Espionage: A Jigsaw in 500 Pieces [part seven]

by Peter Wild

[ 1-10 ] [ 11-22 ] [ 23-30 ] [ 31-49 ] [ 50-59 ] [ 60-70 ]

[ 71 ]
A long period of frustration follows, twenty pieces, almost, that refuse to measure up or fit together no matter how hard you try. And the worst thing, the worst thing, is: you sense these pieces are important, somehow. You lay them out, these twenty pieces that want to fit but don't quite yet. Twenty pieces, some of whom want to connect with each, some of whom wish to form part of the structure you've already established. Twenty pieces, each of whom may as well be part of a game. Twenty questions. Twenty pieces each of which asks a question. Sometimes the question is simple: where do I fit? Sometimes the question is more obscure. Sometimes the question feels more like a challenge. You can see the challenges piling up like so many gloves thrown down at your feet. There is a piece involving the girl and a piece involving the cancroid lips. There are pieces that bring to mind John Cassavettes and John C Reilly. Ali McGraw, the young woman Hal Ashby was thinking about when he croaked, makes another appearance, albeit as an older woman. Heplock and Stent surface, of course. You knew they were going to. You were expecting them, but still. The fact they don't fit doesn't help. Nothing helps at this point. All we can do is plough on. Pick up a piece at a time. Study what you see. Think. Use the old grey matter. Fill up some of that noggin space. Go on.

[ 72 ]
Take Heplock and Stent as a for instance. It wasn't until they were returned and seated within their illegally parked Ford Escort that they realised that the brown paper package in their possession was in fact an erroneous brown paper package. A brown paper package full of stones and sundry other bits of shit. Not being what you would call creatures of lofty thought, Heplock and Stent stared into the bag for a moment, attempting to work out what the problem was. This can't be what we were looking for, can it? Heplock said. Stent's tongue explored his cheek. I wouldn't say so. Air whistled out of Heplock's many-times-broken nose. Stent considered their options. Either one or both of them could return and see whether or not Hal Ashby had another package secreted about his person. Or they could check in. They could check in with the powers that be. See what's what. Stent didn't really want to return to the scene of the crime. As it were. Fraught with danger, that. Returning to the scene of the crime. Simply wasn't done. Heplock was wondering whether there had been a fuck-up, whether Heplock or Stent (or Heplock and Stent) were responsible for said fuck-up. Heplock didn't like fuck-ups. Fuck-ups inflamed his gout. Heplock looked to Stent urging him to fill the perplexing social vacuum with action. Stent removed his mobile phone from an inside jacket pocket the way a magician removes a rabbit from a hat.

[ 73 ]
Alongside this, there is a completely black piece of jigsaw. It offers no consolation whatsoever. You are reluctant to touch it. There is a whiff of the familiar about the black piece (you sense a connection, something to do with Venice, something to do with the unfortunate end of Steve McQueen, something to do with a man who has no truck with failure) and yet that does little to endear it to you. Look at your hand hover over the top of it. Pick it up. It can't bite you. There, see. It's just a darkened hotel room. A hotel room darkened artificially because, look, see, the blinds are all drawn. Such heavy blinds. The room is almost pitch black. Almost. And yet, if you squint - yes, that's it - you can make out a figure sleeping. There. Do you see? There is a large and seemingly comfortable double bed and a figure, sleeping within. A figure sleeping in a darkened hotel room during the day isn't cause for alarm now is it? And yet. I have to say that I agree with you. There is something mildly disconcerting about the state of things. The figure in the bed gives off an aura. Do you feel it? The hairs on the back of your neck, the butterflies in the pit of your stomach. How strange, that a person sleeping could generate such mixed feelings. At which point, of course, the telephone rings and the ringing is shrill, punctuating the silence like a butcher's knife flashing in the light. There is movement in the bed. Whoever it is is waking up.

[ 74 ]
Another piece offers fragments of a dialogue, words bouncing offof satellites. We can hear Heplock recounting his version of events. The who, the what, the where, the when. All of that. There is little in the way of an actual response. Heplock is used, though, to the way in which these things routinely play out. He explains the situation. Keeps things short and sour. When he has finished, he rings off. This is the way things have to be. But - the instant his finger depresses a red button on his mobile telephone - it is as if a hundred fireworks explode at once. Communications now fire every which way. The quiet man in the darkened hotel room makes a phone call. The team stationed not half a mile a way tasked with maintaining a copy of all of Heplock's telephone communications start to communicate with others. Each of these others communicate with others. Talking. Emailing. Phoning. Texting. Before even a quarter hour elapses a number of people - a number of what we should really say are key personnel - know exactly what has transpired. Hal Ashby's people know that Hal Ashby is dead. No one knows the whereabouts of the brown paper package. Or at least no-one in this particular communications loop knows where the brown paper package is. Or at least no-one within this particular loop of communication admits to knowing where the brown paper package is. This is the closest we will ever be to British pandemonium.

[ 75 ]
It isn't long, however, before information intersects. John Cassavettes had known - he'd just known, alright - when John C Reilly (that fat fuck) said, It's done; Cassavettes had known it wasn't done. How could it be done? Nothing was ever as simple as that. Nothing. And Project Owl - which was the name Cassavettes' people had given to anything that involved the brown paper package - had not been simple in about forty seven years. So. He'd known it wasn't done. Circles within circles and circles overlapping with other circles. That was about the best you could hope for. Cassavettes (and Cassavettes' people) had thought the intelligence was good. They thought the package was within their grasp. Hal Ashby was one of the best. They knew that. But he wasn't playing on his home-ground, as it were. So they thought they had him. All they had to do was stand back and watch Heplock and Stent in action. Subsequent to that, the plan was to intercept Heplock and Stent, pick up the aforementioned package and c'est voila. Cassavettes and his people in the driving seat. But no. Within five minutes of leaving John C Reilly's company (across the road from the car park just about facing Tibb Street), Cassavette's phone chirrupped. A text message: Its not done. Cassavettes called. What do you mean 'Its not done'? John C Reilly blubbered into the phone. Ashby is dead but he didn't have the package. We don't know where the package is.

[ 76 ]
Cassavettes ran a thumb along the inside of his right lapel. For whatever reason, this was an action that calmed him. Ashby was dead but they didn't have the parcel. Okay. This meant that Ashby had stashed the parcel somewhere prior to the meet. It didn't take a brain surgeon to work that one out. But Cassavettes was a man rarely without a plan. He was also what you might call something of an optimist. He was a hub for communications. He had resources, and leighway. Cassavettes was in a position to both offer and promise. He was free to cajole and threaten. Ducking out of the overcast day into the subdued shadows of the carpark, Cassavettes made his way up to the third level at something of a clip. It wouldn't do to waste any time. As ever, time was of the proverbial essence. He was the North Wind. He had to marshall the storms. So: he called Alice. Alice gave him a reliable contact and a number. The reliable contact didn't have the information Cassavettes required but did manage to put him in touch with someone who put him in touch with someone who did. A dialogue ensued. Cassavettes referred vaguely to the incident in St Anne's Square - because it never paid to utter out and out specifics. All he wanted to know was, did the man, the old guy, the fella found floating face up in a fountain, did that guy have anything in his pocket?

[ 77 ]
Across town, a cancroid mouth is chewing. I'm loathe to subject you to the way in which each lip glides greasily one about the other. Watching this man eat is like being forced to watch slugs fuck. But lo! The power of technology. We draw back. For the first time in the company of the cancroid mouth, we draw back and see the who and the what and the where. It is disorientating. There is light - overcast light, to be sure, but light all the same - shining, in its own peculiar way, through glass. There is glass all around us. We are in a restaurant, a restaurant if we but knew it, that overlooks the city. It is early lunchtime. The expensive restaurant is not yet full. Effete staff linger in the doorway by the lift looking bored. The cancroid mouth is sat there - there, look - in the middle of the restaurant with a menu opened on the table beside him. It's surprising when you first see him. There is more of Sydney Greenstreet than Edward G Robinson about the cancroid mouth in the flesh. Quite possibly several hundred years old and possessing the prequisite chins to fill a Chinese telephone directory, the cancroid mouth holds his knife and his fork as if he is about to dive into a large vat of ice cream. But he isn't eating ice cream. He is devouring a bloodied steak (of course) and examining the menu to see what, if anything, he can eat next. Again, a telephone rings. But the cancroid mouth does not answer.

[ 78 ]
The girl - you remember the girl, right? - sitting opposite the cancroid mouth with a mildly sulky expression on her face and a long handled elegant fork in her hand (a fork she is using to deride an otherwise untouched salad that sits before her) answers the phone for him. Krakow, she says, for this is the name that the cancroid mouth has chosen to adopt, latterly. Krakow. A name, so the cancroid mouth was once heard to say, full of spit, vinegar, piss and lightning, a name that could fair split the sky, if we let it. The girl's eyes lose their focus for a moment (she's gauging, registering the importance of the caller) and then she gives Krakow a look - one of her many looks, but an important look all the same. Krakow takes his napkin up from where it has been hidden, beneath the table and upon his lap, dabs at his mouth (the right side, the left side) and then gestures with two fingers (it is a brisk and business-like gesture, two fingers, Peter and Paul, two little dicky birds making their way back home). The girl passes the opened clam of the mobile phone across the table. Krakow says the word Krakow again as if it is a code word required in order to get the telephone to function properly. After this he is silent. We have to imagine that a one-sided conversation is taking place, a one-sided conversation that we are not privvy to.

[ 79 ]
It isn't long before dogs start to bark. Orders are yelled, doors are slammed, the creel of various fishing lines whine as hooks are drawn in. Chinese whispers circulate. Soon everyone knows that Hal Ashby is dead. Hal Ashby is dead. The sentence makes the rounds of the corridors of power. All those who need to know know, you know? Certain plans are revised, certain new plans are devised. Cars speed hither and yon. Messages framed as questions are curled into plastic tubes in order to circumnavigate the ancient pre-email nooks and crevices of British intelligence. Ageing military types retire to the club where parallels are drawn between the mysterious brown paper package and the case of Jarndyce & Jarndyce. One old fellow claps his neighbour upon the back and pronounces him a card. You are indeed a card, sir, the old fellow says. The onerous task of dealing with the tedious shitstorm at hand falls to younger men. Men who can think on their feet. Men who love nothing better than a good challenge. Men who like to eat other, mealy-mouthed men for breakfast. Men who have plans coming out of their ass. Men like John Cassavettes. John Cassavettes has a plan, alright. He places a phone call, via the ever reliable Alice, to a woman he hasn't spoken to in eleven years. A woman more familiar to readers of Espionage: A Jigsaw in 500 Pieces as Ali McGraw.

[ 80 ]
As you may have gathered, as you array these strange and unusual jigsaw puzzle pieces in a fan shape around the portions of the jigsaw you have already completed, a lot of people communicate using the mobile telephone. A lot of people, it is true. But not all people. There are two pieces - those two by your right hand, the piece that features a knife and the piece that features a mobile home careering through a mountain pass somewhere in the Bosphorus - that introduce us to a character who does not believe in the telephone. Most know him as The Chinaman. I say know him. Nobody knows him. He has no wife, he has no children and any family members that may once have existed are now long dead. Some of his family were killed by The Chinaman's enemies; some of The Chinaman's family were allegedly killed by The Chinaman. This may be apocryphal but the story that does the rounds, as these kinds of stories inevitably do, informs us that The Chinaman killed the remaining members of his family when he felt they were being used as targets. His enemies were, after all, killing various members of his family in order to get to him, in order to drive him out and into the open. And so The Chinaman killed them himself, quickly and as painlessly as he could. Once alone, The Chinaman had only himself to worry about. This was exactly the way that he liked it.

[ 81 ]
These days, The Chinaman can only be contacted via email. He has quite the routine. You learn the email address, you establish contact, you wire a certain fixed sum of money to one of a number of bank accounts stationed all over the world - from which the money is at once siphoned and siphoned again before finally coming to rest who knows where - and you explain what the requirement is. More often than not the requirement is death. The Chinaman is an assassin, you see. From time to time, however, The Chinaman's skills as a torturer are brought to bear. No-one can apply menaces quite like The Chinaman. But his speciality is death. Death by knives. My friend The Chinaman is quite the knife connoisseur. He owns knives from all over the world. Keeps them with him at all times, as a matter of fact. Has his mobile home jury rigged so that at any one time there are maybe a dozen knives hidden within arm's reach. This is in part because he likes to feel safe. But, it has to be said, he also enjoys knowing that sharp metal is close at hand. Knives do something for The Chinaman that people can't. Who can say what? Barely an hour after Hal Ashby is pronounced dead and removed body and soul from St Anne's Square, an email appears in The Chinaman's email intray from a contact The Chinaman knows well. The subject of the email? Ed Bamyasi.

[ 82 ]
All of which necessitates a return - albeit a brief return - to the darkened hotel room in which we found ourselves earlier this afternoon. We know so little about the person in the darkened room, beyond the feeling of unease that he inspires and beyond the fact that we left him making a phone call. There have been so many phone calls in such a short space of time. It's hard to keep track of who said what to whom and when. I know. Whatever perplexity you feel, whatever apprehension. Don't worry. I feel it too. Many people feel it. It's a common state to find oneself in. Perplexity and apprehension. The figure in the darkened room presses a button that sits on the bedside table and the blinds whirr and start to draw back seemingly of their own accord. Who is this man and what does he want? We can't say. It is too soon. There are only so many words and only so many sentences allotted to each individual piece of this particular jigsaw. We have to be careful. After all, we don't want to force a square peg into a round hole. Every single piece of this jigsaw puzzle is a beautiful and unique little snowflake, to coin a phrase, and each piece of the jigsaw puzzle must find it's natural resting place. Just know that the person in the darkened room is as we speak emerging into the light. Not wanting to get ahead of ourselves, that information should keep us warm a little while yet.

[ 83 ]
I know I know I know. This is John Cassavettes. He's talking like his mouth has become a machine gun. He figures he has maybe twenty seconds. Maybe not even that long. Maybe ten seconds. Maybe five. You won't want to talk to me. I know that. The way I behaved was deplorable. John Cassavettes is saying words but he isn't thinking. He's flying by the seat of his pants, knows full well that he deserves to have her put the phone down on him. The way he'd behaved was deplorable. Leaving her at the altar. Just cutting out. Never explaining his reasons. Never writing. Never phoning. He was one hell of a deplorable human being. By rights you shouldn't give me the time of day. He chanced a pause at this point and took a breath. She was still there. He switched the phone from his left ear to his right. But, he said, gently, whispering, crouching ever so slightly. Please don't hang up. Okay? He chanced another, infinitely longer, pause. Christ but his mouth was dry. The first thing he was going to do when he got off the phone was buy a Coke. Or a Diet Coke. Way too much sugar in a far Coke. Please? Give me thirty seconds. I need your help. I have a job. You are the only person who can help me? Can you help me? Please? Ali McGraw had yet to speak but she was still there. He could hear her breathing. That was all the incentive John Cassavettes needed. Let me explain...

[ 84 ]
Krakow, meanwhile, is putting the finishing touches to an extremely fine dessert. He is using the edge of a fork to hive slices from a devilishly sweet concoction concocted from rather expensive vanilla ice cream, diced mint leaves, crushed digestive biscuits and finely blended raspberries. The girl remained seated opposite, scowling. But why? This is what she wanted to know. There was a manilla folder on the table between them, a manilla folder delivered by hand not twenty minutes previously, a manilla folder that contains a photograph and certain pertinent and impertinent details about our man, Ed Bamyasi. Because, said Krakow. The girl wondered for approximately quarter of a second whether her step-father was going to offer a reason. It would be out of character if he did. She scolded herself for even wondering if he would. Her and her stupid big mouth. When the courier left the envelope, Krakow had held up the photograph, seemingly for the girl's amusement. I know him, she'd said, rashly, without thinking. Krakow's fingers'd twitched. Go on. Instantly realising her mistake, she'd tried to back track - I say I know him, I don't know him, I saw him today, is all. She knew what the absolute worst thing in the world to say would be, and she went ahead, very definitely in spite of herself, and said: He asked me out.

[ 85 ]
Which, of course, pleased Krakow no end. He akksed you out? The girl didn't speak, didn't even think to make a point of attempting to correct the way Krakow struggled with any word featuring a letter S and a letter K. She touched the table with the tip of her index finger, hoping Krakow would see that she was serious and meant business and shook her head. Breathing in through her nose, she said um-um with her lips pressed tightly together. That isn't very pretty now, is it? The girl didn't care whether it was pretty or not. She really wasn't going to start prostituting herself around just to find out what the lanky streak of piss thought. He's a lanky streak of piss, she said. Come on. Krakow lowered his eyes to ample lap and folded the napkin into halves and then quarters. Come on nussing, he said. We have the opportunity to steal a march on suh usser people who are seeking - he paused, rearranged his mental cutlery, continued - what we seek. The girl's shoulders slumped. All of the fight left her at once. She wanted to stand up, yank the table cloth offof the table, smash anything that came to hand and then swear at the top of her voice. She wanted to say the absolute worst thing that she could think of. But then she couldn't think of anything. I'm like a character in a Sylvia Plath short story, she thought before saying: So what is it that you want me to do? Precisely?

[ 86 ]
Ali McGraw said, Oui. D'accord. She was very definite about her use of full stops. When she spoke, you knew exactly what she was saying. Her punctuation was very clear. Even if, as was sometimes the case, she paused for breath or left a word hanging in the air like a tiny baby pussycat held by the scruff of its neck, you, the listener, would know, as soon as another word left her mouth, exactly where you were and exactly where you had been. It was a rare talent. One, it has to be said, of many rare talents. She was a lady of very many rare talents. Everyone said so. As a girl, everyone, simply everyone, had said so. And later, as a young woman, and later still, as an older woman (when some of her acquaintance argued that she did in fact bear more of a resemblance to Charlotte Rampling than Ali McGraw), still people agreed, she was a woman of rare talents. Within the intelligence community, her rare talents were honed to a fine point and put frequently, although not as frequently as once they had been, to good use. Many years previously her fame resided in the fact that she was prone - if prone can be said to be the right word - to exploiting her talents in the manner of a Mata Hari. But the best of those years were behind her. These days she employed certain other talents as and when they were called upon.

[ 87 ]
Elsewhere a dog sits scowling at the foot of a bed. This is the dog you were introduced to way back at the start of this thing. This is the dog that reminded you of your dog, the dog you had when you were a kid. A lot of old feelings well up to the surface again but you rein them in because - the dog is scowling. What a strange thing for a dog to do. You don't think you've ever seen a dog scowl before. Can a dog scowl? You're not sure. But then you look at this dog, lying on the floor parallel with the foot of a bed and you think, well, yes. Because the dog is very definitely scowling. And the reason is? The reason is this: the dog is sitting at the foot of Ed Bamyasi's house-mate's bed, and Ed Bamyasi's house-mate is in the middle of a rather festive bout of copulation with a girl he'd met only the previous day in the queue at the benefit office. Syd doesn't even know her name which is just about the most fucking hilarious thing in the world at this precise moment in time, as the girl in question bounces up and down like an idiot on a bouncy castle. Syd is cranked up and enjoying himself. The same cannot be said for his dog. Bug Powder Dust is making the dog's head vibrate. Some days it does not pay to be a dog. Some days it does not pay to be a dog at all. This day, in particular, it will not pay to be a dog. You can lay good money down. This day is a bad day for dogs.

[ 88 ]
You probably think that we've forgotten about Ed Bamyasi, don't you? We haven't. It's just so hard to predict where the jigsaw will take us. You pick up this piece and that, you are but flotsam in a stream with a supremely healthy current. Who can say which way we will go? Not me and not you. We are the foot soldiers of a larger narrative, yes? The narrative of this strange little jigsaw. We do what we are told. We carry out the orders and imperatives of the jigsaw. Ed Bamyasi, though. Ed Bamyasi accompanied the police to the station, where - subsequent to being kept waiting for three and a half hours until an interview room became free - he was invited into the kind of room he'd seen once or twice on The Bill for what can only be called a grilling. They only had one question - How did Ed Bamyasi's library card end up in the pocket of a dead fella found floating in the middle of St Anne's square? - but they rephrased it maybe twenty three dozen times to see if his story changed even a little bit. Of course it didn't. However. When they presented a hastily snapped photograph of young Hal Ashby, Ed Bamyasi's face fell. The coppers perked up. Oh yes, they said. Want to change your story? Ed Bamyasi opened his mouth to speak just as the door to the interview room opened and his brief - a rather fetching woman in her early forties - sauntered in and introduced herself. Damn, thought Ed Bamyasi, she don't half look like Ali McGraw.

[ 89 ]
Ed Bamyasi barely had time to catch her eye. She was like some kind of crazy whirlwind, demanding time alone with her client to confer, saying ridiculous stuff - like this was a breach of human rights - but in a muted French accent that somehow insisted you forgive her for anything she said that appeared in any way to be over the top. She refused to sit down. The young bobby who'd been in charge of questioning started to stutter. Ed Bamyasi wondered if the stutter was something the bobby had fought with his whole life or whether his brief - Ali McGraw - induced grown men to stutter. Watching her bark and holler, Ed Bamyasi suspected the latter to be true. It was Habeus corpus this and dereliction of duty that. The young bobby and his partner in fighting crime did try to slow her down, raising their hands, inviting her to sit - but their gentle ministrations merely sought to inflame the barrage. She was citing precedence, jabbing the air with an elegant fingernail, constructing lawsuits and threatening to ruin whoever got in her way. It was a thing of wonder to behold. The police - bless them - put up an elaborate struggle. But Ali McGraw was the tide to their Canute. Within a minute or so, Ali McGraw had everyone in the room eating out of the palm of her hand. It was agreed that Ed Bamyasi would not be spending the night in the station, that he'd report back to the station for questioning in the morning, that he was free to go. Outside, as night drew in, Ali McGraw said, You're coming with me.

© Peter Wild 2006 / 2007

Peter Wild is the co-founder of Bookmunch. He is the editor of a forthcoming series of books for Serpent's Tail, the first two of which - Perverted by Language: Fiction inspired by The Fall and The Empty Page: Fiction inspired by Sonic Youth - will be published in 2007. His writing and fiction have appeared in various outlets including Scarecrow, NOO Journal, Word Riot, Laura Hird, Nude Magazine, Thieves Jargon, Dreams That Money Can Buy and Eyeballkid.