Free The Henchmen's Book Club by Danny King Page B

tough-looking friend’s face cracked
into a warm smile.
    “Mr Jones!” he said.
    I returned his smile with interest and
stuck out a hand.
    “Mr Smith!” I declared, beaming to see my
old American friend again.
    Mr Smith shook my hand warmly and we
slung our rifles over our shoulders and jawed for a couple of minutes on old
times.
    “What are you doing here?” Mr Smith
finally asked.
    “Just trying to scrape a few pennies
together to pay the bills,” I explained.
    Mr Smith wasn’t convinced though. “You
didn’t get this job through The Agency.”
    “No, work on spec – ‘situations
vacant’ sign hanging on the gate post.”
    Mr Smith decided against scrutinising
that one too closely and asked me if I was being well treated.
    “Well enough, I can’t complain,” I said,
complaining as much as I could with my eyes out of view of my Special brethren.
Mr Smith noted it and frowned in acknowledgement. Troopers on either side of us
were staring with suspicion so we explained to our respective comrades that
we’d served together before.
    Captain Bolaji decided we’d caught up enough
and reminded us of our orders. After a token glare of protest, I unslung my
rifle and resumed my post, but Mr Smith stayed right where he was. I thought
for one moment they were going to get into it with each other but in the event
Mr Smith just asked me what I was reading.
    “We’ve just finished Patrick Süskind’s Perfume ,” I told him, rolling up the
sleeves of my tunic to show him the bruises.
    “You’ve got a book club going?” he
delighted.
    “Of sorts. Just something to pass the
nights.”
    “ Perfume ?”
    “You’d be surprised what we’ve been able
to get delivered from Durban,” I told him.
    “What did it score?”
    “We haven’t scored it yet. But End of The Affair got two point nine
last week, while Alan Bennett’s Untold
Stories did very well with four point two.”
    “Really? That surprises me,” Mr Smith
said.
    “Well, it was a bigger book, wasn’t it?
And in hardback. Better for fighting with,” I explained.
    Mr Smith understood. He thought for a
moment, looking like he wanted to say something but didn’t know how to put it,
before asking me if I’d read Papillon .
    “Henri
Charrière yeah?” I said. “No, I haven’t read that one yet.”
    “We just read it a few weeks back.”
    “We?”
    “Yeah, we’ve got a little book club of
our own going, like before,” Mr Smith told me.
    “Hey that’s great. Are you scoring and
nominating and everything?”
    “Yeah, same as we did back on the island.
It’s working out really well,” he said, and several of his comrades nodded in
agreement behind him.
    “What did you give for Papillon ?”
    “I
gave it four and it scored four point four overall. Went down very well with
the chaps,” Mr Smith beamed, letting me know whose nomination that had been.
“Easily our best scorer. And you know what, that’s for a book that’s almost
forty years old,” he added.
    “Perhaps
we’ll do that one next, because my choices don’t seem to be going down at all
well,” I said, as the door of the bunker swung open and the white-coated
scientists emerged, rubbing their necks with handkerchiefs and checking their
watches.
    We
whipped our hands out of our pockets and snapped to attention but the
scientists were too preoccupied with their own cleverness to notice. The lead
scientist, who I recognised as having also been on Thalassocrat’s island with
us, radioed in that they were all done and a minute later the Euro players were
stepping out of the house and walking back to the bird, matching His Most
Excellent Majesty salute-for-salute.
    Mr
Smith looked at me and gave me a formal nod. I returned his nod and said I’d
catch him in the bookshop some time. Mr Smith held his retreat for just one
moment and fixed me in the eye.
    “Don’t
bother with Papillon . Try The Fourth Protocol instead. You’ll like
it, particularly the ending,” he said, ladling