Running Blind / The Freedom Trap

by Desmond Bagley

  I said a little shakily, ‘Now I know why the Prime Minister wouldn’t listen to you.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Mackintosh matter-of-factly. ‘It would make him accessory to the crime, and he’s too much the gentleman to get his hands dirty. Besides, it would lie heavily on his conscience.’ He looked up at the sky and said musingly, ‘Funny animals, politicians.’

  I said, ‘Do you know what kind of a tree this is?’

  He turned and looked at it. ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘It’s a gum tree,’ I said. ‘The thing I’ll be up if this operation doesn’t pan out. Take a good look at it.’

  IV

  I suppose you could call Mackintosh a patriot—of sorts. There don’t seem to be many avowed patriots around these days; it has become the fashion to sneer at patriotism—the TV satire programmes jeer at it, and to the with-it, swinging set it’s a dead issue. So with patriots so few on the ground you can’t pick and choose too freely. Certainly, to a casual eye Mackintosh bore a remarkable resemblance to a dyed-in-the-wool fascist; his God was Britain—not the Britain of green fields and pleasant country lanes, of stately buildings and busy towns, but the idea of Britain incorporated in the State. He took his views directly from Plato, Machiavelli and Cromwell who, if you think about it, aren’t all that different from Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin.

  But there was more to him than that as I found out later—much later.

  There was a lot of work to be done and not a great deal of time in which to do it. I studied South African prison conditions with a prison officer, temporarily donning the guise of a sociologist for the occasion. He advised me to read the works of Herman Charles Bosman which was a superfluity as I had already done so. Bosman, possibly the best writer in English South Africa has produced, knew all about prison conditions—he had done a stretch for killing his step-brother and he wrote illuminatingly about his experiences in Pretoria Central Prison—Pretoria Tronk, in the vernacular—which conveniently was where Rearden had served his sentence.

  I also studied Rearden’s record, culled from the files of John Vorster Square. There was not much fact and a hell of a lot of conjecture in that file. Rearden had been imprisoned only once and that for a comparatively minor offence, but the conjecture was lurid. He was suspected of practically every crime in the book from burglary to drug-smuggling, from armed robbery to illicit gold buying. He was a many-faceted character, all nerve and intelligence, whose erratic and unexpected switches in criminal activity had kept him out of trouble. He would have made a good intelligence agent.

  I smiled at that. Perhaps Mackintosh had been right when he said that Rearden was like me. I had no illusions about myself or my job. It was a dirty business with no holds barred and precious little honour, and I was good at it, as would have been Rearden if anyone had had the sense to recruit him. So there we were—birds of a feather—Mackintosh, Rearden and Stannard.

  Mackintosh was busy on the upper levels of the job in South Africa—pulling strings. From the way people danced to his tune like marionettes I judged he had been right when he said the Prime Minister had given him ‘certain facilities’. This was counter-espionage work at diplomatic level and I wondered what was the quid pro quo—what the hell had we done for the South Africans that we should be given this VIP treatment with no questions asked?

  Gradually I was transformed into Rearden. A different style of haircut made a lot of difference and I took much trouble with the Transvaal accent, the accent of the Reef towns. I studied photographs of Rearden and copied his way of dress and his stance. It was a pity we had no films of him in action; the way a man moves means a lot. But that I would have to chance.

  I said to Mackintosh once, ‘You say I’m not likely to run into any of Rearden’s pals in England because I’m not going to be at large for very long. That’s all very well, but I’m a hell of a lot more likely to run into his mates when I’m in the nick than when I’m walking up Oxford Street.’

  Mackintosh looked thoughtful. ‘That’s true. What I can do is this; I’ll have a check done on the inhabitants of the prison you’re in, and any that have been to South Africa I’ll have transferred. There shouldn’t be too many and it will minimize your risk. The reason for transfer shouldn’t become apparent—prisoners are being transferred all the time.’

  He drilled me unmercifully.

  ‘What’s your father’s name?’

  ‘Joseph Rearden.’

  ‘Occupation?’

  ‘Miner—retired.’

  ‘Mother’s name?’

  ‘Magrit.’

  ‘Maiden name?’

  ‘Van der Oosthuizen.’

  ‘Where were you born?’

  ‘Brakpan.’

  ‘The date?’

  ‘28th May, 1934.’

  ‘Where were you in June, 1968?’

  ‘…er…in Cape Town.’

  ‘Which hotel did you use?’

  ‘Arthur’s Seat.’

  Mackintosh stuck his finger under my nose. ‘Wrong! That was in November of the same year. You’ll have to do better than that.’

  ‘I could get away with it if I had to,’ I said.

  ‘Maybe. But this has to be a seamless job—no cracks which need papering over. You’d better get down to studying again.’

  Again I pushed my nose into the files, if a little resentfully. My God, a man wasn’t supposed to remember and account for every minute of his life. But I knew Mackintosh was right. The more I knew about Rearden, the safer I’d be.

  At last it was over and Mackintosh was due to return to England. He said, ‘The local coppers are a bit worried about you; they’re wondering why you’ve been picked for this job. They’re wondering how I was able to lay my hands on an Australian immigrant to impersonate Rearden. I don’t think you’ll be able to come back here.’

  ‘Will they talk?’

  ‘There’ll be no talk,’ he said positively. ‘There are only a few of the top brass who know about you, and they don’t know why—that’s why they’re becoming curious. But it’s all top-secret, diplomatic-level, hush-hush stuff and that’s something the South Africans are good at. They understand security. As far as the middle and lower levels of the police are concerned—well, they’ll be a bit surprised when Rearden gets nabbed in England, but they’ll just heave a sigh of relief and cross him off the books for a few years.’

  I said, ‘If you’re right about the Scarperers they’ll be doing some extensive checking here in South Africa.’

  ‘It’ll stand up,’ he said with certainty. ‘You’ve done a good job on this, Stannard.’ He smiled. ‘When it’s all over you’ll probably get a medal. There’ll be a few private words with the people concerned—insurance company, whoever we rob, and so on. The Home Secretary will probably issue a free pardon and you won’t have a stain on your character.’

  ‘If it comes off,’ I said. ‘If it doesn’t, I’ll be up that bloody gum tree.’ I looked straight at him. ‘I want a bit of insurance on this. I know you’re nuts on security—and rightly so. As you’ve organized it there’ll be only three people who know about this operation—you, me and one other. I’d like to know who this “other” is, just in case anything happens to you. I’d be in a hell of a mess if you got run over by a bus.’

  He thought about that. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘It’s my secretary.’

  ‘Your secretary,’ I said expressionlessly.

  ‘Oh, Mrs Smith is a very good secretary,’ he said. ‘Very efficient. She’s hard at work on this case now.’

  I nodded. ‘There’s something else,’ I said. ‘I’ve been going over possible eventualities. What happens if I’m sprung and Slade isn’t?’

  ‘Then you go for the Scarperers, of course.’

  ‘And if Slade is sprung and I’m not?’

  Mackintosh shrugged. ‘That wouldn’t be your fault. We’d have to leave it to the ordinary authorities. Not that I’d like it very much.’

  ‘Try this on for size,’ I said. �
��Supposing both Slade and I are sprung. What then?’

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I see what you mean.’

  ‘Yes; I thought you would. Which is the more important? To smash the Scarperers or to take Slade back to the jug?’

  He was silent for a moment. ‘Slade is obviously the more important, although ideally I’d like you to pull off both jobs should that eventuality arise. As far as taking Slade back to prison goes you may use your own discretion. If he turned up dead I wouldn’t shed a single tear. The important thing about Slade is that he must not get loose—he must not communicate any information to a third party.’ He flicked his pale blue eyes in my direction. ‘Dead men tell no tales.’

  So that was it. Orders to kill Slade—at my discretion. I began to understand the Prime Minister’s reservations about Mackintosh. A tame hatchet man must be an uncomfortable asset to have around the house. He went to England next day and I followed two months later in response to another letter from Lucy. The crime had been set up.

  SIX

  I stared at the brandy in the glass. I had been thinking for a long time and I hadn’t touched a drop. The time for drinking had gone and the time for thinking had arrived. And I had a hell of a lot to think about.

  Everything had gone as Mackintosh had planned. The crime, the trial, the nick, Slade—and the Scarperers. Then things turned sour. They were a clever mob and as keen on security as any professional espionage ring. Here I was, injected into their organization like a drug, and I was no nearer to cracking it than I had been in South Africa.

  It was that damned hypodermic syringe in the moving-van that had turned the trick in their favour. I hadn’t expected that, nor had I expected this imprisonment. Still, I could see their point; they worked on the ‘need to know’ principle, and an escapee didn’t need to know how he had escaped—just that he had done so. This mob was too bloody professional to be true.

  And I had lost Slade.

  That was the worst bit, and Mackintosh would rip open my guts for it if ever I got past Fatface. His instructions had been oblique but clear; if there was any possibility of Slade getting clear then I was to kill him. I could have cut his throat with a blunt table knife while he slept, or strangled him with a length of electrical wire from the table lamp. I had done neither.

  Of course, if I had killed Slade one night then next morning I would have been a dead man, but that wasn’t why I’d refrained. I had weighed the odds and made a number of assumptions—that Slade and I would be going out together; that I still had a chance of escape, taking Slade with me; that my cover was still secure. Not one of those assumptions had proved valid and now things were in one hell of a mess.

  I lay on the bed with my hands clasped behind my head and wondered how they had tumbled to the substitution. Fatface was trying to convince me that he knew I wasn’t Rearden because of Rearden’s fingerprints extracted from his file at John Vorster Square. I knew that to be a damned lie because I had personally substituted my own fingerprints for Rearden’s in that very file, with Mackintosh looking on, and any prints coming from that file would match mine.

  If Fatface knew I wasn’t Rearden it certainly wasn’t on account of fingerprints—so why in hell was he trying to kid me?

  I thought hard, trying one hypothesis after another. For instance supposing Fatface only suspected I wasn’t Rearden—he might try to pull a bluff in the hope that I’d crack. I hadn’t cracked, and I’d put him in the position of having to produce those fingerprints which I knew damned well he hadn’t got or, if he had, would certainly match mine.

  That was one hypothesis among many, but they all boiled down to the same thing—that either Fatface knew for a certainty I wasn’t Rearden, or he merely suspected it. And in both cases the problem was how the devil had he done it? Where had I slipped up?

  I went back over my actions since my arrival in England and found no flaw. I had done nothing, in either word or deed, to break my cover, and that led me to the nasty suspicion that there had been a leak—a flaw in security.

  I thought about Mackintosh. Now there was a tough, ruthless, conniving bastard who would sell his grandmother to boil down for soap if that soap would grease the runway of the Ship of State. I shook my head irritably. That was straining a metaphor pretty far which showed I was tired—but it was true, all the same. If Mackintosh thought it would serve his purpose to break security on me he would do it without hesitation.

  I thought about it hard then rejected the possibility for the time being because I could see no purpose to it. And that left the super-efficient Lucy Smith whom Mackintosh trusted so much and about whom I knew damn-all. There were other possibilities, of course; either of them could have inadvertently broken security, his office could have been bugged by an interested third party, and so on.

  I went into the bathroom and doused my face in cold water. To hell with Mackintosh’s devious ways! What I had to do now was to find a way out of this trap. There must be less thinking of how I had got into it and more on how to get out.

  I wiped my face dry, went back into the bedroom, and sat at the table to review my armoury of weapons. A trained man in my position assembles his weapons as and when he can from the materials at hand. For instance, I had three meals a day at which pepper was on the table. In my pocket was a twist of paper containing enough pepper to blind a man, which could come in useful on an appropriate occasion.

  After a few minutes’ thought I went to the wardrobe and took out a sock which I half-filled with earth from the row of pot plants on the window ledge, taking a little from each. I hefted the sock, whirled it, and swung it against the palm of my hand. It made a satisfying thump. It wasn’t as good as a sandbag—it wasn’t all that heavy—but it would do.

  There are many ways of getting out of a locked room. You can shoot your way out—if you have a gun. You can set fire to the place, but that’s risky; there’s no guarantee you’ll get out, and it can have disastrous consequences—I’ve always kept in mind Charles Lamb’s story of burnt pig. You can use deception in its many forms but I didn’t think these boys would be deceived easily; I’d already tried to con Fatface into letting me walk in the courtyard and he hadn’t fallen for it.

  That led me to think of Fatface and what he did when he came into the room. He was very careful; the door would click open and he would walk in, closing it behind him and always facing into the room with his back to the door. The man outside would then lock it. Fatface always kept his front to me. I had experimented a bit—trying to get behind him—but he’d never let me. He also carried a gun. When your life may depend on it you notice little details like that, and, no matter how carefully tailored the suit, the bulge shows.

  So I had to get behind Fatface and club him with a sockful of wet leaf mould. And that involved a conjuror’s trick—he had to believe I was in front of him when I was really behind him. Short of hypnosis I didn’t see how I could do it but I tackled the problem.

  Presently I went into the bathroom and flushed the water closet. It had no chain, being one of those low cistern contraptions operated by a short lever. Then I hunted around for a cord. What I really needed was a ball of string, but that I hadn’t got, so I had to improvise.

  The light switch in the bathroom was operated, as good buildings regulations insist, by a ceiling pull-switch from which a strong cord hung to a convenient hand level. That gave me four feet. The bedside lamp was wired to a plug on the skirting board behind the bed, and the wire was two-strand, plastic coated, the strands spiralling around each other. When I separated the strands I had a good bit more cord.

  There was another lamp on the dressing table which contributed more, but still not enough, so I was forced to consider other sources. My dressing-gown was of terry-towelling and had a cord which went around the waist. This cord unravelled into several strands which I plaited and, at last, I had enough. In fact, there was enough wire to make a garrotting loop—not as efficient as piano wire, it’s true—but I was in no position to complain
.

  I made a loop on the end of my long cord and slipped it over the lever of the cistern, then ran the cord from the bathroom, around the walls of the bedroom and right up to the door. I could have done with some small pulleys but, instead, I used the insulated staples which had held down the electric wiring and hoped they would hold.

  They didn’t.

  A gentle tug and nothing happened. A harder tug gave the same result. A very hard tug and a staple sprang from the skirting board.

  This wasn’t working at all.

  I went back to the bathroom and flushed the water closet again, using as little pressure on the lever as possible. It was obviously too stiff to be pulled down by my improvised cord, so I had to think of something else. I studied the cistern for a while, and then removed the top, revealing its guts—the ball valve and associated gimmickry invented by that unsung genius, Thomas Crapper. The action of the lever downwards resulted in the movement of a plunger upwards, and I figured it was the friction involved in this mechanism that stiffened the lever action. If I could disconnect the lever and work on the plunger directly I thought I could do it.

  Half an hour later I was ready to try again. I had lengthened my cord by means of a strip torn from the sheet; it would show, but that didn’t matter in the bathroom. I left the bathroom door ajar and returned to my post at the other end of the cord. I picked it up, crossed my fingers, and pulled with a steady pressure.

  The toilet flushed with a welcome and loud squirt of water.

  I dropped the cord and carefully surveyed the room, making sure that nothing was out of place, that nothing would give the game away to Fatface when he entered. Everything was neat and tidy except for the bed I had stripped. I took the sheet I had ripped and tore it into long lengths. I would have a use for those. Then I remade the bed.