The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [542]
“Well,” I stammered, feeling unnaturally shocked for some reason. “I suppose no reason at all.”
“Good. Be off with you. After we’ve gone to the zoo we might drop in at the tea rooms. And then the theater.”
She had started to go all dreamy so I left, shocked not only that Mother might be even considering some sort of a fling with Bismarck, but that Joffy might have been right.
27.
Weird Shit on the M4
George Formby was born George Hoy Booth in Wigan in 1904. He followed his father into the music-hall business, adopted the ukulele as his trademark, and by the time the war broke out, he was a star of variety, pantomime and film. During the first years of the war, he and his wife Beryl toured extensively for ENSA, entertaining the troops as well as making a series of highly successful movies. When invasion of England was inevitable, many influential dignitaries and celebrities were shipped out to Canada. Moving underground with the English resistance and various stalwart regiments of the Local Defence Volunteers, Formby manned the outlawed “Wireless St. George” and broadcast songs, jokes and messages to secret receivers across the country. The Formbys used their numerous contacts in the north to smuggle Allied airmen to neutral Wales and form resistance cells that harried the Nazi invaders. In postwar republican England, he was made nonexecutive President for Life.
John Williams, The Extraordinary Career of George Formby
I avoided the news crews who were staking out the SpecOps Building and parked at the rear. Major Drabb was waiting for me as I walked into the entrance lobby. He saluted smartly but I detected a slight reticence about him this morning. I handed him another scrap of paper. “Good morning, Major. Today’s assignment is the Museum of the American Novel in Salisbury.”
“Very . . . good, Agent Next.”
“Problems, Major?”
“Well,” he said, biting his lip nervously, “yesterday you had me searching the library of a famous Belgian and today the Museum of the American Novel. Shouldn’t we be searching more, well, Danish facilities?”
I pulled him aside and lowered my voice. “That’s precisely what they would be expecting us to do. These Danes are clever people. You wouldn’t expect them to hide their books in somewhere as obvious as the Wessex Danish Library, now would you?”
He smiled and tapped his nose.
“Very astute, Agent Next.”
Drabb saluted again, clicked his heels and was gone. I smiled to myself and pressed the elevator call button. As long as Drabb didn’t report to Flanker I could keep this going all week.
Bowden was not alone. He was talking to the last person I would expect to see in a LiteraTec office: Spike.
“Yo, Thursday,” Spike said.
“Yo, Spike.”
He wasn’t smiling. I feared it might be something to do with Cindy, but I was wrong.
“Our friends in SO-6 tell us there’s some seriously weird shit going down on the M4,” he announced, “and when someone says ‘weird shit’ they call—”
“You.”
“Bingo. But the weird shit merchant can’t do it on his own, so he calls—”
“Me.”
“Bingo.”
There was another officer with them. He wore a dark suit typical of the upper SpecOps divisions, and he looked at his watch in an unsubtle manner.
“Time is of the essence, Agent Stoker.”
“What’s the job?” I asked.
“Yes,” returned Spike, whose somewhat laid-back attitude to life-and-death situations took a little getting used to. “What is the job?”
The suited agent looked impassively at us both.
“Classified,” he announced. “But I am authorized to tell you this: unless we get ****** back in under ******-**** hours, then ***** will seize ultimate executive ***** and you can **** good-bye to any semblance of *******.”
“Sounds pretty ****ing serious,” said Spike, turning back to me. “Are you in?”
“I’m in.”
We were driven without explanation to the roundabout at Junction 16 of the M4 motorway. SO-6 were national security, which made for some interesting conflicts of interest. The same department protecting Formby also protected Kaine. And for