The Secret World Of Maurice Fitz

Being part of the Firm made you see the whole world a little differently from Joe Ordinary because you knew that nothing and no one, not even your own grandmother, could be trusted.

For example, as agent XX9 sat on a bench in the park, waiting for his contact to show, he started to wonder about the pigeons that were busily pecking around his feet. Were they real pigeons or just wind-up automatons with listening equipment inside? Perhaps, they were real but had microphones pinned beneath their plumage and, if so,which ones were working for his side and which for the enemy.

“Perhaps you are being a little paranoid”, a psychiatrist had once told him. He’d later had to shoot that psychiatrist in the back of the head because he was a mole for the other side and not the cute, furry, burrow digging kind of mole “but even they”, thought XX9, “couldn’t be trusted”.

Sometimes, however, he admitted that he could jump to conclusions a little too quickly, like the time that a Hare Krishna had approached him in the street and offered him a vegetarian cookbook and a sticker that said, “Say Gouranga and be happy”. He’d dangled the poor man out of a seventh story window for a whole hour whilst demanding to know, “Who is this Gouranga and who does he work for?”.

But now, more than ever, he felt that he had good reason to be paranoid, because his colleagues in the Firm had been dropping little hints about his “retirement” and that could only mean one thing, that they were planning to ‘retire’ him in the back of the head.

A beautiful blonde walked by, dragging a toy poodle behind her and XX9 hoped that, perhaps, she might be the contact but then a dirty, old, yellow-bearded tramp sat down next to him, smelling of methylated spirits and stale urine.

“Some weather we’re having, eh chief”, remarked the tramp.

“It is raining in London but in Moscow the sun is shining”, said XX9, giving the appropriate coded reply.

The tramp laughed hoarsely, stunning XX9 with a facefull of halitosis. “Eh? I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been further than Carlisle”, said the tramp, pulling a can of extra-strong lager from a polythene bag and opening it, “You want a drink?”, he asked, with a broad smile on his bearded face but no teeth, holding out the can of lager and offering XX9 a sip.

“Trying to slip me the old Mickey Finn, eh? No thanks, chief”, said XX9 before grabbing the old tramp by the lapels of his dirty raincoat, “and you can tell your friends that I don’t want to buy what they’re selling. Understand?”.

“Okay, okay”, said the tramp, getting awkwardly to his feet and staggering away, “There’s no need to be like that. I was just trying to be friendly, that’s all”.

The tramp walked on into the distance mumbling. Whether he was mumbling to himself or to a secret microphone hidden in his dirty old raincoat, XX9 wasn’t sure but, these days, there was very little that XX9 was sure of.

Suddenly, a familiar face appeared; Gemma, a female colleague from the Firm. “I didn’t see you at work today”, she said, “Everyone thought you might be off sick or something. Anyway, seeing that you’ll be leaving us soon, a bunch of us at the office clubbed together to buy you a little retirement gift. I was going to drop it off at your house and I was taking a short cut through the park when I saw you sitting here”, she
said, smiling as she rummaged through her handbag and produced a small gift wrapped package.

XX9 feigned a happy smile and took the package because he didn’t want to give his “friends” in the Firm the satisfaction of seeing him sweat but he knew exactly what was in the ‘package’ and he chuckled as he held it to his ear and listened to its ominous ticking.

When he got back home to his house it was getting dark and he could see that the lights were on and noticed a group of silhouettes moving behind his venetian blinds which tipped him off immediately that some of his “friends” were planning a little “reception” for him.

Keeping his head low and staying in the shadows, he edged slowly towards his front door and, after turning the key in the lock and kicking it wide open, quickly dived among the azaleas on his front lawn to avoid the shots of who ever may have been waiting behind the door to “greet” him.

Hearing no gunfire, XX9 pulled his semi-automatic from the holster inside his gray trenchcoat and crept stealthily into his house.

From behind his living room door he could hear faint whispers and what he thought sounded like laughter. “Go on and laugh, my friends”, he thought,“’cause it’ll be the last laugh you ever have”.

Charging his living room door with gun blazing, he fired four shots from his pistol into the room.

Delia, his elder sister, screamed as the bottle of blue nun in her hand was shattered by a bullet. Lying on the floor, not dead but shocked and terrified, were the guests who she had invited to her brothers surprise retirement party.

“Maurice?! What are you doing?”, she demanded, part terrified, part enraged.

XX9 looked around him at the crepe paper bunting and the balloons, the cheesy nibbles and the banner hanging above the fireplace with the words “Happy Retirement” on it.

“Very convincing”, he said, “You’ve really gone to a lot of trouble to make this look real but what about the parcel bomb I was given at the rendezvous; which, incidentally, I hurled
into a duck pond just in the nick of time. Explain that!”

“You mean the present we gave you?”, asked Gemma from his office appearing from behind an armchair, “That was just a carriage clock”, she explained, “From the jewelers in the high street”.

For a fleeting moment, he almost bought her story. He had always been a sucker for a pretty face. But he soon realized that she was just stalling him when two goons in fake police uniforms grabbed him from behind.

“We’re just going to take you to a hospital, Mr Fitz”, said the fake police sargeant, smiling as they bundled him, handcuffed, into the back of their van, “There’ll be lots of nice doctors and nurses there who you can talk to”.

“They can try their worst”, thought XX9, smirking as the van was pulling out of his driveway, “but they’ll never make me talk”.