by Gavin Lyall
"He's got a bit of a problem. "
"Yes?"
"He came to me because he couldn't think of anybody else he could really trust."
"Yes?" Maxim said again, feeling a chill in the warm day.
"I thought you might… like being where you are, you could give him some sort of advice.
"Jim, where I am these days is Number 10 Downing Street. It isn't the carefree life of Britain's Modern Army any more: I can't take a piss now without worrying if it'll cause Questionsinthe House "
Caswell nodded sympathetically. "Like, I don't know what you do there…" then waited for Maxim to tell him while Maxim waited for him to realise he wasn't going to be told anything more Eventually, Caswell went on. "I just think you ought to know what this lad says, or somebody up there should know…"
"Jim, is this chap of yours in trouble' – Army trouble?"
Caswell clutched his cigarette by his forefinger over his clenched hand, the way he always did, and let a smoke clouddrift towards the babbling tea-tents. "That sort of thing."
"He's on the trot," Maxim guessed. "Oh Christ, Jim, you can get a district court for that, aiding a deserter… no, I suppose not you, not now."
"It's a criminal offence for civilians, too."
"Good. I wouldn't like to think it was only me going to suffer. Has he been gone twenty-one days?"
"No Not yet."
There was an unofficial unadmitted rule that if you came back inside three weeks you weren'tjumped on so hard. After that time, the prosecution might argue that you'd crossed the great divide between being absent without leave, orjust a little late, and true desertion, planning to stay away for good.
Even so, the Special Investigation Branch of the Military Police would have been told, and local coppers asked to snoop into your favourite pubs and knock on your mum's door at odd hours… It was a slow, sad business, a crime without a victim, but marguably it had to remain a crime. And it could leave an indelible stain on a soldier's career.
"Why hasn't he gone back?"
"He doesn't really know his own officers. He'd only been back with the battalion a couple of months, after three years with Sass. You know how things can change."
"Where is his battalion7"
"Soltau "
"Germany'
'He came back from Rhine Army7He'll have a rough time explaining how hejust lost his way back from the Bterkeller."
Caswell smiled wearily, as if he'd heard that many times already, or even said it himself. "Yes. He wants to go back."
"Has he got woman trouble?" That was usually the reason.
"No. Not exactly that… he'll tell you."
"Jim, all I can do is try and persuade him to go back, then tell the MPs where he is if he doesn't."
"I'd like you to hear what he says. "
"You aren't doing this just because he was a good man in Armagh, are you?"
"He didn't save my life or any bullshit like that No – he's just career. A real committed soldier."
"He sounds like it, " Maxim said sourly. But even now, you still got a few, the odd ones who came into the Army on an unwritten contract that would turn the devil cool with envy They usually had no homes to go back to, they wrote no wills and made no allotments of pay, they rarely married and always made a horrible complicated cock-up of it if they did They simply did everything the Army asked of them, and expected it to be everything in return: a job, home, family, friends, and maybe six feet of regimental ground at the end of the day They had one other clause in the contract- they never deserted. They had nowhere else to go.
In Downing Street you counted the corners and priced self-interest down to six decimal places You forgot about people like Ron Blagg "All right," Maxim said "Lead me to him." It was odd how bright the day had seemed a few minutes ago "Tell me something about yourself," Maxim suggested, trying to start in low gear But Blagg immediately looked even more suspicious "You camem as aboy soldier, didn't you7" prompted Caswell.
"Yees," Blagg said reluctantly. "I joined when I was just sixteen, like."
They were standing, not sitting since there was only one chair, around the work-bench in the armoury of the village drill hall, watching Caswell sort out the afternoon's weapons It was a tiny cell-like room with a high barred window on the back wall, and it smelled of eighty years of gun oil, dust and old leather. The only light was a shaded lamp on the bench that made Blagg's face look hollow and spooky with its upward reflections.
When it wasn't looking spooky, his face was all stickmg-out bits: big ears, a jutting jaw and lower lip, heavy brows. His pale hair was cut shorter than it needed to be and he wore a uniform of faded jeans, a denim shirt and training shoes. He was only twenty-five but had spent the last nine years in the Army, which had done something to wear down a jerky South London accent "What made you choose the Army?" Maxim asked.
Blagg started an 'I dunno' shrug, then smiled quickly and slyly. "Well, you know I'm a bit of a bastard, sir. Fact is, I'm exactly one hundred per cent of a bastard. The real thing My mother, bless her whoever she is, she dumped me on the Council when I was eighteen months. They unloaded me the moment I was sixteen. "
"Did you want to stay?" Caswell asked dryly, his stubby fingers working with the precision of a pianist's as he stripped the bolt out of a rifle.
"Did I buggery," Blagg muttered.
"And you've worn the same cap badge right through?" Maxim asked.
"Yes," Blagg said aggressively, knowing the question behind the question. "Yes, all the way, except for my time with Sass."
So he hadn't been a troublemaker, shunted from regiment to regiment by commanders who didn't want to be caught holding him when the music stopped.
"Ilike the buggering Army," he added gloomily.
"But it's there and you're here," Maxim said.
After a pause, Blagg said. "Yes," then again. "Yes."
"Major Maxim can't do anything for you without you telling him the whole story," Caswell said. "And I don't think he'll be making any promises then. But he'll listen. "
Blagg chewed a speck of dirt out from underneath a fingernail. "Yes. Well… I'm with the Battalion at Soltau, I've been back with them just over two months; I had some leave and there was this course I went on… Then I met this woman, Mrs Howard. I'd met her first in Armagh, that was over a year ago. I don't think it was her real name, you know7She didn't have a wedding ring. Captain Fairbrother, he brought her along. You'd know him, sir."
Maxim nodded, vaguely recalling a thin, elegant Guards officer who had been at SAS's London end.
"Well, he took me to meet her. He said she was from Intelligence, I mean The Firm, not Int Corps. I wouldn't say she was English, she ha4 a sort of accent. Could have been German, like. She was going to meet this bloke from acrossthe border, a Mick, and she was going to have some money for him. Quite a bit. She wanted somebody to go along and make sure everything was really kosher. "
"Why you particularly?"
"Captain Fairbrother said it was because I could use a pistol. It's on my records."
"You went in plain clothes?"
"Yes, sir."
"Did you have any back-up?"
"No." Blagg's face was blank and calm. "The Captain thought it would be best withjust a man and a woman. It was real Provocountry, that. Three or four strange men, they'd have stuck out like a spare prick at a wedding."
Blagg had guts, if not much sense of self-preservation, walking single-handed into a set-up like that, without any of the real spook-craft 'Mrs Howard' would have been taught. Usually in such a job you had four well-armed mates never more than a hundred yards away.
Maxim asked Caswell: "Did you ever meet this Mrs Howard?"
"No. Never heard of her until just now. We just got the word from Command that Captain Fairbrother wanted Ron for a week or so and off he went. He didn't tell us anything when he came back." That last was a small but perhaps helpful compliment.
"And thejob went off as planned?"
&nbs
p; "The Mick didn't turn up the first time. She said she'd have it set up again and we went back three mghts later and it was all right. That was all."
So Blagg had actually gone intwice When the first time could easily have been a rehearsal, for the other side to see how many men came along, and then three days to rig an ambush.
Blagg must have guessed what Maxim was thinking. "She said it was important, sir. And Captain Fairbrother. "
Caswell glanced at Maxim with a lift of his eyebrows and a small humourless smile, then went back to the rifles.
'I see. And d'you mean she turned up again -m Germany?"
"That's right. At Soltau."
Chapter 3
It began quite simply a message delivered to the barracks asking if he could ring Mrs Howard for a chat about old times. For a moment the name meant nothing – far more memorable things had happened during his time in Armagh – but then he remembered and was puzzled. There had been nothing personal in their brief meetings, she had been a trained professional, saying almost nothing during the drives down towards the border but chatting and smiling happily while they waited ina café. Mostly they had talked about films, he recalled, she looked at very little television and he hadn't read any of the books she mentioned Well, it was only a phone call. He got a German woman answering and asked distinctly for "Frau Howard, bitte There was a pause, and the voice said "Ja, Mrs Howard," which convinced him that 'Mrs Howard' was just a code-name, not even a fake identity She came on a few seconds later "Mr Blagg7How are you' Very good of you to call so soon Can we meet, perhaps' Are you free now7"
A little dazed, he found himself committed to meeting her in an hour's time ata cafénear the station. He could just visualise it a family place where British soldiers hardly ever went -which was probably why she had chosen it. He was still puzzled, but not yet apprehensive/ He wasn't even sure he'd recognise her, but of course he did. Even so, she looked different from the timem Armagh. There she'd been almost middle-aged and stolid, red-cheeked and fluffy fair hair. Now her hair was scraped back in a sort of bun, giving her a leaner look, her clothes were more expensive, though she still had a full and somehow loose figure inside them.
She could easily be German, she certainly sounded like it when ordering him a beer. For five minutes they talked about films and how was he fittingmwith the Battalion again, then she said simply "We would like you to do another job, just like last time "
By then, he'd been half expecting that, but still didn't know what to say.
She went on "We are sorry there is so little time now. But we did not know how this job would go, when I came to Germany "
"When is it, then?"
"Friday – tomorrow – if you can. If not, perhaps we can make it for Saturday "
That was no problem The training programme was on schedule – the Battalion hadn't been turned inside out by a Northern Ireland tour for the past two years – and he could be free from about five o'clock But – "Good," Mrs Howard said "Can you bring a bag, a suitcase, some clothes' And some identification, not the Army. Do you have a passport7"
Most soldiers didn't bother to get passports until they married and thought of family holidaysm Spain. But the SAShad insisted on Blagg having one – occupation given as 'Government official' – in case it needed to shoot him off incognito to somewhere to hell and gone, just as it insisted on keeping him immunised against so many unlikely diseases that his left arm was usually as rigid as Jim Caswell's.
"I'm all right," he said, "but -"
"We may have to stay at a hotel, a motel. That will be no problem. Good. Now – would you like to call Captain Fairbrother? Just to check that I am telling the truth? I will understand – I want you to be sure, quite sure I can give you a London number, but can you please do it on a secure line? You understand that, I know "
He thought of the usual queue of soldiers outside the single telephone box inside the barrack gate, jingling 5 DM coins and looking at their watches every few seconds. Asecure line? Hecould ask the company commander, but he could also imagine the answer. He chuckled Being SAStrained gave you a glimpse behind secret doors that some officers didn't even know existed. And those two evenings out along the border had convinced him of her background.
"It's okay," he reassured her. "No problem. But I don't have a gun."
"I will bring one. A pistol or a revolver?"
"A revolver, if it's not too big. "
"Of course." She smiled. Her teeth were large and rather wide-spaced, but very white. How old was she? Growing up without a mother or aunts, he was bad at guessing older women's ages. She could be forty or fifty, almost anything. She was just a different generation.
"I will be here, outside the station, at six tomorrow. In a blue Volkswagen Polo. Okay?"
When she'd gone, he stayed sipping his beer and wondering. He wished he could check with somebody. Captain Fairbrother, even Jim Caswell But if it was no more a problem than the last time, he'd have forgotten all about it in a month. And this wasn't Provocountry.
They drove south-west, roughly paralleling the East-West border, not getting significantly close to it. They were heading, she said, for Bad Schwarzendorn, a little spa town just into the hills beyond Paderborn. A strange little place; it had one of these great walls of blackthorn twigs fitted onto a wooden framework at least ten metres high. Pumps pushed the spa water up so that it trickled down the twigs and partly evaporated, making the water even thickermminerals, before it was fed into the town baths. The twigs turned to rigid fossils, and you could sit in the downwind side of the great wall and breathe the cool damp air blowing out of it. That was supposed to do you good, too. The Germans were still great believers in spa cures. Half, more than half, the patients were paid for by health insurance schemes, and most of the local guest houses had contracts with one company or another. You bathed, you walked the neatly laid out paths in the pine woods, you breathed the salty air – then sat down to a huge Fleischschnitte mit Bratkartoffeln. She grinned, rocking her head from side to side. There was nothing the Germans would rather spend money on than alternately wrecking and repairing their health.
Just before it got dark, he had her stop the car on a lonely stretch of road and fired the gun out of the window at a tall flower sticking up in a field about ten yards away. The third shot exploded the head in a flutter of purple petals. The revolver was about what he'd expected: A Spanish near-copy of a.38 Colt, with a heavy trigger pull. He reloaded and they drove on.
"I could not get a holster," she said. "Did you want one?"
"No. They're like clothes: no use if you don't choose them yourself. Pocket's best, otherwise… How're we going to play this?"
She lit a cigarette and thought for a moment. "We will be apart. He does not expect you, but he is suspicious. He is about sixty years, small, fat, with chins A big nose, the gold half-glasses, not much hair and he will dress like a businessman. Also he will have with him a newspaper."
"Just him by himself?"
She went straight on past the question "There is a bigcaféthat is part of the Park Hotel, some of it inside, some outside. I will sit down there at ten, outside if it is warm enough, if there are others. He will come past, make sure that I see him, then I follow him. I think he will be alone; I do not know who he could get to come with him, but… that is what I want you to worry about. To watch me, not him The man himself does not worry me "
Perhaps he should have asked why, then, but instead he picked on a more obvious problem. "He could take you to a car."
"I will not get in."
"D'you think he'll be there before you'"
She flashed him a quick smile of professional camaraderie. "I think so So if you can go in first, you see him, then come out and…" politely she left the details of his work to him.
"It's a payoffjob?"
"We will both have newspapers. But he may need time to read mine." From that, Blagg assumed she would have a wadof money in the folds of her paper. Almost exactly the way it had b
een on the border The other border.
She said suddenly, but mostly to herself "He may not be ready to trust me…"
"If he's come across the border-"
"No, no, no He is not from there "
Then she shut up for the rest of the drive Bad Schwärzendem wassmall, elderly, rich, very clean, very quiet Mrs Howard gave him an idea of the place by driving slowly around the flat unfenced park that was the core of the whole town. Almost half a mile square, the trim grass was criss-crossed with wide paths and avenues of lime trees, brightly lit by modernistic street lamps. And running diagonally across the middle was the huge blackthorn hedge, foursquare and utterly meaningless. Just a wall half a kilometre long, running dead straight from nowhere to nowhere and reaching way up beyond the lamplight.
It might cure anything you could name, Blagg thought, but who in hell could have thought of building itmthe first place?
They parkedjust out of sight of the hotel, and he walked on ahead It was only half past nine on a mild early summer evening, but already most of the residents were in bed or immobilised by Fleischschnitte A few elderly couples doddered like moths around the blaze of light that was thecaféand a few more sat solidly at the tables, but it was a small crowd and Blagg felt obvious, apart from being generations too young. He went in through the hotel itself and came into thecaféfrom the back.
The man he was looking for was immediately obvious, crouched at a back table beside a large potted plant, complete with a folded newspaper, gold glasses and a bad case of nerves. He looked so obvious that Blagg spent the next twenty minutes covertly watching for a second man, but couldn't identify one At ten to ten he walked out towards the park and kept strolling around-a moving man is less suspicious than one standing still – then bought an ice cream from a stall A strolling, eating man is positively innocent.
He saw Mrs Howard go in; five minutes later, the fat mancarneout, walking awkwardly because he wasn't sure at what pace to go. Mrs Howard followed, moving easily, glancing naturally up to check the weather, then down at her wnst-vvatch. They went on past the ornamental fountain and the rows of plastic chairs in front of the bandstand and on down the far side of the wall.