for dessert - a slice of Chocolate Biscuit Cake, which is Prince William’s favorite and made from a royal family recipe.” With that, he sprayed the contents of the can directly in James’s face and deftly immobilized his right arm as Monty grabbed the left. James yelled in acute pain and all three of them went down in a heap, as Jane scrambled to one side.
Apparently she was being rescued. But should she stay put and play the damsel in distress or make like a hockey player and get the puck out of there? The jig was up, James was on to her, to her connection with IMF Guy, possibly to the implications of a gal from Greece bearing gifts. In such a situation, her would-be knights in shining armor, Monty and Pegg, would probably say that things had gone pear-shaped. And they would be right.
The PPK skittered into the open. Came to a rest at Jane’s feet. If there is special providence in the fall of a sparrow, Jane thought, throwing a gun to a professional killer in a tight spot must have some sort of meaning. Silencing James was imperative. And it was a pity, but it seemed she would also have to relegate Monty and Pegg, accidental members of the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Club, to the trash heap of collateral damage. The younger Jane would have done the deed already. The current Jane hesitated.
Because the temptation to take up arms against a sea of troubles was instinctive and logical on the one hand. Practically second nature. The years of conditioning had done that. On the other, the irony of taking lives when she was carrying one was not lost on her. The irony that the executioner had a baby on board.
For a minute, she looked up, past the pigeons this time. Really, universe? Why and how had it come to this? That the obvious way out of any tight spot was to go around offing people, including those who might have loved us once upon a time? To say nothing of snuffing innocent sparrows?
Exactly when had her esoteric profession become a way of life?
And speaking of things that fly, where the hell was that half-assed slacker John? Torn between compunction and vexation, she bent down to pick up the PPK.
25 The Killing Type
“I say. Was that supposed to happen?” Monty wondered aloud, a trifle concerned.
“Well. He was supposed to become ‘tractable.’ That’s how they put it in class,” Pegg replied. “Tractable.”
The two men stood over James, who lay face forward on the terrace pavement, silent and immobile, wrists cuffed behind him. Monty donned a pair of spectacles and leaned in.
“About as tractable as a dead parrot. Should he be turning blue?”
“Let’s see.” Pegg rubbed his chin. “Memory lapses, crying jags, altered perception of reality. I don’t remember anything specifically about facial pigment. But it’s a new product.”
Jane straightened with the PPK in hand, checked that it was good to go, and added her mite to their deliberations. “A little mouth-to-mouth?” she suggested.
Both men backed away at that, exchanging uncomfortable glances. “No need, he’s coming round,” Monty sounded relieved. James groaned and his head slipped to one side. He coughed and drew a deep breath, like a dolphin surfacing after a long dive. “I’m sorry to trouble you further, Miss, but we’ll need a statement before you go.”
“Statement my ass.”
Jane became aware of a high-pitched whining, the hum of a thousand giant hornets angry and in heat. Turning around, she beheld John, hovering a foot or two above the terrace at the helm of a vertical take-off and landing vehicle known as an X-Jet. Powered by a cruise missile engine, it could best be described as a cross between a jet-ski and a flying pulpit. It maneuvered with the ease of a Segway and could reach top speeds of 60 mph. Due to an advanced chameleon coating that mirrored its surroundings, the X-Jet was difficult to focus on visually, but Jane had no trouble fixating on John. He set the X-Jet down and whipped out a pistol.
“Hold it right there, Goldilocks.” Straight from central casting, John was wearing standard-issue Men in Black attire, including white shirt, skinny black tie, Oakleys and an earpiece. Jane found herself staring down the barrel of her very own Sig. “Hands up.” Obediently, she put her hands over her head, the PPK clearly on display. Monty and Pegg followed suit. John approached Jane with an abundance of caution, seized and pocketed the PPK, and motioned Jane toward the X-Jet. “Let’s go, sister.”
“I beg your pardon,” Jane remonstrated, as John stopped snapping chewing gum long enough to wink at her over his Oakleys.
“Half a mo’,” Pegg protested. “She’s a British citizen on British soil and she’s been victimized by your mate there, I’ve seen the footage myself. A regular old Tailhook moment it was.”
“Good thing you’ve got us around to watch your back,” John hustled Jane onto the X-Jet. “Because ‘my mate there’ spotted her right away. Top of the US terror watch list. We’re headed straight back to Gatwick. Do not pass Go, do not collect a hundred dollars.”
“What utter rot. I am nothing of the sort,” Jane said indignantly, twisting around to tell John off. “You’re mad, you Yanks, the whole lot of you.”
“We did a background check. The worst one can say of her is she voted Lib Dem last round, but there’s no law against that, you know,” Monty insisted.
“The killing type? Her?” Pegg shook his head. “We’ve got terrorists under our beds, then. And by now we know who put them there.” He was interrupted by a cackling at his feet. James was rolling and jerking like a fish out of water. As John pressed the ignition button to restart the X-Jet, James burst into a peal of maniacal laughter. He struggled into a sitting position and spoke as though to a hovering and invisible multitude.
“Once more, once more! I will kill thee again and love thee after. It was you in New York; it was you who changed the Dodo’s song. Cuckoo, cuckoo. Your Dodo’s doomed. The last of his kind. Deceased, demised, passed on. An ex-Dodo. It’s all arranged. Cuckoo, cuckoo. You can kill an idea after all. Watch me. The fat lady is about to sing.” He left off speaking to give a blood-curdling howl.
John saluted as the X-Jet began to lift off, Jane standing stiffly in front of him.
“Do send a lawyer,” she implored, gripping the side rails of the X-Jet.
“Do avoid a land war in Asia,” John exhorted as they rocketed straight up a good fifty feet. He had not yet mastered the finer points of X-Jet control.
“Do you think those roof-top missiles are still on auto?” Pegg asked, shading his eyes as the shimmer of the X-Jet climbed higher and higher.
“It is the age of austerity.” Monty said, in a tone of despondence and resignation. “There’s no telling what’s been cut or kept any more. Let us at least hope, if they do fire, they make it all the way to Downing Street.”
26 Riding Shotgun Down the Avalanche
“We’ll get on a train and never stop,” Jane laughed, once she got her breath back. “Only it’s a rocket and you stopped.”
“Sorry about that. Steering’s a breeze, but the vertical thrusters are for shit,” John complained, as the X-Jet jerked to a halt. “I have a sneaking suspicion that this might be her maiden flight.”
He leaned a bit to the left and the X-Jet described a lazy arc back over the Thames. Nothing much was stirring down below. Though rain had been forecast, and the sky was the color of dirty wool, even the weather was towing the line. Not so much as a drop had marred the day. Most of London was either pasted to its telly screens at home or safely corralled within the wedding security zone and worshiping one jumbotron or another. Early on, the unions had threatened strikes over such a wanton waste of public wealth when so many social needs went begging, but in the end the financial elect, their propaganda machine, and 5000 policemen had triumphed. The wedding of mass distraction was even now concluding without incident. Or so, to everyone but Deus Ex, it would seem.
“I’d about given up on you.” Jane leaned against John and listened to the full-throated clamor from the other side of the river, where the
royal couple had begun their drive by gilded carriage from Westminster to Buckingham Palace. Bread and circuses without the bread, she was thinking. If she closed her eyes did they sound more like arctic seals or savanna baboons? She couldn’t decide. She opened her eyes again. It was nice up here, like riding a Vespa through an eternity of clouds. “Oh look, doves!” She pointed. Released in celebration, a shifting cloud comprised of about a hundred snow white birds rose up, circled Big Ben, and flew toward them in an undulating arabesque.
“Oh fuck, doves!” John said, dropping the X-Jet precipitously to avoid either a bird-strike collision or air intake mishap. He went low, the birds went high, and the rapier mini-missile shot right between them, neatly self-destructing after missing both targets and before impacting the stony facade of Thames House, home of MI5.
The shock wave blew them sideways. Fortuitously. For, woken from its mechanical slumbers, another missile from atop another building on the other side of the embankment fired off, only to bury itself in the gently flowing Thames. The resulting geyser of foam and water almost knocked the X-Jet into Lambeth Bridge. A steep climb to avoid impact and they were once more easy pickings, for the riverfront was fortified with a kind of automated gauntlet, an entire integrated system of rooftop missiles