The Loo Sanction by Trevanian

it!
    â€œSir?” the bobby asked again.
    Jonathan’s shoulders slumped. “Ah . . . did you enjoy my lecture?”
    â€œOh yes, sir. Not that I followed all of it. It’s your accent, you know.”
    â€œCome on!” Bullet Head growled. “Let’s get it moving!”
    The Bentley was parked outside, and behind it was another dark sedan with a driver. As they descended the long sweep of shallow granite steps, Jonathan felt the Kafkaesque anomaly of the situation. They were being abducted with the help of a policeman, in the middle of the afternoon, with people all around.
    Maggie was deposited in the backseat of the sedan with a young man who had seemed to be loitering against a postbox, while Jonathan was conducted into the back of the Bentley. Aloha Shirt got in back with him; Bullet Head and the driver in front; and they pulled away from the curb, the two cars staying close together until they got onto a motorway. They picked up speed and started off toward Wessex.
    â€œCare for a coffin nail?” Aloha Shirt asked, producing a pack of American cigarettes.
    â€œNo, thanks.”
    Aloha Shirt smiled affably. “No need to get uptight, Dr. Hemlock. You struck out, but everything’s going to be A-okay.”
    â€œWhat about the girl?”
    â€œShe’s fine and dandy. No sweat.” Aloha Shirt smiled again. “I should make introductions. The driver there is Henry.”
    The driver stretched to seek Jonathan’s reflection in the rearview mirror and grinned in greeting. “Good to meet you, sir.”
    â€œHello, Henry.”
    â€œAnd my burly sidekick there is The Sergeant.”
    â€œNot ‘Bullet Head’?”
    The Sergeant scowled and turned to stare out the windscreen, his jaw set tight.
    â€œAnd I’m called Yank.” He grinned. “It’s kind of a weird moniker, but they call me that because I dig American things. Clothes. Slang. Everything. For my money, you guys are where it’s at.”
    In the space of a few minutes, Yank had used slang sampling a thirty-year span of American argot, and Jonathan assumed he got it from late-night movies. “Where are we going, Yank?”
    â€œYou’ll see when we get there. But don’t worry. Everything’s cool. We’re from Loo.” He said this last with some pride.
    â€œFrom where?”
    â€œLoo.”

The Olde Worlde Inn
    A s they rushed along the motorway, Yank sketched in the history and function of the Loo organization. Though his instructions allowed him to impart no information beyond this, he said they would meet a man at their destination who would clarify everything.
    Following the typical pattern of development for espionage organizations in democratic countries, England’s earliest felt need was for a domestic agency to ferret out and control enemy espionage and sabotage within its borders. Building up its information files on real and imagined enemies, and occasionally stumbling onto a genuine spy cell while groping about for a fictive one, this bureaucratic organism grew steadily in size and power, justifying each new expansion on the basis of the last. From a single cluttered desk in the Military Intelligence building, it swelled to occupy an entire office: Room #5. And by the simplistic codes of the service, it became known as MI–5.
    It eventually occurred to the intelligence specialists that they might do well to assume an active as well as passive role in the game of spy-spy, so they set up a sister organization to control British agents operating abroad. The traditional British penchant for independence dictated that these two agencies be fully autonomous, and the rivalry between them extended to refusal to admit the existence of the other. But this resulted in a certain erosion of manpower, inasmuch as the agents of each organization spent much of their time spying on, thwarting, and occasionally killing the agents of the other. In a