Dick Longg: Sexual Saviour of the Universe (23 page)

Unfortunately for Dick, it wasn’t Frank who found the fountain pen, it was his cynical colleague Charles. Charles was a weasely-looking man, as thin as he was suspicious. Charles never accepted anything at face value. If he saw something that looked like a duck and quacked like a duck, he would automatically assume that it was a goose in disguise. And so it was with the fountain pen. That’s not to say he thought the pen was a goose in disguise (that would have just been ridiculous), but he assumed it was something else. Of course, he was right. Charles saw the pen lying on the floor next to a stone column on the far side of the reception. He walked over, picked it up and examined it in detail. It was a nice fountain pen. The barrel was polished tortoiseshell. It was finely balanced with a gold-plated nib and clasp. He unscrewed the nib assembly, looked inside, frowned, peered more intently at it, frowned some more, then disappeared into the security office.

Later that day Dick was still worrying about Jack going wrong when he heard the officious announcement over the tannoy asking if anyone had lost a fountain pen. Dick thought it was odd to make an announcement about such a petty issue but assumed that’s what usually happened. Maybe the Ministry of Information was a caring, sharing sort of organisation that was always trying to reunite its staff with mislaid items. Then he panicked and felt his inside jacket pocket. Had he lost
his
pen? The pen with the homing device given to him by
Taylor
? Worry turned to fear then turned to calm. Dick breathed a sigh of relief when he felt the familiar pen-like bulge.

Elsewhere in the office his male colleagues were also checking pockets, desk pen holders or briefcases, shrugging their shoulders and continuing with their work. Dick relaxed and reverted to typing letters to members of the Beret Makers Guild. If the only thing Dick had to do was type this correspondence, he would have been fine. Well, not fine, he would have still been in an unbelievable amount of trouble - it’s just that it would have been a while longer before he was aware of it. It was when he came to sign the letters that Dick was alerted to the pending danger. Reaching into his jacket pocket again Dick pulled out his fountain pen and unscrewed the cap. This wasn’t as straightforward as he imagined because cigars don’t have caps. That was the point at which Dick remembered he’d bought a cigar the day before, tucking it in his jacket pocket for safe-keeping. What he didn’t remember was losing the fountain pen he usually kept there.
That
fountain pen.

Of course, there was a chance that whoever had found the pen hadn’t attempted to examine it in detail. The electronics had been well concealed to avoid detection by anyone other than the most determined, curious and meddlesome person. It worked exactly as a real fountain pen so there was no reason to expect it would be anything else. Unless you were Charles the security guard. Dick gulped and assessed his next course of action. This was easy. The first thing he had to do was to find another pen to sign his letters. The second was to keep very, very, very quiet about his loss.

CHAPTER 18

Dick was in the library later that day when Vera again accosted him. In recent days their relationship had changed. This hadn’t been, to his huge relief, in any sexual predatory way, but in how she treated him. Vera was still the boss but he had gone from being just an employee to being an employee slash confidante. Dick liked this new dynamic as it gave him small but valuable insights into the Party, but he was also conscious of the fact that the small whispered conversations in the office or corridors infuriated Benjamin. Not that Benjamin ever mentioned this, but Dick could see it in his face.

Benjamin was one of those people who obviously found it hard to conceal their emotions. Whenever he saw Dick and Vera talking, he looked like a man who’d seen Dick naked in a locker room; an expression of equal parts astonishment, jealously and anger. Before recent events, Dick had taken great satisfaction in riling Benjamin but given Benjamin’s threat to unmask him, he was now keen not to provoke him. Which is why he was glad Vera was sharing her confidences here in private.

‘Be on your guard’, she whispered in her low-but-definitely-not-sexy voice. ‘There is
an infiltrator among us!’.

Dick dropped the book he was holding. It was quite a large book and the noise made a few library users look in his direction and frown, and a few others make a ‘shushing’ sound. This ‘shushing’ sound made a few other users turn and tut. The tutting in turn, caused others to glare and whisper ‘Be quiet!’, though not as quietly as some would have liked. After the shushing, tutting and ‘be quiet!’s had died down, Dick picked up his book and Vera continued.

‘You know that pen that was reported lost?’, she asked. Dick nodded.

‘Well it wasn’t just an ordinary fountain pen!’

‘I know’, Dick said, immediately wishing he hadn’t.

‘What do you mean?’, Vera enquired.

Dick responded with as much sincerity as he could muster, which to be frank, wasn’t that much at all. ‘Well, I, er, well that’s to say, I erm thought that no one would make an announcement about a lost pen unless there was something unusual about it’.

Vera nodded. ‘That’s very astute of you. Good thinking, Mr. Brunel’. Continuing in her low voice Vera added, ‘I’ve just heard that it was packed full of electronics and probably some sort of signalling device. There’s a very high likelihood that it belongs to a member of the resistance movement, someone who could well be working among us in this very building!’

Dick meant to say ‘No!’ with the appropriate degree of disbelief and innocent surprise but he was so worried by what Vera had just revealed that he said ‘Noooooooooo!’ quite loudly, the way you’d say it in slow motion in the movies as you threw yourself across a room trying to catch a fragile object as it plummets towards the floor. This time everyone in the library began shushing, tutting and yelling ‘be quiet!’ so Vera and Dick had to leave. In the elevator going back down to the office Vera told him that the Party were treating this issue with the utmost seriousness. This was a Code 2B alert; everyone in the building was considered a suspect.

‘Everyone? Even you?’, Dick asked, mopping his brow which had begun to perspire.

‘Yes. Even me. And even you!’.

Dick looked shocked and worried - mainly because he was.

Vera continued. ‘I know it’s preposterous to think that either of us are implicated in some way but nothing like this has ever happened before. The Party are extremely concerned at this breach in security. Frankly it’s beyond belief that it could have even happened’.

‘How will they find out who the pen belongs too?’ Dick asked, perspiring a little bit more.

‘Well, that’s the problem’, Vera explained. ‘They’ve already carried out stage one, a forensic examination. The pen was handled extensively by a security guard so it can’t be checked for fingerprints. It also looks like it had never been used and that means no one would have ink residue on their skin’.

‘So trying to trace the owner is going to be pretty much impossible?’, asked Dick optimistically.

‘Impossible? The Party doesn’t recognise the word ‘impossible’. They’ll just implement stage two of the investigation’.

The elevator stopped with a slight jolt and the door opened.

‘Stage two?’, Dick asked.

‘Yes’, Vera added. ‘Interrogating every single person in the building’.

Dick let out a slight fart but the sound of the elevator door closing with a dull ‘clang’ masked it.

‘Don’t be concerned’, Vera added cheerily as she strode towards the office. The interrogation will be but a minor inconvenience for people like us. You’ll have nothing to worry about’.

As they entered the office Vera turned to Dick and smiled, the smile of someone who has absolutely nothing to worry about. Dick returned the smile with slightly less confidence.

- - o O o - -

The next meeting at the Resistance headquarters had been well-timed. Or badly-timed, given the circumstances. It had been pre-arranged for a while and Dick had been collected by Edward that evening after work.

Dick sat in the middle of the lounge, the centre of attention. He leaned back in a comfortable chair, debriefing his colleagues on Project Gladstone and Benjamin’s recent veiled threats against him. Dick gave a full account of Jack from the initial acceptance of his proposal, the successful demonstration and the impending start of his mission. Taylor and Humphrey listened extra intently while Dick recounted his time at the Scientific Research Centre in case it gave any clues to the so-called secret weapon. As Dick spoke he could see his audience hanging on his every word. He was respected. Even revered. Grace, who was sitting at the back, even winked and pouted at him. Everything was going so well until he finished reporting on Jack and mentioned, almost in passing, the mislaid pen.
Taylor
frowned slightly and suggested that he and Dick retire to a private room to continue their discussion. Once behind closed doors
Taylor
’s demeanour changed and that’s when Dick understood the meaning of the word ‘apoplectic’.

‘You lost it! You lost it! What do you mean you bloody lost it?! How could you be so damn stupid? This can compromise the mission and us! You’re a bloody idiot, Dick! A bloody idiot pure and simple! How difficult is it not to lose a pen? All of our members have similar signalling devices and not one of them has lost them, nor even misplaced them for a short while! I’ve never met someone so utterly careless, cavalier or irresponsible!’

Dick had never seen
Taylor
angry like this. He wasn’t so much like a bear with a sore head as a bear with a sore head who’d accidentally caught his testicles in a rusty bear trap. Even though Taylor was enraged, his temper was tempered by the fact that in this polite New Victorian society strong expletives were limited to ‘damn, ‘ bloody’, ‘hell’, ‘hellfire’, ‘bastard’, ‘piss’ and ‘bugger’. That’s the reason
Taylor
didn’t call Dick a ‘motherfucking cocksucker’ even though he rightfully deserved this description.

Taylor
continued ranting and every time Dick tried to apologise, he was just shouted down. After what seemed like ages (and in fact it was), Dick became aware of the refreshing sound of silence.
Taylor
had stopped shouting and was now staring at him, the stare you give an idiot or a young child while waiting for them to answer you.

‘Calm down’, Dick said, not very helpfully. Then, even more unhelpfully he added, ‘No one’s died’.

‘No, but you might, if the bloody pen is traced back to you!’,
Taylor
exclaimed. ‘And we’re all in jeopardy if the security checks make any sort of connection between us!’.

‘It’s not as if I had my initials monogrammed on to it, is it?’ Dick replied with a degree of sarcasm. ‘Or it carried a sticker that says, ‘If found please return to Jeremy Brunel’. How on earth will they know it’s mine?’

‘By interrogation, that’s how’,
Taylor
shouted.

‘Oh yes…’ Dick said quietly, remembering what Vera had told him.

After several long breaths and a slow count to twenty,
Taylor
was much calmer. The threat from Benjamin was serious enough but now the whole pen issue threatened to expose Dick and wipe out all of his successes to date. Now the prime short-term objective was to ensure Dick avoided detection in the interrogation which, Taylor told him, might involve a libido test in addition to being hooked up to a lie detector.

‘Why a libido test?’ asked Dick.

‘It’s the easiest test to do’,
Taylor
explained. ‘Show the suspect various erotic images and check changes in their blood pressure and body temperature. The monthly injections would normally suppress the body’s natural reactions’.

‘So reacting in a certain way means you’re avoiding the injections, and that indicates to the Party that you’re subversive?’, asked Dick.

‘Not necessarily’, explained
Taylor
. ‘It could mean you’re avoiding the injections or it could just indicate that the chemicals aren’t working. Either way though, it means there is cause for concern and a cue to investigate further’.