The Henchmen's Book Club (17 page)

21.
THE HOTDOGS OF WAR

Jack Tempest peered out of the open Jag door and beckoned me in.

“Aye-Aye, old chap,” he chuckled,
presumably to make me aware that he was spelling his Ayes like “Eyes” and that
this was a pun about me missing an eye. “All aboard.”

He trained a little Beretta Tomcat on me
until I’d climbed in, then tucked it away into a door holster and thrust the
Jag into first. The momentum of our acceleration slammed my door shut and we
sped off into the night, dousing our headlights after half a mile. Tempest
flicked a few switches on the control panel and suddenly we could see again as
an infrared display was projected against the windscreen.

“I’d say her glory days were well and
truly behind her, wouldn’t you?” Tempest suggested.

At first I thought he was referring to
the gadgets on his car and simply grunted, “Huh?” forcing Tempest to elaborate.

“Doctor Days – her glory days are
behind her,” he repeated, raising an eyebrow to help with the translation but
still not getting the laughs he was fishing for.

Have a bit of respect why don’t you!

“Did you know her?” I asked in an attempt
to head off any further quips.

“We’d met… on the job,” he winked,
turning my guts something rotten. “She was a brilliant scientist, but totally
insane. Just like her father,” he added.

“You knew her old man?”

“Knew him. Worked with him. And retired
him.”

“Retired him?”

“Permanently,” Tempest glimmered.

“Oh,” I finally got. Twat. “She accused
me of doing that.”

“Yes, she accused everyone. Even me. Like
I said, she was insane,” Tempest shrugged.

“But you actually did it,” I pointed out.

“I had to. He gave me no choice after he
went over to the Mexicans.”

“Oh Jesus, look seriously forget I
asked,” I told him, in a vain attempt to head off any unnecessarily long
storylines. “Just drop me anywhere, I can walk from here.”

But Tempest wasn’t done with me by a long
chalk.

“You
were one of Thalassocrat’s goons, weren’t you?” he said, turning to look at me
in the glow of his dashboard, his expression all knowing. “The face is
different and you’re missing a few pieces but I never forget a goon.”

“We
don’t say goon any more,” I told him.

“No?”

“No.
It’s like calling your cleaner your skivvy or your PA your lackey. It’s kind of
derogatory.”

“I
see, sensitive souls, aren’t you?” Tempest hammed, much amused with himself.

“Well
yes, I’ll admit it must sound strange to a civil servant like yourself,” I
accepted.

“I’m
not a civil servant,” Tempest corrected me, his amusement momentarily
holstered.

“Well
no, but technically you are,” I told him, sensing a weak spot.

“No
I’m not,” he continued to object.

“I’m
only talking about strict classifications here.”

“I’m
not a civil servant!” he bristled.

“Well
what are you then?” I asked.

Tempest
thought on this for a few sweeping turns of the black countryside. “I’m a
tool,” he concluded, and finally we agreed on something. “A surgical tool of
Her Majesty’s Government. I cut out society’s cancers.” Tempest fixed me with a
steely glare. “With extreme prejudice.”

“And
that’s what it says on your pay slip does it?”

“Look,
I’m not a fucking civil servant, all right, you fucking goon!” he snapped,
glancing down at the passenger seat ejector button. “Now I don’t care what
you’re calling yourself these days; tea boy, guard dog, wet nurse or thug, you
were one of Thalassocrat’s foot soldiers...”

“I
don’t mind foot soldier,” I interrupted.
 

“I’m
so pleased,” he scowled. “So why don’t you tell me who you’re foot soldiering
for at the moment, as if I didn’t know?”

“I’m
not foot soldiering for anyone,” I told him.

“As
if,” he snorted.

“I’m
not, and that’s the truth.”

Tempest’s
eyes narrowed. “So that’s the way you want it, is it?”

“It’s
the way it is,” I said.

“So
be it,” he snarled, pushing his foot down on the accelerator to send us
hurtling through the night.

The
hedgerows whipped by on either side and every now and again an alarm would
sound on his dashboard advising us to take evasive action as traffic lights and
other road users threatened to spoil the rest of our lives.

“You’re
going to get us both killed, you great fuckwit!” I cringed, hardly daring to
look over at the speedometer.

“Danger’s
my middle name,” Tempest breezed.

“I
never said danger. I said killed,” I pointed out. “And fuckwit.”

We
shot straight across a crossroads at over 100mph and the lane before us
narrowed dramatically. A set of headlights appeared on the horizon and
Tempest’s eyes glimmered.

“I’m
betting he’ll swerve first,” he quipped, gunning his accelerator to send the
Jag’s needle into uncharted territory.

“Oh
bollocks,” I braced, reaching for my seatbelt only to find it locked.

“Talk!”
he demanded.

“I’m
not working for anyone,” I insisted, as the other car’s horn grew louder and
closer with every passing second.

“Talk!”
he repeated, veering the Jag onto the right-hand side of the thin country lane
when the other car tried to tuck in.

“I’m
telling you the truth,” I insisted.

“Talk!”
Tempest simply snapped again, but it was academic by this point anyway. Even if
I’d had anything to say, I’d run out of time to say it in.

“Look
out…!”
was all the confession I had time for as our
headlight’s blurred and our radiators met, but the terrible crunch I’d been
expecting didn’t happen. Instead, the other car simply shot straight over us
and flew into a hedgerow in our wake. Tempest didn’t blink. Not even when his
control panel confirmed the car’s “cowcatcher” had successfully deployed. A
little LCD diagram of the Jag showed a thin wedge flashing just in front of his
front bumper, turning the entire car into a huge speeding ramp.

“Now
that’s what I call getting off to a flyer,” Tempest warbled.

“You
great, stupid irresponsible twat. They could’ve been really hurt back there.”

“Well
they certainly look bushed, I’ll give you that,” he chuckled.

“Will
you stop doing that!” I pleaded.

“Then
talk!” he demanded.

“Okay,
I’ll talk, I’ll talk,” I finally conceded, willing to promise anything just so
long as XO-11 dispensed with the stand-up.

A
little country pub presented itself right on cue, so Tempest asked me if I was
in the mood to behave myself.

“Because
we can always do this somewhere quieter if you’d prefer,” he said, snatching up
his Beretta Tomcat to underline the point.

“Look,
just buy me a pint and I’ll tell you everything,” I promised.

“Are
you armed?” Tempest asked.

“I’m
not even armed with any money. Why do you think you’re getting the beers in?” I
told him.

As
luck would have it, Tempest’s car came with a First Aid kit that included an
eye patch, so I made myself presentable before we headed in. Despite my
assurances, Tempest insisted on wearing his gun and his air of shit-eating
superiority into the pub, and lorded them both over me with a constant display
of eyebrow raising semaphore. He also took his comedy routine on the road and
bombarded the confused landlady with a succession of double-entendres that
would have landed her a decent six-figure settlement and Tempest a restraining
order had they worked together in The City.

“I
prefer it hand-pulled myself!”

“Huh,
you what?”

It
was only after five minutes of painful over familiarity that I finally managed
to drag him away and we retired with a couple of drinks to the snug to get down
to business.

“So
tell me, who are you working for at the moment?” Tempest asked, sipping his gin
and ginger.

I
realised we’d just end up playing the same old game of pat-a-cake if I tried to
simply answer his questions honestly, so I decided to take him around the
houses first, as XO agents seemed to like that in a confession.

“I’m
curious,” I opened, taking my spiel from every pre-death gloat I’d ever heard
to make Tempest feel more comfortable, “how did you get out of that turbine
pipe on Thalassocrat’s island?”

Tempest
smiled to himself.

“Let’s
just say, I was rather stuck on the good Doctor,” he quipped.

“No let’s not.
Seriously, how did you get out of it?” I
repeated.

“Hey,
I’m the one asking the questions here, not you, so tell me who you’re working
for before I forget my rules of conduct?”

“What
makes you think I’m working for anyone?” I replied, trying to give him as good
as I was getting.

The
click of the Tomcat under the table caught my attention. “I thought you were
going to behave?” Tempest pursed. “Now talk damn you!”

Despite
the threat, I knew he wouldn’t shoot me in the belly under the table of a
country pub in Sussex, especially not one that had Michelin stars outside, that
simply wasn’t the done thing, so I felt safe enough to continue with a little
interrogative chess just to get my point across.

“Just
what is it you think you know, Tempest?” I toyed.

“Plenty,”
he replied. “Names, dates, targets and objectives. We have almost everything.
It’s just a few minor details that are missing.”

“You
might think you know plenty, but you don’t really. Not
really
. You can’t. Not the truth. Not what’s really going on,” I
dangled. “You’re too small to comprehend the scale of our operation.”

Tempest
duly batted.

“You
under-estimate yourselves,” he challenged.

“Then
you know? You really do know?”

“Oh
yes,” he confirmed, then added, “Mark Jones,” to show me he had one name at
least.

“About
Operation
Gozer
?”

“We
have a man on the inside,” he told me.

“Who
is it?
Venkmen
? Spengler?” I said. Tempest just
smiled. “Not Louis Tully?”

“Why
don’t you tell me what I already know? And remember, if you lie, I’ll spread
you all over the wall, horse brasses or no horse brasses,” he warned me.

I
looked at the table, took a sip of my Guinness and frowned. “If you know about
Tully, then you know we’ve got the proton packs working.” Once again, Tempest
confirmed that he knew everything about the proton packs so I told him; “We
found the gateway a few weeks back. We’ve got
Clortho
and
Zuul
working on it and while they haven’t managed
to get it open yet, they will. Just as soon as they get the sign. And when that
day comes,
Gozer
will rise again.”

Tempest
was frantically scribbling all of this down when a thought occurred to him.

“What
the hell are you talking about?”

Some
bloke on the next table who’d been scratching his head eventually answered for
me.

“It
sounds like the plot of
Ghostbusters
,”
he said and he was right. It had been on the box the night before.

“Are
you playing with me?” Tempest demanded.

“Yes,
because none of you will fucking listen to me. I am unemployed at the moment. I
am between jobs. My last posting was base security for Victor Soliman,” I told
him, figuring it was best not to mention anything about Kimbo Banja, not least
of all because I’d been party to a nuclear explosion, so I stuck to confessing
my failures and left the Hague’s prosecutors to bang the drum for my successes.

“Victor
Soliman? The satellite
refractoriser
, wasn’t it?”
Tempest mulled, in an effort to show off his knowledge.

“I
don’t know, possibly, I was just the bloke guarding the vending machine,” I
told him. “But we were put out of business six months ago by Rip Dunbar of the
SEO, which is where I got this,” I lied, pointing at my face.

“Rip
Dunbar?” Tempest grimaced. “That ape?”

“He
speaks very highly of you,” I told the big kettle, “but yes, that ape. Check
with him if you like. Tell him I was the guy who shot his Nguni.”

“Painful,”
Tempest quipped, “but that doesn’t mean you’re not working for anyone now, does
it?”

“No,
you’re right, and in fact I am,” I corrected myself. “Petworth Editions. It’s a
second-hand book shop in town.”

“I
know, I’ve been in it,” Tempest said.