Ms Jennings came into my room with a smile on her face.

That made me very fearful given her reputation.

She worked for a Government ‘Special Services’ Department somewhere in Whitehall. A sense of foreboding came over me. Their normal function was to provide HR services to a number of departments but their real function was known to very few people. Everyone in her section had ‘Top Secret’ security clearance so if something a bit out of the ordinary was needed doing that wasn’t assigned to us, they did it.

The HR function meant that you generally only saw her or people from her Office when it was bad news and for us, that bad news invariably meant ‘we have no further use for your services’.

Her smile was the smile of the devil in our eyes and everyone in the department.

“Hello Roy, nice to see you again,” said my visitor the bearer of bad news from HR.

“How the heck did you find me? No one was supposed to know where I was?”

“Jemma told me when she came to see me and the director last night.”

I sank back into the bed. That was it, I was for the big ‘heave-ho’, to be cast adrift at my time of need.

“Jemma told us about the incident at the Hospital. The director made it clear that it was not in the plan. Those guards should not have been told to leave.”

“Yeah right. How many people knew who I really was and where I was?”

“As far as we know, only two apart from Jemma and yourself, Sam, a couple of his direct reports and your handler, Danny.”

She didn’t wait for the inevitable next question.

“We arrested the latter as he tried to get on a flight last night. He’s the leak. The guards confirmed that it was him who told them that you no longer needed security.”

“So, Danny was the rat? How much did he sell me out for?”

“He’s not saying anything. He’s claiming that he put in a leave chitty last week but nothing ever got to us.”

“What is going to happen to him? He knows too much to be put in a regular jail and I’m sure that Mr Esteban will be after his money now that I’m not there anymore?”

“Indeed. Mr Shaw will be taken to a place of safety for an extended period.”

“Ah, you mean Gitmo then?” I said hoping that the Yanks would take him off our hands.

“No, nothing like as comfortable. Let’s say, South Georgia is a very cold place out of the way place and people can get lost up there for a long, long time.”

For as long as he’d been working for the Government, there had been rumours of a very secret establishment well to the north of Hudson Bay. It was called South Georgia despite being at the other end of the world because Sir Ernest Shackleton was going to lead an expedition to the Beaufort Sea in 1902 but went to Antarctica instead. He became famous when he led the survivors of his second expedition to Antarctica to safety by going over the mountains of South Georgia to the Whaling Station. South Georgia became somewhere in the far north of Canada.

On the surface, it was supposed to be a winter training base for the Marines, the SAS and the Canadian Special Forces but as with most rumours, there was a grain of truth in them that made them plausible.

“So, no trial then?”

“No. If you had taken the trouble to read your contract before you signed it, you waived any rights to a trial if you broke UK law.”

I had to laugh.

“I have lost count of the number of times that I did that over the years.”

“That might be true,” replied Ms Jennings with a totally straight face.

“But the next clause said that this would not be the case if you were acting on direct orders. In every case that I know about you were acting on orders so you and your partner are in the clear.”

Then something hit me.

“If Jemma didn’t see you until late last night, how did you know about Shaw?”

This time she smiled.

“Anyone in a senior position in any Government Department that has to do with national security and who books a flight using their own passport gets flagged by the Home Office. They in turn contact ‘5’ and then a deputy Director of ‘5’ came to the Director and the deputy Director of our department. He alerted the border force and gave instructions to hold him pending further inquiries. The rest of the puzzle fell into place when Jemma told us about the incident at the Hospital. The standing orders around the alerting go back to the time of Kim Philby.”

“So, we got lucky then?”

“We did but Jemma was one the ball and got you out of danger in time.”

“But my Handler knows of this place. Wouldn’t he have tipped off Esteban?”

Once again, she smiled. Every time she did it, a shiver ran down my back.

“That’s why we have two companies of Marines surrounding the place. They will be in place until we have Mr Esteban in custody or you move to somewhere off the grid.”

“Putting him in jail won’t stop him. People like him have tentacles everywhere.”

“Indeed, they do but Mr Esteban will just disappear when we get our hands on him. I hear he does not like the cold.”

So, he was going to be taken to Canada but deep down, I knew that as long as he was alive and I was here and recognisable I would be in danger but they had to capture him first which was easier said than done.

“Now,” said Ms Jennings
“Let’s talk about the future.”

I groaned.

“Get it over with then. My services are no longer required?”

“Far from it. You two are our best operatives. Both ‘5’ and ‘6’ would love to have you working for them if we were to let you go but we aren’t going to do that. No sir. Sam took this up with the PM a at their regular weekly meeting yesterday. Sam said that the PM was adamant that we needed to hold onto the pair of you and that the oafs in ‘5’ and ‘6’ should be told to sling their hook.”

“Eh?”

“You and Jemma are far too skilled to lose. What we’d like you to do is first get better and get used to your new self. Then we’d like to use the two of you to train new operatives for a period of time before going back into operations. When you are back up to full fitness we will be glad to have you back on ops. That comes direct from Sam.”

If it came direct from the Director who we called ‘Sam’ then it would have to be implemented.

“How long?”

“How long what?”

“How long before you want us back on Ops?”

“As long as it takes.”

“Pull the other one Ms Jennings. There is no way that HMG are going to sanction an open-ended R&R period. You know as well as I do the Treasury would be down on you in a flash.”

This time her smile didn’t make me quiver.

“As you well know, the way your department is funded does not appear on any set of books in the Treasury. Call it recycling but you use the money you recover from operations to fund the operations your department conducts. No cost means nothing on the books, in the records or anywhere else. That will include your… your transition. ‘Sam’ has authorised it in view of the operation that you were on when you sustained these injuries. The wealth of information and money that we have obtained so far from your last operation far outweighs the cost of your treatment. The half million or so in genuine money will more than pay for your rehab.”

That fitted in with the way our small organisation worked. We were totally off the books and as I know knew, totally self-funding but it was not usual for an operative’s rehab to be funded directly from the proceeds of the operation that resulted in the injury in the first place.

For once our apparently unique status had saved my backside. Any ‘official’ department would be umming and ahhing at paying for my treatment. Not us and for that I was truly thankful.

“Now, onto other matters,” said Ms Jennings as she opened a folder that she was carrying.

“Have you decided on a name yet?”

“Eh? I only made the final decision a few hours or so ago.”

“Well, your partner was certain that you would agree to the change when we spoke last night.”

Mentally, I sighed. That was Jemma all over. That’s what made us such a good team.

“Well, I have not given it much thought but I sort of … sort of like the name Angelique.”

“Angelique it is then. You can always change it later. I’ll get your new records started.”

“New records?”

“Yes. Oh, didn’t I say. Sorry…”

“The other thing that alerted the Director to an issue was that someone, probably your handler, had marked you down as ‘Terminated’. To us that means killed in active service. With other departments, it means ‘left the service’. As the director had only just finished reading the latest report on your recovery he was surprised but then he realised that it was for the best.”

“If I was to leave, what would the records say?”

“Nothing. We don’t have a category for that,” came her matter of fact reply.

“Eh?”

“When an agent leaves the service, they are marked as ‘stood down’ but no one ever really leaves you know unless they retire… or die but you are not in that position are you?”

It was good to know these things.

“As I was saying, we will start your new file with the name Angelique. Angelique what?”

“Marceau. Angelique Marceau. Marceau was my great Grandmothers name. She came to London from Bergerac after was broke out 1939 and went to work in the foreign office where she was recruited into the SOE. She went back to France in late 1940 as Operative based in Bordeaux. She came back in late 1943 when things got a bit hot for her after the Resistance blew up three trains in one night.”

She smiled back at me.
“Excellent… Following in the family tradition. I will have the backroom boys work up a backstory for you. Once you get your face done, we can make it official. You know, a passport and such.”

“I’m sure I’m going to love it whatever it is.”

“That’s the spirit. Jemma asked me to tell you that she’ll see you tomorrow. She’s going shopping.”

And so, began my new life as Angelique Marceau.

---

I had a total of nine operations over the next five and a half months in order to create the new me. They were painful and inconvenient. I’d just be getting over one and before I knew it, it was time for me to go under the knife again. My face seemed to be permanently looking like I’d done fifteen rounds with a top heavyweight boxer.

Once I had been given a vagina, Jemma introduced me to the delights of dilation. When I was able to, we made light of my new sexual status by using a double ended vibrating dildo. It worked and we were able to be intimate again. That really helped with my recovery especially the mental side of things even though, there were times when I nearly gave up the whole thing.

Jemma was a total brick. She helped me through the bad times. When my jaw was re-shaped and I could not speak for nearly a month she fed me and … well we became far more than close.

At one point, I did ask her if we should just do a runner, get married and start life again but she soon reminded me of the price on our heads.

By the October of that year and to my immense relief, I was done with the operations and my face while nowhere near as attractive as Jemma’s was far more feminine than before. The Hair transplants had taken ‘root’ and I was starting to grow a decent head of hair for the first time in years.

Jemma had also demonstrated the patience of ‘Job’ in her work on making me not only look more like a woman but act like one. She schooled me for hours and hours in the fine art of walking and being a woman in a world where women watch other women with even more of a critical eye than men do.

However, she got really peed off when I took to walking in heels up to 3in like I’d been wearing them for years but in the end, we had a good laugh about it. That’s the sort of partnership we have.

We also started to get our fitness back which was harder than either of us had imagined.

---

Christmas was not that far away and we were pronounced ‘fit for action’ by the doctors.

Jemma and I knew that was a long way from the truth. We were nowhere near ready. I’d lost an awful lot of my stamina so we went to see our ultimate boss, the Director otherwise known as ‘Sam’.

“I wondered when I’d be seeing you again. Ready for an assignment?”

“No Sam, we are not and far from it,” said Jemma.

Sam was surprised that it was Jemma who was taking the lead.

“All the reports I’ve received tell me that you are more than ready.”

“Sam,” I said.
“Those tests are woefully inadequate for a team like us. For example, we had to run one lap of an athletic track in under eighty seconds. No problem but we were wearing running kit. When was the last time we apprehended someone wearing that sort of clobber eh? Then when it comes to operations, we are like putting a rank amateur into the ring with a world champion. Ring Rusty does not even begin to describe how we feel.”

Sam sat back in his chair.

Slowly a smile appeared on his face.

“Ok. I get it. You two were never ones for doing things the easy way. What do you suggest?”

I looked at Jemma who smiled and said,
“Sam, I know it was a bit before you came to the department but, when we did our initial training we had a sort of mini SAS Final Selection Exercise to do. It was dropped a couple of years later because your predecessor deemed it to be too tough and the drop-out rate was too high.”

“Really? I didn’t know that,” said Sam with a wry smile that said he knew exactly what I was talking about so I carried on with the story...

“We’d like to repeat that operation just so that we are clear in our own minds that we are ready to resume operational duties. As you know, a lot of the sort of operations that we carry out are not like all those Cop shows on TV where they go in all guns blazing less than a day after the crime was committed. Our last operation took us three months of painstaking research and observation before we went into that building where I had my accident.”

I did a small mental shudder as I remembered that event.

“We would like to go on a five or six-day operation to shall we say hone both our physical fitness and mental agility and importantly become used to working together again when under stress. As you have said before, we’ve lasted a lot longer than any other team because we look after each other. We seem to know intuitively what the other is thinking and feeling but at the moment, it is rather hit and miss.”

“More miss that hit if you ask me,” added Jemma.

Sam looked down at his desk and thought for long second.

“Ok. Leave it to me. In the meantime, welcome back to the Department. Light duties until I tell you otherwise. Understand!”

Sam turned his attention back to some report. Our time with him was over.

As we walked towards the door I turned around and said,
“Sam, any news on you know who that we should know about?”

Jemma added,
“All in the good cause of research you understand…”

Sam lifted his head up and a broad smile appeared on his face.

“About time too…”

He pushed a folder that was on his desk towards us.

“This is the latest sitrep. Read and digest but your eyes only understand. It comes back here before the end of the day. Remember, read and digest. No copies either and especially don’t go off on any wild goose chases or even the simplest internet search relating to information in this file. You never know who is watching for certain combinations of searches from a single IP address. This is for education purposes only… Got it?”

“Understood loud and clear Sam,” said Jemma as she stepped forward to pick up the folder.

---

Back in the little cubbyhole that we called an office we settled down to read the contents of the folder. It didn’t make for easy reading. It was clear that Esteban was back in the people trafficking business in a big way as well as spreading his drugs empire out to even places like the West of Wales. The term ‘County Lines’ was well used to describe how drug pushers in large towns and cities were extending their areas of operation right out into the countryside using mostly young people who often worked as fast food delivery operatives. This was the perfect cover for their operations. It was clear to us from the data in the file that one gang that was based in Birmingham was supplying small time dealers over most of Wales.

Jemma closed the file and sat back thinking.
The frown on her face told me that she was worried. I knew exactly why she was worried.

“Did we miss something?” she asked after almost a full five minutes.

“I don’t think we did. It seems that nothing has changed and his empire is even bigger than before.”

“On days like this, I wonder if what we do really matters or makes even one atom of difference,” she replied in a very ‘down’ voice.

“It does make a difference,” I replied.
“Have you ever added up how much stuff we have taken off the streets. Just the smack alone. Ignore the rest.”

“And you just happen to have all this to hand? Really?”

I laughed.
“Well, I have had plenty of time these past months to reflect on our careers with the department, now haven’t I?”

Jemmy just glared back at me.
“Go on then. I know you want to tell me…”

I sighed.
“Sixteen tonnes of Class A Drugs or as close as makes no difference.”

Jemma laughed and burst into song
“You load sixteen tons and what do ya get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store.”

“You may jest but the almost three hundred people we have rescued from the traffickers would probably want to shake our hands.”

“So, we ‘done good’ but Daniel Esteban is like a jippy stomach, it keeps repeating.”

I stood up and picked up the folder.
“I’ll give this back to Sam while you get the Coffee in. It is your turn after all!”

As I left the room, I swear that I heard Jemma growl.

When I returned Jemma had got us Coffee’s and was busy surfing the internet.

“What’s up?”

“You were just with Sam right?”

“Yes… Well, not to meet. He was busy with someone. His office door was shut.”

Sam’s door was only closed when something important was going on.

“Well, take a look at this email that he apparently has just sent to us.”

Jemma turned her laptop so that I could see it.

When I’d finished reading it I said,
“He does not hang about does he?”

Jemma snorted her disapproval.
“Sam never does anything in a rush unless we are in deep do-do. He’s probably been working on this for… Oh, at least a week.”

I had to agree with her.
“You didn’t have any plans for seeing in the New Year, did you?”

I got that look of hers that said,
“We are virtually joined at the hip so you must know that I don’t…”

“Well we do, now don’t we?”

“Yeah, Costa del Brecon Beacons in the depths of winter sounds great. Not!”

“Just give a small prayer of thanks that we aren’t going to Narvik in Norway.”

Jemma nearly threw her coffee at me but the smile on her face said that we were good.

[to be continued]