The Man From LOVE #6: Cleaning up afterwards

    Thirteen children, and they all disappeared somewhere into the house the instant the dishes needed to be cleaned. Valentina washed and Ivan dried and it still took an hour to clear it all away. Fifty minutes into it and the kids starting coming back into the kitchen area, sniffing for sweets.

    There were all the usual dramas. Ivan Jr didn’t know about the cute girl he’d met online, Natasha was ready to give up her job as a horror movie make-up artist and little Stevie had been arrested again by the British police for dressing up as a ninja and going after muggers.

    'Do you have any idea how hard it is to find criminals on a Thursday night in Bath?' he asked Valentina. She just shrugged and wondered when he was going to find the right boy and settle down.

    The kitchen was spotless, so the kids went for the ice cream. There were nine flavours, all imported from Italy, and Valentina painfully watched the dishes pile back up again.

    She decided to ignore the problem and check in with somebody. It would be rude to call N'buli while he was at dinner and Dave was lost in his geek world, but she hated to be out of the loop on any LOVE operation, and knew she could pick up some good gossip somewhere.

    She patted her pockets.

    'What the hell did I do with my phone?'

    Stevie was sitting next to her, but had just spooned some tiramisu into his mouth and could only shrug helplessly.

???

    N'buli had just about ran out of new stories, just as Mrs Goodson cleared away the last of the meal's dishes and piled them up for her husband to do later. After moving through into the living room, the two men talked about sport for half an hour while she did some knitting. They were just getting into a genial argument over the greatest cricket player in history when N'buli started yawning.

    Mr Goodson grinned broadly. 'Keeping you up, Mr MacGregor?'

   

    'Getting old, Mr Goodson.'

    Mrs Goodson didn't look up from her knitting. 'Leave N'buli alone, you damn bully. He just finished telling you about travelling all over the world, and you're keeping him up to talk about stupid sports.'

    'Sport isn't stupid,' said N'buli.

    'He's right,' said Mr Goodson. 'Sport is just a great big metaphor for anything.'

    'Whatever,' said Mrs Goodson. 'Tell us about the Egyptian op. I understand there were lesbians involved.'

    'Oh yeah?' said Mr Goodson, visibly perking up, only to wince as his wife playfully jabbed him in the ribs.

    N'buli explained how the operation had went down, paying particular emphasis on the details.

    The Goodsons always liked to hear the details.

???

    Dave almost pissed his pants in excitement when he finally found that last issue of Swamp Thing he had been looking for since he was 12.

    He had owned issues on either side of this particular comic for more than 20 years and had agonised over his inability to fill that hole for all those decades. He could have bought it over the internet, but that was cheating, and it was something to look for every time he walked into a new comic shop.

    He had been to more than 300 around the world, and had looked for this issue in every single one of them, but it had never been there. And now it was in his hands, hidden in the pile of back issues that Jeremy kept out the back of Metropolis Comics.

    It was, without any irony, the highlight of his week, and things only got better when Jeremy showed him the latest box of back issues he had got in from his supplier.

    'Jesus,' said Dave as he went through the pile and found odd Strange Tales comics from the sixties and issues of World's Finest from the 1950s in pristine condition. 'How much for this stuff?'

    Jeremy looked it over. 'Two bucks each.'

    'You're kidding. Seriously. This stuff is worth way more than that.'

    'I know, but that's the deal with this supplier. He lets me have them insanely cheap, but I have to sell them for a cheap price. Otherwise the whole deal is off. I go see him every month and I’ll allowed to buy 100 random comics from this insanely huge warehouse.'

    'So what's his deal? How does he make his money?'

    'Beats me. Every time I see him, I ask him the same thing too. All he tells me is that it's his obligation to spread the love, and nothing spreads the love like old comic books. Besides, sometimes he gives me good deal on the big stuff, like the first appearances, and I'm allowed to sell those for anything I like. But he has stacks of this stuff that '

    'That's.... weird,' said Dave, feeling the need to scratch the mental itch that had just cropped up. 'Who is your supplier?'

    Jeremy’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. 'Why? So you can cut me out of the loop?'

    Dave sighed dramatically and started blinking in that special way N'buli had shown him one day. The subliminal technique meant anybody he focused on couldn't help telling the truth, as long as they were friendly in the first place.

    'No, I'm just interested. Who is this guy?'

    'Some guy who operates out of Philly. Independent dude. Weird name, got to be some kind of marketing thing.'

    'What? What's his name?'

    'Goodfun,' said a smirking Jeremy. 'He's called Mr Goodfun.'

???

    Mr Goodson's smile looked a bit too creepy, the suburban night was just a little bit too sharp, his feet suddenly seemed very far away and N'buli realised he was a bit drunkerer than he thought.

    'I'm a bit drunkerer than I thought,' said N'buli as he stumbled down the front steps of the Goodsons' house. The couple stayed in the doorway, arms around each other.

    'You'll be fine,' said Mrs Goodson.

    'Taxi is here,' said Mr Goodson.

    N'buli turned around to see the cab pull up at the kerb. 'That's convenient!' He weaved across the front lawn. 'That five years-old port was fucking awesome.'

    He pulled open the cab door and was about to get in when Mr Goodson tapped him on the shoulder. He couldn't stop himself from jumping as he spun around.

    'Here,' said Mr Goodson, brandishing a $100 note. 'For the ride home.'

    N'buli smiled and tried to keep his eyelids open. 'You're good people, Mr Goodson.'

    Mr Goodson leaned in close and whispered in N'buli's ear. 'You think so? You’re wrong. On both counts.'

    'What?' said N'buli, but he was already being bustled into the back of the cab. 'Did you...'

   

    'Bye N'buli!' said Mr Goodson, slamming the taxi door. 'Come again next week! That’s as long as you’re still here, seeing as how you're the harbinger of the apocalypse, obviously. And if you deal with any more lesbian terrorists, remember to get pictures this time!'

    'What?' said N'buli. 'Huh?'

    The taxi pulled away and N'buli scrambled around in the back seat. The Goodsons were both standing on the pavement in the silent night, waving him off.

    He cracked open the beer he’d stashed in his jacket pocket during dessert. The driver complained, but N'buli kept giving him money until he shut up, and then gave him his tie.

!!!

The Man From LOVE #5: Dinner with the Goodsons

    N'buli had nothing to share, other than the beer on his breath and the cream that was speeding away, but he knocked on the door of the Goodsons' home anyway.

    The door opened almost immediately and Mrs Goodson appeared, beaming happily. She motioned for him to come in. 'N'buli! It's so good to see you again! Don't just stand there like a big gorgeous mannequin. Come in.'

    Last month, Nbuli had faced off against an army of lost Roman Centurions in the Amazon forest and defeated them through sheer force of will and his smartphone's ability to get a signal deep in the jungle, but there was something about the Goodsons that actually made him a little nervous. It wasn't just the wealth, it was the way they were just so damned nice about everything. 'I did get the cream, but the taxi driver took off with it.'

    'They do that sometimes. Last week I left some new shoes in a taxi, and I'll never see those beauties again. Don't worry, I'll come up with something.' She smiled warmly and led him into the dining room, where Mr Goodson was pouring a particularly red wine. He grinned as he topped up a glass.

    'That's the worst excuse I've ever heard,' he said, handing the glass to N'buli. 'I've never left anything in a taxi. It's not that hard to hold on to your stuff.'

    'Yeah, yeah,' said Mrs Goodson. She headed towards the kitchen, taking a moment to kiss her husband on the cheek as he walked past. 'We can't all be as perfect as you, dear.'

    He squinted in mock seriousness as she disappeared into the kitchen.

    'You could try, at least,' he shouted after her, before winking at N'buli and motioning to take a seat at the table. 'You didn't need to wear a tie, you know. This isn't anything formal.'

    N'buli took a seat and tried the wine. Even though he'd tried his best, he'd never really got a taste for wine, but he could still recognise a decent, unpretentious drop. 'Are you kidding? You guys are richer than God. I can make an effort to look professional, especially when I'm empty-handed.'

    'This isn't a professional thing,' said Mr Goodson. 'We like to hear what is going on with the organisation, but this isn't a presentation. If it was, we'd ask for some PowerPoint or something.'

    'I know, I know. But for the wages you guys pay, I can make an effort to put on a tie when you invite me for dinner.'

    'Fair enough. You're looking good, though. Even with the tie.'

    'What are you talking about? We don't change. I've looked like this since 1922.'

    Mr Goodson looked a little vacant as he stared into his glass. 'Not physically, but you can always see somebody's true age in their eyes.'

    N'buli smiled, but couldn't really tell if his boss was joking or not. He had never really got his head around the anti-aging treatments LOVE offered. Since he had joined in the early 1920s, the organisation had ensured that he hadn't aged a day. It was something the scientific arm of the group had sorted out hundreds of years ago and Nbuli still didn’t know any of the details. All he knew is that he kept taking the blue pills they gave him every day and the reflection in the mirror remained the same.

    Chang Tzu, his mentor, trainer and - for one unforgettable night in Bangkok, lover - had once told N'buli that he was more than four hundred years old and there were some in the Intelligence division who claimed to have been around since Shakespeare’s day. N'buli had held his 100th birthday party in the hidden dance club beneath the Great Wall of China 19 years ago, and couldn't imagine what centuries more of life could be like. The weight of experience, the sheer drag of the decades, was already heavy on his soul and his lifespan had only just been extended past its normal length.

    'It's not that bad,' said Mr Goodson, pouring another glass of wine for both of them.

    N'buli suddenly felt unaccountably embarrassed. 'What? What are you talking about?'

    'Ha!' laughed Mr Goodson. 'Trust me, N'buli. We've been doing this for a while. We know what that look means.'

    'That look?'

    'You know, the “Oh-my-God-I-don't-age-and-it-makes-me-feel-all-weird-inside” look.'

  

    'Oh. That look.'

    Mrs Goodson came back into the room. 'The pie is still a few minutes away. Oh.' She looked between her husband and N'buli, before scowling at them both. 'Are you getting all hung up on the not aging thing again?'

    N'buli shrugged. 'Only a little.'

    She walked around the dining table and sat down beside N'buli, taking his hand in hers. 'Oh, N'buli. I know it's weird, and it's why we've got so many people working on the best way to introduce this medical technology to the greater population. It's a physiological minefield, and the extraordinary people that are recruited into LOVE can only just barely got their heads around it. It tears us up to see so many people dying needlessly out there, when we've got the chance to spare them unnecessary pain, but we can't guarantee that widespread immortality won't cause more problems than it'll solve.'

    'I understand all that,' said Nbuli. 'You've been telling me that for years. It's just the way it all keeps piling up, especially when you've got me tearing around the world beating up dickheads every day.'

    Mr Goodson smiled at his wife. 'Remember when Chang Tzu said the exact same thing back in 1799? Poor guy, he said his memories were dragging him down to hell.'

    'Wait, what?' said N'buli. '1799? I thought you guys were 20th century babies.'

    Mrs Goodson laughed. 'No, we just look modern. It's a skill.'

    N'buli looked back and forth between the married couple, but couldn't tell if they were joking or not. He'd never been able to tell. 'All right. So what did you tell Chang? He never seemed bothered by it in all the time I knew him.'

    'Just the usual,' said Mr Goodson. 'Let the unimportant stuff slide on by, and hold on to the good times. You'll be surprised how it all works out in the end.'

    'But isn't that the whole problem? How do I recognise what's important?'

    'Here's a little tip,' said Mrs Goodson, standing up from the table and heading towards the kitchen. 'If it smells good, it's worth remembering.'

    She left the room, as the smell of the apple strudel that was still baking in the oven drifted back through behind her.

???

    The fake roast lamb they had for the main course - brewed up by somebody in LOVE's pro-active kitchen division -  was divine and the strudel was perfect, even without the cream. N'buli ate happily as the conversation turned to some of Mr Goodson's big-issue problems with LOVE. He never tasted any kind of sugar until he was 19, but he had been making up for that lost time ever since.

    Somehow, Mr Goodson was talking about HR. 'We've achieved parity with society on the cultural and gender side of things, and we have more gay people than California, but we're still sadly under-represented in staff that come from the trans-gender and disabled communities. We really need to try harder on that.'

    'Have you tried asking them?' said N'buli, between mouthfuls of desert.

    'It's not as easy as that, my friend. We can't force them to come with us, we have to show them we're on a journey worth taking.'

    N'buli finished his strudel. 'This metaphor is getting a bit heavy for me.'

    'If you really wanted to play fair, you'd do the dishes more often,' said Mrs Goodson.

    'I do my share!' whined Mr Goodson. He turned back to his guest. 'She does the cooking, I do the cleaning up afterwards, that's always been our deal.'

    'And I'm still not sure I won that deal. Would you like some more, N'buli?' asked Mrs Goodson, already clearing away his plate.

    N'buli couldn't stop grinning. 'Yes please.'

    She went back into the kitchen to cut him another slice, while Mr Goodson slowly savoured his own piece of pie, waving his fork in the air as he spoke. 'You have to take your time with your food. How are you going to enjoy it if it barely touches your tongue?'

    'Life is too short to waste time over a meal,' said N'buli, well aware of the sarcasm of the statement.

  

    'Really? And what have you got lined up for the next week that's so important?'

    'I've got a sit-down with the Drunk Prophet tomorrow, and then there are some roaming cannibal gangs in the Siberian foothills to track down later on.'

    Mrs Goodson returned just in time to catch the end of the conversation. 'Cannibals? Really?'

    'Oh yeah. They're everywhere. There's the wendigo clan of British Columbia and a few descendants of Sawney Bean hiding away in the Scottish highlands.'

    Mrs Goodson put another big slice of pie in front of N'buli. 'Well. Take care. We'd hate to see you end up in somebody's cooking pot. Got a good team to watch your back?'

    N'buli didn't waste any time and had half the pie eaten before he replied. 'Nah, these types of ops are better on my own. I get Max to drop me in there, I take down the cannibal clan on my own. Usually, all I have to do is take down their biggest guy, and they follow my lead. If they can't be cured of their taste for human flesh, we drop them off at one of the islands. One of the deserted ones. Either way, the problem ends.'

    'But it's not really all that easy, is it? Life is  never that easy,' said Mr Goodson.

    N'buli shrugged. 'No, you're right. There are still issues to deal with that can't be easily fixed. The child soldiers in the Congo, the inherent unfairness of capitalism, Sofia Morte.'

    'I’ve heard of her. She's the honour-killer killer, right? Tracks down families that killed their sisters and daughters for bullshit honour reasons and gives them a taste of their own medicine.'

    N'buli was surprised. He’d never heard Mrs Goodson swear before. 'Yeah, that’s her. She’s always one step ahead of us, and what do we do when we catch up with her? Her methods are horrible, but they do get results.'

    Mr Goodson exchanged a look with his wife and started chuckling. 'I still don't really get it. I never have.'

    'Don't get what?' asked N'buli.

    'How you do it. I've been listening to your stories for years, and I still don't know how you can just walk in there on your own without any fear.'

    N'buli shrugged. 'Like I said, take down the biggest guy, and you're usually fine.'

    'But what if they all jump you? You've got decades of self-defence training, but that won't mean much if 20 cannibals dog-pile on top of you.'

    N'buli took a deep breath. 'I still remember the first group like that I took down, a long, long time ago, somewhere in the Urals. They dropped me in there and I spent two days scoping out their camp before deciding to go for it. So I walked straight in and pissed on their fire, and then ran for my life.'

    He paused for another sip of wine before continuing.

    'Well, that got them running, but I spent my childhood running over half of Africa, and I had to keep slowing down to stay in sight. One point when they looked like giving up, I hid in a tree, jumped out and slapped a couple, and that got us going again.

    'I just kept on running and running until only one was after me, and I knew he was the one I needed. He was the alpha male, the angriest, the one most wiling to keep going, so once I had him alone I beat the shit out of him and took control of the whole clan. The secondary team swept in afterwards, and got the cannibals going on a new path. Might have gone a bit far actually, last I heard they had all converted them into full vegans.'

    Mr and Mrs Goodson exchanged another of their glances and N'buli shrugged again. 'Once you get the leader out of the way, the others usually follow. It doesn't matter if they're the Techno Lords of the lost Mayan empire or skag heads of Glasgow, people are depressingly easy to push in the right direction.'

    'Really?' said Mrs Goodson. 'And just how far do you think they can they pushed?'

    'That,' said N'buli, fully aware of exactly how much of a wanker he was sounding like, 'is something I'm still working out.'

!!!

The Man From LOVE #4: A night off from saving the world

    The tie didn’t look right, no matter how many times N'buli started over again. He always had a problem with ties, even if he knew the importance of them. A good tie would get him into any building in the world, if the will behind it was strong enough. Now it just looked too short and that wouldn't get him in anywhere.

   

    N'buli cursed loudly in a long-dead language and considered going tie-less.

    'You can’t go tie-less,' said Valentina. She always knew what he was thinking. Sitting at the window that showed half of New York’s Central Park, with her back to him, she still knew exactly what he was thinking. 'It’s the Goodsons. You have to put on a good show or they’ll kick us out of these nice apartments they’ve set us up with, and we’re off saving the world while operating out of youth hostels. And I don’t like youth hostels. They all smell like young people.'

    'We all smell like young people,' said N'buli.

    Valentina shook her head. 'No. We might look fabulously young, but our scents give away our true age.'

    N'buli failed to hide his disappointment. 'Do I really smell 119 years old?'

   

    'I’m afraid so.'

    'Huh. So what do I smell like then?'

    'Like old books and fine red wine.'

    'You scare me.'

    'You know I have an excellent sense of smell. It's what kept me alive, back in the war.'

    N'buli started over again. 'I know how important it is to stay on the Goodsons' bright side.'

    She snorted, stood up and came over to give him a hand, but he waved her away and she veered off towards the vodka cabinet.

    'Then quit bitching about it,' said Val. She looked inside the cabinet. They were all out of the good stuff, but there was plenty of the bad. Val grabbed the cheapest bottle and poured herself a shot. 'You're their favourite agent, always running into the face of danger and all that shit. And you're charming as hell.'

    She knocked back the shot and headed for the door, leaving N'buli to his infinite struggle.

    'You could come with me,' pleaded Nbuli, just as she reached the door. 'Two people are better than one.'

    'Can't. Family dinner tonight. All 13 of us.'

    Something clicked in Nbuli¹s head and the tie somehow ended up in the right shape. 'So it's all up to me again?'

    'It's always up to you,' said Valentina, closing the door behind her.

???

    Dave had six hundred dollars in his pocket, had all day to wander around New York and hadn't bought any new comics in three months. He was primed to spend every cent of it.

    He spread the money around, dropping a little at the Jeff Haley’s store by the Empire State Building, taking the train out to Brooklyn to spend a good chunk of it at Starship, then back into the city to polish off the rest at Metropolis Comics.

    Dave got to his favourite comic shop half an hour after the week’s new releases went up on the shelf, but spent most of the next hour flicking through the store’s collection of Silver Age stuff, wondering why the hell it took him so long to fully appreciate Kirby.

    When Jeremy the owner finally showed up, Dave proudly pulled his latest score out of his backpack.

    'Check it out.'

    'What’s this?'

    'It’s an Archie comic. In Egyptian.'

    Jeremy flicked through the comic. 'It seems to still make sense.'

    'If Archie stops making sense, in any language, there’s no hope for the rest of us.'

    'So what were you doing in Egypt?'

    Dave shrugged. 'Saving the world.'

    'Huh,' said Jeremy, giving Dave the look he expected. Dave knew nobody believed him when he just told the truth, so he avoided lying altogether. Jeremy genuinely thought he worked in IT.

    'Anything good this week?' asked Dave, flipping through the pile of new arrivals and wondering where to start.

    'There's always something good. What are you after?'

    'I need something fast and exciting and colourful. It's been that kind of month.'

    'That's what you say every month.'

    'I'm a fast and exciting and colourful guy,' said Dave, turning around to search for back issues of Kamandi so he didn't have to see Jeremy's smirk.

???

    Everybody in LOVE knew about the Goodsons, even if they stayed right out of the action. The Goodson family had been funding the organisation for as long as N'buli had been a member, but he had only seen them outside their comfortable suburban home twice - once at an Arthur Miller play in 1958, and the second time during the 1986 crisis. They seemed happy to stay at home and let the Agents come to them.

    It was a nice neighbourhood, N'buli had to concede that, as the taxi drew closer to the Goodson home. The Goodsons had always lived in Queens, in a modest area that nobody really noticed. Their one major condition of their funding was that an Agent came out to their home every Sunday night for dinner and a debrief to tell them of the week's main happenings. N'buli was their favourite Agent - he hoped it was because of his sparkling personality, but knew it was probably because he kept getting sent on the really interesting missions.

    N'buli had no idea how rich the Goodsons were, but they were definitely one of the top 10 wealthiest families on the planet. They would have to be to fully fund LOVE - the group had offices, houses and halls in every major city in the world. There were at least 7000 direct employees and they were all paid very well. There were also innumerable charitable donations, humanitarian efforts and social programmes and their cost alone must have run into the billions of dollars. All under the radar, all out of the news.

    N'buli was also clueless as to the source of their wealth, but hadn't worried too much about it. He had seen the benefits of their philanthropy hundreds of times over and knew the Goodsons were good people, trying to do the right thing. Nothing else mattered.

    Mrs Goodson had called him as the taxi had been over the river, asking him to pick up a bottle of cream to go with her apple strudel. Now he was running late because every convenience store he'd stopped at had been out of cream, or it was all well past its best expiry date. He had finally found some in a store that didn't have any glass windows, and picked up a six pack of beer for his troubles.

    He polished off two of the beers before the taxi driver noticed and threatened to kick him out for drinking in his cab. N'buli had tossed $20 notes at the man until he stopped complaining and finished off two more by the time the taxi pulled into the Goodsons' street.

    N'buli wasn't ready yet and it cost him another $60 to get the driver to pull up a few houses down, as he took his time with his last two beers. He liked the Goodsons and enjoyed the Sunday dinners. Mrs Goodson made the best gravy he had ever tasted and Mr Goodson always had some new imported beer or fancy wine to share. But he also didn't like talking up his achievements and sometimes – just sometimes - the Goodsons were just a little bit too eager.

    He finished his drinks, paid off the cabbie and stepped out into the night. It was a brisk evening and winter was coming on in this part of the world. N'buli had never got used to the cold, even after all those years, and knew he would be basing himself somewhere further south for the next few months.

    'First things first,' he muttered to himself as the taxi drove off. He started walking down the street, and managed to get two houses away before he realised he'd left the cream in the cab.

???

    It was a Tuesday, he was stuck in Vancouver and Max wasn't back on duty for another three days, so he locked himself in the local flat and played his favourite drinking game on his own. Setting up the DVD player, he took one shot of vodka and lemonade for every time somebody got shot in the head during the original Dawn of the Dead.

    Max was fucked by the time they cleared out the mall.

    He woke up sometime after three, feeling like somebody had sneaked in and poured battery acid down his throat.

    He got to his feet, staggered in to his kitchen and downed half a bottle of coke.

    'Chug a lug, Donna,' moaned Max, before tottering off to bed.

???

    Val caught the regular cross-country evening flight and was at the family home in Malibu by eight, just as Ivan was finishing up dinner preparations. She would have preferred it if they could all have got together at their real home on the shores of the Black Sea, but most of the family were now working at the research facility in Portland, and it was a lot easier for them to get down the coast, rather than across to the other side of the planet.

    Val and Ivan had been married since 1962, when he'd saved her life in Uzbekistan and she had never been tempted away. Ivan had never officially joined LOVE, but had stayed at home to raise the kids while Val was off around the world. They had 11 children in the first 15 years of their marriage, before deciding enough was enough. Each of the kids had eventually joined LOVE in some capacity, with the family showing a talent for scientific research that still baffled her. She blamed Ivan's genes for their pacifism, even though she hadn't killed anybody since eighteen years before their eldest had been born.

    The first of her kids were arriving at the house and Val said hello to all of them, but stayed on the phone, remote controlling a sweep and clear operation in Eastern Pakistan. The team there were being lead by Sergeant Rockford Strong, who had been showing the world how tough he was since the Korean War, so Val knew they were in good hands. But she also knew there was no need for complacency and her approach to detail had been keeping agents alive for even longer, and she recommended the best way to dispose of Ebola-laced cookies while rolling the meatballs for dinner.

    After all, the Pakistani office was one of the busiest and most dangerous postings LOVE had. Agents in that area had to tip-toe around all sorts of local political niceties, without showing their hand. LOVE agents were dedicated to getting rid of as many weapons as possible and Sgt Strong's team were busy cleaning out a terrorist ammo dump that had been found in the foothills when they stumbled across a range of highly toxic baking.

    'Maybe we should just blow it up,' suggested Sgt Strong, relying on his usual high explosive solution.

    'No! Don't burn it!' she barked down the phone. 'You never know what kind of toxic gas dangerous cupcakes can give off. Load them in a box, take them out into the desert and bury them somewhere in the middle of nowhere, where nobody will even find them.'

    'Roger that,' said Strong. 'I'll take care of it personally.'

    Half an hour later, Strong sent through the all clear, indicating his team was pulling back to the safety of the cities. He disappeared into the desert night and Valentina signed off, just as Ivan was finishing up his sauce. They had been married for 49 years and he still did most of the cooking. Now that the kids were grown up, Ivan spent most of his time perfecting his cooking and tinkering away at the Great Russian Novel, and had made slow progress on both.

    He let Val sample the mushroom sauce as she hung up the phone and she had to take that last thought back - he was making great progress with the cooking. She signalled for another taste, but Ivan wagged his finger.

    'Ah, ah, ah. First, no more calls. Now is the time for family.'

    Val smiled and tossed the phone over her shoulder. It bounced off the floor and slid under the refrigerator. 'Now is the time for family,' she said, leaning in for her sauce.

!!!

The Man From LOVE #3: All you need is dance

    Abdul Aziz's satisfaction at being finally proven absolutely right about absolutely everything was only slightly muted by the fact he was probably going to die because of it.

    He had been warned about these kinds of women - strong, independent thinkers who thought the world owed them something. His grandfather used to tell him stories of the tragedies that these women brought down on the world, stories he had never forgotten.

    As he had grown up, his disgust had only increased. He had seen them in the back streets of Cairo, hiding their shame in the dark. They were too loud to keep quiet, with demands that no man should suffer, and Aziz had stood strong against them.

    When he made the move into politics after building his wealth on a chain of muffler repair stores, he had used his influence to put these women back where they belonged, under the stern word of their rightful master.

    He had seen them at his speeches, their faces twisted into a vulgar display of disgust. He had received their filthy letters and taken their terrible phone calls in the night. He had heard whispers of a group that had targeted him, and he was not afraid.

    They had taken him as he drove into the office, knocking out his guards, and pulling him out of his car and into their van in seconds. Since then he had been blindfolded and shoved around between vehicles and buildings and rooms. He had been poked and jostled. He showed no fear.

    He knew he might suffer because of his stand, but it was the right thing to do. When they gave him some food, he was reluctant to accept, but too hungry to refuse. And when the world started spinning around him, he knew they had poisoned him and that this was the end.

    The first thing he noticed when he awoke was that he was lying on a bed with silk sheets. For a moment, he was certain it had all been a dream, and then he tried to move his arms, only to find that he had been tied down to the bed.

    While they were not tight, the knots were strong and a brief exertion did nothing.

    Aziz looked around. He was in a dark room lit by a single light above his head and he could not even tell how big it was. He heard footsteps out in the dark and cried out, only to find he couldn't speak. He tried to scream, but no sound came out.

    'It's a side effect of the drug we used,' said a voice out of the dark. A man emerged, with the blackest skin Aziz had ever seen. He carried a chair, placed it beside the bed and sat down, at ease. 'It paralyses the vocal chords and will wear off in three and a half minutes. We just find these things always go better when we just make you listen.'

    Aziz didn't understand. The black man pointed ahead and Aziz saw something else in the dark. A single spotlight appeared in the middle of the bare room and a small girl with dark eyes cast downward stepped into the light.

    'Her name is Iris,' said the black man. 'She is 19-years-old and was cast out of home four years ago after her father caught her whispering with another girl. She fled into the country and lived off the food she could steal from the fields, until a farmer found her and beat her nearly to death.'

    Aziz tried a grin, but was paralysed. If he could have done anything, he would have spat in the faces of everybody in the room.

    A second girl entered the light. A head taller than Iris, she had equally dark eyes. She took Iris' hand and the black man continued talking.

    'This is Nina. She found Iris lying in the road and took her in. The two girls became friends and moved closer in the night.'

    Nina began rubbing her hand down Iris' arm, as the smaller girl began to sway to soft music that had faded in. The tune reminded Aziz of something he had forgotten a long time ago, something from deep in his past.

    'They had to move town four times because of the hatred that came there way. The sideways glance became the angry word became the thrown stone and they feared for their life more than once. It took them two years to find friends who did not judge, friends who took them in and cared for them.'

    Both women were dancing now, rubbing their bodies against each other. Aziz wasn't aroused, but he felt something in his chest, a delicate sensation that he thought he had broken years ago.

    He was starting to forget why he hated them so much, as the music swelled and the black man spoke again.

    'They fight back, because they are forced to. They can't just stand there and take it. But if you left them alone, they would leave you alone. Your differences are vast and may be beyond fixing, but there is no reason for hate. All they want to do is love each other, there is no reason for hate.'

    'There is no reason for hate,' said Aziz. His head felt like it was swelling and a light was shining bright in his eyes. There was a moment of lucidity and he tried to snarl, but accidentally let out a contented sigh. 'No reason.'

    The black man laughed, a rich, throaty roar that drowned out the music. He leaned over and loosened the knots. Aziz's arm came free and he reached for the girls, but they just smiled and moved back out of his reach. He would never reach them.

    'Change the world by changing your mind,' said the black man. Aziz looked at him and understood. He finally understood.

    'What was I doing?' he croaked.

    'There is always time to start all over again,' said the N'buli MacGregor. And then he pulled out his pistol and shot Aziz in the heart.

???

    Dave, Valentina and Sonya joined N'buli in the room as the two girls picked up their clothes and walked out with stoic indifference. Dave watched them go, but started paying attention when Valentina slapped him over the back of his head. 'Mind on the job, David.'

    Sonya bent down and looked closely at the prone figure on the bed. 'He just looks creepy with that smile on his face.'

    'Can you hate somebody who looks as stupid as that?' asked N'buli, putting his blissgun away.

    'It's certainly a lot harder to take him seriously,' she replied. She stood back up. 'Now what?'

    'We drop him off home. One of the side effects of a high-class bliss blast is the wiping of short term memory, so he won't have a clue where he has been.'

    'What use is that, then? He'll just go back to the same old shit.'

    N'buli shrugged. 'I'll be honest. There is always that chance. But we are quite good at this, and 98 percent of instances such as this lead to a life-changing experience on the part of the subject.'

    'And if he is one of those 2 percent?'

    'We're just the first line. He will be monitored by a follow-up group, who will watch his progress and make any necessary adjustments.'

    'And that's what you do, is it?'

    'What do you mean?'

    'You just go around the world, changing people's heads until they do what you want?'

    Dave and Valentina had transferred Aziz to a stretcher and started carrying him out the door. N'buli watched them go.

    'Only the dickheads, Sonya. Only the dickheads.'

???

    Max was woken by the sound of his phone and he scrambled to get it out of his pocket.

    'Yo! What's the situation?'

    'This is Dave. All good at this end, but just a few things to tie up. We'll be back in eight hours.'  

    'Eight hours? Fuck me, what am I supposed to do until then?'

    'Watch your bloody movies, have yourself one of the MREs with the red wine jus and sit tight.'

    'I'm out of bloody movies!' whined Max. 'I've already been through the lot.'

    'Check in my bag under my seat. There is something in there for you.'

    Max got up, found the bag and opened it to see a small pile of cheap and nasty horror films from the 1970s. He accidentally let out a small yelp of joy before picking up the phone again.

    'I love you, Dave.'

    'I know you do, man.'

???

    There was still a heavy security presence around Aziz's home, but it was relatively easy to reinsert him back into his bed and get out before anybody noticed. They were back at the compound by dawn, and N'buli found that last bottle that he knew he had hidden in his fight-suit. He shared it with Sonya, the two girls who had given Aziz the show, and his team, sitting in deck chairs on the roof of their compound.

    'What was that shit about shooting him in the head?' said Dave. 'Who was going to kill him? You? You haven't shot anybody in sixty years.'

    Valentina didn't respond, so Dave turned to the girl sitting on the other side of him. 'Hey, Iris. Show me that thing you did with your legs during that dance.'

    Iris looked him up and down. 'Sure. For five hundred bucks, white boy.'

    'I gotta get to a cash machine,' said Dave, looking inside his empty wallet.

    Down the line of deck chairs, N'buli emptied the last of the bottle of wine into Sonya's glass.

    'Will it work?' she asked. 'Will there be anything different?'

    N'buli shrugged. 'We've done our best. Changing the world is a lot harder than it looks.'

    'I still think we should have just killed him.'

    'You don't have to be friends, but you also don't need to kick the shit out of each other. That's old thinking, Sonya. We need something new. You grow up surrounded by all this shit and think it's the only way to get what you want. Because nobody showed us anything different. That's where we come in.'

  

    'I'm still not sure.'

    'That's the spirit!' said N'buli brightly. 'Question everything! But you have to admit it, this is better than blowing him up. No vows of vengeance, no blood feuds stretching down the generations, everybody gets what they want.'

    Sonya sighed as Isis started laughing at Dave again. 'And it was fun.'

    'That's what we're here for,' said N'buli MacGregor, Agent of LOVE.

!!!

The Man From LOVE #2: No shot

    Valentina had no shot. She saw N'buli and Dave disappear through the roof, but the building was too dense to see through any of her scopes. She couldn’t do anything from her current position.

    'Nbuli! Dave! What's happening?'

    'Can't talk right now, Val,' said Nbuli, his voice crackling over the radio. 'We're in a situation.'

    Val tried several of the higher-tech options on her scope, infra-red and ultra-bleed, but still came up with nothing. She couldn't do anything to help from here.

    'Bojemoi,' she whispered. Time to go. It took her seven seconds to pick up her rifle and exit the room, 27 more seconds to get down the stairs and 23 further seconds to get across the street and kick the front door in.

    One minute after seeing her friends fall and Valentina was inside the building, dropping the first two guards with darts from her rifle. She was in a short corridor with only one exit and she kicked in the door, rolling into the room and ready for anything.

    Except for the sight of N'buli MacGregor - last member of a lost Senegalese tribe and number one agent for global peacekeeping group LOVE - surrounded by women happily dancing, standing on a table with his pants around his ankles, showing off his Mr Spock boxer shorts, four open bottles of wine in his hands, a cigar in his teeth and the stupidest grin Valentina had ever seen on a human being.

    N'buli's radio had been hooked up to a speaker system and was picking up a 80s revival station from somewhere, filling the room with some English tune Valentina couldn't place. Many of the women in the room had removed some of their clothing, but some still held on to their guns even as their tore off their combat jackets.

    Valentina had been ready to fight to the death for her partners. Now she didn't know what to do.

    'You!' said a harsh voice in heavily-accented English. 'Is this your doing?'

    Valentina turned to find herself confronted by an older woman with a long, deep scar running down the side of her face. She gave Valentina a look that strongly advised honesty.

    'Yes,' said Valentina. 'We are here to get Aziz.'

    The woman reached into the crowd of her dancing comrades and pulled Dave out by his ear. 'And this one?'

    'He's with me.'

    The woman nodded and released Dave, who managed to grin and wince at the same time. She nodded towards a side room. 'My name is Sonya. That's my office. I think we should talk.'

???

    Even with all its technological marvels, Max couldn't get Netflix to run properly on his plane. He'd pulled the engine apart three times and put it back together, but any kind of streaming service was always left buffering and it would drive him crazy. DVDs still worked, though, and Max ejected his latest disc and reached back behind his seat for another movie. The tech boys had managed to rig up the cockpit so that movies could be played on the inside of the plane's windows, creating a massive great screen. Max's job was to sit and wait for the call, and sometimes that could take hours.

    Max was worried. He had only bothered to bring half a dozen DVDs and he was in danger of running out.

    He decided to sleep on it. He had one last hit on the joint in his ashtray and shut down the plane, activated the security cordon and slouched back in his pilot seat in the dark.

???

    'How did he fit four bottles of wine inside his fight-suit?' asked Valentina as Sonya closed the door. It cut out most of the sound of the music, which seemed to be getting progressively louder, and a window into the main room showed N'buli forming a conga line.

    Dave shrugged. 'It's a skill.'

    'It's a record. He's never managed more than three.'

    'Why are they all drinking anyway, aren't they a Muslim group?'

    'You always think we're bloody Muslims,' said Sonya. 'We all practice what we want, and most of us don't bother with that religious crap. Now sit the hell down.'

    She sat on the other side of a sparse desk and motioned towards two chairs in front of it. Dave and Valentina sat down, with the Russian woman resting her rifle in her lap.

    Sonya reached into the desk and pulled out a small pistol of her own, placing it on the surface of the desk. 'What is this about? What is happening here?'

    'Hey,' said Dave, pointing towards the pistol. 'There isn't any need for that.'

    Sonya gave him the cold, hard stare. 'I don't care what you think, I was talking to the woman.'

    Valentina yawned. 'Don't bother. I'm just the muscle. If you need me to break somebody's leg, I'm there for you, but don't ask me to negotiate. Dave is the talker. He is the one who usually makes sense. I'll just make you angry.'

    'And him?' asked Sonya, gesturing towards N'buli through a small window. He had somehow found a lampshade to put on his head.

    'He's the best we've got,' said Dave. 'Look, we just want to sort everything out without resorting to bloodshed. Okay?'

    'I don't understand any of this. You people burst in here, and we should be beating you to death and putting a bullet in your head just to be sure, but it's like a party has erupted. I don't know you people, but I want to trust you, and I've never trusted anybody in my life.'

    'You can trust us.'

    'But why do I feel this way?'

    Dave shrugged, even though he knew exactly why she did feel like that. When N'buli had shot himself with the blissgun, it had instantly turned him into the biggest party animal in the room, and that was when Dave set off a gas bomb hidden in the sole of his boot. The gas that was released spread quickly around the room.

    It had been one of N'buli's own concoctions, an odourless, colourless gas that provoked feelings of extreme well-being. Angry people exposed to the gas saw the most obvious effects, with a sense of peace, a realisation that violence was unnecessary, and the desire to trust everybody.

    The effects of the gas lasted less than two minutes, but the charm of an Agent trained in tactical charisma, along with the residual positive feelings, had a much longer-lasting impact.

    Dave realised Sonya was still staring at him coldly, gas or no gas. 'Who are you people?'

    Valentina and Dave both smiled and spoke together. 'We're LOVE.'

    'What is that supposed to mean?'

    Dave waved off her question. 'It doesn't matter. What matters is the situation you're in. You've got a massive homophobe jerk of a government minister somewhere in this building, holding him hostage in a bid to overturn rampant institutional sexism. Yeah?'

    'I don't think-'

    Dave cut her off again. 'I'm sorry to interrupt like every other arsehole male in your life, but please let me finish. The real problem is this: what now? You can't let this guy go, he's not going to change his mind because of a kidnapping. And you can't kill him, because they're they'll come after you hard. We found you in a day and a half, the government can't be that far behind. What are you going to do when they come knocking on your door?'

    'I don't need to discuss this with you. We have options you can't even imagine.'

    'You could shoot him in the head,' said Valentina. 'There was a nice ditch on the edge of town we could use to dump the body. Lots of nice, big rats.' Dave gave Valentina his sourest look, but she just smiled pleasantly. 'Really. It would be no trouble.'

   

    'That's not an option,' said Dave. 'What you need is a change of perspective. You need your enemy to feel empathy. You need to get him seeing things from your point of view. You need him to change his mind.'

    'And how are you going to do that?' asked Sonya.

    'Trust us,' said Dave, putting on his best smile. 'We're professionals.'

    The door to the office burst open and N'buli leapt into the room. While the music from the other room was louder than ever, they could still hear N'buli clearly.

    'I'm a street-walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm!' he cried, before diving back out of the room, thoughtful enough to close the door behind him.

    Sonya tried to look stern, but failed miserably. 'Is he always that cute?'

    Valentina shrugged. 'Only when he is working.'

    'Look out honey, cos I'm using technology!' said Dave.

    The women ignored him.

    'Okay,' said Sonya. 'Let's say I give you a chance to show what you can do. I'm open-minded enough. What do you need?'

    'One room, any candles you've got, two of your keenest members and a bloody big bottle of booze,' said Dave.

!!!

The Man From LOVE #1: It starts at the movies

    N'buli MacGregor took his seat in the third row of the theatre, exactly five minutes before the movie started. It was an average multiplex cinema on the edge of Dublin, but it would do. He’d bought the popcorn he didn’t really need and had a sudden craving for the grubs he used to find under trees as a child, before spooning the popcorn into his mouth happily.

    He’d been looking forward to the movie for months and was off duty for the next two and a half hours after destroying an ancient IRA weapons cache earlier in the day. He wasn’t going to let work interfere with his day off. Nothing would make him move from this spot, a thought he instantly regretted, because of course something came along.

    The cinema was empty, so N'buli instantly knew something was wrong when the girl with short blonde hair and a severe dark suit sat down right beside him.

    'Shit, this isn’t fair,' he said, putting the popcorn aside, his appetite for the snack shattered. 'I was promised a day off. I haven’t had a day off in three years. I just want to se a movie.

    'I’m sorry, Agent MacGregor,' said the girl in a faint Irish accent. 'But a situation has come up and they ne-'

    N'buli interrupted her with a wave of his hand. 'A situation always comes up. That’s what they do. Surely somebody else can take it on.'

    'Nobody as good as you.'

    'Yeah, yeah. Flattery will get you everywhere, but it's still not fair,' said N'buli, still a little embarrassed by how much he sounded like a child. At his age. He stood up and dumped his popcorn in the girl’s lap. 'All right, but you have to sit here and watch the movie for me.'

    'They need me to report back.'

    'They needed you to tell me to come in. Job done. Now I need you to watch the rest of this film and then compose a written report on its merits and deficits, without resorting to any kind of plot spoiler. You will be judged on your spelling and grammar.'

    'This is a perfect example of male entitlement, you know. Getting the woman to do all the real work.'

    'Maybe, but I'm 119 years old. Cut an old man some fucking slack and bash out a report. It won't take long.'

    The girl pouted. 'I was the second fastest typist at my high school.'

    N'buli resisted the urge to kiss her on the cheek. They said it wasn't appropriate anymore, and he was trying to change with the times. 'Then you’ll be fine. Now. Where is my motherfucking helicopter?'

???

    The motherfucking helicopter was waiting on the roof of the cinema complex, disguised as a medivac. The identical twin Agents from Pakistan - who N'buli kept getting mixed up, which made him feel even more old and racist - flew him from the complex to the nearest airport and he was in the air on an innocuous-looking cargo plane within 20 minutes.

    Valentina and Dave were already waiting for him on the plane. She was on duty, but he’d been dragged away from a long-planned Call of Duty marathon and spent the entire flight sitting in the cockpit with Max, bitching about the last seven Star Wars films.

    N'buli went over the briefing papers as Valentina stripped and cleaned her Bliss rifle for the third time on the flight. It was a typical operation – a senior Egyptian government minister had been kidnapped from his Luxor home, with all signs pointing towards a group of militant Egyptian women who operated further up the Nile.

       

    As he read the file, N'buli saw the complicating factor. The girls had some legitimate grievances. The politician, a man named Aziz, was a depressingly conservative advocate for male dominance. He had twice been charged with beating his wife, but never convicted. He deserved to be put in his place.

    But LOVE saw all the angles. The analysts in the forecasting division predicted a 93 percent chance of bloodshed if Aziz wasn’t rescued within two days. If he was killed, the backlash would be inevitable. Innocent people would suffer and N'buli’s job was to stop that.

    He filed away the papers in his briefcase and moved to the back of the plane to change out of his double-breasted suit. He hoped he wouldn’t need the extra edge of the standard fight-suit he started putting on, but experience had taught him it was far, far better to be prepared. Just in case.

    The fight-suit's design hadn't changed much since it had been introduced during LOVE's World War Two operations. Simple design gave him the most comfortable clothes in five temperature ranges, while stowing away enough gear to keep a man going for days. Recent developments in muscle augmentation had been incorporated into the suit and gave him a punch harder than Ali. It also allowed him to reach a top speed of just under fifty kays an hour, which was useful when he had to run away, very fast.

    N'buli did not like using the suit's full offensive capabilities, mainly because he had to use them so often. He didn't mind all the defensive stuff, though.

    Suited up, he returned to the front section, walking around the one small truck tied down in the middle of the otherwise empty interior. He had to grab onto the wall of the cargo plane as it began rattling through some turbulence. Even after decades of flight, N'buli didn’t like being in the air. He swallowed back the discomfort and headed for the front.

    Max and Dave were still arguing and a little of N'buli’s soul died when he realised they were still arguing about the Star Wars prequels. It was a horribly familiar argument that N'buli had lost interest in a long time ago. He liked movies, but couldn’t muster the enthusiasm of the other two men.

    Even though N'buli didn’t enjoy flying, he knew he was safe with Max at the controls. The man might never shut up about the distinctive fight choreography of each individual Jedi, but he was LOVE’s best pilot, used for the most crucial of missions. Max had saved the lives of everybody on board the plane, on several occasions. His terrible taste in movies was acceptable after that.

    'It’s all about the feint,' said Max. He frowned as he tapped one of the gauges, only to shrug it away. 'It’s the teamwork of two warriors who know each other backward, and know how it use that in combat to their full advantage.'

    'I’ll give you that,' said Dave. He was chewing away at a chocolate bar, his one concession to nervousness before an operation. He’d already smeared some of it down his own fight-suit. 'But that doesn’t absolve Lucas of his storytelling responsibilities. You can’t have four differently themed climaxes going on simultaneously. It just looks busy and stupid.'

    'Are you dense? His only responsibility is to himself, not some faceless audience. Really, Dave. Your sense of entitlement is crowding me out of this cockpit.'

    N'buli cleared his throat loudly and Dave nearly jumped out his seat.

    'Jesus, mate. I’m going to paint you with whiteout. I can never see you coming.'

    'Quiet, you dumbass cracker. You'll never see me coming,' said Nbuli, before turning to Max. 'ETA?'

    'Half an hour. The new sleeve-sheet coating has us going a little over Mach 7. Not bad for a plane built when my Dad was still in diapers.'

    'Why update when quality lasts this long?' said Dave, but nobody picked up on his sarcasm.

    'All right,' said N'buli. 'I'm going to try and get 20 minutes sleep before we go in. Wake me when we're over the desert.'

    'So, what's the plan, boss?' asked Dave.

    'Standard. Max can drop us off outside town, and he can wait for us while we do the real work.'

    'Hey!' said Max.

    N'buli ignored him. 'Forecasting gives us a two-thirds chance the girls who've taken the minister are holed up in a building in a small settlement just outside Luxor. Val will cover us as usual from across the street and we'll go in and see what's what. We'll only have a couple of hours before the shit really hits the fan, so we'll have to get it sorted out as soon as possible. Okay?'

    'So we're winging it as usual.'

    N'buli nodded. 'I said it was a standard op. Best scenario, we get the politician out of there without anybody noticing, get him out to the plane and in the air before anything goes crazy.'

    'Oh sure,' said Max. 'It's not real work until you need someone to come in and haul your arse out of the fire, is it?'

    'It's not real work if you're not shooting anybody, Max,' said Dave.

    'It's not real shooting if you're not using proper guns, Dave,' said Max.

    N'buli left them to it, leaving the cockpit without another word, determined to get some rest while he still had the chance.

    Max and Dave sat in silence for several minutes, before the pilot spoke up again. 'Is that why you need just one narrative thread? Is it because this shit can get complicated enough as it is?'

    Dave closed his eyes and started thinking about video game strategies. 'Shut up and fly the fucking plane.'

???

    'I hate Egypt,' moaned Dave as he got out of the van. 'Twenty minutes in country and I've already got sand all the way up my crack. How does it do that?'

    Valentina and N'buli both ignored his moaning as they got their gear out of the van and locked it up, leaving it in the darkest side alley they could find. It was just after one in the morning, local time, and the small town they had arrived in appeared completely silent.

    The target building was further down the block and they moved off towards it. Dave was about to launch into a rant over the North African diet when he saw the look on N'buli's face. It strongly suggested it was time to keep his fucking mouth shut.

    Hugging the walls of the small dwellings around them, they stealthily made their way down the street. Several stray cats were the only witnesses to their passing. Within seconds, they were opposite the target building.

    Valentina knew what was expected of her. Without a word, she moved into the building covering the front of their target. It was a half-finished, three-storey apartment building, with plenty of cover. She was up on the third floor in moments and had her tranq rifle ready in seconds.

    She tapped the comms wire twice, activating it. 'Good to go. If this isn't the place we're looking for, it's still something interesting. Place is barricaded, but there is a front door, which is never a good idea. You could try roof access. You've got two sentries up there.'

    N'buli looked up at the building, but saw nothing. 'Are the sentries women?'

    'They're wearing heavy clothing, but they hold their guns like girls. You've got a fire escape on the north side. Do you want to go in from the roof?'

   

    'Yeah, drop the guards and we'll set off the datablitz.'

    'Understood,' said Valentina. She fired twice and saw the figures on the roof slump forward. Her Bliss rifle carried three kinds of sedative, but this was her favourite. It put the target down instantly and induced euphoric dreams. Val sometimes shot herself for fun, or when she couldn't sleep. 'Done.'

    'Blitz it, Dave,' said N'buli.

   Dave nodded and hit seven buttons on his phone, setting off the datablitz. The sub-sonic neurowave shut down all electronic security within three blocks. Any cameras, alarms or electronic locks were instantly shut down. It also meant every television in every house in the area would be irreparably damaged, but Dave knew a consignment of brand new HD televisions had already been ordered for the settlement.

    'Go,' said N'buli. He didn't wait for Dave, sprinting across the street and swinging his long legs up the fire escape. He was on the roof without making a sound and was pleased to see Dave had kept up with him.

    They silently crept across the roof, heading towards a skylight in the middle. The two guards were out and Dave heard one of them murmur something softly in French.

    Reaching the centre of the roof, N'buli cautiously looked inside. There was a bright light shining up from within and definite movement, but the skylight had been deliberately smeared with dust and dirt, making it impossible to see inside.

    Dave moved up beside him, only to stop suddenly. N'buli could feel him tense up from half a metre away.

    'What's wrong?'

    Dave looked glum. 'I don't think this roof is going to hold.'

    'What?'

    'When I stepped here, I felt something give under my foot. If I move, I might go right through the fucking roof.'

    'Then don't move!'

    'Gee, you think? Why don't I dance a ji-'

    Dave vanished as the roof completely gave way beneath him. N'buli heard a crashing sound, followed by a moment of silence, and then a group of women began yelling very loudly. N'buli didn't hesitate and dived in through the hole after Dave, gun drawn.

    He landed on his feet and instantly took in the situation. Dave had landed on a large table in the centre of a room that must have taken up most of the building. Surrounding the table were several dozen angry women who had been eating a meal when they had been rudely interrupted.

    Dave sank to his knees and covered his head with his hands, wishing it all away.

    N'buli stood up straight. He saw angry faces. He saw guns. He saw intention to use those guns.

    'N'buli! Dave! What's happening?'

    'Can't talk right now, Val,' said N'buli carefully and quietly. 'We're in a situation.'

    He looked around the room and knew bloodshed was inevitable.

    N'buli smiled. 'Ladies, apologies for the interruption,' he said in perfect Egyptian

    Then he pointed his gun at his head and pulled the trigger.

!!!