‘I know,’ said Blanka. She finished the sentence in her head: He doesn’t want to lose me.
Like he lost Kitty, said Hebe.
Late that morning, removals trucks blocked the view to Blanka’s Mews. At number 10, a horse box had been backed against her stable. To those in the neighbourhood, it seemed Caesar had been brought back from Dorset. In reality, a CIA-Blue Comms system and its peripherals were being quickly unloaded, and three CIA techies were firing it up inside.
At the same time, at London City Airport, 12 CIA field agents reported to Blanka. In a screened-off area Drox retained, Blanka and 10 agents boarded his Cessna Citation X+ jet, together with burners and CIA-Blue Comms radios. Two others staked out City airport, while Drox took a commercial flight home to Paris.
From a distance, an MI6 agent loyal to C watched the
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helicopter refuel ing and taking off with only Nearby aboard—
wearing a blonde wig and dressed in Blanka’s clothes. She carried Blanka’s Scanner, cel phone and a false passport.
The grid at G.C.H.Q. showed the helicopter—with Blanka in it—heading towards London’s Stansted airport. When she checked in on Norwegian Air to Stockholm, C would be led into believing that Blanka was meeting the Swedish security service.
Wonderland. Floor 13.
The British Government, and its former leaders, had many state secrets. Like other great empires, the secrets lead to more secrets, endless dark tunnels which themselves lead to catacombs, where unseemly corpses lay…
Until recently, Her Majesty’s Government pretended MI6
existed only in books and movies, with no address, website or entry in the phone book. At every opportunity C repeated his catch phrase: It’s real y nothing like James Bond.
A beautiful quantum of spin, a triumph of MI6’s post-cold war dissembling, it was simultaneously correct and incorrect.
Correct because there was no double O program with a ‘license to kil ’ (the international y sought Cadre of wet job agents was put out of business by OhZone), no Scottish orphan boy, and no one cover company cal ed Universal Exports.
Yet at the same time incorrect. Everything from its nine shadowy Roman Catholic directors down to the mailroom was far more like James Bond than C wanted the public to know.
Its Latin motto, identical in tooth and claw to that of the Vatican’s Intel igence service—the infamous Holy Inquisition—
said it al : Semper occultum. ‘Always hidden.’
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From his offices on Floor 13. C’s telescope was trained on Grinin’s penthouse, but his mind was on Felicity. Looking at her, he decided she was undoubtedly the best totty he’d ever had. But could she keep her head? Why had she been thrown out of med school?
‘It’l be on your head,’ the voice had told him.
Felicity sat like the cat with the cream—long legs crossed, perched not on the other side of C’s desk but on his black leather sofa—showing not only bare leg, but bare thigh to within an inch of her nakedness. She flashed C her sparkling white teeth, and pursed her pink-red lips into a lover’s smile.
‘You’re sporting new lipstick and blue eyes,’ said C, picking up his stolen OhZone Scanner.
‘I fancied a change,’ said Felicity.
‘I feel like a party pooper using one of their own Scanners to listen in,’ he said laughing.
‘From what I’ve seen, it’s not much of a party,’ she replied.
‘But you’re going to change al that, aren’t you?’
‘Just give me the chance,’ said Felicity. ‘Are we meeting at our old time?’ she asked.
‘You’re a married woman, La Bombe. Won’t your husband be expecting you to spend the night with him?’
Felicity stood up—at five eleven she towered over C—and sauntered towards him, revealing the shape of her erect nipples under her blouse.
‘Oh, I remember,’ he said, smiling. ‘Someone has overridden the Russia Desk rota, and put him on back-to-back nights.’
She placed C’s hand on her breast and kissed him, her tongue making circles around his. C savoured the taste of her, until she pul ed away and headed for the door.
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‘You’ve forgotten something,’ he said, gesturing to the blue manila square cut folder lying on his desk.
The mugshot of Grinin was struck through with a red line, and Operation Penthouse was written across it in flowery handwriting.
‘You need to close the Grinin file,’ he said. ‘The activation code is underneath.’
Felicity closed the blue file on Grinin’s face, and lifted it aside to reveal a white envelope the size of a credit card.
‘What time tonight?’ she asked.
‘The old time. Blanka’s got OhZone, and half the Russia and Asia Desks guarding Grinin. She’l be suspicious if she doesn’t see us together.’
‘She can see your flat? The bedroom?’
‘How long have you been OhZone, 7?’
‘Since Monday.’
‘It’s Friday. Catch up.’
‘Queen bitch. I bet she slows it down frame by frame when you’re inside me.’
Felicity paused, and spoke to Hebe.
Can you get that footage off the cameras? I can make GIFs.
Ja Kommandant, said Hebe.
‘Maybe,’ continued C, unawares. ‘But there are other things going on in her life besides watching us. I’m not sure what they are, but she has issues. It won’t be her, but someone from OhZone wil be watching.’
In a distant voice, Felicity said, ‘We all have issues. It’s just that some of us enjoy them more than others.’
C sat down at his desk and picked up a note written—in the famous green ink—on rice paper.
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‘In the meantime you’re befriending Frank Ryder.’ He handed the paper to Felicity. ‘This is the pub he goes to every night after work. By the way, you do remember who he is, don’t you?’
‘The property manager at River Heights. The man who has access to everything.’
‘Access to everything,’ echoed C, looking pointedly at Felicity’s legs. ‘He’l be there this evening.’
‘But I’m seeing you.’
‘Come after. I can’t spare al evening. After our performance for Blanka, I’l decide if you’re staying.’
Felicity stifled her impulse to slap him, instead she brushed the Grinin file across his crotch.
‘And the wet job?’
‘When I transmit the code.’
He pressed a red key on his old-fashioned intercom, and spoke when the light lit.
‘Where’s Queen Boudica?’
‘On Norwegian Air to Stockholm as a Ruth Baldwin,’
answered a woman from C’s counter-OhZone Desk.
‘Thank you.’ He let go the intercom button. ‘Not a particularly smart move on Blanka’s part. I wondered when Ruth Baldwin would surface. She’s been dead 10 years.’
‘Are we done?’ said Felicity.
C punched keys on his desktop Mac, studied the screen, and moved the mouse to show Grinin’s diary.
‘Blanka’s probably moving Grinin to Stockholm. And soon.
You should pay him a call on Tuesday, before she has time to arrange anything.’
Felicity dropped the white envelope into her bag.
‘I stand corrected,’ continued C. ‘It’s his wedding anniversary on Tuesday. I won’t deny him his last rights, a man of his age.’
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Felicity rolled her eyes impatiently. ‘What’s wrong with Monday? Does Wonderland find wet jobs inconvenient on Mondays, so close to the weekend?’
‘The Office! ’ growled C, ‘not Wonderland. Monday’s Radio 2.
We can’t have him miss the B.B.C., for Christ sake… Do it Wednesday or Thursday.’
Felicity he
aded for the door. ‘See you later, Chumley* Jasper,’
she said. [* an English nickname; spelt Cholmondeley]
‘Am I stil required for the orphans’ fair?’ asked C.
‘Yes. Have you got the Bagatel e?’
‘I have,’ said C, starting paper work.
Just as Felicity was opening the first of a pair of double doors, C addressed her sharply.
‘You’ve forgotten something else.’
Felicity gave him her standard, bored pouting look.
C wiggled his finger for her to come back to his desk. As Felicity stepped behind it, C gave her OhZone ass a mighty slap.
Tight as sprung steel, he thought.
Felicity raised her eyebrows.
‘Just as I suspected,’ C said. ‘Neither shaken nor stirred; just slightly aroused.’
‘If you did that to Blanka, she’d have your arm off.’
‘But you’re not Blanka. ‘You’re my OhZone, and don’t you ever forget that.’
Hidden by her contact lenses, the purple tint washed over Felicity’s eyes.
Inside her head, Hebe sang out a warning.
Anger emotion outside regulation limits: suppress!
To control the surging anger, Felicity tossed her head and looked away, cascading her long hair—a gesture C knew wel .
118 ≥ GIRL WHO FELL 1
‘You’re bigger, stronger, and younger than Blanka and Sokol,’
he laughed. ‘You’re the new model… the real-life Stepford Wife!’
Taking the slip of rice paper from her hand, and holding it in front of her mouth, he taunted her.
‘You are my beast. My little wild thing.’ He pressed it against her lips. ‘Now eat this.’
Kleiner! snorted Hebe. Who would dare to call us little?
Felicity looked down at the thick carpet, imagined the pattern C’s red arterial blood would make sprinkling over it.
But would it be art? she asked Hebe.
Maybe, if we mixed Blanka’s purple blood with it, replied Hebe, laughing eerily inside Felicity’s head. But you’ve only been an OhZone four days. Bide your time.
Felicity looked C full in the face, and then she closed her eyes and parted her pink-red lips.
With a sigh within, she al owed the man who commanded MI6 to feed the rice paper between her lips; then she opened her eyes, turned her muscular body away from him, and stepped across the carpet, chewing.
‘When you’re finished, La Bombe,’ C cal ed after her. ‘Close the door behind you. And ask Miss Banks to step in.’
Felicity imitated C’s voice to amuse Hebe. When you’re finished, La Bombe, ask Miss Banks to step in, she said.
And ask Miss Banks to step in, La Bombe, Hebe reprised in her German accent.
The woman-hybrid and the AI both laughed. Felicity held the handle of the inner door in her hand, as she swal owed the rice paper. It was a solid hardwood-core fire door, soundproofed and cushioned. She could easily rip it off its mounting, and use it as a pyre to float C’s corpse down the River Thames in flames.
And you can use the outer door for Blanka, Hebe suggested.
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The science-level-enabled elevator descended 14 floors. Having reached Level -2, it stopped silently and the doors opened with a sound like heavy snow landing.
Felicity skipped out and strode down a long corridor. Half way along, she reached double doors to one side: Area B 21. She carried out the palm, retina and voice recognition; and having verified her as ℧7, the doors opened.
Down another corridor, outside the Bio Labs, a sandwich board read: Security camera maintenance in progress.
Felicity stepped round the sign, pressed a button and waited, tapping her foot impatiently. When the airtight door whooshed open, she stepped onto the padded, hermetical y sealed floor of the airlock and waited again for the outer door to close. When the inner door opened, she was final y able to step into the laboratory.
It consisted of a central science bench and the usual equipment of microbiology and forensics: microscopes, Bunsen burner with a hot blue flame, surgical scissors, probes, scalpels, tweezers and a stack of MI6 forensic pouches. Several apertures marked with the triple-cel s Biohazard symbol opened to negative airflow cabinets, freezers and internal corridors. One led to the refrigerated mortuary boxes and pathology lab, and another led to a Biosafety Level 4 facility containing Yersinia pestis (the Black Death), and vacuum and UV decontamination rooms.
‘Some do it with a bitter look / Some with a flattering word.’
Words whispered into her ear, Felicity jumped at the suddenness of the lines spoken so close.
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A petite woman had entered behind her, wearing scrubs and surgical mask. Bio peeled the mask off her face, and looked up seven inches at Felicity.
‘The coward does it with a kiss / The brave man with a sword!’ As she finished, Bio popped a black combat cap with a red star on the front on Felicity’s head, and saluted her, Soviet style. ‘Welcome Comrade OhZone 7,’ she loudly proclaimed.
‘Now you are properly dressed as executioner.’
Having been startled, Felicity was edgy. ‘I didn’t know you were a poet,’ she said.
Yet each man kil s the thing he loves, prompted Hebe. Ballad of Reading Gaol.
‘Yet each woman kil s the thing she loves,’ Felicity said to Bio.
‘Cle ver! You’ve come back from Paris all literate,’ laughed Bio. ‘My La Bombe cultivée. Now we can read together, as wel as our usual sport.’ And she kissed Felicity on the cheek.
Stil nervous, Felicity looked up at the security cameras.
‘Off,’ Bio reassured her. Looking Felicity up and down, she said: ‘ Tu as un certain je-ne-sais-quoi: l’expression de ta regard peut-être.’
Felicity had learned French at boarding school, and had it loaded in her AI; but she wasn’t going to speak it to humour Bio.
‘You can’t even see my eyes,’ she scoffed. ‘I’m wearing contacts.’
Bio pulled out two stools, and they sat together at the science bench.
‘Got something to show me?’
From inside her purse, Felicity lifted out the white envelope.
Bio handed her a scalpel, and Felicity slit open the envelope, removing a smal er inner one. This envelope should have been a blue-slip. But instead it was black.
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Black.
Behind Felicity’s blue contacts, the silver tint washed over her brown eyes.
Clarify, Hebe.
Insufficient data to clarify, Hebe said.
A hole in the data, replied Felicity, angrily. That bugger C
didn’t tel me; beyond my pay grade I suppose.
The black slip tumbled from her hand on to the floor. When she jumped from her stool to retrieve it, she smashed her head on the bench top.
Bio helped her up. ‘Mm, you’re much meatier,’ she remarked.
She took an ice pack from one of the freezers, and applied it to the purple bump on Felicity’s forehead.
‘Oh, bless, a first purple bruise for my purple-blood.’
‘I’m not “yours,”’ snapped Felicity. ‘Get a life.’
Her hand shook as it held the black slip.
‘Anyway,’ Bio said. ‘The black slip matches the cap.’
Felicity glared at her, ‘I was expecting a blue-slip.’
Bio took out a blue-slip from a tin box where several used slips lay, and set it down in front of Felicity. ‘Like this?’
Bio’s casual attitude irritated Felicity, but she kept silent.
‘La Bombe,’ said Bio, affectionately, squeezing her arm,
‘You’re OhZone 7 now.’
‘But they didn’t talk about black slips either.’
Bio took the black slip from her.
‘No one talks about black slips, black Ops. Look, they don’t exist!’
With
a click of her fingers, Bio made the black slip disappear, and held up her empty palms. Felicity clenched her fists; she was angry, but not surprised. It wasn’t the first magic act Bio had shown her.
122 ≥ GIRL WHO FELL 1
When Bio produced the black slip triumphantly from behind Felicity’s ear, Felicity recalled her Saturday mornings with C, and the magic tricks he showed her to punctuate their bouts of sex.
Although Bio was 15 years older, Felicity suddenly realized that C’s bedroom, not just Bio’s doctorate in microbiology had been her passport to becoming an MI6 director.
Bio held out the black slip. That smile again. Felicity was ready to hit her. If she was an OhZone now, why was there still this contempt? She was used to it with C, but not Bio. She tried to look through the black slip with her AI vision, but it was opaque.
It’s lead lined, reported Hebe.
‘I can’t see through it, it must be lead lined,’ Felicity said.
‘Wel , you’d better open it, hadn’t you?’ Bio replied.
Felicity picked up the scalpel, and slit open the black envelope. Bio looked away as Felicity withdrew a thin parcel of lead foil, and unwrapped it to reveal a sliver of rice paper.
It was marked with a random-generated activation code, known only to C, and the agent entrusted with the wet job. Her. A code was printed on it.
317885
Field agents were trained to memorize codes in half a second, and swallow the evidence. OhZones did it quicker. But there was something about the number. Felicity stared at it, and stopped breathing. Goosebumps formed on her arms.
She didn’t realise—how could she know?—but in an ironic quirk of fate that would have fascinated the target of the wet job, Major Grinin, the digits matched the S.S. military number for the Nazi doctor Joseph Mengele.
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Felicity flipped the rice paper so she couldn’t see the number, folding it in half, then in half again. She placed the paper in her mouth, trying to avoid getting it on her tongue. She screwed up her face and tried to swallow. She turned pale, looked like she was going to be sick, but at last swallowed it down.
‘Finished?’ asked Bio, still with her back turned. ‘That took you a while. But everyone knows that Felicity-La-Bombe always swallows!’
Flustered, Felicity tore the combat cap off her head, glowered at the red star on the front, and hurled it in Bio’s face. Bio handed Felicity a pair of tweezers. Picking up the little black envelope with them, Felicity held it out towards the Bunsen burner. But she couldn’t quite reach, Bio was in the way.
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 10