Adam Mars-Jones - Pilcrow

‘But it’s only my second day …’ I whined.

‘These people we’re up against are ruthless. They’ll use your weakness against you.’ This I could understand. This was just the sort of rubbish that filtered down from the fathers of our generation. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘nothing will happen that I can’t handle. That’s what I’m here for, after all …’

He had been on the blower to his boss at HQ, and there was a plan in place. Atkinson would be kidnapped the next Monday. He would be detained at HQ for three days, interrogated and then brain-washed. Atkinson was very dangerous, but it had to be admitted that he was an extremely good agent. It would be a shame to eliminate a man of that calibre, so HQ (after taking advice from Julian, of course) had decided that it was worth taking the risk of recruiting him to be one of ours, once he had been brain-washed.

The funny thing was that Atkinson did disappear on the Monday. Miss Willis told us that his sister had been taken ill suddenly and he needed to visit her. She hoped that things would be back to normal in a few days. She read out this announcement from a piece of paper, peering down at it through her half-moon specs.

My admiration for the boy agent Julian went from strength to strength — it was a treat to see how even Miss Willis had fallen for the cover story. I just wished I’d been a senior enough agent to be trusted with it ahead of time. On Thursday Atkinson was back, looking just as dapper, and continuing to write his upward-sloping curly R s in just the same way, but somehow he was milder. Something had happened to him which was the opposite of what happened to my stick when the gun was installed. He had been hollowed out. More had been taken out during interrogation than had been put back in.

All the same, I got a reward for my part in the successful conclusion of the Atkinson affair. QM used his influence to get me a promotion. He was now my immediate superior. I was to report only to him.

Usefulness in the field

Julian told me I would be put on an assignment within a week. I was very excited, but I also had doubts about my usefulness in the field. ‘We’ve already thought of that,’ he said. ‘GHQ says you’re to be issued with a hidden tape-recorder. It will be planted in your body at some stage. It may be grafted on while you’re sleeping — we do a lot of our work that way — or I may install it myself. Keep it on you at all times! ’ I promised I would. Of course, since it would be grafted onto my body, I wouldn’t be able to do anything else.

I was looking forward to getting my tape-recorder, but I wasn’t sure that I wanted a secret agent to install it in my body while I was asleep. What if I woke up in the middle of installation? And if I woke in the night I would wonder if an agent had already been, to leave his equipment inside me. I much preferred the plan that Julian — QM — would install the apparatus himself. If he did, he would have to get close to me, and after all, I did have a mission of my own.

It turned out that HQ wasn’t able to send an agent that week. Some sort of show in the Balkans. So Julian was authorised to take care of the installation himself, in an empty classroom at the end of the school day, when no one else was around. It was vital for both missions that secrecy was observed, otherwise the whole operation would turn into a fiasco. QM reminded me that the security of our country depended on vigilance, and I took my new job very seriously.

Julian came over to me and leant his crutches against the wall by my desk. I put the brake on my wheelchair to give him something stable to hold on to. I tingled from having him so close. Julian always wore a nice shirt and nicer jeans. His clothes looked fresh and smart, however long he wore them. He had a nice fresh smell and kept himself very clean, although the facilities at Vulcan weren’t wonderful. I could never quite work out how he achieved this level of grooming. Perhaps it was all part of an agent’s training.

He was holding himself up on the arm of my wheelchair, to the left of my legs. I wondered what the promised secret tape-recorder would look like. I was also gazing at those crisp new legs. I was familiar with Julian’s back view, and his snug young bottom. Now I was close to the cleft at his front, and trying my hardest to see what was there. There didn’t seem to be very much. Then by good luck I was given another means to explore the equipment.

‘It would be best if you close your eyes now,’ said Julian. ‘HQ’s very anxious that you don’t witness the transfer. What you don’t know can’t be tortured out of you.’ This was a less welcome thought. Julian put his left arm over my right shoulder and then leaned back slightly while I closed my eyes. He was very strong. His strength ran through me. I felt a pressure on my forehead which must have been his thumb. He pressed and twisted, almost to the point of pain, then told me to open my eyes.

Nothing felt different, but my heart was pounding as if he had given me a stimulant injection. Julian’s warm breath was falling on my face. The tape-recorder might be inside me or it might never have existed, but there were other things in the world that cried out to be investigated.

‘This is a solemn moment,’ I said. ‘We should recognise its importance with some sort of pledge.’ I stumbled over the words. ‘You know, a hand-shake or a hug. Maybe even a kiss …’

I was afraid that I had gone too far but Julian didn’t hesitate. ‘Good plan, Agent Nesbitt,’ he replied. Why he called me Agent Nesbitt I have no idea. ‘You have an inventive mind. GHQ will like that. I reckon it should be a hug and a kiss on the ear, and while I’m doing that, I’ll pass on some Top Secret Info!’

Julian hadn’t lost his extraordinary ability to bring others into his fantasy world, but he was also responding to mine. We were like two master hypnotists putting the moves on each other, or just two schoolboys, both equally suggestible, getting carried away.

While I waited for the Top Secret Info to be poured into me, I had my own scheme of espionage. The plan was to get Julian’s leg between mine, and when I had him close to fumble at his cleft just as fast and as furiously as I could. If any treasure was there, I would be sure to find it, even with the somewhat primitive data-gathering equipment available to me. Because of the inflexibility of my wrists, there was no possibility of me turning my palms towards Julian’s crotch. I would have to make do with the backs of my hands.

My assignment within an assignment had its share of risk, but the strong taboo against telling tales, which left me vulnerable at other times, was strangely protective here. I said a quick prayer, hoping that God was indeed omnipresent. Then he must also be in the devil who was tempting me today.

I was an undercover agent, true, but I was certainly a beginner. There was something I had overlooked in my eagerness to go undercover. I parted my legs and waited in rapture for Julian’s left leg to come mounding and pressing against my genitals. The leg never made it that far. As it approached my knee, I felt not pleasure but a bolt of pain.

Chaperone and chastity belt

I could only open my legs the merest crack. I was having a good day in terms of flexibility, and I expect I managed a few inches, but of course a few inches at floor level isn’t the same distance when you work up to the knee. A rolling pin could hardly have fitted between my upper legs, let alone the neatly trousered leg of this strong thirteen-year-old boy.

We were in a school for the disabled, everything in the establishment catered to our difficulties and our special needs, but in the heat of secret-agent fantasy it had slipped my mind that I had Still’s Disease and that he had polio. I hadn’t forgotten, exactly, but at that moment I didn’t remember. I knew perfectly well that Julian wore callipers, but this too had disappeared from my consciousness at this point.