Gideon Carletan Is A Spy
Gideon Carletan sat on the second floor of Carl's Coffee House. The traffic of Soho was deafening as a nine o' clock commute rose to a crescendo.
He looked out over the soaked smoggy city, being pelted with thick smatterings of rain which lashed down viciously. He watched the city through weary eyes.
The rain would last at least until mid-afternoon. He knew that.
Now that meant that the plan was in motion.
"The wheels are turning." Gideon mumbled to himself.
He tapped his own nose twice.
An elderly gentleman folded up his paper and left, signalling the teenager next to Gideon to change the song on his iPod.
"Don't Stop Believing." Good. A classic coded phrase. He tilted his head ever so slightly, so as not to alert potential Others.
The barista behind the counter opened the coffee filter, waited for the hot steam to dissipate and then poured a fresh batch of the finest Columbian ground beans into the chute.
The quality of the beans would no doubt remove any taste of the sleeping draught.
"If that doesn't slow down the Others," Gideon thought. "Then nothing will."
He adjusted his horn-rimmed spectacles and rubbed his dark stubble. Gideon Carletan was tired of running, tricks, smoke and mirrors and espionage.
He noticed a shadow fall over him and felt a tap on his shoulder. He wasn't alarmed, the smell of peach was unmistakable.
"Can I get you anything to eat, Sir?"
Oh, Lana. Sweet, innocent, Lana. So under duress from constantly blowing his cover, she had herself enabled her own deep undercover mode. Ever since her "Assistant Manager", Simon, had taken Lana to the back room to give her a coded warning, ("Stop bothering customers" if you are interested.) Lana had always given Gideon non-stop raised eyebrows and questioning looks.
He understood that it was for the good of the company, but it sure got damned lonely from time to time.
"A cherry coke, grilled ham and cheese bruschetta and a napkin, please."
It was an ingenious code and it worked every time.
The type of Coke (Vanilla, Cherry, Diet, Regular.) would indicate to Lana the threat level of the Others, the sandwich (Filling and bread-type.) would let her know the last known spot that the Others/an Other had been spotted and the napkin would show Lana that Gideon didn't want to spill food all over himself whilst he ate.
The food arrived within about ten minutes, delivered by a waiter called Carl.
As far as Carl knew, he was working for a perfectly ordinary coffee company which wasn't a front for The Great Resistance.
He didn't ask questions and never thought twice about the extra money that poured into his bank account each month from an unknown source.
Oh, how he envied. Longed to be a black face amongst the shadows.
But beneath his chalky skin, there lay a brain that contained just slightly too much information.
Information that was dangerous . It was his burden, his curse and they'd never stop hunting.
Carl was smiling and his arm strained under the weight of the food.
Gideon realised that he had been staring out of the window and running his internal monologue whilst Carl had stood over him, trying to give him his food and trying to get back on with work for at least half a minute.
Gideon took the plate and effervescing drink and watched Carl leave.
He put the sandwich up to his lips and took a bite. Chewing slowly, thoughtfully, he washed it down with a swig of Coke. The tang of the cherry pinched his nose, the ham hock tasted peppery with just a nudge of Tarragon and the thin cut slices of Edam were the proverbial layer of icing on the cake.
"This truly is one of the finger joints in town", Gideon thought, licking his lips and fingers as the crumb-laden plate was relinquished from the table.
But even after a great meal, something was troubling Gideon Carletan.
He looked over at Lana, who was wearing an anxious look and talking hurriedly with Simon.
Gideon looked down at his half-drained cherry Coke as Carl crossed the room, watching the bubbles rise in neat single file.
Cherry for a reason. It's red alert, Lana. "You need to leave now, sir."
Carl said it quietly, but directly.
"You've been in here fifteen times in the last week and you're making the staff nervous.
Crestfallen barely cut it.
Gideon felt himself shaking with contempt and disgust. He opened his mouth to accuse Carl of jeopardising the lives of millions, but thought better of it at the last second.
It could be worse than he thought, a traitor could lurk in the midst and, after all, how much did he really know about Carl?
Rogue agents were a dime a dozen. Someone living a second life hardly thinks twice about taking on a third if the pay is right, especially in this scum-hole of a city.
As Gideon was escorted from the premises, he thought of a simpler time.
Venice, Paris, Bruges. Those had been simpler assignments. You knew your allies and you knew your foes. In London, it seemed, things weren't always so clear cut.
Gideon walked three streets in the drizzle, until his leather coat and denim jeans were sodden.
The sun shone fiercely on the wet cobbles, almost giving them the appearance of many hard, small, grey jellies.
The shops and flats drooped in an almost contented way as rain splattered out of the drainpipe next to the deli and down, down through the rusty guttering and into the dark below.
"They don't trust you, you know." came a voice from the corner.
Even with a grizzled beard, drenched anorak and tweed hat by his foot filled with copper and silver, Gideon would have recognised Geoffrey Droitway anywhere.
A former KGB agent, disgraced from the service due to his crippling addiction to amphetamines, nobody got results like him. Highly trained and having racked up hundreds of confirmed kills all over the world, Geoff was a man you wanted nearby when shit flurries into the fan.
"They probably won't ever trust you, Giddy." he repeated, sighing and taking a long drag on a Marlboro cigarette.
This was invariably true. Gideon remembered back to when Carl's Coffee House had first opened only a month ago and he had ran upstairs to the HQ disguised behind a simply ply door and a laminated "STAFF ONLY" sign and had come face to face with a mop, six brooms and a plastic spray bottle filled with blue cleaning fluid.
In retrospect, he felt stupid for not stating the passcode on the way up. The uppers must have switched up the doors whilst he was climbing the stairwell when they saw him on the hidden cameras, not saying a word to staff on his way up.
In his defense, he hadn't received the passcode by e-mail or text Admin. What a nightmare.
Geoff hadn't acknowledged him yet, his face still hidden underneath his black plastic hood.
"I wish it would stop raining." Gideon complained, prompting him. The silence between the two was deafening.
"Rain makes the world grow." Geoff said, finally.
This was true. But who knew what would flower in some lone areas of the world, remote and cut off from reason and-
"Do you have any pills?" said Geoff.
Gideon handed over his prescribed medication to Geoff. It gave him headaches anyway.
Geoff threw the contents of the orange capsule back and swallowed nineteen anti-psychotics in a single gulp.
"I'm not sure that's what you're supposed to do with them." Geoff spluttered, anxiously.
"Ah, nuts to what the doctors say." came the hooded reply. Geoff looked up. He was smiling. Conversation felt awkward, stilted.
"It's been nice seeing you, Mr Droitway." Gideon murmured, turning to leave, only for Geoff to grip his arm firmly and pull him down to his own level. Taking one look into his bloodshot eyes, Gideon could tell that the man hadn't been taking fantastic care of himself.
"Vol'sin is back." he said, as sombre as the grave.
Gideon left immediately without looking back.
The statement had concerned him more than Geoff's bad teeth, repugnant odour and poor dress sense.
Geoff had finally lost it. Vol'Sin had been dead for years.
The midday sun finally crested high enough for the rain to finally subsist and Gideon felt the warmth of the sun's rays as he made his way through the city of puddles, dodging the odd pedestrian.
Many agents had cracked under pressure, but Gideon would never have assumed Geoff would do it.
"I mean what kind of spy assumes that the resurgence of minor threats relates to Vol'sin, The Iron Fist?" Gideon thought to himself, continuing to walk without looking.
A car beeped angrily as Gideon stepped in front of it, his mind still on the situation.
"Asshole." he muttered. "People should be grateful for people like me, saving the world on a dime. Instead I get beeped."
It was indeed true. Gideon's tryst with Geoff had rekindled old memories. Vol'sin was just too... personal.
Gideon had only been fifteen when he first stopped the nefarious villain, and a villain he most certainly was.
Vol'sin was an African Warlord in the same way that Tony Hawk is a skateboarder and Michael Jordan is a basketball player. But like Tony and Mike, Vol'sin had been retired. Forcibly.
Vol'sin ruled over an army of imprisoned slaves with an iron fist. When once told this by a subordinate, the metaphor got lost in transit.
He ordered a small vat of magma and ingots and fused an iron gauntlet into his right arm, searing the entire thing into his flesh. People said that he was silent throughout the whole procedure despite no anesthetic being used.
He had a loyal circle of five men who had their hands cast in gold, a constant reminder of their old lives as gold miners in Africa, a nod to their newly-found life of glitz and wealth but, most importantly, a metal not as strong as iron.
Vol'sin did not tolerate potential usurpers.
Gideon hadn't technically been the one who took him down. Hell, he'd only ever seen the man from two hundred meters away before he called the hit.
And that was definitely more than enough.
Scope up. Position. Locked. Moving tango. Taskforce in. Tango down.
And that tango was most certainly down. He had seen it himself through the night vision scope.
Cornered by five SAS operatives armed to the teeth, Vol'sin had ran off into the woods. The squadron had emptied their guns after him, a body fell and Vol'sin was carried out in a body bag.
Four years had passed. Now Gideon was truly old, jaded and had no desire to get into that level of conflict again.
But surely he was dead? His henchmen had all but abandoned him with only two small encounters that sparked a few months after his death. There was no way that-
"Are you going to get a bloody move on?" came a voice from behind him.
Gideon turned round to see a queue of at least five people behind him. Ah yes, he taking some money out the ATM.
"Get this fucking show on the road!" yelled a voice from the back."There's never a time to think in this city," thought Gideon glumly.
He trod home morosely, stopping only once outside a shop selling specialist jams and holding up three fingers next to the window. The owner would know what it meant.
As he made his way down his road, he noticed a sodden umbrella sticking out of a neighbours hedge in front of him.
He crossed onto the other side of the street.
"At least there's still someone looking out for me." he thought to himself.
Gideon let himself in and headed straight to his room to play on his Xbox 360. He didn't bother calling out to his mother. It was eleven am, so she'd be passed out in front of the TV. Just slouched on the leather lazyboy with bottle in hand. It had always been that way. Well, ever since the divorce.
Across town, events were slowly transpiring.
Some were innocuous. Friends meeting for late breakfasts or early lunches.
Others, however, had much more to them than what met the eye.
Geoffrey Droitway had not stopped gazing at the thick metal drain in almost an hour.
Passers by had chucked him general coinage and one man had also knelt down for several minutes to talk at him about our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ.
To the uninitiated, Geoffrey's constant indirect stare at the grate made him seem as if he were on drugs.
But occasionally, just occasionally, there's much more than what meets the eye.
Geoffrey raised his arm in the air. It was grubby, but nonetheless indicated to the driver in the alleyway to reverse into the road. That, in turn, summoned two men in yellow coveralls who walked across the road with a massive mahogany cupboard that towered over everything.
They put the cupboard down and pretended to have a heated discussion about their pay which would devolve into an argument or even a fight should the correct signals be displayed at the right time.
With the cupboard strategically placed, the van blocking the main street and pedestrians either blocked by paid "actor pedestrians" who posed as old friends or simply told them of roadworks up ahead or canvassed by charity workers with clipboards who would ask for a minute of your time and then stop you for ten, the road and pavements were truly empty.
Tumbleweeds would have been exceedingly fitting had this not been Soho, London.
The grate covering rattled until it finally fell away into the darkness. Five seconds later, it made a muted splash.
A dark figure rose up from the depths of the sewer, one of his hands wrapped in gauze.
"Do you have any news for me?" asked Vol'sin in a measured voice.
As he pulled himself up from the watery chasm, the gauze enveloping his hand unfurled and fell away, revealing a monstrous and titanic metal fist underneath.
"Gideon has been evading our best efforts." the traitor said, dejectedly. There was a sudden clash of thunder as the rain continued to beat down upon them.
"I sent an assassin after him, and another will be following him home as we speak." continued Geoff.
"One of them is already down."
"Yes, Vol'sin. I'm sorry. The first assassin is slumped inside Carl's. He'll be sleeping for at least the next six or seven hours. It would appear that Mr Carletan remembers Code IO35."
"Code IO35?" Vol'sin enquired.
"Essentially, there is a point in time, that occurs each day, whereby an Agent can make a subtle movement, at one particular place or another, which will trigger another and another, culminating in the deactivation of-"
"You bore me." Vol'sin stated.
"The assassin was neutralised by a sleeping draught that was stirred into a single batch of coffee beans."
"Oh." Vol'sin stared. "I see. Well, do not trouble yourself about it."
Geoffrey Droitway had been expecting death, his best hope being for a swift and merciful version.
But here he was, being told not trouble himself about it? It made him uneasy, to say the least.
"Unfortunately, your other attempt to eradicate Gideon has hit rock bottom." Vol'sin said, before a small snigger broke out of his cruel, leering mouth. Geoff felt the need to laugh along, but Vol'sin's face snapped back to seriousness.
"The fellow Agents of Gideon Carletan stuck an umbrella into a garden hedge last night." Vol'sin began in a low monotone. "I believe they have been aware of our activities for over a week."
"Forgive me, Warlord, but I do not fully comprehend how umbrellas relate to our own men." Geoff responded, feeling ever more shaken by the second.
Vol'sin took a moment to respond.
"The spot marked with what you British call a "brolly" was marked under code VO73. Otherwise known as a booby-trapped spike pit underneath a false paving slab made by art graduates indicated by a brolly stuck into a hedgerow."
"Oh," said Geoff. "I'm sorry, I'm a bit.... off the ball today."
"That's quite alright." Vol'sin countered, batting his words away as if they were a small number of flies. "You are currently dying of Cyanide poisoning, so it's to be expected, really."
"What?!?" Geoff slurred loudly, stumbling over his words in a frenzy.
In an instant, Geoff slouched over and began foaming from his mouth and twitching spasmodically, his eyes filled with terror.
It was over almost as quickly as it began.
The rain continued to clatter, never ceasing for even the passing of Geoffrey Droitway.
Vol'sin picked up the pill bottle next to the corpse.
Gideon was, it would seem, cleverer than he had anticipated.
The clear plastic bottle was labelled under a well know anxiety stabiliser that Agents in the field would use routinely.
But the pills inside had been taken out and replaced with microfilm capsules of potassium cyanide.
Vol'sin removed a capsule and sniffed it. Bitter almonds. Textbook.
As Vol'sin disappeared into the murkiness of a dreary London afternoon, he considered Gideon.
"It may turn out that getting up earlier may not be enough." Gideon thought, considering Vol'sin at the same time. "I might just need to stay up later too."
Gideon didn't mind so much. Not if it meant getting the upper hand. After all, he hadn't really been sleeping that much anyway.
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The next day, Gideon awoke with a feeling of apprehension.
He had successfully pulled the enemy off of his trail by murdering that traitorous Droitway, but still knew that they couldn't be far behind. Looking out of his bedroom window he spotted a figure hiding behind his neighbours hedge that had been there since last night.
At around 10pm, the figure had moved slightly, giving the game away.
Enemy Agent ninjas in the field often took special tablets which paralysed them or otherwise effected a statuesque appearance for several hours. Then, they would pounce when you walked by.
It was all the rage in Russia and the US. Most assassins were too conscious of their breathing, or limb fatigue, or simply stumbling over when stationed in the same spot for hours and so they took the pills.
Gideon had crouched down below his curtain and dialled the emergency number to Carter, who at 23:00pm, flew a military drone outside of his neighbours yard.
Gideon was watching the live feed on his mobile as he soon realised that he was getting paranoid over a large fence pole that cast human-like shadows.
He curled up with embarrassment as he heard Carter's laugh on the telephone, before he radioed out and the drone flew off across the twilight city.
Was he finally cracking up?
As he slowly descended the stairs and moved towards the door, he was stopped in his tracks by a large red letter in the mailbox. He grabbed the blowtorch on the nearby table next to a bowl containing the house keys and pressed down on the trigger.
The letter ignited as Gideon stepped back to let the Anthrax spores burn as far away as possible from him and ran to the kitchen to throw back two Penicillin.
He sighed as he walked through into his garden and hopped the fence into the adjacent alley, levering himself down onto a large green bin.
Sometimes it's like they weren't even trying. As he walked through to the other end and out into the main street, the fence pole from last night dropped over and a horde of angry Japanese hornets flew out of the other end.
Thinking quickly, Gideon pulled up a manhole cover and leapt in.
The cover fell back with a clank and Gideon was knee deep in sewerage water. The bricks around him seem to drip green and slimy contempt. Gideon shivered.
Wet, cold and alone.
"Hello there."
He wasn't alone.
The fist connected with the back of Gideon's face before he had the opportunity to raise his elbow in defence and hit the muddied water with a loud slosh. He felt cold unidentified matter swash against the wall. Golden red stars danced in his eyes and his head felt like the inside of boiling kettle.
Vol'Sin threw another punch into his sternum and Gideon felt the wind being knocked out of him. He tried in vain to catch his breath but couldn't as the Warlord wrapped his hands around his neck and began strangling the life out of him.
He felt the darkness wrap around him amongst the excrement and piss.
This was the end.
Goodbye.
A light opened up above them, revealing Vol'Sin's hideous face underneath a cloak of murky water as the manhole cover flew down, hitting Vol'Sin's head with a muted "ThWACK!"
He went down like a sack of potatoes that also contained bricks.
Gideon broke the surface of the water and choked up what felt like an entire glassful of raw sewage water. Lana stood over him and offered down her finely-manicured hand. Gideon grappled with it, and Lana grimaced as black sludge dripped down her hot pink nails.
"I just had those done." she grumbled in a voice that echoed around the cavernous depths.
"I knew you'd come through for me, Lana." Gideon said, after a long moments pause that hung in the air.
"Well, you've taught me a thing or two about tracking, Gid."
She was smiling that smile, that quiet smile that shone with the beauty of a thousand bright mornings when the front of her forehead opened up as the bullet exited.
Gideon didn't hear himself screaming.
As she dropped, Gideon spotted the Warlord being carried away, far down the outlet pipe, by two darkened figures. One of them was holstering a large handgun, fumbling repeatedly.
The darkness slipped in.
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Gideon awoke in a rather comfortable hospital bed, feeling entirely uncomfortable.
Lana was dead. And it was his fault she'd become embroiled in this madness in the first place.
For the first two nights, sleep didn't come easily and Gideon slept like a twig, fearing that every sound or movement from the bedside window was Vol'Sin returning to finish what he started.
When sleep did arrive, it came in light and thin waves, peppered with visions of Lana dropping and the continual feeling that he had failed in saving her.
Uncomfortable. Uncomfortable was an understatement.
"Gideon. Gideon Carletan?"
He stirred briefly.
"I'm not interested." he said.
"MI5. They need your help. We've managed to locate the Warlord at his private resort in northern Ukraine. You will be briefed on the three agents that will accompany you on this mission whilst in transit. We just need you to assist us in tracking down one particular man, currently chained to a hospital bed according to our intel."
Some time later, Gideon was sitting next to Monty Carlos, Natasha Polanski and Mary Sue.
He waited for The Director to speak.