The Baldrick defence...

Having followed some of the criminals involved in the Eastcastle Street postal van robbery to several business premises and finally to their homes, MI6s team of enhanced individuals are getting ready to snatch one of the hijackers. MI6s team consists of Alfie Baldrick, the one man rifle section; Mimi Dubois, maîtresse of skills; Madeline Forsyth, the living shadow; and Sven Hyse, the Norwegian shapeshifter.

London, England, August 1948

In a hospital ward within Hyde Park Barracks, Madeline listens to the coming and goings of medical staff. She manages to overhear that the captured hijacker is called Edward William Hughes, and that he is to be sedated and secured awaiting pickup from another military unit. Madeline bides her time until a squad of troops, under the command of a Captain, enters the room and informs Doctor Finlay that they are there to transfer the patient to Hanslope Park via military ambulance. Madeline weighs up if this might be a deception, but finally decides to let them go without following, she then slips out of the rooms window looking for an opportunity to become substantial once again and rejoin the others.

Stood on the corner of Ronald Street, outside the tuberculosis centre, smoking a cigarette I push out with my senses and confirm that the criminal that I had followed was the individual enhanced with ridiculous luck. A little while later a car pulls up around the corner and Alfie waves to me. I slink over to them and climb in, informing them of which house the target is in. Sven transforms into a small bird and flaps out of the open car window heading for number 10, while I get Alfie to contact Jonny at Hanslope Park and inform Major Sawdon of the situation. Sawdon informs us that there is a truck inbound, and that we are to take the target alive at all costs. As the Major is reentering his office, Jonny overhears him muttering to himself about having to now contact Special Agent Philby, and Jonny doesn't think that he sounds happy about it.

I remember trying to find a comfortable spot in the car as my back was aching really badly before Sven returned to tell us that there was just one man in the house, and that he was sat downstairs reading a newspaper and that the windows were open in the heat of the summer. A nondescript truck pulls in behind the car, and a man in civilian clothing but with a very military bearing gets out and walks over to the car. We agree that I will get the target to the front door while the snatch team set up across the road, when they have a clear shot they will take it. Sven informs me that he is going to enter through the window and come up behind the target just in case.

The truck drives down Ronald Street and four men jump out of the rear and take up positions opposite number 10, while I saunter up to the front door and knock loudly. A gruff voice from within shouts;

Who is it?

I reply in my best East end accent that I have a message to deliver and I am greeted with the sounds of swearing from inside and the heavy tread of someone approaching the front door. I loosen the top button on my blouse and bend over adjusting my stocking tops. It has the desired effect, as the man opens the door he is absolutely distracted by my antics and does not spot the four plain clothed soldiers all aiming rifles at him. A heartbeat later there is the hiss of compressed air from four barrels, and four darts strike the man in the chest. He staggers backwards a step in shock and I leap onto him trying to knock him to the floor.

Seeing me dive into the property, Charlie floors the accelerator and races down the street ready to provide support. The criminal beneath me releases an electrical discharge, but it fortunately ripples off of my enhanced armour. I slam my open palm into his jaw in the hope of distracting him long enough for the tranquillizer to take effect. He swings a haymaker at me, but he is slowing and I am able to dodge beneath the swing and punch him once again. With visible effort he flings me off of him and I am winded long enough for him to gain his feet and slam a boot down on my chest, but once again I am thankful for my armour. And that is the last action he takes, as the drugs coursing through his system finally take effect and he collapses to the floor knocking over a table in his fall.

Sven steps into the hallway from the front room and checks his vital signs, finding them erratic he quickly administers first aid and calls for a medic. The snatch team stabilize the target and the Baldricks help to bundle him into the back of the truck. Myself and Charlie follow the truck in our car, leaving Sven and Alfie to search the house for any clues. They discover a significant amount of cash as well as identification documents in the name of George Chatham, but more intriguingly they find a metal sphere, about the size of a golf ball, made of brass or copper. As Sven tinkers with the object he manages to flip up one section that looks very like the top of a key. Alfie continues to search the house, and in one of the back rooms he finds several boxes containing what he recognizes as thief tools. There are several tools that he has no idea what they are used for, but he knows a lady that will know.

Alfie contacts Jonny at Hanslope Park and get him to tell Major Sawdon;

Target captured sir! Alive as ordered. Identification shows him to be George Chatham.

Major Sawdon smiles and mutters;

Finally, some good news.

He then returns to his office and closes the door.

We followed the truck into Hyde Park Barracks and then the unconscious body, who Charlie had informed me was thought to be George Chatham, onto a hospital ward. I am not allowed into the room while the doctors are working on him but as soon as they are finished I enter and ask if the patient is stable, I am told that he had received an overdose of tranquillizer but that he is not critical. I position myself in a chair opposite the unconscious Chatham and await the transport team.

It is a couple of hours before they arrive, and when they do I watch them place the hijacker onto a gurney and I follow them out of the room. Unknown to me at the time, coincidence had led me to be in the same room that Madeline had followed the previous target into, and in fact she was still there waiting for an opportunity to sneak out. So when I left, Madeline rolled out from beneath the bed, became solid once more, and just followed me out like she had always been there. As we get to the exit from the medical wing I spotted Madeline just behind me, and being used to her unnatural ability to appear from thin air (or more accurately out of the shadows) I turned to her and started to chat as we walked out.

We quickly get back in the car, while the target is loaded into the back of a military ambulance, and Charlie drives us back to Ronald Street where we pick up Alfie and Sven. We then get Charlie to drive us to Hanslope Park, and en route, Madeline and I compare addresses of the drop off points that we had followed the criminals to. There were a number that matched but several of them were different locations. Alfie also shows Madeline the set of lock picks that he discovered in Chatham’s house and after she has explained the use of the more complex tools, and Alfie had pulled the kind of face that a child makes when someone tries to describe nuclear physics to them, they ended up swapping tool sets and both parties were happy. Alfie was particularly happy when he discovered that Madeline’s lock picks spent most of their time strapped to her thigh.

With some less than cautious driving, Charlie catches up to the military ambulance and we follow it into Hanslope Park and up to the hospital building. Once inside I get one of the nurses to show me which room holds the other hijacker brought in, she points me to one of the side rooms and I step into it and read on the charts that he is heavily sedated and the name on the chart identifies him as Edward William Hughes. I push out with my senses and confirm that he is the enhanced mind reader. I step back out of the room and find the nurse once more, asking her to take a look at my earlier bullet wound. She has a look at it and asks me when I sustained the injury as it looked fresh. When I told her that I had received it well over eight hours ago she sits me down and takes a closer look, as well as several blood samples and swabs. She insists that I remain on light duties until one of the doctors can examine the results.

We are contacted by Major Sawdon, via Jonny and Alfie, and ordered to attend an immediate debrief of the days events. Sawdon was not in a good mood and as Madeline relayed what had transpired, and the rest of us interjected with additional details from when Madeline had not been present, his mood seemed to darken further. He was impressed by Sven’s accurate single shot take down of a machine gun wielding criminal, but far less impressed by Alfie’s skill with the sub-machine gun. And the disregard for the safety of the immediate general public when Alfie had sprayed the street with bullets when trying to disable the postal van. At one point he even shouted;

We are not at war damn it!

Madeline responds;

May I speak in defence of the Baldricks?

The Major, now going an unhealthy shade of crimson, bristles;

No you may not!

Madeline, her own hackles now raised, bites back saying that she will file her own report on the matter then and Sawdon tells her that is her prerogative. After a tense moment of silence, I continue with the debrief and inform the Major of the demise of Billy Hill. I suggest to Sawdon that Mr. Hill attempted to use an enhanced power that backfired and exploded his head in a shower of ice crystals. He looks to Madeline and Sven for confirmation, completely ignoring Baldrick, but Sven shrugs his shoulders and tells him that he was following the postal van at the time and Madeline says that she didn’t see anything as she was in the back of the car.

At the same time that we are being debriefed by Major Sawdon, Superintendent Chapman telephones the safe house and Isy answers. Chapman asks for a report on what happened that day and Isy responds;

I’ve been in all day sir! I have answered the telephone three times, once to you sir!

Superintendent Chapman slams the phone down in a rage before Isy can continue. Back in Major Sawdon’s office Sven has a map of London spread out across the table and is locating the pub that the criminal that he followed stopped at, as well as the rough location in the dock lands where all of the criminals met up. Sawdon makes notes of all of the locations and then calls the debrief to an end and dismisses us. As we filed out I noticed that Madeline stayed behind and shut the door, but she never did say what they discussed. Sven and I decided that Alfie needed a pick up after his dressing down and so we took him to the officers mess for dinner and drinks. It must have been a good night because I remember singing and having all of the officers enthralled, well most of them at least.

The following morning I awoke and found that my back had finally stopped aching, and after a quick visit to the hospital building the nurse confirmed that my wound had started to heal nicely after the curiosity of it not healing the day before. I then join up with the others and we head over to Major Sawdon’s office to continue with the debrief. As we enter Madeline, who had not joined us in the officers mess the night before, hands the Major two copies of her written report and I notice that Sawdon seems calmer today and that the following of protocols by Madeline seems to have helped with this.

We run the Major through the rest of the day and Sven takes over when they are describing the search of Chatham’s house and produces the brass ball that they had discovered. Having not seen it I ask if I can inspect it and Sven hands it to me. It is very finely crafted, seems to be made up of four interlocking pieces, and has what looks like a fine seam in the shape of an ‘H’. As I am tinkering with it, one end flips up and looks like a clockwork key. So I turn it and it clicks three times before my paranoia kicks in and, holding very still, I say to Madeline;

I think that this might be a bomb!