If The Bed Falls In

by Paul Casselle

  He picked an office that had a good sight-line on the presidential route, then returned to the main staircase and climbed to the top floor to retrieve the rifle before coming back to his chosen spot. He sat quietly and waited for the sun to rise and his target to arrive.

  Joseph had slept a little, but the intensity of his professional focus and a fear of his exhaustion threatened to make him oversleep, and kept his eyes more often open than closed. By twelve o’clock he had witnessed massive preparations below and a number of CIA sweeps of the gallery, but they had so far neglected to check the unused office block. However, as the time on his watch reached ten past twelve, he noticed a group of agents climbing the stairs again, but this time they were preceded by three men wearing black trousers and bomber jackets. Each of these three men held a lead, and at the end of each lead was a frenetically sniffing German Shepherd. The agents, and their canine-wielding comrades, swept the usual offices, but before they filed back down to the lobby, they approached the unused block where Joseph was hiding. Joseph silently placed the rifle onto the floor, and pulled the Beretta from his waistband. He controlled his breathing with years of hard-learnt and long-practiced MI6 techniques, and waited as the footsteps got nearer.

  The sound of boots on suspended walkway stopped, and Joseph could hear excited snuffling at the door. He drew himself further into the tight space between a broken filing cabinet and a dented metal stationary cupboard. The door opened. Joseph looked down at the Beretta in his hand and quietly slid the safety catch to ‘F’ with the other hand. The dog crossed the threshold, held back from dashing directly into the room by a tight control on his lead.

  “Think I got something here!” called the dog handler over his shoulder.

  The black German Shepherd inched his way into the room, his strained lead twanging with tension. Joseph could feel Tom’s untrained body failing to respond to the commands he was sending to it, and could detect sweat running from his hairline.

  “You got something?” said the dog handler, “what you got, Blackie?”

  From his hiding point, Joseph could just see the man bend and examine something over which the Shepherd had become very excited. The man stood up quickly.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sakes, Blackie,” he hesitantly kicked something on the floor. “You stupid asshole. That’s just a stupid fucking rat.” He laughed and called out to his colleagues. “Wrong type of rat!”

  Blackie and his owner left the room and closed the door. Joseph returned the safety on his gun to ‘S’.

  A minute later, the door suddenly opened again. Joseph’s eyes jerked to the doorway. Sarah stood with her head and shoulders into the room and her hand still on the handle. Joseph leapt over to her and dragged her into the room holding her fast with one arm. With his free hand he quietly closed the door. He slapped a hand over her mouth and held it there unaffected by her struggling.

  “Shhh…” he whispered into her ear.

  Sarah stopped struggling and seemed to wait patiently. After another minute, Joseph heard the CIA party descending the stairs to the lobby. He held up a threatening finger to Sarah, then removed his hand from her mouth.

  “What are you doing in here, Tom?” she whispered.

  “How did you find me?” Joseph demanded, sotto voce.

  “I’ve been looking everywhere. We want to help you… we really do, but you must let us. Whatever you think is happening is just an illusion… Tom… whatever you’re believing just isn’t real.”

  Sarah glanced around the room and spotted the Remington on the floor. She stifled a gasp and continued her scan of the office. Joseph noticed her reaction. He raised the Beretta.

  “Shit!” Sarah exclaimed, “where’d you get that?”

  “Sit down,” Joseph said simply, righting an upturned chair for her.

  “Shit, Tom!… Is that real?”

  “I know the truth, Tilda, so you can cut the bullshit,” said Joseph.

  “Tom, who’s Tilda?” asked Sarah.

  Joseph waved the gun in her face.

  “That’s enough!… Jesus, Tilda, how could you do this?” Sarah shook her head, wide-eyed. “You actually married me. We went on holidays together… We made fucking plans… And you just betray me?”

  “Tom, please,” said Sarah, “you’re scaring me… Tom, I’m not Tilda… I’m your friend, Sarah… We’ve known each other since you were at art school.”

  “Stop it, just stop it.” He looked painfully into her eyes. “I know, Tilda… I know you’re CIA.”

  “What are you talking about, Tom? I’m a neurologist. I work here, at this hospital… Tom, you must listen to me… None of this is real.” Joseph adjusted his grip on the gun. “Tom, could you put that gun down? I’m not here to hurt you.”

  “So, when did you turn, huh? How long were we together before they got to you, eh? Oh, fuck!” Joseph screwed his face up in pain and momentarily lost control of his breathing. “Is this whole thing a set-up? Oh, fuck! You were always with the CIA… They put you in to spy on me… That’s it, isn’t it?”

  Joseph glanced out of a side window to the lobby below, then looked at his watch; twelve twenty-five. Sarah watched him, then moved her eyes to the rifle on the floor. She spoke slowly.

  “Tom? What are you planning to do, Tom?… Oh, shit! No, Tom! For god’s sake Tom, this is crazy.”

  “Well, that’s what you keep trying to make me believe, isn’t it? That I’m crazy.”

  “No, Tom,” pleaded Sarah, “you’re not crazy… Listen, you had a terrible trauma as a child, and that led to you getting into drugs, and all of this – that’s happening – is part of that. Your brain has been damaged by the cocaine. It’s not an unusual condition. It’s causing all of this confusion. Tom, please listen to me… THIS IS NOT REAL!”

  “I didn’t have a traumatic childhood. I had a wonderful childhood with wonderful parents who I tragically lost in a plane accident when I was… twenty-six. You, Tilda are full of shit. You’re still trying to work me! I’m sure the Company must be very proud of you? A real Stars and Stripes trouper ‘till the end, eh? The real… delusion… is you pretending that you loved me, when really you were spying on me… trying to find out what I was up to… Well now you know… I’m going to kill the President, and there’s not a fucking thing you can do about it.”

  “Tom, please, just think. Whether you believe me or not, are you so sure of what’s really going on, that you can do this terrible thing?”

  “That’s enough. I don’t want to hear another word from you.”

  “Look at you,” Sarah continued, “you’re confused; in a complete spin. What, Tom, what if I’m telling the truth? What if you take that shot and what I’m saying turns out to be true? What then, Tom?”

  There was a commotion in the lobby. Joseph looked at his watch; twelve-thirty. He picked up the Remington and took aim at the window. As the President entered the building, Joseph started the timer on his watch.

  “Tom!” cried Sarah, “please listen to me. Are you so sure of yourself that you can do this? Really, Tom, are you that su…”

  Joseph hit Sarah on the side of the head with the butt of the rifle. She slumped forwards and was quiet. He looked at his watch; sixty seconds left to take aim and fire. He rushed back to the window and watched President Harrington through the scope. The crosshairs steadied on Harrington’s temple, and Joseph smoothly followed him as he moved nearer to the internal door. He looked at his watch; thirty seconds left. He must take the shot now. Joseph had Harrington in the crosshairs again. He placed his finger on the trigger. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck. Harrington was almost at the internal door. Joseph shut his eyes and pushed his lips tightly together.

  Harrington reached the internal door, and the man ahead of him opened it for him. In the disused office above, the Remington lay abandoned on the floor, and Joseph was gone.

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  Chapter 32

  Joseph had made his way
back towards the safety of his hideaway on the top floor. As he rounded the penultimate turn on the stairs, he heard voices. He backed up and hid. He could see two people leaving a small office on the landing above. They moved off towards the lifts.

  “Aren’t you going to lock the door?” inquired one of them.

  “I’ll only be gone a minute. Don’t be so paranoid,” said the second person. The first shrugged. “Anyway, with the place teeming with American security, I think my little office is pretty safe.”

  Joseph waited for the two people to move out of sight before he climbed the last few stairs and slipped through the unwisely unlocked office door. He was faced with a small desk covered in hospital files. In the middle of the unruly mess was a computer, the owner of which had not only left the door unlocked, but the computer was still logged in. Joseph quickly sat and typed furiously. He was looking for information on American Airlines flight AA777 from Dulles to JFK on Tuesday November the first two thousand and one. A Google search brought up page after page about ‘9/11’, but he could find no report of a plane crash. He typed in the date and flight details again, and was presented with the identical results he had had last time. Joseph searched the New York Times and the Washington Post, but there was no record of a plane crash that day. That, he knew, was not possible. He had commemorated that exact date each year with Simmons, the year was unmistakable as it was the same year of the Twin Towers terrorist attack, and the flight number was seared into his brain; seven-seven-seven.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” came an angry voice.

  Joseph looked up to see one of the two people he had seen earlier standing in the doorway. Joseph stood up and marched in her direction. The woman stepped to one side, eyes wide and mouth gaping a little.

  “I said, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” the woman repeated.

  Joseph slowed slightly as he barged past her and negotiated the door.

  “I have no fucking idea,” he said under his voice.

  He got to the door of the store room that he had considered a safe place earlier, but now the room seemed to give no solace. It felt more like a prison or a condemned cell where he would wait until his executioners found him. He continued up the stairs until there were no more stairs to climb; nowhere to hide; nowhere to run. He opened the fire door in front of him and stepped out onto a windy roof. Joseph kept walking until he reached the parapet wall at the edge of the building. He looked down; eleven floors of uninterrupted air before the concrete pavement below.

  ‘Why couldn’t I take the shot?’ he asked himself, but the answer was now obvious to him. He looked down at his middle-aged paunch; the belly that had come from nowhere; in no time. This was not the agile physique of a top MI6 assassin. This was the depressed husk of a middle-aged photographer with too vivid an imagination. He couldn’t take the shot because he was not Joseph Miller, and President Harrington was not the enemy. Tom had fucked himself with self-pity and cocaine. He had warped his brain and now tried to escape the pain by fantasising. There was no Morrison in room seven-seven-seven, there was no American Airlines flight seven-seven-seven. Tom snorted through his nose as a realisation caught him off-guard, ‘but my photography studio address is seven-seven-seven!’ he thought.

  Tom heard a door slam behind him, and spun around. An attractive woman had emerged from the fire door and was walking towards him limping on her left leg. She stopped a few meters away and looked at him with deep intensity. Her tightly curled black hair remained perfectly still, even in the gusting winds.

  “What are you doing up here, Mona?” Tom called out. Mona didn’t answer. “I heard about Berlin, sorry that you got hurt… but at least you’re okay.”

  “You heard about Berlin?” Mona said with an American accent, “You heard about Berlin?… You fucking cunt!”

  “What?” Tom said.

  “You fucking set me up in Berlin, you son-of-a-bitch!”

  “What?” repeated Tom.

  The door behind her opened again and a large man walked onto the roof. He took a position next to Mona.

  “Boris?” stammered Tom.

  “Good to see you again, Joseph. Shame about the circumstances, compadre,” he said.

  While Tom had been studying Boris, Mona had drawn a gun, which she now pointed at him.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake… Sherry?” he asked.

  “Who then?” said Sherry, “the fucking Queen’s mother?”

  “This is crazy,” said Tom. “If this was even slightly real, you,” he pointed at Boris, “are dead. I killed you. I shot you in the fucking chest.”

  Another two figures came through the fire door, that now seemed to Tom more like a magical portal into his damaged brain’s psychosis. Taylor and Sarah joined the other two.

  “Joseph,” said Taylor, “come on old man, come with me and we can sort all of this out.”

  “Sweetheart,” Sarah appealed gently, “you’ve got this all wrong. I never wanted to hurt you. You’re confused. You’ve got this idea that the President is somehow against you. He isn’t. Harrington is a good man. Really, Sweetheart, come with me and Sherry, and we’ll make sure you get the treatment you need.”

  Tom tried to back away from the apparitions, but his heels butted against the parapet wall; he could not affect an escape in that direction.

  “Joseph,” Taylor called out to Tom emphatically, “don’t listen to them. They’ve been trying to kill you.”

  “Shut your fucking mouth, Simmons,” yelled Sherry, then turned to Tom. “Don’t listen to his bullshit. He’s been working with us all along. He wants you dead.”

  “Why would I want my best agent dead?” countered Simmons.

  Sherry turned her gun onto Simmons.

  “You think I wouldn’t work it out? That it was you – and that cunt – that set me up in Berlin.”

  “I did no such thing, my dear lady,” said Simmons.

  Tom watched the four people argue and shook his head slowly.

  “Shut up!” he screamed. The four went silent and looked towards Tom. “I am Tom Friday. I am a photographer who is paying the price of my misspent youth. And you… all of you… are just in my head. I’m probably not even here.” He laughed. “I’m probably still in the fucking MRI scanner,” he turned to Tilda, “right?” Tilda shook her head. “If you’re Tilda, why are you wearing a doctor’s coat? That would be Sarah, but you’re not Sarah, you’re Tilda… IT’S A FUCKING BAD DREAM!”

  “Joseph,” Tilda said gently, “I’m wearing a white coat as a disguise,” she indicated the hospital building with both hands, “we’re in a hospital.”

  “I said,” screamed Tom, “shut the fuck up!” He tried to back up again, but was still hard against the wall. “I’ve had enough! Enough!”

  Tom closed his eyes tightly and prayed that when he opened them again he would be firmly back in his real life. He opened his eyes. The four were still there; nothing had changed. Tilda reached a hand out to him with something like sympathy in her eyes. Tom reacted and swayed backwards. He stumbled and put his left hand out to save himself, but he misaimed and his hand met empty air. The rest of his body followed, pivoted on the parapet wall, and teetered on the brink. He looked back to his four tormentors, and then simply gave up. He relaxed, for the first time in a long, long time, and let himself fall.

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  Chapter 33

  Rather than the gut-wrenching pull of gravity, Tom seemed buoyed up, somehow floating slowly downwards on the empty air, like an autumn leaf. ‘What now?’ he thought, ‘What happens now?’.

  Tom smiled to himself at how non-sensical his delusion had become; a desperate mind fighting to justify itself. Joseph Miller had been such a compelling reality until the flaws in its fabric had begun to tear, then it fell apart completely. ‘Boris could not be alive,’ Tom thought, ‘he had taken a bullet in the chest. Tilda was dead; Sherry had caught her, and the mad bitch had obviously ‘off-ed
’ her in her usual uncontrolled frenzy. The CIA report was clear; Tilda was killed in action. And my mind had become so confused it put Tilda in a white coat that belonged to Sarah. And what about the plane crash my parents were supposed to die in? There was no plane crash. What did my addled brain expect me to believe; that the crash was covered up? Why would it be covered up? My parents were not involved in anything shady… Oh, maybe they were embedded agents, snuffed out by the joint machinations of MI6 and the CIA! And what… did I really not shoot Boris in the chest? After all, it was Sherry’s gun that I used. Ah, so it was all a set-up. I didn’t kill anyone that day. Sherry’s gun was full of blanks and the agents had squibs under their shirts? Like the fake death Boris told me about in Berlin? I was supposed to get away to lead them to the Bedfellows? No… all fucking crazy shit. When I wake up, or however I come out of this, I will put myself in the capable hands of Sarah and her colleagues, and get well’.

  Tom became aware of a sharp noise above the rushing wind. He looked down. The pavement was now beginning to loom frighteningly. A red Fiesta was driving erratically along the road, hooting continuously. It screeched to a stop in the middle of the street. The cars behind it joined the disharmonious chorus of loud horn blowing. A small man jumped from the driver’s side of the Fiesta, and looked up. In his hand he tightly clutched a piece of paper.

  “Sir!” Cyril screamed, “Joseph!”

  And then the coldness came. The mind and body numbing coldness of reality. For longer than Joseph could remember he had played, mused and teased reality, but, as he had quoted so often, ‘We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality’. He was Joseph Miller – a British Intelligence agent – and he was falling to his death.