6. What Has It Got in Its Pocketses

Colonel — or as he preferred, commandant — Stephens of 020 was going through the items taken off the latest detainee. He’d been found in a village in the Cotswolds the evening before, in a jumpsuit and combat boots, and been taken prisoner by the villagers. No parachute had been located yet, but it seemed the only way he could have arrived. Since then, he’d been cooling his heels in one of the cells of 020, or as it had been known before the war, Latchmere House. He’d said very little, but was clearly American by birth. For all that indicated.

The jumpsuit and boots had been innocent of garrote wires or anything exciting of that nature, but it had been an odd choice to drop a man in such a military kit. Even his haircut was military, or what a military haircut would look like if the sides were given an inadequate time to grow out and then faded into the longer hair on top. He’d also been wearing a cotton short-sleeved military undershirt, but dyed purple with the image of a horned Viking warrior with long yellow mustachios printed on it. Some of the pockets of the jumpsuit had odd closures, too, tabs of material that stuck to each other but could be pulled apart with a tearing noise.

His fillings had given the resident dentist a fright — they were some kind of unknown substance like tough white porcelain and he had almost failed to notice them. They would be an ideal colour to hide a poison capsule in, but they were innocent of anything but the mystery amalgam.

Stephens looked again at the items spread out on the table, and frowned. At first glance, some were obvious, even innocent. A pen, loose change, a wrapped mint (assuming it wasn’t flavored with bitter almonds, one for the chemists to determine), what seemed to be a printed greengrocer’s receipt, a fossilized shark’s tooth on a cord, a penknife, some keys, and an equally fossilized paper tissue. The amount of folding money was a small fortune, but that had several explanations.

The oddities remained. His wallet contained a collection of hard plastic cards, most but not all bearing a gleaming black strip on the obverse. These strips did not appear to be for decorative purposes, since the rest were highly decorated with both emblems and text. One said “debit,” another “credit,” and both were marked with what must be the name of a bank. Another was clearly an American library card, yet another a driver’s license, bearing a colour(!) photograph that his subordinates assured him was a good likeness of the man, and in the same vein, an amusingly insincere card for a fascist, granting the bearer leave to vote in a given district. Yet another read “Daisy Ice Cream”. This one was made simply of pasteboard and was clearly a scheme to reward customers for their loyalty. Well, for the detainee’s sake, hopefully it was only his loyalty to his ice cream shop that was unshakeable.

He smiled a bit at that little joke, and reached for another mystery object. He’d gotten first crack at all of this before the scientists got them for analysis, the better to catch the detainee out in any prevarications he might unwisely select for his use.

This one was a flattish hinged object, curved slightly on the leading edges, with a small tab projecting from one end. The colour was a black between glossy and matte, smooth in texture, and small enough to hold in one’s palm. A hinge suggested opening it, so he did. As he did, it revealed a small keypad of numbers and a small glowing square about an inch wide, lighting his hand like a very inadequate torch.

He blinked again, and the square resolved into an image — towering ivory cliffs above a sea inlet or a broad river, the dense forest topping the cliffs touched with the fires of autumn. It was made of innumerable tiny squares, giving it rather the effect of a pointillist painting or a Byzantine mosaic. Over it, in white letters, was superimposed “26 Augusto” and just below, in larger numbers “6:34.” The whole was clearly illuminated, not just reflective.

He would have liked to unlock the mysteries of this bizarre little object himself, but a good interrogator knew not to let his pride overrun his skill, or strike out alone without the vital alliance with the more conventional investigators that made the role of an interrogator better than a mere series of canny guesses upon the psychology of the individual. He regretfully closed it and resolved to have the scientists analyze it that morning as soon as the layabouts trickled in to work.

The second mysterious object was also black, heavy for its size, cool to the touch, and perhaps an inch by three inches by a quarter inch. A long forked insulated wire was plugged into one end, the forks terminating in small squashed hemispheres. It took him a moment to realise these were odd flexible headphones that could be placed into the ears rather than over them.

The object itself required more analysis. It had a square screen as well, and several buttons on the narrow edges, unlabeled. Immediately below the screen there was a button about the size of a penny, surrounded by a ring with ridges running perpendicularly across it. It seemed to be intended to be turned like a wheel, so he turned it, carefully, with a light hand. Like a human being, too much force would lay it to waste and prevent it from revealing its secrets.

The screen and the wheel both lit themselves with blue light. Another cautious rotation illuminated a list of phrases in white lettering. Like the hinged device’s colour photograph, the projection was made up of impossibly tiny squares. He had to adjust his monocle to bring his weak eye into focus, but there they were.

He turned the wheel again, still gingerly, and the image shifted, like a magic lantern slide, giving the illusion that the blue-white list was being rolled upwards, like a scroll. A strange and inefficient method, so many extra frames required to give that illusion of motion.

He read the phrases visible: “Safety Dance”, “Master of Puppets,” “Chain Lightning”, “Should I Stay or Should I Go”, and “Down in Yon Forest,” then tapped his fingers on the tabletop, considering. Wasn’t the last of those an old English song? That, with the headphones, made a certain theory very likely. He put the headphones in his ears where, after a little adjustment, they stayed.

A little experimentation showed that the song title could be bordered in white by rotating the wheel forward or back, and if the central penny-sized disc was pressed — music! And rather good quality sound as well. It opened with a single guitar, joined by a higher-pitched stringed instrument, and a male American voice raised in song.

His thoughts mingled with the wild clashing foreboding of the music as it rose. If each phrase represented a complete song, how much sound could be recorded or stored on this little object and safely smuggled back to the detainee’s handlers? The mind reeled, this impossibly tiny toy in his hands like an unexploded firebomb in the streets of London.

The scientists must get at the secrets of these objects, and he must get at the secrets of its bearer. Immediately. He reached for the telephone.

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