Indecent Exposure by Tom Sharpe

advance his career.
    Back in his office Luitenant Verkramp checked the scheme and memorized all the details carefully before burning the file on Operation Red Rout as an added precaution against a security leak. He was particularly proud of his system of secret agents whom he had recruited separately over the years and paid out of the funds allocated by BOSS for informers. Each agent used a nom de guerre and was known to Verkramp only by his number so that there was nothing to connect him with BOSS . The method by which the agents reported back to him was similarly devious and consisted of coded messages placed in “drops” where they were collected by Verkramp’s security men. Each day of the week had a different code and a different “drop” which ensured that Verkramp’s men never met his agents, of whose existence they were only vaguely aware. The fact that the system was complex and that there were seven codes and seven drops for each agent and that there were twelve agents would have meant that there was an enormous amount of work being done had it not been for lack of Communist and subversive activity in Piemburg to be reported. In the past Verkramp had been lucky to receive more than one coded message per week, and that inevitably of no value. Now it would be different and he looked forward to an influx of information.
    Having initiated Operation Red Rout, Luitenant Verkramp considered his second campaign, that against miscegenating policemen, which he had code-named White Wash. Out of defence to Dr Eysenck he had decided to try apomorphine injections as well as electric shock and sent Sergeant Breitenbach to a wholesale chemist with an order for one hundred hypodermic syringes and two gallons of apomorphine.
    “Two gallons?” asked the chemist incredulously. “Are you sure you’ve got this right?”
    “Quite sure,” said Sergeant Breitenbach.
    “And a hundred hypodermics?” asked the chemist, who still couldn’t believe his ears.
    “That’s what I said,” insisted the Sergeant.
    “I know that’s what you said but it doesn’t seem possible,” the chemist told him. “What in God’s name are you going to do with two gallons?”
    Sergeant Breitenbach had been briefed by Verkramp.
    “It’s for curing alcoholics,” he said.
    “Dear God,” said the chemist, “I didn’t know there was that number of alcoholics in the country.”
    “It makes them sick,” the Sergeant explained.
    “You can say that again,” muttered the chemist. “With two gallons you could probably kill them all off too. Probably block the sewage system into the bargain. Anyway I can’t supply it.”
    “Why not?”
    “Well for one thing I haven’t got two gallons and wouldn’t know where to get it and for another you need a doctor’s prescription and I doubt if any doctor in his right mind would prescribe two gallons of apomorphine anyway.”
    Sergeant Breitenbach reported his refusal to Luitenant Verkramp.
    “Need a doctor’s prescription,” he said.
    “You can get one from the police surgeon,” Verkramp told him and the Sergeant went down to the police morgue where the surgeon was performing an autopsy on an African who had been beaten to death during questioning.
    “Natural causes,” he wrote on the death certificate before attending to Sergeant Breitenbach.
    “There’s a limit to what I’m prepared to do,” said the surgeon with a sudden display of professional ethics. “I’ve got my Hippocratic oath to consider and I’m not issuing prescriptions for two gallons. A thousand cc is the most I’ll do and if Verkramp wants anything more out of them he’ll have to tickle their throats with a feather.”
    “Is that enough?”
    “At 3cc a dose you should get 330 pukes,” said the surgeon. “Don’t overdo it though. I’ve got my work cut out signing death certificates as it is.”
    “Stingy old bastard,” said Verkramp when Sergeant Breitenbach returned from the chemist with twenty hypodermics and