Anna sat and there was a thoughtful hiatus.
“She’s not wrong, is she?” Morrison offered.
“No,” Thandie said with a smear of contrition, “she’s not. I’m sorry. I need to control m’Yorkshire gob!” She laughed.
“Okay,” Anna said, “firstly, does anyone have any more news of the Spring since Greg saw him at the graveyard yesterday?” There was a short silence. “Then I propo…”
Morrison interrupted her.
“I strongly believe that that is the first priority.” He looked around the room. “Well, without him there is no plan.”
“Well, I don’t agree,” said Edwards, “As I understand it, each of us has been briefed on our part of the plan. We need to pool everything we know and the plan should be self evident.”
“Yes,” Morrison agreed, “but one of us must take the lead.”
“Not necessarily,” Thompson interjected, “I’ve spent my whole career as a BBC TV producer, and believe me, there is no planning on Earth that’s more difficult than trying to get things done for that bureaucratic beast. What has never worked there is trying to oversee everything. So, we appoint one person for each element. They administrate just their bit. Then all the subheads get together regularly and jointly report and plan the next move. We are already in that position. We’ve each had our part laid out by the Spring. So we can carry on and do it like we’re… planning a BBC production.”
“Are you fucking mad?” Thandie’s voice thundered.
Everyone fell silent and looked at her. She shook her head.
“Well, forgive me,” Morrison broke the silence, “but I don’t see how we can carry this out without someone in ultimate charge.”
“Will you all just shut the fuck up!” Thandie shouted, more emphatically but less loudly than her previous outburst.
“And will you stop being so fucking disrespectful to all of us,” Edwards said to Thandie from the safety of the crowd.
“Listen to you all,” Thandie said rising to her feet. “You’d think this was a fucking… PTA discussing fucking… school… books or something. For god’s sake, people. We are planning to change the world. We can’t keep pussy-footing around and pretending we’re some sort of bloody sub-committee of some other bloody sub-committee. Guys… guys… we need to get real. We’re planning the…” her voice became very quiet, “… assassination of the President of the United States… for fuck’s sake!”
She sat down exhausted, not by her outburst, but by the extreme effort it had taken to bring their private thoughts into their collective consciousness.
“You’re right, you’re right,” Anna said, “what we’re planning can’t be taken lightly. So, in light of recent events, I guess the first question has to be; does… anybody have cold feet?”
The question hung heavily.
“Well, I’ll start us off… I’m in… one hundred percent in!” said Thandie.
“Me too,” said Anna.
“Yep, and me,” Thompson and Edwards said nearly in unison.
They all looked to Morrison.
“Well, yes of course I’m fucking in… I just think we need the Spring…”
Morrison went silent.
“So, the second question is… can we do it if the Spring doesn’t come back?” Anna asked.
Morrison put his hand half into the air.
“Yes,” said Thandie, giving him a hard look, “we know what you think.”
“Who else thinks it can’t be done without the Spring?” Anna asked plainly. No one made a sound. “So, I take it that only Simon has doubts, then?”
“Well,” said Edwards, “in principle I’m for it, but I don’t think we can make a snap decision like that. I think we need to discuss it.”
“We are discussing it, you fucking wanker,” Thandie blurted out.
“Now that’s enough, you fucking stuck-up cow,” Edwards stood wagging a finger.
“Now come on,” Morrison said with a cooling voice.
“Well, it’s not right,” Edwards said, wounded, “she’s always insulting me and treating me like a fucking lackey.”
“You’re right, John. I’m a fucking fishwife at heart. I’m sorry… I apologise,” Thandie conceded.
Edwards sat down. Morrison cleared his throat.
“There is a major problem about going forward without the Spring, that you’re all missing,” said Morrison. “The Spring is a marksman. He’s the one that will take the shot. Who shoots the President if we do it by ourselves?”
Anna stared hard at Morrison.
“Actually,” Anna said slowly, “we do have a marksman among us. The only reason that person was recruited was because we needed a backup if for some reason the Spring couldn’t take the shot. We are honoured, Lady and gentlemen to have a British Olympic shooter on our team.”
“And how do you know that?” Thandie questioned.
“The Spring told me,” Anna reported with a tinge of self-importance.
Morrison sank back onto the sofa.
“So…” asked Thandie impatiently, “who is the bloody Olympic shooter?”
The group looked quizzically at each other.
“Well, think about it,” said Anna, “we each have our different roles. Each SIS sleeper re-activated by the Spring for a specific purpose. Morrison at the Treasury, Thandie at British Metals, Thompson at the BBC, Edwards deep in the throng of the government and me at the heart of the British legal system. All you have to do is ask which one of us is in a position that is superfluous to the plan. And that person… is our shooter.”
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Chapter 14
Before going to bed, the previous night, Cyril had checked the front door three times. He had shaken it hard by the handle, before running his fingers over the night latch and each of the two bolts; the one at the top and the other at the bottom. Then he had headed upstairs, undressed, brushed his teeth and climbed into bed.
But sleep had not come. Maybe, he thought, it was he that was not making sleep welcome. The mayhem in his head was simply not a conducive place for sleep to do its stuff. Sleep was no fool. It knew when it wasn’t really wanted. However, at around nine AM, just as Cyril had decided that there was no point continuing to lie in bed awake, the reluctant guest he had been courting for nine hours crept up from behind and struck a decisive and soporific blow. When his eyes re-opened, it was mid-day. He made his way bleary-eyed to the bathroom, and brushed his slept-in teeth briefly before heading downstairs.
A noise, as he reached the landing, made him stiffen. He realised that waiting for this noise had been the cause of his sleepless night. He had feared its arrival, but had prayed it would not come, and in the light of day, had hoped it would turn out to be simply unfounded paranoia. But no, the noise came again. Someone was moving around downstairs. As much as Cyril wanted it to be Mocha again, he knew that considering the facts of his current situation, the likelihood of that false-positive happening again was very slim.
He crept downstairs, trying to remember the position of each creaky floorboard, and doing his best to avoid them. He approached the kitchen, as that was from where the noises seemed to be coming. The kitchen door was open. Cyril peeped his head around the door jamb, and froze. A man was moving around in the kitchen, apparently preparing coffee and toast.
“What… what… w…?” Cyril stammered.
“Morning Cyril,” said Joseph, cheerily, “Hope you don’t mind,” he gestured to his preparations. “Can I get you something?”
“Coffee would be nice,” Cyril answered.
Joseph smiled as if the two of them were casual house-mates.
“What are you doing here?” Cyril asked.
Joseph continued his domesticity. As the assassin moved around the kitchen, his jacket opened a little. Cyril noticed that his own Walther PPK was tucked into Joseph’s waistband.
“Are you here to finish what you should have done yesterday?” Cyril asked timidly.<
br />
Joseph handed him a cup of coffee.
“There you go,” Joseph said, then picked up his own cup and a plate of toast.
He gently pushed past the younger man. Cyril stood both scared and dumbfounded. He heard the older man suddenly stop and retrace his steps until Cyril could feel Joseph standing behind him. A voice came in his ear.
“No, Cyril, I’m not here to kill you.”
Cyril turned to face Joseph.
“Well, that’s always a pleasant thing to hear, Sir.”
“No,” continued Joseph, turning and walking away towards the front room, “I’m here to get your help.”
Cyril followed Joseph into the front room. The two men sat down; Joseph on the sofa and Cyril in an armchair. Cyril sipped his coffee.
“How can I help you, Sir?”
Joseph looked up and wiped toast crumbs and butter from his lips with the back of his hand.
“You know an awful lot about me,” Joseph began, “so, it is reasonable to assume that as you are a profiler, you know so much because you’ve been studying me.”
“Okay,” the profiler conceded.
“It is of course possible that you have been looking into me in your spare time, but I’m going with the idea that you were ordered to do so,” Joseph continued. Cyril attempted to keep a poker face. “And if you were ordered to study me, I think there may be another five profiles you were ordered to look into… How am I doing?”
“Not bad, so far, Sir,” Cyril encouraged.
“So,” ventured Joseph, “would I be right in thinking you have been studying… the Bedfellows?”
“You would not be wrong, Sir,” Cyril commented, attempting to hide how impressed he was.
“That’s what I need your help on. I need you to help me identify who they are.”
“You don’t know?” Cyril asked, quizzically.
“No, I don’t.”
“But you’re one of them.”
“Apparently I am, but I seem to have lost that knowledge due to a drugs binge courtesy of the CIA.”
“The CIA?”
“Yes, they’ve also worked out that the Bedfellows exist. They think I’m their leader. But the silly buggers fucked themselves up – and me – with some experimental concoction from Langley. Now even I have no idea what’s going on.”
The young man finished his drink and placed his cup on the coffee table.
“It would be an honour to help, Sir,” he said.
“It will also be extremely dangerous,” Joseph warned.
“Sir!” Cyril announced boldly, “you are talking to a man who survived an attempted deletion by the best agent in the world.”
“Well, there you go,” Joseph responded.
Cyril narrowed his eyes.
“Is it right that until you climbed into my office window yesterday you had no idea who I was?”
“Yes,” Joseph answered.
“Then how did you find me?”
“Ah,” Joseph laughed, “you’re obviously impressed by my extra-human powers.”
“I’m not usually stumped by such things, but I can’t work out how you did that.”
“Would it upset you to find out that the deduction was prosaic rather than miraculous?”
“It would take a lot for me to lose faith in you, Sir.”
Joseph smiled and produced a crumpled letter from his pocket. He held it up.
“A letter to you from your mum. Your address is on the envelope.”
“Where did you get that?”
“It was on your desk in your office,” Joseph explained.
“But,” Cyril furrowed his brow, “how did you know to take it? How did you know it would be useful?”
“And that, Cyril, is what keeps the best agent in the world – a living agent. Never… never let any possibly useful piece of information get away.”
Cyril paused in deep thought. Joseph watched him like a proud mentor.
“Did you read it, Sir?”
Joseph laughed knowingly.
“What do you think, Cyril?”
Simmons was pouring himself a whisky as Sherry Goodman burst into his office almost knocking his personal assistant to the floor.
“What the fuck, Simmons!?”
“And a very good day to you, too,” said Simmons.
“You let the fucker escape? What kind of outfit are you running?” she yelled.
“Whisky?” asked Simmons, holding up the bottle.
“Got any Bourbon?”
He smiled and cocked his head apologetically.
“Okay, I’ll take Scotch… No ice or water.”
“Of course not.”
Simmons handed her a glass and gestured to her to sit down. Sherry descended clumsily onto the sofa; her damaged left leg straight out in front of her.
“Is it hurting a lot?… The leg?”
Sherry downed her drink in one, and grimaced.
“So what happened, Simmons? How the fuck did he get away?”
“You assume a lot, don’t you, Sherry dear?”
“Correct me if I’ve got this wrong?” Sherry said tightly. “He was here, right? You put him under lock and key, right? And now he’s gone, right?”
“But you are assuming that via our amateur, non-American, cockamamie methods we let him slip his moorings… right?”
“But that’s exactly what you did.”
“Is it?” questioned Simmons, “Is it?”
“Are you saying you let him get away?”
“Can you think of a better way to find out the identity of the Bedfellows?” Simmons indicated Sherry’s glass. “Would you like another one?” he asked.
“Sure… Thanks.”
Simmons took her glass over to the drinks cabinet, and started to unscrew the top of the bottle of Scotch.
“Now, what we need from you is all your intel on the Bedfellows,” he said returning with the refreshed glass.
“Really?”
“Yes,” Simmons repeated pointedly, “really.”
“And what do we get in return?” Sherry asked petulantly, and downed her drink again in one gulp.
Simmons stared at her.
“The glass seems almost superfluous, really.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” Simmons added absently, “co-operation, Sherry. That’s what you get.”
“That’s it? Co-operation?” she laughed.
“We know where he is. We know his every move. We have eyes on him twenty-four seven. He will be looking for the Bedfellows, and when he finds them, we’ll have him… and them.”
“So, why do you need our intel?”
“Every little helps, as they say. You can’t know too much, but knowing too little… gets you killed.”
“We too have someone on the inside, you know,” Sherry said, coquettishly.
Simmons cleared his throat.
“You have someone?”
“Yep.”
“Who do you have?”
“That,” Sherry said as if serving a tennis ace, “is our business.”
Sherry grappled her way to her feet. Simmons did not help her. She limped over to him and stared hard into his face.
“Don’t fuck with me, Simmons.”
“My dear Lady, I have no intention of fucking with you.”
“I want you to put your best man on this.”
“My second best man,” Simmons corrected blandly.
“Your second best?”
“Our best man… is the target,” he stated matter-of-factly.
As suddenly as she had entered, Sherry stormed out.
“I’ll send the intel over,” she called over her shoulder as she disappeared through the door.
Simmons’ PA put his head into the room.
“Sorry about that, Sir,” he apologised.
“No, no, don’t worry… she’s American!” The young man turned to go. “Perkins?”
“Yes, Sir?”
“Can you ask Claude Maddison to come in�
�� straight away.”
Maddison stood uncomfortably in front of Simmons who sat back casually on the sofa.
“What do you mean, ‘There’s no sign of him.’?” Simmons said angrily.
“We have everyone out, Sir. The building’s empty.”
“And no one knows where he is?” Maddison shook his head. “Maddison, old boy. I hate strong arm tactics, but if you don’t have Miller back here under lock and key by tonight… well, do I have to spell it out?”
“No, Sir.”
Maddison walked urgently towards the door.
“Oh, and Maddison?” Simmons called to him. Maddison stopped and turned. “That chap of yours, Cyril Proctor… Have him picked up and brought in.”
“Proctor? Why?”
“Immediately, Maddison. I want him here in my office within the hour!”
Joseph and Cyril were on their fourth cup of coffee. They had been filling each other in on what they actually knew. Cyril had a brain like a flash-drive, whereas, although usually Joseph would be a close second, the top SIS agent’s brain was currently more like a Swiss cheese.
“Okay,” said Joseph, “can we look at the actual files you’ve been working on?”
Cyril looked at him.
“Oh dear, the computer’s at…” Cyril trailed off.
“SIS?”
Cyril nodded. He then reached into his back trouser pocket and pulled out a brown leather wallet. Joseph watched him carefully. From inside the wallet Cyril took a small, flat, black piece of plastic. He held it up and examined it, then adjusted his focus to Joseph’s face beyond.
“A flash-drive, right?” said Joseph.
“I’ll get the laptop,” Cyril said getting up from the armchair.
As he got to the hallway, he called out.
“Another coffee, Sir?”
Joseph sat back into the sofa and realised he was the most relaxed he could remember being. Slowly things were beginning to make sense. But more than that, the future looked knowable. Cyril’s head appeared at the door.
“Another coffee, Sir? I really need one; didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“Sure, Cyril. Why not?”
“I’m afraid I’m out of milk. There’s a shop on the corner. I’ll be there and back in a couple of minutes.”
If The Bed Falls In Page 11