The Adventures of Fembot Sally

By Samantha Faulkner

Stealing diamonds and seducing secret agents is all in a day's work for a robotic femme fatale...

For the first time in one volume, the complete adventures of Fembot Sally.

Sally Shagwell may look like an ordinary shop girl – she works behind the perfume counter at Burlington's department store – but in reality she is a Fembot, a deadly android assassin manufactured by a sinister international crime syndicate known only as "the Organisation." Her function: to maim, to kill, to steal and to seduce.

A diamond heist draws the attention of MI6 and secret agent Steve Blunt is dispatched to investigate.

Fembot Sally must use all her robotic wiles to lure him into a deadly trap.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Samantha Faulkner
• Release date: Feb 21, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386650751

Book preview

Copyright © Samantha Faulkner 2018

The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

First Published in 2013

All characters appearing in this story are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Contents

I, Fembot

Fembot Sally and the Fortress of Doom

Wenchworld

Bride of the Vampire

Prisoners of Tarzenda

One Million Years AD

Fembot Sally and the Reign of Terror

The Thirty-Eight Steps

Prisoner Sixty-Nine

I, Fembot

Nobody notices a pretty girl in a miniskirt when she is humping around a great big tea trolley. The choice of hair colour is important here. Pert and blonde may well attract attention, but a pert brunette can easily slip under the radar. I have been working as a tea lady at the Secret Research Institute for three days now. On day one, I introduced myself to the head of security, Jeff Buck. He is the only man on site who knows the combination to the vault and I have been plying him with tea and biscuits three times a day. Mr Buck is married and has an unimpeachable record of twenty years service, but I do not believe he will pose a problem. The sight of an unbuttoned blouse and the thought of a bit of slap and tickle is enough to corrupt even the most outwardly respectable of men.

It is I who suggest an illicit rendezvous down in the vault. There is no point wasting time. ‘I want to see the Coxton Diamond,’ I gush, fluttering my eyelids and adopting my best ickle-girl voice. ‘I saw a photograph of it in Life Magazine. It looks so big! I’d love to see it for myself.’ I lean forward across the desk and my hand slowly unpops another button on my blouse. ‘I’d be so grateful,’ I whisper. Mr Buck stares back at me, captivated.

A few minutes later, we are three floors down, outside the vault, and he is tapping the combination into a small keypad.

I take out my compact and touch up my lipstick. The mirror in the compact acts as a miniature television receiver. I switch it on and am able to see into the control room, where Jenny and Michelle are distracting the guards. Jenny is sat astride Mr Arnold Jackson, between him and a bank of security monitors. I can see the man’s deliriously happy face through Jenny’s artificial eyes as he leans forward and unzips the front of her dress. I flick channels and see that Michelle has already locked tongues with William Moore, the second night watchman. Everything seems to be running to plan. I should have several minutes of undisturbed attention.

The huge titanium door swings open and I flash a dazzling smile at Jeff Buck. He is short and balding but has a kind face. We move inside the vault and he locates the box containing the legendary diamond. He enters a second combination on the lock and the lid flips open. Finally, he pulls out the Coxton. I gaze at the gem with wide eyes. ‘It’s huge!’ I exclaim. It is almost the size of a tennis ball. ‘Can I hold it?’

Buck smiles indulgently. ‘Be very careful.’

I take the diamond in my hand and caress it for a moment. ‘It’s beautiful,’ I say, holding it up to the light. I unclip the top of my handbag and slip the diamond inside.

Buck laughs. ‘Now, now!’ he admonishes me, with mock severity. ‘If you’re going to try and walk off with that, I may have to put you over my knee and spank you.’ He grins. The poor lamb thinks I am playing a joke.

I smile and break his neck with a swift karate chop. There is a snap as his spinal chord severs. He falls to the floor without a word and I blow him a kiss. ‘Sorry Jeff!’

I leave the body inside the vault and close the door behind me. Then I pull out my compact to check up on Jenny and Michelle.

Michelle is still snogging William Moore. He is not bad looking for a security guard. Arnold Jackson, the older of the two men, has his head buried deeply in Jenny’s cleavage. That should keep him preoccupied while I slip out of the building. The vault is below ground but there is a fire exit one floor up. Opening that will trigger an alarm, but by then I will be out onto the street and long gone.

The alarm sounds prematurely. William Moore has accidentally found the notch behind Michelle’s left ear. Her plastic face plate clicks open on a hinge, revealing a mass of circuitry and two bulging artificial eyes. Moore is too shocked to do anything, but Jackson, who has just come up for air, sees the face swing open and instantly reaches forward to press the alarm button on the console in front of him, before Jenny has time to break his neck.

Now I can hear the sound of armed guards racing along the corridor. I will have to shoot my way out.

Luckily, my boobs are fitted with heavy duty machine guns. One moment they are all pert and bouncy, the next two metal tubes pop out, even when I’m wearing a blouse. Don’t ask me how that works. I open fire as the first guard comes around the corner. That is Mr Cooper. I let out a shriek of pleasure – spitting bullets is an orgasmic experience – and the forty-nine year old bachelor is the first to be torn apart. It’s a shame, really. I rather liked Mr Cooper. But there is no time for sentimentality. Two more guards come into view and I cut them to pieces with equal efficiency.

Jenny and Michelle arrive at the fire exit ahead of me, Michelle having thoughtfully clicked her face back into place. We pull open the doors and find ourselves in a back alley. It is the work of a moment to discard our brown wigs in a nearby dustbin and disappear into the night. The police will be searching for a trio of brunettes. They won’t notice three innocent-looking blondes out for a night on the town.

‘Did you get the diamond?’ Jenny enquires. She is fractionally taller than me with a button nose and deep brown eyes.

I nod and slip her the Coxton; then I do up the front of my blouse. ‘Did you wipe the monitors?’ I ask her. There must be no record of our presence at the institute.

‘Of course!’ she snaps, offended that I would even need to ask. She drops the diamond into her handbag and snaps it shut. ‘I’ll head back to control with this.’

‘We’ll see you tomorrow,’ I say.

Michelle and I have another mission to complete.

The two of us head to the Purple Pussy Club in Soho. By now, it is eleven o’clock and the club is heaving. A fog of tobacco envelopes the bar. I push my way through the crowd. There is a live band and a small dance floor. I am worried about partnering with Michelle. She was hit over the head with a baseball bat in Ulan Bator a couple of weeks ago and she has not been right since. Every now and then, her head will spark and her arm will start to jerk uncontrollably.

At the moment, however, she is blending in well with the other dancers. She catches sight of our quarry in the far corner.

Sir Clive Lazenby is dressed in a casual suit. He has a neatly trimmed moustache and is chatting up some dolly bird in a green sweater. I walk across to the table, trip on my heels and accidentally spill my gin and orange over her top.

‘I’m terribly sorry,’ I say.

She rushes off to the ladies to clean herself up and the field is left open for Michelle.

An hour later, we arrive at Sir Clive’s luxury Mayfair flat. Michelle spikes his drink and gets him into bed. I take the photographs as she undresses and cavorts on top of him. He is conscious throughout but barely aware of what is going on. He doesn’t seem to notice the occasional flash of static electricity from Michelle. In the morning, a set of prints will be delivered to his office alongside a rather important summons.

Michelle is getting carried away. She has started slapping him across the face. If this carries on, she might do him some serious harm. That blow to the head has really unhinged her.

‘Time to go!’ I hiss.

She slides off Sir Clive and zips up her dress.

––––––––

At this point, perhaps, I ought to introduce myself. My official designation is Fembot 1969/Z49/2A73 – but you can call me Sally. During the day, I work at the perfume counter on the ground floor of Burlington’s, a top Knightsbridge department store. I have been away on leave for a few days, to cover my most recent assignment, but it is a simple matter to slip back into the routine. The store manager, Doctor Eugene Lovelace, is also the Chief Scientist of an international criminal organisation, known simply as The Organisation. Our secret London headquarters is situated in the basement of the store.

I am keeping a record of these events at the behest of Doctor Lovelace. He is the inventor of the Fembot – a purpose built female android designed to distract and deceive the human male. I am one of the latest models. Doctor Lovelace has instructed me to keep an account of my daily life, paying particular attention to any amorous encounters that may occur during the course of my work. I think he is hoping to sell the manuscript to a girlie magazine. Strictly speaking, I should report him for this – the Organisation takes a dim view of moonlighting – but the Chief Scientist has installed a loyalty subroutine in my data core and I am unable to say anything nasty about him. Doctor Lovelace is a hugely intelligent man, with a great sense of humour, who never touches my bum inappropriately.

The store itself is a jewel in the heart of London. The richest and most famous people in the land do their shopping at Burlington’s, and I have a database of all their names and faces. As soon as anyone steps into the store, myself or one of my colleagues will identify them and they will quickly be categorised in terms of potential usefulness to the Organisation. If I can flog them a bottle of Chanel No.5 as well, so much the better.

It is rewarding if rather tedious work, but I have been fitted with special nasal receptors which allow me to differentiate several billion odours. I am thus able to tailor each perfume to the individual customer. At night, I undertake more serious work – assassinations, robbery, extortion – and for these tasks I am even better equipped.

I arrive back at Burlington’s shortly before dawn and am on the shop floor by eight o’clock. Luckily, I do not need sleep and I have already drained the alcohol from my system. Fembots can eat and drink like ordinary human beings – we have a small atomic reactor in our stomachs and any food stuff can be broken down and used for fuel – but we can go for days without ingesting anything if it ever proves necessary.

I spend a pleasant hour gossiping with Janet and Mabel, the other girls in the perfume department. They think I have been away sunning myself in Margate, a place they have obviously never visited. They are real women, not Fembot replicants. Janet is in her early twenties, big-nosed and vacuous. Mabel is older and more homely.

The store opens promptly at nine o’clock and soon the shop floor is buzzing. At eleven, I catch sight of Sir Clive entering the store, his fingers nervously rubbing his platinum wedding ring. The blackmail photographs have been delivered and he is now being brought in for appropriate direction. As Head of the Board of Trade, he will be expected to authorise the export of certain vital equipment to the island of San Andress in the South Pacific. Once that is accomplished, Phase Two of Our Glorious Leader’s Grand Design can begin.

Janet is flirting with a young male customer, who has come looking to buy some perfume for his girlfriend. Valentine’s Day is approaching and there will be something of a rush in the next couple of days. I move across to take over, but at that moment I spot a man in a sharp Savile Row suit walking down the main aisle. A quick flick through my database identifies him as Steve Blunt, an MI6 operative and congenital womaniser. He is tall, dark haired and ridiculously handsome. I rush across the floor to intercept him. ‘Can I help you, sir?’

He eyes me up casually, his gaze lingering a little too long on my upper torso. ‘I’m sure you can.’ He smiles a dazzling smile and raises a single eyebrow. Sighs of pleasure ripple across the shop floor. The effect is incredible. That one eyebrow could dampen a pair of knickers at fifty paces. At twenty paces, it would probably snap the elastic. This is a man who knows how to draw attention. Thankfully, I am beyond such shallow human reactions. ‘The name’s Blunt. Steve Blunt,’ he says. He pulls up a solid leather briefcase and rests it on a nearby counter. He flicks the combination and opens the lid. Inside the case are three dark brown wigs, which I recognise from the night before. These are the ones we abandoned outside the institute. ‘I believe these may have been purchased in this store.’

I pick up one of the wigs and examine it, for forms sake. On the inside, written very clearly, are the words Burlington’s, Knightsbridge, SW1. ‘I’m afraid we can’t give a refund without a receipt, sir.’

‘I’m more interested in who may have purchased them,’ he says. ‘They were discovered last night near the scene of a jewel robbery.’

I play dumb. ‘Gosh, how exciting!’

‘So you can understand why we want to trace the buyers...’

I nod my head vigorously. ‘I can check with Miss Dalton in hairware. If you’ll excuse me for just a moment.’

‘But of course, Miss...’ He glances down at my name badge and his eyes light up in amusement. ‘Miss Shagwell.’ He raises that eyebrow again. Over at the perfume counter, Mabel has a hot flush and has to sit down. ‘An unusual name,’ he observes, with a smirk.

It is not one of my choosing. ‘Call me Sally,’ I insist, engaging a girlish-charm subroutine and smiling sweetly up at him. The Chief Scientist takes great pride in the inventiveness of his names but it does sometimes lay a girl open to ridicule.

I move across to the hairware counter and have a quick word with Miss Dalton, a fearsome dragon of a woman who nonetheless cannot keep her eyes off Mr Blunt. I show her the wigs, but of course she does not remember selling them.

I return to the perfume counter and offer my apologies. ‘I’m terribly sorry, sir. I’m afraid Miss Dalton has no memory of these items.’

‘Do you keep a record of sales?’

‘We have a master ledger in the back office. Would you like me to fetch it?’

He grins. ‘There’s no hurry. Perhaps you’d like to meet up for dinner with me this evening? You could let me know then.’ He hands me his card. ‘La Maison Femme, at seven thirty?’

It seems churlish to refuse. ‘That’s very kind of you. I’d be delighted.’ He raises an eyebrow again and the entire shop floor quivers. I will have to start spraying some perfume into the air when he has gone, if only to dissipate those potent sex pheromones. Where on earth does MI6 find men like him?

––––––––

At twelve o’clock, I take my lunch break. The service elevator at the back of the store leads down into the labyrinth of the Organisation itself. Fembot Jenny is waiting at the lift when I arrive. She is my regular training partner and something of a thorn in my side. She works in haberdashery and thinks herself superior to everybody else. Two security bots, Poppy and Holly, stand guard outside the elevator as we arrive at the basement. They are dressed in the standard issue diaphanous pink negligee. Poppy raises a scanner and checks our ident chips before allowing us to proceed into the inner sanctum.

A loud voice booms from the Tannoy system and reverberates across the corridor. ‘STAGE ONE WILL COMPLETE IN ONE DAY.’ The voice is vaguely Germanic. ‘ONE DAY...UND COUNTING.’

We make our way along a faceless passageway to the Balloon Room. Fembot Greta, the weapons mistress, is expecting us. She opens a small panel in my back and removes the spent cartridge from last night, replacing it with a fresh one and sealing up the panel invisibly afterwards. Jenny steps forward and her weaponry is reloaded in a similar fashion.

The shooting gallery is filled with brightly coloured balloons and the odd underling who has displeased our Great Leader. Today Mr Craig Dawson – a middle aged henchman, third class, who recently made an unauthorised telephone call to the Daily Clarion – is strapped to a post in the middle of the room.

Jenny and I smile at each other and open fire.

My boobs can spit twelve rounds a second and keep firing for upwards of a minute on a single cartridge. The gun tubes are difficult to aim – you have to direct your whole body in the direction you wish to fire – but they are always lethal. Most of the balloons are burst within a fraction of a second and poor Mr Dawson is cut to shreds. After ten seconds, we cease fire and a score card pops up on the far wall. 141 to 144.

Greta nods approvingly.

I am a little peeved. Jenny has burst three more balloons than me, though I did manage a head and a groin shot. Jenny, however, hit Mr Dawson’s heart, which is worth double. She always gets a better score than me. Her boobs are two millimetres closer together, which apparently makes all the difference. I am not jealous though. I can touch my nose with my big toe, which is more than she can do. It is strange how much physical variation there is between Fembots, considering we are mass-produced, but as the Great Leader is often quoted as saying, variety is the spice of life.

Greta scribbles a note on her clipboard. ‘Approved for San Andress.’ She does not look up. Other Fembots are waiting in line outside the armoury. Lunchtime is always busy in the training rooms. A new set of balloons self inflate as we exit the chamber.

One Fembot I am not expecting to see outside is Big Bertha. I flinch at the sight of her. She is the bodyguard for the Deputy Number One, a grim, solid-looking creature with wide hips and arms like iron girders. Rumour has it she is brought in to dismantle any Fembot who show signs of disobedience or general malfunction. Perhaps I should have a word with her about Michelle. Big Bertha strides towards me. ‘You are to report to the Deputy Number One!’ she booms, in a worryingly masculine voice. ‘You have been assigned a special mission!’

I bob my head. I have never been granted an audience with the Deputy before. It is a great honour. Fembot Jenny looks on enviously as Big Bertha escorts me into the office.

Nikita Von Schmidt is a formidable woman in her early sixties. She is dressed in a shockingly plain skirt and a mohair blouse. Her hair is scraped back in a bun, which looks every bit as pinched as her face.

‘I have been monitoring your interaction with the secret agent, Steve Blunt,’ she says. Her accent is difficult to place, at times Russian, at times German. It is the same voice I hear every day over the loudspeaker. ‘Good work, Fembot Sally. You will meet the agent at La Maison Femme, as arranged. Excuse me one moment.’ She looks at her watch and flicks a switch on the desk in front of her. ‘STAGE ONE WILL COMPLETE IN TWENTY THREE HOURS AND FORTY MINUTES,’ she bellows. I dampen the feed from my audio receptors. ‘TWENTY THREE HOURS, FORTY MINUTES...’ An agonising pause follows, as the inevitable coda is wilfully delayed. ‘...UND COUNTING.’ Frau Schmidt flicks the Tannoy off and returns her attention to me. ‘You will bring the agent back to your flat after dinner.’

‘Do you wish me to kill him?’

‘No, my dear.’ She smiles cruelly. ‘We have something rather more interesting in mind for Mr Blunt...’

––––––––

The waiter pops the cork and pours a small dribble of champagne into the fluted glass. Steve Blunt takes a sip of the bubbling liquid. He swills it in his mouth, considers for a moment and then nods his head. ‘A little fruity, but rather pleasant.’ I think he is talking about the champagne. His eyes, however, are locked on me. I am dressed to kill in a shockingly low cut gown from our new Spring Collection. The waiter fills up both our glasses and we clink them together across the dining table. I look away from him and then back, coquettishly.

‘So what’s a beautiful girl like you doing working behind a perfume counter at Burlington's?’

I blush at the compliment. ‘A girl has to making a living.’

‘I’m sure you have other talents.’ He chuckles.

‘That’s not for me to say.’

‘You’re too modest.’ His eyes do not move from my face. There is a hypnotic quality to the man that any real woman would be hard pushed to resist. As a Fembot, I am immune to all forms of charisma, but I have been programmed with the correct non-verbal responses and I am employing every one of them this evening. A tight dress and a bit of cleavage is not enough to lure a British secret agent to his doom. I must make him believe that he is in control and that I am falling under his spell.

‘I checked the ledgers in the back office,’ I tell him. ‘The hair pieces did originate from our store, but we have no record of selling them. I think they must have been stolen.’

‘That’s very likely,’ he agrees. He smiles again and tops up my champagne glass.

I must remember to engage my inebriation software before we leave the restaurant. It is the latest upgrade and involves a certain amount of simulated disorientation – not to mention the occasional wandering hand – which I am sure Steve Blunt will appreciate.

Our mutual flirtation has the desired result. We share each other’s dessert, spend a pleasing hour at the Purple Pussy in Soho and then arrive somewhat sozzled at my apartment in West London. I pull a key from my handbag and insert it in the lock. The door swings open and I switch on the lights. Steve Blunt follows me inside.

‘Charming place,’ he observes.

It is charming, though strictly speaking it does not belong to me. The Organisation keeps a penthouse suite on standby for intimate evenings such as this. A luxurious but sparsely furnished living room leads through into a richly embroidered boudoir with a king-sized bed.

‘Make yourself at home,’ I say. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’

He grabs my wrist and embraces me. I don’t think he is interested in the coffee. We move back towards the sofa and fall on top of it. I am giggling, but he slaps me hard across the face and I stop at once. I have to suppress the urge to snap his neck. Instead, I feign shock and surprise.

‘Now why don’t you stop pretending,’ he tells me, sternly. His hand is gripping my wrist again. All at once his expression has hardened. ‘A girl working on a perfume counter could never afford an apartment like this. You’re working for the Organisation.’

‘I...I don’t understand...’

He slaps me a second time. It will be a pleasure to kill him, when the time comes. ‘We’ve known for some months that Burlington’s is a front for an international criminal organisation. You recognised me as soon as I entered the store, which means you are part of that organisation. And presumably you brought me here to pump me for information. Isn’t that right, darling?’

I nod weakly. I had certainly intended a bit of pumping. But inside I am smiling. Everything is going exactly as Frau Schmidt predicted.

‘So why don’t you be a good little girl and tell me everything you know?’ He pulls back and allows me to sit up.

I start to cry. A small set of tear ducts have been implanted especially for this mission. I have been warned not to overdo it, however. There is a danger the water might short out some of the circuitry in my head. I don’t want to end up like Fembot Michelle. ‘I didn’t want to do it,’ I sob, uploading the pre-arranged storyline from my hard drive. ‘My uncle, they...they kidnapped him. The Organisation. They’re forcing him to work for them. And they said...they said I’d never see him again, unless...unless I did exactly what they said.’

Blunt stares at me intently. ‘Your uncle?’

‘Professor Marius. He’s a rocket scientist. Or was. Working for the British government on their ballistic missile programme.’

‘And his absence hasn’t been noticed?’

‘He retired a couple of months ago. And then they abducted him.’

Blunt considers this for a moment. ‘And do you know where they’ve taken him?’

‘There’s an island in the South Pacific. It’s called San Andress.’

‘I’ve heard of it.’

‘The Organisation has its headquarters there, a few miles outside the capital. That’s where they’ve taken him. It’s the truth. I swear it.’

His eyes bore into me. He is not sure if he believes my story; but if he decides to check it out, it will stand up to scrutiny. There is a rocket scientist called Professor Marius. Or rather, there was.

Blunt hands me a handkerchief. ‘There. That wasn’t so difficult was it?’ I dab my eyes and flinch slightly as a burst of static leaps across from an eyeball to one of my fingers. I don’t think Blunt notices. He puts an arm around me. ‘How would you like to go on a little journey?’ he asks. ‘Sometime tomorrow?’

My eyes widen. ‘You mean...?’

‘Why not?’ He grins, just as his watch beeps the hour. It is getting rather late. ‘And in the meantime...’ He leans forward and kisses me.

––––––––

It is six am. I am lying naked in bed with just a white sheet covering me. My internal chronometer has suffered a glitch during the night. There is a twenty minute misalignment. I must have short circuited during our love making. It would not be the first time. Water is not the only liquid that can cause problems for a Fembot.

Steve Blunt is already out of bed. I can hear him in the hallway. He has unscrewed the receiver on the telephone and removed the bug. I hear the plop as he drops the microphone into the fish tank. He dials a number and I turn my audio receptors up to maximum. The time it takes for the dial to rotate backwards gives me each digit and I cross reference the number with my own internal phone book. As expected, he is calling his office. I hear him speaking quietly to his boss, passing on all the latest developments, and getting his secretary, Miss Primm, to arrange a couple of plane tickets. Perfect, I think, everything is going according to plan. Blunt is still suspicious of me but he has decided it is worth swallowing the bait.

I lift myself off the bed, pulling the sheet up to cover my chest as I move across the room. 16mm film cameras behind the walls record everything that happens in this flat – one of Doctor Lovelace’s innovations – and though I am sure the Chief Scientist would never make inappropriate use of the footage, I do not feel the need to expose myself unnecessarily.

I enter the bathroom and twist the end of my thumb. With a clunk my body enters full lock down mode. I can now turn on the shower and stand underneath it without the water ending up anywhere inappropriate.

Blunt rings off the phone. ‘Morning, darling,’ he says, wandering nonchalantly into the bathroom and taking me in his arms. ‘The flight’s booked for ten thirty. That gives us about an hour before we need to head off to the airport.’

He pulls off my towel and we step into the shower together. Thankfully, the glass is frosted and our naked silhouettes are barely visible to the film cameras outside. Steam fills the cubicle and we kiss passionately.

‘In hot water again!’ Blunt chuckles.

––––––––

A wall of heat envelopes us as we step out of the terminal building. Taxi drivers yell and try to attract our attention. Small boys dart around us, offering up fruit and badly made trinkets. It is a colourful, exotic scene. There is the smell of salt in the air and fish from the sea. Strangulated voices ululate in the distance. If you are going to travel abroad, you might as well visit somewhere different and there are few places quite as bizarre as the bustling Pacific island of San Andress.

A man stands with a placard a little way along the pavement, the words ‘BLUNT / SHAG’ scrawled inappropriately on the front of it.

‘I think that may be us,’ Blunt observes wryly. He steers me gently through the throng of soon-to-be-disappointed taxi drivers.

I pretend not to recognise our contact. Angus McConnery is one of the Organisation’s most reliable henchmen. He is a relaxed and friendly fellow with a well-disguised psychotic streak. He takes the suitcases and leads us across to a slick four seater. Blunt is impressed by the car, an Austin Myers GB5. McConnery takes the cases, puts them in the boot and then sees us into the back of the vehicle.

We drive off towards town.

It is market day today and the place is alive with activity. Luckily, McConnery is an expert driver. He hurtles through the centre of town at full speed, screeching left and right through a tangle of fruit and vegetable stalls without displacing so much as a solitary satsuma.

Blunt thinks we are heading for our hotel and he frowns when we move out of town and hit a long coastal road. He knocks irritably on the glass. ‘The Hotel Splendide is back that way.’ He knocks again. ‘Can you hear me?’ McConnery presses a button on the dashboard and the side doors lock themselves. Blunt raps on the window again but McConnery ignores him. ‘I’m going to have to break the glass,’ he tells me, urgently. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got anything hard in that handbag of yours?’

I click it open and pull out a snub nosed revolver. ‘Only this,’ I say, aiming the gun at his head. ‘Sit back in your seat, Mr Blunt.’ He stares at me, dumbfounded. ‘We’ll be arriving very shortly.’

––––––––

A helicopter flies overhead as the car draws up on a patch of waste ground. A heavy line of trees encircle the area, but the helicopter flies over them and descends out of sight into the cone of a nearby volcano.

The Deputy Number One has arrived in San Andress.

McConnery unlocks the door of the Austin Myers and I gesture our captive out onto the gravel. Two henchmen are waiting to escort us into the mountain. Both are armed with automatic weapons.

‘Quite a reception committee,’ Blunt notes dryly.

I push him forward, towards a gap in the trees. A small trail leads up the side of Mount Paluzzi, a long extinct volcano. It will take fifteen minute to reach the entrance. It is uphill all the way and a heavy sun is beating down on us. It is lucky I do not perspire. The henchmen grunt and wheeze as we make our way along the trail.

We come to a halt just before the tree line cuts out. Above us there is only scree. Artificial plants swivel suspiciously as we arrive at a door imbedded in the rock face. I address the nearest tulip. ‘Prisoner and escort.’

‘Identification?’ a disembodied voice reverberates.

‘Fembot 1969/Z49/2A73.’

Blunt glances at me incredulously. ‘You’re a Fembot?’

I reach a hand up and flick the switch behind my left ear. My face plate swings open to reveal two bulging electronic eyes. ‘But of course. You have been naïve, Mr Blunt.’

The secret agent gapes at me. He is so astonished, he raises both his eyebrows at once. If I were a real woman, I would be melting right now. Thankfully I am impervious to his charms, but the same cannot be said for the two henchmen. Even men, it seems, are not immune to Steve Blunt’s extraordinary sexual charisma. Burt Drummond swoons and crashes to the earth. Harry Brosnan, a rugged heterosexual with a wife, three children and a mistress in Pimlico, merely staggers slightly. Blunt takes his chance and smacks Brosnan in the face. He grabs the machine gun but, before he can aim it, I thump the back of his neck and he falls to the ground unconscious.

‘Get up!’ I snap at the henchmen. ‘The Deputy First Leader will hear of your incompetence.’

Drummond and Brosnan rise to their feet, just as a door slides open in the rock. ‘BRING THE PRISONER TO DETENTION CENTRE SEVEN!’ I recognise the voice of Frau Schmidt. The henchmen lift up the unconscious secret agent and, clicking my face back into place, I gesture them inside the volcano. ‘YOU HAVE DONE WELL, FEMBOT SALLY!’

––––––––

The interior of the volcano has been hollowed out. Only a skeleton staff is in attendance at the moment, though the rest are already being shipped out from London. Burlington’s department store will be severely depleted over the next few days. I wonder how Janet and Mabel will cope.

A labyrinth of corridors gives way to a central silo. A huge rocket stands ready on the launch pad, supported by an enormous metal tower. Final preparations are being made for lift off, with the last of the equipment having recently been shipped out from England. The Coxton Diamond will have pride of place in the nose cone of the rocket.

Off to one side, I see the helicopter that brought Frau Schmidt into the volcano. Her assistant, Big Bertha, is talking to the pilot, who is preparing to return to the capital. A siren sounds as the roof of the volcano begins to slide back. ‘WARNING! WARNING! ROOF SECTION OPENING! ROOF SECTION OPENING!’

I make my way to the changing rooms to get out of my travel clothes. At long last, I can put on my real uniform – not the modest minidress of a Burlington’s shop girl but the proud pink negligee of an Organisation Fembot.

Jenny and Michelle are refuelling in an adjacent chamber. I am surprised to see them both here.

‘We came with the Deputy Number One,’ Jenny explains, thrusting out her better-perforning bust with pride. It must have been very cramped in that helicopter. ‘We have been assigned special protection duty.’

It can’t be that special, I think, if the two of you have been detailed. Fembot Michelle’s condition has deteriorated since I last saw