The Sterling Directive

by Tim Standish

  He smoked his cigarette in silence for a few moments, then dropped it to the floor and stubbed it out under his foot. ‘As my colleague has already said, by returning before the end of the agreed period, you have forfeited your freedom and, regrettably, your life.’ He pulled on his gloves picked up his hat. ‘The only question remaining is whether we merely have you hanged for murder or make the case to have you shot for treason. Do give that some thought this evening, won’t you?’ And then, turning to my first interrogator: ‘The Captain has some weighty thinking to do. Let’s put him somewhere where he won’t be disturbed.’ He put on his hat. ‘Good night, Captain. We’ll talk again tomorrow.’ He walked through the door and I heard his footsteps recede and another door close before the Inspector spoke, calling the guards in and telling them to take me to the secure wing.

  When they did, I was surprised to be directed not back out into the courtyard but through the door opposite and along a corridor to another spiral staircase which, at the guards’ direction, I walked down.

  As we walked, I thought back to the idea of Cooper being a gun-runner, somehow involved in treason. It seemed fanciful, but if it was true that might explain why she cooked up a story with Edgar to have me blamed for the death. They would have known that my family had enough influence to hush things up, and to avoid any undue publicity. But if that was the case, why call the police, why not just call Julius first? My head ached under the bandage. I couldn’t make sense of it. I wondered whether, if I was careful, I could use the interrogation, the questions Fuller asked me, to try and work out more of the background before he got bored of the whole thing and had me shot for treason. Or just shot.

  We passed two doors on the way down before reaching a third where the staircase ended, and which began to slowly open inwards as we reached the bottom step. Through the doorway I could see a small room.

  Curved whitewashed walls stretched either side of a folding table behind which sat a uniformed guard. Arrayed in front of him was a series of riveted brass cubes and what looked like some sort of control panel. The guard looked up as we entered and pointed to our right with a curt ‘Number three.’ A shove to my shoulder encouraged me in that direction and, as we moved away from the desk, I could see that the rest of the room’s wall was punctuated by a series of rounded metal doors that were set tight into the brickwork and that, unsettlingly, put me in mind of the kind of thing one would expect to see subdividing the lower compartments of a ship. The doors had numbers stencilled on them and, at the one labelled ‘3’, my guards stood either side of me and indicated that I should wait. After a few moments there was a motorised rumble from behind the door followed by the sound of rushing water. A minute or so later the noise stopped, and the door opened to reveal a low-ceilinged corridor with an identical door at the other end. The floor, walls and ceiling, I couldn’t help noticing, were all dripping wet.

  ‘In you go.’

  I had to stoop to go through the doorway and into the corridor. When I was halfway along it the door closed itself again behind me. Thick, rubberised cables ran along the ceiling, held in place by metal staples. In the delay before the next door opened, I had a short moment of fear as I imagined that this was no cell, merely a cheap method of execution, and I spent what seemed like an age with only this thought and the sour, nose-wrinkling tang of the Thames for company before the door in front opened and I completed my journey, stepping through the iron door frame and down into a metal chamber.

  It was small and an almost perfect sphere; not quite big enough for a man to stand up or to lie down in. Behind me the door swung shut with a dull metallic thud and from beyond it I heard the rush and gurgle of the corridor refilling. I sighed heavily and slumped against the door, finally acknowledging what I should have admitted the moment I landed: I really should not have come back.

  5. Sound

  We were at the Pickwick’s in Montreal airport.

  It was a cold and bright October afternoon, a month or so before my planned trip to London. Gus was having what he insisted on calling a ‘run ashore’ and we had agreed to contact our brother Julius so that he could have one last attempt at persuading us to give up the idea of me returning. Through the window behind Gus an airliner was tying up to one of the mooring posts. He sighed and took a deep breath. Breathed out contentedly. ‘That,’ he declared at a cheery volume, ‘was bloody marvellous.’

  The waiter paused as he cleared the last fragments of our not-quite-finished Basket Lunch from the table. ‘Would you gentlemen have room for dessert?’

  Before I could say no, Gus jumped in with a swift ‘Pair of brandies, there’s a good chap. Large ones. And coffee. Charlie do you want coffee?’ I shook my head. ‘Well bring me two anyway, the tiny ones, and plenty of sugar.’ Gus sighed again and burped loudly. ‘I love this place. Good food for a chain, bloody good service and a bloody good view of things.’

  He shifted round with a grunt to look at where the liner was now moored; metal gangways were being wheeled out fore and aft by men in red overalls, white maple leaves printed on their backs. Dots of colour against black tarmac and the vast grey bulk of the liner. ‘Just in from Frankfurt. One of the latest models, very light, they get an extra three knots out of it, apparently.’ He beckoned me forward. ‘See those bulges on the underside of the fins?’ He glanced back at me, waited till I nodded then continued. ‘Counter-rocket munitions. Flares, shrapnel clusters, that kind of thing. After Frankfurt they started fitting them to all their civilian ’ships. Not much help against aerial attack of course but keeps them safe from anything from the ground.’ He shook his head, turned back as the waiter arrived with our drinks. ‘They’re idiots if they think Bismarck will ever back down. Old or not, next year, mark my words, he’ll find the ringleaders, beat them bloody and go looking for a war to keep the people’s mind off the price of bread.’

  The waiter came back with our drinks, darkly golden liquid in small French-style glasses. He placed them carefully down, added two espressos down by my brother’s. Gus reached for his brandy, raised his glass. ‘Absent friends.’ I raised my own, nodded at him and took a sip. Gus knocked his back, squinted disappointedly at the empty glass and waved it in the direction of the waiter. Outside, passengers were starting to emerge, heads down and hats held firm against the wind as they walked across the gangways to the terminal.

  The waiter came over with the brandy. ‘Anything else gentlemen? Are you sure I can’t tempt you to a pudding? We have a very fine trifle?’

  I shook my head. ‘That’s fine, thank you. But if you could bring us a teleprint. We’ve booked a connection.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’ He walked across to the other side of the restaurant and disappeared through a door.

  My brother squinted at his watch.

  ‘What time were we supposed to be on, can you remember?’

  I thought for a moment. ‘Three.’

  Gus grunted. ‘Bet the first thing he types is that we’re late.’

  A minute or so later the waiter came back with a machine and plugged it into the socket set in the centre of table. It was relatively modern, a single unit with a keyboard, a small mechanical display a few lines tall and a built-in printer. We waited for a few moments while it ticked and tapped itself into life. A red light came on next to the display which rippled across from dark to light grey, to show a short a string of letters:

  Pickw_mtl>

  Gus’s hand landed on my back. ‘You do it old boy. I’ve got no idea how this stuff works.’

  I flicked the printer switch to ‘off’ and typed in the command to connect us, hit the return key and waited. The letters disappeared and a single black dot strobed across the display.

  The machine clattered to life, turning incoming dots and dashes into letters then a short line of words that appeared on the display.

  Mdx1_ldn>U R LATE.

  Gus barked triumphantly. ‘Tell him the clocks have changed here for farming time or something.’

  I started ty
ping.

  Pickw_mtl>APOLOGIES. NAVY ALWAYS LATE. RUM. Mdx1_ldn>DRUNK? Pickw_mtl>MERRY.

  ‘Ha! I’m obviously not drinking quickly enough. Waiter! A mug of your finest ale if you please.’

  Mdx1_ldn>IMPERATIVE CEASE VISIT. Pickw_mtl>IMPOSSIBLE. ALL IN PROGRESS. Mdx1_ldn>MOST IMPERATIVE CEASE VISIT.

  ‘Not very eloquent is he? I thought he could come up with better than that, given all the time he spends hanging around with politicians.’

  ‘It’s cost-saving. They charge per character.’

  ‘Do they?’ Gus thought for a moment. ‘And who’s paying, us or him?’

  ‘Julius is.’

  ‘Hmph.’ Gus leaned over me, exuding brandy like a closely worn cologne. ‘Let me have a go.’ The keyboard shook as his hands hammered down.

  Pickw_mtl>TEH THING IS BLOOOOOODY WELL ONM WHATEVER YOU SAY JC ALL SORTED DONOT WORRY NO PRONLEMS AL WILL B WELL LA LA LA LA LA DHIATENSORPWFULCMYZXKGBVQJ!!!!!!!!!!

  Julius’s response was unsurprisingly brief:

  Mdx1_ldn>MOST IMPERATIVE CEASE VISIT.

  ‘Bloody bean counter.’

  The words held on the display as Julius Clarence Maddox, our younger brother (and current Executive Director of Maddox Maritime Global) waited for our response. I knew what was going through his head – he’d already had this conversation with Gus in person earlier that year. Elections were looming, the Tories were looking very beatable now that Gordon had thrown his hat into the ring and the last thing Julius (and the company’s highly lucrative state contracts) needed was a potential scandal involving one of his brothers. Therefore, though he regretted the necessity for caution, he could not in any way permit me to travel back to see our father, regardless of the seriousness of his illness. Gus’s repeated insistence that the trip would be short, and that our scheme to render me undetectable would be foolproof, had fallen on stony ground.

  Mdx1_ldn>ELECTIONS. VISIT UNTENABLE.

  Gus reached over again, more calmly this time and typing well enough despite his earlier claims.

  Pickw_mtl>VISIT ON. ALL ARRANGED. ALL WILL BE WELL. Mdx1_ldn>UTMOST. REPEAT. STRESS UTMOST IMPORTANCE NOT COME. Pickw_mtl>MADDOX OR MOUSE?

  Gus’s final sally: a teasing challenge from our childhood.

  Mdx1_ldn>M

  The screen froze. The machine’s transmission hung, cycling dah dah, dah dah, dah dah over and over again.

  M. M. M.

  *

  I woke in the cell, twisted into the curve of the riveted metal floor, ill-taken sleep clamming my eyelids. Shoulders stiff and limbs aching, I tried to sit up. There was no camera here, though two lights clung to its ceiling in closely wired cages and a small loudspeaker was installed just above the door that I had stooped in through.

  I had discovered earlier, by thumping my way up the walls, that, though submerged, only a small section of the roof was actually in contact with the river, with the majority of the cell buried below the mud of the Thames. It was damnably cold, cramped and insufferably uncomfortable: ideal for helping traitors recover their memory. Escape was unthinkable.

  M.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and rubbed my hands across them to rub away the last few grains of sleep.

  M.

  It took a second for me to realise that the sound was real.

  I listened carefully: two long taps, M in Morse code. I stood, hunched in the centre of the cell, and focused on the sound. I waited for a few moments and the sound, the pace, the time never varied. I realised that it was being caused by something tapping sharply against the cell’s roof. Someone was out there, underwater and trying to communicate.

  I tapped out a reply against the roof: long, short, long. R. Roger. Ready to receive. The M stopped.

  Q…R…K…?

  A Q code. And one I recognised. I said a silent thank you to my first CO in Canada, whose insistence that all officers spend time learning to man the wire had driven the mess up the wall at the time. QRK: how well could I hear them? I rapped out a five against the roof. I didn’t get their response at first, had to ask them to repeat it a few times before I understood what they were saying.

  S…T…A…N…D…C…L…E…A…R…R…O…O…F

  I paused before responding. There was only one reason they would tell me to get clear of the roof. Whoever was out there was planning to come in and join me. I tapped back RCD, received and pressed myself into the scant cover provided by the door frame.

  Q…R…V…?

  Was I ready? My signals knowledge wasn’t up to the task of translating the immediate responses that came to mind, with the exception perhaps of the most direct one and I wasn’t sure that that would have been particularly helpful. So, instead, I rapped the QRV code back to them on the roof near the door to confirm my readiness.

  I was halfway through the dots of the V when a bright beam of sparks lanced in through the roof, sending a circle of molten metal drops hissing to the floor. I tried not to think about the heat, closed my eyes, pressed myself as far into the door as I could and waited for it to stop. It took less than a minute before the hissing ended with a terrific, deafening clang and a rush of water that poured in and filled the floor to just above my ankles. I opened my eyes cautiously to see that an opening slightly larger than a manhole had been cut through the inches-thick chamber roof, steam rising from the edges. Hanging down the middle of this hole was a rope ladder and stretched between two of the rungs was a sign, stencilled with luminescent paint:

  ‘Ne paniquez pas. Vous êtes sauvés.’

  And underneath, in smaller letters:

  ‘Ascendez-vous.’

  I stepped round to face the ladder and climbed up carefully and looked through the hole into a squat, domed cylinder, little more than an oversized and elongated diving helmet. Pulling myself up, I rested on the edge of the hole and saw that there was more luminescent writing near the top of the chamber.

  ‘Suivez les instructions numérotées.’ There were indeed three numbered instructions, accompanied by simplistic pictures of the activity they described.

  Apposer la masque.

  Maintenez fermement les poignées.

  Appuyez sur le bouton rouge.

  I tugged at what I now realised was a mask, set between the two handles that protruded from the roof of the cylinder and pulled it down towards me. It seemed to be some sort of simple aqualung, attached to the metal with a thick rubber tube, and I put it on, checking for a flow of air before tightening the straps that held it in place. I grasped the handles and steeled myself for step three, staring at ‘le bouton rouge’ in front of me.

  Below me, in the cell I heard the sound of pumps starting up. My captors coming to investigate the noise. I had a choice, stay here and hang or take my chances with my, apparently French, rescuers.

  I pushed the button.

  Nothing happened.

  I stood, gripping tight knuckled to the handles as I stared at the writing in front of me. I let go with my left hand and pushed the button again, holding it down this time and a rapid circle of explosive snaps rattled around the joint between cylinder and cell. I just had time to disentangle my legs from the ladder before I was wrenched away from the cell and dragged up, body and legs buffeted violently by the dark green torrent that rushed into the cell below. I closed my eyes and cursed my ineptitude, lunacy and bloody-mindedness as I was dragged clear of the cell and through the rage of river water like a sounding lead, legs dragging behind me as I bumped through the murky darkness of the Thames.

  Inside the pitch blackness of the rescue helmet I tried to breathe slowly, heart hammering and fingers cramping as I held on for grim death. Something weighty clanged against the outside and I held my breath, deafened, expecting a crack and wondering how watertight the breathing mask was. The apparatus held and ten seconds or so later I felt the pull lessen and my pace slow before the angle changed and realised I was being winched upwards, out of the water. A faint red light from above just allowed me to just make out the surface of the water b
elow and, off to either side, the concave slopes of a pair of ships’ hulls. Then I was moving up through a square trapdoor into a red-lit chamber loud with the hum of winding gears and finally, thankfully, came to a halt. Hands grasped my shoulders and pulled me to one side.

  ‘It’s alright, you can let go.’ A man’s voice.

  With some difficulty I managed to unfasten my fingers and, hands numb, forced the mask off and dropped the few feet to the floor, almost collapsing. I staggered, limbs shaking, but managed to stay standing. Thames water dripped from my clothes onto what I now saw was some sort of parqueted flooring.

  ‘Here.’ A thick white towel was pushed into my chest and I started to dry myself off as best as I could while my rescuer stood in silence.

  Tall and broad shouldered, with a pugnaciously blunt face, he looked like he could more than hold his own in a fight and wore a scowl that suggested he was ready for one. At the same time there was a sharpness about his eyes that hinted at something more than a bruiser and I made a mental note not to underestimate him. He wore the waistcoat and trousers from a tweed three-piece, the sleeves of his shirt rolled to his elbows, exposing skin long tanned by warmer climes and a coloured, serpentine tattoo that curled its way down the underside of his right arm. A boxy, large-calibre automatic pistol was clearly visible in a shoulder holster under his left. ‘You all right?’ he asked.

  ‘You’re not French?’

  ‘French?’ He paused, looked puzzled for a second. ‘Oh, the gear. No, all we could get at short notice. Plus a little red herring for our friends over in Millbank. Are you okay?’ Just a little sharpness of the East End in an accent that would have been harder and rougher once, but that something – time, travel, practice – had worn almost smooth over the years. Almost.

  I checked myself over. ‘Good enough.’ I wrapped the towel around my shoulders, took a breath of air, coughed. There had almost certainly been occasions in Canada when I had felt colder and more bedraggled than this but, in the moment, they escaped me. I folded my arms across my chest, stuffed my hands in my armpits and shivered.