Читать книгу Incredible Spy Detective. Poets and Liars - - Страница 3

[Russia, Moscow, Khamovniki District]

“So I go up to him asking who he is and what he’s doing in my home,” the female voice spoke from the stand, and from the audience, in the allocated logical pauses, delighted laughter sounded. “And he goes, ‘I am an MI6 agent’.”

The voice was deep, with a hoarseness common in sociopaths and artistic hysterics. There was no more microphone feedback noise, the other speakers at the table on the press-conference stage were silent in fascination and didn’t interrupt the monologue. The camera shutters occasionally clicked and the flashes whistled.

“I tell him to get the hell out – because I didn’t invite him,” the woman continued. “But he’s not leaving.”

She spread her arms theatrically – her nails were a bright neon green – and the pattern of a tattoo flashed on her open wrist from under the white jacket, it snaked up her forearm.

“So I tell him: ‘Take your clothes off, then.’ And he did.”

The audience roared, it was mostly the women who shrieked with laughter, the men were reacting more calmly. The other speakers clapped, bulged their eyes grotesquely, motioned falling from their chair – and the woman was satisfied with the effect she had, though she was simply giving an ironic and restrained smile.

It was impossible to tell if she was being serious.

Richard clapped, too – because he was supposed to, and because he recognized the glimmer of wit in all the absurdity of the joke.

The voice from the stand belonged to the writer under a pen name Stella Fracta, the author of the new detective bestseller ‘Cats Don’t Drink Wine’ about a murder on Italian vineyards. The story about an MI6 agent that she just told to the audience was a product of her psychedelic visions – an author’s method of applying the active imagination.

Richard read all of her books – more than once. MI6 ran a two-week intensive course on all her works, novels and otherwise, with detailed analysis and examples, methodical manuals on her system of symbols and historical notes.

MI6 has been in chaos for the last five months. An unprecedented case of the revelation of the secrets of the Poets, an alchemical society, was deemed a potential threat: that was normally the way that political secrets, stolen by hackers and spies, were exposed to the public eye, with a taunt and a pleasure of impunity.

Among the Poets were famed artists of different eras. The formulas of the Great Work encrypted in their art were passed onwards from chosen ones to chosen ones in forms inaccessible to the understanding of a layman – and the author of the novel that’s gained phenomenal popularity made a marketable detective plot out of it!

A good one – bright, colorful, with multi-layered subtext and deep conclusions … But it was a sensational upheaval, an explanation of the hardest instructions of the wise in simple terms – like a pie recipe on a television cooking show. There were no theories of the great conspiracies of humankind exploited in it, as it often happens in popular culture – there was simple naked truth. It was suspicious.

The alchemical society has existed for many centuries. The Poets didn’t interfere in the political conflicts, nor the economy, nor religion, the matters concerning them were not of paramount importance for intelligence and counterintelligence services – it was business of a different kind. The Poets kept their knowledge behind seven seals in heavy chests, piling up crafty constructions of defense on the surface – one more absurd than the other – as they followed their own data security.

Faustian bargains, the philosopher’s stone, turning metal into gold, water into wine … Vials and potions, Keys of Solomon, rituals for calling demons into service and other trappings of the occult were distractions from the real work of the Poets – and only the chosen few were privy to the true meanings of the metaphors and symbols that had nothing to do with magic.

Even MI6 didn’t teach alchemy. To outsiders, the entrance was closed.

That’s the way it would have stayed – if not for the thunder of the book that exposed what the Poets really do.

There was no doubt that Stella Fracta is a member of the alchemists’ society: she had the knowledge. The why of her exposing the secrets of her society was to be found out by the MI6 agents.

The incident became a matter of international significance: the books in English were spreading around the world like hot buns.

It wasn’t self-exposure – she was popularizing alchemy with a specific goal. Whether it was a call to action, a signal to other alchemists, it was, univocally, danger, because the knowledge supposed to be kept secret could end up in the wrong hands.

The fans, the journalists, artists of all trades – writing and theater and art – all gathered in the press center of Russia’s biggest media group on Zubovsky boulevard – they were dazzled by the hype and a hot newsbreak. Moscow was – as ever – a boiling pot with a fat broth of money, greed for entertainment, avarice for success, competition and vanity fairs.

For a month already Richard has been visiting all events with the author’s participation, for a month he’s been living under a new name. He introduces himself as an actor of the London troupe The Old Vic, often, mostly as a joke, apologizes for his intentionally broken Russian, makes new acquaintances. The fact that he’s in Russia for a project of the Moscow Satire Theater that conducts a series of master classes for the Shakespeare Festival was a cover that hitherto gave rise to no questions – only baffled awe.

In a month he’s not moved an inch forward, he found no new data, no disproof, no proof of the dangerous activities of the Poets – and he could find no way to approach this strange writer, it was as if she didn’t notice him. He was acting with a jeweler’s precision, he couldn’t attract suspicion, he didn’t intrude by acting as a fan or an interested party – and at the same time he had a specific objective: to enter her intimate circle.

The most intimate circle.

The official part of the press conference was over, the autograph session was coming to the end, the guests drifted into the hall with food and drinks. Stella Fracta was guzzling water near one of the tables on the sideline, Venceslav Renev, the literary agent, was whispering something in her ear, flailing his hands, she was staring off into space.

She resembled a teenager at times – with her nose piercing, tattoos all over the left side of her body, the fang extensions and a whimsical hairdo with bangs and two buns on her head made to resemble horns; she’s extremely serious at times – when she frowns, thinking about something, when she says complex things in a convoluted manner, but with racy, dirty jokes. She, too, lives under a pseudonym and wears social masks – even though she hates them, spits on them, as if she’s trying to scare the layman away with her grotesqueness.

Richard looked at her and didn’t understand anything. It wasn’t in his habit to anger at failure, but he did have a habit of never putting his guard down.

The joke about the MI6 agent who came to the writer’s home was forgotten, but in an incredible way described the extreme that Richard will have to go to, if need be.

He’ll have to get into her apartment and take his clothes off – if necessary. Such is his job.