The Henchmen's Book Club (13 page)

This, together with my fellow patients’
scores, gave
The Day of the Triffids
an overall score of 3.69 (rounded up to two decimal places). I thought this was
a bit low so I logged on using my username (
Book
Mark
) and gave it a five, bringing its average up to 3.76. If I’d been the
first reader to score this book, I might well have given it a four myself, as a
five is a big ask for any book, but the lads’ harsher scoring of a book I’d
really enjoyed had influenced my final decision causing me to weigh in with a
maximum to correct the perceived wrong. I wondered if the others had been doing
this too. And if so, what the book would have scored had we all voted with our
conscience.

I made up my mind to have a word with Mr
Alekseev after dinner. Mr Alekseev (username:
Tech Boy
) had designed and encrypted the site to my specifications
from this very seat while recuperating from reconstructive facial surgery, so I
figured I’d ask him if he knew of some way of fixing it so that each user
couldn’t see a book’s overall score until they’d submitted their own. Then
again, that would be a bit annoying, slogging your way through a pile of utter
donkey shite just because it had been on our site, only to discover that
everyone else had thought so too. It kind of undermined our powers of
recommendation.

I wracked my brains a little longer as to
the problem before I was interrupted by a knock on the door.

“Mr Jones, the doctor would like to see
you if you have a minute. We have the rest of your eyes for you to try.”

It was Nurse Parker.

I pulled my eye from the back of the
computer, erasing the book club window, then folded the USB jack into the orb
and pushed it back into my eye socket.

“Does he want to see me right now?” I
asked, opening the door and sheepishly fixing Nurse Parker with my good eye.

She glanced at the ongoing porn on my
screen and framed her disapproval with a stare.

“If you’re not too busy,” she frowned.

I clicked the computer off then stood,
remembering to theatrically retie my pyjama cord.

“Lead on,” I invited.

“Like I say Mr Jones, you only got one
good eye left,” Nurse Parker advised. “Go easy on it.”

16.
BETTER OFF DEAD

“Fire!”

The first three opened up with their
sub-machine guns, obliterating the targets to their cores. I let off a volley
of automatic fire over their heads, warning them onto their bellies as Mr
Herbert threw stun grenades into the mix.

“Move it!” I yelled. “Pick up the pace!”

They shuffled forward, splattered with
dirt and peppered with that stinging dust that hits you when a flash-bang
explodes nearby, but all of them made it to the wall.

“Get your arses moving, maggots!” I
offered by way of an encouragement.

I fired another burst of AK fire over
their heads as they took to the ropes, then timed their splits on my stopwatch,
stopping only when they fell out of my line of sight, and a whoosh from Mr
Sato’s flamethrower signalled he had them now.

“Next three!” I ordered, and three more
cherries took to the target range and obliterated three fresh paper targets
with their SMGs.

I’d been home only two weeks when I’d got
the call. Was I available to help vet and train a new batch of recruits for The
Agency? Well blimey, I was so potless I would have gone on
Celebrity Big Brother
had I been asked to, so I jumped at the
chance and a week later found myself in an enormous underground cavern on a
private island just off the West Coast of Scotland, firing live rounds at The
Agency’s latest crop of temps.

“Get your arses moving!”

God this took me back. It only seemed
like last week that I’d been here myself, face down in the mud, bullets
whizzing past my head, methane filling my pants, wondering what the fuck I’d
let myself in for. And those instructors! Just where the hell had they got them
from? As a typical cocky twenty-something brain donor, I’d always thought of
myself as Rambo’s harder brother, but they’d scared the hell out of me.
Particularly when they let that kid in my intake fall into the grinder instead
of hitting the emergency stop button when it had become clear ropes weren’t his
strong suit.

“We won’t be there to hit stop buttons
when you’re operational,” our grizzled old veteran had growled at us
afterwards, which had been a fair point, though one that hardly made it up to
the pile of mince lying under the grinder who, just a few minutes earlier, had
been worried about what they might say if we didn’t finish the course in the
allotted time.

And now I was one of them; seasoned,
grizzled and decorated with the scars of a dozen different campaigns. I’d come
full circle. Just as Bill had before me – which of course was where I’d
met him. At least, it’s where I’d got to know him. He’d been our instructor.
Where I’d actually met him had been the same place the guys running around in
front of me had met their various Agency recruiters – namely prison.

That’s where The Agency does its
recruiting. That’s where it gets its guys from. Although it’s not enough just
to be a prisoner, you have to be a lifer – and a lifer with a minimum
tariff of at least twenty years. The Agency likes to know it can dump you right
back in the hole it rescued you from should you ever think to question their
terms.

It was the insurance we all had hanging
over our heads. Me, Bill, Mr Sato, Mr Smith, all of us; we were all lifers,
from far and wide.

Like most of the guys on the ticket, my
sentence had been handed down for murder. And not just any ordinary murder
either, but the murder of a policeman no less. Of course, it hadn’t mattered
that I hadn’t known he was a policeman at the time. He’d been in plain clothes
and hadn’t identified himself properly, so I’d assumed he was one of John
Broad’s men come to rap my knuckles for ripping off his main supplier. I’d been
wrong, although I hadn’t known it until half a dozen uniforms piled in behind
the unfortunate Sergeant Hopkirk, who by this time was sporting a rather
fetching steak knife handle.

Well neither his colleagues nor the judge
felt in the mood to show me any leniency and after I got out of the hospital, I
was bunged into a cell and left to rot for the next thirty years – at
least.

And that’s where I stayed, slowly doing
my porridge, keeping myself fit so that I’d at least be able to have one last
dance when they finally released me, and reading everything I could lay my
hands on.

Then, after four years, a craggy old soak
came to visit me. He’d introduced himself as Bill and asked me if I’d be
interested in being reborn. He offered me a new life, a renewed hope and a way
out of my confines. This was how he’d phrased it too, the big comedian, so
naturally I’d assumed he’d been fixing to introduce me to his pal Jesus and
sell me that whole Amway of hope.

But actually, as you know by now, he’d
meant a proper new life. And proper renewed hope. And a proper way out of my
actual confines.

My life as I knew it was forfeit. And
there was nothing I, nor anyone else, could do about that. But there was a new
life out there for me if I wanted it. It would be dangerous, merciless and in
all likelihood short. But I’d see spectacular things. Be part of momentous
events. And risk all for unimaginable rewards.

If I’d wanted it.

All I had to do was kill myself.

So that’s what I did. Six weeks after
Bill’s visit, I knotted my bedsheets together and hanged myself from the window
of my cell. The screws found me thirty minutes later and rushed me to the
medical unit but it was too late, I was already dead. Asphyxiation caused by a
ligature to the neck. That’s what was written on my Death Certificate. And as I
had no immediate family nor next of kin, my body was collected by a local
undertakers twenty-four hours later where it was taken to an airfield just
outside Durham and flown by Lynx AH.9 Battlefield helicopter to a very private
hospital in the Scottish highlands and handed over to a team of specialists,
who revived me, repaired the damage and handed me back my life.

Of course, I hadn’t really been dead. I’d
been in a deep deep all-but dead coma, and shut down so completely that even an
autopsy wouldn’t have been able to ascertain if I’d still been alive –
unlikely after an autopsy. But autopsies rarely looked into prison hangings.
Bill had supplied the drugs. All I’d had to do was take them and hang myself.
My coma would protect me for up to forty-eight hours until The Agency could get
to me.

And if they didn’t get to me on time?

“No problem,” Bill had assured me.
“There’s a complaint procedure in case of such events, but in all the time The
Agency’s been operating, it’s never had a single action filed against it.”

Like I said, he was a fucking comedian.

It took my body three months to recover
but when it had, I was fed, drilled, trained and prepared, before being shipped
off to East Timor to help Connaughtard Cottletrophff destroy the wheat crop of
Australia, for somewhat megalomaniacal reason. That first signing on payment
had settled my account with The Agency. It was also the first time I’d ever
encountered Jack Tempest. And also the first time I’d ever seen someone drown
in a vat of grain – poor old Connaughtard.

When I was extracted by The Agency, I was
given a new identity – my current one as it happens – with all the
accompanying documents; birth certificate, driving licence, passport, even a
new National Insurance number. One job and I was a living, breathing free man
all over again. My past had been erased. My time served. My debts repaid. No
one was looking for me. And no one would. As long as I kept a low profile and
avoided my old stamping grounds of course. That life was over for me. The Agency
made that very clear. This was an entirely new life. And if I wanted to keep
it, I had to let the old one go completely. That had been the deal. That was
the price we all paid to be reborn.

So Bill took me in and put me up. We’d
been in East Timor together and I’d thrown him on to the evac chopper after
he’d been shot, so he’d taken me under his wing to repay me for saving his
life, providing me with a sofa to sleep on and even introducing me to his
family.

And Linda.

Oh well, that’s enough disaster stories
for one day. Back to shooting the new recruits.

“Son of a bitch!” Captain Bolaji swore as
I blasted the masonry around the rope he was clambering, causing him to fall
off again.

“Get up that rope you black bastard!” I
shouted, fully aware that this sort of language didn’t go down at all well in
the workplace these days, but equally aware that while sticks and stones could
break one’s bones, grinders would also ruin your favourite shirt.

Captain Bolaji glared at me with
contempt, then hurled himself at the rope and climbed hand over fist as I
peppered the surrounding wall with the rest of my banana clip, chuckling to
myself and grinning with satisfaction when he fell over the top and encountered
Mr Sato’s flamethrower.

“Priceless,” I sighed.

Actually, not all new recruits had to be
lifers. A few exceptions were made for former soldiers or time-served
mercenaries with the right experience. Captain Bolaji had saved my life. So in
return The Agency door had been cracked open for him. A potentially dangerous
situation for Captain Bolaji, because there was no prison he could be returned
to if things didn’t work out; just the quandary of what to do with the lone
African gunman who knew all about our secret organisation but who didn’t want
to be part of it any more.

Hmm, yeah, tricky one. No lawyers
required I suspect.

“Last three,” I shouted, and the last
three recruits took to the range while I loaded a fresh magazine and reset my
watch. “Move it!”

There were around thirty new recruits in all: four from Britain, six from the
Continent, six from the States and thirteen from Asia. That left just Captain
Bolaji sticking out like the sore thumb. Strangely, there weren’t many Africans
Affiliates. I’d only ever encountered one other in all my time at The Agency. I
don’t know why this should be. The Agency certainly wasn’t prejudiced. After
all, one man’s money was just as good as another’s. No, if I’d had to guess I
would’ve said that most Africans didn’t need to look that far a field for
trouble. There were plenty of wars and local conflicts to interest its young
men, so why travel?

Not that we were soldiers. Not really.

No, we were criminals, plain and simple.
Straight down the line and no pretence at anything else. We were criminals, out
to make a buck and feather our nests with all the gaudy trappings – ie:
drink, drugs, women and leopard skin furniture.

And I think it was this, more than race
or religion that was the hardest thing for Captain Bolaji to deal with when it
came to fitting in. He didn’t vocalise his doubts, that would’ve been silly,
but I recognised the inner conflict that was raging away behind his eyes. See,
when we’d been part of the Special Army, he’d been an ideological soldier. He’d
genuinely believed in the cause and in particular His Most Excellent Majesty,
which is why he’d been so easy to dupe. But now, here he was in amongst the
dupers, or at least their kind, and it was a hard thing for him to reconcile.

I stared down at Captain Bolaji a couple
of hours later in the boiler room and wondered if I’d been right to trust him.
Then again, had I been right to trust anyone? There were two others with us;
rock solid recruits who’d stay the course and no doubt turn Affiliates if they
survived their first operation. But would they be able to keep their mouths
shut about the things that really mattered?

Who knew?

“The first rule about book club is you
don’t talk about book club,” I told my three new recruits. “The second rule
about book club is you don’t talk about book club!” These were essentially the
same rules, I’ll admit, but I was having trouble making up the ten and Chuck
Palahniuk had gotten away with it so I figured I could too.

Captain Bolaji crumpled his eyebrows and
frowned.

“The third rule; no names – post
usernames only when you’re on-line. The fourth rule is no chit chat. We’re all
copied into the same forum so no boring banter about West Ham’s chances next
season thinking we’re all going to find it fascinating because we’re not
– book talk only. The fifth rule is no operational details. You can post
your location, but not what you’re doing there or who you’re working for,” I
told them, pacing backwards and forwards in front of the boiler. “If you’re
really concerned about the safety of other book club members, you can, in extreme
circumstances, recommend we avoid certain parts of the world in the coming
months.”

“Like what?” Mr Nikitin (username:
Smoker
) asked.

“Like, for example, you might post up
something like; ‘crikey, have you seen how much hotels charge in Washington these
days? I’d wouldn’t go there if I was you – especially not next April,’
that sort of thing. You know, subtle.”

Mr Nikitin nodded to demonstrate he
understood. Captain Bolaji, who still hadn’t chosen his username yet, just
frowned some more.

“The sixth rule is no posting your own
books. You are only allowed to read the books that are officially nominated. If
you want to be a loose cannon, join a library. If you want to nominate a book,
wait your turn and earn your credits. The seventh rule; you have to finish a
book before you can comment on it. That’s every single page. It doesn’t matter
if it’s boring. If you want to give it a kicking, you have to finish it. The
eighth rule is no giving away the endings. We’re all reading the same books
here, but not necessarily at the same time, so don’t go spoiling the endings by
boasting how you could see the big twist coming from a mile off or that they
all did it, let us find that out for ourselves. The ninth rule is voting; if
you read a book, you have to vote on it. No excuses. No abstaining. Marks out
of five, one being the lowest, five the highest…”