout what the junior girls c-cal , Sp-p-pecial-C. …C-C did cunni-l-lingus, with rice pa-pper inside Debbie, the d-day bef-fore, in his private dining room, with his b-butler on guard outside the door. I wanted to quit Wonderland.’
Blanka put her arm around Nearby.
‘That dick-shit. Did he offer her a promotion?’
Nearby nodded.
‘Debbie must report it to Dr Fox. C should be arrested. He won’t be, but he should be. Stil you need to report it anyway.’
Much to Nearby’s relief, Hart, having had a couple of White Canadians (his favourite Kahlúa cocktail), turned the conversation to one of his more eccentric preoccupations: whether human canines, referring to our teeth not our dog companions, were the mark of Cain, and singled humans out as kil ers. The Professor revealed that men had the smal est canines
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of any male ape, and that this reflected reduced dimorphism between the sexes.
‘So, women will rule the world,’ Blanka asserted.
‘Yes, but which k-kind of women? ’ Nearby had asked.
In Nearby’s soul, her failure at the
hearing—which unleashed her lookalike as an OhZone—haunted her. It could jeopardize Blanka’s life. And Nearby owed everything to Blanka.
‘What w-was it Kurt Vonne-g-gut said?’ she blurted out. ‘If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are armed with A K-K-47s? Was that it? Alright, if there’s n-nothing else for it, I’l learn to f-f-fire a gun!’
Nearby’s curious comment struck an uneasy chord within Blanka, but she dismissed it.
‘Unfortunately,’ she announced, ‘you may be eventual y able to fire a gun at another human being, but if you actual y gave angels AK-47s, they might not use them. It could go against their nature to kil even devils; be they female or male.’
For the rest of afternoon tea, Hart frequently glanced at the shy, stuttering Irish woman who so uncannily resembled Felicity; and from that day on, he looked on Nearby with a new respect.
Felicity dove across the floor, aiming both Sig 321 pistols at a spot on the padded concrete wal . As she rolled, aiming the Sigs this way and that, the tattoo on her arm was exposed: a portrait of Genghis Khan with a hidden swastika.
‘Go,’ she yel ed again.
The lights dimmed, and human-shaped targets appeared in different doorways and windows in rapid succession, two at a time. Felicity emptied the clip in one gun—the .45 FCP rounds
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tearing gaping holes in the heads of three men, a woman and two children—before taking aim with the other.
Suddenly the lights were switched back on, and she jumped up, looking cheated, and concealed the unused pistol down the back of her jeans.
Arms—a middle-aged man with an uneasy face—
approached. At five eleven, Felicity was the same height as him; he tried not to be distracted by the startling green contact lenses over her AI eyes.
‘I’m sure I made the rules of engagement clear,’ he said,
‘you’re not supposed to shoot the children. And with your previous –’
Felicity sauntered closer, allowing him a good view of her breasts. Arms lost his train of thought.
‘Were those children?’ Felicity asked. ‘I thought they were dwarfs.’
Arms wasn’t going to argue with a débutante OhZone AI with a loaded pistol in her pants.
Girl Who Fell 1: Behind Blue Eyes. Offbeat Brit spy series-cum-lesbian love triangle. Killing Eve meets female James Bond meets Helen of Troy returns (HAIL THE QUEEN series) Page 2