This is a non-erotic story, which just to labour the obvious, means exactly what it says. There's zero sex. I mean zero.
So why read it? Because it's a nice little mind control mystery thriller with a twist in the tale, and it's short.
Joe.
Lee stands leaning against the kitchen sink while she reads the hand-scrawled pages, her expression blank. When she finishes it, she puts a hand to her lips in thought. Dan, her husband watches her, waiting. Finally she speaks:
"So, you've known all this since January. You've known for the last two months, and kept quiet about it all that time."
If you're reading this, either I'm dead, or you're an expert safe-cracker. Or there's another possibility: Maybe I finally broke down, Lee, and told you the truth about my job.
It's January as I write this. Up until last November I worked for the British Secret Service. My field was assassination. My usual method was poison, which I would administer by various means, depending on the target: For a man of letters, a drop of sarin on the page of a book; for a keen horticulturalist, the inside of his gardening gloves. In some cases I got to meet my target and gain his confidence. But none of them ever suspected me in the least. Not until it was too late.
I received my instructions anonymously, by post: Every few weeks an envelope would plop through the letterbox at my home, postmarked from Westminster, London. The letter consisted of a name and address, no more. Nothing to identify the sender. Anonymity was pervasive in my field. Once I had the details I would work on my assignment. It would usually take no more than two or three days to plan, then execute the killing. And then I'd wait until the next assignment came.
My wife, Lee, was unaware of my real job. She knew I was a civil servant of some kind, and that I worked in Whitehall. Lee worked from home. She was a psychotherapist, specialising in adolescent emotional and cognitive disorders. The majority of the time I would leave the house at 8:30 in the morning, off to my fictional job at Whitehall. Then I would just hang around the West End, reading in cafes, bookshops and libraries, until it was time to go home. This was my daily routine. Except, of course, on those days when I had a killing to plan. In any case, I would usually arrive home promptly every weekday at six, hug Lee, and we'd ask each other how our day went. Lee might tell me a little about one of her current cases, as far as patient confidentiality would allow. But I would keep gently quiet about my work, which she knew was classified. She was happy that I didn't bring my work home with me. She never asked me about the times when I'd arrive home late in the evening, when my assignment required darkness to complete. She knew that my secretiveness was entirely due to the nature of my work, and that I'd never have an affair or do anything like that.
This was, as I say, my life until last November. It was the 11th. I'd received an assignment that morning, but hadn't read it. I left the house with the unopened envelope in my jacket pocket. It could wait until later. I took the tube to Covent Garden. I went into the little newsagent at the station exit to buy my usual snack, but came out with a pack of cigarettes. This was a very strange thing for me to do, as I didn't smoke. In fact I'd
never
smoked. In all my born days.
I stared at the pack of cigarettes in my hand in shock, and turned to go back into the shop to return them. But then I stopped still. A sudden thought had arisen in me, from nowhere, it seemed: "Why not try one?" I tried to laugh it off, but the thought wouldn't go away. I hurried away from the newsagent, still clutching the pack.
I walked rapidly but without purpose through the busy West End streets, lost in thought. There was a definite possibility that there was a sinister cause for my odd behaviour: perhaps someone from a rival group was trying to get to me. I'd heard rumours about mind-control drugs being used in my field, but even as an insider I'd never witnessed anything that would convince me that it was anything more than spy fiction. But what had just happened to me seemed to me to be exactly the sort of thing that would indicate such an attempt to manipulate my mind. Paranoid? Accusations of paranoia don't apply in a job like mine.
After a while I found myself on a bench in Green Park, the unopened pack of cigarettes now in my pocket. A man sat down next to me. He was wearing a high visibility jacket and work boots. He nodded and smiled.
"Morning," he said. To my horror, he lit up a cigarette. He caught my stare.
"Sorry, do you mind...?" He added, wagging the cigarette in indication.
"Not at all!" I said automatically.
He surveyed the trees and wide lawns of the park idly.
"This is about the only place they let people smoke these days." I detected an East European accent. A Polish immigrant builder perhaps? Or was that just a disguise?
To show him that I too was a supporter of personal freedom, I nonchalantly fished the pack out of my pocket and popped a cigarette in my mouth. I feigned fumbling for a lighter, even though I knew full well I didn't have one. He handed me his.
I inhaled the hot smoke deeply, and, surprisingly, it felt completely natural to me, as though I'd always smoked. But it should have felt awful: This was the first cigarette of my life.
I wished I could talk to Lee about it. But I couldn't talk to her. It would mean a lot of awkward questions, which is something I couldn't risk. No, best to leave Lee out of it for the moment, I decided.
I thought about my strange, murky job. And the more I thought, the more I puzzled over it. How could I be sure I really was working for the British? I tried to recall how I got into the business. And with growing bewilderment, I found I couldn't remember! In fact I couldn't recall much at all about my previous life, other than that I worked at a pharmaceutical lab that was attached in some way to the military. But it was all vague. It was as though, as though.... I felt close to a revelation... but the feeling subsided, and I returned to the present. The man who had sat next to me was gone. My cigarette had burned down to the filter.
I suddenly remembered the envelope in my pocket. As usual, just a name and address. But this time there was something out of the ordinary about the address: It was a houseboat, moored on the Grand Union Canal in West London.
"Death by drowning, I think", the assassin in me decided.
I was tired. It could wait till tomorrow.
I returned that day earlier than usual. Parked a few yards from my house was a battered and dirty pale blue van. It was so decrepit it looked as though it had been dumped there. I knew all the cars belonging to my neighbours, and I was suspicious of any unusual vehicles parked nearby. I could be under surveillance. I looked inside the front window, then I peered in through the back window and saw that the van had been piled high with logwood. I decided it probably belonged to a gardener. Certainly no visible electronic equipment in there.
