Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite! (34 page)

'Still don't,' threw in his partner acerbically, and Crosskill nodded.

I looked at them and then sat up, pressed my back against the seat. Pulled myself as far away from them as I could manage in such a confined space.

'What now?' I asked.

They exchanged a glance, one of those where they worked out who was going to be doing the talking, and then looked back at me.

'We exchange you for the other guy.'

'What are you going to do with him?'

'We'll see,' she said. 'Might just have to dispose of him.'

'You can't do that!'

'Why? What d'you want us to do with him? Leave him at home. You think your wife would be happy with two of you there?' She glanced at Crosskill and then back at me. 'Maybe in some situations.'

Crosskill laughed.

'But we can't let that kind of thing be going on. We need to extract him, fit you back in. Seamlessly. We're going to meet one of our operatives down there. He's going to give you the same clothes as the other guy. We're going to draw him out and then send you back into the family home.'

'That's it? I won't know what's been going on there for the past four-and-a-half months?'

'No.'

'What if I've done something stupid? What if something major's happened?'

'We've been watching,' said Crosskill. 'Nothing major.'

I stared at them for a long while, one to the other. I wanted more, but it appeared they were finished.

The car continued on its way down the M4, driving at precisely 70 miles per hour.

––––––––

J
ones came back into my head. Hadn't seen her since I left her in Seattle waiting to meet the Starbuck's manager. She'd said she was coming back to the UK the following day, which was the same day as me. Yesterday. At the time I'd hoped she'd by chance be on the same plane, because it wasn't as though there hadn't been a lot of chance. When it came to it though, I was halfway across the Atlantic before I even thought about her.

It had started in the café after I'd first left her at the Hilton, and the change, the distance, had been growing. Seeing her again briefly had only emphasised it. I was moving on, at last, and it had really kicked in after leaving Mr Pike Place Roast, meeting the two agents, and working out where I'd needed to go next. After that, I'd known I'd be going home. It was time.

Now that I was finally heading there, I was a little nervous about seeing Brin again – and the whole thing about another me being with them the entire time was disconcerting – but despite all that, I couldn't wait. I would get to talk to them and hold them and laugh with them. I'd get to lie next to Brin and press myself against her. Just thinking about it made me realise how much I'd missed it.

We came off the motorway, and slowed down. We began to stop at lights, fitting into early evening traffic.

'What's going to happen to the Jigsaw Man?' I asked. 'I mean, you know, Men. Those three guys.'

Neither of them answered. Indeed, as had frequently happened in the past, they acted as though I hadn't spoken. As before, Agent Crosskill was staring at nothing, Agent No Name was looking at a report.

The car accelerated away from a set of lights and then quickly pulled up again. The driver, who was invisible to us, tapped on the glass behind the female Agent's head. She looked up from her report, as if disturbed from a very deep sleep.

'Right,' she said. 'We're on.'

She opened the door and stepped out onto the pavement. We were not far from my house, at the edge of the small residential area I recognised. I began to get out the car and she held her hand up.

'You stay there for a moment. You'll be getting changed.'

Crosskill started to get out of the other side of the car. I thought he was going to leave without saying goodbye, then he stopped and turned back.

'Hey, Mr Kite,' he said, 'how are you on early '70s classic American porn?'

I looked at him without answering. The question was so out of the blue and unexpected that I didn't know what to say.

'Well, the first biggie was
Deep Throat
, of course, but after that came
The Devil In Miss Jones
. A big movie. Genre defining.'

He paused, looking at me, waiting to see if he was going to get any sort of reaction.

He smiled a slightly twisted, cruel smile and then shrugged.

'Just a thought,' he said.

He got out of the car. That was it for Agent Crosskill and me.

The Devil In Miss Jones
.

No, thank you, I didn't want to think about that.

The female agent had closed the door on me, then she returned a few moments later and tossed in a change of clothes. Clothes that I recognised from home. The weird thing was that they weren't new, as though they had my actual clothes, but they'd said they'd be getting clothes to match what the other me was wearing.

I changed in the back of the car, stuffing the clothes I removed into the small backpack I'd been carrying, then I stepped out of the car into a warm early spring evening on the edge of Bristol. She was standing talking to another two men when I emerged.

'Ditch the bag,' she said, turning back to me.

'Why?'

'You've just nipped out for something,' she said. 'Why d'you have a bag of clothes?'

I had no answer.

'If there's anything small you want to keep, stick it in your pockets. Otherwise, bag back in the car.'

I stood at the edge of the pavement thinking about it. The credit card was in a side pocket, but there was little point in keeping that. That aside, I had acquired nothing in the previous week or so that I cared to keep. I opened the car door and tossed in the bag.

'What now?'

'Walk with me,' she said.

She crossed the road without looking, as if she instinctively knew that no cars would dare approach while she was in the area. Her two new companions waited for me to follow her, and then they dropped in behind. There was a small park, a couple of people about, through which there was a shortcut to my house. Sometimes I took that path, and sometimes I didn't bother, since it was barely worth it.

'What's your name?' I asked. 'Agent Jones? Are you Jones?'

She glanced behind, slowed a little while holding my gaze, then said, 'Yes, that's correct.'

I slowed slightly. She didn't, so she pulled away again.

'Come on,' said one of the guys coming up behind me, and he indicated a man walking towards us across the path. Recognised him straight away. It was me, shoulders slightly hunched, staring at the ground looking for dog faeces, rather than looking at the trees or the sky. Wearing the same clothes I was wearing now.

There was another fellow in a suit trailing the other me; walking towards them there was Agent Jones, me, and two other guys in suits. Slowly the other me looked up, looked away again, but he was aware now of the peculiarity. Knowing that I'm not one to stare, I knew that I wouldn't immediately look at all these odd-looking people in suits and the bloke in the same clothes.

Eventually however, the other me looked up. He saw me. We were only about forty yards apart by now. He slowed down and then stopped.

Agent Jones approached him, and soon we were all bunched up. Me, myself, the agent and three guys in suits. I stared at myself. I was the only one of the two of us who had any idea what was going on, and even I wasn't that sure. I noticed the other guy looked a little scared.

I'd hoped that in that situation I'd have been much cooler. In reality, of course, I'm rarely cool.

'What?' was all he said, a question he directed at Agent Jones as it was obvious that she was the one in charge.

Maybe if you're a spy, maybe if you spend your time in
Mission Impossible
type situations, you might expect to come across yourself. You might even look out for it. But this poor sucker was the manager of a Starbucks on the outskirts of Bristol.

'You need to come with us,' said Agent Jones.

'Where?' he asked.

My voice sounded weak. I was disappointed in myself. Show some balls, I wanted to say. Poor sap never had any.

'Doesn't matter,' she said.

The other me turned and that was when he noticed the guy in a suit behind him. He looked around the park, wondering whether or not he should make a scene. It's what I would have done ten months earlier.

Agent Jones turned and gave a quick nod to the two guys who'd followed me up the path. In tandem they eased their suit jackets to the side to reveal the guns padding out their chests.

'You run, we shoot,' she said. 'You cry out, we shoot. You make a scene, we shoot. We're like that Alanis Morissette song
You Learn
, except we shoot. So don't try anything. We can cover our tracks with no problem whatsoever. We own everybody. Including you. You're coming with us.'

She looked at me and nodded, and I stood to the side. At a nudge from behind, and now looking very shaky, he walked by me, our eyes meeting. I recognised that guy, but I wasn't sure that I recognised myself anymore.

He'd shaved that morning, I'd shaved that morning. The similarities seemed to end there.

'What's happening?' he asked, his voice vulnerable and scared. As he passed her she reached inside his trouser pocket and took out the house keys. We always locked the front door, even when others were home. She stopped beside me, as the three guys in suits led him down the short path to the car.

'We'll see how we get on,' she said, handing me the keys. 'We might be back.'

She held my gaze for a while, and then turned and walked quickly after them.

'Agent Jones?' I said.

She did not turn. Perhaps she hadn't heard her name.

Down the path, across the road they went. I watched them all the way, as they headed for a black transit van. Nearly there, the guy looked over his shoulder at me. Our eyes met. He hesitated and received a nudge from one of the suits. He's going to run, I thought. It's what I would do.

He pushed the guy to his right out of the way and took off down the street. As he came alongside a black Mercedes, which was parked facing him, the front passenger door opened. He ran into it and went sprawling. Agent Crosskill got out of the car and stood over him as the three suits quickly caught up. A brief flurry and it was over.

Two of them hauled him up, led him back to the van, then pushed him inside. None of the others got in there with him. It must have been pretty secure, with no way of getting to the driver.

Agent Jones surveyed the scene for a while, wondering perhaps if this brief spectacle had been witnessed by anyone, did not bother looking back in my direction, and got into the car, which immediately drove away. Round a corner and the sound of it was quickly lost.

I stood in near silence for a while. Then I noticed the birds, the familiar sounds, which I hadn't been aware of before. I looked up and around the park. Dusk was falling, but the day was still warm. I'd missed much of it, but it had been one of those delicious, hot early summer days in May that promise so much more than is usually delivered.

I looked at the sky, a near cloudless dark blue. A few aeroplane contrails disappearing south. I looked at the grass and realised that it had been cut earlier in the day, and there was the smell, right there. The smell of freshly mown grass. I closed my eyes and breathed it in.

I was going home. I could forget the past ten-and-a-half months. I could forget the past week.

Smell the grass, feel the warmth.

I could hear knocking and looked down to the road. It was coming from the transit van. Knocking on the back door of the van. The other me had finally woken up and was trying to draw attention to himself. Knock, knock, knock.

Too late.

The van started up and quickly drove off, following the direction of the previous car. They were gone.

I turned and surveyed the park again. Didn't come here much now that Baggins wasn't a toddler anymore. But it reminded me of Baggins and those days of ice cream and Winnie the Pooh and grazed knees. When she was a toddler, she'd fall over, hurt herself, and get back up without so much as a whimper. My brave little girl.

Time to go home.

––––––––

B
rin was in the kitchen. Of everything that had happened – from getting off the plane to finding myself in that extraordinary elevator in the middle of Dubai, from going to the Stand Alone and then finding it had been closed for years, from Mr Pike Place Roast to the Jigsaw Man – this was the weirdest. Standing in my own kitchen, about to talk to my wife.

The place smelled of onions. There was something bubbling in a pot. Potatoes probably, pandering as ever to Baggins.

She turned. I have no idea what was going on with my face. I expected her, of course, to freak. As if she would know. As if she could tell that I'd spent time with Jones.

'Hey,' I said, tentatively.

She regarded me curiously, as if she couldn't quite understand something. Then she looked at my empty hands, then back to my face.

'Where've you been?'

I wasn't sure what to make of the question. Had I been a long time in the park? Had she not actually seen me for over four months? I stood there looking nonplussed. Empty headed I dare say.

'Where's the milk?' she added.

'Milk,' I repeated.

'That's why you went out, like, ages ago.'

'Sorry,' I said. 'Forgot.'

'What were you doing?'

'I...eh.. just ran into Matt,' I said, grabbing the first name that came to mind.

'Matt's back?' she said. 'Wow. Why didn't you ask him over?'

Like I hadn't envisioned that kind of thing happening as I'd travelled down the M4. I mention my best friend, and out of the blue, it turns out he's moved off somewhere in the last four months. I shook my head.

'Sorry, not that Matt. One of the guys who comes into the shop. You don't know him. I'll go and get the milk.'

'It's fine. Dinner's almost ready, you can nip out after.'

She was smiling. I couldn't remember Brin smiling, it seemed so long.

'How could you forget the milk?' she said, but there was that mocking tone in her voice, like the old days when we used to tease each other. 'It was the only reason you went out.'