Swindon - December 1989 (Chapter 7-9)
CHAPTER 7
The aftermath of Commissioner Pheces’ press conference was about as unpleasant as could be expected. The private security company, Fletcher & Kyd, took over the investigation and within 12 hours had released a statement blaming Marlovian extremists for the theft of the Richard III manuscript. Most of Marlowe’s followers were harmless, but there were (as with every fan base) groups who took things too far and were militant in their beliefs. The Marlovians happened to be the worst of them all. No attempts at contact had been made, and as far as I knew, there were no ransom claims either. That didn’t bode well for the manuscript itself.
As expected, the Shakespeare supporters blamed the Marlovians and all known Marlovian groups denied any involvement, but proclaimed that it affected them as much as everyone else since they believed that Marlowe really wrote Richard III in the first place. The Baconians, those who claimed Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare’s works, disagreed with the Marlovians, but didn’t want to side with the mainstream Shakespeare fans either, so they sat in the middle of it all poking fun at both sides to see what kind of reaction they could get. In the meantime, Pheces was using the situation as an excuse to arrest as many Marlowe supporters as possible. Riots had begun on the streets and SpecOps officers all around the country were pulling double shifts to keep things under control. All SpecOps officers except SO-27, who were told to stand down pending new orders as soon as parliament had voted to wipe the division out of existence.
In all of the fuss, Wednesday morning came rather quickly and I found myself leaving Christopher Marlowe sitting in front of the television muttering about how the people involved in riots were insane, but he did hope that his side won since they had a very cheerful war chant that made him sound rather nifty. I hadn’t had time to worry myself too much before it was time to meet my father so I could finally get some answers about Landen’s whereabouts.
My credentials were still good enough to get me in the building and I soon found myself standing outside the nondescript door to the small SO-12 Chronoguard office. I raised my hand and knocked sharply, then waited for a response. None came. I checked my watch, made sure it was actually Wednesday and then knocked again. My father promptly opened the door, looking quite well. “Hello Sweetpea!” he greeted cheerfully. I didn’t reciprocate the cheerfulness. “Come in!”
He stepped back and stepped in, looking instinctively at my surroundings. There was a desk, a chair, a desk lamp and a cabinet. The only thing that had changed since my last visit was that someone had sprung for a water cooler in the corner. As the door closed behind me, I watched as my father walked to the desk and sat down at his chair. I waited in silence. Dad’s expression sobered.
“You want some answers.”
“I hadn’t seen my husband in six months, then suddenly I wake up the day after Christmas and he and his belongings are all gone, as if he’s been eradicated again.”
“He hasn’t.”
I showed my wedding ring. “I know.”
“He’s fine.”
“Bowden gave me your message.”
“And he’s safe.”
“I’m going to need more than that.” Richard III was forgotten. SpecOps-27 was forgotten. Fandom was forgotten. All I cared about right now was Landen, and my father knew something he wasn’t telling me.
“Sweetpea,” he tried to reason with me, “You must understand that there’s only so much I can tell you, for Landen’s safety and yours and Friday’s. How is my young grandson?”
“He misses his father.” That was a low blow, but it was one I was willing to use.
“Landen’s landed himself in a bit of trouble.”
“A minotaur is trying to kill us all. How much more trouble could he possibly get into that would make him disappear?”
“He didn’t disappear. I stopped time and picked him up. We had to leave right away. We were on a deadline and my actions were being traced. It wasn’t exactly an officially sanctioned operation, you know.”
“Why can’t you tell me everything?”
“I share this office. We all time share. There’s no telling who’s standing in the corner watching time pass at a different rate to ours, waiting for someone to give Landen’s location.”
“Then there’s someone else involved. Someone who wants to hurt Landen, possibly kill him, and that someone has access to Chronoguard agents.”
“Possibly not Chronoguard.”
“French?”
“I wouldn’t put anything past them. How is Marlowe, by the way?”
“He’s fine. Dad.” I leaned against his desk. “Where’s my husband?”
Dad looked torn. “I can’t tell you,” he finally said and I reeled back, frustrated. “But I’d look into what your new Commissioner is up to if I were you. He did disappear for ten years. That’s plenty of time to establish a double life.”
There were no easy answers here, and I was a fool to believe that my father was going to tell me everything I wanted to know. If he could have, he would have already. But he had given me what I needed to know in order to figure this all out. Pheces, Landen, Richard III and the closure of SpecOps-27 were all related. Now I had to figure out how, and that would lead me to Landen. I was sure of it. “Thanks Dad,” I said finally, hoping I didn’t look as dejected as I felt. I must have, since he reached over and put his hand on mine.
“Send my love to your mother?”
“I will.”
“And tell Marlowe to keep his filthy playwright hands off her. I’m watching him, and if he’s not careful I’ll send him back so he really does get stabbed in the back in that pub.”
“You mean he doesn’t?”
Dad shook his head. “That was just a cover story. If he’d stayed behind, he would have been arrested and tortured for some posters that went up threatening French and Dutch Protestant refugees. He didn’t post them, of course, but everyone thought he did.”
“French revisionists?”
“Very good, Sweetpea! Now I just need to figure out what to do with him. He can’t stay with your mother forever. Perhaps he can get a job at the Swindon Globe.”
The Swindon Globe was an unwanted reminder of what was going on outside this office. “I’d better go Dad. I’ll stop by later.”
“Friday night,” Dad said, sure of himself. “I’ll be here.”
It was Wednesday morning. That gave me two days to find Richard III, figure out how Pheces figured into the situation, save SpecOps-27 from closure and locate my missing husband.
CHAPTER 8
All SpecOps-27 activities in the system had been frozen. All of our access was cut off. Our cases were put on hold. We had no way of conducting any investigations whatsoever. Commissioner Pheces wanted us out of the picture, and he was doing an extraordinarily good job of ensuring that was exactly what happened. That didn’t work for me. I was on borrowed time and didn’t have the patience to deal with internal politics. Thankfully, I had friends in other departments. Spike was my first choice, since SpecOps command had a don’t ask/don’t tell policy with all of SO-17’s work. The ‘biters and suckers’ division that dealt with vampires, werewolves and other supernatural phenomenon was too much for those higher up the ladder of progress to stomach. Unfortunately, Spike was out on a case and was uncontactable. I couldn’t ask Miles because SO-14 was cutting back on its system usage and a random search would be noticeable. The head of SO-14 figured that the tactical unit should know as little about their cases as possible and stick to what they were good at - shooting things. That left Bartholomew Stiggins, or Stig to his friends.
Stig was a Neanderthal, a prehistoric race of people who didn’t have the aggressive trait that homo sapiens had and who had subsequently become extinct 24,000 years ago only to be brought back into existence by humans with too much time on their hands and not enough respect for life. Neanderthals were considered second-class citizens, a genetic anomaly, the unwanted cousin of the human race, left to die out because they couldn’t reproduce. Stig was the head of SO-13, the genetic detectives responsible for Neanderthal affairs and the policing of genetically engineered creatures.
“Miss Next, We are glad to help,” Stig said, referring to himself. The Neanderthals didn’t have the word ‘I’ in their vocabulary. It made no sense to them, being intensely social beings.
“Thank you, Stig,” I replied. “There’s a good chance someone might come looking for the information I’ve asked you to find.” I had a feeling Commissioner Pheces wouldn’t appreciate a LiteraTec using other divisions to keep working on the Richard III case, especially when the information I was seeking involved him and the new security company that had taken over the LiteraTec jobs.
“They will not find what they seek,” Stig assured her. Knowing Stig, and knowing that Neanderthals couldn’t lie, I took him at his word. “We will contact you.”
Sure enough, Stig contacted me after I returned to Mum’s. Friday was getting a piggy back ride from Christopher Marlowe around the lounge room while I helped Mum prepare dinner.
“Miss Next,” Stig said over the phone. “We are sending someone to you with what is needed.”
I watched the door for the next hour and a half, wishing every five minutes that the Internet would hurry up and be invented and thinking that Logan would have found that thoroughly amusing. As dessert was being served, there was a knock at the door. It was Stig’s assistant, Agent Bread. “Come in, Ginger,” I said. Mum immediately invited her to join us for peaches and cream, which Ginger was too polite to say no to. I wanted to go through the information package immediately and find out what Pheces had been up to all those years, but when my mother put on her authoritative voice I felt like I was 12 years old again. I sat patiently and ate my peaches and cream.
By the time I had a chance to process all of the information, it was nearly midnight. I wouldn’t be able to do anything until tomorrow. I barely slept all night. I kept tossing and turning and hoping that tomorrow would bring results, that I would unravel this mystery and restore my family to the way it was.
The next morning, I was woken by my pager and an emergency call to come into work. SO-27 had been reassigned to different duty for the day - riot control. I returned home late, fine but tired. Bowden hadn’t fared so well and was spending the night in hospital, Cordelia at his side fussing over him after an untimely blow to the head by a Baconian troublemaker with a 2x4 signpost and no sense of personal space.
I ate the dinner Mum set aside for me alone at the table, checked in on Friday and fell asleep before I even had a chance to roll over in bed. No matter the results, everything would happen tomorrow. I had an appointment with my father tomorrow night and I didn’t intend on missing it.
CHAPTER 9
Spike, Stig, Miles, Joffy, Christopher Marlowe and I were the most unlikely group of people ever to be positioned outside an industrial warehouse on the outskirts of Swindon. Nevertheless, the sun was going down on Friday evening and here they were, much to my dismay.
“None of you have to be here,” I told them. They stared back at me and all had their different ways of showing it, but essentially what their expressions came down to were ‘be quiet, we’re staying, so let’s get on with this.’ Except Joffy, who had never passed up an opportunity to say something his life. “As long as we’re not late for the ball, I’m with you, Doofus.” There was nothing quite like sibling solidarity.
I laid out the plan. “No shooting,” I said and Miles looked slightly disappointed until I added, “If we can help it,” at which time he perked up considerably. “Stig arranged the schematics for us. I think the manuscript could be held here or here,” I pointed to the map. “Guards are positioned in these locations. Avoid them if possible.”
“Not that it matters,” Spike said, “But out of curiosity about the detective mind of Thursday Next, how do you know Richard III’s in there?”
“On Wednesday I went to Stig and asked him to find out what Sullivan Pheces was up to in the decade he was out of the public eye. Stig?”
“We learned he was a businessman,” Stig said simply. A moment’s silence indicated that he was leaving it to me to elaborate.
“A businessman who built up a security company that did private contracting with Goliath. Outsourcing. When Goliath came under new management, the on-going contracts were severed and the company was left without their major client. The trail ended there, or so it appeared. Pheces’ company changed names last year.”
“Fletcher & Kyd?” Marlowe asked. I hadn’t wanted him to come along, but Mum insisted that I get him out of the house for a while.
I nodded. “Fletcher & Kyd. I think they staged the original break-in at the Swindon Globe. The report said clearly that there was no attempt to steal anything. The security footage showed that the people broke in, then left, as if they wanted to show they could crack the security system. The security people at the time claimed, quite rightly, that the only people who could crack the Swindon Globe’s security system was another security company, but their complaints fell on deaf ears because of the Richard III theft.”
“Wait,” Joffy said, “I’ve got it.” Being a priest meant he didn’t see much action, but he was getting into the atmosphere of the situation quite quickly. I would have been impressed if time allowed it. “They’re in a transition period with the security. There’s such a muck up with all of the different people around that it’s easy for a F&K person to get in there and swipe Dick 3 without anyone noticing.”
“I really wish you wouldn’t call it that,” I said, “But yes. That’s it exactly. Then they blamed it on the Marlovians…”
“I do wish you wouldn’t call them that,” Marlowe said with a sigh.
I kept talking. “In order to get the rivalry between the world’s biggest literary supporters and fanatics into an uproar. Pheces can then get rid of SO-27 by saying a stronger force is needed that only the private sector can control. He can outsource the work to his own company, now owned under a pseudonym, and control both sides - the thieves and the people trying to catch the thieves because they’re the same people. If parliament approves this with the vote that’s happening tonight during the ball, I think it’s the first step. What’s to stop him from doing it to every other department? Then SpecOps would be entirely controlled by him in the private sector and he’d be making a fortune instead of getting a SpecOps salary.”
“Fame, power, money,” Joffy said, “I think that covers it all.”
“One thing,” Miles added, but I already knew what he was going to say.
“No, I can’t prove it. Not until we get the manuscript from in there.”
Spike checked his gun and stood up. “Well come on then,” he cajoled us, “I don’t want to miss the dance!”
Three hours later, the sun was down, Richard III had been recovered and I was in a dress. The paperwork linking the Richard III theft to Commissioner Pheces was safely in the hands of SO-1 operatives. SO-1 was the internal affairs division and despite my clashes with them in the past, I knew that no one else could be trusted with the information I possessed. The ball was in full swing, people were drinking wine and eating canapés and Joffy had gone from priest-turned-detective to socialite in an under an hour. The operation had been a success. No one had been hurt on our side, but there were a few guards working for Fletcher & Kyd Security Services whose heads would ache for a couple of days once they woke up.
There was a television set off to the side tuned into The Toad news programme which would be covering the parliamentary vote about the fate of SpecOps-27. When a picture of Commissioner Pheces appeared on the screen, someone called for the television to be turned up. Interested clumps of people crowded around to see what all the fuss was. I hung back, keeping my eye on Pheces. I knew what the news was about to say. With Goliath no longer in control of the news, The Toad writers felt the need to be as blunt as possible. “…Ops boss Commissioner Sullivan Pheces is allegedly responsible for the theft of the priceless Richard III manuscript...”
I may have sent The Toad a condensed copy of what SO-1 had received. The news spilled into the hall and the murmurings amongst the attendees grew louder and louder. Pheces remained calm.
“Slander,” he insisted. “Don’t listen to a word they say. I’ll have this all sorted by Monday morning, don’t you worry. Dissenters spreading lies, that’s all,” he assured everyone. Then he saw me across the room watching him. One of his aides whispered in his ear and I had a strong feeling he was getting the report in from the F&K warehouse that would have included my face on the security video footage. He crossed the hall, stopping twice to assure his supporters that this was all a misunderstanding. “You must be Thursday Next,” he said when he finally reached me, offering his hand to keep up appearances.
I shook it. “And you’re Commissioner Pheces.” My old connections in London made sure that a copy of the information that was now out in the open got to parliament as well long before the vote started. Today I had located Richard III, figured out how Pheces figured into the picture and was about to watch SpecOps-27 be saved from closure. All that remained was finding out what had happened to Landen. My father was sure that Pheces was the key, and I wasn’t about to let him walk out of here until I had the information I wanted.
I didn’t have to wait long.
“You’re fired,” Pheces said.
“Yes, I gathered that when you decided to outsource my line of work,” I replied.
“I’m afraid you misunderstand,” Pheces said, not letting go of my hand, or perhaps I wasn’t letting go of his. “The other LiteraTecs will be transferred. You won’t. You’re fired for breaking onto a private premises without a warrant.”
“I think you’ll find I already resigned.” The vote should have been on the television screen by now, but instead the words ‘SpecOps vote cancelled’ scrolled along the bottom of the screen under the newscaster.
“My paperwork will get through before yours.” His grip tightened, as did mine.
“I resigned in August.”
“I’ve heard of you, Next. Smart, but reckless. Dedicated, but trouble. You’ve been under scrutiny before. I can make it happen again.” Both of us saw the SO-1 operatives appear at the door, quietly and unassuming. They waited for Pheces to come to them. I wouldn’t let go of his hand, but he smiled and let go of mine. He fully intended to play the innocent card and I had no doubt he intended to try to discredit me. Pheces leaned in close. “Your husband didn’t know when to stop either. Brilliant writer, Parke-Laine, brilliant. He picked the wrong subject to write about. There’s nowhere he can hide, you know,” Pheces pulled back slightly to look me in the eye. “Not in this world, not in that little hideaway island of yours.” I didn’t know how he knew about Fandom. No one else here was meant to know. “It’s only a matter of time before I find him. Your father’s good, but he’s not that good.” Pheces gave me the smallest of smiles and pulled back. I let go of his hand. I had the answer I needed. I knew where Landen was.
Pheces walked away with the SO-1 operatives and I followed at a safe distance. Colonel Flanker, a man I would have been more than glad to avoid for the rest of my life, remained at the door. “I take it you got the package?”
Flanker shrugged noncommittally. “We’ll look into it.” His nonchalance worried me. Perhaps SO-1 wasn’t to be trusted at all. Perhaps Pheces had them in his proverbial pocket. “Going somewhere, Next?”
I glanced sidewards at him as we stood in the doorway. “Yes. To see my father.” I had appointment to get to and I didn’t intend to miss it.