Paddy Bostock - Chosen

“Play me one of his songs, could you?” said Dame Muriel.

“You’ve never heard one before?”

“Remind me.”

“Okay. So how about this one?” said Maurice, taking out his laptop and calling up Our World, the first ever international satellite broadcast of June 25 th1967 featuring Maria Callas, Pablo Picasso… and the BBC’s contribution to the show of The Beatles playing “All You Need Is Love,” a song Lennon had written especially for the occasion.

“I particularly like the line about us all being able to learn how to be ourselves in time. You didn’t see the programme, ma’am?”

“I was a mere girl at the time and school would never have allowed it anyway. No Beatlemania for us girls,” said Dame Muriel by way of explanation. “And you’re younger than me. So how did you…?”

“Through an indulgent and Beatlemanic father, ma’am.”

“Ah. Quite a nice little ditty, though, and with a whole bally or chestra to go with it,” said his boss as the screen faded. “I rather liked the Marseillaise bit with the French horns at the beginning. May we hear it again?”

Maurice smiled and hit replay, to which Dame Muriel clicked her fingers and giggled a bit.

“And the Lennon chappie is which one?” she said as the video re-ran.

Maurice pointed him out in his long silk jacket and Indian beads.

“Mmm, one has to admit one can see a certain attraction,” said the head of MI6. “And he’s dead, you say?”

“Shot to death outside The Dakota apartment building in New York. He said it was the only city on earth he’d ever felt free to walk the streets.”

“Dear, dear. And this was long ago?”

“December the eighth, nineteen eighty,” said Maurice who, like many people around the world, remembered precisely where he was when the news broke. In the case of a fledgling OO17, it was deep undercover in Moscow of all places.

“And it’s the revenant of this fellow you’re telling me who could, after all these years, so appeal to the global public imagination as to…?”

“As I have always said, it’s a gamble, but I believe the odds could be in our favour. There are, after all, people who believe Elvis is still alive and living on Mars, so…”

“ El vis?”

“Presley, ma’am.”

“Was he a Beatle too?”

“No. He was an American singer known as the king of rock ’n’ roll who…”

“Anyway, any way, Double O Seventeen,” said Dame Muriel, “to return to topic, you mentioned a lookalike to play this revenant.”

“I did, ma’am.”

“And may one ask who? After all, your original mission was simply to find the bonkers banker, not to fiddle-faddle about with solutions to global neo-fascism.”

“Quite so, ma’am,” said Maurice, sufficiently encouraged by Dame Muriel’s visceral attraction to Lennon to lay before her all his cards. Which was when he fessed up to having found Jeremy Crawford and his new albeit improbable friends, all of whom had found it easy to learn how to be themselves in time.

Dame Muriel paled, then flushed, then paled again, then flushed again.

“You… mean… to… tell … me… you… found …? she eventually spluttered.

“The bonkers banker? Yes. And he is very far from bonkers. Sorry I didn’t tell you earlier.”

More spluttering, ending with, “And you didn’t tell Phoebe either?”

“No, ma’am. You’re the only one to know.”

“Well, that’s a relief. And these friends of his?”

“One used to be a philosophy prof, my philosophy prof as it happens, at Oxford. He’s a gardener now. Another is an ex-policeman. And the other two are Jeremy’s ex-banking boss and his woman PA.”

“A very odd bunch.”

“Indeed, but they have come together through shared life experience.”

“Explanation please, Double O Seventeen. All a tad esoteric for me.”

So it was that Maurice outlined the difference between choosing and being chosen and the way such an insight could alter the course of a person’s life, never mind their background or gender.

Hiatus while Dame Muriel digested this and Maurice took another happy look at The Beatles’ offer to Our World in 1967.

Once the digestive hiatus was more or less over, she said, “And these people of yours are to play a part in this plan?”

“A critical one. They are to be The Reconstructed Beatles, although the focus of my attention will be on John, who will be played by Jeremy, the bonkers banker.”

“And the rest of the real Beatles. Are they dead too? I mean, if they’re still alive, how are they going to feel about having other people playing them? Can’t have MI6 facing plagiarism and impersonation suits for huge sums.”

“Don’t worry, ma’am. I’ve already thought of that. Poor old George died some years ago too, but Paul and Ringo are still alive and very much kicking. To assuage your fears, I have already been in touch with them and they are happy for tribute bands to play their tunes without any royalty claims. All they ask is for any money raised to go to charities of their choice.”

“Pretty decent chaps then,” said Dame Muriel.

Maurice smiled, sensing a shift in his boss’s position and, thus emboldened, threw into the conversation an adaptation to the plan for her to ponder, namely the new Lennon narrative he had dreamt up on the tube from Tooting to Vauxhall Cross, the one in which John is shot but doesn’t die. He and Yoko have fabricated the whole murder scenario so they can escape forever the hassle of fame and live in peace on some desert island where nobody can find them. Only now, given the awfulness of world politics, he has decided to return and save the day.

“Yoko? Funny name. Who she?” asked Dame Muriel.

“His widow, ma’am. She’s Japanese.”

“Gosh. Will she come too?”

“No,” said Maurice, making a mental note to check with Yoko Ono, although he was pretty sure as co-writer of ‘Imagine’ she would love the story.”

“And you’re floating this fantasy, although presumably the killing was recorded and somebody locked up for it…”

“Mark David Chapman, and he’ll never leave prison.”

“Even if his murderee suddenly turns up alive? Surely then he could claim a legally suspect verdict and damages galore.”

Maurice nodded. “The thought has also crossed my mind, ma’am. But remember what we’re tapping into here is the power of myth, in which verifiable facts play little part. Chapman can plead whatever he likes, it’ll make no difference.”

“You mean we would be lying? I have never known you to lie, Double O Seventeen.”

“There are outright lies, ma’am, then there is massaging of the truth, as you will have observed in the clouds of obfuscation surrounding both the madman in the White House and his counterpart in the Kremlin. Hard to tell in such circumstances what ‘truth’ even means any longer, except that it’s normally declared ‘fake’ in these post-truth days. One only needs think of the pearls of solipsism dripping from the lips of our current foreign secretary, let alone the loony in the White House.”

Maurice shrugged meaningfully.

Dame Muriel nodded. She was no fan of either.

“And as you must well know, ma’am, there are moments when counter intelligence requires us get our hands dirty too. Whether we like it or not.”

Dame Muriel nodded again. “Okay, I’m beginning to understand, Double O Seventeen. A case of means and ends we’re talking here, am I right?”

“Yes, ma’am. And Machiavellian though it may be, if it’s the only game in town what is the point of us standing on the side lines shouting boo at the ref when the ref has already been paid off by the opposition to go deaf?”