Story 21 – Asset Retrieval

“That’s the place?”

“Confirmed. You are on location.”

Rick Lau looked at the small patisserie, window filled with pastries and cakes that, quite frankly, looked delicious.

“It’s a cake shop.”

“Intelligence has confirmed its only a front. You will find access to sub levels through the kitchen.”

“A cake shop. Full of cakes.”

This time he heard the sigh very clearly through his ear piece.

“It is a holding facility, maintained by COTES. We’ve confirmed it.”

“Fine. But if I take a cream pie to the face, you and I will have words when I get back.”

“Rick, you’re more likely to take a nine millimetre to the face. Keep your eyes on a swivel. Unconfirmed if the shop staff are enemy combatants or not.”

Lau looked down at his boring grey suit and the clipboard in his left hand. “You’re sending me in there as a health inspector. They’ll see me as an enemy combatant anyway.”

A deeper, older voice spoke to him now, the Beard had clearly been monitoring communications “Lau. Get on with it. Jokes later, retrieval and violence now, if you don’t mind.”

“Sorry, Boss.”

Still not fully believing the intelligence, Lau crossed the little rue to the patisserie.

The two woman behind the counter wore aprons and one of them had flour dabbed on her nose. The shop did not smell of bread or baking and all of the cakes were behind glass, under covers. None could be touched or smelled without help from the staff.

Lau thought this definitely looked strange.

Speaking in French, he introduced himself to the women. Explaining that he was from the health department and he was here to make a spot inspection on their facilities.

The women exchanged a glance that was puzzlement, not worry. They were not expecting an inspection. A few good reasons for that, one bad.

“Please, show me to your kitchen.”

The taller of the two women, the one with flour on her nose, asked to see his identification. He passed it over with a half smile, conveying he knew this was awkward but it was just his job.

The woman nodded at the card and passed it back. The card was thicker in his hand. Turning it over, Lau saw that she had added a folded bundle of notes to it. Very impressive, he hadn’t seen the switch and he had been looking for it. That was good, in a way. While an ordinary baker might bribe an official, no ordinary baker would have sleight of hand that smooth.

“I’m sorry.” He said, handing the money back. “I don’t take bribes. I take my work very seriously.”

Flour-nose took the money back, looking annoyed. Lau noticed the other woman had moved to the far end of the counter and was about to come out from behind it.

“The flour was overkill, honestly.” He said in English.

Flour-nose’s eyes widened as he spoke, but Lau was already moving, reaching across the distance between them to punch her in the face. He heard the crack as her nose broke. She went down, dazed.

The other baker rounded the counter holding a large, sharp knife as Lau was settling back on his feet. She stabbed out as he regained his balance. Pivoting, he was able to avoid the stab. Faster than he would have liked, the knife was drawn back and a slash delivered. He stepped back, the tip just missing his chest. She stabbed again and he brought up the clipboard, using it as a shield. The knife stabbed through it. Lau twisted the clipboard, forcing the knife out of her hand.

The woman reached behind her, presumably for another weapon.

Lau frisbeed the clipboard at her face. She raised a hand to block it, but he followed the projectile and delivered a punch to her jaw.

The woman dropped, the second knife clattered to the floor.

Before she could recover, he was pinning her down. She spat blood at him.

Lau pulled out a small book of what looked like stamps. He tore one off and pressed it to her neck while she struggled. The effect was instant, as soon as it touched her skin, she was out. She would stay that way fo six hours.

Tearing off another stamp for Flour-nose, he stood up in time to receive a baking tray to the face.

Sent sprawling, he rolled aside as Flour-nose swung the edge of the tray at his neck.

She kept coming, not giving him a moment to get to his feet.

Lau was backed up to one of the display tables and had no room to manoeuvre as she chopped his left ankle with the tray.

Ignoring the pain, he kicked out with his right foot at her standing leg, taking her out at the knee.

She yelled in pain and her leg gave out.

Flour-nose dropped to her knee, giving Lau the time to reach forward and jam the baking tray back into her face.

The blow stunned her enough that he could shove again, throwing her backwards.

Taking advantage of her dazed state, two blows to the face in a short time will do that, Lau pushed himself up, tore off another stamp and slapped it onto her forehead.

She was out before her head hit the floor.

Taking a moment to catch his breath, Rick Lau stood and locked the shop door, flipping the sign to read ferme.

Straightening his tie, Lau looked at the two unconscious women “Well, this is all going into the report.” He told them.

“Shop front is secured.” Rick said, speaking to base. “I’m going to see what’s in the kitchen.”

There was nothing in the kitchen.

Not, nothing suspicious, there was literally nothing. No oven, no counters, no baking equipment of any kind. A very suspicious nothing.

They must have been very confident that they wouldn’t get any official visitors. Rick wondered at their influence, Paris isn’t normally so lax in letting places that serve food operate with absolutely no oversight.

There was a door, but it opened into the space behind the shop, where the bins were. Rick closed it and went back inside, looking around the empty kitchen for some kind of clue.

“There’s nothing here.”

“Our intelligence says the entrance to the base is in that kitchen.”

“This isn’t a kitchen. It’s an empty room. There’s no ovens, no sinks, not even a counter. This is an empty space.”

“There’s something there, you just need to find it.”

Rick rolled his eyes “Gee, thanks. Very helpful.”

He inventoried the room, it didn’t take long.

Floor. Ceiling. Walks. Two windows. Lightbulb with no shade. Light switch.

Lau poked the lightbulb, dangling from an overlong wire. It swung easily.

The windows were sealed shut and looked to be reinforced, inch thick glass. There was definitely something going on here.

He flicked the light switch. The light didn’t come on, but something clicked by the rear door.

Investigating, he saw that a small panel had been released. Behind it were five buttons, the top labelled S, the ones below had 1 to 4.

“Found something. Looks like a lift control. Do we know what level he’s being kept on?”

“We do not.”

Lau shrugged and pressed 4, may as well start at the bottom and work his way up.

Machinery groaned and the whole floor of the not-kitchen began to descend.

Looking around, Rick Lau saw that he was standing in a open space, being lowered into an unknown situation with nowhere to hide.

He relayed the situation to base and told them how the lift operated. Base were in the middle of replying when the signal cut off.

Rick Lau was alone, unable to call for backup and about to face an unknown number of hostiles in an unfamiliar location.

In other words, he was going to do exactly what he had been trained for.

Unsurprisingly, the lift stopped at the first floor it come to.

Lau had expected this, there was very little chance that his actions in the shop hadn’t been noticed. Any organisation worth its salt would have someone monitoring the cameras he hadn’t seen in the shop. Then, once he activated the lift, all they had to do was wait for him to deliver himself to them.

If he was in charge, he would have a squad waiting by the doors and as soon as the lift stopped, opened fire. It could be non-lethal weaponry if he wanted the intruder alive.

First problem, there was nowhere to hide on the platform.

Second problem, he didn’t know where the door would be.

Start with the second problem first.

As long as the exit from the lift was not the width of one of the four walls, he might be able to buy himself some time by putting himself directly to the side of it, forcing the enemy to come onto the platform. That would help with problem one.

All of this had flashed though Lau’s mind before his waist was lower than the shop floor.

The two most likely choices for the door would be either the side where he had entered the not kitchen, or the opposite side, where the back door had been.

The plain floor offered no contextual clues as to which was which or most likely to be the exit.

Lau decided to walk in slow circles around the platform, making sure he remembered which side was the entrance from the shop to orientate himself. He kept his eyes moving, looking for the first indication of a door.

He idly wondered if the people watching him on cameras had any idea what he was up to.

He pulled out the small book of stamps, flicked to a page at the back and removed one, in preparation.

There, the side that had held the windows, he saw the edge of a wide door, maybe a third the width of the platform.

Casually, Lau strode in that direction and pressed the stamp to the side of his neck, feeling the tingle as the magic worked.

That should cause them some consternation.

The lift stopped and four men rushed onto the platform through the open door, sub machine guns in hand, looking wildly around or him, yelling in French and German that they couldn’t see him.

Knowing that the invisibility spell would only last another eighty three seconds, Rick Lau slipped out through the door.

Seventy seven seconds remaining.

The wide corridor ran in a straight line for fifty yards, three offices on either side, before it branched at a t-junction. Leaving it to luck, Lau went left, looking for any sign as to what was on this floor.

Forty eight seconds remaining.

Straight across another junction then right at the next one, Lau slipped past three people in lab coats and saw another group of five guards running towards the lift. 

Nineteen seconds remaining.

Keeping track of his turns was easy, knowing what he was heading towards was less so.

Finding one balding man in a lab coat walking down a corridor holding a steaming cup of coffee, Lau decided to follow him. Hoping the man was going back to his office having just got a drink. He just had to hope it would be close enough that he could get inside before the spell wore off.

Seven seconds to go.

The man pressed the badge clipped to his pocket on a pad beside one of the office doors. The door unlocked.

Rick Lau waited until the man was in the office before pushing him from behind and stepping through just two seconds before the spell ended.

The man tripped, stumbled into a desk and accidentally tossed hot coffee into his own face. As he began to yell in pain, Lau kicked the door shut. He stepped forward and delivered a hard punch to the man’s kidney, making him gasp and slump to the floor.

The man turned to look at him with surprised eyes, Lau thought that was a reasonable reaction. A man appears out of nowhere in a secure base when you were alone, traps you in your own office and punches you in the kidney. Surprise was a mild reaction in all fairness.

“Any cameras in here?” Lau asked, in French.

“Of course, ya daft bastard.” The man replied in a Scottish accent.

Lau switched back to English “A multi national group, interesting. How long before someone will look to see what you’re up to?”

“Oh, immediately.” The man said, sneering.

That was very unlikely. Lau sighed and pulled off another stamp, slapping the truth spell onto the man’s forehead.

“Try again.

“Ages. I’m not doing anything important in here. I just collate the results.” The man looked shocked and tried to pull the stamp off. It wouldn’t budge.

“What’s your name?”

“Dino Groves.”

“Dino, I’m not here for your research, although I’ll take anything that you think the British government might be interested in. I’m here to retrieve someone. Where do you keep the prisoners?”

“The cells are on the third floor. You’d probably want to take everything on the hard drive in my computer. The Brits would probably want to see all of it.”

Lau smiled at him “You’re a pal, Dino. Is there a better way for me to get down to the third floor, one I’m less likely to be seen on than using the lift?”

“Oh yeah, stairs. We moved the cameras so we can have a smoke and bitch about the bosses without being seen. Just hug the walls on your way down.”

Lau got Dino to give him directions to the stairs

After he had removed the correct hard drive and slipped it into his jacket pocket, Lau slapped a sleep stamp on the man, stole his coat and ID badge then left the office.

Keeping his head down, Lau followed the directions Dino had so kindly provided. He passed another couple of lab coat wearing drones and saw another group of three guards rushing in the direction of the lift.

The stairs opened at the touch of Dino’s ID badge. Lau stepped inside, looking like he belonged.

He saw the camera and noted Dino was right, it was definitely pointing in such a way as to create blind spots. He’d try to keep to them for as long as he could. He would’ve able to use another invisibility patch in five minutes without taking on any of the side effects, but he kept one handy in case he needed it. They only lasted 100 seconds and he didn’t know how far down he would have to go.

The second floor felt as though it was a similar depth to the first from the shop. Three flights of stairs down. The third floor took seven flights of stairs to reach. Lau couldn’t help but wonder what they might be doing so deep under the streets of Paris.

What he saw when he slipped through the door to the third floor didn’t offer any obvious answers.

At first glance, it was a dimly lit space, a man made cavern. It put Lau most in mind of a hanger.

Eyes adjusting to the gloom, he saw that it was not an empty space, instead the light dimly lit several strange shapes and objects.

The first was a spiderweb, something normal, but it looked strange. Walking towards it, Lau realised that he was not seeing a normal sized one close up, instead he saw an enormous one that took up the entirety of the far wall. He stopped walking towards it and looked around for the spider that had spun it. Nothing was visible, he suppressed a shudder imagining how big the spider must be.

A spherical cage that hummed held something dark and smokey which hovered in its centre.

Was this a prison or was this the barracks for an uncanny army?

He dared not spend too much time here, he was under equipped for a full supernatural battle. His job was simply to retrieve the asset.

Head still down, trying to look as dejected and bored as many of the lab coat wearers he’d passed had, Lau started a long walk down the cavern, away from the spiderweb.

The space was eerily quiet. No voices travelled through it, no sounds of life. He wondered what kind of guards a place like this would employ.

He came upon a pit, barred with gold thread, which hissed with the sound of a thousand snakes as he drew close. An empty square, marked out with crushed stone moaned as he passed it.

Lau sped up, searching for the cells he was looking for. He didn’t know what else was being kept here, he could guess at some of them but he had no interest in finding out right now.

Down in the darkness, a long way away, he heard an engine start, saw two pinpricks of light he recognised as headlights appear. That was probably a guard patrol.

He was running out of time.

He found the row of nine feet tall, cylindrical faraday cages a minute of walking after he passed the empty bamboo cage that dripped blood.

Barely two feet in diameter, the six cages stood in the dull light, apparently empty. Inside each one was a small stone.

“I’m looking for Edmund Barker.” 

In the third cage from the left a man in a dishevelled tuxedo faded in to view.

“Edmund?”

“That’s me. Is me? Was me? I’m terribly sorry, things are a touch confused.”

“Allow me to clear it up for you. You’re dead.”

Barker grimaced “Yes, I had gathered that.”

“Right, well, now you’re a ghost. As are all the poor sods in the other cages.”

“Yes. I had all surmised as such. Who are you?”

“Well, Mr Barker, formerly of MI6, my name is Rick Lau, currently of MSSA. This is what we call a jailbreak.”

Barker stared at him, bewildered “What is the MSSA?”

“Monsters, Sorcery and Supernatural Agency. We deal with the weird stuff. Like you.”

“And you plan to break ghosts out of this prison?”

Lau pulled out a knife and began cutting through the wire of the cage “Indeed I do. Is there anyone in these cages you think would be worth taking with us?”

Barker shook his head “They won’t speak to me. I don’t know if they are members of this group or agents like me who have been captured.”

“Let’s take them all then. Anyone have an objection?” Lau asked the other cages, whose occupants were starting to appear.

The two men either side of Barker, one a tall black man, the other a short Thai, both glared at Lau, daring him to try it.

The three women, all white, began to beg for help in French.

“Oh, a unisex jail, how progressive.”

“Oh, you’re one of those.” Barker rolled his eyes.

“All day, every day.” Lau said as he finished cutting a hole in Barker’s cage. He moved to the end cage an quickly dug his way in.

“Out you come then.” Lau called to Barker.

Before Barker replied, Lau reached through the hole in the cage, retrieved the small stone and dropped it into a bag which he closed tight. The Woman in the cage vanished from sight.

“I cannot leave, cannot move away from my stone.”

Lau grabbed the next woman’s stone and moved to the last of them. Leaving the angry men for now.

“Why are you putting the stones in bags?” Barker asked.

“Faraday bags. Work just like the cages for containing the ghosts. Don’t know who they are, can’t risk them causing trouble.” Lau told him, putting the last of the women’s stones in a bag. “Are you coming or not?”

“I cannot leave the cage while my stone remains, even with the break in the barrier you have created.”

Growling with frustration, Lau tossed a coin to Barker through the hole. The former spy caught it.

“You can touch things. Pick up your stone and walk out.”

Barker bent down and tentatively poked at his stone, gasping when it moved.

The men either side of Barker grinned at each other and picked up their own stones.

“Put them down, boys.” Lau didn’t attempt to cut open their cages.

The Thai said something Lau didn’t understand, it was a gap in his language skills he had yet to fill.

Barker stepped through the hole in his cage holding his stone, still looking at it in wonder.

“Put that in your pocket for now.”

Barker did so as they were illuminated by the headlights from the patrol vehicle. It had reached them faster than Lau had expected.

Facing away from the lights so as not to be dazzled, he heard the sound of doors opening and boots hitting the floor.

“Drop the knife.” Drawled an American voice.

Complying, Rick Lau put his hands in the air and was pleased to see Barker fade away to a barely visible shape. He wouldn’t be able to vanish completely while he held the stone but hopefully he would be of some use.

“Now then, what’s a Chink like you doing all the way down here, messing with my pets?”

Lau stayed silent, waiting for the obvious move on the guards’ part. He didn’t have to wait long. A gun was pressed to his ear and a hand clamped onto his shoulder.

Twisting away from the gun at the same time he drove an elbow into the guard’s gut. The move ended with Lau behind the guard, his left hand gripping his throat and his right holding the gun arm aloft. This made the guard an effective meat shield.

“Let him go” said the American, voice not quite as confident “Should’ve guessed you’d know some kung fu shit.”

Lau took a good look at the leader of the guards, the man was a walking cliche of every rude American he’d ever heard of. The idiot even wore a cowboy hat. Two other men were behind their leader, pistols pointed at him.

“Its really racist of you to assume I know kung fu just because I’m Chinese.”

Barker was sliding into place behind the other two guards, he nodded at Lau.

“Ain’t racist, that’s for blacks.” The American sneered.

Lau rolled his eyes the stupidity.

Barker chopped one of the guards in the neck from behind and the man dropped, his gun clattering to the floor. The American turned at the sound and Lau attacked.

First, he wrenched the windpipe of the guard he held, leaving him gasping on the floor. Before the man hit the floor, Lau had crossed the distance to the American who was only just beginning to realise something was going wrong.

Credit to the man, he managed to swing his gun most of the way up to get a shot off. Lau knocked the gun hand aside and delivered a punch to the man’s sternum. That pushed the wind out of the American and Lau dropped, sweeping the man’s feet out from under him.

The American rolled as he hit the floor, taking the impact on his side and using his momentum to attempt to get space.

Lau didn’t give it to him. He dropped a knee onto the man’s ankle, hearing the bone snap.

The American’s head came up as he yelled in pain, giving Lau the chance to grab a handful of his hair and smash his face down into the ground. Blood spurted out as his nose broke, but the American didn’t stop.

Lau punched him in the back of the head and got another cry of pain, but no knock out for his troubles.

“Sod this.” Lau said and pulled off a sleep stamp. 

The American was struggling to his knees when Lau slapped the stamp on his cheek. The American’s arms folded and he dropped nose first to the ground.

“I mean, I do know kung fu but that’s because I’m a secret agent. Not because I’m Chinese.”

“I don’t think he can hear you.” Barker said, looking solid again.

“I know. I just had to tell him.”

“What do we do about those two?” Barker asked, pointing to the two angry men still in cages.

Lau had started to reply when an enormous spider leg crashed through the cages, smashing them.

“We leave them. Get in the car.”

Jumping into the driver’s seat, he made sure Barker was beside him and accelerated away.

“Is it chasing us?” Asked Barker.

“I’m not looking. It either is or it isn’t.”

Pushing the car up to sixty, they reached the door to the stairs in seconds.

Lau was out of the car before it stopped fully, sprinting for the door and pulling Dino’s badge out to push against the lock pad beside the door. He pulled the door open and stepped through. Barker was right behind him.

“Give me your stone.”

Barker pulled it out of his pocket, apprehensive “You aren’t putting it in a bag, are you?”

“No. I might need your help. I suspect we’ll have company soon. But you can’t vanish completely if you’re holding it. You can if I have it.”

Barker handed over the stone “Are you going to explain to me how I ended up like this?”

“Later. Right now it’s time to do as the Beard says.”

“The Beard?”

“My boss. He says its time for violence and escape.”

Barker grinned “I like the sound of that.”

Lau slipped the stone into a pocket and pulled out his stamp book and slapped an invisibility stamp on.

“How did you do that?” Barker gasped.

“Magic. Come on, up the stairs. I think I hear company descending to meet us.”

The pair had barely climbed two flights before they came into contact with the first group of guards. None of them knew what hit them as two invisible assailants attacked and dispatched them.

One flight below the door to the second floor, the invisibility spell wore off. They couldn’t afford to wait the ten minutes it would take for a safe second stamp, so Lau suffered through the stomach cramps and nausea to sneak past them. He didn’t want to risk taking the time to fight them.

They made it to the blind spot by the first floor door ten seconds before the spell wore off.

Becoming visible, Lau couldn’t hold his stomach contents in any more and vomited. Barker faded in to view but Lau told him to stay invisible.

“I can’t take another one right now, all I’d do is end up lying invisibly on the ground in agony. You stay out of sight, we can still surprise them.”

Lau took a moment to let his stomach settle and told Barker the route back to the lift.

“They have cameras, so they will spot me. You go ahead and call the lift. If we can get back up top my comms should start working again. I can call for help if we can’t get away.”

“That’s your plan? Run for it, hope you don’t die?”

Lau grimaced “The plan was to avoid detection. I hadn’t counted on a giant spider as a guard dog.”

“May I suggest an alternative?”

“Suggest away.”

Barker smiled “Do you know what my job was?”

Rick Lau spent ten minutes waiting for Barker to come back and pondered the implications and possibilities his new comrade presented.

The stone in his pocket was a reminder of how bizarre this life he had been called into could be and Barker had never known this world even existed.

It was one thing to be killed in the course of a mission, every field agent accepted that possibility. No-one outside of the MSSA even knew it was possible to force someone to be a ghost and haunt a specific item. Yet that was the fate which had befallen Edmund Barker.

Such a shame for those on floor one that he wasn’t simply a spy. He had been the Crown’s chief hidden executioner.

There was a knock on the door and Lau cautiously opened it, ready to strike out if he saw a face.

“I’ve cleared a path and I don’t think there’s a clean pair of trousers left on this floor.” Barker laughed. “Can you be invisible again?”

He shouldn’t, he should leave it for at last another half an hour, but there wouldn’t be permanent damage, so far as he knew.

“I can. But I won’t be fast or effective if we come up against trouble.”

“I still will be, though.” Barker told him.

Lau accepted the answer, slapped on a stamp, vomited over the railing and the pair of them ran for the lift.

Each step made his stomach churn and his head pound with the worst headache of his life, but Rick Lau wasn’t going to let that stop him. He had one hundred seconds to bear it, then he would either be on his way to freedom or he would be caught. Binary choices.

The last group of guards was smart. They were waiting or them on the  lift platform.

Lau’s invisibility ended just as he stepped into the light of the lift, six guns raised to point at him.

“Oh well,” he said, “I’ve had fun. Just remember to take your stone with you when you go.”

He watched fingers tighten on the triggers of the six MP5’s and waited to die.

To everyone’s surprise the guard on the left of the line twisted and fired into his teammates. Lau saw him trying to turn away from them, but in seconds then bodies were dropping to the ground. Then his head twisted unnaturally and he too fell to the floor.

Edmund Barker faded in to view next to the body.

“Thanks.” Lau managed to say before collapsing to his knees.

Six hours later Lau and Barker were stood to attention in the office of the head of MSSA.

Affectionately known as the Beard, he was a man of indeterminate age, his eyes looking much more youthful than the white beard which reached to his knees.

“Congratulations, Lau. Mission accomplished.”

“Yes, Sir. Although I wouldn’t have succeeded without agent Barker.”

The Beard studied the tuxedoed ghost “Yes. A man of extraordinary talents. Now an extraordinary being with the same talents. Very good job, Barker.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

“Now then, Barker. Lau was sent to retrieve you for two reasons. Firstly, to prevent a lengthy interrogation. You know things we do not want others to know.”

Barker was indignant “I would never have told them, Sir.”

“You would be surprised, a ghost can still be tortured. Except when that happens, they know there is no escape into death. It can be remarkably effective.”

“Sir.” Lau could hear a trace of petulance in the others acceptance and tried to hide a smile.

“The other reason is that you were sent to gather certain information on your last mission. We took the chance that you did.”

“I had a chance to memorise the list before they cornered me, Sir.”

“Excellent, you will be debriefed. And please, stop calling me Sir.”

“Call him Beard.” Whispered Lau.

“I heard that, Rick. Please, do not call me the Beard. My name is Merlin.”

Barker was momentarily taken aback “Your name is Merlin? You were named after the wizard?”

Merlin laughed and Lau joined in.

“Sorry, did I say something funny?”

“I’m not named after Merlin. I am he. Britain’s sorcerer.”

“Oh.” Barker looked like he wasn’t sure if he was being made fun of.

“It really is him. I promise you.” Lau told him.

“I suppose it makes sense that you are the head of the Monster, Sorcery and Supernatural Agency. Who would know them better than you.” Lau was impressed, not many people took this information in stride, he hadn’t handled the revelation nearly half as well. But then, he hadn’t been turned into a ghost and been chased by a giant spider first. Barker had been given a bit of a head start.

“The Monster, Sorcery and Supernatural Agency? Is that what we’re telling people the acronym stands for these days?” Merlin raised an eyebrow at Lau, who coughed and looked away.

“That isn’t what it stands for?” Barker asked.

“Of course not, what a weird name for an agency. Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.”

“What does it stand for?”

Lau groaned, everyone who worked for MSSA hated its true name, but the Beard refused to entertain the notion of changing it.

“It stands for what I demanded it be called when Henry first asked me to be in charge of Britain’s defence against the supernatural. This is Merlin’s Super Secret Agency.”

Barker boggled, Lau didn’t blame him.

“Now then. After your debriefing we will show you how to pass on, if you wish. You have served your country with distinction and deserve your reward.” 

Merlin left an unspoken choice in the air, Barker was smart enough to pick up on it.

“If I don’t wish?”

The ancient sorcerer smiled “Would you like a job?”

© Robert Spalding 2020