Chosen

by Paddy Bostock

  The fly in the ointment was Yuri’s job with the top-secret St Petersburg computer outfit, the Internet Research Agency, also known as Glavset, internationally recognised as having meddled in Western elections, including most spectacularly the wipeout of the only candidate capable of preventing the madman in the White House from becoming the madman in the White House. In Glavset’s bunker beneath St Petersburg, his colleagues were running about like headless chickens trying—and failing—to block the further spread of Maurice’s teaser with their firewalls and volts. But however many nifty counter-hacker algorithms they hammered into their keyboards, nothing worked, because Maurice’s counter-counter-hacker algorithms worked better. Back and back came the Lennon songs like an unstoppable refrain. The big boss in Moscow wasn’t going to like this. Not at all he wasn’t.

  Ripurpantzov had permitted a number of Western rock concerts, including one by Paul McCartney, but these had been carefully Kremlin-choreographed events, which would include nothing that might be interpreted as critical of the regime. Igor had learnt that lesson from the performances of Pussy Riot, several of whose members he had thrown in jail for sedition. Since then, some of the Beatles’ silly love songs were still allowed across the media as a warped symbol of glitz and “modernity,” but chatter on the wires suggested the president was as aware as OO17—to the point of paranoia some said—of his potential vulnerability to the “decadent” Beatles’ tracks which had foreshadowed the death knell of the Soviet Union. Maybe he’d even seen a translated version of the same TV show as Maurice, the one in which The Beatles had “rocked the Kremlin.” After all, he had spies everywhere, some of whom he’d been obliged to poison with sarin. One thing was for certain, though. Nothing similar did Ripurpantzov want happening to his iron grip on power, especially from the likes of John Lennon.

  And here was Yuri Frumkin handing over to his partially crazed father evidence of the continuing existence of the very person his president most wished to stay dead and buried. In principle, Yuri should have been conflicted in his duty to father on the one hand and his country on the other. But Yuri had only recently returned from a trip to Moscow, there to protest against Ripurpantzov’s imprisonment of his only viable opposition candidate in the upcoming presidential election and lucky he too hadn’t been incarcerated, so duty to his country was out the window. Pissed off with his country and its oligarch leaders was how Yuri was feeling.

  “Papa,” he whispered. “I know how these songs can be passed on to friends all across this country and in many others. Just give me the word.”

  “You could do this?”

  “Da,” said Yuri. “I have the means. Very very hush-hush it would have to be, but I could do it.”

  “With your computer thingummy whatsit?”

  “Da.”

  “And you would do it?”

  “For you, Papa, and for your dream. Now our shared dream.”

  That was when the tears came to Fyodor’s eyes. At first he swiped them away. But more came, then more until they were dripping down his cheeks and through his straggly beard.

  “My son,” said Fyodor, taking Yuri in the sort of bear hug for which Russians are famed and smothering him in kisses. “You are a good boy, the best boy. Of you I am proud.”

  “Blagodayra (thanks in Russian),” said Yuri. “Need a hand polishing that shrine of yours?

  Had he known of such developments, Maurice Moffat would have been moved and encouraged, but even in our super-informed world some things remain private and this was one of them.

  Twenty-nine

  Dame Muriel sensed a certain je ne sais quoi in the air the moment she set foot in the Shepherd’s Hut and met Barry, Jeremy, Julie, Maggie and Dennis. Maurice had introduced her as “my boss, the head of MI6,” but nobody seemed much impressed by the prestigious title. They just smiled and said “hi.”

  “Do take a seat. Cup of tea?” said Barry, at which Muriel said, “Thank you,” reflecting the fellow would likely have said precisely the same words had it been the queen who had stepped into his parlour. No sense of surprise, deference or hierarchy. It wasn’t even as though her visit had been announced in advance. All very peculiar.

  “Sugars?” Barry was further enquiring as Pete, Colin, Hans and Shirley joined the party to investigate their latest guest—sniff her legs and so on—at which, unused to animals, Muriel recoiled a bit.

  “Don’t worry, they won’t hurt you,” said Julie. “Checking you out, that’s all.”

  “I see,” said the head of MI6, extending a tentative hand to pat a couple of canine heads. The pig she would leave for the moment, thank you very much. “And, um, no sugar or milk.”

  “No sugar or milk?” said Barry.

  “No, I take it straight,” said Dame Muriel, looking to OO17 for assistance but receiving nothing bar but a shrug and a smile in return.

  “Ooo-kay then,” said Barry. “But could I at least tempt you to a Hobnob to go with it?”

  “A Hobnob would be nice,” Dame Muriel was saying, shortly before Pete poked his snout up her skirt and Jeremy ran over to drag him away.

  “Sorry about that, he means no harm,” he said. “Oh, and by the way, I’m the bonkers banker.”

  “Oink,” Pete confirmed.

  Never mind a je ne sais quoi, it was all getting something of an overload for Dame Muriel, but struggling with her credentials and thinking of England, she strove to maintain her composure.

  “Otherwise known as Mister Jeremy Crawford, I presume,” she said. “Britain’s most wanted man.”

  “A title I never wished for,” said Jeremy. “But yes.”

  “And the main chap in Maurice’s Reconstructed Beatles, as I understand it. The Lennon lookalike.”

  “Indeed so,” said Jeremy as Muriel took to worrying less about her credentials, thoughts of England or composure maintenance. The fellow had honest eyes, which couldn’t easily be dismissed.

  It was as Barry was returning with the Russian tea and a plate of Hobnobs that he and everybody else in the Shepherd’s Hut became aware of the thwacka-thwacka-thwack in the skies just above them.

  “What the…?” said Maggie, leaping from his seat and heading to the door for a better look.

  And what he saw didn’t please him as the helicopter landed and, escorted by two armed policepersons—one male, the other female—Prime Minister Phoebe/Clarissa came marching in his direction grinning ghoulishly.

  “Found the bonkers banker at last!” she warbled triumphantly as she marched.

  ~ * ~

  And how, you will be wondering, had the normally clueless Clarissa achieved this feat of detection? In a rare moment of acuity, by appointing her super supremo smartphone tracker, Simon “The Sniffer” Southgate to track the phones of both Casanova and Milly to their current whereabouts, that was how.

  “Duh!” I hear you say. “Two top-of-the-range spies leaving themselves open to such an easy ploy. Duh!”

  And nine times out of ten, your derision would be perfectly understandable. But this was the tenth time and, far from being the result of operational fecklessness, instead marked the culmination of the cunning ruse Maurice had floated to Muriel on the last lap of their journey to the Shepherd’s Hut.

  “You know, ma’am, thinking things over, it might be of benefit to us all, but in particular Jeremy, were we to take this opportunity to lure Clarissa into a little trap.”

  “Trap, Double O Seventeen?”

  “Yes. As I understand it, she is keen to offload onto poor old Jeremy recrimination for all her government’s howlers by painting him as a criminal mastermind and thus get the press pack off her back. Not so?”

  “Agreed. And?”

  “Well, it did occur to me we might be of assistance to both Jeremy and Clarissa through a slight manipulation of the narrative.”

  “You’re a demon for narrative manipulation, Double O Seventeen…um, Maurice.”

  “Comes with the turf…Muriel.”

  “And this new story?
”

  “Is the one in which our little enterprise, starring the same Jeremy Crawford albeit in a slightly different light, stands a much better chance of letting Clarissa off all sorts of hooks than the blame game she is currently working on. Just imagine if, by promoting Jeremy’s Lennon role, she were to be credited as the single world leader to have dented Ripurpantzov’s armour, even without recourse to threats of nuclear weaponry.”

  Dame Muriel smiled. “Some skullduggery, Maurice, but as part of our current fictions, possibly worth a try. And how would you suggest we set this lure?”

  Which was when OO17 proposed leaving both their smartphones turned on full blast for the remainder of their drive to meet Jeremy and his new friends.

  “Should be easy peasy for one of her top smartphone sniffer chaps. So, just let’s give it a whirl, shall we? And hope Clarissa takes the bait.”

  “I’m in this up to my neck already, Double O Seventeen.” Dame Muriel shrugged blithely. “Can an inch further make a signal difference?”

  “My feelings entirely. So let’s go for it, shall we?”

  Dame Muriel shrugged blithely again.

  And so it was that “duh” was not the only explanation to the surprise arrival outside the Shepherd’s Hut of the RAF Puma HC2 helicopter bearing Prime Minister Phoebe/Clarissa and her two armed policepersons. Sorry about that.

  ~ * ~

  It was Maurice who took charge of the situation, calling Jeremy to join him as he sauntered to the garden gate and waved cheerily at the prime minister as she continued marching towards the Shepherd’s Hut.

  “You wave too. And point at your hat,” he whispered to Jeremy, who was wearing a black felt tricorn from Barry’s thespian store upon which, going for levity, Maurice had inscribed in red letters, HI THERE, I’M THE BONKERS BANKER.

  Jeremy chuckled and did as instructed while Maurice continued to wave, and also to call words of welcome. Sadly to no avail however, since unable from birth to tell a joke from a jam sandwich, Clarissa sensed the piss being taken, continued marching, and instructed her armed policepersons to arrest “these treasonous buffoons” on the spot.

  Which was silly of her, because rarely though he had been obliged to employ his martial arts skills, Maurice was left with no other option but to resuscitate them as the policepersons advanced towards him and Jeremy cocking their pistols and hissing: “Hands in the air and don’t move.” What was he supposed to do, stand there and wait to be arrested when all he’d been trying to do was play nice?

  Sighing therefore, he dived headfirst over the garden gate to make himself a thinner target, scrambled back to his feet...and the rest was a foregone conclusion. All it took while the policepersons were preoccupied loosing off futile bullets into nearby trees was a flying double reverse taekwondo Dwi Huryeo Chagi (spinning hook kick) and both officers were flat on their backs mewling softly. All Maurice then needed to do was pick up their weapons, tuck them into his belt gunslinger-style and shrug apologetically at Clarissa, who was peering boss-eyed at her fallen defenders.

  “Sorry for kicking the lady cop, Prime Minister. Not my normal practice to kick ladies,” said Maurice, “but this one was pointing a pistol at me.”

  PC Sian O’Brady mewled slightly louder as if in corroboration.

  “Don’t worry about her…or her friend here,” Maurice continued, prodding PC Joe “Charlie” Chaplin with the toe of his shoe. “They’ll be fine in a minute, although they will, of course, need to be stripped of any other unpleasant equipment they may be carrying and tied up. But they’ll be fed and watered.”

  “Ug,” said Clarissa, for a fleeting second turning her head to the pilot of the Puma HC2 for assistance.

  But Harry “The Whirlybird” Warburton, staring through his windscreen at the mayhem Maurice had just unleashed, shrank back in his seat. Far beyond his remit or pay grade was it to mess with trained killers the likes of which he’d just witnessed. Harry’s job was to fly choppers and mightily relieved he was when the call came through from RAF HQ that his “bird” was needed pronto at a riot in Lewes East Sussex where groups of dangerous-looking, albeit elderly, ex-hippies were marching around town threatening civic disorder and screaming Lenn-on! Lenn-on, right-on! while burning effigies of both the madman in the White House and the one in the Kremlin, even though it wasn’t Guy Fawkes Night when Lewesians normally burn effigies of people they loathe.

  Yes, folks, Yuri’s promised diffusion of Maurice’s Beatlemania teaser, never mind its creator’s own distribution, had already hit the first of its manifold future nerves. Strange it should have been in the sleepy town of Lewes that residents reacted so fast, but such are the facts of the matter. Who knows how the World Wide Web works?

  Anyway, off Harry flew. Elderly ex-hippies he reckoned he could frighten away with dive-bombing tactics any day of the week.

  “Bugger,” Clarissa was saying as Maurice, now with Dame Muriel at his side, strolled over, proffered a hand for shaking, and said, “There there, Prime Minister, don’t worry. Every little thing is going to be all right.”

  “I’ll see to it, ma’am,” said Jeremy, doffing his HI THERE, I’M THE BONKERS BANKER tricorn and bowing from the waist.

  At which Clarissa fainted and had to be helped back onto her spindly legs by her ex-Girton College rival, Dame Muriel, who, while hoisting her up in a full nelson, whispered in her ear, “Plus ça change, ma chère, plus c’est la même chose, n’est ce pas?”

  But what with the supply of blood to her brain having been even further reduced than normal and not speaking any language other than English, for which she had been repeatedly ridiculed by European leaders, as usual Clarissa missed the point. Like levity, irony had never been one of her strong suits, particularly when it was in French.

  It was Barry who came out to pick up the pieces and offer a little hospitality.

  “Cup of tea, Prime Minister?” he said. “And a crumpet to go with it, perhaps?”

  At which one of Clarissa’s glazed eyes squeezed open a fraction.

  “Mmm, yummy,” she managed to mumble.

  Thirty

  Idly while Maggie and Dennis were out tying PCs O’Brady and Chaplin to trees and Julie was coaxing Clarissa back to something akin to consciousness with tea and crumpets, Maurice flicked about on Barry’s elderly laptop for any early indications of responses to his Internet Lennon teaser. And his eyes widened at what he saw.

  “Look at this,” he said, finger-hooking Dame Muriel, Barry and Jeremy to look over his shoulder, then scrolling through the thousands of hits.

  “Hey, hey, slow down, would you?” said Dame Muriel. You know how irritating super-scrolling can be. Or a person riffling papers before your eyes and expecting you to digest the contents through hyper osmosis.

  “Sorry,” said Maurice, going back to the top.

  “Perhaps just a brief résumé?” said Barry.

  So Maurice picked out the effigy-burning incident in Lewes, and then the jerky video from St Petersburg showing pro-Lennon marches outside the IRA’s supposedly secret underground offices and police spraying protesters with tear gas.

  “Who could have thought it?” he said. “But there are more.”

  The “more” included similar demonstrations from places as far flung geographically and ideologically as Novosibirsk and San Francisco, which would have taken Maurice the rest of the day to list, so he didn’t. Just let us say hamlets, towns and cities from practically every continent were represented.

  “Wow,” said Jeremy.

  “And all this even before we’ve released our final product, when one hopes to stir up yet further interest,” Maurice was saying as Maggie and Dennis returned from tying policepersons to trees—a task Dennis had particularly enjoyed—and Clarissa finally began to respond to Julie’s ministrations, albeit rudely.

  “Where am I and who’re you?” she said, knocking the teacup from Julie’s hands, springing onto her pogo stick legs and peering about.

  “Excuse me,” sa
id Dame Muriel to Maurice. “A certain lady looks as though she needs to be taught some manners,” she added before marching over to Clarissa and telling her to sit down and shut up if she knew what was good for her.

  “Don’t worry, love,” I can handle it,” said Julie. “I’ve got an auntie just like her.”

  “Only your auntie isn’t a prime minister.”

  “No. There is that to it.”

  “What kind of a madhouse is this?” squawked Clarissa. “And what are you doing here anyway, Muriel?”

  “My job, Clarissa. Now sit down.”

  “Your job? Your job is to protect national security, which does not include sequestering a dangerous madman, who…”

  “You need as a cover story to deflect attention from your fumbling attempts to govern a country?”

  Julie smiled. She was starting to like this MI6 boss lady. “Do like the woman says and sit down or I’ll kick you behind the knees,” she said. It was a tactic that had worked wonders on Auntie Gertie.

  “Flibbertigibbet! Northern strumpet!” said Clarissa, so Julie did kick her behind the knees and Clarissa was left with no choice but to sit down.

  Maggie and Dennis raised appreciative eyebrows. Especially Maggie, who, as Sir Magnus Montague, had twice been fêted at Downing Street for his contributions to “The National Welfare,” aka the Tory Party.

  “How nice to meet you again, Prime Minister,” he said, proffering an ironic hand for shaking.

  Clarissa’s eyes widened and she looked as though she might faint again.

  “Who’re you?” she said, gazing at the unkempt person who claimed to know her.

  So, at considerable length before Barry intervened, Maggie took to explaining exactly who he was with particular emphasis on his transition from City banker to happy hippy, thereby causing Clarissa to wobble on her seat.