Paddy Bostock - Chosen

“Office, ma’am?” said Clarence, holding the door open with one hand and doffing his peaked driver’s cap with the other.

“And don’t spare the horses,” said Dame Muriel, sinking into the leather seat, leaning her neck back against the super-padded headrest and, embarrassingly for Clarence when they arrived at MI6 HQ, although he’d known this happen to The Mistress on previous occasions, nodded off.

“Oops,” she said as Clarence re-opened her door, coughed meaningfully, and said, “Sorry to wake you, ma’am, but we’re here.”

“Just a little cat nap, Clarry. Helps clear the brain.”

“Quite so, ma’am. And have a nice rest of the day,” said Clarry/Clarence before climbing back into the driver’s seat and heading off for another Secret Service duty trip with maximum obsequiousness.

Once back in her 24/7 bug-swept office on the twelfth floor of MI6 HQ however, Dame Muriel got on the horn to OO17 straight away.

“Casanova?” she said.

“Milly, my dear. How nice to hear from you. What can I do for you today?”

“Tell me what you’re up to, that’s what. I’m getting bloody Phoebe on the blower every five minutes wanting progress reports and all she’s heard so far is you’re ‘close’ to the Crawford creature. Otherwise her calls all go to message. So bean-spilling time, Double O Seventeen.”

“Ah…”

“Thick as a brick the woman may be, but she is the bally PM after all.”

“At least this week. Rumour has it there could be a night of the long knives any time soon. Fat Slob and Lurch at each other’s throats and hers, and so on.”

“ Lurch ?”

“The chancellor. Both vying for the top job, from what one hears, eh? Cabinet in disarray as usual, all warbling from different hymn sheets over Brexit. Plotting rife. Insurrection on the rise around the Nazi back benches. And all the while the Brussels eurocrats watching on, laughing their socks off. Along with the madman in the White House and Ripurpantzov in the Kremlin, no doubt…”

“Double O Seventeen?”

“Yes, Milly.”

“Enough of the flimflam. I asked you a question.”

“Which was? Remind me.”

“What ‘close’ to Jeremy Crawford means . To which I require an answer. Now!”

“Ah.”

“Otherwise you may soon be finding yourself an ex -Double O Seventeen.”

“I see.”

“So no more muddying of waters.”

“Point taken, Milly,” said Maurice, “rest assured I’m working on the problem twenty-four-seven.”

“With… what… out comes?”

Maurice took a deep breath and stroked the head of Pete the pig, who had nosed his way through the door Maurice had left ajar and wandered over to see what was going on.

“Oink,” he said. Encouragingly.

“What was that noise?” said Dame Muriel, furrowing her brow.

“Wind,” said Maurice. “In the willows. There’re a lot of willows around here.”

“ Where ?”

“Where I am.”

“My patience is running very thin, Double O Seventeen.”

“Understandably, ma’am.”

“Quite. What, where you are concerned, one might term a career-defining moment. So get to the point or be damned.”

Maurice opted for bean spillage and let devils take their hindmosts.

“Well, ma’am, I do have up my sleeve this rather cunning ruse, even if I say so myself. Like to hear it?”

Hiatus while Dame Muriel digested this resonant remark, reminding her as it did of Sir Hubert’s hope for precisely the same thing and his belief if anyone could come up with such a plan, Double O Seventeen could. What she really wanted to know was whether Maurice had found Jeremy Crawford yet, but if…

“Milly? You still there?” said Maurice, as the hiatus persisted.

“I’m here.”

“So cunning ruse time?”

“Okay, but it better be good. And make it brief,” said Dame Muriel. “I’m not one for beating around bushes, as you well know.”

“Indeed, ma’am,” said Maurice, before outlining his plot to destabilize the positions of both the Russian and American dictators by flooding the Internet with images of John Lennon lookalike.

Another hiatus this time, an even longer one.

“Still there, Milly?” said Maurice. “ Milly ?”

“Have you com plete ly lost your marbles, Double O Seventeen?” Dame Muriel eventually spluttered. “A John Lennon lookalike, for God’s sake! If memory serves, was he not LSD-addicted, long-haired, Liverpudlian oaf who sent his MBE back to the queen?”

“Indeed so, ma’am. In protest at our involvement in the Vietnam war. And who, along with his fellow Beatles, played a major part in Gorbachev’s glasnost.”

“ What ? The bally Beatles weren’t polit i cians.”

“No, ma’am. At least not overtly. But you have no idea of the power of popular music when it comes to consciousness-raising. You may recall the effect of Bob Dylan’s ‘The Times They Are a-Changin’ on American society. And he’s a Nobel Laureate now,” said Maurice, adding for good measure his tale of the ancient St Petersburg guy still praying daily for Lennon’s spirit to return to Russia.

“Cloud bloody cuckoo land,” spat Dame Muriel. “And even if it were to work on Ripurpantzov, which… I… very… much… doubt, are you also telling me it could work on the cretin in the White House?”

“Point taken. It’s a long shot, Milly,” Maurice agreed. “But given the power of not only music but the social media in these bizarre days, in my view it’s one worth taking. What we’re looking at here is an iconic reminder of a less jingoistic, less me-me-mine age and, given the psychosis emanating from the White House and encouraged from the Kremlin, you just wonder how many folk might welcome that.”

Yet another hiatus as Dame Muriel reflected on Sir Hubert’s comment on the fillip for MI6’s and MI5’s reputations should the cunning ruse he hoped for manage to upset apple carts in both Moscow and Washington simultaneously, feathers in caps and so on.

“ Milly ?”

“I’m here, Double O Seventeen. And your assessment of the potential impact of all this on fatuous Phoebe and her Brexiteers is? She is our current client, remember.”

“Only too well.”

“So?”

“In a word?”

“If you please.”

“Wipeout,” said Maurice.

Dame Muriel liked the sound of that .

“A reversal of the knee jerk alt-right, and indeed alt-left, populisms currently wreaking havoc on British democracy as we once knew it, to be replaced by a resurgence of wiser, dare one say it, more reflective arguments.”

“Like ‘make love not war’?” said Dame Muriel, vaguely recalling the line both she and Clarissa had scorned back in their distant Girton days.

“Not such a foolish idea after all. A case of ‘coming together,’ as Lennon had it in his usual double-entendre-ish manner. A shame he had to be shot.”

“Which leaves you with something of an impasse, even if I do agree to this nonsense, doesn’t it, Double O Seventeen?” said Dame Muriel. “What with the fellow being dead and everything. No good swamping the cyber waves with a dead person’s image, is there? Hardly likely to arouse much of your consciousness-raising, given people will have seen the images a million times already. Might as well put up pictures of Mozart.”

“Quite so, Milly. Hence the part of my cunning ruse which posits John as a walking, talking returnee to planet earth, an avatar if you wish.”

“A ghost ?” whispered Dame Muriel, whose childhood had been spent in a haunted house in Hertfordshire.