“Well,” said my mother, wiping her hands on her apron, “that’s her gone. I’m glad she got her husband back.”

  “Yes,” I agreed somewhat diffidently, and walked off to find Hamlet. He was outside, sitting on the bench in the rose garden, deep in thought.

  “You okay?” I asked, sitting down next to him.

  “Tell me truthfully, Miss Next. Do I dither?”

  “Well—not really.”

  “Truthfully now!”

  “Perhaps . . . a bit.”

  Hamlet gave a groan and buried his face in his hands.

  “Oh what a rogue and peasant slave am I! A slave to this play with contradictions so legion that scholars write volumes attempting to explain me. One moment I love Ophelia, the next I treat her cruelly. I am by turns a petulant adolescent and a mature man, a melancholy loner and a wit telling actors their trade. I cannot decide whether I’m a philosopher or a moping teenager, a poet or a murderer, a procrastinator or a man of action. I might be truly mad or sane pretending to be mad or even mad pretending to be sane. By all accounts my father was a war-hungry monster—was Claudius’s act of assassination so bad after all? Did I really see a ghost of my father or was it Fortinbras in disguise, trying to sow discord within Denmark? How long did I spend in England? How old am I? I’ve watched sixteen different film adaptations of Hamlet and two plays, read three comic books and listened to a wireless adaptation. Everything from Olivier to Gibson to Barrymore to William Shatner in Conscience of the King.”

  “And?”

  “Every single one of them is different.”

  He looked around in quiet desperation for his skull, found it, and then stared at it meditatively for a few moments before continuing. “Do you have any idea the pressure I’m under being the world’s leading dramatic enigma?”

  “It must be intolerable.”

  “It is. I’d feel worse if anyone else had figured me out—but they haven’t. Do you know how many books there are about me?”

  “Hundreds?”

  “Thousands. And the slanders they write! The Oedipal thing is by far the most insulting. The good-night kiss with Mum has got longer and longer. That Freud fellow will have a bloody nose if ever I meet him. My play is a complete and utter mess—four acts of talking and one of action. Why does anyone trouble to watch it?”

  His shoulders sagged and he appeared to sob quietly to himself. I rested a hand on his shoulder.

  “It is your complexity and philosophical soul-searching that we pay money to see—you are the quintessential tragic figure, questioning everything, dissecting all life’s shames and betrayals. If all we wanted was action, we’d watch nothing but Chuck Norris movies. It is your journey to resolving your demons that makes the play the prevaricating tour de force that it is.”

  “All four and a half hours of it?”

  “Yes,” I said, wary of his feelings, “all four and a half hours of it.”

  He shook his head sadly.

  “I wish I could agree with you but I need more answers, Horatio.”

  “Thursday.”

  “Yes, her, too. More answers and a new facet to my character. Less talk, more action. So I have secured the services . . . of a conflict-resolution consultant.”

  This didn’t sound good at all.

  “Conflict resolution? Are you sure that’s wise?”

  “It might help me resolve matters with my uncle—and that twit Laertes.”

  I thought for a moment. An all-action Hamlet might not be such a good idea, but since he had no play to return to, it at least gave me a few days’ breathing space. I decided not to intervene for the time being.

  “When are you talking to him?”

  He shrugged. “Tomorrow. Or perhaps the day after. Conflict-resolution advisers are pretty busy, you know.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. True to form, Hamlet was still dithering. But he had brightened up, having come to a decision of sorts, and continued in a more cheery tone. “But that’s enough about me. How goes it with you?”

  I gave him a brief outline, beginning with Landen’s reeradication and ending with the importance of finding five good players to help Swindon win the SuperHoop.

  “Hmm,” he replied as soon as I had finished. “I’ve got a plan for you. Want to hear it?”

  “As long as it’s not about where Biffo should play.”

  He shook his head, looked around carefully and then lowered his voice. “Pretend to be mad and talk a lot. Then—and this is the important bit—do nothing at all until you absolutely have to and then make sure everyone dies.”

  “Thanks,” I said at length, “I’ll remember that.”

  “Plink!” said Alan, who had been padding grumpily around the garden.

  “I think that bird is looking for trouble,” observed Hamlet.

  Alan, who clearly didn’t like Hamlet’s attitude, decided to attack and made a lunge at Hamlet’s shoe. It was a bad move. The Prince of Denmark leapt up, drew his sword and, before I could stop him, made a wild slash in Alan’s direction. He was a skilled swordsman and did no more damage than to pluck the feathers off the top of Alan’s head. The little dodo, who now had a bald patch, opened his eyes wide and looked around him with a mixture of horror and awe at the small feathers that were floating to the ground.

  “Any more from you, my fine feathered friend,” announced Hamlet, replacing his sword, “and you’ll be in the curry!”

  Pickwick, who had been watching from a safe corner near the compost heap, boldly strode out and stood defiantly between Alan and Hamlet. I’d never seen her acting brave before, but I suppose Alan was her son, even if he was a hooligan. Alan, either terrified or incensed, stood completely motionless, beak open.

  “Telephone for you,” my mother called out. I walked into the house and picked up the receiver. It was Aubrey Jambe. He wanted me to speak to my old coach Alf Widdershaine to get him out of retirement and also to know if I had found any new players yet.

  “I’m working on it,” I said, rummaging through the Yellow Pages under “Sports Agents.” “I’ll call you back. Don’t lose hope, Aubrey.”

  He harrumphed and rang off. I called Wilson Lonsdale & Partners, England’s top sports agents, and was delighted to hear there were any number of world-class croquet players available; sadly, the interest evaporated when I mentioned which team I represented.

  “Swindon?” said one of Lonsdale’s associates. “I’ve just remembered—we don’t have anyone on our books at all.”

  “I thought you said you had?”

  “It must have been a clerical error. Good day.”

  The phone went dead. I called several others and received a similar response from all of them. Goliath and Kaine were obviously covering all their bases.

  Following that, I called Alf Widdershaine and, after a long chat, managed to persuade him to go down to the stadium and do what he could. I called Jambe back to tell him the good news about Alf, although I thought it prudent to hide the lack of new players from him for the time being.

  I thought about Landen’s existence problem for a moment and then found the number of Julie Aseizer, the woman at Eradications Anonymous who had got her husband back. I called her and explained the situation.

  “Oh, yes!” she said helpfully. “My Ralph flickered on and off like a faulty lightbulb until his uneradication held!”

  I thanked her and put the phone down, then checked my finger for a wedding ring. It still wasn’t there.

  I glanced into the garden and saw Hamlet walking on the lawn, deep in thought—with Alan following him at a safe distance. As I watched, Hamlet turned to him and glared. The small dodo went all sheepish and laid his head on the ground in supplication. Clearly Hamlet wasn’t just a fictional Prince of Denmark but also something of an alpha dodo.

  I smiled to myself and wandered into the living room where I found Friday building a castle out of bricks with Pickwick helping. Of course, “helping” in this context meant “watching.” I glanced at the clock. Time for work. Just when I could do with some relaxing brick-building therapy. Mum agreed to look after Friday and I gave him a kiss good-bye.

  “Be good.”

  “Arse.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Pikestaff.”

  “If those are rude Old English words, St. Zvlkx is in a lot of trouble—and so are you, my little fellow. Mum, sure you’re okay?”

  “Of course. We’ll take him to the zoo.”

  “Good. No, wait—we?”

  “Bismarck and I.”

  “Mum!?”

  “What? Is there any reason a more or less widowed woman can’t have a bit of male company from time to time?”

  “Well,” I stammered, feeling unnaturally shocked for some reason. “I suppose no reason at all.”

  “Good. Be off with you. After we’ve gone to the zoo we might drop in at the tea rooms. And then the theater.”

  She had started to go all dreamy so I left, shocked not only that Mother might be even considering some sort of a fling with Bismarck, but that Joffy might have been right.

  27.

  Weird Shit on the M4

  George Formby was born George Hoy Booth in Wigan in 1904. He followed his father into the music-hall business, adopted the ukulele as his trademark, and by the time the war broke out, he was a star of variety, pantomime and film. During the first years of the war, he and his wife Beryl toured extensively for ENSA, entertaining the troops as well as making a series of highly successful movies. When invasion of England was inevitable, many influential dignitaries and celebrities were shipped out to Canada. Moving underground with the English resistance and various stalwart regiments of the Local Defence Volunteers, Formby manned the outlawed “Wireless St. George” and broadcast songs, jokes and messages to secret receivers across the country. The Formbys used their numerous contacts in the north to smuggle Allied airmen to neutral Wales and form resistance cells that harried the Nazi invaders. In postwar republican England, he was made nonexecutive President for Life.

  John Williams, The Extraordinary Career of George Formby

  I avoided the news crews who were staking out the SpecOps Building and parked at the rear. Major Drabb was waiting for me as I walked into the entrance lobby. He saluted smartly but I detected a slight reticence about him this morning. I handed him another scrap of paper. “Good morning, Major. Today’s assignment is the Museum of the American Novel in Salisbury.”

  “Very . . . good, Agent Next.”

  “Problems, Major?”

  “Well,” he said, biting his lip nervously, “yesterday you had me searching the library of a famous Belgian and today the Museum of the American Novel. Shouldn’t we be searching more, well, Danish facilities?”

  I pulled him aside and lowered my voice. “That’s precisely what they would be expecting us to do. These Danes are clever people. You wouldn’t expect them to hide their books in somewhere as obvious as the Wessex Danish Library, now would you?”

  He smiled and tapped his nose.

  “Very astute, Agent Next.”

  Drabb saluted again, clicked his heels and was gone. I smiled to myself and pressed the elevator call button. As long as Drabb didn’t report to Flanker I could keep this going all week.

  Bowden was not alone. He was talking to the last person I would expect to see in a LiteraTec office: Spike.

  “Yo, Thursday,” Spike said.

  “Yo, Spike.”

  He wasn’t smiling. I feared it might be something to do with Cindy, but I was wrong.

  “Our friends in SO-6 tell us there’s some seriously weird shit going down on the M4,” he announced, “and when someone says ‘weird shit’ they call—”

  “You.”

  “Bingo. But the weird shit merchant can’t do it on his own, so he calls—”

  “Me.”

  “Bingo.”

  There was another officer with them. He wore a dark suit typical of the upper SpecOps divisions, and he looked at his watch in an unsubtle manner.

  “Time is of the essence, Agent Stoker.”

  “What’s the job?” I asked.

  “Yes,” returned Spike, whose somewhat laid-back attitude to life-and-death situations took a little getting used to. “What is the job?”

  The suited agent looked impassively at us both.

  “Classified,” he announced. “But I am authorized to tell you this: unless we get ****** back in under ******-**** hours, then ***** will seize ultimate executive ***** and you can **** good-bye to any semblance of *******.”

  “Sounds pretty ****ing serious,” said Spike, turning back to me. “Are you in?”

  “I’m in.”

  We were driven without explanation to the roundabout at Junction 16 of the M4 motorway. SO-6 were national security, which made for some interesting conflicts of interest. The same department protecting Formby also protected Kaine. And for the most part the SO-6 agents looking after Formby did so against Kaine’s SO-6 operatives who were more than keen to see him gone. SpecOps factions always fought, but rarely from within the same department. Kaine had a lot to answer for.

  In any case, I didn’t like them and neither did Spike, and whatever it was they wanted it would have to be pretty weird. No one calls Spike until every avenue has been explored. He was the last line of defense before rationality started to crumble.

  We pulled onto the verge, where two large black Bentley limousines were waiting for us. Parked next to them were six standard police cars, with the occupants looking bored and waiting for orders. Something pretty big was going down.

  “Who’s she?” demanded a tall agent with a humorless demeanor as soon as we stepped from the car.

  “Thursday Next,” I replied, “SO-27.”

  “Literary Detectives?” he sneered.

  “She’s good enough for me,” said Spike. “If I don’t get my own people, you can do your own weird shit.”

  The SO-6 agent looked at the pair of us in turn. “ID.”

  I showed him my badge. He took it, looked at it for a moment, then passed it back.

  “My name is Colonel Parks,” said the agent. “I’m head of Presidential Security. This is Dowding, my second in command.”

  Spike and I exchanged looks. The President. This really was serious.

  Dowding, a laconic figure in a dark suit, nodded his greeting as Parks continued:

  “Firstly, I must point out to you both that this is a matter of great national importance, and I am asking for your advice only because we are desperate. We find ourselves in a head-of-state-deficit condition by virtue of a happenstance of a high-otherworldlinesspossibility situation—and we hoped you might be able to reverse-engineer us out of it.”

  “Cut the waffle,” said Spike. “What’s going on?”

  Parks’s shoulders slumped, and he took off his dark glasses. “We’ve lost the President.”

  My heart missed a beat. This was bad news. Really bad news. The way I saw it, the President wasn’t due to die until next Monday, after Kaine and Goliath had been neutered. Formby’s going missing or dying early allowed Kaine to gain power and start World War III a week before he was meant to—and that was certainly not in the game plan.

  Spike thought for a moment and then said, “Bummer.”

  “Quite.”

  “Where?”

  Parks swept his arm towards the busy traffic speeding past on the motorway. “Somewhere out there.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Twelve hours. Chancellor Kaine has got wind of it, and he’s pushing a parliamentary vote to establish himself dictator at six o’clock this evening. That gives us less than eight hours.”

  Spike nodded thoughtfully. “Show me where you last saw him.”

  Parks snapped his fingers, and a black Bentley drew up alongside. We climbed in, and the limo joined the M4 in a westerly direction, the police cars dropping in behind to create a rolling road-block. Within a few miles, our lane of the busy thoroughfare was deserted and quiet. As we drove on, Parks explained what had happened. President Formby was being driven from London to Bath along the M4, and somewhere between Junctions 16 and 17—where we now were—he vanished.

  The Bentley glided to a halt on the empty asphalt.

  “The President’s car was the center vehicle in a three-car motorcade,” explained Parks as we got out. “Saundby’s car was behind, I was with Dowding in front, and Mallory was driving the President. At this precise point, I looked behind and noticed that Mallory was indicating to turn off. I saw them move onto the hard shoulder, and we pulled over immediately.”

  Spike sniffed the air. “And then what happened?”

  “We lost sight of the car. We thought it had gone over the embankment, but when we got there—nothing. Not a bramble out of place. The car just vanished.”

  We walked to the edge and looked down the slope. The motorway was carried above the surrounding countryside on an earth embankment; there was a steep slope that led down about fifteen feet through ragged vegetation to a fence. Beyond this was a field, a concrete bridge over a drainage ditch and beyond that, about half a mile distant, a row of white houses.

  “Nothing just vanishes,” said Spike at last. “There is always a reason. Usually a simple one, sometimes a weird one—but always a reason. Dowding, what’s your story?”

  “Pretty much the same. His car started to pull over, then just . . . well, vanished from sight.”

  “Vanished?”

  “More like melted, really,” said a confused Dowding. Spike rubbed his chin thoughtfully and bent down to pick up a handful of roadside detritus. Small granules of toughened glass, shards of metal and wires from the lining of a car tire. He shivered.

  “What is it?” asked Parks.

  “I think President Formby’s gone . . . deadside.”

  “Then where’s the body? In fact, where’s the car?”