Rant (21 page)

I told Anna to stay where she was and she said, ‘Too bloody right. This is your effing mess and you can effing well clear it up.' Ah, Anna. I do love you so.

Looking as dejected as it was possible to look, I crawled out from under the seat and held my hands up.

‘Ah, Mr Rant! How lovely to make your acquaintance again. You are keeping your pecker up, I trust?'

I scowled up at him.

‘Oh, don't be such a sore loser,' he said. ‘Carry on, Mr Rant. Tie the suitcases on for me, there's a good chap.'

I tied them on and tried to hide the briefcase behind my back. I saw Eugene's face peer out through the door and he said something to Barbu.

‘Oh, I think we'll have the money too, Mr Rant. We don't want you profiting from your exploits. What kind of message would that send out to the young people of today?'

I fastened it on, flashed my middle finger at him, and retreated back under the seat.

‘Farewell all! I will be back, as all the best villains say. See you in your dreams.'

Slowly, the bags began to rise.
Come on,
I thought,
we must be down to the last dregs now. Hurry up, for fuck's sake.

The cases cleared the roof, and the helicopter began to bank over the river and away. Through the loudhailers we could hear Barbu singing:

‘If I were a rich man, biddy, biddy, biddy, biddy, biddy, biddy, biddy—'

Reader, I cheered.

Now

I sit at the prison table. My hands are manacled to it, and my feet are manacled to the chair. I am only allowed visits from my wife (and anyone else, for that matter) under these conditions. I am considered a dangerous man. My life is spent in solitary, and I have been told this is as much for my own protection as for the protection of others.

The prison guards watch me openly, tauntingly.

Over the months my wife has come to regard me with increased suspicion, convinced that I am the homicidal maniac that everyone says I am. She has joined the ranks of friends and family who have slowly but surely become convinced of my guilt. I am the last person who believes that I am a falsely accused man. But I have a plan.

Today it will come to fruition.

Everything is in place. There is just one final cog to be placed within the mechanism and the machinery of justice will spring into action.

I giggle.

Someone tuts loudly.

‘Sorry,' I say.

One must be so careful at these times. I am under surveillance at every moment. Their cameras recording my every tic, every lie, every truth.

But I can't help myself.

I giggle, I laugh, I guffaw, and pretty soon everyone around me is joining in.

The director walks onto the set and throws up his hands in exasperation.

‘Okay, we'll cut there and take ten minutes out, everybody relax. And for pity's sake, Mike, pull yourself together.'

So everything worked out rather well. All things considered.

I feel I still have rather a lot to make up to Anna, but she is gradually coming round to the fact that I didn't do nearly as much wrong as she thought I had. Though I haven't told her the whole truth, of course.

The whole helicopter crash on the Thames/garage blowing up in Gloucestershire/Crimewatch hunt for Mike Rant was repackaged as a pre-publicity stunt for a new TV crime show called
Breakaway,
in which I am currently starring. The ratings are high, the intellectual level of the script is low. I do not expect it to stretch to another season.

Whilst I was still in the hospital recovering from general exhaustion and bodily (not to mention substance) abuse, under heavy police guard and the influence of what felt like more horse sedatives, I received a somewhat unexpected visitor.

I was dozing, in between police interviews and offers from the press for exorbitant amounts of money to tell “my side of the story”, when a familiar voice said,

‘Well now, here's a pretty picture. And how is Mr Stinky this fine morning?'

I was reaching for the bell to summon a nurse or a burly policeman, when Sam waved his hand at me. ‘No point, Mike,' he said, ‘I've sent them all on their way. Thought it might be nice to have a little quality time together.'

He sat on the edge of the bed and it creaked ominously as I rolled towards him.

‘Seriously, Mikey boy,' he said, ‘how are you doing?'

‘What the hell are you doing here?' I managed. ‘I would have thought you'd be as far away from here as possible, raking in the cash from your ill-gotten gains and conning the teeth out of your Granny's head. And you can quit with the phoney American accent, it's really not that good anyway.'

He smiled.

‘What have you got to smile about?' I spluttered. ‘Apart from being very rich and having the governments of several countries in your pocket, I mean. You know they'll shoot you dead if they catch you round here. And probably me as well while they're at it, so bugger off and be smug in someone else's bedroom.'

He just looked at me for a long time, then said, ‘You don't believe everything you read on the internet, do you Mike?'

‘What do you mean?'

He considers for a few seconds. Then, ‘Let's say, just for argument's sake, that a certain businessman got hold of some highly inflammatory material regarding certain highly placed individuals. And that said businessman was using said material to influence…affairs of state.'

‘Okay,' I said, ‘you've said it. Now fu—'

‘Let's say as well that certain government departments got wind of this and wanted to eradicate the problem. Now, whilst it's all very well giving such an order, certain officials might want to put a little…distance…between themselves and the solution to their problems. Do you follow?'

‘No,' I said, though I was beginning to.

He sighed. ‘See, it's all about necessary evils, Mr Rant. The balance of power. There is a problem, and there is a solution. But both must be kept at arm's length, lest anyone find out what is going on. They are intertwined. Admit to members of the CIA acting on British soil to eradicate foreign nationals and the threat they represent, and you have, at least to a degree, to confess that there was a threat.'

My head is spinning, but one thing is becoming clear.

‘Are you trying to tell me,' I said slowly, ‘that the whole thing about you being a gangster was a bluff? That you really are a member of the CIA or something?'

‘I couldn't possibly confirm or deny any such thing.'

‘Oh, for Christ's sake!' My head felt like it was going to burst. ‘What happened? Who are you? Who the hell won this battle?'

‘The good guys.'

‘The theoretical good guys, who might or might not exist and will, theoretically at least, kill me if I try to prove it one way or the other and who will happily see me banged up in order to cover their tracks?'

‘Something along those lines. But it needn't come to that.'

‘What do you mean?'

He opens the briefcase he is carrying and pulls out a formal looking document. He flicks over a few pages and then hands it to me, along with a cheap disposable pen.

‘If you could just see your way to signing this.'

‘What is it?'

‘Let's just say that it may or may not be a copy of the Official Secrets Act. Along with authorisation for you to act on behalf of the American Government in order to protect British soil from foreign incursion.'

‘You mean…you're signing me up as a spy?'

‘Oh, I couldn't—'

‘—possibly comment. Yeah, yeah. Give me the pen.'

I signed, and then started riffling through the pile of papers, but he whipped them away from me, folded them and shoved them into his jacket pocket.

‘Of course, you may have just signed a confession to all of the things you've been accused of in the last few days. And believe me, should push come to shove, your signature will find its way onto just such a document. And do bear in mind that no bodies were recovered from the wreckage of the helicopter pulled from the Thames. I'm sure you wouldn't want Mr Barbu or his associates to suddenly come into possession of information as to your whereabouts. Because if they did you might require a little more protection than you or your good lady wife could muster.'

‘You fat Yankee bastard.'

‘Sweet talker. For now then, Mr Rant.' He wiggled his fingers at me in farewell and turned to go.

‘Just tell me one thing,' I say to his back.

He does not turn. ‘If I can,' he says.

‘Are you one of the good guys, or one of the bad guys?'

He turned back to me and sighed.

‘It's a complicated world, Mr Rant. Sometimes people do the right thing for the wrong reasons. Or the wrong thing for the right reasons. Or any other combination you care to come up with. In your case I'd go for...doing the wrong thing for all the wrong reasons and yet still coming out okay, ish.'

‘Is that an answer or did you just open a fortune cookie?'

He paused.

‘Let me put it this way. If I work for the government and some of my work is somewhat…beyond the normal realms of legality, I wouldn't be likely to tell you, now would I? And if I'm a gangster, and my business practices have the blessing of several governments, either willingly or unwittingly – well, I wouldn't be likely to tell you that either, now would I?'

‘No,' I said.

It wasn't that I understood what he was telling me; it just felt like he was waiting for me to say something.

‘Just be glad that we won this one, Mike. You've seen the contents of those disks, and nobody in their right mind is going to prosecute you for your part in proceedings. Because we, whoever we are, will make sure that that will not happen. And if it does, you'll be dead before your feet hit the courtroom floor. So, good guys or bad guys, you're one of us now. Remember that, because we will.'

He let that sink in.

‘Maybe we'll call on you again. One day.'

I opened my mouth, and then closed it.

‘What?' he asked.

‘I was going to say I'd rather be dead. But there's a good chance they'd amount to the same thing, if this week has been anything to go by.'

He smiled.

‘Ciao, Mike. Take good care of yourself. And keep fighting the good fight.'

He had almost closed the door when he stopped, reopened it and looked at me with a smile.

‘Oh, yes,' he said. ‘Silly me. Almost forgot.'

He walked back over to the bed and handed me the briefcase.

‘Is this a bomb?' I asked as he walked away.

‘That rather depends on your point of view, doesn't it?' he said, and closed the door behind him.

I clicked back the catches.

Opened the case.

Stared at the bundles of cash sitting there. I knew without counting that it would come to a total of one hundred thousand English pounds.

Less expenses.

And sixty-four pence for a bottle of milk.

On top of the notes was a plain white envelope.

On the envelope was written:

It contained an unmarked DVD.
Hmmmm,
I thought.

So, theoretically at least, I am now a spy. A spook. I like to compare myself to Jack Bauer in
24
, though Anna tells me I am more like Jack Duckworth in
Coronation Street
. They pay me a retainer, which does look kosher, directly into my bank account, in case they should ever want to call on my services again – or because they want to keep me quiet. I got terribly excited and couldn't wait to brag about it to all of my friends. But then Sam called one afternoon and told me that of course, I wasn't allowed to mention it. It appears on my accounts as having been paid by WH Smith.

I consoled myself with the thought of jetting off to far-flung corners of the world to fight evil, flirting with beautiful women,
no, of course I would never sleep with them, Anna,
and of never having to work again with my private income.

Then I found out that the retainer amounted to the princely sum of $100.00 US per year. Less tax.

‘Did you ever,' I asked Anna one afternoon, while she was visiting me in hospital, ‘did you ever in your wildest dreams imagine I would one day work for the CIA?'

‘Babe,' she said, ‘I'm sorry to tell you that you're not in my wildest dreams.'

And she fell quiet, with a dreamy look on her face.

For once, I didn't say anything.

And, of course, I now have a child. He is beautiful and it makes my heart glow every time I look at him, to think that I could have been a part of creating something so delicate, so wonderful, and so precious.

He is a symbol of all that is good between Anna and me, all of our dreams and aspirations, and how we feel toward one another.

Anna insisted that we call him Giorgio.

And that disk.

I know you're wondering.

Let's just say that it's amazing how many high up members of the media – television, stage, and screen – you can fit onto one small computer disk, all of them committing…well, let's just call them errors of judgement, large or small.

Of course I use it sparingly, and quietly.

And I would like to think that I succeeded in getting the lead role in
Breakaway
purely on the basis of my superior acting skills. But I don't think I'm kidding myself, let alone anyone else.