Back in the USSA

by Kim Newman

  "But this is ridiculous. The plot didn't stop the wedding. Charles and Ekaterina stopped it. They realised they didn't love one another and it would have been hypocritical and damaging to go through with it."

  "Pish and fiddlesticks, Cinds. Most royal weddings are between people who don't love one another. Am I right, Chas, or am I right?"

  "Most," Charles admitted.

  "Remember, Blunt tried to keep you out of the picture. Philby's job was to mark him and jolly you two together. At the same time, Andropov saw to it that the handsome young hussar officer Ek had a crush on was returned to Petrograd to be right at her side just as she was about to marry someone else. They didn't stoop to assassination to stop the wedding, just provided the happy couple with happier alternatives. My guess is that the plotters concentrated on Pavel the Patsy and you were just an unexpected opportunity they took advantage of."

  Charles raised his champagne flute and toasted "God bless the USSA."

  She looked around, wondering if anyone heard. Harlan, the American attache, was distracted from chatting up an Olympic skater and grinned at them.

  "I feel like a puppet in a show," she said, almost annoyed.

  "I've felt like that for most of my life," said Charles. "But not now."

  "Won't Ekaterina's marriage to the handsome ensign prove just as popular with the masses? When they polled people on tele, everyone wanted to see her happy."

  Balham smiled slyly. "But, Cinzia, you must have seen how tiny Chekhov looks on tele, surrounded by all the scrambled egg."

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  Shiploads of Imperial Engagement souvenirs had been recalled and reissued with Chekhov's face stuck over Charles's. The ensign would transfer back to the space program after the wedding and had requested a moon mission.

  "And have you noticed how Ek cosies up to that young Austrian they brought in as a bodyguard?"

  "Leutnant Schwarzenegger?"

  "The very same. If I were that Asimov chappie, I'd foresee storm clouds over that marriage."

  "Isaac has been right about some things," she said.

  Charles held her hand. They would return to Britain for a decent period and then have a quiet wedding in Westminster Abbey, which Cinzia understood was quite small. She had to convert to the Church of England, which would probably set Grandfather a-spin in his grave.

  Mother would be moving back with them, and Vladi—who wanted Brynner to play him in the Paradjanov miniseries Anastasia was writing about Uaffaire Cinzia —said he would consider moving to Britain if the obligation to perform National Service were waived.

  Another bottle arrived, complements of Harlan. Cinzia doubted Charles had ever bought champagne in his life.

  "Oh good," said Balham to the pretty waitress. "Can we have the fish eggs with that, there's an antelope. And don't tell me fish eggs are off, love."

  Harlan grinned. In the dark corner with the Ice Queen and the attache.

  "Cheers, you scheming commie bastards," Balham toasted.

  "So who won?" she asked.

  "We did," said Charles.

  They toasted each other and drank. The Earl washed down a lump of caviar with champagne.

  "Cindy," he gulped, "has the future King of England taught you the English National Anthem?"

  "I already know it, my Mother taught me. She's English, remember. God save our gracious King, long live our noble. .."

  "No, not that one," interrupted Balham, cackling. "The real one."

  Charles and the Earl looked at each other, wickedness sparking in their eyes, and began to shrill at the tops of their voices, startling everyone in the room.

  "Ying tongying tongying tongying tongying tong iddle-eye-po. ..

  Eventually, she joined in.

  ON THE ROAD

  fc

  1998

  Oak Park, Illinois

  "Remember alternative comedy? Boffo in Europe in the early-to-mid-'80s?"

  Lowe nodded, cornered by Hunt Thompson. He had actually been at the Windmill Theatre the night Mary Millington shot Rik Mayall in the throat, the fabled Gig That Stopped the Laughter.

  "The Okhrana were behind the scenes," continued Thompson. "The fiendish Russkies figured it'd be cool to have obnoxious types get up and be unbelievably rude about your system of government. The idea was that the comics were so personally horrible your docile population would equate them with their message and react against anyone who dared complain about anything. So they came up with psychiatric profiles of the sort of person who'd piss off the most people. You know, clever college-boys without girlfriends."

  Chugging Vimto, he did his best to look attentive while Thompson declaimed. This was his marquee and the party-thrower was in a fever of expansive, post-Communist reminiscence. The condition was widespread and, Lowe feared, incurable.

  "The intelligence boys recruited misfits, trained them in irritating vocal mannerisms, designed off-putting stage outfits. Even their haircuts were calculated to offend. The spooks paid mucho dinero to get the movement off the ground, then let the gullible stand-ups do the rest."

  Lowe had heard the rumour before. He didn't really credit it. For a while, with that explosion of irreverence, it had seemed things in stifling

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  Back in the USSA

  grey Britain were genuinely about to get out of hand. And a good job too. The Dangerous Brothers called Bill Grundy a pillock on live television, a defining moment. But the next year, Tarby and Brucie were back on the Home Service and the shiny-suited, arrogant iconoclasts were out of work or dead. Now, the survivors were doing advertisements for banks.

  "Kinda clever, we thought," drawled Thompson. "You know, prove to the world how tolerant the democracies were. For a while it was my job to go around rounding up illegal tapes of Alexei Sayle and Ben Elton."

  Sayle would have been an especial problem in the USSA. The showpiece of his act was a combined impersonation of George "Mr. Woo" Formby and President Al "Scarface" Capone. At the height of his career, the self-styled "fat bastard" was probably a sincerer Marxist than anyone in the American government.

  "I was seconded to the Ministry of the Interior," continued Thompson. "We didn't understand alternative comedy at all. We even thought for a while that it might be the precursor of some sort of socialist youth movement in Europe. That's why we were so keen to stop it coming into America. Last thing we wanted was for American kids to catch socialism."

  Lowe laughed dutifully.

  Nine years ago, when Lowe first met him, Hunt Thompson was a minor official. Lowe had been in Chicago to interview Charles H. Holley, one of the troubadours of the New Deal, for The Sun. The CP lived on for a few years after Vonnegut was swept to power, and Thompson was the singer's Party minder.

  Then, America was different. Full of hope, bursting with strange energy, letting out the stench of two generations of corrupt dictatorship. Now? Disillusioned, wary, uncontrolled. Fragmenting into half a dozen near civil wars and squabbling states, petty crime and medium-sized rackets on every street. And overrun, poor bastards, by European God-botherers and double glazing salesmen like Sir Robert Maxwell.

  Lowe wanted to ask Thompson if he'd heard from Holley.

  "The bad days are behind us now. My people and I have very high hopes of your Sir Robert and this tour. This is a big country, Mr. Lowe, a very big country, with big opportunities."

  That much was true, as long as you understood the way the system worked. Where most European hucksters failed was in simply not understanding that nothing would happen if you didn't pay off the right people, from the local mobsters all the way down to the janitors.

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  Thompson, the prissy little official of nine years ago had reinvented himself as a capitalist. He had obviously blagged his old Party connections into new business connections and made a fair old wedge in something or other, buying himself a big house on the proceeds. He probably sold army surplus to the secessionists and militias springing up a
ll over the country.

  Thompson was organising the Yank end of Sir Bob's "Freedom and Enterprise Roadshow" a circus that would spend eight weeks travelling from Chicago to Los Angeles, bringing Americans the gospels of capitalism and Christianity—and selling them all sorts of rubbish along the way.

  Christ! Two months of dealing with idiots like Thompson, all the while hacking out adulatory nonsense about Sir Bob for the Mirror.

  "What have you been doing with yourself since we last met?"

  "I left the Sun a few months after I got home" shrugged Lowe. "The new owner wanted to take it "down market" Bathing beauties and bingo. There was talk of going tabloid. I moved into the wireless for a while, but came back here three years ago, as North America correspondent for the Daily Mirror."

  "Yes sir, it must be satisfying being a newspaperman. Travel, meeting people, being at the centre of world events..."

  Lowe's glass was empty. He needed to get away.

  "Fact is I had to take the Mirror job. All an old Fleet Street hand could get at the age of 51. Auntie BeeBee fired me."

  Hunt's jaw dropped a little.

  "Live on The World at One, I referred to the Home Secretary, the Right Honourable Francis Urquhart MP, as a murdering cunt'. So you see, communism or capitalism, it's all the same. Always a struggle to get the truth out."

  He walked off to the bar, leaving Thompson wide-eyed.

  The bar served only British soft drinks. Lowe took a Vimto refill from a young man with a yard-wide smile and a celluloid bow tie. The barman —HI PARDNER! MY NAME IS TOM on his lapel badge—insisted on demonstrating his juggling, decanting the drink from a bottle in mid-air, snatching the full glass from free-fall to hand it over.

  Lowe quite liked Vimto, but couldn't quite understand how an unexceptional fruit-flavoured cordial had come to symbolise, for New Americans, the best in democratic style and youthful chic.

  Back in the USSA

  The Freedom and Enterprise Roadshow was kicking off right here, right now in a marquee in Hunt's spacious garden. Along with the various British stars and "businessmen" of the roadshow, Le Tout Chicago was here. Hard-faced, crop-haired men in dark suits moved like sharks through the crowds, accompanied by big minders in expensive British-made shell suits with gun-bulges under their armpits. The womenfolk were all under 30, with long legs, short dresses, big hair and too much panstick.

  "Lowe!" boomed His Master's Voice.

  Sir Robert Maxwell barrelled towards Lowe, displacing the air like a whale shifting water, planet-shaped body exerting a repellent force like gravity in reverse. The proprietor of the Daily Mirror was a moving mountain in a purple tux, half a dozen chins pinning his dickie bow to his sternum, fists swinging like hams. Rivulets of pungent sweat flowed from his coal-black hairline down through the deep folds in his face.

  "I've decided you're opening bat."

  Part of the Roadshow's remit was to introduce Americans to the joys of cricket. Maxwell was captain of the team, and a firm of sports equipment manufacturers had donated a vanload of gear, mostly seconds.

  "Me?" said Lowe. "I'm hopeless. They made us play cricket at school. I don't think I scored more than three runs in all that time. And dropped every catch I ever got near."

  "Well, practice, you pillock! And make sure you give the team a decent write-up in the next few days."

  When Maxwell, whose real name was something Czech and unpronounceable, took over the Mirror he had promised he would not interfere in the running of the paper.

  Maxwell sighted Mr. Gekko, a hungry-looking American entrepreneur, and bore down on him like a sweaty avalanche in evening dress. Lowe, as always, was relieved by the passing of his boss.

  Someone asked HI PARDNER! MY NAME IS TOM for a glass of Tizer. The newcomer was British, with a firm, clear voice that radiated friendliness and decency. It could only be a vicar, Lowe bet himself, and turned to look.

  He won. He caught the eye of a thin man in his late 30s. He had an unlikely mop of unruly hair and a dog collar.

  "Hello," said the vicar. "What do you think of it so far?"

  "Rubbish," said Lowe. "And you?"

  "Needs must when the Devil drives." He held out his hand. "John Beverley, roving Anglican evangelist, at your service."

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  Lowe saw something in the Reverend's eye, at odds with his mild manner and clerical suit. A tic, maybe, but also a tick-tick-tick. The vicar would bear watching.

  "I'm Lowe of the Mirror"

  A vast shadow fell over them: Sir Robert returning like a happy dirigible, arm heavy on the shoulders of Mr. Gekko, breathing business opportunities into the American's face, insisting he meet the minions.

  Lowe decided to venture forth and mingle.

  Part of the Roadshow was sponsored by Strand cigarettes. Lowe helped himself to a handful from a tray carried by a girl dressed as a can-can dancer. Her pretty face was a frozen mask of utter misery, but her legs, in fishnet stockings, were worth a second glance. He was distracted from the legs by a tall, elegant blonde in a pink twin-set. She was nodding intently, the losing half of a one-sided conversation. She was tapping her cheek with her two middle fingers, the universal secret sign of boredom distress, requesting rescue from anyone who picked up the signal.

  The blonde's borer was Blair, a young-looking man with fifty-two teeth. The Cheshire piranha was coiner of the slogan "New Britain, New Hope" and currently working triple-time to get attention for the Roadshow. He paused in mid-tirade to draw breath, and his victim cut him off, making a "there's someone I really must say hello to" gesture. She advanced towards Lowe, arms outstretched, pink lips puckered for a double-cheek air kiss.

  As the woman got close Lowe realised who she was. Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward. A minor Royal, great-grandchild of Queen Victoria by one of the youngest of her immense brood. He remembered hearing something about how she'd been hammered by death duties and didn't qualify for the civil list. She was persona non grata with the pridvorny of King Andrew's court because of some sordid row with Queen Sarah.

  "Thank God you're here, darling," Lady Penelope breathed at him. "Do you have a gun? Or a spear? That ghastly man needs murdering. Wipe the risus sardonicus off his fizzog. Give me one of those dreadful fag things, smile like we're old friends, and snag me a drink will you, lovie."

  Lowe noticed the deft way Lady Penelope managed to hug and kiss him without any physical contact. She smelled of something expensive.

  He lit up two cigarettes and gave her one, which she jammed into a pink holder that she sucked languidly. Then he fetched her a Vimto.

  B

  Back in the USSA

  Lady Penelope was well into her forties, but looked a sight better than her pictures. Her skirt seemed to restrict her movements, forcing her to bob in tiny steps as if she were on wires. A wide-brimmed pink hat, with a functionless veil, perched on her stiff blonde hair. Her eyes were huge and fascinating, her mouth generous and red; these features seemed almost too big for her small, smooth face.

  "What do you think of it so far?" he asked.

  "If, as I suspect from your seedy manner and general grubbiness, you're a journo, I want it understood anything I say to you between now and the day I die is strictly off the record."

  Lowe grinned. "Done."

  Lady Penelope took a deep breath, and let it out in a torrent of smoke and tiny words.

  "This is no kind of work for a lady, the Yank criminals are unspeakably vulgar, and that Maxwell creature gives me the screaming willies. And Mr. Blair is a complete phoney. D'you know my principal function right here, right now? What it is I'm supposed to be here for?"

  "To add aristocratic glamour to the Freedom and Enterprise Roadshow, what the Americans call a touch of class'?"

  "Balls. At this particular do, I'm to allow my posterior to be manhandled by American oafs. It's astonishing how much loudmouthed criminals want to grope the bum of a minor, financially-strapped British royal. If things
carry on like this, I shall set up a stall and charge a million dollars a time. Would you like to be my barker? It's a very presentable bum, I'm told. Who are you, by the way."

  "I'm Lowe."

  "Of course you are, darling."

  "It's my name too."

  Having run out of patter, Lady Penelope blew a smoke ring and looked through her veil at a tall man in dark glasses who stood alone at the far end of the bar.

  "There's a bit of rough, and no mistake," she said.

  The man was in late middle age, but obviously kept in shape. Like all of the British government cloak-and-dagger brigade at public functions, he had a cheap camera dangling like a charm bracelet, to give the effect he was a tourist, a visitor, a member of the family.

  "I know him," Lowe said. "He used to be famous."

  "Bloody dangerous is what he is," said Lady Penelope. "Some of my

  Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman

  silly girlfriends dream of a night of brutal intimacy with someone like that. Personally I'd rather sleep on top of a live volcano."

  "Brown," Lowe said, pulling up the name from memory, "William Brown. Just William, they called him. Used to be with one of those tearaway outfits in Indo. A necklace of small human ears sort of fellow. Then a couple of dozen other brushfire wars. The whisper is that he's the one who topped Gerry Adams. Wonder what he's up to here?"

  "Keeping tabs on Fatty Maxwell. Or perhaps something more sinister?"

  Lady Penelope seemed excited by the idea.

  Lowe let his thoughts run on. "Half a dozen secessionist movements or state governments in this country would pay handsomely for a consultant like Just William. Maybe he's checking out freelance opportunities."

  Lady Penelope turned back to him. "Oh well, killers on top of criminals. Hardly unexpected, what? Now then, Mr. Oh So Lowe, as a newspaperman you ought to be able to tell me what a girl has to do to get a drink in this wretched place."

  "Sorry. I've been asking exactly the same question."

  Lady Penelope lifted her veil and looked at the barman with big eyes.