The Fandom of the Operator (19 page)

“You’re a real friend, Dave,” I said, putting out my hand for a shake. “I’ve wanted to talk to people about the bad things I do, but I know they’d only freak out and tell the police and then I’d have to go to prison and I don’t want to go to prison. I’m really glad we could talk about it. It’s good to have a friend like you.”

“Of course it is,” said Dave, shaking my hand. “I’m your bestest friend.”

And so we drank some more champagne.

And we chatted about the good old days and we buddied up once again and I thought to myself what a wonderful thing real friendship is and how you can’t put a price on it. Which is probably why the rich and famous, for all the money they have to squander, never have any real friends.

Dave nicked another bottle of champagne and we took to drinking that too.

And, of course, when you drink a lot of champagne and you’re in the company of your bestest friend you do tend to talk
too much
.

“I talk to the dead every night,” I said to Dave.

“Now, why doesn’t that surprise me at all?” Dave said in reply. “You’ve finally taken to drugs, then, have you?”

“No, it’s not drugs. I really do talk to the dead. On the telephone.”

“Yeah, right,” said Dave.

“No, really.” And I told Dave all about FLATLINE.
All
about FLATLINE.

“Bowls of bleeding bile!” said Dave when at last I was done with my telling. “And this is
true
?”

“
All true
,” I said. “All of it.”

“And you haven’t got caught?”

“Barry and I have it sewn up.”

Dave shook his head and he shook it violently. “You are in big trouble,” he said. “And I mean the biggest.”

“Eh?” said I. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying,” said Dave, “that I’ve heard about this. In the nick. I met an old boy in there – he’d been in for years – who told me about the FLATLINE thing and I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. But if you’ve actually spoken with the dead, then it must be true.”

“Who is this old boy?” I asked.

“His name is Terence Trubshaw.”

“I’ve heard the name,” I said. “He was a bulbsman. Mr Holland told me about him. He took a day off. It was wartime. They banged him up for forty years.”

“He didn’t take a day off. He found out about the program. It wasn’t called FLATLINE then. It had a secret operations name. Operation Orpheus. He was a Greek mythical bloke who went into the underworld.”

“I knew that,” I said.

“Well, it was part of the war effort. They had all kinds of weird secret operations back then. Because the Nazis had contacted aliens from outer space who were supplying them with advanced technology so they could win the war. Be a puppet world power run by the aliens.”

“Get real,” I said.

“It’s true,” said Dave. “Well, according to Mr Trubshaw, it is. The allies had to produce something pretty special, so some bright spark came up with the idea of contacting the dead by scientific means. The theory was to interrogate German officers who had been killed in the war. German officers who knew stuff, like secret information that the allies needed. They had this bloke who could impersonate Hitler’s voice. They managed to tune into the dead by using certain radio frequencies and mathematical calculations and the impersonator interrogated the dead officers and got all their information and that’s how the allies really won the war.”

“And Mr Trubshaw told you that?”

“He found out. Memos that he shouldn’t have seen got put on his desk by mistake and he read them.”

“Oh,” I said. “And how did he get found out about the memos?”

“He said that the entire telephone exchange is bugged. There’s secret cameras and microphones everywhere. Well, there would be, wouldn’t there, if it was a secret operations HQ in the war? And apparently all this stuff still goes on secretly. And the British government goes on pulling the same scam. When someone politically important overseas dies, or is assassinated, they call them up on this FLATLINE hot line, impersonating their Prime Minister, or King, or suchlike, and get secret information out of them, which is why Britannia still rules the waves.”

“But it doesn’t rule the waves,” I said. “There is no British Empire any more.”

“Oh yes, there is,” said Dave. “England is really the ultimate world power, because we alone have the FLATLINE technology. England might not seem to be the power controlling the world, but it is. It’s all a big conspiracy. It’s the biggest secret.”

“Well,” I said, “thanks for sharing that with me.”

“Gary,” said Dave. “Gary, my bestest friend. Don’t mess around with this stuff any more. Leave it alone or you are going to turn up missing. This is a big deal here and you could be in
really
big trouble.”

“Yes,” I said. “I appreciate that.”

“Run,” said Dave. “Run now. Tonight. Don’t go back.”

“Where can I run to?” I asked. “I don’t have any money. Where would I go? And anyway, just hold on here, I’ve been doing this for months and I haven’t got caught yet. Maybe they don’t have all the bugs and cameras any more. After all, they are a bit free and easy with the technology. Letting their operatives call up their dead grannies and suchlike.”

“They’ve all signed the Official Secrets Act. They know what the penalties are.”

“Yeah, but …”

“Get out,” said Dave. “Run. This is big. It doesn’t come any bigger.”

“Yes,” I said to Dave. “You’re right about that. It really doesn’t come any bigger than this, does it?”

“No,” said Dave. “It’s huge. It’s world-sized.”

“Yes,” I said. “It is. I’ve been going about this thing all the wrong way.”

Dave made groaning noises.

“No, really, listen. Barry and I have been doing ‘biographies’, dictated by the dead. That’s what the launch party here tonight is for. P.P. Penrose dictated his life story to Barry.”

Dave laughed. “Not to
you
, then? What a surprise.”

“Cut it out,” I said. “I admit it, I didn’t have the nerve to talk to him. But think about it, Dave: if the dead are willing to talk, they might be willing to talk about
anything
. We were just thinking biographies, but that was Barry’s idea. You’ve given me a better idea. What about all those dead criminals, like, say, pirates for instance? They might be prepared to tell us where they buried their treasure. And not just criminals. Leonardo da Vinci might tell us where he hid his last notebook. Michelangelo might tell us about the location of a few missing masterworks.”

“Hitler’s mob probably had all that lot,” said Dave.

“Yeah,” said I. “And a whole lot more. There must be tons of hidden booty that only the dead know about. I don’t know why I never thought of this before.”

“Because you weren’t with your bestest friend,” said Dave.

“You are so right,” said I.

“And perhaps
you’re
right too,” said Dave. “Perhaps the fact that you haven’t been caught means that there isn’t any surveillance. I think that, together, you and I might pull off a very big number here.”

“The very biggest,” said I.

“Mind you,” said Dave, “this will have to be between you and me. We daren’t have any loose ends. No smoking pistols. No one but the two of us must know about this. Are we agreed?”

“We are,” I said. “Anyone else,” and I drew my finger across my throat, “no matter who they are.”

“Hello.”

I looked up and so did Dave.

“Enjoying yourself?”

“Yes indeed, Barry,” I said.

Sandra drove Dave and me home in the taxi. I was far too drunk to drive and also too excited.

Sandra drove very well, considering.

Considering that she had to get used to the nice new nubile body I had rather drunkenly and lopsidedly attached to her neck. But she did very well and I rewarded her later with as much sex as I could manage, considering my condition.

I had to set the alarm clock for five and get up to dispose of the taxi. I didn’t want anyone finding Sandra’s old body in the boot, so I drove out to a bombsite in Chiswick and set it on fire.

It burned beautifully and I enjoyed watching it burn. I considered its burning to be a kind of phoenix rising from the ashes of my past. A new beginning. For me. For Sandra. And for Dave. I felt that up until now I had been going about things in all the wrong way. Well, not really going about them in any way at all, when it came down to it. I’d just been drifting along on a life tide, washed from one situation to the next, with all my attempts at finding a real purpose and making a real success of myself failing, failing, failing. This would be a new beginning. This, I felt sure, was my fate. And I smiled as I watched that taxi burn and felt warm and happy inside.

My enjoyment was temporarily spoiled, however, by a lot of noisy banging that suddenly came from the inside of the taxi’s boot.

I knew that it wasn’t the cabbie.

And I knew that it wasn’t Sandra’s headless bits and bobs.

So I suppose that it must have been Barry.

But it soon calmed down and stopped.

And the taxi was soon reduced to a charred ruination.

And so, although I had a terrible hangover, I went off to work at the telephone exchange.

With a big fat smile on my face.

Priceless, really, the way things turn out.

Dave didn’t have a motorbike, but he was the first person to apply for the vacancy at the telephone exchange. For the night-shift bulb-booth operator. Which was still referred to as the position of telecommunications engineer.

I called in on Dave at a little after eleven p.m.

“You look a bit shagged out,” said Dave.

“I am,” said I. “Sandra’s new body is a blinder.”

“Can I have a go?” Dave asked.

“Certainly not. Get your own zombie.”

“Hm,” said Dave. “When you put it like that, it sort of puts it in perspective. I think I’ll stick with living girlfriends.”

“So, what are we doing tonight?”

“Well,” said Dave, “I made a list of possibilities.”

“Yes?” I said.

“And then I crossed them all out.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I used my head,” said Dave. “If you want to be a really great thief, then you have to use your head. You have to put yourself in the position of the person you’re stealing from. Think, if I were
you
where would I, as you, hide the booty?”

“Go on,” I said.

“So,” said Dave, “it occurred to me that we would not be the first people to come up with this idea. After all, FLATLINE, or Operation Orpheus, has been around since wartime. Don’t you think that others before us would have thought of doing what we intend to do?”

“Yes,” I said. “You’re right.”

“I am,” said Dave. “So, following the direction of this thinking, where does it lead us to?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Where?”

“To the top,” said Dave. “You’d have to go to the top.”

“To God?” I said.

“To Winston Churchill,” said Dave.

“What?” said I.

“Churchill would know,” said Dave, “where all the Nazi booty went. He’d have got his Hitler impersonator to find out. So Churchill is the man to speak to.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know about this,” I said. “We’re not just going for Nazi booty here. We’re going for
all
booty.”

“In recent history, the Nazis nicked the most. It’s probably all in Switzerland in special bank vaults.”

“I’m getting out of my depth here,” I said.

“I’m not,” said Dave. “Nicking is my business. Let me have an hour on the phone with Mr Churchill and we’ll both be rich men. I’ve looked up his death date, like you told me you have to. I’ve got it here. Let’s do it.”

“Well, I can’t see any harm in that. Let’s give it a go. Follow me.”

And Dave followed me.

We took the lift to the seventeenth floor. I picked the lock of room 23 and led Dave to the telephone box. “Take as long as you like,” I said. “Dial in his full name and date of birth,” and I explained to him all the rest, “and do your stuff.”

“Sorted,” said Dave and he entered the telephone box.

I dithered about outside. I paced up and down, then I sat and smoked a cigarette. Then I paced, then sat and smoked another one.

At what seemed a very great length, Dave emerged from the telephone box. And Dave didn’t look very well.

“Are you all right?” I asked him. “You look a bit shaky.”

“I
am
a bit shaky,” said Dave. “I wasn’t expecting to hear all that I just heard. That Winston Churchill is a very angry dead man.”

“Oh,” I said. “Why?”

“He says that he was betrayed. He says that a secret elite is plotting to take over the world.”

“The British government,” I said. “You told me that.”

“Not them,” said Dave. “He says aliens.”

“Space aliens?”

“According to Winston Churchill. And who is going to argue with
him
?”

“Did he say anything about the booty?”

“Oh yeah,” said Dave. “He said lots. Apparently there’s a secret underground complex beneath Mornington Crescent tube station. All the booty is there. And all the rest of it. The real communications network centre.”

“For communications with the dead?”

“No, the aliens. The aliens who are us.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” I said. “But let me tell you this, Dave, and I’m sorry I didn’t mention it to you earlier. You can’t take everything the dead say as gospel truth. They have a tendency to make stuff up. They tell a lot of lies. I wouldn’t take this aliens stuff too seriously if I were you.”

“I wouldn’t have,” said Dave, “except that it tied up with something that you told me years ago, when we were kids. Remember when you told me that you’d overheard those two blokes talking about human beings not really doing their own thinking? About their thoughts being directed from somewhere else outside their heads? About our brains being receivers and transmitters but not really brains that do thinking? Remember?”

“I do remember,” I said. “Those two young men in the restricted section of the Memorial Library. One of them works here now.”

“And there was something about this at your daddy’s trial, although it wasn’t reported in the papers.”

“The Daddy must have known something about all this,” I said.

“He did work for the GPO,” said Dave. “And you told me that he was on bomb disposal in the war. Perhaps he was part of the secret operations network.”

“Now, hold on,” I said. “Are we going to get rich here, or not?”

“That sounds like the kind of question
I
should be asking.”

“Well, you ask it, then.”

“No,” said Dave. “But I’ll ask you this. What do you think
we
should do? We could go to Mornington Crescent and if there’s anything valuable there that can be nicked I assure you that I can nick it. Or, and this is a big or, we could go to Mornington Crescent and try to find out what the truth of all this really is. What do
you
think?”

I thought long and I thought hard and it was a whole lot of thinking.

“All right,” I said, when finally I had done all the thinking that I could do. “Let’s go.”

“And do what?” asked Dave. “One or the other?”

“Let’s do both,” I said.

“OK,” said Dave. “That’s cool.”

Now, this wasn’t going to be easy, because I worked the day shift and Dave worked the night shift and so I couldn’t see how we could go together. And even if we
did
go together, how we were going to find what we were looking for, whatever
exactly
that was. I confided my doubts to Dave and Dave was, as Dave had always been, optimistic and up for no good. And, as he always had been, up to doing things at his leisure.

“You leave it with me,” said Dave. “I have to do a bit more research with a few more dead men. I’ll get back to you in a few days.”

“Don’t you want me to let you into room 23 each night?” I asked. But that was a stupid question. This was Dave, after all.

“I’ll let myself in,” said Dave. “You go home. Give my best to Sandra, if you know what I mean and I’m sure that you do. And if we meet as we change shifts, just nod. Pretend you don’t know me.”

“OK,” I said and I shook hands with Dave. I felt absolutely confident in Dave. After all, he was my bestest friend and he had never, ever, let me down. I trusted him. He was the only one I had ever owned up to regarding my homicidal tendencies. I’d never mentioned them to Sandra. Some things you just don’t say to your wife although you would say them to your mate. It’s a man-thing, I suppose.

So I went home and gave Dave’s best to Sandra.

And for the next week I just nodded to Dave when I changed shifts with him, and he nodded back when he changed shifts with me. And then I found a note on the table of the bulb booth telling me to meet him on Friday evening at eight-thirty at the Golden Dawn.

So on Friday evening I togged up in my very bestest, put Sandra’s head in the fridge to keep it fresh and stop her wandering about while I was out, and strolled off down the road towards the Golden Dawn.

It was a fine Friday evening. It smelled of fish and chips, as Friday evenings so often do, and there was still some sun left, as there generally is on a summery Brentford evening. And as I strolled along I wondered, quietly and all to myself, exactly what Dave might have come up with and where it might lead me and whether it might make me rich. Because I was warming more and more to the prospect of becoming rich. I felt that it was about time that I got what I knew I deserved.

It was all quiet and peaceful in the Golden Dawn. As quiet and peaceful as it had been the last time I was there. Which was more than six months before: on the night of my wedding anniversary, when Sandra had told me that she was going off for the caravanning holiday with Count Otto Black. I had Sandra wearing red now, by the way. I felt that she had mourned long enough.

But I’d actually quite forgotten about Eric the barman’s threats to me. About how he said he’d grass me up if I didn’t find out all about what went on in Developmental Services, because he had this thing about people’s True Names and how some of the folk in Developmental Services – well, one at least: Neil Collins – didn’t seem to have a True Name.

When I strolled into the Golden Dawn, and saw him standing there behind the pump, it brought it all back to me and I really cursed Count Otto for fouling up the orders I had sent him through the voodoo medium of Frank the invisible Chinaman, which caused him to butcher my Sandra instead of the blackmailing landlord.

I only mention all this in case you might have forgotten about it.

“Well, well, well, well,” said Eric. “If it isn’t my old chum the Archduke of Alpha Centuri.”

“Well, well, well, well,” I replied. “If it isn’t my
very
good friend Kimberlin Malkuth, Lord of a Thousand Suns. A pint of Large, please, and a packet of crisps.”

“I’ve been missing you,” said the barlord. “For so many months now. You and I had an understanding, I remember.”

“Indeed,” I said. “I’ve not forgotten. But I had a death in the family. My dear Sandra was cruelly taken from me.”

“Yes,” said Eric. “I read about all that in the papers. Tragic business. Poor Lady Fairflower of the Rainbow Mountains. The world is a sadder place without her.”

I nodded and he nodded and then he presented me with my pint. “But life goes on,” he said. “We should be grateful for that.”

“We should,” I agreed.

“And the fact that you stand there before me means that you are now all grieved out and ready to face life without the Lady Fairflower. It also means that you have come to tell me all that I need to know regarding Developmental Services.”

“It does,” I said. “Shall we step outside and discuss this matter in private?”

The barlord nodded and I smiled at the barlord.

A hand, however, fell upon my shoulder.

I turned and said, “Dave,” for Dave’s hand it was that had fallen.

“Not now,” whispered Dave in my ear. “Wait until after closing time. You can do for him and I will do for the cash register.”

“You are, as ever, as wise as your years,” I whispered back. “I’ll tell you everything later,” I said to Eric. “After closing, in private.”

“Right,” said Eric. “And you see that you do. I’ll lock up, then when I’ve kicked everyone out I’ll let you back in the side door.”

“Perfect,” I said.

“Double perfect,” said Dave.

“A pint for Dave too,” I said to Eric.

“Indeed,” said the barlord. “Always a pleasure to serve a pint to Barundi Fandango the Jovian Cracksman.” And Eric once more did the business.

Dave took me over to a side table and we took sup from our pints.

“It has to be this weekend,” said Dave.

“What does?” I asked.

“Mornington Crescent. We have to go this weekend.”

“OK,” I said. “But why?”

“Because I’m in too much danger of getting nicked and dragged back to prison. I’m working at the telephone exchange under a fake name. I’m a wanted man, remember. I told them that my cards and my P45 were being sent on by my last employer, but I think they’re already becoming suspicious. I shall have to run this weekend no matter what. So we do it now, or we don’t do it at all.”

“Seems reasonable,” said I. “What is your plan?”

“Well, I’ve chatted with a lot of dead blokes this week and remembering what you said about them lying, I’ve been careful to cross-reference everything. I know how to get into Mornington Crescent and I have a pretty good idea of what kind of booty is in there. And it’s
lots
. But there’s something more. Something in there that frightens the dead and they don’t want to tell me about.”

“Something that frightens the dead? I don’t like the sound of that.”

Dave shook his head. “You’ve had months and months at this, haven’t you?” he said. “You could have asked loads and loads of questions of the dead. You could have found out amazing stuff. Why didn’t you?”

I shrugged. “I’ve thought about this,” I said. “Death was my major interest when I was young. All I ever wanted to do was find out the point of it. I could never see the point, do you understand? I could see the point of life, but never death.

“I wanted to find out the truth. But when it actually came to it, when I actually found myself talking to the dead, I never had the nerve to ask. The first dead person I spoke to was my dad and he wanted to tell me something fantastic. But Barry cut me off and I never spoke to him again. I bottled out. I don’t know why. I think it’s because the living aren’t supposed to know and I didn’t want to know.”

Dave shook his head again. “You’re a real mess, Gary,” he said. “Other people, given the opportunity that you were given, would really have gone for it. They’d have found out.”

“So, have you found out, then? The truth about everything?”

“No,” said Dave. “I haven’t. But that’s because they wouldn’t tell me. But I know enough to know where to look. It’s all there at Mornington Crescent. And if you have the bottle to go there with me, we’ll find out together.”

“I have the bottle,” I said. “I’m not scared. I’m brave.”

“That’s good,” said Dave. “But you are telling me the truth, aren’t you? There’s no going back. When we do what I plan that we’re going to do, there will be no going back. It’s a total commitment.”

I sipped at my pint. “What exactly are you saying?” I asked.