'No, I want you to go and take the courses. Then I want you to come back here and run 'em through it with me, day by day, you understand?'
'They'll smell me out on the E-meter, if you'll pardon the expression, Sir; they have this lie-detector, Sir. You can't beat it, Sir. You see, I did a job for them once...my wife took a personal efficiency course at the London Center and that's how I got into it. Well, I padded my expense account a bit; and this grim old biddy drags me into a broomcloset, puts me on the cans, and says should I have told her anything I didn't.'
'That reads, what do you think this could mean. She bloody dragged it out of me, Sir, and said I would have to wear a gray rag, Sir, and go around and ask every decent Scientologist if I could rejoin the group. I quit, Sir.'
'Don't worry about Sec-Checks, all you need to do is take one of these.' Lord Westfield shoves a bottle of pills across the table. 'Sit down, Jenkins, and stop pretending to be stupider than you are.
Now this drug lowers the electrical resistance of the brain.'
Now Jenkins has dropped his obsequious Cockney voice. 'Yes, Sir, of course. The E-meter works on resistance.'
'I believe that electronics is a hobby of yours, Jenkins?'
'Yes, Sir, in fact I've been working on an E-meter that'll work on non-resistance.'
'Have you really? When you get it finished, bring it along, perhaps the Technical Department will be interested. Now, on this assignment you have to watch every word and every move. There isn't a man or woman in the org won't turn you in if you so much as nip into a bar for half a pint on course, so for Christ's sake, don't get caught out taking a pill.'
'I used to give sleight-of-hand shows in the Council Hall, Sir. I was on the junk in New York. I know ten different ways of getting a pill into my mouth under closed-circuit TV.'
Of course, Lord Westfield knew all this and a lot more about Jenkins. Intelligence during the war, electronics and demolitions expert, expert at gaining access to premises, photographing and returning documents, & expert in electronic spying devices.
'And remember this, Jenkins, you're going to have to study. It's a tough course, they tell me.'
Jenkins went pale...'You don't mean I have to take the special briefing course, Sir?'
'No, Jenkins, just what you need to get the clearing course, then you can lift the rest.'
Two weeks later when Jenkins showed up for the daily lesson, he looked worried... 'Lord Westfield, it's them pills, Sir.'
'Yes, Jenkins?'
'Well, if you'll pardon the expression, Sir, they loosen my rectum, Sir. I've had, er, several accidents, Sir. You see, there's been a scandal about the confidental material; and they've gone Sec-Check mad, Sir. It's a side- effect.'
'Well, Jenkins, you can lift the rest.'
Scientology was one of the many subjects that interested Lord Westfield. On the surface he was a highly- placed but obscure civil servant at the Home Office. There were select dinners for highly-placed officials...Lord Westfield, who was on his way to a Top Secret meeting with Olga Hardcastle, looked out the one-way window of his Bentley and saw that fight was in progress. He stopped the car, got out and sat on his cane seat to watch the fight.
Two middle-aged women were the first to notice Clinch Smith. They looked at the kris in disapproval...'He's not allowed to carry that.' She didn't have time to scream. He ripped her stomach open, striking from near the ground. The other looked at him, her face flapping in silent terror. He swung his arm and cut her throat.
He turned to face the crowd. Electric menace blazing from his kris, which vibrated with a life of its own, pulling him down a funnel of screaming, running figures. And there, at the end of the funnel, is the Sea Org, Lord Westfield, and Olga.
The Sea Org has something eccentric and puritanical in their dress, like MRA personnel. They placed themselves in ineffectual karate stance.
When Lord Westfield saw Clinch Smith's face, he knew he was a dead man. He had studied karate, Chinese boxing, judo, aikido. He was giving the orders to his hand, but a numbing paralysis clutched him. Suddenly he broke through, his limbs stiff with panic, brought the cane seat up in a clumsy stab to the groin.
Clinch seemed to undulate aside, as if the ground had moved under his feet, straightened his bent arm, rippling the kris along the side of Lord Westfield's throat. He straightened his arm and shoved the kris right into Olga's open mouth and out the back of her neck. He placed his left hand on her face and shoved, snapping the kris in an arc that nearly decapitated a Sea Org member.
Whirling, dancing, shifting...he slashed and stabbed.
Crack.
Colonel Wentworth stood there with a sporting rifle. Born Marvin Weinstein he sported a dubious military title from World War II. His first shot killed Lord Westfield's chauffeur. He moved closer.
Crack.
Clinch Smith fell under a pile of dead Sea Org uniforms. Meanwhile, a rumor has flashed through the town that the Home Secretary has ordered a massacre of hippies and militants. Now they come out in droves, all marching towards the scene of battle just ahead. This is it. They glimpse a slender, young Malay boy, a Negro, a Mexican, a Chinese, perhaps, crushed under a pile of cops.
Pulling baseball bats and bicycle chains, they charge. Many of the opposition fainted at the sight; and the weaker ones had heart attacks.
What remained summoned something so ugly that several hippies with Zen leanings faltered and said, 'Let's talk this over.' But the stronger hippies were strengthened and their eyes blazed while the embattled police and landed gentry flung themselves forward.
