“Mr Grayson was always very specific on wanting measurements. Very keen on them he was,” I interrupted by way of explanation. She stared at me in cold silence until I subsided.
“I am aware of the,” she picked her word carefully, “situation between Mr Grayson and yourself. I can assure you that I do not need to have information about the size of the entities that you deal with. Shall we simply accept that the size of your genitalia is sufficient and that you have what I believe street operatives call ‘cojones’ and move on?”
“I thought we were ‘field’ operatives,” I said, more as a musing than an actual question. It isn’t wise to question someone who has just ascended to the throne of power. They are usually only too eager to demonstrate that they know how to use that power so recently bestowed upon them.
“How often do you carry out investigations in a field?” she asked archly.
“Good point well made,” I had to allow.
“In the file,” she continued referring to the master file that contained all of the various reports and documents relating to the investigation or incident from everyone involved (well, everyone who was still alive enough to hit a keyboard that is) along with all further evidence, photographs, CCTV footage and anything else that had been picked up along the way, “it indicates that you only uncovered the plot after letting a potential bomber into the building and that she revealed herself and her plans to you. You further state that you not only tied up the Agency Director, but that you actually handed the gun in your possession to the bomber who then went on to use it to kill him. You admit it was you who disabled the communications systems from this office and then those of the entire building…”
“That bit wasn’t me,” I defended myself.
“But it was caused by the gun that you handed over to the bomber,” she pointed out. “You were also responsible for the destruction of one of the largest laboratories in the building by means of collapsing obelisk, one of my laboratories, I might add. You accessed the Generator Room without authorisation and finally because of your actions several inmates of the basement cells are suffering from indigestion. And you know how unpleasant they can be when they are irritated. I need also not add the number of phone calls and emails that I have been forced to field from representatives of the Egyptian government and the authorities of the Siren Liaison Bureau.”
She waited for me to respond and I was tempted to let her wait, but instead prompted, “Is there a question in all that?”
“Add to ‘all that’ the fact that you ran up the largest expenses bill for an operation ever recorded by this organisation on some very questionable items and the question that I have for you is what possible reason can there be for my not demoting you to toilet cleaning detail?” she demanded, the temperature in the room around us falling noticeably. Or maybe that was just my imagination. I made a mental note to bring a thermometer with me next time (assuming that there would be a ‘next time’) so that I could take empirical readings.
“Because there’s someone out there who wants to get rid of the Magic Circle and wants to be rid of them very, very badly,” I suggested. This was possibly the most worrying aspect of the whole sorry saga. Well, the most worrying to me personally was the likelihood of sludge demons in Morecambe Bay being my next assignment, but this was the only defence that I had against her particular way of reading what had happened and so I had to be convincing. “Several someones who are very powerful, very well informed about Agency security protocol, possibly from within the organisation itself, and who have access to enormous resources. And you need me to find those someones.”
“If I threw a jelly in any direction in the canteen I could hit a dozen or so people equally qualified to carry out that assignment,” she said, dismissively. I decided not to ask whether she was serious considering jelly throwing as a proper method of assigning cases to agents.
“Only if you actually want the mole unmasked,” I pointed out and this did catch her attention.
“What do you mean by that?” she asked giving me her suddenly undivided attention.
She sat there like an ice sculpture, her chin resting on the tips of the apparently razor-sharp nails of her steepled fingers. Hers was a very impressive stare, but I am trained and experienced in dealing with thousand-eyed multi-tentacled inscrutable squid gods from other dimensions and weathered it with little concern. Few human stares can match up to that.
“Personal effects go missing whilst on their way to storage?” I reminded her. “No, that doesn’t happen. Critical information about an investigation doesn’t show up in the initial briefing file? No, that doesn’t happen either. Now correct me if I’m wrong, but both evidence storage and information gathering come under the remit of research and development. Those are your departments. And you just happen to be conveniently out of reach at a conference somewhere in the middle of nowhere and with a very select audience at the time these things happen? These things that lead to the removal of your most hated rival?” I paused to make a theatrical point. “No, I don’t think so.”
“If you are anywhere in the vicinity of a point then perhaps you would be so kind as to make it,” she said through teeth that were clamped together behind pursed lips.
“My point is this: the Children of Osiris’s plot to blow up the Magic Circle never had any chance of succeeding. You knew that. What kind of global overlords of the mysterious arts would the Magic Circle be if they couldn’t foresee an exploding obelisk featuring sometime in their immediate future? Or, failing that, if they couldn’t summon up a whole batch of personal protection spells that even the annihilation of this entire building wouldn’t so much as put a dent in? So, knowing that there was never any real threat to the Magic Circle, you encouraged the plot, helped it along with occasional assistance such as getting an unregistered Siren into the country and removing any information along the way that might lead my investigation in a direction that you didn’t want it to go. Apep wasn’t a reincarnated snake demon after all, but a genetically engineered water snake with a major steroid addiction and the sphinxes were cloned from DNA sourced from a priceless rug of sphinx pelts found in a private collector’s vault. These were two incredible feats of bioengineering beyond the resources of even the most advanced companies, but just the kind of thing that could be carried out by, let’s say, the Research and Development branch of a United Nations agency, for example. The Children of Osiris knew that I was going to talk to Professor Houseman and had her killed and the Curator of the Abu Simbel museum knew that I might be paying him a visit and that he should lead me to Apep. How could they know that? Yes, Miranda Harcourt might have managed to get that information to them whilst in the ladies’ room or something, but department heads have, I’m certain, access to all Agency staff expenses claims and travel arrangements if they take the time to be interested. I could make enquiries with Miss Kilkenny as to whether any enquiries were made about my travel plans during this investigation if you would like.” She did not speak, though this was not proving to be unusual for her. “I’m fairly sure that you didn’t expect things to end up in the death of Director Grayson…”
“Ex Director Grayson,” she corrected me quietly, but I wasn’t fool enough to take that for cowed surrender.
“Late Director Grayson,” I corrected her before continuing, “…but his failure to pick up on a plot of such global proportions would have presented the perfect way to discredit him and, with him out of the way, the powers that be would turn to you to fill the void. He was on to you, you know. That’s why he wouldn’t issue the Siren alert. He knew someone was working against him inside the Agency and he needed time to figure out who it was. As it turned out, he never got that time. Things seem to have worked out quite well for you, wouldn’t you say Mrs Freidriksen?”
“That’s an interesting piece of fiction Agent Ward and were I to be interested in taking it as anything other than fiction then I would have to presume that you would have large amounts of proof with which
to justify making such accusations against me?”
“Not a shred,” I admitted cheerfully, but then turned more serious than anyone in the organisation had ever seen me, “but be very clear, Mrs, Freidriksen, that your position here exists only because you have the support of the ‘street’ agents. Without them this Agency is nothing. Lose their faith and your fall from grace would be more spectacular than the whole Icarus wings fiasco. If it were to become known, for example, that you let people die and that you were wiling to gamble the lives of everyone here, not to mention the future of the Agency itself, for nothing more than a grubby snatch at personal power then I don’t suppose that faith would last any longer than the proverbial snowball on the face of the sun. No, I don’t have any proof, but I have a mountain of circumstantial evidence and if I were to set the gathered ranks of my fellow agents loose on that then I would have all the proof I would need before you took afternoon tea.”
Grayson probably would have shot me on the spot and made up some story about me going rogue to cover himself, but then he had been an agent and therefore used to action. Mrs Freidriksen was a desk jockey and head of department. She spent too long thinking it over.
“What do you want?” she asked and right there I had all the evidence and proof that I was ever going to need. There was no way that an ice queen like her would even consider dealing with me unless I was completely accurate in my assumptions. If there had been even a hint of a bluff then she would have played it.
“Me?” I could have twisted the knife and asked her to bring the dead back to life, the innocents like Cynthia Traske or those caught in the crossfire like Mettles, but any attempt to make her feel guilty was doomed to failure since I was fairly sure that a conscience was one thing that was missing from her makeup. “A modest pay rise, better toilet paper in the washrooms, a personal guarantee that I will never be assigned to sludge demon duty in Morecombe Bay… Nothing excessive. Oh and the knowledge that if I choose to call then you will choose to answer.”
She tried the stare on me again, but that had the exact same response as before.
“You had some leave coming to you when you were put on this case did you not?” she asked at length, rather non-committally I thought. The woman really had some stones as the kids on the street might have said after watching far too much American television.
“Yes, I had some days off due.”
“Take an extra day,” she ordered and then went back to the computer screen and her typing. Clearly the interview was now over. I wasn’t sure whether I’d passed or not and whether I was going to have to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder waiting for her revenge to fall. As I stood up to leave she added without looking at me, “Leave the credit card at the door and I would appreciate it if you did not distract my personal assistant on your way out with nonessential chit chat.”
“All limbs intact?” Penny asked as I headed back past her desk towards the lift.
“Are you kidding me? She loves me,” I told her, reluctantly slipping the card back across the desk so that it could disappear into that top drawer. “This could be the start of a beautiful friendship.”
“I rather doubt that,” Penny giggled as the door slid shut behind me.
The End
(For now anyway)
The Man From U.N.D.E.A.D. - the Curious Case of the Kidnapped Chemist Page 25