The Executioners

by Philip McCutchan

  Nevertheless he had a feeling, a nasty feeling, that he had not been brought to the Embassy just to hear this. And he was right. The preliminaries over, the First Secretary got down to the nitty gritty.

  “There’s just one other thing,” he said. He turned as a discreet knock came at the door. A little earlier he had pressed a button in a box on his desk and spoken briefly into it; and now a servitor had appeared with menu cards, one of which was handed to Hedge. “Just a little something,” Roberts-White murmured. “The daube de boeuf à la provençale’s rather good usually.” They settled for that, after prawns with cream, brandy sauce and rice, and Roberts-White ordered a bottle of Gevrey-Chambertin to go with the boeuf. When the servant had withdrawn he went on with what he had been about to say earlier. “Just one thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “Stanislav Asipov,” Roberts-White said.

  Hedge stiffened. “What about him?”

  “We’ve just had word through from the FO. It’s believed he was a plant.”

  “I’d half suspected that,” Hedge lied.

  Roberts-White raised an eyebrow. “Had you? Well done!”

  Hedge flushed. Tartly he said, “Tell me about it. How’s it emerged he was a plant?”

  “It hasn’t emerged exactly. It’s what Whitehall now thinks. The fuss from the Russians has a synthetic ring, apparently. There’s no value to us in Asipov, he’s just what he always was on the surface, a technical expert in his own field, which is —”

  “Gas pipelines.”

  “Yes. Nothing very earth-shaking, expect perhaps in a purely physical sense —”

  “What? Oh — yes, I follow. Very droll. But if he was a plant, what was he being planted for? Simply as a long term spy?”

  Roberts-White nodded. “Spot on, Hedge.” He paused, then went on, “It’s being suggested that someone was precipitate in having Asipov hooked off that Russian jet. We reacted just as the Russians expected we would, after they’d rigged that dash from the factory and then given chase —”

  Savagely Hedge said, “He’s dead now in any case.”

  “Yes. We still don’t know, I gather, who that telephone call came from, the one that said he’d be dead in a couple of days if —”

  “I took the call myself,” Hedge snapped, “so I’m fully aware of what was said.”

  “But I’m told,” Roberts-White went on in disregard of the interruption, “that some progress has been made in another direction. The gunmen slipped up. Early this morning a stethoscope was found in the Westminster Hospital … that’s to say it was actually found yesterday in a corner by the main entrance and handed in to the porters’ office. At the time, no-one ticked over. Then it was realised — when no-one claimed the stethoscope — that the Yard might be interested —”

  “Because the gunmen had gone in disguised as doctors?” Hedge asked keenly.

  “Quite. So it was collected and sent down to the fingerprint people. After the eliminations, one set stood out. This was checked with the computer and identified.”

  “Someone with a criminal record?”

  Roberts-White nodded. “Internationally. A Russian dissident by the name of Alexander Vernodski. Heard of him, Hedge?”

  “No.”

  Roberts-White looked surprised. “Well, he’s known here in Paris. He’s a member of a group dedicated to the overthrow of the Soviets, a pretty hopeless task if you ask me, but there you are, they’re fanatics. No doubt you know of them —”

  “Possibly.” Memories of days past … Hedge asked, “Are you referring to the Avengers of St Petersburg?”

  “Yes, I am —”

  “And the connection with Asipov?”

  “Vernodski was Asipov’s half brother.”

  “Yet he killed Asipov?” Hedge’s mind was in a whirl and he was remembering Ernestine Kolnisenko and her bastard son Mikhail — Vernodski’s nephew, evidently. Hedge mopped at his face. “Why kill his own brother?”

  “We don’t know whose hand fired that particular shot,” Roberts-White pointed out. “As a member of the Avengers of St Petersburg he was probably simply following orders, or even demonstrating his commitment. Also, brotherly love is not a universal thing by any means. And he was only a half brother, remember.”

  Hedge’s brain whirled still. It was all too much for him and he was feeling his age; he should be back in London … it was all happening in his absence and it was never a help to anyone’s career to be seen to be dispensable. Dabbing again at his face he asked, “These Avenger people … you said Vernodski’s known in Paris. Is he here now, do you suppose?”

  “Unlikely, Hedge. UK has had all ports and airports under close watch — you’ll know that, of course — and the French are watching all entry points just as closely.”

  Hedge wrung his hands. “That’s all very well, but his involvement wasn’t known until —”

  “Vernodski’s always being watched for.”

  “Then how did he get out in the first place?”

  Roberts-White shrugged. “He could have been many months in the UK, Hedge. Though certainly I’d have expected the Home Office and your people to know. There seems to have been a balls-up if you ask me.”

  The “little something” was brought in soon after but Hedge failed to do it justice; his appetite had gone. The expression balls-up was a disgusting one for a diplomat to use but there was no denying it fitted and it could well, in the course of time, be crammed down in an even tighter fit over his, Hedge’s, ears. Of course it was Shard again; Shard should have kept him informed about this Alexander Vernodski, he’d been guilty of the most enormous, the most flagrant, dereliction of duty. Names flashed through Hedge’s brain as he picked at the boeuf à la provençale: Stanislav Asipov, Ernestine and Mikhail Kolnisenko, adultery and unexpected relationships that seemed about to impinge on international relations themselves … Alexander Vernodski who might be, was in fact, some kind of link.

  What link, for God’s sake? Was the Foreign Secretary — was that important personage in extra danger?

  Roberts-White, reassuringly, didn’t think so. He made some vague reference to the fact that in any case the security was exceptionally strong and Hedge himself was there too. Hedge didn’t like the ‘too’: he considered he was an integral part of the strength already referred to. Roberts-White said there was nothing to worry about — not until he got back to London. There was no immediacy about the Asipov/Vernodski tangle and he had been informed only as a matter of courtesy and routine.

  Was there just a hint that he wasn’t being regarded as seriously as was his due? Another worrying thought: had H of S sent him to Paris just to get rid of him?

  Hedge left the Embassy in a very bad temper and filled with morbid thoughts. He was under orders to stay in Paris so he couldn’t very well go back to London until the Foreign Secretary did. Not unless he contacted H of S by the closed line from the Embassy and this he had already rejected, since all he could say in effect was that he was bloody useless in Paris and they could get on well enough without him. Walking along the Rue du Faubourg St Honoré — the mobs had gone now — Hedge found himself in a curiously bitter and defeated mood. Everything nagged at him; Shard was a beastly nuisance, getting himself sent to that dreadful hippie commune in the south of France. Hedge’s inflamed imagination blossomed and ran riot, ran the full gamut of all that he knew, or guessed, went on in hippie communes. God alone could say what Shard might be getting up to, even if only in the interest of authenticity in his role. Open-air copulation, sex of all kinds beneath the moon, beneath the sun as well, the hippies didn’t let that inhibit them. Interesting, perhaps, to play the voyeur …

  Voyeur?

  That brochure … Hedge looked almost guiltily at his watch. It was far from late, far from too late if he hurried.

  But no, he couldn’t possibly! It wasn’t to be thought of for one second. A pillar of the Foreign Office, ranking with an assistant under-secretary of state! One who moved in exalted circles, mi
xed with ministers of the crown, smiled at on one occasion by the Queen herself. It would be unforgivable, of course it would. But life was hard and this was Paris and Hedge had suffered his frustrations for long enough. A widower these many years, and his wife had never been keen on it anyway … nature still called loud and clear and coursed strongly in his veins.

  Hedge walked on, heart pumping, lewd scenes coming into his mind. He would accompany the tour, nothing more. But it was appalling … he went so far as, there in the Rue du Faubourg St Honoré, to plead with God to remove the scenes and their horrible temptations from his mind; but God failed to respond. He could still reach the assembly point, which — why he didn’t know — he had memorised from the hotel pamphlet.

  He would go.

  Why not for goodness’ sake? It wasn’t a crime. Gay Paree — and he was here on his own. Other diplomats did it. All those reports from Moscow and Washington.

  But he couldn't go. On the other hand … being watchful, conscientious, observing places where men with wicked intentions against the Establishments of East and West might foregather? Possibly it could be justified.

  He did something stupid: he went. He made his way along the Paris streets to the assembly point for the coach party and upon arrival found a motley crowd already waiting, some sheepish, others blatant. Not all male: two butch girls had turned up and when the coach came they sat together in the rear, glaring at the back of the men’s heads. Hedge’s other companions were mostly middle-aged and mostly respectable, city and professional people who’d bypassed the wife for the evening. Some were young — four men in their early twenties come along for a giggle. Hedge felt contaminated but was determined to proceed even if he was the one who was to be giggled at. It was a man’s duty, a diplomat’s duty in particular, to broaden his mind and see how the basic people, the common people, lived and took their pleasures. It began to take on the air of an assignment almost. There would be no compulsion on him to take part in whatever turned up to be taken part in — none at all. He would be the amused onlooker, detached, one of the gigglers really, only in a more mature way. The young men were sitting across the aisle from him, as it happened, and he turned to them with a matey smile, but that didn’t come off.

  It was misunderstood; all he got was a glare and a loud remark about old poufs who should have taken a different sort of tour.

  The coach started off. There was a girl acting as courier, which Hedge thought just showed how insensitive the blasted French were — either that or they were much too relaxed about sex. She was an attractive girl and her broken English was attractive too. She announced over a microphone that the sex part of the tour would not start immediately; there were other attractions in Paris, she said with a smile. “Ze English we treat with respect … sex is not all, zere is also Notre Dame.”

  They crossed the Seine to L’lle de la Cité and looked at Notre Dame. They didn’t go inside; perhaps that would have been disrespectful. They looked at the Pompidou Centre, all contorted with enormous pipes like a mad organ — why did that word have to come to mind, Hedge wondered — and they looked at a number of other places briefly, places that Hedge scarcely took note of. The blood pounded when they came at last into Montmartre and the Place Pigalle and he could hardly wait. He stared out of the coach window at the bright lights. Outlines of naked women, first one breast lit up then the other. Other suggestive things, adverts, neons, curious people lurking with curious desires no doubt. Disgusting, of course, but … to be honest Hedge had so far found nothing that was not part of the Soho scene but this was Paris and so the ambience was much more vital and soon they would be bound to see something really worth while.

  The coach stopped and the courier ordered the sex tourers out into the street. She led them down a narrow and smelly alley and stopped at a door beneath the overhang of a balcony. There was music coming from above, a thud of drums and a wailing voice. The courier knocked three times, which Hedge knew was sheer propaganda, the sort of thing that made it all more mysterious and wicked, the thirty pounds more worth while.

  A grille opened, more nonsense, and a nose was vaguely seen before they were admitted.

  The stench was dreadful. Cheap scent, poor drains, foul lavatories, sweat. Hedge followed in a long queue, along a dark passage and then up some stairs where the drums hit with the force of all-out war.

  They went into a small, jam-packed auditorium.

  There was a stage. Such goings-on … Hedge clicked his tongue but was riveted all the same. A totally naked girl, almost immobile. Not quite … she was slowly, tantalisingly, bending her knees, lowering her body towards an object on the stage beneath her.

  What was it? Hedge peered from tip-toe. A bottle — yes, an empty bottle of Johnny Walker complete with label.

  Goodness gracious! Hedge was even more riveted. He had heard of this from people who’d visited Port Said and such places but he’d never really believed the stories. But there it was happening before his very eyes, and successfully too.

  When the bottle was lifted, the courier ordered the party out again. There was no time to linger, there was much else to see, and later they would have some time on their own, or rather, apart from each other. There was an establishment well recommended by the tour organisers with comfortable dunlopillo mattresses. By this time Hedge was sweating like a pig and his head felt full of blood and no thought of Whitehall was entering his mind.

  *

  Soon after the dawn had stolen over the Ardèche the hippie encampment began stirring. Shard and Eve Brett, having dropped at last into an uneasy sleep, sat up in appreciation of fresh air and a golden mist hanging over the trees at the end of the field.

  Eve said, “I’m hungry. Very.”

  “The man said, prayers first.”

  “Yes. Shorter the better. Who do we pray to, do you know?”

  “No idea,” Shard said. “Tex, probably, linked in with Tom Tit.”

  “You pray to ethereal beings, not physical ones.”

  “Well,” he said, “we’ll see soon.” He was wondering how Hedge was making out. Somehow he couldn’t see him in Paris. Eve got to her feet, stretching away the night’s cramps. Her clothing felt damp, but dampness hadn’t appeared to harm the hippies. There was movement going on now, a kind of straggly muster as the hippies gathered in groups under what looked like individual prayer leaders. From under a distant hedge a tall, rangy man emerged and strode through the assembling groups until he was more or less in the centre of them. He wore a long purple robe like a bishop’s cassock and on his head was a western-style ten-gallon hat, an incredible sight, as reported earlier in London by Hesseltine.

  “Tex,” Shard said.

  “Hi,” a voice called. Shard turned. Tom Tit was approaching, waving a hand, gesticulating towards the group nearest to Shard and Eve. They took the hint and joined it; no-one appeared in the least curious about them; the hippies had somewhat dead expressions, withdrawn — until they caught the eye of Tex. Then looks of rapt adoration spread across the unwashed faces.

  Tex, ten-gallon hat and all, revolved slowly in the centre, beaming a smile, so far as Shard could make out, towards each group in turn. Shard, while this was going on, did a rough count: there must have been something like three hundred hippies in the field, a good if captive congregation. Then Tex lifted a hand, removed his hat with a show of reverence, presumably towards himself since he was God, and raised his arms in the air. As he did so all the hippies except for the prayer leaders went down on their knees. Shard and Eve did likewise. From their rear came a sonorous intonation. Shard glanced round. Tom Tit was uttering a prayer. “God who has left America and the warmongers and the moneymakers, those who would hold all persons in wage bondage and those who would enslave the free spirit of personkind, God who has rejected the imprisonment of the capitalist society to come to us here and lead us to the fight, hail!”

  “Hail,” the prayer leaders repeated. Tex looked smug. More hails came from the kneeling hippies the
n in each of the groups a person, male or female, got up and flourished either a guitar or a banjo. Something like pandemonium broke out as each instrument went into a different tune. The hippies rose to their feet and leapt around to the music, shouting and in some cases screaming. The noise was indescribable. Shard and Eve gyrated with the rest; this was no doubt all part of morning prayers. Tex was seen to be swaying to the nearest rhythm, his eyes closed. Around him the hippies closed in to sway in unison, eyes closed like those of Tex, tears pouring down some of the cheeks, leaving runnels through the dirt. Some of them began to take off their clothes; in many cases this was an unedifying sight. Pot bellies indicated only a short time since the last meal of chips, and past burning of bras had left breast muscles in a sorry state.

  Suddenly there was a yell from Tom Tit and the racket mercifully stopped dead. This was evidently Tex’s cue. Once again the American lifted his hands in the air and went into a lengthy spiel. The gist of it was that the wait for the fight would still be long but would be found well worth while; when the first of the UFOs came in to land, the time would be nigh and death would be the release. It would be all systems go and lift-off would take them straight to joy everlasting. In the meantime the kitty was always in need of cash and it would be better for the hippies’ or if applicable their parents’ souls if they parted with it, so Tex hoped that the message would go forth and be heeded.

  When he had finished they all shouted, conventionally enough, Amen. That was the end of prayers; breakfast was next and all over the field primus stoves started up. There seemed to be a reasonable commissariat, each group produced its own from plastic bags ex supermarket — sausages, tomatoes, loaves of bread, even a tin of sardines in Shard’s group. The hippies were generous; love was their watchword. They shared the food out. One, a young man as thin as a skeleton and with a pronounced limp — polio? — was very friendly.