Dick Longg: Sexual Saviour of the Universe (30 page)

Everything moved very quickly after that. The same source in the Resistance who supplied Dick’s entire fake back-story manage to access David Parnell’s permanent record. This contained details of a series of minor incidents going back over several years that, when viewed in isolation, were just that; minor incidents: vandalism, drunken behaviour and public disorder. Nothing that demonstrated any real degree of dissent, but which definitely did hint at someone dissatisfied with the status quo. Under
Taylor
’s direction David Parnell was placed under detailed surveillance. Further investigations failed to throw up any questions or issues about his legitimacy or sincerity, and verified
Taylor
’s original assumption that he was a good potential resistance member. That being the case, plans were made to contact him.

- -
 
o O o - -

At the next meeting
Taylor
updated everyone on the process to recruit Parnell.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

‘Don’t you think you’re moving a little too fast?’, Dick enquired. ‘I thought you said that the recruiting procedure for new members took months. You said you had to be overwhelmingly confident that the prospect was entirely safe to introduce’.

‘You’re right’,
Taylor
admitted, ‘But we’re extremely concerned about this secret weapon that the Party are developing. Each day that passes is a day they’re closer to using it’.

‘But we’re not sure about the weapon. It’s still just a rumour isn’t it?’, Dick enquired.

‘It is, but a very strong rumour, and one from several different sources. That makes it a rumour we can’t afford to ignore’.

‘Just because you haven’t uncovered any definite proof about it Mr. Longg, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist’. Humphrey added. There were murmurs of agreement within the room. Dick recoiled from the pointed criticism.

‘Have faith.
Taylor
has weighed up the situation and he knows what he’s doing. There are sufficient precautions in place to safeguard our identities and location’. This was
Alice
’s turn to add support to her lover and she did it with a look that said, ‘You were wrong about Mr. Parnell and you’re still jealous of him’. It was also a look that said, ‘And when he gets here I’m going to have really good sex with him’ - but then Dick thought that maybe he was reading a little too much into her look.

When it was Dick’s turn to report on developments he told his resistance colleagues that Jack had so far located and dispatched eleven of the rogue harlots. In his job at the Ministry he continued to seed all variety of rumours about the murders including fake confessional letters from the killer in which he signs his name Jack. All these reports were being lapped up by the public which still demonstrated an unquenchable desire for all things associated with the killings. In addition to these news stories papers were devising their own crowd-pleasing features like ‘The Ripper Diet’, ‘Are YOU a Prostitute?’ personality tests and even ‘Jack the Ripper Bingo’. Dick even planted a few reports that said that Jack had killed prostitutes
and
their clients in the same bloody brutal attacks (the men, stories claimed, had been found with their severed penises in their own mouths). Discouraging women from becoming prostitutes was the key objective, but putting men off visiting them was equally important.

The Party didn’t mind the fact that conflicting stories confused the police and ultimately wasted their time. The intention of these reports was to make sure everyone got the message that prostitution, as the Party had always claimed, was a ‘great social evil’. Of that, after Dick’s sustained media campaign, there was absolutely no doubt.

- - o O o - -

Although Dick was kept busy, his days at the Ministry had become rather routine. The Ripper business would continue until all the robot prostitutes had been killed, and then maybe a little longer.
 
(At his most cynical and manipulative, Dick was toying with the idea of a moral ending to Jack’s reign of terror; having him killed off in a fight to the death by a god-fearing, Party-supporting, non-masturbating, happily-married man - that sort of thing). Each day he monitored transcripts of the television news, studied press cuttings, planned and implemented future activity and briefed Vera on his activity. Just when he felt he’d been forgotten and wouldn’t receive any more recognition for the excellent work he was doing, he got the call. As calls went this one was very, very welcome, and in fact featured in Dick’s Top Three Calls Of All Time.

The first was the time he learned he was being inducted into the Pornography Hall of Fame, having his penis imprinted for perpetuity in cement outside a seedy cinema off
Hollywood Boulevard
. The second of the top three calls was the time he was told he would be appearing on the cover of Newsweek as
 
‘The Man With The Golden Cock’ (this was a feature on his immense wealth and not an incident involving a pet rooster and a can of spray paint). This latest Top Call came when Dick was in the middle of charting week-on-week newspaper coverage.

‘Mr. Brunel’, a serious voice intoned over the phone, ‘This is Jonathan Claygate from Party headquarters. Your presence is requested tomorrow afternoon at 1600 hours’.

Dick’s default response was to feel guilty and panic. He looked up and saw Vera sitting on her platform, head raised up from a massive pile of papers, smiling at him. She winked and Dick knew that this was the call he’d been waiting for. He was going to Party HQ to be congratulated in person. Maybe he’d be given a promotion. Now his skills had been recognised, the sky was the limit. A sub-section under-manager? No, he was better than that. A department deputy head? What about ‘Head Assistant to the Deputy Leader?’ Or ‘Deputy Head Assistant to the Leader?’ He liked the sound of that. In fact, he thought he’d be happy with any position with ‘Leader’ in the title. Well not a title involving the words ‘Syphy Leader’ or ‘Pooh Pants Leader’, obviously.

‘Mr. Brunel? Mr. Brunel? Hello…’ Dick was shaken back to reality by the impatient voice still emanating from the receiver.

‘Hello Mr. Claygate. Sorry about that. I’ll be delighted to be there tomorrow’.

‘Good. Be ready in your reception at
fifteen forty
where a ministerial hovercar will pick you up. Goodbye’.

With that, Mr. Claygate was gone. Dick put the phone down, still in a state of shock. He looked up at Vera who smiled and winked at him once more. Dick smiled back. He wasn’t certain which high-ranking Party official he was going to meet but just to be summoned to Party headquarters was enough at this moment. Dick couldn’t wait to tell
Taylor
about this invitation. This was his chance to infiltrate the Party hierarchy, discover their plans and fulfil his mission. He didn’t give a shit about this young upstart David ‘I simulated sex with a statue of Queen
Victoria
’ Parnell. He might join the Resistance and impress them with his stupid party connections via his even stupider canal building-related career but what he wouldn’t be doing was travelling in a chauffeur driven car to Party HQ. Dick just knew
Alice
would be suitably impressed.

CHAPTER 24

As journeys go, the one to the Party HQ was very uneventful. Dick tried to strike up a conversation with the young driver but only succeeded in establishing that he was being driven by a Grade III chauffeur who was only permitted to drive and not talk to passengers. Well, that’s not strictly true, he could obviously talk to passengers to tell them this - and also explain the differences in the party driver hierarchy. Grade II chauffeurs were allowed to respond to passengers but not instigate conversation, while if you achieved the heady heights of Grade I you could converse freely with passengers on journeys longer than 10 miles or a half hour in duration (whichever was shorter), as long as you showed due deference. The New Victorian class system was alive and well in the front of this hovercar as it sped westwards through
London
. After about fifteen minutes the Party HQ came into sight, an austere tower block on the south bank of the
Thames
. Dick had travelled past it many times, always wondering what went on behind its faceless exterior. Now, he hoped, he was going to find out.

- - o O o - -

It took a lot to impress Dick but the glazed triple height atrium and thirty-foot fir trees growing within it with squirrels leaping from bough to bough almost did the trick. Looking around at this grand entrance Dick could easily see where the population’s taxes were being spent. He scanned the trees again. There were squirrels everywhere he looked. He scanned the lobby and the only thing more numerous than the squirrels were armed guards. Those who weren’t positioned at security stations were on patrol, and those who weren’t on patrol were milling about, getting ready to go on patrol. Dick guessed that the security here was tighter than the pussy of a Mother Superior (Dick had never had sex with a Mother Superior, although he once got a blow job from a novice nun who it turned out, struggled more with his zip than with her faith).

Dick had his fingerprints and voice scanned and then re-scanned. Then he was frisked and only then was he allowed into the elevator that whisked him to the twenty-second level. The elevator came to a gentle stop, far gentler than the elevator in the Ministry of Information. The doors glided silently open and Dick was met by an anonymous Party member who escorted him into a high-ceilinged antechamber. Dick’s escort told him that someone would collect him in ten minutes and in the meantime he should make himself comfortable. There was little to entertain Dick. On a small console table were the de rigueur copies of the Bible and the Party manifesto, and adorning the walls, a selection of framed posters from recent campaigns run by the Ministry of Information, including one Dick himself had devised about the perils of syphilis. He wondered if he should point this out when he met whoever it was he was going to meet - but thought better of it. He was sure that the Party knew more about him than he knew about himself, and to be boastful about his work, would be considered distasteful and a sign, no doubt, of ill-breeding.

Dick had learned soon after starting work that the Party ran everything like clockwork, which was quite appropriate given their Victorian influences. In this society, being promised a wait of ten minutes meant ten minutes and not eighteen, fifteen or even eleven minutes. And so it was exactly ten minutes later when the opposite door to the antechamber was opened by another anonymous Party member who ushered Dick through into what turned out to be another ante-chamber. In effect this made the first room, the one containing the framed posters, an ‘ante-antechamber’ not an ‘antechamber’. (If you want to be really picky you can change this in biro where relevant. If you don’t want to do this in case it ruins your book, well fair enough. It won’t spoil your reading pleasure). Anyhow, in the real ante-chamber Dick was scanned and frisked again although this seemed rather pointless as all he could have concealed since his first frisking and this latest one were the Bible and Party Manifesto, neither of which would make effective weapons, even if you dropped them on someone’s foot.

The same Party member then ushered Dick through yet another set of heavy double doors into another room. Don’t worry though. This wasn’t yet another antechamber, requiring you to make yet more amendments in biro. No, this was a Grand Room. Dick’s polished brogues sank sensuously into deep pile blue woollen carpet. Concealed pelmet lighting painted a warm glow on the vaulted ceiling. The focal point of this room was a long polished walnut burr table surrounded by twelve sumptuously upholstered chairs that complemented the colour of the carpet. The door closed almost silently behind Dick leaving him alone to contemplate the splendour of his environment; more surroundings seemingly at odds with the austerity preached by the Party. A matching set of double doors were set into the opposite wall and in one corner of the room was an elegant inlaid mahogany drinks cabinet. Dick was peering through the small inset glass panels when he was startled by a sudden deep, rich voice.