Organisation Man: Chapter 10

In which we make the acquaintance of Claire Maguire and Lexa Hackett. They're new characters, so you don't need to know anything about them.

The Chief was sitting behind his desk, looking perturbed. Things were not going well. To his right, at an adjacent chair, sat Kearney, with the same look of displeasure that he always sported. And in front of the Chief's desk sat two women, their faces suggesting that they shared in the general sense of bad fortune.

"A chailiní", began the Chief, "Ba mhaith liom sibhse atá anseo, ach tá brón orm ar na rudaí atá muid ag caint. An- "

But at this point one of the women interrupted him. Her name was Lexa Hackett, and this is what she said: "Chief, sorry to interrupt, but I went to a Protestant school, and I don't want to sound anti-national or anything, but it would aid my understanding a lot if we were to conduct this conversation in the one of our official languages that everyone here can understand".

The Chief looked somewhat pained, but this did not stop him acceding to her request, albeit without acknowledging it.

"Unfortunate occurrences have unfortunately occurred", he continued. "Ones about which I think we will all be most concerned. You will of course be aware through office gossip that our colleague Barry Ryan is away conducting some fieldwork. You may also have noticed that he has been away for some time now, perhaps thinking that his mission was a long one. Well, I can reveal to you that it was nothing of the short. We expected him back long before now, but he has not returned".

"I see", said the other woman, whose name was Claire Maguire.
"Have we heard anything from him?"

"No, we have not", the Chief answered. "Not a peep. It is most disturbing".

"Mr Ryan seems to have vanished", said Kearney. "We sent him to London, to execute a task arising from a previous mission there. But he has not returned and he has not sent us any message".

"Well, could he just be taking his time?" asked Hackett. She had the impression that Ryan was something of a slow worker.

"I said that he seems to have vanished", said Kearney, glacially. "We made inquiries through the usual consular channels. He checked into the hotel we had booked for him, but he did not show up for breakfast and was not seen there again".

"It is most untoward", said the Chief.

"Again, through consular channels we contacted the British authorities to see if they knew anything of the Ryan's whereabouts. Though of course we gave them the name he was travelling under. They knew nothing, beyond his seeming to have vanished from the hotel. Or nothing they were letting on".

"I think they know more than they are telling us", said the Chief. "That's the way the Brits like to play it".

"And has London Station been of any assistance here?" asked Maguire.

"No", answered Kearney. "We do not want to risk compromising them in this matter".

"So where do we fit into this?" asked Hackett, though she already knew the answer.

"You're two clever girls" answered Kearney, permitting himself a slight smile. "I'm sure you can work it out".

"In a nutshell", continued the Chief, "We want you to go to London and find out what has happened to Ryan. And we are giving you full discretion to sort it out. I know some people here like to moan about the Organisation, but one thing that we have always prided ourselves on since long before I rose to this position, it is this – we never leave one of our own behind. So if you can extract Ryan, do it. If you find where he is, but can't get him out, let us know and we will ransom or exchange him".

"And there's another thing, of course", said Kearney. "The Organisation does not tolerate turncoats".

"Yes, I think that is something we can all agree on", agreed the Chief. "If you find that Ryan has gone over to the Opposition, well, I think you will know what to do".

Hackett and Maguire looked at each other.

"You know what I mean, girls?" said the Chief, trying to sound as ominous as possible. "Make sure he tells no more of our secrets, one way or another".

"I hope it won't come to that", said Maguire. Hackett nodded her head in agreement.

"It won't come to that", said the Chief, trying to lift the mood. "I know Barry Ryan, I know the kind of lad he is – he's an Organisation man through and through. He won't let us down. Just concentrate on finding him and bringing him home".

"But", said Kearney, now definitely smiling, "if he has turned, you will have to sort him out".

"Now girls", said the Chief, smiling and trying to sound as cheerful as possible when you have just asked someone to be ready to kill one of their colleagues should the situation warrant it, "I have some important matters to attend to, but Mr Kearney here will be able to fill you in on everything you need to know before you head off on your mission. But I'm sure I can count on you. I think I can safely say that you are the two best girls we have working here".

"Thanks Chief", said Hackett, trying to sound only partially sarcastic. "You can rely on us".

"And Miss Maguire", the Chief continued, "I believe you are the most senior girl here, so I am appointing you commander of the mission".

"I'll do my best", said Maguire.

"Aye aye skipper", agreed Hackett. The Chief looked quizzically at her.

Kearney stood up and moved towards the door out of the Chief's office. "Come this way, please", he said. Hackett and Maguire followed him to his office. Once they had left the room the Chief took the newspaper back out from his briefcase and went back to the crossword.

Kearney briefed Hackett and Maguire on Ryan's first trip to London – why they had sent him over and what he had done there. He described the salient points in Ryan's report of his trip and his encounter with Agaskayon, and then he gave them a copy of the report to read at their leisure; likewise with his own report on his debriefing session with Ryan. He outlined to the two women the practicalities of their trip to London – how they would travel over, what names would be on their travel documents, how much money they would be able to bring, and so forth. He also flagged to them that Ryan had been working on another matter for the Chief before the passport issue had come to light.

"I don't think it's relevant to the matter in hand", he said. "In fact, I think it's little more than a wild goose chase. I mean, an enemy spy ring using a music publication to transmit intelligence, how likely is that. But you know how the Chief is on things that take his fancy. And you should still look into it. Just in case". He gave them a passkey to Ryan's lockers and said that he had arranged their access to his computer files.

Kearney also made clear that his opinion of Ryan differed somewhat from that of the Chief. "You will have heard the Chief sing Barry Ryan's praises", he said. "You will not hear anything of the kind from me. It is quite possible that Ryan's cover was blown and he was taken out by the Opposition. Or maybe he has indeed gone over and is even now selling us out to the Brits. But I think it is far far more likely that he just made a stupid mistake and fell into a hole he couldn't climb out of. But keep your minds open to all possibilities".

On leaving Kearney the two went and poked around Ryan's computer and in his desk locker. "Here's that music thing", said Maguire, pulling out the dog-eared sheaf of stapled papers from under a stash of used envelopes. She held it by the spine to see where it flopped open.

"Let's have a look at it", said Hackett. They started to read.

"The real daddy of the funny vocal music was one Dylan Nyoukis. He just stands on stage and makes funny noises, without any obvious sign of electronic treatment or sampling. He had already started when I came into the Dock he had already started, and for the first few minutes I did find myself wondering whether this really was the kind of nonsense that gives avant-garde music a bad name. But then I noticed that some of the small children present were laughing their heads off at him (in a good way), so started appreciating what he was doing on a less poncily cerebral level. What he does is both very impressive and very entertaining, though one might argue that he sails a bit close to the ethnically stereotyping wind.

"When Mr Nyoukis finished his performance, some people suggested that he had not played for long enough, with the small children being particularly vehement on this point. So he invited anyone who wanted to have a go up on stage, and they (children and adults) all shouted away for a couple of minutes. It was a bizarre moment.

"What I think was striking about all the voice stuff in general was how high quality it was. One could easily imagine some chancer being inspired by this kind of thing to get up onstage and start making ugly grunting noises in the hope of finding themselves added to the bill of some weirdo music festival, but all the voice performers had an air of polished technique that buried any "Sure anyone could do that" scepticism. This was especially true of Jennifer Walshe, for all my ambivalence about how her work fitted with that of Tony Conrad.

"Another big element in the festival's line-up was what might broadly be called psych-rock. Or just rock. Dublin band Seadog did their twin-guitar thing, managing to sound like a post-rock Thin Lizzy with occasional nods towards the motorik sounds of Neu!. I liked them a lot… must establish whether I did actually buy one of their albums which I then never got around to listening to.

"GNOD were also entertaining with their tunes calling to mind the likes of Hawkwind and other purveyors of weirdo space rock. Their line-up was rather large, and it was noticeable that it included quite a few of the odd festival characters who had been wandering around at Hunters Moon beforehand. Their drummer swigged from a flagon of cider while playing, and looked momentarily non-plussed when it seemed to have been moved beyond his reach by one of the other members of the band… fortunately he was then able to access his backup drink source, a bottle of Jägermeister.

"GNOD also saluted the passing of the great Jimmy Saville by incorporating the Jim'll Fix It theme into their set".

"Do you think there might be anything to this?" asked Maguire.

This question will be answered in the amazing part 2 of chapter 10, which is coming your way real soon.

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Organisation Man: Chapter 2

More NaNoWriMo action, in which Barry Ryan is given an assignment.

Ryan made his way down the corridor to the Chief's office and knocked on the door. A grunted "Dul isteach" called him in.

"Ah, Barra, maith thú," said the Chief, looking up from some papers on his desk. "Is mhaith liom tú atá anseo. Suigí síos, suigí síos".

Ryan sat in the chair indicated for him. Its low design was almost certainly arranged deliberately so that from behind his desk the Chief (a man not over blessed in height) could tower over any visitor.

"So, you were looking for me, Chief?" asked Ryan, using English in the hope that it would divert his boss into a language he could actually understand.

"Yes, Barry, yes I was," said the Chief in the tongue of Ireland's enemies. The twin portraits behind him of Padraig Pearse and Rory O'Connor looked down disapprovingly. "Strange things are afoot. Tell me, how are things with you at the moment? Are they going well?"

"Oh yes, well I can't complain, not that it stops me". Ryan wondered where this was going.

"Do you have much on at the moment?"

The Chief fixed Ryan with a steely gaze. This was always a worrying question. It signified either that the Chief had some kind of new task for him or that he suspected him of slacking off. Given that Ryan was slacking off, he had to be careful how to respond. But if he were to claim that he was incredibly busy with all kinds of non-existent activity there was the danger that the Chief might take an interest in it and ask him for a full report on where his investigations were going.

"Well," he replied, playing for time, "I'm collating information from a number of informants and sources".

"Anything out of the ordinary? Anything juicy?"

"Well, it's pretty routine stuff, to be honest. Low grade data, nothing anyone would get too excited about".

"I see, I see". The Chief paused, staring into space as though pondering some weighty question. He started to hum a song to himself. Ryan recognised it as having lyrics involving Black and Tans, the Flight of the Earls, the infamy of Diarmuid McMurrough and the heroic victory of Fontenoy. It was one of the Chief's party pieces and he always made sure to sing it at the Organisation's Christmas party, forcing everyone to join in on the chorus.

The Chief kept humming his song to himself, now seemingly oblivious to Ryan's presence. When he switched from that to a ballad listing all of Ireland's fallen heroes Ryan began to wonder if it would be acceptable for him to leave, or if perhaps he should call a doctor. Instead he made a slight cough to remind the Chief of his presence. This snapped the great man out of his reveries. He appeared somewhat confused.

"Cad atá isteach?" he muttered. He then noticed Ryan, looked at him quizzically, and then recollected himself. Nodding sagely, the Chief picked up a bundle of papers and handed them to Barry. "What do you make of this?" he inquired.

Ryan looked at the bundle. A4 size, bound with two staples in the spine, it seemed to be somewhere between 50 and a hundred pages in length. The cover had a photocopied image of some black circles and some text while the back had a crudely reproduced photocopy of a typewritten text. None of the writing meant anything to him.

"It doesn't look like much to me, Chief", Ryan answered.

"It's not meant to, Barry, it's not meant to. But I have reason to believe that what you are holding in your hand is a threat to the security of the State". The Chief imparted this information in the most solemn tone a short bearded man can muster.

"Really?" said Ryan, trying to sound like he was open to the suggestion that the photocopied papers represented some kind of existential crisis. "What makes you think that?"

"I have my reasons", answered the Chief. He was smug now, confident that his simple statement was enough to dispel any doubts on the part of his subordinate.

"And what is the nature of the threat they contain?" asked Ryan, wondering if it might not be too late to put in a transfer to a proper Department where the senior management were at least somewhat competent and blessed with some kind of understanding of where reality ended and fantasy began.

"Well Barry, that is what I want you to find out. Stop what you are doing immediately, and take this document on. Read it carefully. Carefully! I have my reasons for believing that it contains coded messages – signals between foreign powers and their agents in this country, as well as communications between subversive elements. Find out what's going on here, Barry!"

The Chief was emphatic. Barry was still somewhat confused.

"Would it be possible for you to, | don't know, fill me in on your reasons for thinking that this document contains such coded messages?"

"I'm afraid not, Barry". The Chief was smug again. "Need to know, a chara, need to know".

"I see".

"Well Barry", said the Chief, in a tone indicating that the conversation was over, "I can't keep you from your important work any longer. I know I can count on you on this one".

"Thanks Chief" said Barry, making his way to the door. "You can rely on me".

"But Barry!" said the Chief abruptly just as Ryan was leaving. "Keep this under your hat! Don't let anyone else know what you're working on. This stuff is dynamite. We can't let the Opposition find out that we're onto them. Trust no one. Tell nothing to anyone. Least of all to that gobshite Lyon. There's a question mark over him, if you see what I'm saying".

"I'm with you Chief", said Ryan, secretly pleased that there was some prospect of Lyon being exposed as a double agent and despatched to the Organisation's holding facility in Belmullet. "Be seeing you".

* * * * *

While Ryan had been having this conversation with the Chief, Lyon had gone back to his desk smiling happily to himself. He enjoyed his chats with his colleague Ryan, their friendly banter being a large part of what made working in the Organisation bearable. He could tell that Ryan was grateful for having been tipped off that the Chief was looking for him – forewarned is forearmed, after all. He was a good fellow, was Barry Ryan. With people like him on the case the country was in safe hands.

So Lyon mused as he went back to work on his investigations into Ethiopian intelligence infiltration of the Library Association of Ireland.

* * * * *
After surfing the Internet for the best part of an hour Ryan reckoned that maybe it was time to start looking at the document the Chief had given him. A quick skim suggested that it was some kind of amateur publication dealing with music – or so, on the surface, it appeared. The font and layout seemed to go through abrupt changes from one part of the document to another, corresponding to the purported authors of each piece. A list of contributors at the beginning confirmed that they were located in Ireland, Britain and the United States, with one in the Netherlands. But Ryan noticed one thing that made him wonder whether maybe, just maybe, the Chief might actually be onto something. The various musical performers mentioned in the publication were not what one would call household names. Ryan did not think of himself as a keen music aficionado, but he did listen to the radio and felt that he was reasonably au fait with the latest happening sounds. In the Chief's document, however, there seemed to be a succession of references to performers that he had never heard of, usually named as playing kinds of music that sounded distinctly fictional. This would be an ideal way of hiding coded messages. Might the Chief not actually be delusional?

He opened a page at random and started reading more closely.

"The first band I saw were Nuada, some English-Irish folkies (two women and a man) who perform in (faux?) period costumes and play various olde instruments. They were playing when we arrived in the Dock on the first night. I think I liked them because I had not realised that the festival was going to be featuring anything other than guys fiddling with laptops, so they signalled that the event was going to be a bit more musically varied. I saw them again on the Sunday, when they began their set in the church by parading in playing bodhran-like drums and pipes. On this occasion I was struck by what rofflers they were."

This was accompanied by an indistinct photocopied picture of three people dressed like extras from the Lord of the Rings.

Looking back, Ryan saw that this piece of writing occurred in a discussion of a music festival – not the kind of music festival like Oxegen or the Electric Picnic that you hear about on TV and in the papers, but some kind of festival for people who get their kicks listening to music you never hear on the radio. This kind of thing would an ideal front for foreign agents and the like to get together, thought Ryan. Something this boring would never run any risk of random members of the public wandering in, and the Guards would never think of sticking their thick heads anywhere near a festival of unlistenable hippy music. It really was perfect, thought Ryan – except that the Chief had seen through the plans of these enemies of the nation.

Did these musicians even exist? Ryan went back to the Internet and searched for this Nuada group. After wading through several pages dealing with terrifying Jim Fitzpatrick art, he found that, yes, there was actually a group called Nuada and that they did seem to be the people in the grainy photograph. Or, at least, there was a website run by people calling themselves Nuada on which they claimed to be a group of musicians. But, again, that could all be a front as well. That was the thing with subversives and foreign agents. When they created a false identity they would go to great lengths to make it look as real and as thorough as possible.

Ryan then searched for the festival this Nuada group were purportedly playing at. It seemed to exist, in that it too had a website and there were various other references to it on the Internet. Not too many, mind, but then it was purporting to be a small-scale event. Everything was consistent with it having been an actual event that had recently taken place. The enemy was clever. A fake band with a fake website playing at a fake festival, with everything set up to look like it was not fake at all but real, as real as the Organisation Ryan worked for.

But then Ryan stopped. The Organisation was not real, at least not in the sense that it had any presence on the web or that anyone outside of its corridors had ever heard of it. Maybe they were going about things the wrong way. If they wanted to be really secret, perhaps they should put up a billboard advertising the Organisation outside their headquarters and set up a flash website with a mission statement and a listing of personnel. That would throw the Opposition off the sent. Ryan would have to suggest this to the Chief.

The thought distracted Ryan. He started looking on the Internet for the websites of the Organisation's analogues in other countries. What could be discerned from them? Was there a pattern to how they used a public presence to mask their real purpose?

written 5th November 2011

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Organisation Man: Chapter 1

What is this? Why it is chapter 1 of the novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo 2011. I am going to post a chapter of it a day for the next while, with chapters typically being somewhere between one and two thousand words in length. I am posting them so that the curious can see what a novel made up as the author goes along reads like. If that is not your thing then check out some of the other amazing posts Inuit Panda has to offer.

Please be warned that this is a largely uncorrected first draft. I have removed any obvious typographical errors that leaped out at me, but I have not proof-read it properly or corrected stylistic errors.

I'm as unimpressed by the title as you are.

Barry Ryan worked for an organisation that did not exist. As it did not exist, it did not have a name, and was known to those aware of its existence simply as the Organisation. The Organisation did of course exist for Ryan in the sense that he worked for it, that it provided him with a desk to sit at, that he had colleagues and a boss who instructed him on what to do. He even had some juniors he could get to perform mundane clerical tasks for him. But if Barry were to mention his employer to anyone, they would look at him blankly or think he was making some kind of joke. The Irish parliament did of course vote monies to the Organisation each year, but the amount was deliberately kept so low that no actual body could credibly exist on its official budget, and for all the monies voted for it the Organisation never delivered an annual report (at least, not a public one) and maintained no official premises or presence. The Organisation instead maintained a shadowy existence, nested within one of the less glamorous government departments, drawing parasitically on it for resources. Barry and his colleagues existed on paper as a division within that department, one whose purpose seemed at best unclear to the rest of its staff. This notional division operated out of an anonymous office building in central Dublin whose other occupants were from a different department entirely. They had no inkling of the deep work being carried out in the building they worked in.

Barry arrived into work on what seemed like it would be a morning like any other. His unctuous colleague Lyon was loafing around his desk.

"Well well well, Mr Ryan, you're a bit late, aren't you?" Lyon asked in an accusatory tone.

"I think not, I swiped in before the deadline", replied Ryan, taking off his coat and wishing Lyon would fuck off to any someone else.

"Well I'm not sure the boss would agree – he was down looking for you an hour ago".

Ryan noticed a sticky on the monitor of his computer, with a handwritten scrawl in the distinctive pidgin Irish favoured by the Chief:

"A CHARA, DUL SUAS MÉ A FEACH ANOIS, MAS É DO THOIL IS MISE ETC. – P"

"Thanks Lyon, I can read". Ryan sat down at his desk. "Any idea what this is about?"

"No no, but the boss seemed very agitated. I bet you're in big trouble, better get up there sharpish". Lyon sniggered.

"I suppose I should", Ryan said, trying to affect an air of nonchalance but actually worried. Having to deal with the Chief was always difficult and often involved such unpleasantness as being given work to do. "But don't you have things to be doing? Maybe you should fuck off to do them?"

Lyon adopted a facial expression suggested a highly exaggerated sense of hurt at Ryan's expletive and retreated away, though as he disappeared behind a partition Barry was blessed with a last glimpse of his grinning maw.

I'd better go and see the Chief, thought Barry.

written 4th November 2011

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