The Loo Sanction

She shook her head again.

'All right, lady. You have a count of five, at the end of which in you come to join me.'

'I'm all dressed!'

'Two.'

'What happened to one?'

'Four.'

'You wouldn't...!'

The sere, middle-aged cleaning woman looked up from her sweeping and gasped. Approaching her down the hall were Jonathan and Maggie wrapped in towels, she with her dripping clothes over her arm, and he his torn and muddy ones. For the benefit of their round-eyed spectator, he shook Maggie's hand and thanked her for a delightful time. She asked if he would care to drop into her room for a while before lunch, and he said yes, he thought that might be fun. Then he turned to the chambermaid. 'Would you care to join us?'

Horrified, speechless, she backed against the wall and held the broom handle protectively before her chest. It was perfectly adequate coverage. He shrugged, said something about ships passing in the night, and followed Maggie to her room.

'How are you going to dress?' Maggie asked as soon as the door was closed.

'I'll go to my own room as soon as I think the maid has left. I wouldn't want to spoil her orgy of outrage.' He lay on her bed and stretched his body to get the kinks out. 'Were you able to find out anything about the Feeding Station?'

'Hm-m, yes. Rather more than I'd care to know, really. It's a ghastly business.'

'Tell me.'

'Well... that man—the one in your bathroom the other night. He was a product of the Feeding Station. Yank told me all about it. He didn't want to at first, but once he started, it came gushing out, like something he needed to be rid of.'

He leaned up on one elbow. Her tone told him she was finding it difficult to talk about it.

She slipped into a bathrobe and sat on the bed beside him. 'Evidently the concept of the Feeding Station is a result of the two problems faced by MI-5 and 6 and Loo. The first is the problem of defection and treachery within their ranks. These aren't very common, but they are dealt with vigorously. In fact, the defectors are assassinated. You do the same in the United States, I believe.'

'Yes. The assassinations are called 'sanctions' if the target is someone outside the CII, and 'maximum demotes' if the target is one of their own men.'

'Well, it seems that these assassinations were often difficult and awkward. There were bodies to dispose of; the police nosing about; and the Loo man who performed the assassination had to surface to award the punishment, maybe thereby stripping his cover for some more important task. So this was the first problem: the difficulty of performing assassinations.'

'The second problem?'

'Corpses. Recently dead bodies are at a premium. They are used by the various branches of intelligence for setups, like the one you were victim of. And it seems they also use them as the ultimate deep cover for an active who has to go underground. Rather than simply disappear, the agent dies, or seems to. And there is no better cover than being dead and buried. They also use corpses to leak misguiding information to the other side—whoever that may be at the moment.'

'How do they do that?'

'Evidently, a man is found in his hotel room dead of a heart attack, or perhaps he dies in a fatal traffic accident. And he has certain information on him that identifies him as a courier, together with some false data Loo wants implanted. In Lisbon or Athens—wherever the police are for sale—the other side ends up with the false information. They never imagine that a man would give his life just to fob off a bit of rot on them, so they always take it at face value.'

'I see. So the Vicar put one and one together and decided to use the bodies of men written off for assassination to fulfill the Loo's need for fresh corpses. I assume they kidnap them and bring them to the Feeding Station to hold until they're needed.'

'I don't know. I suppose so. I do know that bodies from the Feeding Station are always in short supply in relation to the needs of the services. The fact that the Vicar used one to rope you in gives you some idea of the importance of this affair, and of your importance to its success.'

'I'm flattered. But why is the establishment called the 'Feeding Station'?'

'Well...' She rose and lit a cigarette. 'That's the really grisly part of the matter—the part that upsets Yank so. It seems they are kept all doped up at a small farm back in the country near here. And they are fed... oh, lord.'

'Go on.'

'...and they are fed on special diets. You see, Loo discovered that the first thing the Russians do when they have a corpse in want of identification is to pump its stomach and check the contents. And it wouldn't do for a supposed Greek to produce the remnants of steak-and-kidney pie. So, along with matters of proper clothing, the right dust in the trouser cuffs, and all that sort of business, they have to be sure the right food is...' She shrugged.

'Thus: the Feeding Station. They're quite a bunch, these Loo people.'

'I feel sorry for Yank, though. His reaction to the whole thing is so violent, you forget for a moment that he's part of it.'

'Yeah, he's an odd one to find in this business. Of course, they're all odd ones in this business, come to think of it.'

'But we're involved in this. We're not odd.'

'No! Christ, no. Come over here.'

Jonathan was resting in his room after lunch when Yank knocked and entered. 'Greetings, Gate. I've just come from the Guv. He laid everything out for me. How do you feel about our working together on this gig?' He sat in the overstuffed chair and put his feet up on the dresser.

Jonathan had been shielding his eyes from the light, his arm thrown across his face, and Yank's potpourri of slang gleaned from a span of thirty years evoked the image of a bearded and sandaled man wearing a zoot suit and a porkpie hat. Jonathan lifted his arm and squinted at Yank. 'I can dig it,' he said, getting into the spirit of the thing.

'First thing, of course, you'll need a gun.' Yank's tone was heavily serious. He'd been around. He knew about these things.

Jonathan dropped his arm back over his eyes and sighed. It was just like working again for CII. A kind of inefficient, rural CII. Each event had a lived-in feeling. 'Right. Of course. The gun. I don't want to carry it. But it should be in my flat when I return.'

'Gotcha. The Mayfair flat, or the one on Baker Street?'

'Baker Street. And I'll need two guns. One in the bottom of my shirt drawer, covered by three or four shirts and surrounded by rolled-up socks. The second above it, covered by only one shirt.'

'Whatever you say, man. You snap the whip; we'll make the trip. But why two guns hidden in the same place?' Then it dawned. 'Oh, I get it! If they search the room, they'll find the top gun and not look further for the other one. Now that is what cool is all about!'

Jonathan lifted his arm and looked at Yank to ascertain if he was real.

'What kind of guns will you be wanting? Our MI-6 lads run to Italian automatics.'

'I know they do. They're deadly as far as you can throw them. I want American-made .45 revolvers—five cartridges in, and the hammer down on an empty.'

'Not an automatic?'

'No. If there's a misfire, I want something coming up.'

'They're awfully bulky, you know.' Yank blushed involuntarily. 'But then, of course, you know.'

Jonathan sighed and sat up. 'Listen, when I bring the guns along, I won't be going to a party. And I won't