ubiquitous than blue jeans.
“Need more background,” Jane said. “We know about the spy in the bag and his network. They got him last August. Here it is April.” She marked two points in the air, widely separated. “Please fill in the blank.”
“You know what Envy, Inc. is,” Whitney sounded a tad impatient.
John raised his hand. “You gild lilies for a living.” A left turn, a quick right, and the new construction was gone, replaced by Georgian rowhouses, wider sidewalks, and narrower streets where two cars could no longer drive abreast.
“Give that young man a prize. Indeed we do. For time-constrained, self-important, organizationally-challenged plutocrats. You might say we’re there to help them be better at being rich. We connect all the best people with all the best things - including each other. While you two were pottering about aimlessly for the past two years, some of our old gang and I have been busy infiltrating what is arguably the most expensive and exclusive lifestyle management group in the world. We now have access on a daily basis to the most beautiful of the beautiful people, the crème de la creme. Jen’s bunch may have the digital ‘goods’ on the global rich, the ‘dirt’ if you like - but I know where and how they live, down to what cars they drive, whose designer clothes they wear, and what’s in their refrigerators. I staff their lavish multiple homes, I buy gifts for their mistresses, I hook them up with the most talented tax avoidance lawyers. And one of my newest clients,” she paused for effect. “Is the head of MI6.”
“So - deliver the package yourself,” Jane said. “What am I missing?”
“That I don’t have clearance to enter the building. And I need to remain under cover to help run other, possibly more critical missions,” Whitney explained.
“Whereas we - “ John began.
“Are expendable,” Jane finished.
“Are über capable and opaque to the Powers-That-Be. Having been declared legally dead, your data has been scrubbed. We can use your biometrics any which way we need to. Moreover, at the moment you are not plugged into any other long-term ops,” Whitney argued. “You can therefore approach the mission tomorrow with a whatever-it-takes frame of mind. Knowing full well that, at the end of the day, I’m going to fire your ass.”
“Asses?” John wondered. “Plural? There are two of us.”
“A man is always suspect, whereas women are routinely disregarded. So we’re sending Jane in. You’re - backup.”
“What the hell does that mean? Am I driving the car?” John wanted to know.
“Negative. We have a driver, they know him; he’s part of our carefully crafted routine.” Whitney said.
“Am I in the car at least?” John had a feeling he already knew the answer.
“That would raise a red flag that doesn’t need to be raised. Any security guard with a gun on his hip is going to believe he can handle a mere woman. A woman and a man - warning signs begin to flash. And speaking of things that flash -” Whitney stripped off the watch she was wearing and handed it to Jane. “Your weapon, madam.”
“I don’t do jewelry,” Jane said, examining the timepiece critically. It had an outsized square dial and a black plastic band. “Well, pearls on occasion.”
“Nothing for me?” John sounded like a crest-fallen four-year-old.
They had arrived at and were walking through a small public wilderness, densely planted with trees and bushes and the odd organic sculpture, an improbable bit of London greenery situated, or so a sign said, where bombs had left nothing but a blackened wasteland after the Blitz. “Welcome,” the sign graciously announced, “To the Bonnington Square Pleasure Garden and Paradise Project.”
Whitney studied John a minute. She glanced right, glanced left, scanning for cameras and microphones, and then said in a lowered voice, “How do you feel - about jet packs?”
22 The Palace Guards
“I’m sorry, Missis, the answer is no.” Inside his security cubby in the bowels of MI6, the wiry ginger-haired guard was growing weary. “It’s ‘no’ now, it’ll be ‘no’ five minutes from now, and if you choose to wait ‘round till it’s time for us all to go home to our tea, the answer will still be ‘no.’”
But standing beside the gently purring Town Car with its E4-NVY license plate, Jane was just getting warmed up. Her hair dyed ash blonde and twisted into a fashionably careless bun, she laid the Oxonian accent on extra thick, a power play aimed at his working class subconscious. “Perhaps you didn’t understand me.” She removed her sunglasses and tempered the accent with a confidential smile made all the more beguiling by her choice of lipstick, a bare rose shade called Über Nude.
“Oh I understand you, all right. You want in and you’re not getting in.” Rather than backing down, he was instinctively pushing back, the Scottish burr in his voice thickening.
“I probably didn’t make myself clear.” She put her head on one side and unbuttoned her black Hugo Boss jacket.
“Clear as this glass between us.” He straightened and tightened his tie, which had gone askew.
“This package is for your employer, Sir John -“
“Sir John is not my employer, I work for Her Majesty’s Government. And that’s rather a sore subject, I might add, as I’ve been made redundant by the last round of cutbacks, which is why you find me here on a holiday, wringing what last few quid I can from what’s left of the public purse.”
“Well you see the package is to be delivered to Sir John, but it is for His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge, who intends to give it to his father, the Prince of Wales, at dinner this evening.”
“For Prince William who intends to give it to Prince Charles. Why didn’t you say so?” the guard made it sound as if all her troubles were over. And then cheerfully punctured her rising hopes. “Because I’m a flaming Republican who believes the monarchy is an elitist, anti-democratic, archaic waste of money at a time when the rest of us are being tossed out of the lifeboat without so much as a ‘by your leave’. If I can have 9,000 nurses or one sodding queen, I’ll take the Florence Nightingales, thank you. And if the royals get to exchange one less gift on a day many in the country are jobless and scraping by, I say tough titty biscuits. So you can leave the package as usual or you can take it back where it came from, I don’t give a bally Archduke’s damn. But either way, you are not stepping foot in this building. Not without the proper clearance.”
“And how does one get the proper clearance?” Jane asked, “In an emergency situation, say.”
“One doesn’t. Not here. In any situation.” He folded his arms. She folded hers. They stared at one another, bristling like two alley cats. At this point a taller, Monty Python sort of senior officer entered the booth with a genial, “Go and get your elevenses, then, Pegg. They’ve got the national flimflam on in the break room if you’ve a stomach for it. Hallo,” he regarded Jane over his eyeglasses with mild surprise. “What have we here?”
“I’m trying to see Sir John.”
“Are you now? I’m afraid he can’t be trying to see you, or we’d have heard about it. Have we heard about it, Pegg?”
“We have not,” Pegg declared in no uncertain terms.
“It’s a matter of the utmost urgency,” Jane said, fixing Monty with her great grey-green eyes.
“Is it?” Monty inquired of Pegg.
“It’s a matter of the utmost rubbish.” Pegg disagreed vehemently. “Or she’d hand the blinking package over and faff off.”
“No need to pitch a wobbly, young Pegg. Let’s keep our hair on, shall we?” the older man said breezily. “Do we know what’s in the package? No?”
Jane reached down to pick up a black leather case, several times longer than it was wide. She placed the bag on the counter, on her side of the glass, and unzipped the brass zipper, letting the case drop open to reveal, nestled in black velvet - a gold-plated AK-47.
“Blimey,” Pegg breathed.
“Blimey indeed,”
Monty concurred.
“I was told,” Jane said “That I must personally place this in Sir John’s hands. Perhaps we might contact him directly? I do have his private number,” she assured them, zipping the case closed again. “But I can’t seem to ring him from here.
23 Step Into My Office, Baby
They confiscated her phone, ran a check on her fake ID, and made her stand in a full body scanner long enough to read the tags on her lingerie. La Perla, if you must know.
“We took the liberty of calling up,” Monty said. “And C has agreed to see you. Young Pegg here will light your way.”
On the other side of the divide, Jane set the gun case down briefly and checked her watch. “They’ll be saying their vows any minute now,” she said with a sigh, surreptitiously pressing a minute silver button.
The watch was in fact a miniature cell phone modified to broadcast multiple silent messages to MI6’s proprietary in-house communication and computer systems. “How does this work exactly?” Jane had wanted to know. This was last night, following their trek over Vauxhall Bridge, when they were at dinner in a quirky bohemian café. Whitney was a tad vague.
“Before they killed him, our boy genius created a sort of super-spyware that can transmit wirelessly. The UK and the US have been using it to spy on and steal data from just about everybody. In some cases it has also been used to shut down targeted machines or websites,