If The Bed Falls In Read online

  “So, what shall I tell them?” asked a pretty blond girl.

  “What?” Morrison responded absently.

  “The Governor of the Bank of England? His office called to ask if the meeting tomorrow is still okay?”

  He looked at her and smiled. Although now the wrong side of sixty, Morrison’s historic good looks were still very evident in his face, and his piercing blue eyes had not faded with time.

  “Yes, Kimberly,” he said, “Tell them that’s fine.”

  Kim hated that he always insisted on calling her Kimberly. He was the only one in the office that had the courage to do so. But she could forgive those blue eyes anything.

  Kim left the room, and Morrison watched her shapely form leave. The door closed behind her. He stared into space for a few moments, then became aware of a ringing sound coming from a locked drawer in his desk. He opened the drawer with a key from his pocket, and answered the mobile.

  “Ezra,” he said, simply.

  “It’s Mrs Law,” came the female voice on the phone.

  “Any news?”

  “The Big Man found him.”

  Morrison sat up with a jerk.

  “Shit!” he said reactively, “Where has he been?… Do they suspect anything?”

  “Why would they?” the female voice inquired.

  “Because he went AWOL?” suggested Morrison.

  “Yes, but we don’t know he wasn’t on a mission… or he’s doing something he hasn’t told us about.”

  “Okay,” said Morrison, relaxing a little, “but there’s no precedent; this has never happened before.”

  “You’re over-reacting,” she said.

  “Really? Well, I think that it’s better to over-react than risk missing something important,” Morrison parried.

  “This game’s not like banking, you know,” the woman said, “You can account for money, you can’t for people.”

  “Very clever,” Morrison conceded.

  “It was rather, wasn’t it?” the woman’s voice smiled, “We’re calling a Bedfellows’ meeting tomorrow. Will that work for you?”

  “When tomorrow?”

  “One o’clock, usual place.”

  “Shit, shit!” reacted Morrison, throwing open his diary, “can that be moved… to a different time?”

  “Ezra! You know that that is the golden rule. Meetings are sacrosanct. They never get re-arranged.”

  “Then why did you ask if that will work for me?” he questioned.

  “Courtesy.”

  “Huh… okay, I’ll be there.”

  Morrison put the mobile back into the desk and re-locked the drawer securely. He ran his finger along the cold metal of the Colt 45 replica, then pressed a button on his desk phone.

  “Hi, Kimberly?” he called out to the device.

  “Yes,” came the reply from the speaker. There was a slight sigh in her voice.

  “Can you re-arrange the meeting with the Governor tomorrow? Something’s come up.”

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  Chapter 10

  Joseph followed a British Intelligence flunky to the lift. The button was pressed, and they waited.

  “It’s a great pleasure to meet you, Mr Miller,” oozed the young flunky. Joseph half smiled and nodded. “You’re… a bit of a legend around here,” he continued.

  “You shouldn’t believe all you hear,” commented Joseph, ungraciously.

  The young man laughed awkwardly, as if in the presence of a taciturn god.

  “Is that… advice, Mr Miller?”

  “No,” said Joseph, “it’s because I don’t know what else to say. I don’t think I’m the hero you seem to think.”

  “But the stories, Sir… So many stories,”

  “Probably not true,” Joseph said dismissively.

  “I think you might be being modest, Sir?”

  The lift arrived and Joseph stepped in.

  “… And I think you might be being gullible.”

  The lift transported them to the eleventh floor. The doors opened.

  “Are you really saying the stories aren’t true?” the flunky asked.

  Joseph looked hard at the young man.

  “The truth! Do you know what truth is? Well, do you?”

  The flunky recoiled a little. His rosy cheeks blanched. Joseph stomped off down the corridor. The young man followed. As Joseph neared their destination, the flunky put on a spurt of speed and overtook him. His action looked like that of a puppy, desperate to please his master. He slid a key into a door, and threw it open.

  “The executive apartment,” he announced.

  Joseph walked into the room. The flunky stayed at the threshold.

  “It’s a great view, isn’t it, Sir?” the young man said, desperately searching for Brownie points.

  “If you don’t mind being unnaturally high up,” Joseph responded, tersely.

  “You don’t like heights, Sir?” the flunky said incredulously.

  “Heights aren’t the problem… I don’t like falling. If god had meant men to be so high up, he would have made our legs longer.”

  “That’s funny… Will you be needing anything else, Sir?” the young man asked. Joseph shook his head. “Well, if you do, there’s a telephone on the bedside table; just dial the usual information number, triple seven.” He turned to go, but hesitated and faced Joseph again. “Are the stories really not true?”

  Joseph stared at him and sighed.

  “For most of the last twenty-four hours,” Joseph said slowly and deliberately, “I thought I was someone called Tom; a middle aged photographer.” He paused, “If you want to know about the truth, you’re asking the wrong person.”

  “Right,” intoned the flunky, and backed into the corridor. “Triple seven, Sir… if you need anything.” He slipped the key into the room-side of the door lock.

  “Yeah, you said.”

  The flunky padded dejectedly towards the lifts. Joseph closed the door behind him.

  The apartment consisted of two receptions, a large bedroom and an en suite bathroom. It was nicely furnished and in a good state of decoration, but was more like a top room in a three-star hotel than anything that could legitimately be awarded the label ‘executive’.

  Joseph sat on the bed, forcing himself to explore his own mind; trying to search out sketchy memories and drag them into the light. For the first time since he had accepted that Tom and Tom’s life was simply an illusion, the tendrils of doubt started to do their dark work. He looked around himself. ‘If all of this is real, why am I having so much trouble remembering details? Why can I remember so little?’ Although Tom’s life was now a collection of very distorted memories, Joseph still had the feeling that they were somehow complete; they made sense. But this? ‘Why were the CIA torturing me? What’s all this stuff about the Spring?’

  The phone rang. Joseph reached across to the bedside cabinet and picked it up.

  “We need to talk,” said Simmons.

  “About?…”

  “Come back down to the ninth. There’s someone you need to talk to.”

  “Who?” asked Joseph, “About what?”

  “The person sitting with me has information about the Bedfellows.”

  Thandie Smith was a beautiful woman, but although this had meant she had never been short of offers, she had remained doggedly single throughout her forty-three years.

  She had left school at sixteen and worked aimlessly as an office girl and/or secretary at a number of companies around the Yorkshire city of Sheffield until she made a succession of ill-conceived life choices. After eighteen months in the wilderness, she landed a job at British Metals. Her rise up the company ladder had been slow but powerful. And that really summed up her method of operation; slow, but powerful. Her low gear, high torque approach to her work had earned her the nickname ‘Metal Thandie’. It was a name in common parlance at the company, but never within her earshot. Along with her fortieth birthday came her final promotion; almos
t as if it had been a birthday present from the gods; she rose to become CEO of the entire company.

  Thandie sat at the head of the large table in the company’s boardroom with just one other person seated next to her. A suited, distinguished man in his mid fifties. The two people were visually diminished by the grand, heavy table, the other twenty-eight unoccupied chairs and the lofty ceiling. But anyone entering that room would be in no doubt that the attractive woman, casually sitting in the number one seat, was totally in control.

  “I got a call from Mrs Law,” said the man.

  Thandie nodded.

  “Yeah, I got a call from Uncle. I know… he’s back.”

  The man moved in his seat, trying to get comfortable.

  “So, do we simply go ahead?” he asked.

  Thandie doodled on a pad of paper in front of her.

  “Of course we go ahead. Until we actually know that something is wrong, we carry on as if everything is going as planned.”

  There was no reply. She looked up from her doodling.

  “Okay?” she said, “Look, if anyone has any objections, we can discuss it tomorrow at the meeting.” The man nodded in agreement, but moved a little in his chair again. Thandie changed tack. “So, how’re we doing?”

  “Oh, no problems,” the man responded, “the minister’s completely on-board with the arrangements. He thinks the President would quite like a tour of the foundry.”

  “I can do that. What we need are the timings. That’s going to be the most crucial thing.”

  “Special branch and SIS flatly refuse to release any final itinerary until the day,” he said shaking his head.

  “Well, you’ll need to find a way. Someone knows, and everyone has a price. Just find out who and how much.”

  “Okay,” the man said half-heartedly, “I’ll try again.”

  Thandie slammed her pen down and grabbed his arm roughly. As she spoke her Yorkshire roots lay thickly on her tongue and her prettiness was consumed by an intense darkness.

  “You won’t try, John… you’ll fucking do it.”

  She squeezed his arm, and could see her actions were hurting both his physical and emotional pride.

  “For fuck’s sake, Thandie, I’ll get it done. Don’t treat me like one of your workers.”

  She relaxed and released her grip on his arm. Her poise returned with the crispness of a switch being thrown.

  “Well then, John,” she said calmly, “that’s all right then.”

  Joseph splashed his face with water and combed his hair with one of the complimentary items that had been neatly laid out next to the sink. He walked slowly to the door and slid the key from where it protruded from the inside lock. Joseph closed the door, solidly behind himself, and gave it two hard pushes to make sure it was secure. Then he took the stairs to the ninth floor.

  Arriving at Simmons’ grand office, Joseph knocked on the door. A voice from within called instantly.

  “Come!”

  Joseph went in and closed the heavy door behind him.

  “Ah, Joseph. Thank you so much for coming down,” Simmons said cheerily.

  Joseph scanned the room. It was empty apart from Simmons and himself.

  “I thought you said there was someone here who knew about the Bedfellows?”

  Simmons motioned towards the en suite bathroom that adjoined his office.

  “She’s in the loo,” Simmons explained, “I’m sure she’ll be out presently. You know what the fairer sex are like once they get their talons into a bathroom.”

  The two men sat on one of the sofas. Joseph looked at the older man expectantly.

  “Well, Joseph, it appears that the Bedfellows are a renegade group of embedded agents, disenchanted with the machinations of our sterling efforts, and determined to… how can one give this the gravity it needs?… Fuck things up.”

  “And who are they?” asked Joseph.

  “We don’t know. I am informed that there are six of them. Five are embedded agents – British intelligence sleepers, placed carefully in a number of influential positions in government, industry and media, and…”

  “… And the sixth?” prompted Joseph.

  “Well, embarrassingly it appears that it’s an active field agent; someone here at SIS.”

  “Jesus!” Joseph responded. “Do you have any idea who it is?”

  “Funnily enough, our lady friend,” he gestured towards the closed door of the bathroom, “believes she does.”

  At that moment, as if confirming her presence on cue, the toilet flushed. Simmons looked kindly at Joseph.

  “Any of this prompting any memories? Anything coming back to you?”

  Joseph shook his head.

  “Sorry… nothing.”

  “Shame,” Simmons said turning away, just as the bathroom door opened.

  Joseph looked up to see who this fountain of information was, and as a slender, coffee-coloured hand reached around the door, he knew. The woman came into the room at a measured pace, revealing herself little by little, like a striptease artist. Then, with her identity fully revealed, the woman made her way towards the two seated men, her beauty marred by a pronounced limp in her left leg. Joseph looked at Simmons.

  “What the fuck is she doing here?” he demanded.

  Simmons said nothing. He seemed to be enjoying the charade.

  “I thought we’d be seeing each other again,” the woman said, languidly hanging onto every vowel in her American accent.

  “And I thought you were dead,” Joseph said blankly.

  Sherry Goodman limped over to the sofa opposite the two men, and sank heavily onto it.

  “This is your expert?” Joseph said, turning hard on Simmons. “This is the person you’re going to believe?”

  Simmons smiled at Joseph.

  “Listen, old man, why don’t you help us avoid any more unpleasantness and simply come clean, eh?” Simmons turned to Sherry, “to use one of your colourful expressions.”

  “Come clean about what?” demanded Joseph.

  “Joseph, please stop. This is me you’re talking to. I’ve known you for more years than I care to remember. Do you really think I can’t tell when you’re lying?”

  “Lying! I’m not lying about anything. The only things I’m not saying are the things I can’t remember. For god’s sake, I don’t know anything about these Bedfellows… or the Spring.”

  Sherry leant forwards, moving her leg painfully as she did.

  “Joseph, we will get the truth… one way or another. Don’t think you can fuck me over again. You’ve done it twice, there ain’t gonna be a third time.”

  “Twice?” questioned Joseph.

  Sherry snorted mockingly.

  “You thought you’d get away with Berlin?” she said.

  “I wasn’t responsible for Berlin,” said Joseph.

  “Fuck you!” Sherry responded.

  “Blow it out your arse, Sherry,” Joseph exclaimed dismissively.

  “Well, we are having a fun time with these colourful American expletives today, aren’t we?” interjected Simmons. “Look, old man, we know quite a lot about these Bedfellows. We believe this Spring chap is their leader. What we don’t know is who they are.”

  “And you think I do?”

  “Yes, we do,” said Sherry.

  “And why would I know more than you? How could I know more than the combined intelligence of both the CIA and SIS?”

  “Simple really,” said Sherry, “because you’re the Spring.”

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  Chapter 11

  Joseph sat on the sofa in the executive apartment; no longer a guest, but a prisoner; brought starkly home by the absence of the key on the inside of the apartment’s door. He was locked in, and a burly guard sat on a simple cane chair on the other side of the threshold. The door, the simplest exit, was therefore not a tenable escape route.

  Joseph scanned the room. This situation allowed for the most contemplative of problem
solving modes. The scale goes from lightning reactions that even shortcut the usual route to the brain; knee-jerk, autonomic responses; to sitting back and slowly going over all possible courses of action. The selector for which point on the scale is chosen lies in the situation itself; how imminent is the danger; the timescale inherent from noticing the problem to needing a solution.

  Joseph had only noticed the problem a few minutes ago. Up until then, the focus of his attention had been ‘who he was’, then if he solved that puzzle, ‘what was actually going on’. He had been completely unaware that lurking beneath these seemingly top priority conundrums was something far more dangerous. He had enemies; people who wished him harm as they believed he was out to do harm to them. They were the worst kind of enemies. They were the kind that hid their malevolence behind the disarming smile of friendship. It’s true that Joseph had never been big on friendship. Functionality had always been his driving motivation. The wide tolerance needed to sustain a friendship was simply inefficient. Anything that was not functional was merely fashion, and he had little time for such frivolous things. However, the betrayal of belief that Simmons had shown for him was not so much a betrayal of friendship, but a lack of trust. For Joseph ‘trust’ – a faith-based belief born out of unchanging experiences with a particular person – was sacrosanct. Like the rule of law, society could not function without trust. And although this was not as absolute and fundamental a system as Joseph would have liked, it was the best humanity had achieved so far.

  Why Simmons and the CIA had lost trust in him was a mystery, but he knew the answer had to lie within the many details he could not remember. It was, of course, possible that he was indeed the Spring, but it was equally possible that he was not. And whatever the Spring was, and whatever threat the Spring may be to MI6 or the CIA, Joseph was not that. Joseph had no idea what the Spring believed or wanted to do. So, if he was the Spring, and was therefore a danger to the world, that danger was locked away in his memories. Choice was no longer his. He was persona non grata based on beliefs of which he was unaware, and which he could not decide for himself. Whatever he believed in right now, however solidly he was allied with MI6, it was some unknown Joseph that made him a danger to the state. Logically there was only one way to move forward. He had to somehow uncover what he could not remember. But that left one very unsettling possibility. How could he remember what he was when he became conscious of being the Spring, if in truth he was not the Spring?