"AN AMERICAN SUBTERFUGE" BY JACOB MILNESTEIN In which Steed does a crossword and Emma raises her eyebrows [For the uninitiated this story takes place between the televised stories MISSION...HIGHLY IMPROBABLE and THE FORGET-ME-KNOT, and after The Compleat Other Volume I, Issues 1 - 10] This is a rather tongue-in-cheek little four pages, possibly not quite the kind of story that you might have been expecting and more "Avengers" than "Hellblazer", sorry! My sense of humour is odd, I know but what else is to be expected from someone who writes the stories I do? Not the longest or the most conclusive affair but I have a soft spot for it and I hope you enjoy it too. If you have any comments please feel free to email me at jamie.calohan@bigfoot.com or calohan.promethean.demon.co.uk and I'll try and field all questions as best as I can. Thanks once again. John Constantine created by Alan Moore, owned by DC/Vertigo All "Avengers" characters owned by Weintraub Entertainment Ltd All historical characters owned by their good selves (Thanks to Carrion, boatman of the River Styx!) All other characters owned by Vietnamese Wallflowers text (C) Vietnamese Wallflowers 1998 "A raised glass to the memory of Philip K. Dick. Cheers." The arc of fire upwards from its core and touching the end of a cigarette. A thousand angels may dance upon the head of a pin but how many do you reckon you could cram into a decent Silk Cut? John Constantine smiled to himself and turned the collar of his trenchcoat upwards to protect his neck from the rain. A dark and cruel smirk stained his face, growing with every rainswept step; every once shiny shoe now placed within the abysmal heart of London's excess rain. Bollocks to London. Bollocks to Cockneys and bollocks to the South. With patience he made his way across the threshold of The Green Man, placing a wet cuffed sleeve on the counter and ordered himself a pint of Stella and a large gin and tonic. A young girl in a 'Britpop Is Dead' T-shirt beamed at him from the other side of the bar. She was in her mid twenties, twenty-two at the most he estimated. "Evening, squire." She grinned. Constantine frowned. "Bit young to be on the game ain't you, love?" He asked through a drunken haze. The girl pulled a face at him. "I'm only selling stories, John." She replied. He scoffed and downed his gin and tonic. "Yeah, well, I've 'ad enough of bollocksing stories, ta." The smile returned to the young lass' face and she leant forwards slightly. "You might want to hear this one." She said, her voice quiet. He looked over at her and ran a hand through his rough blond hair. "You don't know how many people have told me that." He said. "How many people have come to me with their sorrows, the weight of the world on the backs, praying for some simple solutions and thinking I can make it better." His eyes were glazed over with pain. "I can't make it any better than it is, this is it, it's shit, I know but thank you for coming so can you please just fuck off now?" She reached out and touched his cheek with her pale, bloodless hand. He flinched back, half expecting her to hurt him, half not knowing what to expect. A line of hedonist's ash across the portrait of the green man at the bottom of the ashtray. The flimsy cardboard lip flicked open at his touch and he brought another fag out of the relative safety of its box. "So what's this story then, love?" He finally asked, shedding the skin of his trenchcoat. She smiled reassuringly. Beneath the dim lights of London halos there is a gravity that makes us look at our feet as we make our way from Point A to Point B. Never once is it permitted to look into each other's faces for fear that if we do we will see that the pain is alone in us, that they too, are suffering just like us. Oxygen masques cover our faces and we are obliged to never look up, never to see the sun, always perpetual darkness. Swallows may sing but we will never hear, our ears are covered and our hearts are broken. That is the Law, and it is known implicitly by each of us who live under it. Callous engineering and the whisper of doubts but we are blindfolded, too dead to hear anything anymore. Konstantinova leant against the darkening wood of the bar. "This is how it begins." She announced, then to herself; "This is how they all begin." Briefly it spun in the air and then, moments later, it fell back down to Earth, obeying the laws of physics and displaying an inaccurate portrait of the Queen's head. "What a strange fellow." August third, nineteen sixty-eight. Mrs. Peel looked up, an arch cool expression across her delicate face. Despite her appearance, the young lady perched on the edge of his desk was a woman of decisions - someone who implicitly understood the complexities of the human mind. "You know, Steed, there was something exceedingly familiar about that young lady." Mrs. Peel mused. The man who resided behind the desk looked up, raising his champagne glass a fraction. "And which young lady would that be?" He asked, a broad smile filling out his subtle features. Mrs. Peel frowned; a frown which only served to accentuate her features. "Miss. Calohan." She finally said. "Oh," Steed smiled with recognition. "The enigma." Emma Peel uncrossed her legs and stretched her arms. "What did you make of all that?" She asked. "What? Alien worlds, time machines, alternate realities, faeries." He smiled again; it was the kind of smile that you expected to encounter firmly attached to the most cunning of foxes. "I wouldn't believe a word of it." Carelessly he finished his champagne and replaced the glass on the small, glass 'coffee' table. "Surely there must be some kind of explanation." Mrs. Peel murmured. Steed slapped his knees and stood forward, retrieving his bowler and brollie from beneath his seat. "And I'm sure there is, Mrs. Peel," He remarked, pulling a white card from his inside pocket and holding it aloft. "But for now, I think we're needed." Beneath London... Beneath all the seething piss and shit, beneath the last vestiges of a human facade, something emerged... A quiet life for a quiet being. Many centuries had passed, both in linear and non-linear terms. By the eve of the twenty first century it knew it would have died...possibly. But now...now was a different time. Mister Lincoln, 281 Boldmere Road, Wylde Green Mrs. Peel grimaced and stepped out from the relative safety of her car. "Not very alluring is it?" She commented, looking up at the house and then back down at the card Steed had handed her earlier. "I'm sure you'll be suitably charmed by its occupant, Mrs. Peel." Said Steed beaming, swinging his umbrella over his shoulder. She scowled and followed after him towards the tired red doorframe. Patiently Steed tapped the handle of his umbrella twice upon it and waited. There was a shuffling from inside and a figure reached out for the handle and opened it. As it opened, Steed and Mrs. Peel found themselves face to face with Abraham Lincoln. Twisting like the effigy of a long since forgotten god, the complicated mathematics of purity unfolding across a pale background of twisted sheet metal and darkened soliloquies. Constantine looked up, his concentration fragmented by booze and fags. "Sorry, love, 'fraid I don't quite follow." A brief momentary frown. "What's all this got to do with me anyhow?" The grrl crossed her arms and gave him a disapproving look. "Really, John." She sighed in mock disappointment. "I expected much more from you." He raised his third - or was it his fifth? - pint in her direction and tilted his head. "Yeah, well, I'm all washed up now ain't I?" Konstantinova arched her eyebrows. "I wouldn't know." Tea and biscuits and all very English indeed...except for the dead American president sitting on the nineteen seventies dayglo sofa, his suit creasing as he folded his folded his legs and his top rat resting atop a child's Basil Brush lunchbox. Mrs. Peel looked uncomfortable, the PVC of her immaculate virgin boots twisting in time with her impatient feet. She looked across the room to where her comrade, John Steed, sat at Lincoln's dinner table, quietly filling out The Times crossword puzzle as if nothing was out of place, not the faintest hint of an anachronism. Lincoln placed his china Alice's Adventures In Wonderland cup back in the cradle of its saucer. "It has been a long time." He noted in his extraordinarily melancholy voice. "A long time since I died." Mrs. Peel raised her eyebrows, her cheekbones taking centre stage. "And how long has that been, Mister Lincoln?" She asked. Steed looked up from his crossword. "Don't pay any attention to Mister Lincoln here," He smiled. "He's a simulacrum. Bad conversationalists." Lincoln frowned. "Excuse me, sir..." He began in his dead Yankee drawl. "Are there any more of them?" Mrs. Peel asked. Steed rose from his uncomfortable position besides the window. "I believe so." He grinned. "Apparently George Washington is working in a supermarket in Manchester and John F. Kennedy is living in a sewer near Knightsbridge." "And how are we involved in all of this?" Steed twirled his umbrella and sipped his tea. "We're going to integrate them into society." He beamed. "Won't people recognise them?" "I shouldn't think so." He placed his cup down next to the crossword. "This is England after all." "Yes, I suppose your right." Lincoln looked up, his face contorted in bewilderment. "Am I to believe that I am to be prevented from going home, that there is to be no purpose to my renewed existence, that my sentience counts for nothing?" He asked. Steed smiled and looked down at him. "Well, we would have shipped you back out to Uncle Sam but they quite unresponsive on the whole." He twirled his brollie once more. "Besides, from what I gather you were constructed by a young man at Oxford so in a sense you're the property of the United Kingdom." Mrs. Peel smiled deviously. "Well, England does have considerable influence." Steed grinned his boyish grin. "Not to mention Wales...and Scotland...and Ireland...and the Isle of Dogs." "The Isle of Dogs?" Mrs. Peel enquired. "Oh, formidable power." Steed replied. "First in the Space Race, nuclear arms pioneers, in fact we'd all be lost if war broke between the Isle of Dogs and us." He took Lincoln under one arm and Mrs. Peel in the other. "I'm sure there are many things we can find for you to do, Mister Lincoln. I hear there are a few miner's posts in Llanfairfach." He smiled a final time and opened the door. "Is that it?" Constantine asked. "For now." Konstantinova remarked. "Bit short ain't it?" "Most stories are." Constantine finished his drink and lit another cigarette. "So what about the Kennedy simulacrum?" He finally asked. "Still there. It's been causing a handful of problems as of late, or so I'm told. I hear you're quite skilled in dealing with the deceased presidents of the United States." "Yeah, I met Kennedy a few years back...only this were the real thing if you know what I mean?" Konstantinova smiled. "Yeah. I know what you mean." She paused and linked her arm in his. "So do you accept the job then?" "And what job would that be?" "The 'clearing up' job of course, I mean we can't just leave it there can we? Department S will be pulling their hair out when they discover it's still there." "Yeah, why not. Haven't got much else to do 'ave I?" "Good, good, good." She smiled. "I didn't want to kill you." He looked over at her quizzically. "Do you bollocks." He grinned and opened the door.