The Henchmen's Book Club (18 page)

I
couldn’t remember Tempest popping in any time while I was there, which meant
he’d probably toured the place with a flashlight hanging from his gob.

“And
what did you find?” I put to him.

“A
lot of books,” Tempest admitted

“Yeah,
I bloody knew it wasn’t kids,” I said, referring to the break-in.

“Well
you would, wouldn’t you?” Tempest accused.

“Presumably
then, it was you who drugged Stewart and made it look like he’d crashed his car
too? What were you doing, searching his load or planting a tracking STE?” I
asked.

“Neither,
that really was Stewart. He’s got a secret drinking problem, didn’t you know?”
Tempest replied.

“Really?”

“Yes
really, there’s a load of bottles hidden behind the
Jilly
Coopers if you look.”

“Oh,”
I
ohhed
.

“I
know a cover story when I see one,” Tempest then said. “You’re sleeping, aren’t
you?”

“If I
am, I’m having a fucking nightmare,” I told him. “You’re tailing me, aren’t
you?”

“And
lucky for you I was,” he said, referring to this evening’s earlier special
guest stars.

“And
that’s another thing, where did she come from? Glory Days? Did you put her onto
me?”

“The
Admiral told me not to trust her. I knew she’d try to deal the
Dymetrozone
independently if she knew about you, and I was
right,” he congratulated himself.

I
took an enormous sigh and rubbed my forehead. Unfortunately, I’d used up my
only plastique organ, but I was of half a mind to pull out my real eye and
throw it in his face just to get his attention.

“Look
Jack, I’m an Affiliate for hire. I’ve worked for Thalassocrat. And I’ve worked
for Soliman, just as I’ve worked for dozens of others in my time. You’ve got me
banged to rights. But I ain’t working for anyone at the moment,” I tried to
make him understand.

“You’d
like me to believe that, wouldn’t you?” he said.

“God
preserve me,” I gasped. “Just tell me this, how long have you been following
me?”

Tempest
considered the question before evading it. “Long enough.”

“Five
days? A week? Two weeks even?”

“Long
enough,” he simply repeated, though his lustre had lost a little of its sheen
by now.

“Then
in all that time, have you seen me do anything other than stack books, nip into
Waylett’s
for a pasty or struggle over the crossword
in The Star?”

Tempest
sipped his gin and ginger to buy time, before hitting me with the biggest
revelation of the evening.

“What
about
Goodwood
?” he levelled, then added, “And the
man in the hat?”

“
Goodwood
?” I gawped, scarcely believing what I was hearing.
“
Goodwood
was three months ago! You haven’t been
following me for three months, tell me you haven’t!”

Tempest
didn’t know whether to look triumphant or embarrassed, and settled for looking
indignant.

“You’ve
been following me for three months!” I pressed again.

“Gathering
intelligence takes time,” he defended.

“Obviously,”
I laughed. “Jesus Christ and you still haven’t got a jot of it!”

“The
man in the hat?” Tempest reminded me, showing me a black & white
surveillance photograph of myself buying a hotdog off someone at
Goodwood
races a couple of months ago.

“Would
you believe he sells hotdogs?” I suggested.

“And
drives the very latest Lotus
Exige
?” he countered.

“Does
he? Fuck me, maybe I should get into that game,” I
phewed
.
“Hang on a minute, you’re following me because I bought a hotdog off some bloke
who happens to own a flashy motor?”

“But
you didn’t just buy one hotdog, did you? You bought three?”

“What
are you, my personal trainer? So what? I had three hotdogs. I like hot dogs.
Phone Weight Watchers why don’t you?”

“You
were Thalassocrat’s goon. I recognised you from the island!” Tempest shouted.

“Thalassocrat
is gone and
so’s
my job,” I shouted back.

“Never!
You’re working for someone, I know it,” Tempest insisted, turning over the
table and grabbing me by the lapels, but it was the act of a man who’d spent
the best years of his life lining his pants with toilet paper only to shit his
hat.

“Take
it outside will you chaps,” the bloke on the table next to us requested through
a forkful of chips, so Tempest bundled me towards the doorway and threw me out
into the road.

I
tumbled over three times to put some distance between us, but I was too slow,
Tempest was already on top of me, karate chopping my back and scissor-kicking
my legs out from underneath me to dump me on my face again.

“Will
you stop fighting me and notice I’m not fighting back?” I shouted as Tempest
spun about in the car park blocking shots that weren’t coming.

Tempest
eventually took a time out and asked me what was up.

“For
fuck’s sake,” I growled, rubbing my shoulder. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Some
might say I don’t like goons,” he glared.

“While
others might say you’ve just pissed away three months of the company’s time
following an unemployed hotdog enthusiast and you’re having trouble coming to
terms with it.”

Tempest
shaped into his fighting pose again, just as two old boys left the pub and
walked past us to their Rovers.

“’night
Ron.”

“Yup,
’night Mick, mind how you go.”

They
barely afforded us a glance, Tempest hovering over me on one leg like the
Karate Kid, me rubbing my elbows on the floor and the landlady wiping
Shepherd’s Pie off the blackboard behind us.

“Aren’t
you?” I demanded again when the old boys drove off.

The
landlady turned, afforded us both a smile then also headed inside. Tempest’s
lethal hands flexed a little longer before they eventually melted into his
trouser pockets.

“Fuck
it,” he spat. “The Admiral’s gonna bite his pipe in half.”

When
Tempest didn’t offer me a hand, I hauled myself up and dusted myself down.

“Are
you really not working for anyone?” he asked for the umpteenth time.

“No.
No one,” I repeated, patting myself down.

“Then
what are you doing around here?”

“I
live around here,” I told him.

“Really?”

“Yes
really. What are you doing around here?” I asked in turn.

“I
live around here too,” he replied.

“Fucking
nora
!” I sighed for us both and we scratched our
heads and wondered where we went from here.

“Fine,
okay I believe you. You’re not working for anyone at the moment, but I still
get to run you in,” Tempest said, pulling his Tomcat on me yet again.

“For
what?”

“For
what? You were one of Thalassocrat’s men. One of
Soliman’s
men. One of God knows who else’s men. You’ve got crimes to stand trial for.”

“Come
off it, what happens on missions stays on missions,” I said. “You know the
score.”

“You
think you get to go home at the end of the day after doing what you do?” he
almost laughed.

“Why
not? You do,” I replied.

“I’m one of Her Majesty’s officially sanctioned Executive Officers.
Licenced
to…”

“…
flip over other drivers while showing off your flashy Jag?” I finished for him.

Tempest
spent some time with his finger in the air considering this one so I hit him
with a few of the juicier rumours I’d heard about him, such as the time he’d
sunk an American Coast Guard’s Cutter by tearing underneath it in his mini-sub
whilst being chased by a magnetised torpedo or the time he’d banged the Mayor
of Bangkok’s sister when the Mayor of Bangkok only had brothers. Then I spiced
the pot further still.

“Besides,
how’s the Admiral going to take it that three months of costly surveillance
work by one of his elite XO agents has produced nothing more than an unemployed
goon and a hot dog vendor with an outstanding credit record?” I put to him. “I
take it you do have people on him too?”

Tempest’s
silence said all that needed to be said.

“I
could always just kill you,” he said, jigging his gun up and down to remind me
he still had options.

“Why?
What’s the point? I’m just a foot soldier. A goon. You said so yourself. Kill
me when you see me next out in the field if you’re that fired up about it,” I
suggested.

“There
won’t be a next time if I kill you now,” Tempest pointed out.

“No,
that’s true, but there will be someone else. Someone you don’t know. Someone
you don’t recognise. Would you rather that for a scenario?”

“It
cuts both ways. I might not recognise them, but then again, they won’t
recognise me,” he said, jabbing his gun in my ribs to underline the point.

“Oh
leave it out, will you, everyone knows what you look like. We’ve got pictures
of you pasted up in every base and laugh our socks off whenever you wander into
our places of business introducing yourself as Jack Stock of the
London Financial Times
. Fuck me, I don’t
know why you don’t just go the whole hog and put on a white beard and a big red
coat and come in as Father Christmas.”

Tempest
looked suitably insulted, which had been the intention, and told me he’d been
highly decorated for his undercover work.

“Yeah
well, perhaps you should try wearing your medals on the inside of your disguise
next time you’re trying to infiltrate us, Beau Jangles,” I suggested.

“Now
you look here…” Tempest snapped, less than happy to find himself the butt of a
lowly goon’s put-downs, but he should try being a fly-on-the-wall of The Agency
works canteen for five minutes if he really wanted to know what defamation
sounded like.

“Information,”
I said, catching him off-balance.

“What?”
Tempest blinked.

“I
said information. I can give you a juicy nugget of information to take back to
the Admiral so you’ve got something to show for three months of overtime, and
in return we’ll forget we ever saw each other, right?”

Tempest
eyed me with suspicion, not knowing what to make of my offer and reluctant to
show too much enthusiasm for it until he was sure it had nothing to do with the
Stay
Puft
Marshmellow
Man.

Before
we could get into it, more locals started spilling out of the pub, so Tempest
holstered his Tomcat and bid them all good night, as drinkers have a want to do
in rural Sussex at closing time, before finally biting.

“What’s
this information then?”

“It’s
a bit vague, but I can tell you who’s hiring for a job just now,” I said.

“Who?”

“Got
a pen and a bit of paper?” I asked.

Tempest
slipped a hand into his pockets and told me he could do better than that,
pulling out a
suped
-up Palm Pilot with laser-lighting
guidance beam, GPS tracking radar and go-faster stripes.

“That’s
no good, I can’t do the little threes on it,” I told him.

“It’s
got a three on it,” he showed me.

“Not
a little ones,” I said, looking around for dust and a stick to write with
before spotting something much better. “Look here,” I said, leading him over to
the pub’s outside menu board and wiping it clean. I found a splinter of chalk
just below it and wrote ‘X
³
’.

“X-cubed?”
Tempest read.

“Your
guess is as good as mine, Jack. His real name’s Xian Xe Xu, but this is how he
likes to refer to himself. Fucked if I know how to pronounce it, but he’s
recruiting for something big at the moment,” I said, slapping my hands clean of
chalk dust.

“And
how do you know this?” Tempest asked.

“Because
he passed through,” I said, without wishing to divulge too much. “I was offered
a contract but decided against because I didn’t like the look of him.”

“Fussy
aren’t you?”

“Not
really, but some jobs you can tell are going to be trouble, particularly with
that mad bitch he’s got in tow.”

“What
mad bitch?”

“Sun
Dju,” I said.

“Ah,
of the genus
Drosera
.
A carnivorous plant that captures its prey by exuding a sticky honey from its
shoots,” Tempest lectured. “Beautiful, but deadly.”

“God,
it’s no wonder you’ve got no mates,” I told the boring pub quiz nerd.
“Different spelling.” I wrote Sun Dju’s name out on the blackboard for him and
watched XO-11 play with his Palm Pilot for a bit, trying to make a little
³
before giving up and simply taking a photo of the board.