The Henchmen's Book Club (11 page)

13.
NONE BUT THINE EYE

“Mr Jones, I’ve come to remove your bandages. Please sit up.”

I recognised her sweet aroma before I
recognised her sweet voice and smiled accordingly.

“Sarah Jessica Parker,” I deduced.

“You remembered?”

“Of course, how could I forget?” I
replied, moving to one side to make room for Nurse Parker as she perched on the
bed beside me. “Lovely,” I added.

Of course, this wasn’t really Sarah
Jessica Parker, but it’s how I’d come to know and recognise her since I’d been
here in the hospital so I saw no reason to stop with the sexy pseudonyms any
time soon.

The sight in my left eye was gone. In
fact, the whole of my left eye was gone, but worse still was the infection that
had spread to the right, threatening to rob me of daylight completely. It had
been a scary few days, but the doctors seemed confident that they’d caught it
in time. Here and now we’d find out.

Nurse Parker began to unwind my bandages.

Sarah Jessica Parker was, and as far as
I’m aware still is, an American actress, one of the girls in that show,
Sex and the City
. I’d never actually
seen it myself, but I remembered who she was when I asked the nurse what
perfume she was wearing and she told me, Sarah Jessica Parker, so this was how
I came to imagine her throughout my time in bandages.

“Keep your eyes closed, Mr Jones.”

Sarah Jessica Parker carried on unwinding
the bandages and daubed my eye with a crystal cold solution, wiping away the
crust that had built up over the last two weeks in preparation for me seeing
again.

Two weeks. That’s how long I’d been here.
Fourteen nights. That’s how long my eyes had been bandaged.

Just over two weeks earlier, I’d arrived
in Harare with Captain Bolaji after forty-eight hours on the road and
practically fell out of the jeep. With no money, no passport and no strength,
I’d been an unmarked grave waiting to be dug. Captain Bolaji had wanted to take
me to the city’s central hospital, but no offence to Harare, I would have stood
a better chance doing the work myself. Plus, the authorities might’ve wanted to
know where I’d picked up my injuries and why I was making their Geiger Counter
sound like Flipper and his mates.

So I’d made the call. Or rather, I’d had
Captain Bolaji do it on my behest, which had proved something of revelation to
him.

“An Agency looks after you?”

“Yes. It looks after all its people,
which is more than I can say for half the bastards it rents us out to.”

Captain Bolaji thought for a while. “How
do I join?”

“You don’t,” I told him.

“Well how did you join?”

“I didn’t.”

“You didn’t? You just said you did.”

“No, I didn’t join them, I was invited to
join.”

“Invited?”

“Yes. You don’t choose to join The
Agency, The Agency chooses you.”

Captain Bolaji thought some more on that.
“Then how do I get invited?”

“That’s easy, keep me alive until the
plane arrives and they’ll have a look at you,” I told him, before passing out
on the grimy hotel bed.

The next few hours were a dreamy blur. I
felt someone moving around the room and the swirl of the ceiling fan. I felt
water on my lips and a cloth on my face, the ringing of a telephone, and
eventually, the knock on the door. Voices, swabs and injections followed, along
with a fast ride along a bumpy road, then a roar into the sky. More needles in
my arm preceded stars in my mind but I no longer cared. I was too far gone. Too
pumped full of drugs. Too pumped full of infection. Heat wrapped my body like a
blanket and I finally succumbed again.

The next time I awoke, Sarah Jessica
Parker was checking my blood pressure when a pair of shoes entered the room. Of
course, it was an Agency Interviewer, here to take down my story. “Plenty of
time to rest later. Let’s hear what happened first,” he invited.

When only one man survives a job –
in this case Operation
Solaris
– the debriefing’s much more intense because there’s no one else to
corroborate the facts with you. A polygraph is sometimes used, but not in this
instance. My infections had messed with my system too much to render my
readings useless, so instead I just went over and over the story of what
happened with The Agency Interviewer, and all the whens, wheres, whos and hows
that went with it. The Agency isn’t so much interested in the whys. That’s
their job to figure them out. They’re the analysts, we’re just the foot soldiers
so they like us to stick to the facts, make our reports objectively and leave
any interpretations to them.

For eight days the Interviewer grilled
me, at all times of the night and with increasing intensity as my recovery
progressed. Eventually, after the eighth night he told me he was satisfied with
my story (which they always do to allay your fears) and got me sign my
statements – at least, I’m assuming they were my statements, but what
with my eyes bandaged I could just as well have been signing half a dozen blank
cheques for him. I doubted it though. Trust’s very important at The Agency and
it swings both ways.

“So now let us turn to the matter of the
raid on the Caia diamond mine,” the Interviewer had suggested, opening a new
folder and scanning the chip in my arm to begin the process all over again.

As exhausting as this was, the debrief
for the Caia job wasn’t nearly as intense as it had been for the Soliman job
because The Special Army hadn’t hired through The Agency, so technically,
they’d had nothing to do with it. But their fingerprints were still on the job.
The appearance of my old friend Mr Smith, when the bomb had been delivered,
told me as much, so I knew there were wheels within wheels here and played
along accordingly.

At least until the following question was
put to me.

“And so what made you decide to abort the
operation when your driver Savimbi was killed?”

Now, at this point I should have told him
the truth. I should have. But I didn’t. Because Mr Smith had taken a chance for
me. So weirdly I felt honour-bound to do the same for him. Hmm, a few book club
rules we hadn’t discussed there.

Obviously
I told the Interviewer that we’d encountered each other out in Africa and that
we’d even talked. I told him that we’d said hello, that we’d previously been in
a book club together and that we’d even discussed what we were currently
reading. I’d had to tell him that much as The Agency’s computers would match us
as having worked together on Operation
Blowfish
.
They’d also put us on overlapping jobs, and they’d identify the fact that we’d
both been in His Most Excellent Majesty’s compound when the bomb had been
delivered, so unless we’d been wearing balaclavas or some sort of kooky head
gear (which were some times required) then we would have definitely clocked
each other.

So I told the Interviewer all of this.
And I even told him the context of our conversation and the specific book
titles we’d mentioned (
Perfume
and
The Fourth Protocol
).

I told him all of these things, but
omitted the message behind the chat.

And
this was a risk.

It
was a calculated risk, but a risk all the same. A very big risk.

See, if Mr Smith’s job went
off beam
(as
it inevitably would) and he lived to tell the tale, then at some point in the
future he would have to tell this same tale to The Agency, with the same dates,
the same locations and the same chance meetings.

If he didn’t, if he held back, he’d be as
good as inviting a bullet in the brain.

So he’d tell them he’d bumped into me.
He’d tell them we’d talked books. And he’d tell them he’d recommended
The Fourth Protocol
to me. He’d have to.
Because he’d know I would have already told The Agency during my debriefing.
The only way to protect yourself during the debriefing is to tell the truth,
the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you if you don’t.

But would he tell them
why
he’d recommended
The Fourth Protocol
? Would I? That was
the real quandary.

It was doubtful, because he’d be dropping
himself in it if he did. Losing his Agency Affiliation and all the protections
and guarantees that came with it. I was in no such danger, because technically
I’d done nothing wrong. After all, it was Mr Smith who’d voluntarily spoken out
to save my life, not the other way around. He’d been the one who’d broken protocol.
He’d been the one who’d taken a chance. He’d been the one who’d jeopardised an
entire operation, not to mention his own life, to save a former colleague. No
one could blame me for heeding his warning. I mean, who wouldn’t in my shoes?
So he’d only dropped himself in it.

If I’d wanted to, I could’ve told them
all of this and relaxed safe in the knowledge that I’d done nothing wrong.

But Mr Smith had done this thing for me.
And I wouldn’t have been here now to tell this story if he hadn’t. So I took a
chance for him, and for the first time in my life told The Agency a lie.

“I sensed something like this
double-cross was on the cards.”

“You sensed?” the Interviewer asked.

“Yes,” I confirmed.

“How did you sense it? Are you psychic or
something?”

“No. But I have been on dozens of jobs so
I’ve come to know when something doesn’t feel right. And when I saw the package
the Russians brought with them and the accompanying scientists alarm bells
started ringing.”

“Alarm bells?”

“Metaphorical alarm bells. Not actually
alarm bells,” I clarified – pedantic cunt.

“Metaphorical alarm bells. Yes, I see,”
he noted down. “So you decided to abscond from the Special Army when you saw
the package?”

“Yes.”

“Because you sensed that the Special Army
was being used to take a nuclear weapon into the diamond mines of Caia? And
that this weapon would be detonated, eliminating the Special Army along with
the mine?”

“That is correct, if a little specific.
My suspicions were more general than that.”

“Nevertheless, your decision to abscond
was based purely on these suspicions?” the Interviewer pressed.

“I would say so.”

“You would say so?”

“Yes.”

“Then please do say so.”

“What? Oh, yeah, my decision to abscond
was based purely on my suspicions that there was trouble ahead for the Special
Army and that we were being double-crossed.”

“And these suspicions were entirely of
your own making? That no outside influence had a hand in planting them there
for you?”

“Only the actions of His Most Excellent
Majesty, his Russian paymasters and fifteen or so years of experience planted
those suspicions there. That is correct.”

“Just so that we are clear about this,”
he pressed. “Nobody forewarned you about the bomb?”

“They didn’t need to, I worked it out for
myself.”

“Whether they needed to or not is immaterial.
All I want to know is if they did.”

“No sir, they did not.”

“Not even…” I heard the Interviewer
flipping through a few pages to refer to his notes. “… Mr Smith? He didn’t warn
you about the bomb?”

“No sir. We talked only about books.”

The interviewer was silent for a few
moments then I heard some scribbling before he spoke again.

“I see. And what happened then?”

And there, with that single white lie,
book club was forced underground. And the seeds of future events were
sown.
 

“Okay Mr Jones,” Nurse Parker said a few
days later. “Now open your eye.”

14.
DOCTOR PATCHWORK

Now, I wasn’t quite so naïve as to believe that Nurse Parker actually looked
like Sarah Jessica Parker, my suspicions first being aroused when she flattened
my grapes and almost up-turned the bed when she perched next to me. But what I
hadn’t expected was her to be was black. I don’t know why I shouldn’t have
thought this. I mean this was the Caribbean after all. The majority of nurses
here were black. And most of them were old enough to be our mothers, even
Jennifer Lopez who did the bed baths around here, which especially disappointed
me.

But
Nurse Parker didn’t have a Caribbean accent. She was American, eastern seaboard
unless I was mistaken, which had helped underline my Sarah Jessica Parker
fantasies. But when the bandages came off and my vision as restored –
albeit in only one eye – I lost them all to reality and a knowing wink
from Nurse Parker.

Still, what the nursing staff around here
may have lacked in catwalk poise, they more than made up for in medical
abilities. They were the best – and I do mean the
BEST
– on the planet. This was The Agency’s own private
hospital and better medical and care facilities you’d not find anywhere else
outside the 22
^nd
Century. Doctors, nurses, physiotherapists and
pharmacists: they had recovery and recuperation rates other military hospitals
could only dream about. I guess it helped that there was an almost constant
influx of trauma patients to deal with: gun shot wounds, shrapnel, burns,
breakages and shark bites. Not too many patients were brought in here to have
their wisdom teeth out. And such a workload only pooled experience and
expertise until the hospital’s staff led the field in patching up battlefield
casualties.

Then again, for what they charged they
should. My fees from Operation
Solaris
were covering my eye surgery and facial reconstruction. They had lain in The
Agency’s bank accounts awaiting my return to Britain but I hadn’t made it
– again. And so I’d called them in and used the money to save my own
life. And patch myself together for next time.

“Now Mr Jones, we’ve removed what was
left of your injured eye and replaced it with a plain silicone orb for now,”
Doctor Jacob told me from behind a heavy old cedar desk. Nurse Parker had
wheeled me here for my morning consultation and left us at the doctor’s
request. The reason why was about to become apparent.

“If the orb feels comfortable, and you
are happy with it, then we can have a cosmetic version made up for you that
exactly matches your right eye so that no one would ever be able to tell you
have a prosthetic eye. You won’t be able to see out of it, of course, but
cosmetically, you will look quite normal.”

I glanced at my reflection in the mirror,
at the six inch gash that ran vertically down the left hand-side of my face,
across my eye socket and to my ear and breathed a sigh of relief.

“Thank God for that. My looks are all
I’ve got.”

The Doctor read between my laughter lines
and assured me that they could lessen my scarring too. “With skin grafting and
laser treatment, we can reduce the visible injury to a few lines or slight
discolouration if you want.”

“If I want?”

“Certainly. But some Affiliates like to
keep their battle scars. They find they get more contracts that way,” he
explained.

“Really?”

“Yes. Lots of gentlemen prefer to hire
– how shall we say – more robust looking employees to action their
duties. Such staff can often bring a certain pizzazz to proceedings,” he said,
nodding approvingly at my disfigurement.

I looked at the mirror again, screwed my
face into a growl and warmed a little to the apparition who leered back.

“Yes, I suppose,” I agreed, with a
renewed appreciation. “Perhaps I’ll leave it for the moment and see how things
work out.”

“Excellent,” Doctor Jacob smiled, not so
much as an eyelash out of place on his own face. “Your surgery credits will
stay on your file for either five years, or until you sign your next contract,
in which case any and all future medical work will come out of your fees from
that job. Understand?”

I did.

“Good. Well, that’s the small print out
of the way,” he said, rising from the desk and walking around to examine my eye
at close quarters with a small penlight. “I must say it’s a most excellent
rebuilding job around the socket. Doctor Silverman, I believe it was.”

“I’ll send him a bunch of flowers,” I
said.

“Her. Doctor Silverman is a woman,”
Doctor Jacob replied.

“Then I imagine she’ll like them even
more.”

“I expect so yes,” he agreed, clicking
his little light off and slipping it back into his pocket. “Of course, there
are alternatives to simple replica eyes, you know. Look here.”

The doctor wheeled me over to a medical
cabinet at the back of the room and pulled opened a thin drawer. Inside,
several hundred eyes stared back at me although they were like no eyes I’d ever
seen before.

“You can choose pretty much any design.
Your eye socket will support anything in here,” the doctor told me.

There were plain white orbs, pupils as
black as night, green, red, silver and gold. Some featured yellow smiley faces,
skulls & crossbones, circular target designs, stars & stripes, musical
notes, dollar signs and Oriental symbols. Others had silhouettes of naked
ladies on them, lightning bolts, male and female symbols, bar codes, grinning
devil faces and, most sinister of all, Disney characters.

“What’s that one?” I asked, squinting at
one in particular.

“That’s a washing machine window. Look,
there are little socks and knickers going around inside. See?”

I recognised the undergarments tumbling
around amongst soap suds and bubbles and cooed accordingly.

“I don’t like it.”

“No, no one seems to. No one’s ordered
that one yet,” the doctor agreed.

“Do a lot of people order eyes then?”

“Oh yes. Affiliates are always losing
them,” he told me making me remember Victor Soliman and his glass eye.

“What’s the most popular design?”

“The skull & crossbones,” he told me,
picking it out and handing it to me for a closer look. “It’s a classic design
and Affiliates don’t seem to mind other Affiliates having it. Beautiful
graphics,” he smiled, studying the eye through a magnification glasses.

“I don’t want something that someone else
has got,” I told him.

“No, and lots of Affiliates feel that way
too, so when we prescribe them a design, they have the choice of being
allocated the copyright, which is theirs to keep for life – how ever long
that lasts.”

It was then that I noticed little red
stickers next to fifteen or so of the designs, a couple of which I’d had my
remaining eye on.

“The stickers?”

“Unfortunately yes. All those designs are
spoken for I’m afraid,” the doctor confirmed, with an apologetic cluck of the
cheek.

Amongst those already taken was the
vintage sniper scope view, with the little cross hairs and yardage numbering
that I was going to have. It was one of the best in the drawer and reflected
the image I wanted to convey – deadly, but retro.

“No sorry, someone’s already got that
one,” the doctor shrugged.

And that wasn’t all. The biological
hazard symbol, which would have been my second choice, had been taken too. And
the nuclear symbol. And the dollar sign. And the hand grenade.

Even bloody Mickey Mouse had been taken.

“Oh. I don’t know then,” I frowned. “Can
I try a few in?”

“Certainly, but why don’t you take this
catalogue away with you and have a think about it?” the doctor suggested,
handing me a samples catalogue then a life-sized picture of a man’s face with
several pieces either missing or on flaps so that you could fold them back to
see what he looked like with no eyes, ears, teeth or chin. “To help you
decide,” he smiled.

“Oh,” I replied suddenly feeling I’d
gotten off quite lightly, all things considered.

“Now, another thing to consider is
accessories,” the doctor said.

“Accessories?”

“Yes. Because the eyes don’t have to simply
be cosmetic eyes, you understand. They can also be tailored to specific
requirements, if that’s what you’d prefer,” the doctor then said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, they can conceal tools, or weapons
if you wish. Here, look here,” he said, moving along to open a second drawer.
In here were more eyes, only these had realistic pupils and looked like eyes,
only with simple lettering inscribed on each to indicate their purpose –
A through X.

“Now, this one here’s a little camera,”
the doctor said, picking up A and showing it to me. “It can take over a
thousand digital images, depending on what resolution you set it at. It has two
gigabytes of storage, a ten times magnification lens, auto focus, infrared and
it’s completely water-proof.” The doctor handed me the eye and I turned it over
in my hand. There were a couple of little rubber buttons in the back of it and
a portal for inserting a cable, but other than that, it looked just like an
eye.

“How do you take the pictures?” I asked.

The doctor smirked, almost embarrassed.
“You blink. Here look, when you want to start taking pictures, you just give
the front of the eye a firm push to turn it on,” the doctor said, doing just
that to prompt a little click. “Then you just blink away until your heart’s
content and it takes one image per blink until you turn it off. Then you just
pop it out and download the pictures onto a laptop. Rather neat don’t you
think?”

“Very nifty,” I agreed. “And this one?” I
said pointing to B.

“Oh, same thing, only it’s also got a
video unit on it so it’s got a bit less space for photos.”

The doctor proceeded to talk me through
all the various eyes, giving me a little tutorial on each until I was baffled
by the array of choice. Here’s what was available:

A – digital camera

B – digital camera with DV camera

C – USB flash drive with 64 GB
capacity

D – audio recorder/player

E – radio transmitter/receiver

F – radio traffic scrambler

G – GPS tracking device

H – fold-out blade

I – multi-headed screwdriver

J – torchlight with twenty-four
hours of battery life

K – compressed O2 (approx three
minutes of underwater breathing)

L – phosphorous flare

M – smoke flare

N – one-shot mini-pistol (.22
calibre)

O – iPod

P – laser-cutter

Q – plastique charge (with
detonator)

R – incapacitating gas pellet

S – empty watertight compartment
(for smuggling)

T – cyanide powder (for self-use or
foul play)

V – eye scanning skeleton key

W – cigarette lighter

X – ballpoint pen (blue, black and
red)

The
doctor spent a few minutes demonstrating each, and they all worked flawlessly,
all except the ballpoint pen of course, which the doctor gave up on after two
minutes of futile scribbling against the back of his notepad.

To demonstrate the plastique charge, the
doctor led me across the hallway to the test range and handed me a pair of ear
protectors and an eye guard.

“It comes with a five second fuse and
should be enough to blow open most locks,” he said, pushing the soft eye into
the keyhole of a chunky padlock that was shielded by a couple of sandbags. The
Doctor then pulling on a little red cord that hung out of the eye where the
optical nerve should’ve been and ushered me clear. We ducked behind a wall of
sandbags twenty yards back and were rewarded with a thunderous crack as the
charge detonated. Doctor Jacob looked suitably amused and on scouring the room
showed me what was left of the lock. Not much.

“It won’t get you into a safe but it will
get you out of a cell,” he summed up.

The gas pellet was likewise as effective,
filling the room with a noxious clear vapour that comatosed the doctor’s canary
in under five seconds.

“He’ll be fine. He’s been through it a
few times,” the Doctor assured me.

And besides all the weapons and designs,
I also had the choice of a stationary eye or a magnetically responsive
motorised eye that would match the movement of my right eye.

“It’s a lot to think about,” I confessed.

“Well, with the basic package we offer
you five eyes. One, a purely cosmetic dress eye with watertight compartment and
four others which feature whichever accessories you’d like, either of a design
of your choice or replicas of your healthy eye.”

“Oh, that’s quite good,” I said, no
longer feeling quite so backed into a decision. “Well, I’ll have a look through
the brochure and get back to you. Thanks you, doctor.”