A Thursday Next Digital Collection: Novels 1-5 (3 page)

Funding for the Special Operations Network comes directly from the government. Most work is centralized, but all of the SpecOps divisions have local representatives to keep a watchful eye on any provincial problems. They are administered by local commanders, who liaise with the national offices for information exchange, guidance and policy decisions. Like any other big government department, it looks good on paper but is an utter shambles. Petty infighting and political agendas, arrogance and sheer bloody-mindedness almost
guarantees
that the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing.

MILLON DE FLOSS
—
A Short History of the Special Operations Network

T
WO DAYS
of fruitless hunting for
Chuzzlewit
had passed without even the slightest clue as to where it might be. There had been whispers of reprimands, but only if we could figure out how the manuscript was taken. It would seem a bit ludicrous to be chastised for leaving a loophole in the security arrangements but not know what it was. Now slightly despondent, I was sitting at my desk back at the station. Recalling my conversation with Dad, I phoned my mother to ask her not to paint the bedroom mauve. The call backfired slightly as she thought this a
grand
idea and hung up before I could argue. I sighed and flipped through the
telephone messages that had accumulated over the past two days. They were mostly from informers and concerned citizens who had been robbed or cheated and wanted to know if we had made any headway. It was all small beer compared to
Chuzzlewit
—there were a lot of gullible people out there buying first editions of Byronic verse at knockdown prices, then complaining bitterly when they found out they were fakes. Like most of the other operatives, I had a pretty good idea who was behind all of this, but we never caught the big fish—just the “utterers,” the dealers who sold it all on. It smacked of corruption in high places but we never had any proof. Usually I read my messages with interest, but today none of it seemed terribly important. After all, the verses of Byron, Keats or Poe are real whether they are in bootleg form or not. You can still read them for the same effect.

I opened the drawer of my desk and pulled out a small mirror. A woman with somewhat ordinary features stared back at me. Her hair was a plain mousy color and of medium length, tied up rather hastily in a ponytail at the back. She had no cheekbones to speak of and her face, I noticed, had just started to show some rather obvious lines. I thought of my mother, who had looked as wrinkled as a walnut by the time she was forty-five. I shuddered, placed the mirror back in the drawer and took out a faded and slightly dog-eared photograph. It was a photo of myself with a group of friends taken in the Crimea when I had been simply Corporal T. E. Next, 33550336, Driver: APC, Light Armored Brigade. I had served my country diligently, been involved in a military disaster and then honorably discharged with a gong to prove it. They had expected me to give talks about recruitment and valor but I had disappointed them. I attended one regimental reunion but that was it; I had found myself looking for the faces that I knew weren't there.

In the photo Landen was standing on my left, his arm
around me and another soldier, my brother, his best mate. Landen lost a leg, but he came home. My brother was still out there.

“Who's that?” asked Paige, who had been looking over my shoulder.

“Whoa!” I yelped. “You just scared the crap out of me!”

“Sorry! Crimea?”

I handed her the photo and she looked at it intently.

“That must be your brother—you have the same nose.”

“I know, we used to share it on a rota. I had it Mondays, Wednesd—”

“—then the other man must be Landen.”

I frowned and turned to face her. I
never
mentioned Landen to anyone. It was
personal
. I felt kind of betrayed that she might have been prying behind my back.

“How do you know about Landen?”

She sensed the anger in my voice, smiled and raised an eyebrow.

“
You
told me about him.”

“I did?”

“Sure. The speech was slurred and for the most part it was garbage, but he was certainly on your mind.”

I winced.

“Last year's Christmas bash?”

“Or the year before. You weren't the only one talking garbage with slurred speech.”

I looked at the photo again.

“We were engaged.”

Paige suddenly looked uneasy. Crimean fiancés could be
seriously
bad conversation topics.

“Did he . . . ah . . . come back?”

“Most of him. He left a leg behind. We don't speak too much these days.”

“What's his full name?” asked Paige, interested in finally getting something out of my past.

“It's Parke-Laine. Landen Parke-Laine.” It was the first time I had said his name out loud for almost longer than I could remember.

“Parke-Laine the writer?”

I nodded.

“Good-looking bloke.”

“Thank you,” I replied, not quite knowing what I was thanking her for. I put the photograph back in my drawer and Paige clicked her fingers.

“Boswell wants to see you,” she announced, finally remembering what she had come over to say.

Boswell was not alone. A man in his forties was waiting for me and rose as I entered. He didn't blink very much and had a large scar down one side of his face. Boswell hummed and hawed for a moment, coughed, looked at his watch and then said something about leaving us to it.

“Police?” I asked as soon as we were alone. “Has a relative died or something?”

The man closed the Venetian blinds to give us more privacy.

“Not that I heard about.”

“SO-1?” I asked, expecting a possible reprimand.

“Me?” replied the man with genuine surprise. “No.”

“Litera Tec?”

“Why don't you sit down?”

He offered me a seat and then sat down in Boswell's large oak swivel chair. He had a buff file with my name on the cover which he flopped on the desk in front of him. I was amazed by how thick the file was.

“Is that all about me?”

He ignored me. Instead of opening my file, he leaned forward and gazed at me with his unblinking eyes.

“How do you rate the
Chuzzlewit
case?”

I found myself staring at his scar. It ran from his forehead down to his chin and had all the size and subtlety of a shipbuilder's weld. It pulled his lip up, but apart from that his face was pleasant enough; without the scar he might have been handsome. I was being unsubtle. He instinctively brought up a hand to cover it.

“Finest Cossack,” he murmured, making light of it.

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't be. It's hard not to gawp.”

He paused for a moment.

“I work for SpecOps-5,” he announced slowly, showing me a shiny badge.

“SO-5?” I gasped, failing to hide the surprise in my voice. “What do you lot do?”

“That's restricted, Miss Next. I showed you the badge so you could talk to me without worrying about security clearances. I can okay that with Boswell if you'd prefer?—”

My heart was beating faster. Interviews with SpecOps operatives farther up the ladder sometimes led to transfers—

“So, Miss Next, what do you think about
Chuzzlewit
?”

“You want my opinion or the official version?”

“Your opinion. Official versions I get from Boswell.”

“I think it's too early to tell. If ransom is the motive then we can assume the manuscript is still in one piece. If it's stolen to sell or barter we can also consider it in one piece. If terrorism is the game then we might have to be worried. In scenarios one and three the Litera Tecs have sod all to do with it. SO-9 get involved and we're kind of out of the picture.”

The man looked at me intently and nodded his head.

“You don't like it here, do you?”

“I've had enough, put it that way,” I responded, slightly less guardedly than I should. “Who are you, anyway?”

The man laughed.

“Sorry. Very bad manners; I didn't mean all the cloak-and-dagger stuff. The name's Tamworth, head field operative at SO-5. Actually,” he added, “that doesn't mean so much. At present there are just me and two others.”

I shook his outstretched hand.

“Three people in a SpecOps division?” I asked curiously. “Isn't that kind of mean?”

“I lost some guys yesterday.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Not that way. We just made a bit of headway and that's not always good news. Some people research well in SO-5 but don't like the fieldwork. They have kids. I don't. But I understand.”

I nodded. I understood too.

“Why are you talking to me?” I asked almost casually. “I'm SO-27; as the SpecOps transfer board so kindly keeps telling me, my talents lie either in front of a Litera Tec desk or a kitchen stove.”

Tamworth smiled. He patted the file in front of him.

“I know all about that. SpecOps Central Recruiting don't really have a good word for ‘No,' they just fob. It's what they're best at. On the contrary, they are fully aware of your potential. I spoke to Boswell just now and he thinks he can just about let you go if you want to help us over at SO-5.”

“If you're SO-5 he doesn't have much choice, does he?”

Tamworth laughed.

“That's true. But
you
do. I'd never recruit anyone who didn't want to join me.”

I looked at him. He meant it.

“Is this a transfer?”

“No,” replied Tamworth, “it isn't. I just need you because
you have information that is of use to us. You'll be an observer; nothing more. Once you understand what we're up against you'll be very glad to be just that.”

“So when this is over I just get thrown back here?”

He paused and looked at me for a moment, trying to give the best assurance that he could without lying. I liked him for it.

“I make no guarantees, Miss Next, but anyone who has been on an SO-5 assignment can be pretty confident that they won't be SO-27 forever.”

“What is it you want me to do?”

Tamworth pulled a form from his case and pushed it across the table to me. It was a standard security clearance and, once signed, gave SpecOps the right to almost everything I possessed and a lot more besides if I so much as breathed a word to someone with a lesser clearance. I signed it dutifully and handed it back. In exchange he gave me a shiny SO-5 badge with my name already in place. Tamworth knew me better than I thought. This done, he lowered his voice and began:

“SO-5 is basically a Search & Containment facility. We are posted with a man to track until found and contained, then we get another. SO-4 is pretty much the same; they are just after a different thing. Person. You know. Anyway, I was down at Gad's Hill this morning, Thursday—can I call you Thursday?—and I had a good look at the crime scene at first hand. Whoever took the manuscript of
Chuzzlewit
left no fingerprints, no sign of entry and nothing on any of the cameras.”

“Not a lot to go on, was there?”

“On the contrary. It was just the break I've been waiting for.”

“Did you share this with Boswell?” I asked.

“Of course not. We're not interested in the manuscript; we're interested in the man who stole it.”

“And who's that?”

“I can't tell you his name but I can write it.”

He took out a felt tip and wrote “Acheron Hades” on a notepad and held it up for me to read.

“Look familiar?”

“
Very
familiar. There can't be many people who haven't heard about him.”

“I know. But you've met him, haven't you?”

“Certainly,” I replied. “He was one of the lecturers when I studied English at Swindon in '68. None of us were surprised when he switched to a career of crime. He was something of a lech. He made one of the students pregnant.”

“Braeburn; yes, we know about her. What about you?”

“He never made me pregnant, but he had a good try.”

“Did you sleep with him?”

“No; I didn't figure sleeping with lecturers was really where I wanted to be. The attention was flattering, I suppose, dinner and stuff. He was brilliant—but a moral vacuum. I remember once he was arrested for armed robbery while giving a spirited lecture on John Webster's
The White Devil
. He was released without charge on that occasion, but the Braeburn thing was enough to have him dismissed.”