OCTOBER 22, 9:32 A.M. 10 DOWNING STREET. LONDON, ENGLAND
The man was thin and wiry. He wore a pristinely tailored navy suit and an expensive yet understated wristwatch. Stuck in a perpetual state of scowling, he was not exactly what Jonathan and Shelley expected of a prime minister, but then again they didn’t have much of a frame of reference.
“President Arons informs me that you are the team responsible for stopping the sale of classified information, as well as bringing the vice president’s kidnapper to justice,” Prime Minister Falcon said in a stiff and formal manner befitting a conversation with the queen.
“To you he may be the vice president, but to me he’s just Carl, a close personal friend,” Shelley stated proudly while seated before the prime minister’s desk.
“In the spirit of full disclosure, sir, I feel you should know that Shelley has an incredibly low bar for what constitutes a friend,” Jonathan chimed in. “If you so much as wave at her, she’ll consider you a bestie.”
“But am I correct in assuming that you two were responsible for the success of the aforementioned mission?” Prime Minister Falcon pressed on.
“You are, sir,” Jonathan confirmed.
“Good,” the prime minister responded with a nod. “I do not ask for foreign aid easily. Only the most grave and dangerous of situations has brought me to do so today.”
“PM, may I call you PM?”
“Please don’t,” Jonathan whispered to Shelley.
“You needn’t worry because while my middle name isn’t ‘Grave and Dangerous,’ it would be if it weren’t illegal for minors to change their names without parental permission.”
Prime Minister Falcon’s stiff expression suddenly grew strained as he looked from Shelley to Jonathan expectantly.
“Oh, me?” Jonathan said. “I don’t have a middle name, which is actually a good thing when you hear the ones my parents were considering… Flash, Boon, River… I mean, what were they thinking? I could never pull off any of those names.”
“Yeah, no way. Frank or Larry maybe,” Shelley added.
“I do not wish to offend you two, but—”
“Oh, it takes a lot to offend us, right, Johno?”
“Right. It’s actually one of our strongest assets.”
“You two seem terribly inept, rather shockingly so,” Prime Minister Falcon declared unapologetically.
“Inept? You mean like we don’t know what we’re doing?” Shelley asked.
“Exactly,” the prime minister answered.
“That’s because we don’t know what we’re doing. And we’re pretty much not good at anything,” Jonathan explained.
“I hate to disagree with my partner, but I actually have quite a few hidden talents.”
“She doesn’t,” Jonathan stated emphatically. “But what we do have is an ability to blend in, to go through life without showing up on anyone’s radar. Why? Because we’re average, forgettable, normal. In the words of Hammett Humphries, we live in the world’s blind spot.”
“And that blind spot gives us access to just about everything,” Shelley said as she removed her glasses and looked the prime minister straight in the eye. “You may not believe it now, but in the end, you’ll wish all your spies were as unexceptional as we are.…”