V 02 - Domino Men, The by Barnes-Jonathan Page A

move on.”
    “Now?” I asked.
    Jasper nodded.
    Barbara squeezed my arm.  “Well done,” she hissed.  “Good luck.”
    Nervously, I cleared my throat.  “Well, goodbye everyone,” I announced to the office at large.  “It’s been great working with you all.  I’ve enjoyed myself.  But it looks like I’m moving on.”  My colleagues ignored me, my only answer the tap of keyboards, the drone of telephones, the lazy burr of the photocopier.  Somewhere, inevitably, someone was crunching their way laboriously through a packet of crisps.  Cheese and onion, I think.  I could smell it.
     
     
    As soon as we were outside, Jasper grabbed my cardboard box and heaved it into the nearest bin.
    “What did you do that for?” I asked, trying not to sound too wheedlingly plaintive.
    “Where we’re going…”  The man was striding off ahead.  “Take it from me, you’re not going to need  a potted plant.”
    I trotted next to him, struggling to keep up.  We walked along the South Bank beside the river, past the National Theatre, the restaurants, bookstalls and pavement caricaturists, past the Big Issue sellers and skateboarders and the men in furry coats roasting chestnuts, heading toward the great, gleaming edifice of the Eye.
    “Where’s your department?” I asked.
    “You’ll know it when you see it.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “By the way,” Jasper snapped, “I think you should get a new suit.  You can’t wear that thing anymore.  Wouldn’t be respectful.”
    “Oh.”
    “That girl in your office…  Barbara, isn’t it?  I don’t suppose you happen to know if she’s attached?”  Jasper’s tone had switched from understated menace to something approaching chumminess.
    “What?” I asked.
    “I mean does she have a boyfriend?  Someone special in her life?”
    Nonplussed:  “I’ve no idea.”
    “Hmm.  I wonder.”  He appeared to savor some sort of mental image before exclaiming:  “Perfect, Mr. Lamb.  That girl was perfect!”
    “What are you talking about?”  I wondered if this wasn’t some kind of office prank, if for the purposes of someone else’s entertainment I’d been yoked to a lunatic for the day.  Surreptitiously, I looked around for hidden cameras.
    Jasper stopped short.  “We’re here.”
    Baffled, I looked up.  “But this is the Eye.”
    “Come inside.”
    There were dozens of tourists shuffling patiently in line, tortoising forward a few inches at a time.  Jasper barged past them all to get to the front of the queue, and the curious fact was that none of them seemed to object, almost as though they hadn’t notice we were there at all.  I observed, too, that for all his bravado and swagger Jasper seemed to be inspecting each of them carefully, like he was searching for someone he knew.  More than once, I noticed him turn and nervously scan the line behind us.
    “Looking for someone?” I asked.
    “The enemy, Mr. Lamb.  The enemy are always watching.”
    “Enemy?” I said, feeling even now that this was most likely to turn out to be some insanely elaborate practical joke.
    We reached the front of the queue, pushed past a ticket inspector who offered not the slightest objection to our presence and stood before an open pod filled with a group of Japanese tourists, all of them bristling with guidebooks and cameras, totally oblivious to the two of us.
    Jasper gestured into the pod.  “After you.”
    The tourists were still ignoring us.
    “But it’s packed.”
    “Trust me.”
    I didn’t move.
    “Mr. Lamb, what you’re about to see is above top secret.  Breathe the merest word of what you see here today and the most extreme measures will be set in motion against you.  Is that understood?”
    I nodded, feeling oddly light-headed — like I was in a dream and knew it, that my actions would have no real effect in the waking world.
    “Well then.  Walk on.”
    “I can’t.  It’s full.”
    Jasper seemed to lose patience.  “Just