Mission London

by Alek Popov

  LADY DI: How are we today, my hero?

  SIR M: Better, your Highness, thanks to your tender ministrations.

  Lady Di sits on the chair and opens the basket.

  LADY DI (serious): They have reported to me that you refused to eat your desert. That surprised me a great deal.

  SIR M: But they always give me the same thing here!

  LADY DI: Yoghurt is good for your health.

  She takes six small pots (100g) of Danone out of the basket, each one a different flavour, and arranges them on top of the locker.

  SIR M (childish): I don’t want any yoghurt!

  Lady Di (strictly): Come on, stop whingeing! Remember how you rescued those poor Bosnians from the surrounding partisans. You’re a hero!

  She opens a pot of yoghurt, takes a full teaspoonful and puts it to his lips. Sir M pulls the blanket up to his nose.

  SIR M: I beg you!

  LADY DI: Eat!

  SIR M (hiding beneath the blanket): Nnnnnnnnnnoo!

  LADY DI (persuasively): Do you want to play a little game with me? (Pause. Sir M pokes his head out) For every little pot you eat, I’ll undo one button of my uniform.

  She puts the spoon to his lips again. He bites it hungrily. The metal rattles against his teeth. He eats the entire pot.

  LADY DI: Well done, my hero! (she undoes the top button of her uniform) Shall we continue?

  He nods. She opens the next pot. Sir M swallows the lot without complaint. She undoes another button.

  LADY DI: Two!

  She is wearing a black bra with transparent cups. Sir M gapes hungrily. The remaining buttons are equal in number to the remaining pots.

  “Hey!” shouted Dotty from her bed, “Do you play Diana?”

  “What?!” Katya frowned.

  Dotty waved the scenario at her. “Yoghurt’s good for your health. Do you want to play a little game?” she giggled.

  “You’ve been going through my stuff again!” Katya got angry and snatched the pages out of Dotty’s hands.

  “No I haven’t!” Dottie was emphatic. “They were on the table. Recently you’ve been really absent-minded!”

  “Look, it’s an amateur production for the department,” Katya lied without thinking. “They offered me a part in this scene and I accepted. Now I’m learning my lines. Okay?”

  Malicious sparks appeared in her roommate’s eyes. Recently she had become even more apathetic and depressed. She washed rarely and spent all day in bed wearing thick woollen socks. Not that she didn’t have an excuse. Her father, a dodgy businessman, had been arrested in Pazardzhik two weeks previously, and all his accounts had been blocked. Her allowance had suddenly been cut off. She already owed Katya fifty pounds, which did nothing other than to make her more embittered than ever.

  “It’s so easy for you!” shouted Dotty.

  Katya got undressed without paying her any attention, and went into the bathroom. Whilst the water drummed against her nose, she wondered whether it might not well be time to clear out of here altogether. Actually, that decision had been taken a long time ago. From the moment she had met Ziebling in the Embassy and realised that her double-life had been uncovered. She had no idea what kind of game they were playing; but she was sure of one thing: she wanted no part of it. Apparently, Ziebling was of the same opinion, “I don’t want any scandals!” he had told her. Katya was quick on the uptake.

  Dotty was weeping in her corner. The fat tomes piled around her bed had not been touched for several days. A half-empty bottle of cheap Bulgarian wine completed the picture; three fruit flies flew around the bottle’s neck.

  “What’s going to happen to me?” she said mostly to herself.

  “You’ll have to find yourself some sort of work,” said Katya as she vigorously towelled her hair. She had cut her hair very short because of the wigs she had to wear and she liked her new self. The shorter haircut made her breasts stand out more.

  “What kind of job?” wept Dotty.

  “You can always clean at the Embassy. That way you save the rent on your room.”

  “Really?” Dotty livened up a bit.

  “Uh-huh, and you know what? You can take my place,” continued Katya with unexpected enthusiasm. “I need some time off. You’ll have to clean the Ambassador’s office. What d’you say?”

  “Well, yeah, great!” nodded her roommate, unconvinced.

  Katya could not suppress her smile. The whole idea seemed devilishly piquant. She threw on some baggy khaki combats, with vast pockets, and a clingy halter-top, which left her tanned midriff on display. She felt Dotty’s gaze roaming over her body, but didn’t give a damn! She would rent a small studio in the Portobello Road or thereabouts. As far as possible from this shit-hole.

  She put the script in her bag and threw a glance at her roommate. “Head up!” she said and left.

  The scenarios were written by some guy called Thomas Munroe. A tall, skinny wanker with lank greasy hair, and glasses like bottle-ends. They had met at the very start. He had come, so he claimed, to take the measure of her. His undertaker’s mannerisms included such phrases as, “We must make the orgasm more stylish, like the French petit-mort.” He resembled a coffin-maker.

  The problem was that the agency’s clients – predominantly business busy-bodies – lacked any imagination. They had only the vaguest idea of their fantasies, or the direction in which their desires lay, and were incapable of giving them a concrete or complete form. They could not build a situation nor handle dialogue, nor did they have time for those things.

  Take Rube Sparks for example. He was a jeweller, whose shop was situated near one end of Regent’s Street. Rube knew everything about rocks, but next to nothing about his own soul. For him, the soul differed but little from the ‘bow-tie effect’, which could be found only at the heart of some extremely rare, and equally extremely expensive, diamonds. He could admire it for hours but had no concept of how to reach it. The play of light in this king of gems made him feel its vibrations. It spoke to him. It whispered thoughts and secret desires that made him blush. And aroused him. But nothing more. It required someone, such as Thomas Munroe, to appear on the scene, to polish up these uncut urges and remove the slag. Munroe, who knew everything about desire, had tunnelled for a long time into Rube’s soul to bring its treasures out into the open. And then he had worked on them with all the precision and persistence of a true gem-smith to give them the form and lustre they deserved. Now Rube Sparks knew exactly what he wanted and how to get it.

  Katya enjoyed that scenario: ‘The Decoration of the Christmas Tree’ as she had jokingly dubbed it. Rube would unlock the safe behind his desk and take out the treasures, one by one. The diamond necklace of Hera. The Onyx Eye. The Blue Moon. The necklace of Isabella of Castile. The strings of pearls of Cassandra. The Bracelet of Fire and Ice. The Medallion of the Ethiopian Princess. The Sapphire of the Dragon. The Chain of Diamond Tears. The stones radiated a cold, which reached all the way to her clean-shaven pubis. She felt their weight – to the last carat. Those priceless items rarely even made it as far as the window display. Normally they were made to order for a small circle of select clients who preferred to invest their money in things of permanent value. Bankers, film stars, producers of goods for mass consumption, and recently (horrors!) even Russians. Deep within his soul, Rube was convinced that these people were unworthy of his jewels. His dream was to work for the Palace. He believed that noble gems only shone correctly when seen against Noble skin. Skin unhampered by the annoying shadow of clothes, glowing in its natural nakedness. And here she was, standing in front of him – Princess Diana herself, glistening as though she were a freshly polished pearl. From the tiara encrusted with gems, to the anklets with diamond hearts, her body was bathed in blinding sparkles. Rube contemplated her in silence. His heart climbed slowly into his throat and his adam’s-apple began to pulsate like an iguana’s. Katya could also feel that she was losing her self-control. Her body-heat had unlocked the energy of the gems; their glow cut
through her skin, pouring streams of light into her veins. She felt dizzy, softened, and fluffy like an egg-white beaten into the form of an opening rose. At that moment, it would have been enough for Rube to raise his hand and dip his fingers into the sweet cream of her body, but he never did. Instead he would take his camera and take careful pictures of her from every possible angle. After which, all the treasures disappeared into his cold safe.

  As she took the tube to Camden Town, Katya took out her copy of The Veteran & the Princess and reread it. The part was far from difficult, but on the whole the play struck her as a bit repulsive. Maybe it was the yoghurt. She asked herself whether that was one client’s requirements, or whether it had been the artistic addition of Mr Munroe? Recently her relationship with the scriptwriter had cooled considerably. Katerina had dared to edit one of his scripts and he had created a huge ruckus as a result. She realised that if Thomas Munroe so desired, her parts would become even more repulsive, therefore she sensibly stopped poking her nose into his business. He obviously held grudges.

  The agency was based in a run-down three-floor building crammed into some back-alley near Camden Market. The surroundings consisted of old industrial workshops and warehouses. At the end of the alley there was an ‘alternative’ bar, whence often chilling noises emanated. From the outside the building looked unoccupied, but the few neighbours there were had noticed a long time ago that the place was the centre of an intense, though secretive, social scene. Various people went in and out of the run-down entrance who were vaguely reminiscent of famous personalities. There were often taxis out front, and every so often a luxurious limousine. But there were no adverts or other signs at the entrance to shed light on the purpose of these visits. After some time, visitors usually noticed a grimy plastic plaque stuck above the doorbell. ‘Famous Connections’ was engraved in it.

  Katya pushed the buzzer, but heard nothing. In spite of this, after just a short pause, a tall man opened the door dressed as a porter with the face of one whose trousers were stuck deep between his arse cheeks.

  “Hi Cole!”

  “Hi-i-i!” he replied slowly and shut the door behind her.

  She ran up the stairs. The first and third floors were full of junk and practically unused. The second consisted of a spacious hall, divided by thin partitions walls into small make-up rooms. The furnishings were simple and businesslike. The floors were carpeted in ubiquitous faceless grey tiles. No particular investment: it was one of those companies that set up or moved out overnight. Every time Katya came here she had the awful premonition that she would find it empty.

  Today, however, all the little cubicles were full and the actors buzzed around like bees. Barry Longfellow’s office could be found at the far end. The blinds were open and one could see him talking on the phone. He waved to her cheerfully. Barry was Ziebling’s number two in the agency. He was the Casting Manager, Executive Producer and Executive Director all at the same time. Ziebling himself rarely showed his face in the ‘Factory’, as he liked to call the Camden building. He had a far more prestigious office, somewhere in Pimlico, from which he pulled the strings. Katya had never been there. After she had passed the ‘caviar test’, Barry had offered her a sixty-performance deal, got her to sign a confidentiality agreement, and only then showed her the Factory.

  She was now a part of the troupe.

  The cubicles had no doors, so Katya caught glimpses of her colleagues as they carefully prepared themselves for their own little shows. She caught sight of Baroness Thatcher, Gorbachev, Liam Gallagher, Sir Elton John, Ulrika Johnson, President Clinton, and a stack of other celebs from all walks of life, all the way down to the Nobel Laureate, Professor Hawking. There were even some zombies, such as Benny Hill, John Lennon, and, of course, her good self: Diana, Princess of Wales. She sometimes felt their envy. No one else had a hope of reaching her level. She was the best: sixty performances in two months! Now that was impressive!

  ‘Hi Hawking,’ she said, taking a few steps back and looking curiously into his cubicle, ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I’m training, can’t you see?’ he mumbled.

  ‘Hawking’, better known as Samuel Fogg, was sitting in that well-known pose in a wheelchair, manipulating some new gadget, concentrating deeply. It looked like a cybernetic arm, although it was almost two yards long, and was capped by an impressive artificial penis. The mechanism was tied into the small joystick-gadget on the arm of the chair. Sam was training himself to be able to slip the uber-vibrator into the centre of a loo-roll, which had been fixed to the opposite wall. Without much success as yet.

  ‘Shit!’ he roared.

  The demand for ‘Hawking’ was far smaller than that for Lady Di. He had been hired twice a month by three wealthy, and strict, lesbians to explain Black-Hole Theory, which they regarded both as an ideological pillar offeminism and a powerful aphrodisiac. As a result of those academic requirements, Mr Fogg, an uneducated and ordinary youth, had to commit to memory the works of that great physicist, and later to recite them word for word, – no easy task with the speech machine in a darkened auditorium – over and over, until the three rug-munchers reached climax amidst crying and moaning reminiscent of a jackals’ feast. In reality, Fogg had no objections to sinking his instrument into any one of them, and if possible all three of them one after the other, for which reason he had begged Munroe to make some changes to his part. The great dramaturge was unreceptive at first, ‘Are you trying to screw to whole thing up?!!’ he had yelled, ‘They’re paying for Hawking, not lice-ridden, horny Sam! Or maybe you disagree?!’ That was Mister Fogg’s only role and he needed it, to the extent that he would go to any lengths to keep it. He continued to cram physics and recite Black-Hole Theory, reaching the stage whereby he actually began to understand it. Meanwhile, Munroe decided that Sam’s idea was not so bad after all and after a brief consultation with the clients, he came up with a new variation on the scenario, in accordance with the fundaments of the character. Which was why Sam was now struggling, without success, to master the newly approved gadget.

  ‘Good luck, Hawking!’ Katya tossed over her shoulder, as she dived into her own make-up box.

  She sat in front of the mirror, staring at the picture of Diana that was stuck in the bottom-left corner of the frame. She had dreamt that the Princess was still alive. Usually, she forgot her dreams very quickly, but this one had been haunting her all week. It was not nice. In the dream, Katya was wandering the streets of an unknown oriental city, when she met a veiled woman. The veil covered her entire face, but the voice was Diana’s; though she had never actually heard the Princess’ voice, Katya knew it was her. The woman said only, “Now I am happy.” Then she slipped into a dark side-alley, leaving her alone in the bazaar. A muezzin’s call came from above her head and she woke.

  The grey figure of Thomas Munroe appeared behind her. “Your Highness,” he said teasingly, “I would like to present you with your new chauffeur.”

  She turned around. Munroe had a fat folder under his arm, full of scripts. He moved aside and another man appeared, framed by the doorway. He was thin, stripped to the waist, dark-skinned. The wide buckle of his belt shone darkly. His torso was hairless and his three-day beard carefully trimmed.

  “Desmond was a big star till recently,” Munroe said, thumping the man on the shoulder. He left.

  The pair examined one another closely for a minute or so.

  “What did you play till now?” she asked, realising she’d seen him around the Factory before.

  “O.J.” he replied seriously.

  Her eyebrows rose, “Not in fashion any more, eh?”

  “There’s always hope.”

  “What hope?”

  “O.J. is just reaching the peak of his abilities. He still has a lot to give society.”

  Katya got the joke and chuckled. Desmond looked like a decent bloke, but a little too self-assured. “O.J.’s going to be quiet for the next century or so,” she said, shaking her head. “You’d best stop wast
ing your time.”

  Alice, her make-up artist, turned up, a new ring in her nose, today’s lipstick thick and black. Without any fuss, she started to tart Katya up. Desmond hung around the doorframe sullenly, but was quickly shooed off with a high-pitched squawk, not unlike that of a peeved hen.

  26

  The cook sat in front of the office for a few minutes, then he stood up, paced a little and stopped next to the window. He was nervous. He had no idea as to why the Ambassador wanted to see him, but from long experience could guess that it would not be nice. The office door opened and the Consul came out, mopping his sweating brow. The secretary’s intercom buzzed.

  She picked up the receiver and nodded to Kosta. “You can go in.”

  The Ambassador sat behind his desk, fresh and cheerful. He had just sucked the vital juices from the Consul and had found them tasty. He made a gesture, as though luring some small animal forward. “Come in, come in, don’t be shy!”

  The cook advanced unwillingly. He was more than merely shy.

  He looks like his speciality is hair soup thought Varadin. He was unsure that the risk would pay off. Perhaps he should order out to some top-class restaurant for the dinner. But it was bound to be too expensive, and would devour his already slim budget. Ziebling’s expenses were fairly salty, but he could justify them. Recently it had become all the rage to hire foreign PR companies to represent government interests. At least, that’s what people were saying. However, a dinner for thirty, laid on by a fancy restaurant, given that they had a chef on the payroll? He had thought of the look on the Audit Commissioner’s face and dropped the idea.

  “Well, Pastricheff,” began the Ambassador, “I’m sure you already know that I’m arranging a large charity event. An important part of said event will be the official dinner. I don’t wish to scare you, however, persons of the highest rank will be attending, including Her Majesty the Queen of England.”