Paper Chase

by Bob Cook

  “With some justification,” the D-G admitted.

  Stringer brought his fist down onto the D-G’s desk.

  “God Almighty! I bet he’s pissing himself laughing at us. What I’d give to take that fucking bubble-gum of his and make him choke on it.”

  “Not now,” the D-G said firmly. “But your time may come. These memoirs are bound to die down: even Ogden must run out of ideas at some point. And when he does, you may have your chance.”

  “I’m looking forward to it,” Stringer said grimly.

  The D-G was struck by a pious afterthought.

  “Of course,” he said, “there would be no question of taking revenge. This would be entirely a matter of what’s best for the security services.”

  “Oh, naturally,” Stringer agreed.

  “Ogden would serve as an example.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Pour encourager les autres.”

  “Right.”

  “Good,” said the D-G. “I’m glad that’s established. Now, when the fuss does die down, what sort of thing will you have in mind?”

  Chapter Seventeen

  OGDEN HAD BEEN to United States before, but only on business. His brief visits had been confined to the British Embassy in Washington, and such organisations as the CIA and NSA. This was his first opportunity to “have a good long dekko”, as he put it, and he intended to make the most of it.

  He flew to Baltimore, where Mr Stompfweiner was waiting to greet him. If it were possible, the newspaper proprietor was an even bigger admirer of Ogden than when he had first spoken to him: the mounting extravagance of Ogden’s memoirs only served to fan the flames of Mr Stompfweiner’s adulation.

  Ogden was installed in a luxury hotel in Pleasant Street, where he was given the kind of reception normally reserved for visiting royalty. Each of the rooms in his suite was marginally smaller than the average banqueting hall, and was furnished in the most preposterous “olde worlde” style, with an excess of mahogany panelling, brass fittings, and so forth. Ogden loved every bit of it.

  For the first few days, most of Ogden’s time was spent meeting local dignitaries at dinners organised by Mr Stompfweiner and his associates, where he was invariably introduced as “Clive Ogden, Superspy”. Unlike Britain, where Ogden and his friends were regarded as troublesome old reprobates, the citizens of Baltimore thought Ogden was a tremendous hero, and they queued up to shake his hand and wish him well.

  Indeed, the contrast between Ogden’s standing here and in Britain did not go unnoticed by his new acquaintances. After assuring Ogden that she was his “number one lifelong fan”, one woman asked, “Why do they hate you so much in England? I mean, they ought to give you a medal or something. Why don’t they want you to talk about what you’ve done?”

  Ogden nodded thoughtfully, blew a large orange gum-bubble, and popped it.

  “A good question, old girl,” he said, “and I’m not sure I can answer it. You see, we British are an odd crew. We insist on understating things, and we detest people who boast about their accomplishments. I suspect my memoirs are regarded as a piece of gross immodesty.”

  “Are you kidding?” the woman said. “You gotta have heroes, Mr Ogden. And you’re a hero, right? I mean, what kind of a country doesn’t have heroes?”

  “Oh, we do have them,” Ogden said. “It’s just that we prefer them to be dead. Like Nelson and Drake.”

  The woman thought about it, and shook her head.

  “No,” she said. “I never heard of them. Anyway, tell me about the time you got cornered by ten Russians in an ice rink, and they came at you with flamethrowers…”

  Apart from society functions, Ogden was booked in for a series of television interviews. To everyone’s amazement, Ogden performed before the cameras like a man born to the task. The producers were a trifle upset by his habit of blowing bubble-gum in the middle of interviews, but no one else seemed to mind. Most importantly, he handled his questioners with skill and confidence. One lady on breakfast television had doubts about Ogden’s truthfulness, and she expressed them in a most aggressive manner.

  “Suppose I say you’re an out-and-out liar?” she suggested.

  “Suppose I say you’re a beautiful woman,” Ogden replied cheerfully. “Then we’d both be talking rot, wouldn’t we?”

  “But Clive, are you seriously asking me to believe that you staged all these amazing feats of espionage, slept with all these beautiful women, and took on half the KGB single-handed?”

  “Not at all. I had two or three colleagues.”

  “Look, Clive,” the woman insisted, “a lot of people have written about the Cold War. How come nobody mentions you?”

  “I agree,” Ogden nodded. “It’s an absurd omission. That’s why I wrote the memoirs.”

  “Sure,” she said drily. “Now, what about this guy Akhmatov. Nobody’s ever heard of him before, have they?”

  “I have,” Ogden said.

  “The Russians haven’t said anything about him, though.”

  “Have you asked them?”

  “Well no,” she admitted, “but—”

  “I think you should. I’d be jolly interested to hear their response.”

  The interviewer shook her head, and with mounting annoyance, she said, “Gimme a break, Clive. Why don’t you admit you’re lying through your teeth?”

  “That would be impossible,” Ogden said, and with a deft manoeuvre he plucked his dentures out of his mouth. “You shee, I don’t have any.”

  The next stop on Ogden’s itinerary was New York, where he met the publisher who proposed to issue his collected memoirs in book form. Since the autobiography was guaranteed of instant success, Ogden was given the sort of reception that would make most writers howl with envy: sumptuous dinners were lavished upon him, and within days he was almost a stone heavier.

  Amidst all this social whirl, Ogden found time to visit an old friend from his Intelligence days. Chester Peacock was an effete old gentleman who lived with over thirty Persian cats in a rambling apartment building in Greenwich Village. Some twenty years before, he had worked for the CIA in London, where he first made Ogden’s acquaintance.

  “Clive, darling,” Peacock exclaimed, as he showed Ogden into his apartment. “What a delicious surprise!”

  “Good to see you, Chester,” Ogden smiled, as five or six cats clustered around his feet. “How’s things?”

  “Oh, fine, fine. Love the memoirs, Clive.”

  “Thank you.”

  “What I keep asking myself,” Peacock said, “is how does he get away with it? It’s all so outrageous.”

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” Ogden chuckled. “Somebody gave me a quote from Julius Caesar: id quod volunt, credunt.”

  “‘They believe what they want to believe’,” Peacock nodded. “I guess so. And if you’re going to tell lies…”

  “Tell big ’uns,” Ogden grinned.

  “Right. I can’t get over some of these stories: every cliffhanging cliché that’s ever been devised—”

  “And a few more besides.”

  “And you even got a death ray in there. A death ray! I mean to say! Even the novelists gave up on that gimmick thirty years ago. Well, it all goes to show: there are lies, damned lies, and the memoirs of British Intelligence agents.”

  “Absolutely,” Ogden agreed. “Tell me Chester, are you still in touch with anyone in the Company?”

  “Oh sure,” Chester said. “I still do some occasional chores for them. There’s a very nice man in the Latin American section who sometimes—why do you ask?”

  “I wondered if you could do a little snooping for me. Nothing too strenuous, of course…”

  “Sounds highly intriguing,” Peacock said. “What is it?”

  “I’m interested in a fellow called Brutus Kyle. He’s an ex-Marine colonel who runs an arms company called Magnum Inc. over in Denver. At least, he did run it: I’m told he’s wound up the business and disappeared.”

  “Yeah? What do you w
ant to know about him?”

  “Everything you can get,” Ogden said. “I’m going to Denver myself in a couple of days to see if anyone there can tell me anything, but I doubt if I’ll have much luck. Apparently Colonel Kyle has done a bedouin impersonation: packed up his tent and vanished in the night.”

  “Why are you so interested?”

  Ogden recounted the story of the missing arms-shipment, and the subsequent murders.

  “I don’t suppose Kyle would be of much use,” Ogden said, “but we’re trying every possible lead, and since I’m visiting the States…”

  “Sure,” Peacock nodded. “What a bizarre little tale. Almost as outlandish as one of your newspaper fictions.”

  “Can you help?”

  Peacock sat back in his armchair and stroked one of the cats, which had settled on his lap. After a pause, he said, “Okay, Clive. Leave it with me. What are you doing over the next couple of days?”

  “As I said, I’m flying to Denver. Then I’m off to San Francisco and Los Angeles to meet some more people about the memoirs.”

  “Busy busy busy.”

  “Oh, I find time for amusement,” Ogden smiled. “I had a splendid time in Baltimore: they’ve got something called the National Aquarium, which I thoroughly recommend. A bloody great fish tank packed full of sharks and things. Great fun.”

  “Where are you going after California?”

  “Home, theoretically. But I could stop by here, if you’d gathered any information by then.”

  “I don’t see why not,” Peacock said. “It shouldn’t take me too long to find out about this Kyle person.”

  “Good show. After I’ve finished in Denver, I should be back from California in ten days. How does that sound?”

  “Fine,” Peacock said. “Come back earlier, if you get bored.”

  “No chance of that,” Ogden smiled. “I expect to have a jolly good time in San Francisco. But the one I’m really looking forward to is LA.”

  Peacock gave a noncommittal shrug.

  “Nice, I guess. If you like Californians.”

  “Oh, to blazes with the Californians,” Ogden said. “I want to see Disneyland.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “ANYTHING TURNED UP?” Beauchamp inquired.

  “Niet, Tovarisch,” said the Laird.

  “Ditto,” Beauchamp sighed. “This gumshoe lark’s a jolly sight harder than it looks.”

  They were working from Beauchamp’s home in Surrey, firstly because Sybil had become fed up with Laird’s malodorous pipe-smoke, and secondly because Beauchamp possessed two phone lines, which were a legacy from his defunct antique business. The two men could therefore pursue their separate inquiries from the same address, and pool ideas whenever necessary. At the moment, neither of them was in good spirits.

  “I’ve tried just about everybody,” the Laird said. “Each is as useless as the next. The people at Lloyd’s register said they haven’t a bloody clue where the SS Flavio could be, and they wouldn’t know how to find out. Pea-brained fools. But everyone else has said more or less the same thing.”

  “What now?”

  “God knows. I suppose if I phone every harbourmaster on the Mediterranean, I must find who’s come across the wretched tub. But that could take months.”

  “Well, you could start with the Italian ports,” Beauchamp suggested. “There can’t be too many of those. And the Flavio does operate from Italy, so it’s bound to return there sooner or later.”

  “Good thinking,” the Laird said. “Unfortunately, my Italian isn’t up to much.”

  “So what? English is supposed to be the international language, isn’t it?”

  “True,” the Laird said reluctantly, “but…well, we don’t rule the waves any more, do we?”

  “Can’t hurt to try.”

  “No. I’ll do that, then. How about you?”

  “I’m floundering,” Beauchamp admitted. “In the last two days, I must have spoken to a hundred different arms dealers. Not one of them has ever heard of a Dutchman called Pieter Lemiers.”

  The Laird pensively scratched one of his sideboards.

  “Wrong tack,” he said. “You’re going over well-trodden ground. That investigator, what was his name—Hopkins, did the same as you, and found nothing. Whoever Lemiers is, I don’t think he’s an arms trader.”

  “But he managed to persuade Carter that he was.”

  The Laird shrugged.

  “The other night, the Vicar managed to persuade someone that he was a Telecom engineer. He bloody well isn’t, though.”

  “Point taken,” Beauchamp said. “But what are we left with? Lemiers is Dutch, and he knows about shipping things. That narrows down the field to about five million people.”

  “He also knows about forged end-user certificates. There can’t be too many Dutch people in that position.”

  “Fair enough,” Beauchamp said, “but if he’s not in the arms business—”

  “Let’s just say he knows about shipping things illegally. Now, if the man’s a criminal, he may have a record.”

  “That’s a thought,” Beauchamp said. “How would we find out?”

  “Haven’t the foggiest,” the Laird smiled. “I just get the ideas. It’s up to you peasants to make ’em work.”

  “Very well,” Beauchamp said. “I’ll think it over.”

  The Laird went back to his telephone to begin phoning the Italian ports, and Beauchamp spent the next half hour in silent contemplation. Perhaps, he thought, an old Intelligence contact might help. It seemed unlikely: he’d never had dealings with Dutch Intelligence, and he knew nobody who had. Furthermore, this was a criminal matter, which was wholly outside Beauchamp’s experience. Just as he was about to write the idea off altogether, something occurred to him.

  Beauchamp did know a policeman—a Superintendent Day of the Fraud Squad, whose acquaintance he had made during his time in the antiques trade. Beauchamp had been offered a large number of Victorian bronze figurines at knockdown prices. He recognised them as forgeries, and refused the offer, but other dealers were less fortunate. Superintendent Day led the investigation, and interviewed Beauchamp in the course of inquiries. The two men got on quite well, and Day later became one of Beauchamp’s regular clients. Perhaps he was worth a try.

  Beauchamp looked inside his wallet and found Day’s card. Three minutes later, the two men were speaking over the phone.

  “This is a pleasant surprise, Jeremy,” Day said. “I thought you’d retired with your millions.”

  “Well, you’re half right,” Beauchamp smiled. “I am retired. And this is nothing to do with antiques, actually.”

  “No?”

  “No. I was wondering if I could ask a favour of you…”

  Beauchamp explained that he was trying to trace a Dutchman called Pieter Lemiers on behalf of a friend, but was having no luck.

  “There’s a possibility that Lemiers has a criminal record. If so, the Dutch police might know his present whereabouts.”

  Beauchamp could hear a heavy intake of breath at the other end of the line.

  “Is this something I should know about, Jeremy?”

  “Not at all,” Beauchamp said. “I don’t think Lemiers has committed any crimes recently.”

  “If you say so, old son. But this is a tall order, you know.”

  “Is it?”

  “I’m not supposed to give you the contents of our records, never mind those of the Dutch.”

  “I suppose not,” Beauchamp said. “In that case, I’m sorry to have bothered you—”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute. I didn’t say I was helpless. What do you know about this guy Lemiers?”

  “Nothing, beyond what I’ve told you. He was in Paris on the dates I mentioned, and since then he’s disappeared.”

  “Okay,” Day said. “Leave it with me. I’m not promising anything, mind.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I’ll get back to you tomorrow, all right?”

 
; “Fine,” Beauchamp said. “Many thanks.”

  He put the phone down, and looked up to see the Laird grinning from sideboard to sideboard.

  “Eureka,” the Laird said, triumphantly waving his pipe.

  “Found the Flavio?”

  “On my fourth attempt. It’s in the port of Livorno—Leghorn, to you—and it’s due to leave in two days.”

  “Congratulations,” Beauchamp said. “What now?”

  The Laird thought about it, and said, “I suppose I’d better go there, hadn’t I?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  MR BLAKE’S PHONE was tapped according to a well-established system. Whenever his line was in use, the voices would automatically set off a tape recorder in the tapping centre. The tapes would be transcribed by one of the typists and sent off to the ‘client’ in MI5. At the same time, two gentlemen called Wayne and Kevin took turns to listen to the phone calls as they occurred, on the off-chance that something might be said which would require an immediate response from the client.

  Wayne and Kevin found most of Mr Blake’s calls boring. In fact, they found most people’s calls boring, but Mr Blake’s were exceptionally dull. Mr Blake spoke in the kind of-dense, gloomy voice that could make the most incorrigible optimist dial for the Samaritans. Furthermore, most of his calls were to and from the medical authorities, and it was clear that Mr Blake was far from well. Wayne and Kevin did not know the precise nature of Mr Blake’s complaint, but they understood that it required copious amounts of drugs, few of which seemed to do Mr Blake any good. All in all, they found Mr Blake a depressing fellow, and they wished that he would stop paying his phone bills and be disconnected.

  At once, however, things began to look up. There was a new voice on Mr Blake’s phone, and Wayne and Kevin found it a great improvement. For one thing, the voice was female, and belonged to someone called Sharon. Of course, it was not the eavesdroppers’ task to interpret what they heard—that was the client’s job—but they could not help speculating on this new development. They supposed that Mr Blake’s illness had taken a turn for the worse, and that he was now bedridden and being looked after by a nurse.