Paddy Bostock - Chosen

“At this rate, there’s no telling, ma’am,” said Maurice, nodding at the tractor up ahead, which was making farting noises and expelling clouds of smoke, causing the dung wagon to quiver and list dangerously towards a ditch. “But more haste, less speed, eh? Meanwhile I do have cups and a thermos of tea on the back seat should you wish to be mother.”

Dame Muriel laughed, a rare occurrence for her. “Don’t suppose you brought along any choccie biccies too, then we could have a picnic.”

“In the glove compartment, ma’am.”

“ Muriel .”

“Muriel. By the way, just to keep you fully abreast of matters in the hoped-for expectation of your agreement, I have released a little teaser across the Internet to whet appetites of what might be to come.”

“ Teaser ?” said Dame Muriel, ferreting in the glove compartment and, to her delight, finding a packet of Jaffa Cakes.

“You know, a mere hint at the as yet unverified but nonetheless distinct possibility of John and George not having died after all and perhaps—just maybe—being prepared to make a one-off and one-time only comeback.”

“To tempt the cats amongst pigeons, eh? You naughty boy,” said Dame Muriel, leaning backwards across her seat in search of the tea thermos.

“Quite. You’ll also find sugar sachets in the box. Two for me, please,” Maurice was saying as magically up ahead the tractor stopped farting and blowing and its driver, Sam Smyles, strolled back to the stopped Morris Minor Traveller to offer his apologies for any delay.

“Sorry, big end problem,” he said as Maurice wound down his window. “Happens all the bleedin’ time with the old darlin.’ Just needs a bit of a rest and a good talking-to and she’s right as rain before you know it. Anyway, sorry for holdin’ you folks up.”

“No problem,” said Maurice, “Similar problems with my old darling.”

Sam nodded sympathetically at Dame Muriel’s backside as she struggled with the tea preparation until Maurice clarified matters by tapping at the Morris Minor Traveller’s dashboard.

“Ah, yes, sorry, the car ,” said Sam. “Also an old lady.”

“Indeed,” said Maurice. “Care for a cup of tea yourself before you head back with your load of…”

“Shit for the fields,” Sam explained. “But, yeah, a cuppa would be nice. Very generous of you, squire.”

And so it was that the head of MI6 and her top trouble-shooter, agent OO17, spent the next half hour sipping tea and chewing Jaffa Cakes in the company of Sam Smyles, who outlined to them with some passion the disasters awaiting local farmers like him once Brexit ensured there would be no more subsidies from Brussels.

“Be without a living we will,” said Sam. “But the bleedin’ government here couldn’t give a toss, could it? Let alone money. And still they expect us to provide the food for folks to eat. And the cow jumped over the moon,” he added tapping at his right temple.

It was with those words ringing in their ears that, some hours later, Maurice and Dame Muriel finally pulled up outside the Shepherd’s Hut.

Maurice couldn’t even have guessed at the impact his John Lennon comeback teaser was to have in St Petersburg, where the old man who had inspired his project still looked out to sea daily in hopes of his hero’s return. His neighbours all believed poor old Fyodor Frumkin to be bonkers, harmless, but nonetheless two sandwiches short of a picnic. So they humoured him. Brought him flasks of vodka and plates of pryaniki and stood alongside him as he tended his shrine and sang “Imagine” to himself and anyone else in the vicinity. He’d learnt most of the words in English and had had them translated for him by his clever son Yuri, who worked for some top-secret computer outfit in town. And Fyodor so loved those words. Just to imagine all the people sharing all the world, how good was that? What the hell was the point, he would argue with anyone prepared to listen, in Russia and America continuing to threaten each other with more and more missiles capable of obl it erating all the people in the world? No point, was Fyodor’s view. As, of course, had been Lennon’s in his and Yoko’s campaign for peace. Soon Fyodor would die and in some ways that would be a relief. But before that day, even for an instant, could there be a glimmer of hope? And as fate would have it, that glimmer came on a Tuesday evening as Fyodor was giving Lennon’s shrine a final polish and taking a last hopeful look at the sea before heading home to his shack.

“Papa, Papa , look at this ,” said Yuri, running up to thrust beneath his father’s eyes a smartphone and click on Maurice Moffat’s teaser with its mini clips of the newly emergent and not-dead recluse John Lennon singing some of his favourite songs with his old band. Then came “Give Peace A Chance,” at which Fyodor wiped tears from his eyes before punching air and shouting “ alliluyya ” (hallelujah in Russian).

Yuri was delighted. The only child of a widower, he loved the father who had sacrificed so much to ensure his son had the best education in town. Okay, the old man was a bit doolally, but who wouldn’t be after enduring the privations of the soviet time, then rejoicing in glasnost, then watching on as the criminal in the Kremlin stole back all the freedoms? So often as a teenager Yuri had listened as Fyodor told him tales of better times when the world had been more open. When he’d also listened on an old record player to a bootleg original of the Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band LP with its exciting sleeve… and to the Rolling Stones, and to Elvis and Chuck Berry, and to many more. But it had always been to Lennon that Fyodor returned, saying: “Hear what this man is saying, son. He has truth in his heart and isn’t afraid to tell it.” Devastated Fyodor had been when news came through of the New York shooting in which he had never fully convinced himself to believe: hence the shrine, hence the hope. And now it was Yuri who brought his father the news he most wanted to hear, that Lennon was still alive. What better gift could a son give such a father?

The fly in the ointment was Yuri’s job with the top-secret St Petersburg computer outfit, the Internet Research Agency, also known as Glavset, internationally recognised as having meddled in Western elections, including most spectacularly the wipeout of the only candidate capable of preventing the madman in the White House from be com ing the madman in the White House. In Glavset’s bunker beneath St Petersburg, his colleagues were running about like headless chickens trying—and failing—to block the further spread of Maurice’s teaser with their firewalls and volts. But however many nifty counter-hacker algorithms they hammered into their keyboards, nothing worked, because Maurice’s counter-counter-hacker algorithms worked better. Back and back came the Lennon songs like an unstoppable refrain. The big boss in Moscow wasn’t going to like this. Not at all he wasn’t.

Ripurpantzov had permitted a number of Western rock concerts, including one by Paul McCartney, but these had been carefully Kremlin-choreographed events, which would include nothing that might be interpreted as critical of the regime. Igor had learnt that lesson from the performances of Pussy Riot, several of whose members he had thrown in jail for sedition. Since then, some of the Beatles’ silly love songs were still allowed across the media as a warped symbol of glitz and “modernity,” but chatter on the wires suggested the president was as aware as OO17—to the point of paranoia some said—of his potential vulnerability to the “decadent” Beatles’ tracks which had foreshadowed the death knell of the Soviet Union. Maybe he’d even seen a translated version of the same TV show as Maurice, the one in which The Beatles had “rocked the Kremlin.” After all, he had spies everywhere, some of whom he’d been obliged to poison with sarin. One thing was for certain, though. Nothing similar did Ripurpantzov want happening to his iron grip on power, especially from the likes of John Lennon.