The Man From U.N.D.E.A.D. - the Curious Case of the Kidnapped Chemist

by Darren Humphries

  I glanced at Grayson quizzically and he said simply, “Over the page.”

  I turned the report over and there was a second sheet of paper. The crest at the top of the page was significant enough on its own to almost stop my heart beating.

  “It’s genuine,” Grayson confirmed in answer to my shocked expression. Clearly he had worn one of his own very much like it when first he saw the crest himself.

  The message on the second sheet of paper was short, clear and unequivocal. I closed the file and placed it thoughtfully back on the desk where it slid back into Grayson’s fingers by itself.

  “Who is this woman?” I queried.

  “Preliminary investigations suggest that she’s nobody.” By ‘preliminary investigations’ the Director meant a thorough background check running her name, address, social security number, passport number, driving licence and probably dress size through every known database in just about every law enforcement and government organisation on the planet. To get that done in the time frame since the arrival of the note would have taken every system override and every request expedition code that the Agency possessed. Despite the paucity of information, favours would have been called in for it. It was no small thing and would not have been undertaken lightly.

  “She’s ‘nobody’ and the Magic Circle’s helping her?” I didn’t believe it.

  It was unlikely in the extreme. Grayson had meant the woman in the file had been shown to have no direct or indirect connection to the Agency’s work or the more sensitive areas of defence, research or advanced manufacturing, nor was she connected to anyone who was currently involved in any such work. In short, she was a normal person leading a normal life.

  “No, you’re helping her,” Grayson demurred. “The Circle is merely passing the case on to us with a note of their disinterest.”

  The fact that the Magic Circle had actively voiced its disinterest in the case was a matter of great interest in itself.

  The Magic Circle had officially been formed when the greatest magical practitioners of their day had come together in response to the Hundred Years War. The official history states that the conflict had been proving to be too long a distraction from their more important, personal researches. The countries involved, and the world in general, had been presented with an ultimatum to live in peace and stop bothering them or suffer the consequences. The Circle had been willing to provide demonstrations of their sincerity and the sinking of Calais and the erasure of Paris from maps of the period had proven to be incentive enough for their offer to be taken up. Now countries worked together for the common good of everyone rather than bickering over borders or natural resources or who said what about which President’s cigar-loving assistant. Leaders who would not have thought twice about sending armies of young men off to die in battle took a different view when faced with a lifetime of sucking the algae off the inside of an aquarium. Even merchant bankers looked for ways of making a quick buck that were socially sustainable and disadvantaged no-one.

  World Peace ensured, the Circle had once again retreated into the shadows from whence it had never fully emerged. Whenever some foolish leader decided that it was all just a myth told to frighten small children into finishing their homework and started to get uppity, the Circle would issue a warning and then take dire retribution if that warning was disregarded. This didn’t happen very much anymore and so the Circle didn’t bother the world very much either. The big picture secured, they left the day to day security of the world to the politicians.

  And us.

  The second sheet in the file had been a note bearing the crest of the Magic Circle. It hadn’t been addressed to anyone since the Circle never bothered with individuals and it hadn’t been signed by anyone, but its message had been short and to the point – ‘Deal with this’.

  It was dismissive; designed to communicate the highest level of disinterest and yet if you really are not interested in something then you just ignore it. To voice your disinterest suggests a certain level of interest. To address that disinterest to the Agency instead of the regular police suggested rather more interest than the disinterest professed. Why would the Magic Circle be interested enough in something to ensure that we dealt with it whilst all the time trumpeting their total lack of interest? How important could this be?

  I was interested.

  Grayson left me all the time I needed to ponder on this. It was surprising how much intrigue could actually be suffused into three small words. Politics wasn’t something that I cared about very much, or in fact at all, which was why I was still slugging it out with slimeballs on the street rather than heading up my own section from the comfort of an office that was smaller, but no less luxurious, than this one. That, though, was the way I liked it. It takes a certain kind of person to be a politician and I don’t like to compromise my beliefs that much and I don’t get on well with those that do.

  There was another factor that bothered me, one that Grayson wouldn’t even be aware of – Old Edna, or whatever her name had been, at Marylebone station the night before. If a low level street precog like her had been able to pick up on this (assuming she had picked up on it and wasn’t just some raving senile dementic, of course) then it was potentially far more significant than either of us thought and than the Magic Circle were trying so hard to make out. Her premonition could be completely unconnected, pure coincidence, but then again it might not. The easiest way to tell would be …

  “Is she blonde?”

  “What?” There was probably a list of all the questions that Grayson might have thought that I would ask and therefore have prepared himself to answer, but this one was apparently not on it. There hadn’t been a photograph in the file either, which was surprising but was probably nothing more than an administrative oversight caused by the speed with which the information had been put together. “Is that important?”

  “It might be,” was all I was going to tell him, at this point anyway. I didn’t want to embarrass myself by saying anything more if the old crone in the station turned out to be some alky flake.

  “Then you’ll be able to tell for yourself, won’t you?” He tapped the intelligence file on his desk, “According to this she’ll be walking through our front door in,” he checked his watch, “oh about seven minutes. I take it you can handle one distressed woman or would you like me to call for some assistance?”

  I ignored the implied insult. Despite my inbuilt dislike for political machinations of all kinds, I was now far too curious to think of handing this case over to anyone else and he knew it. There wasn’t an agent alive, or undead for that matter, that would have been able to turn it down. I was as hooked as a coelacanth on a line.

  “Normal case rules?” I inquired. I needed to know my terms of engagement and something told me that these were going to be different.

  “No. This one doesn’t go through the books.” Grayson produced a credit card and slid it across the table. I didn’t need to be told that the limit on it wasn’t infinite, but would allow me to charge anything up to and including an Apache attack helicopter if I thought it necessary. I would have to justify every penny of it, though, if I was still alive at the end of the mission.

  I regarded the card for a moment before picking it up. This was my last chance to back out. Picking up the card meant that I was accepting the assignment and everything that went with it and there was no telling what was going to come with it. The card had my name on it, but it wouldn’t be traceable back to the Agency or any of the Agency’s usual banking partners. If the mission wasn’t ‘on the books’ then it officially didn’t exist, which meant that I was not only expendable, but also deniable.

  I picked up the card and slid it into my pocket.

  “Six minutes,” Grayson said simply and I headed for the door. “Oh and Ward, keep in touch. I presume that you still have your phone?”

  The Pike, A Pub On The Thames

  The pub was much like many others that can be found in the countryside of Ox
fordshire – picturesque enough to adorn the front cover of a souvenir box of fudge, quietly isolated and hideously overpriced. It sat by the river a few miles outside the city alongside a small weir that was constantly overflowing, adding its babbling to the countryside ambience. From the outside tables there was a view across the common back towards the city where the skyline was visible in a parade of spires dominated by the one from which I had so recently departed. Peacocks wandered around the grounds calling and generally making a nuisance of themselves. John Constable probably would have taken up permanent residence in the place had he ever come across it.

  Apart from the sheer quaintness that the place exuded, the pub’s main advantage was that it belonged to the Agency and all of the patio heaters were fitted with surveillance dampening equipment. The only people who could overhear my conversation with the chemist’s sister would normally have been a monitoring team detailed to listen in to, and record, what we were saying, logging the recording against the job file reference in the central servers. Since this was an ‘off the books’ job, the eavesdropping had been suspended.

  I had made it from Grayson’s office down to the ground floor just in time to make my rendezvous. The lift doors had slid smoothly open to reveal the main lobby in all its glory, the sunlight slanting in through the glass to cast a soft golden glow over the extremely expensive décor. Special tinting had been ordered from a major provider of stained glass to ensure that the same reassuring glow was achieved whatever the level of sunlight outside. There was an equally soft susurration of sound from the water feature that spilled a sheet of gleaming water down an expanse of burnished bronze along one wall. The plants were specially sourced to add calming, soothing perfumes to the air. Everything was designed to calm and soothe visitors. If that didn’t work, then there was an industrial strength system for spraying pacifying gas over everyone in an emergency situation.

  I had recognized Miranda the moment that she passed through the main door at exactly the appointed hour. The Agency’s precogs are the best in the world, including Hardly Street’s finest. Miranda couldn’t have stood out more had she had been carrying a large neon sign flashing the phrase ‘this woman is the trouble that you have been expecting’ over her head. She had the kind of looks that drew all eyes in the place to her without having to do anything more than simply be there to be looked at. Even the lovely Penny Kilkenny would have glowed green with envy. Dressing, as Miranda had, in a light blouse that had at least one button too many undone at the neck and a skirt that rose above her knees as she walked was certainly doing the something more that she didn’t need to.

  And she had been, as promised, blonde.

  Now she was sat opposite me in the heart of the Oxfordshire countryside, nursing a gin and tonic and listening to the babbling of the weir as a rowing team from the university went past in one of the low slung racing boats that were traditionally used for racing the Cambridge lot. The ramming spike shone at the prow, just beneath the surface of the water. As she turned her tumbler this way and that, the ice tinkled slightly against the glass and I wondered why on Earth I was noticing things like that which were of no importance whatsoever.

  Back in the lobby, I had crossed the space to intercept her as quickly as I could without looking as though I was hurrying. There were several other people, all of them male, who were doing much the same thing, but I had the advantage of having a purpose beyond simply trying to get her phone number and I was approaching from the front.

  “Miss Harcourt?” I inquired as soon as I was close enough not to be taken for someone shouting across the room. “Miss Miranda Harcourt?”

  “Yes?” she responded with a surprised frown. Since she had just walked in through the door without an appointment she wouldn’t have been expecting someone to be calling her name in personal greeting.

  “Hello. My name is Ward. I’m the agent that’s been assigned to your case.” I showed her my ID, just in case she didn’t believe me, and also to impress her a little bit.

  “Really?” she was surprised, even taking the time to look at the badge, which most people don’t once inside Agency Central. “I didn’t know that I had a case.”

  “Why else would you be here if you didn’t have a case?” I inquired gently. “This Agency doesn’t deal with kidnappings and yet here you are instead of going to the police who should properly be dealing with your brother’s disappearance.” Which was only partially true since the Agency regularly deals with the kidnappings of young virgins who are still considered by the uninformed as being important ingredients in all manner of evil rituals.

  “I did go to the police,” she lied, and I wondered why she did that. No doubt she would explain herself in time, “but they told me that they couldn’t help me since there are no signs of foul play.”

  “Well, the Agency has agreed to take on the case and I am the lead investigator.” She didn’t need to know that I was also the only investigator. “I will be needing lots of information from you and my office is a stuffy broom cupboard near to a water heater,” not to mention lots of bore worms, “but I know of just the place where we can talk. Let me call for a car.”

  I showed her to a seat, one that was far enough away that she couldn’t hear what I was saying on the phone, but that was close enough for none of the other sharks that were still circling to think of nipping in for a quick bite. I went to the reception desk and picked up one of the house phones, punching in the appropriate departmental number.

  “Enquiries desk,” was the quick response. The phone had barely rung the first time. The woman on the other end was bright and cheerful in that plastic way that only people who answer the phone for a living seem to be able to manage.

  “Ward, badge number 327.”

  “Yes Agent Ward, how may I help you?” the impossibly cheerful voice asked, immediately accepting my identity, though no doubt having checked me through a voice verification process. I wondered, as ever, if it was real cheer or something that was taught at call centre training school. It might possibly have been drug-induced. Whatever it was, everyone in the department had it. Their enthusiasm for answering queries and doing tedious research was both constant and extremely annoying. I have tried everything in my time to bring a falter to those tones of bonhomie and joie de vivre (something about them just makes me think in French), but to no avail. When I had once asked one them what they would be thinking about when the bomb I had planted in their office went off, the impossibly cheerful male voice had replied that the last thing to go through his mind would probably be his shoes, all in that unbreakably cheerful manner. In the end I had admitted defeat and given up on the task.

  “I need a list of any and all contacts between one Miranda Harcourt and the police with regards to her brother in, let’s say, the past six months sent to my phone and a check that one of the DNA traces that just came through the main door is Miranda Harcourt,” I told her. “Oh and I need a car out front. Can you get that for me?”

  “Yes, Agent Ward. It’s already on its way. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

  “No thank you. I presume that this call is being logged for training purposes?”

  “And for surveillance purposes,” she agreed, “as per standing orders.”

  “Good. Please tag it to the Director of Operations personally. I believe that he will want it deleted from the archives at the earliest opportunity. Thank you.”

  The car, a nicely upmarket, but suitably anonymous model in a dark colour, was pulling up outside as Miranda and I left the building. Half an hour later we were safely ensconced between the patio heaters and wandering peacocks of the Agency pub where the woman now confirmed by DNA scan as Miranda Harcourt was playing with her drink and biting her bottom lip.

  “Tell me about him,” I asked after settling the bill at the bar with the credit card. There was something satisfyingly circular about the Agency card paying the Agency pub for the drinks.

  I already knew all the basics about her br
other from the Intelligence report, but the basics were all that I knew. He was named Arnold (and how he must have thanked his parents for that), but his friends called him Arnie, which was only marginally preferable. He was twenty-eight and had studied Chemistry at Inverurie University (apparently a good chemistry school) before taking on a string of small-time research and quality control jobs. He was, like his sister, a ‘nobody’ – unconnected with the magic world or any sensitive industries. His latest job was testing water purity for the London and Thames Water Board, but he had quit that a couple of months ago. His last known rented address was somewhere in Slough and was fully paid up for the month. There had been payments made into and taken out of his bank account recently and none of the activity looked in any way suspicious.

  “My brother?” she asked, coming out of her reverie and placing the drink, untouched, on the table in front of her.

  “Yes. What is he like?” I stuck to the present tense when referring to him since there was no evidence that anything untoward had actually happened to him.

  “Oh I know what you’re thinking,” she told me with a sigh, “but it’s not like that.”

  “Enlighten me. What am I thinking and what is it like?”

  “The police think that Arnie is something of a drifter, moving from job to job, not managing to hold onto any of them for very long. They think that he’s just upped sticks again and moved on to something new and neglected to tell me,” she said forlornly, but there was a challenging undertone to her words, daring me to disbelieve her.

  “So tell me why they’re wrong,” I rose to that challenge.

  “Because he never does anything without telling me,” she replied firmly, her clear, blue eyes meeting mine and that fiery undertone became a firm conviction in her gaze. “Well, not anything important. My brother is a very smart man, I mean really smart. Nobel Prize kind of smart. But he has the attention span of a whelk. These simple chemist jobs that he keeps getting aren’t enough to hold his interest for longer than it takes to pay the rent and build up a reserve to tide him over looking for the next one. He needs something that is a real challenge, something that will keep challenging him, and that kind of job is very hard to come by for someone so young. So yes, I do know my brother’s faults, but we’re all we have and all we have had since we were five. I couldn’t stop him from quitting his job and moving to Outer Mongolia if something took his fancy there, but he would at least tell me that he was going.”