At the next meeting Taylor updated everyone on the process to recruit Parnell.
‘Don’t you think you’re moving a little too fast?’, Dick enquired. ‘I thought you said that the recruiting procedure for new members took months. You said you had to be overwhelmingly confident that the prospect was entirely safe to introduce’.
‘You’re right’, Taylor admitted, ‘But we’re extremely concerned about this secret weapon that the Party are developing. Each day that passes is a day they’re closer to using it’.
‘But we’re not sure about the weapon. It’s still just a rumour isn’t it?’, Dick enquired.
‘It is, but a very strong rumour, and one from several different sources. That makes it a rumour we can’t afford to ignore’.
‘Just because you haven’t uncovered any definite proof about it Mr. Longg, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist’. Humphrey added. There were murmurs of agreement within the room. Dick recoiled from the pointed criticism.
‘Have faith. Taylor has weighed up the situation and he knows what he’s doing. There are sufficient precautions in place to safeguard our identities and location’. This was Alice’s turn to add support to her lover and she did it with a look that said, ‘You were wrong about Mr. Parnell and you’re still jealous of him’. It was also a look that said, ‘And when he gets here I’m going to have really good sex with him’ — but then Dick thought that maybe he was reading a little too much into her look.
When it was Dick’s turn to report on developments he told his resistance colleagues that Jack had so far located and dispatched eleven of the rogue harlots. In his job at the Ministry he continued to seed all variety of rumours about the murders including fake confessional letters from the killer in which he signs his name Jack. All these reports were being lapped up by the public which still demonstrated an unquenchable desire for all things associated with the killings. In addition to these news stories papers were devising their own crowd-pleasing features like ‘The Ripper Diet’, ‘Are YOU a Prostitute?’ personality tests and even ‘Jack the Ripper Bingo’. Dick even planted a few reports that said that Jack had killed prostitutes and their clients in the same bloody brutal attacks (the men, stories claimed, had been found with their severed penises in their own mouths). Discouraging women from becoming prostitutes was the key objective, but putting men off visiting them was equally important.
The Party didn’t mind the fact that conflicting stories confused the police and ultimately wasted their time. The intention of these reports was to make sure everyone got the message that prostitution, as the Party had always claimed, was a ‘great social evil’. Of that, after Dick’s sustained media campaign, there was absolutely no doubt.
Although Dick was kept busy, his days at the Ministry had become rather routine. The Ripper business would continue until all the robot prostitutes had been killed, and then maybe a little longer. (At his most cynical and manipulative, Dick was toying with the idea of a moral ending to Jack’s reign of terror; having him killed off in a fight to the death by a god-fearing, Party-supporting, non-masturbating, happily-married man — that sort of thing). Each day he monitored transcripts of the television news, studied press cuttings, planned and implemented future activity and briefed Vera on his activity. Just when he felt he’d been forgotten and wouldn’t receive any more recognition for the excellent work he was doing, he got the call. As calls went this one was very, very welcome, and in fact featured in Dick’s Top Three Calls Of All Time.
The first was the time he learned he was being inducted into the Pornography Hall of Fame, having his penis imprinted for perpetuity in cement outside a seedy cinema off Hollywood Boulevard. The second of the top three calls was the time he was told he would be appearing on the cover of Newsweek as ‘The Man With The Golden Cock’ (this was a feature on his immense wealth and not an incident involving a pet rooster and a can of spray paint). This latest Top Call came when Dick was in the middle of charting week-on-week newspaper coverage.
‘Mr. Brunel’, a serious voice intoned over the phone, ‘This is Jonathan Claygate from Party headquarters. Your presence is requested tomorrow afternoon at 1600 hours’.
Dick’s default response was to feel guilty and panic. He looked up and saw Vera sitting on her platform, head raised up from a massive pile of papers, smiling at him. She winked and Dick knew that this was the call he’d been waiting for. He was going to Party HQ to be congratulated in person. Maybe he’d be given a promotion. Now his skills had been recognised, the sky was the limit. A sub-section under-manager? No, he was better than that. A department deputy head? What about ‘Head Assistant to the Deputy Leader?’ Or ‘Deputy Head Assistant to the Leader?’ He liked the sound of that. In fact, he thought he’d be happy with any position with ‘Leader’ in the title. Well not a title involving the words ‘Syphy Leader’ or ‘Pooh Pants Leader’, obviously.
‘Mr. Brunel? Mr. Brunel? Hello…’ Dick was shaken back to reality by the impatient voice still emanating from the receiver.
‘Hello Mr. Claygate. Sorry about that. I’ll be delighted to be there tomorrow’.
‘Good. Be ready in your reception at fifteen forty where a ministerial hovercar will pick you up. Goodbye’.
With that, Mr. Claygate was gone. Dick put the phone down, still in a state of shock. He looked up at Vera who smiled and winked at him once more. Dick smiled back. He wasn’t certain which high-ranking Party official he was going to meet but just to be summoned to Party headquarters was enough at this moment. Dick couldn’t wait to tell Taylor about this invitation. This was his chance to infiltrate the Party hierarchy, discover their plans and fulfil his mission. He didn’t give a shit about this young upstart David ‘I simulated sex with a statue of Queen Victoria’ Parnell. He might join the Resistance and impress them with his stupid party connections via his even stupider canal building-related career but what he wouldn’t be doing was travelling in a chauffeur driven car to Party HQ. Dick just knew Alice would be suitably impressed.
CHAPTER 24
As journeys go, the one to the Party HQ was very uneventful. Dick tried to strike up a conversation with the young driver but only succeeded in establishing that he was being driven by a Grade III chauffeur who was only permitted to drive and not talk to passengers. Well, that’s not strictly true, he could obviously talk to passengers to tell them this — and also explain the differences in the party driver hierarchy. Grade II chauffeurs were allowed to respond to passengers but not instigate conversation, while if you achieved the heady heights of Grade I you could converse freely with passengers on journeys longer than 10 miles or a half hour in duration (whichever was shorter), as long as you showed due deference. The New Victorian class system was alive and well in the front of this hovercar as it sped westwards through London. After about fifteen minutes the Party HQ came into sight, an austere tower block on the south bank of the Thames. Dick had travelled past it many times, always wondering what went on behind its faceless exterior. Now, he hoped, he was going to find out.
It took a lot to impress Dick but the glazed triple height atrium and thirty-foot fir trees growing within it with squirrels leaping from bough to bough almost did the trick. Looking around at this grand entrance Dick could easily see where the population’s taxes were being spent. He scanned the trees again. There were squirrels everywhere he looked. He scanned the lobby and the only thing more numerous than the squirrels were armed guards. Those who weren’t positioned at security stations were on patrol, and those who weren’t on patrol were milling about, getting ready to go on patrol. Dick guessed that the security here was tighter than the pussy of a Mother Superior (Dick had never had sex with a Mother Superior, although he once got a blow job from a novice nun who it turned out, struggled more with his zip than with her faith).