Jenny Everywhere: Folly of Men
Nov. 17th, 2022 07:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scott_sanford“I’m telling you, Molotov cocktails work! Anytime I had a problem and I threw a Molotov cocktail, boom! Right away, I had a different problem.” - Jason Mendoza, The Good Place
The Folly of Men
by Scott Sanford; November 2022
* ring *
Jenny Cornelius put down her novel and picked up the phone. “Hello?”
“Good morning! Stewart here. I’m glad to have gotten you.”
“You haven’t gotten me yet but negotiations continue. It’s lovely to hear your voice, Captain. And you’re a lucky man for that; I’ve been in and out of town all week. It’s ridiculous you should find me at home now, an active woman living a thousand feet from Carnaby Street, but I’ve been in all morning indulging in a guilty pleasure.” She grinned happily and leaned back, putting her feet up on her desk.
“Jenny Cornelius, it is impossible to imagine you feeling guilty over anything,” he told her.
“Oh, perhaps a few things.” She laughed lightly and added, “Believe it or not, in this case it’s because I’m reading a Biggles book.”
“That is very nearly as hard to imagine as you feeling guilty.”
“It’s a rare edition, hard to come by, but I know a very special person in the book trade,” she understated. She eyed the copy of Biggles Goes to Mars she’d acquired from a friend who ran a nearby bookstore over on Greek Street just off Old Compton, and counted it a just reward. She’d been over half of creation and a few other places tracking down a copy of the Plasmanomicon for his private collection and he’d been happy to get it. That was a double win for her; better it be in his collection than out where just anyone could read it. “Lovely man, too; very polite, handsome, well dressed, and gay as a tree full of monkeys. I’d love to introduce you and Mister Fell but I rather suspect you move in different social circles.”
“No doubt.” On the phone, he sighed. “It is a pleasure talking to you, but since I’m phoning during business hours I feel it’s important to be clear that I’m not calling you in my official capacity. That would be impossible, as you are not an officially part of the government…”
“Completely impossible,” Jenny agreed, reading ahead on the conversation. She put her feet back on the floor and sat up with better posture. “You’re a responsible military man and I’m famously none of those things. I hope that doesn’t mean we can’t call each other and chat once in a while...”
“Quite,” the captain said. “I’m particularly glad to have caught you at home today.”
“You’re always welcome to bend my ear, and if your pitch is persuasive enough maybe some other parts, but I sense you’re phoning with an ulterior motive.”
He sighed and asked, “Do you know anything about North Korea?”
“Bloody little. North is the Russians’ half; it’s not really the Isle of Wight as a vacation destination.”
“No, no it is not,” the captain agreed. “Rather an understatement, in fact. But there’s the rub, some of the SBS boys went up there – never mind why, I shan’t tell you – and now they’re pinned down and having a devil of a time getting out. They’re safe enough where they are for the moment but they can’t go home without raising a fuss, and if they’re seen awkward questions will be asked. I was hoping you might know ways in and out of the area.”
“Hm,” Jenny said thoughtfully. She considered what little she knew of the Korean peninsula. “It does seem as if there should be something to be done but I’m knackered to tell you what it is right now.”
“I didn’t expect you would but you do have a flair for arriving and departing unseen, and in the damnedest places. It was worth asking.”
“I do and it was. Let me think this over, Captain. I may be able to think of something.”
They made polite noises at each other and hung up.
* ring *
“Intelligence Taskforce, central desk,” the Captain answered.
“Hello, my dear Captain; Jenny Cornelius here. I hope you’re having a good afternoon.”
“Rather busy, to be honest. That matter I mentioned earlier.”
“Yes, I was wondering about that. I tried thinking of ways to get your fellows out quietly and I haven’t come up with any good ways to extract them without making a fuss. I’m sorry, Stewart, but I’m afraid I’m completely out of plausible deniability at the moment.”
“I was afraid of that,” he sighed, looking at the maps and reports spread out across his desk. They were not encouraging.
“So tell me… How do you feel about implausible deniability?”
“Pardon?” He hadn’t expected that.
“What if something else happened in the area? What if something got everyone looking somewhere else, do you think your boys could slip away in the confusion?”
“I… imagine they could…”, he admitted guardedly.
“If they have a radio or something, it might be a good idea to suggest they seize any opportunities that might arise. Particularly if their opposite numbers are distracted or confused.”
“Distracted by what?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t like to commit myself. They could just be ready in a general way, for whatever might arise. Besides, it could be convenient if you can honesty say you knew nothing at all beforehand.”
“Jenny Cornelius…” He sensed impending disaster. “What are you going to do?”
“Nothing much, I think,” she evaded. “I’ll make a few more phone calls, chat with friends. I might go out to a club later.”
“But you’re not going to Korea?”
“Certainly not, Stewart,” she said lightly, and continued in a more serious tone, “This will be a bad time to be near Korea. Do pass that along to your boys, dear. This will a good time to be leaving Korea.”
* ring *
“Public relations, Drake.” Her voice was brisk and professional.
“Miss Drake!”, exulted the familiar voice on the other end of the phone. “How wonderful to talk to you again!”
“Oh God, what is it this time?”
“Oh! My darling Miss Drake, I don’t know why you think anything might have happened,” Jenny dissembled lightly. “What could possibly happen in my life that would interest a sophisticated woman of the world like yourself?”
“Jenny, every time you pass through my life I get either more work or a ludicrous misadventure,” she pointed out. She remembered the weekend Jenny had shown up urgently needing to know if a submarine, somehow much too far up the Thames, could be hidden at the West India Docks. (Not very well, it turned out.) She felt compelled to add, “Or both.”
“I do like to think I bring excitement into other people’s lives.”
“I don’t need any excitement,” Laura claimed, her heart beating faster.
“Probably for the best I’m getting ahead of things, then. I’m calling to help you out, if you’d be so kind as to let me.”
“What is it this time?”, she asked, her suspicions growing.
“As I told you, nothing at all has happened,” Jenny assured her. Laura was not less suspicious. “I just wanted to get in ahead of anything that might come up later and let you know that this would be a good time for your Intelligence Taskforce to be ready to disavow all knowledge.”
“What exactly am I supposed to deny knowing about?”
“Oh, whatever might come up,” Jenny said vaguely. “Just… be ready to deny everything in general, say what?”
“Everything, everywhere, all at once?”, Laura asked, clearly hearing the warning rumble of an avalanche about to descend on the Public Relations office.
“That’s the spirit!”, Jenny said in the light hearted tones of someone well above the avalanche zone who was idly flicking rocks at an unstable mass of snow to see what might shake loose.
“I don’t know why I let you talk me into these things, Jenny…” She felt buried in snow already.
“Let me talk you into a few more,” Jenny suggested. “I can’t do tonight but the weekend is coming up. Once you’re done with your dreadfully boring job let me take you away from all this. I could pop you into the Mod Rod and get you out of London… It’s only an hour to the south coast once we’re out of the city.”
“I’ve seen the coast; it’s rainy and dreary,” she pointed out. She looked around the office; nobody was paying attention to her encounter with the voice of chaos and nonsense. “And we don't need your car. We could stay right here in London; there’s plenty to do. Have you been to a place called Lee Ho Fook’s?”
“Down in Chinatown, yes, it’s not very far from me. Great food, but uncertain service and half the time it’s full of tourists. Let’s take our chances. I can meet you at the Liecester Square Tube station; we can walk though the streets and find something that tickles our fancy.”
Laura checked her coworkers again and whispered, “Friday. Seven o’clock.”
Somewhere in London, in a large operations room in a secure government facility, people who were paid to remain calm in a crisis were losing their calm. People in military uniforms and expensive suits moved back and forth, doing busy things and contributing to the sense of a well-kicked ant hill. Through it all strode Jenny Cornelius, looking very sharp in a matching scarf and miniskirt combo, and not looking at all as if she belonged there.
She spotted her captain with a group of other Ruperts.
“Captain!”, she cooed, joining them. “It’s lovely to see you again!”
“Cornelius! Where did you come from?”
“Everywhere, darling, I’m sure I’ve mentioned that.”
“You know I meant how you got in here”, he clarified. “This is supposed to be a secure multi-national emergency response center.”
“That’s well spotted. This is a secure facility so I couldn’t possibly be here if I wasn’t supposed to be. Q.E.D.” She patted his shoulder and added, “But if anyone asks where I came from, you can tell them that one day I escaped from my pram in Kensington Gardens and ran for it. Never looked back.”
“You are going to be the death of me, Jenny Cornelius. Or worse, my career.”
“Nonsense. In ten or twenty years you’ll have shot up the ranks, you’ll be a brigadier or something, and you’ll have no time to run around with me. I’d best enjoy you while I can. So what exciting multi-national situation are you boys talking about today?”
“You hadn’t heard?”, asked one of the fellows in American uniform. “I thought it was all over the news.”
“Will you indulge a lady? Pretend I know nothing?”
A French officer gestured at an impractically large world map mounted on one wall, where a constellation of cryptic and colorful symbols were stuck on in various places. There were rather a lot around the Korean Peninsula. “The monstre, she marches!”
The American fellow elaborated, “It started just a few hours ago. Some kind of giant sea monster rose up out of the Sea of Japan, stormed through the outskirts of the harbor city of Munchon, and headed west into the mountains.”
“My goodness,” Jenny said, without detectable surprise or disbelief.
“Nothing seems to be able to stop it. Their army has been trying everything they’ve got in the area, with no luck yet. Even if it slows down at night, it could still reach Pyongyang tomorrow. The Koreans are going nuts.”
Another American beside him, this one wearing a large cowboy hat with his uniform which Jenny suspected might not be regulation, nodded agreement. “That ain’t the half of it. They-all is losin’ their shit!”
“Coréens sans merde?”, inquired the Frenchman.
“It’s not much prettier on the political side,” contributed a man in an expensive suit and a public school tie. “The Russians are yelling at the Americans, the Americans are yelling at the Russians, and the Chinese are yelling at everybody.”
“Nobody’s military plans for whatever that is,” said the bare-headed American, indicating a poster sized aerial photo of something that at first glance could be mistaken for an actor in a silly rubber monster suit.
“Nobody except the Japanese,” the school tie wearer confided. “Somehow they did have a contingency plan, and I’m going to have questions about that later, when there’s time.”
“Critter’s got the Koreans runnin’ round like a flock o’ headless chickens,” said the cowboy hat. “Maybe they could learn somethin’.”
“She’s a beaut though, she is,” an Australian remarked, admiring the photo. “We don’t get those Down Under.”
“I expect not, Lieutenant Irwin,” the first American said, pronouncing it loo tenant in the American style.
“I’ve read about your Australian wildlife,” said the school tie. “The monster would be redundant.”
“It all sounds very distracting,” Jenny remarked softly to her companion while the others were talking among themselves. Several interesting expressions passed over his face.
“What do you know about this, Cornelius?”, the captain asked, quietly but intensely.
Jenny shrugged casually and said, “Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you, well, slightly fewer lies. The important matter is what we discussed earlier. That’s going smoothly, I hope?”
“I haven’t heard anything in a few hours. I expect they’ll take whatever opportunity presents itself.”
“Good. All is well then.”
The captain looked at the giant world map, and the markers of the suddenly re-deployed forces of what appeared to be every military active in the Pacific, and the room full of agitated government functionaries, and the blown up photo of the giant rubbery monster. He said dryly, “I would not have said that all is well.”
“Think of it like the weather,” she suggested. “Some days there’s rain, some days there’s a giant atomic monster.”
“In my experience, no.” The captain tried to give Jenny a stern look that was completely wasted on her, and gave it up as a bad job.
“Les monstres atomiques ne sont pas la pluie.”
She shrugged, grinning with the carefree heart of someone who wasn’t going to have to clean up the mess.
“Cornelius, you’d better lie low until this is over,” the captain advised. “Or forever. The Koreans are going to be out of their minds about this.”
“I’ll try to be somewhere else for a few days,” Jenny said, still grinning. She squeezed his arm fondly. “Lying low and being unnoticed isn’t really my best skill.”
The character of Laura Drake was created by Jeanne Morningstar and is available for use by anyone.
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Date: 2022-11-20 11:51 am (UTC)For those not into such things, the SBS mentioned here is the Special Boat Service, a unit of the British Royal Navy that sneaks around and does things they don’t talk about.
I put in a lot more specifics of geography than I'm used to – and in the end the story defines Jenny's neighborhood without actually naming it. The research for both the geography and the era was interesting; I doubt most readers will catch more than a fraction of the allusions.
Jenny proposes to take Laura to the south coast, which is a reasonable place to go for a weekend. It’s a lovely drive down the A23 or parallel roads, too.
I think silly French people are a recurring feature in Jenny Cornelius’s life, just because that’s who she expects to meet.