Chosen

by Paddy Bostock

  “I do not come in that exact capacity,” said Maurice who, like Julie Mackintosh never told overt lies but had been groomed to obfuscate when it came to the whole truth. “Look, may I come in? I have a story in which you might be interested.”

  And so it was that, trusting his ex-student, Barry stood aside and ushered Maurice into the now somewhat crowded Shepherd’s Hut where he was confronted by not only the elusive Jeremy Crawford, whom he recognised from his Internet exposure, but also two other people, of whose identity he had a fair idea. Plus there were the animals from his dreamscape. The latter sniffed traces of Terpsichore/Tiddles/Cat and were initially suspicious and standoffish, but once Maurice tickled them on their occipital bones, they were persuaded he was kosher and took to licking him.

  By contrast, the humans, Jeremy in particular, remained mistrustful even after Barry had introduced Maurice, saying he was the most high-flying alumnus he’d ever had the pleasure of teaching and was a thoroughly decent chap. Even so they wondered what the hell the bloke was doing here of all places and at this time of night/early morning. And how had he tracked Barry down to the middle of nowhere when their host had assured them all connections with his past life had been severed years ago when he quit Oxford to become a gardener.

  Even more pertinently, what if it weren’t actually Barry he was looking for? What if he were a Sir Magnus Montague appointee who had somehow stumbled upon Jeremy’s whereabouts and who, despite the dogs’ thumbs-up and his harmless-looking demeanour in his brown three-piece tweed suit, should be treated with extreme caution?

  Jeremy’s face betrayed this suspicion and Maurice wasn’t surprised. How likely was it, after all, that one of the most wanted men on the planet would just smile and say “hi” to some stranger breaking into his erstwhile top secret hidey hole? Not likely at all.

  “Perhaps I could take a seat?” said Maurice.

  At which Barry waved him to a ratty American rocker.

  “Make yourself comfortable, old chap. It’s in that chair I do my crosswords. Cup of tea? Or perhaps something stronger?”

  Like Julie Mackintosh before him, Maurice went for the stronger.

  Sipping at the Château Broadbent 2015 Premier Cru, he declared it, “Magnificent, better even than the Cockburn’s Special Reserve of our Oxford days.”

  “Sorry for the intrusion, Prof, truly I am,” he added. “But believe me, I come in peace and the hope I may be able clear some waters which have become muddied.”

  “Such as?” said Barry, topping up the glass of Premier Cru.

  Maurice levered himself up in the American rocker and went for broke. “The matter of the megalomaniac bonkers banker, for example.”

  Jeremy’s eyes widened and he shrank back on his sofa, as did Dennis and Julie on their seats.

  Barry frowned meaningfully. “And may one ask at whose behest such waters are to be clarified, Mister Moffat? Not MI6’s, one hopes.”

  Maurice pursed his lips, stroked his chin, and nodded. “Not directly,” he said, which did little to calm nerves. Jeremy, for example, was all set to head for the door until Barry placed the calming hand on his shoulder that kept him on his sofa.

  “Care to be a tad more precise, old fellow?” said Barry. “Mystification not exactly the order of the day in the circumstances.”

  Maurice sighed and nodded again.

  “Let us just say I am officially here on government business,” he admitted. “But not The Circus’s. I come on behalf of the prime minister.”

  “Tuh-to fuh-find muh-me?” said Jeremy.

  Maurice couldn’t deny it. “She has plans for you, old fellow. But, you will be pleased to hear, such plans do not meet with my approval and under no circumstances shall I be releasing to her any details of your discovery, hence my first somewhat equivocal response to Prof Broadbent’s question as to my role in this visit. And, in case either of your other guests—“Betty” and “Jackie Lamur” I presume—may be worried by my presence, I can equally assure them neither their Internet sobriquets nor their real names shall ever be mentioned outside these four walls.

  “You know who we are?” Dennis spluttered. “How...?”

  But this wasn’t the moment for Maurice to reveal the workings of the reverse algorithmic code he’d invented to backtrace not only the ID behind the megalomaniac bonkers banker post but also, through a complex series of arcane bugging processes, the names of those with whom he or she had subsequently communicated on the same subject. Nor was it the time to tell of the GRNAV device that had traced Jeremy to the Shepherd’s Hut.

  “For the moment, just let us say I have ways and means, shall we?” he said. “Which I would be glad to explain further at some later date. But meanwhile, I repeat, you can be assured that nothing of what I have discovered shall be released to parties with ideas potentially detrimental to the wellbeing of any of you—Mister Crawford, Miss Mackintosh, or PC Dawkins. A fine piece of sleuthing it was to find Mister Crawford in the first place, by the way, Constable. Does you credit.”

  “Thanks,” said Dennis.

  “Well now, so it was Wibbly Wobbly who sent you,” said Barry.

  “Wibbly...?”

  “The PM. The one who likes to present herself as strong and stable but is about as steadfast as a blancmange in a high wind.”

  Maurice laughed. “Haven’t lost your touch with similes, I see, Professor. And yes it was she.”

  “And these ‘plans’ she has for me?” said Jeremy, finally finding his voice.

  “In a nutshell, to blame you for practically every aspect of Britain’s current decline into a tiny fifth-rate island nobody in his right mind will want anything to do with once the Brexit fiasco is finally done and dusted.”

  “Blame me? I know this damned megalomaniac bonkers banker story has got a bit out of hand, but...”

  “Now it’s reached the realms of the absurd?”

  “Quite.”

  Maurice nodded. “A perfectly understandable reaction, old boy. But the PM is desperate for any story, however far-fetched, to divert public attention from her recent multiple faux pas and, with a little manipulation, yours must have appeared to fit the bill. Unfortunately for you, not even royal births or weddings were sufficient to distract Mister and Missus Joe Public’s attention from the failings of her governance, so she needs a mega focus switcher to persuade them everything is still hunky dory in the sceptred isle and stop them believing it’s her and her flimflam cabinet who’ve got us into the multiple messes we are currently in.”

  Jeremy frowned. “And how is she planning to...?”

  “By concocting a fabric of lies around you, young man. How you had secret and subversive contacts with Igor Ripurpantzov and his Kremlin cronies in pursuance of the destruction of Western democracy as we know it. Vide the election of the fruitcake to The White House and the infiltration of the Brexit referendum campaign by bot farms all across Russia. How, singlehandedly once you decamped to Moscow, you diverted billions of tainted rubles from the City of London to illicit ‘paradise’ accounts all across the globe, thereby depriving the UK Treasury of the sorts of cash it needed to fund the army, the navy, the air force, the NHS, housing for poor people, and…so…on. How...”

  “Don’t go on. I get it,” said Jeremy, holding up a palm.

  “Bloody hell,” said Julie.

  “Bugger me,” said Dennis.

  Barry blew out his cheeks and stroked them.

  “And you’re here to...?” he asked Maurice, who hung his head and kneaded at it before replying.

  “To deny Wibbly Wobbly her pleasure. I didn’t sign up with the Secret Service with this sort of nonsense in mind. Was rather hoping to keep the world in some kind of order. For the general good, you might say. In pursuance of which objective I have a little ruse in mind for giving some of our leaders, Ripurpantzov in particular, a bit of a headache. For irony’s sake, shall we say?”

  Barry smiled. “Ah, irony. I remember it well, old fellow. Always something of a S
ocratic, were you not? Otherwise I would never have written you the glowing reference for the spooks. And what, may one ask, is this little ruse of yours? As it is to us you have come, one can only assume our participation might be required.”

  “Indeed,” said Maurice, yawning. “But might I crave your patience until full daylight before I go into the details? It’s been something of a hard day’s night and...”

  “No problem,” said Barry. “I’m sure we could all benefit from a little shuteye.”

  So it was that Maurice, Barry, Dennis, Jeremy and Julie bedded down for what remained of the night although, with OO17’s delayed explanation on their minds, sleep did not come easily. Even on the sofa bed they came to share either by accident or design, Jeremy and Julie were restless.

  Shirley, Pete, Hans and Colin, by contrast, slept the sleep of the innocent. Such is the advantage of bestiality.

  Seventeen

  From his majestic chambers on the top floor of the Kremlin, Igor Ripurpantzov looked out over the nighttime Moskva River, rubbed his hands, sipped at a glass of Cobetckoe Ntpnctoe champagne and marvelled at his power. From his days as a small fry KGB officer, he really had done rather well. The old Soviet Union was dead and buried with all its oil and gas assets safely sequestered in his various beneath-the-radar banks and companies, and the new Russia was safely under his control for the better part of two decades, during which he’d either been president or prime minister with a puppet president speaking his words. Such a clever—and rich—chap he was. And...how...good...that felt. The tsars would have been proud of him, although of course he had done a lot better than any of them, and certainly better than their Soviet replacements. Whenever before had Russia ruled the world? Never, that was when. Until Igor took command, that was. And now the world was his oyster; he could do anything he liked and nobody had the cojones to stand against him. Invade Crimea and suck it back into the Russian union, easy peasy. Ensure Syria went on singing from his hymn sheet by pretending to rid the country of its “terrorists.” No sweat. And so on, and so forth. It was even better now he had the dork in The White House in his pocket and a number of European governments were jittery and crumbling just the way he’d planned. And none of this with any effort or expense. No cold war missile stand-offs required. Just some little low-cost pieces of code fed by his IRA (Internet Research Agency) into the right places at the right time, and hey presto, zhizn’prekrasna (“life is wonderful” in Russian).

  Igor sipped down a little more of his Cobetckoe Ntpnctoe and toasted his achievements. Yes, he’d had to have poisoned or shot a few dissidents who’d made their way from the homeland with anti-Igor messages, but, hey, casualties were an inevitable part of any bold strategy, weren’t they? And no judge in Russia would have the temerity to raise an eyebrow, not when the entire judiciary was in his pocket. From where else would they get their fancy 4x4 Mercedes, and their dachas on the Black Sea, and the billions of rubles to flush through sad little old London? No, no, Igor Ripurpantzov had no worries on that front. Or any other.

  He strolled away from his window, humming to himself a Western song called “If I Ruled The World.” Only, in Igor’s case, the hypothetical had become redundant. There had just been another presidential “election” which he had won hands down as expected. As things stood, he would be president forever. Oh, what joy it was be alive in these wondrous times! After a quick workout in his gym to maintain the alpha-male-with-big-pecs image, Igor reckoned he deserved a long, hot, unguent-rich soak in his marble-tiled, Roman-type, sunken bath in the company of his currently favoured concubine, Ludmilla.

  So that’s what he did.

  ~ * ~

  At much the same time—minus the three-hour difference, of course—PM Clarissa was in Brussels for a European heads of state summit, before the commencement of which she was getting an ear-bashing from the president of the European Commission, Bastien Duchamps, during a sub rosa meeting in a locked antechamber well away from the waiting TV cameras and microphones outside on the rue Wiertz.

  “Now listen up, Clarissa. And listen up good,” Bastien kicked off with while Clarissa smiled one of her gormless smiles. “No way can you keep on with the Bregshit bullshit you’re peddling, okay?” he continued in the fluent American he had learnt during his exchange year between the Sorbonne and Harvard Law School.

  “No way,” he stressed.

  “Um...erm...” said Clarissa, adopting what she thought of as a steely look. “Let me be clear. What exactly are you saying here, Sebastian?”

  “Bastien.”

  “Pardon?”

  “My name is Bastien.”

  “Ah,” said Clarissa, twiddling, she hoped sexily, her left long-drop silver earring with the single diamond inset. “And your point is?”

  “You want the trade deal you say you want, you gotta give us: Number one, a whole lot more dough than is currently on the table. Number two, a legally binding assurance on EU citizens’ future rights after Bregshit. And number three, an equally legally binding solution to the Ireland border business agreed by all parties. No watertight answer to those little problems, no deal on trade or anything else.”

  “Oh,” said Clarissa. “Look, Bastiano, let me be clear. Point taken. I’ll get my top chap on it straight away.”

  “Not if it’s the dingbat you keep sending, the Bregshit secretary dude you got along with you today for back-up.” Bastien winced. “Guy’s a banana skin waiting to be slipped on.”

  “Peter Peters?”

  “That’s the bozo.”

  “He tells me he’s been making splendid progress in the talks over here.”

  “Splendid, my ass.”

  “No need for obscenities, Mister Ducheese.”

  “Duchamps. And, for the record, it’s Doctor.”

  “Golly. And you gave up a lucrative medical practice for...”

  “I am a doctor of philosophy, Clarissa.”

  “Oh.”

  “And could we puh-lease get back to the point? You Brits mightn’t have noticed, but it is the future of the European Union I am responsible for here. And I do not mean to let it flounder and sink in the wake of your dumbass Ruskie-rigged referendum.”

  “Good thinking,” Clarissa was saying as a press aide called Maxine knocked on the door reminding them the media were outside on the street, eager for any hint of developments in the private talks before the summit meeting itself began.

  “Any hopeful little whisper I might feed them?” asked Maxine.

  “Ah, l’espoir,” Bastien sighed, before taking Clarissa’s hand and leading her like a lamb to the slaughter toward the parliament chamber in which, after a brief consultation with the egregious Peter Peters, she was hoping to present the cast-iron case for the best possible deal for the UK while making no mention of money, Euro citizens, or Ireland. On the way, over her shoulder, she whispered to Maxine trotting along behind that she and Sebastiano were making “excellent progress.”

  Once inside an antechamber, however, Bastien set Clarissa adrift and hurried off to discuss more urgent matters than Brexit with representatives from the twenty-seven other countries in the union. Smiling, in some cases laughing, pressing the flesh, kissing cheeks, back slapping, and in every instance speaking at least a modicum of his friends’ languages. Unlike Clarissa, who, until the official agenda began, was left to wander about on her stork-like legs trying to meet and greet, but failing. Nobody seemed keen to talk to her. There was the occasional “hello there, how’s it going?” from the German chancellor or the Dutch prime minister or the French president, but nothing to write home about. None of the crucial one-to-one insider deal-making hints and whispers she’d been hoping for. Partly because she was, in the Europeans’ view, a petitioner claiming an outrageous alimony settlement from a dubious divorce. Partly also because, working on the principle that if a person spoke loudly enough in English, Johnny Foreigner would eventually understand, she hadn’t even a Bonjour or a Guten Tag at her disposal, let alone a whole phras
e or sentence. Thus ostracized, she searched the room for Peter Peters to have at least someone to chat to before her big speech.

  “Excusey moy,” she asked of a passing prime minister from some country or another. “Any idea where Peter Peters is? He’s s’posed to be around here somewhere.”

  “Peter Peters?” The Danish PM Anders Frederiksen scratched his head and frowned while trying to put a face to the name. “Ah, Peter Peters. Your back-up guy?” he said in impeccable English.

  “My Brexit secretary. I need to speak to him urgently on a top-level matter.”

  Anders smothered a chuckle. “Yes, okay, Peter Peters. So I have seen him.”

  “Where?”

  “In the little boys’ room, although he didn’t see me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’d lost his spectacles. Last I saw of him he was walking backwards into a cubicle saying, “Where’re my specs? Oh, shit.”

  “Dearie me,” said Clarissa, gloomily recalling both Peter Peter’s failing eyesight and his ongoing bowel issues.

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Clarissa? People to see, deals to do. Busy, busy, busy. Longing to hear your speech later, though. Sooo great Britain used to be. I loved it over there.”

  And with that Anders was off for a handshake and shoulder bump with emcee Bastien Duchamps, who knew how say “good day” in Danish.

  “God dag, Anders,” he said, before the two of them lapsed into English, neither referring to the Brexit dilemma except for a passing mention.

  “Blast it all to blastiness!” whispered Clarissa to herself before snatching a vol au vent from the tray of a passing waitress and wolfing it down in one.

  “Mmm,” mused the waitress, an ex-concubine of Igor Ripurpantzov’s called Katya, newly promoted to the role of international spy.

  And within microseconds, Clarissa’s discomfiture had been relayed in super-secret code to Moscow with the question: “How much longer can we allow this woman to survive?”