‘Sit down, please Mr. Brunel’.
‘So you’re not a doctor?’, Dick asked.
‘I am’, Mary replied. ‘A doctor of criminal psychology. I’m employed by the Party and one of my duties is overseeing interrogations’.
Neighbour or not, there was absolutely no familiarity about her tone. She was here in her official Party capacity with a job to do. A job to condemn him to a horrible fate.
‘You won’t be surprised to hear that following the interrogations of all the staff working here, we have identified the traitor’.
Dick farted.
Ignoring this, Mary continued. ‘It’s someone who managed to conceal his true identity and hoodwink his employers and the Party’.
Another fart. This one longer.
‘The curious thing is, he passed the lie detector test. We can only assume that he did this by means of a temporary chemical suppressant…’
Mary was interrupted by the door bursting open. Dick turned to face two armed guards. They stared at him, guns raised. In a complete reflex action Dick raised his hands high above his head.
‘Come with me’, she ordered.
Dick went to get up.
‘No, you stay here Mr. Brunel’.
Mary left the room with the guards in tow. He could hear her talking to them outside the room, then heard the sound of their heavy boots pounding the corridor.
Mary re-entered. ‘Where was I? Oh yes. The traitor thought he had avoided detection and even tried to blame one of his colleagues in an effort to disguise his guilt’.
Dick was stunned. In fact stunned doesn’t go anywhere near to describe how he felt. He was amazed, astonished and astounded all at the same time. In his state of shock he managed to get one word out. Fortunately this was a relevant word. It wasn’t something random like xylophone, giraffe or bungalow. It was the word ‘Benjamin?’
Mary nodded. ‘It seems Mr. Faraday was not what he appeared’.
Dick managed to get one other word out. ‘Wow!’.
‘We were certain there was a member of the Resistance operating within the department but despite our keen surveillance they somehow managed to evade us. Until now, that is’. Mary leaned forward slightly and continued, adopting a more earnest tone. ‘As you know, Benjamin tried to implicate you and I wanted to bring you here to apologise for treating you as a suspect. The party is well aware of the work you have undertaken for Project Gladstone and I of course know you on a personal level. Of course, I didn’t believe Benjamin’s outlandish allegations but I hope you understand that everyone had to be interrogated in exactly the same way’.
Dick nodded with a slightly blank look, trying to deal with the simultaneous mixed emotions of relief and shock. Relief that Taylor’s drugs had worked but shock that Benjamin
‘Are you one hundred per cent certain that Benjamin’s guilty?’ Dick added, hoping that he wasn’t pushing his luck, and that Mary wouldn’t say something like, ‘Hmmmmm. Maybe we were too hasty and got it all wrong’. But she didn’t.
‘Definitely. Although he passed the lie detector, we were alerted to his guilt by something far more serious’.
Dick’s frown was a cue for Mary to continue.
‘We received an anonymous tip-off and while Benjamin was being interrogated, a search was conducted of his work station. Concealed in a locked drawer we found a copy of your recommendations for Project Gladstone and even more damning, plans to build improvised explosive devices and a list of Party targets’.
Dick’s mind was reeling. His earlier hunch about Benjamin being recruited by Taylor as a back-up was right. If Benjamin was clever in disguising his anti-Party role then Taylor was a genius. A devious genius. He must have known that one of them would be unmasked in the interrogations so he hedged his bets. It obviously didn’t matter which one of them was sacrificed, Dick or Benjamin. Who cared as long as one of them continued the fight against the Party? Before he had time to consider the implications of Taylor’s cunning strategy Mary stood up.
‘You are free to go now Mr. Brunel’.
‘What about Benjamin?’ Dick enquired, also standing.
‘He’ll be taken to the State Police Headquarters for further interrogation’.
‘And then what?’ Dick enquired.
‘You don’t need to concern yourself with his fate, Mr. Brunel’. Mary held the door open for him. ‘Goodbye’.
Dick hesitated as he left the room. He stopped and shook his head. ‘I didn’t suspect Benjamin’.
Mary continued to hold the door open, now slightly annoyed that Dick hadn’t actually left yet, as despite its appearance, it was quite a heavy door. ‘No one suspected him, Mr. Brunel, no one at all. Which just goes to show that many people are in fact, not whom they might seem’.
As Dick left the room he took one last look at Mary to see if he could detect whether this barbed remark was aimed at him. Was it the sort of remark that, if you read between the lines, meant ‘I’m talking about you Jeremy Brunel. We know you’re concealing something and we’re watching you like a hawk’. If Mary was making a veiled threat to Dick then she certainly didn’t make it obvious. She didn’t raise an eyebrow by the tiniest amount or give a half smile. She didn’t even simultaneously wink and stamp her foot. Totally inscrutable, she gave absolutely nothing away. But then, just as Dick passed by her she uttered something under her breath that made him shudder.
‘William has a new jigsaw. The changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. Two thousand pieces including lots of blue sky… Drop in anytime…’
CHAPTER 20
Jack had been activated at the Party HQ and sent on his mission into London’s East End. His programming was simple. He would move from bar to pub to tavern looking handsome, prosperous and a little bit lonely, attributes that the rogue prostitutes had been programmed to respond to. In less than twenty-four hours he had met his first target.
Jack was reading a newspaper and sipping a glass of port (he was designed to chemically digest anything he drank or ate) in the Smiling Blacksmith pub just off the Whitechapel Road when a woman approached. She was reasonably attractive, quite well dressed and she asked if the seat opposite was taken. Jack, always the gentleman, doffed his hat and said that he would welcome her company. Soon they were chatting about current affairs, the price of drinks and the latest bridge construction. Jack discovered her name was Elizabeth and it wasn’t long before Jack bought her a large glass of red wine. It wasn’t long after that before Elizabeth leant forward and whispered something suggestive in his ear. Jack nodded and smiled, then whispered back. More softly spoken words were exchanged, then Elizabeth blushed. She pulled back to look at Jack who was winking, holding his hands about ten inches apart (needless to say, Dick had insisted on that part of the programming).
Jack paid for the drinks, picked up his briefcase and the new couple exited the pub. Elizabeth looked nervously about her and taking Jack by the hand, led him up a dimly-lit Brick Lane towards Shoreditch. Noticing a police patrol on the corner of Hanbury Street they doubled back and after a few minutes, reached a deserted and squalid alleyway near Spitalfields Market. Making sure they were concealed from anyone who might pass by the alley entrance, Elizabeth grabbed Jack’s head with one hand, pulled him towards her and kissed him passionately on the lips. Her other hand moved skilfully down between his legs and felt the rock hard bulge in his trousers (his pneumatic valves were operating faultlessly). Elizabeth gasped. After releasing him she leant against one of the walls and began undressing. Despite the cool night air Elizabeth seemed comfortable opening her jacket, then her blouse, before hoisting up her skirt and dropping her red lace knickers.
Jack smiled at the display he’d just witnessed. Elizabeth watched intently as his hand slowly reached into his jacket pocket. What she saw next made her eyes widen and for the second time in a few minutes she gasped again.
