‘But I’m Jeremy…’
‘It was your penis’.
Dick stopped. The Leader didn’t.
‘My doubts about you were all but confirmed by David Parnell. One thing he learned from your colleagues was that they had managed, fairly recently, to get someone deep within the Party however they would not reveal who this person was, how it happened or where they were. Then I remembered that a short time ago, using stolen Party technology, one person travelled back to 2010 but two people came back. Two agents were dispatched to follow them but they failed to make a clear identification. You don’t need to be a genius to work out that the person brought back was most probably recruited by the Resistance to do their dirty work’.
Dick could only listen in shock as the Leader continued his explanation. ‘This person seemed to go under cover at about the same time as you appeared on the scene at the Ministry of Information. I’m far too suspicious to believe in coincidences to I decided to probe deeper to try and uncover evidence of your duplicity’.
As Dick’s anxiety levels reached ‘Code Red’ the Leader continued his explanation. ‘We reviewed every single inch of video security footage you might have appeared in. There were eight teams on the project and they went back weeks and weeks looking for any clues, however small. Well, three days ago they eventually found that clue. And you know what? It wasn’t small. It was in a video taken in your department at the Ministry of Information.’
‘Fuck!’, Dick thought. Then he thought some more, ‘Fuck!’ He knew there were cameras outside the entrance and in the lobby but he had no idea the actual offices and meeting rooms were all under video surveillance, and he doubted whether anyone else was aware of it.
The leader continued. ‘Of course, when I said the footage featured ‘you’, I meant you and Vera. You remember that night don’t you?’, the Leader asked, smiling. ‘Well, everything that took place was captured by the hidden security cameras. And I mean everything. You made quite a couple, or should that be quite a coupling?’
Dick choked; a combination of fear and the memory of that night in Meeting Room A. Being reminded of what happened was like someone opening-up an old wound. And squeezing lemon juice in it. Then vinegar. Then a bit of lime for good measure, then rubbing it with sandpaper before hitting it hard with a stick.
The Leader continued. ‘That’s when I thought, there’s only one man I’m aware of with a twelve inch penis’.
‘Thirteen…’ Dick added, realising that setting the record straight was also tantamount to admitting his guilt.
‘And that was Dick S. Longg, world famous porn star. Well, famous of course in his own world’.
‘But if you realised my identity three days ago’, asked Dick. ‘Why the hell didn’t you confront me then?’
‘Well, since we had you under close observation I knew you wouldn’t pose much of a threat, and I thought I could use the situation to my advantage’, explained the Leader. ‘I wanted to see whether you still had contact with the Resistance or whether you were in the field on your own. And of course, I wanted to see how you reacted to the news about David Parnell in the meeting. Your response was priceless!’. He smiled. ‘And I hope you also enjoyed me toying with you in my little introduction. I like to have my little jokes’.
Dick was stunned.
‘Mr. Parnell failed to report in to us this morning’, continued the Leader. ‘I don’t doubt you have some knowledge about what happened to him’.
Dick shrugged his shoulders but in a way so unconvincing that he might just as well have said, ‘Of course I do’.
‘Come on, Dick’, said the Leader with a strange half-smile. ‘Just tell us. You’ve got nothing left to lose’.
‘What about my life?’, asked Dick.
‘Okay, apart from that’, agreed the Leader, adding, ‘Anyway, it’s probably a fair assumption to say that Parnell was killed by one of your colleagues, acting on your tip-off’.
‘And if he is dead’, asked Dick. ‘Then you happily consigned him to his fate just to prove I was still in contact with the Resistance?’
‘Well, yes’, the Leader answered. ‘What is the sacrifice of one man for the greater good of the Party?’
Dick shot the Leader a glare that said you’re a cruel, callous, cold-hearted, contemptible fucker (he would have used the other ‘C’ word to complete the alliteration but the publishers said they didn’t really want that word in this book).
Noticing Dick’s look of abhorrence, the Leader shook his head.
‘Dick. I’ve changed’, he said, adding earnestly, ‘I’m not the man you once knew’.
Dick frowned.
‘Look at me Dick. Look at me’. The Leader had placed the gun down on the desk near him and leaned towards Dick. ‘We know each other… Imagine me with short hair and without a beard and moustache’.
Dick looked. Nothing, but yet…
‘And thirty pounds lighter’.
Dick thought there was something slightly familiar about him. Then the Leader rolled up his shirt sleeve to reveal a tattoo of tape measure; one that neatly wound its way around his strong bicep.
‘Fuck’. Dick thought. It had been over a century since he’d seen that tattoo, but here it was, instantly recognisable.
‘It… It… It can’t be!’ Dick stammered. You’re… you’re…’
‘That’s right Dick…’ smiled the Leader.
‘Maxx Boner!’, Dick gasped.
‘The one and only!’, The Leader / Maxx replied.
Dick slumped back in his seat, the colour having drained from his face almost instantaneously. Being threatened by a loaded gun and then having your identity revealed was enough of a shock. Having it busted by your porn star rival from the past was enough to give anyone cardiac arrest. He thought back top his own time, to the day Maxx Boner suddenly and mysteriously disappeared from the industry. At the time rumours about his disappearance were rife. Some said Maxx had been murdered by drug dealers or by the jealous boyfriend of an actress he was screwing on and off screen. Other stories were far more salacious. These included him being kidnapped and slain by a poorly-endowed serial killer, known by the FBI as ‘Wee Willie Winkie’ or suffering hideous shaft blisters when a cheap penile sheath he’d been wearing to increase his length had caused a chronic allergic reaction. And to think, all along he’d been living in the future.
‘Fuck me!’ Dick was still stunned at meeting up with his rival once again. ‘Maxx Boner by name. Maxx Boner by nature’.
‘Sadly no more’. The Leader said dolefully. ‘Probably like you, my disappearance and my appearance here were so sudden I had no time to take the things most dear to me’.
‘Like photographs of loved ones or childhood mementoes?’, enquired Dick.
‘No. My penile implant inflator and valve set’, Maxx said with a dismayed expression.
So the rumours were true after all, Dick thought. Maxx had relied on artificial aids to sustain his erection and without his inflator he was like someone with… someone with… well, the best analogy he could think of was someone with a very long but very floppy penis.
‘But couldn’t you use the technology here to compensate?’
‘That’s what I thought’, Maxx said. ‘That notion… that promise… it’s what kept me going. The then leader of the Resistance and his colleagues tried all sorts of methods but nothing worked. My erections either took too long to achieve or they were extremely painful. Usually both. And having to inflate your penis with a bicycle pump for forty minutes beforehand is guaranteed to kill any amorous moment stone dead.
‘So, even under pressure you couldn’t rise to the occasion?’, Dick asked.