Running Blind / The Freedom Trap

by Desmond Bagley

  ‘It’ll be more than sixpences, Aunt Maeve,’ said Alison. ‘I’ll be telephoning to England and more than once.’

  ‘Rest easy, girl. If you talk to Alec, ask him why he never comes to Ireland these days.’

  ‘He’s a busy man, Aunt Maeve.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Maeve. ‘And when men like Alec Mackintosh get busy it’s time for normal folk to find a deep hole. But give him my love, and tell him he doesn’t deserve it.’

  She went off and I said, ‘She’s quite a character.’

  ‘I could tell you stories about Maeve O’Sullivan that would make your hair curl,’ said Alison. ‘She was very active during the Troubles.’ She picked up the telephone. ‘Let’s hear what the Harbourmaster has to say.’

  The Harbourmaster was most obliging. Yes, Artina was expected. Mr Wheeler had arranged for refuelling. No, he didn’t really know when she would arrive but if previous visits by Mr Wheeler were anything to go by then Artina would be staying in Cork for a couple of days.

  As Alison put down the telephone I said, ‘Now I have to think of a way of getting aboard. I wish I knew more about Wheeler’s craft.’

  ‘Give me a few hours and I’ll have all you need to know,’ said Alison. ‘The telephone is a wonderful invention. But first I must ring the hospital.’

  It was a time for rejoicing because Alec Mackintosh was fighting his way through to life again. Alison was radiant. ‘He’s better! The doctor said he was better! His condition has improved and they think there’s a chance now.’

  ‘Is he conscious? Is he able to speak?’

  ‘No, he’s still unconscious.’

  I thought back. If Mackintosh had been unconscious all this time it would be quite a while before the doctors let him speak to anyone, even if he was able and willing. I’d have given a lot to be able to hear what he’d said to Wheeler the day before the hit-and-run.

  ‘I’m glad he’s better,’ I said sincerely.

  Alison picked up the telephone again, suddenly all businesslike. ‘And now to work.’

  I left her to it, only answering her questions from time to time. I was busily engaged in developing my hypothesis which was beginning to blossom into a very strange shape indeed. If I was right then Wheeler was a most odd fish and a very dangerous man—more dangerous to state security, even, than Slade.

  I was deep in thought when Alison said, ‘I’ve done all I can now; the rest will have to wait for morning.’

  She flipped open the notebook which was full of shorthand notes, page after page. ‘What do you want first—Wheeler or the yacht?’

  ‘Let’s have the yacht.’

  She leafed through the pages. ‘Here we are. Name—Artina; designed by Parker, built by Clelands on the Tyneside; she was two years old when Wheeler bought her. She’s a standard design known as a Parker-Clelands which is important for reasons I’ll come to later. Overall length—111 feet, beam—22 feet, cruising speed—12 knots, speed flat out—13 knots. She has two Rolls-Royce diesel engines of 350 horse-power each. Is this the sort of stuff you want?’

  ‘Just right.’ I could begin to build up a picture. ‘What’s her range?’

  ‘I haven’t got that yet, but it’s coming. A crew of seven—skipper, engineer, cook, steward and three seamen. Accommodation for a maximum of eight passengers.’

  ‘How is the accommodation arranged?’

  ‘That will be coming tomorrow. The plans of her sister ship were published a few years ago. They’re being photographed and sent by wire to the Cork Examiner where we can pick them up tomorrow, together with some photographs of the ship.’

  I regarded Alison with admiration. ‘Wow! Now that’s something I wouldn’t have thought of doing.’

  ‘The newspaper is a very efficient information gatherer and transmitter. I told you I could pull strings.’

  ‘What about Wheeler?’

  ‘There’s a detailed account coming to the Examiner on the telex, but this is the meat of it. He fought the Italians when they moved into Albania before the war.’ She looked up. ‘He’d be about 14 years old then. He fled with his family into Jugoslavia and again fought against the Italians and the Germans during the war both in Jugoslavia and Albania towards the end of the war. He left Albania in 1946 when he was somewhere in his early twenties and settled in England. Was naturalized in 1950. Started to deal in property just about that time and that was the beginning of his fortune.’

  ‘What kind of property?’

  ‘Offices. That was about the time they first began to put up the big office blocks.’ She wrinkled her brow. ‘I talked to a financial editor; he said there was something funny about the first deals Wheeler made.’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ I said. ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘According to this editor it wasn’t easy to see how Wheeler had made a profit. He evidently had made a profit because he suddenly had the money to go bigger and better, and he never looked back right from the early days.’

  ‘I wonder how he paid his taxes,’ I said. ‘It’s a pity we can’t subpoena his tax inspector. I’m beginning to see the light. Tell me, when he was fighting in the war—did he fight for the Cetniks or the Partisans? The Nationalists or the Communists?’

  ‘I don’t have that here,’ said Alison. ‘It will be coming by telex, if it’s known at all.’

  ‘When did he enter politics?’

  She consulted her notes. ‘He fought a by-election in 1962 and lost. He fought in the general election of 1964 and got in by a fair margin.’

  ‘And I suppose he lashed out generously for party funds,’ I said. ‘He’d do that, of course. Any known connections at present with Albania.’

  ‘Nothing known.’

  ‘Russia? Any communist country?’

  Alison shook her head. ‘He’s a dinkum capitalist, mate. I don’t see it, Owen. He’s always popping off with anticommunist speeches in the House.’

  ‘He’s also against prisoners escaping from gaol, if you remember. What about this prison reform bit?’

  ‘He used to be a prison visitor, but I suppose he’s got too big for that now. He’s generous in his subscription to various prison reform societies, and he’s a member of a House committee studying prison reform.’

  ‘My God, that would come in useful,’ I said. ‘Did he visit prisons in that capacity?’

  ‘I suppose he might.’ She put down the notebook. ‘Owen, you’re building up quite a structure on a weak foundation.’

  ‘I know.’ I stood up and paced the room restlessly. ‘But I’ll add another layer on my hypothesis. I once talked to a multimillionaire, one of the South African variety; he told me that the first quarter-million is the hardest. It took him fifteen years to make £250,000, three years to bring it up to the round million, and in the next six years he reached the five million mark. The mathematicians would say he was riding an exponential curve.’

  Alison was getting a little impatient. ‘So what?’

  ‘The first quarter-million is hardest because our potential millionaire has to make all his own decisions and has to do his own research, but once he has money he can afford to hire regiments of accountants and platoons of lawyers and that makes decision making a lot easier. It’s the starting of the process that’s the snag. Go back to your financial editor—the one who smelled something funny in Wheeler’s first deals.’

  Alison picked up her notes again. ‘I haven’t anything more than I’ve already told you.’

  ‘Let’s take our man X,’ I said. ‘He’s not a Russian—let’s call him an Albanian—but he still favours the Russians. He comes to England in 1946 and is naturalized in 1950. About that time he starts dealing in property and makes money at it, but at least one man can’t see how he did it. Let’s assume the money was fed to him from outside—perhaps as much as half a million. X is a sharp boy—as sharp as any other potential millionaire—and money makes money. So he begins to roll in the time-honoured capitalistic way.’

  I swung around. ‘In 196
4 he entered politics and got himself a seat in the Commons where he’s now an enthusiastic and keen back-bencher. He’s forty-six years old and still has another twenty-five years of political life in him.’

  I stared at Alison. ‘What would happen if he were to attain high position in the Government? Say, Chancellor or Minister of Defence—or even Prime Minister—in 1984, which seems to me to be an appropriate date? The boys in the Kremlin would be laughing their heads off!’

  EIGHT

  I slept badly that night. In the dark hours my hypothesis began to seem damned silly and more and more unlikely. A millionaire and an MP could not possibly be associated with the Russians—it was a contradiction in terms. Certainly Alison found she could not accept it. And yet Wheeler was associated with the Scarperers, unless the whole series of assumed links was pure coincidence—and that possibility could not be eliminated. I had seen too many cases of apparent cause and effect which turned out to be coincidence.

  I turned over restlessly in bed. Yet assume it was so—that Wheeler actually was controlling the Scarperers. Why would he do it? Certainly not to make money; he had plenty of that. The answer came out again that it was political, which again led to Wheeler as a Member of Parliament and the dangers inherent in that situation.

  I fell asleep and had dire dreams full of looming menace.

  At breakfast I was still tired and a shade bad-tempered. My temper worsened rapidly when Alison made the first phone call of the day and was told by the Harbourmaster that Artina had arrived during the night, refuelled quickly, and left for Gibraltar in the early hours.

  ‘We’ve lost the bastard again,’ I said.

  ‘We know where he is,’ said Alison consolingly. ‘And we know where he’ll be in four days.’

  ‘There are too many things wrong with that,’ I said glumly. ‘Just because he has clearance for Gibraltar doesn’t mean he’s going there, for one thing. For another, what’s to prevent him from transferring Slade to a Russian trawler heading the other way through the Baltic? He could do it easily once he’s over the horizon. And we don’t even know if Slade is aboard Artina. We’re just guessing.’

  After breakfast Alison went out to collect the stuff from the Examiner. I didn’t go with her; I wasn’t going anywhere near a newspaper office—those reporters had filled up their columns with too much about Rearden and too many photographs. A sharp-eyed reporter was the last person I wanted to encounter.

  So I stayed in the house while Maeve tactfully busied herself with the housework and left me alone to brood. Alison was away for an hour and a half, and she brought back a large envelope. ‘Photographs and telex sheets,’ she said, as she plopped the envelope in front of me.

  I looked at the photographs first. There were three of Wheeler, one an official photograph for publicity use and the others news shots of him caught with his mouth open as the news photographers like to catch politicians. In one of them he looked like a predatory shark and I’d bet some editor had chortled over that one.

  He was a big man, broad-shouldered and tall, with fair hair. The photographs were black-and-white so it was difficult to judge, but I’d say his hair was ash-blond. His nose was prominent and had a twist in it as though it had been thumped at some time or other, and the cartoonists would have no trouble taking the mickey if he ever attained a position of eminence. I put the photographs of Wheeler aside—I would recognize him if I saw him.

  The other photographs were of the Artina, and one was a reproduction of the plans of her sister ship. Sean O’Donovan had exaggerated—she was not nearly as big as the royal yacht, but she was a fair size for all that, and it would take a millionaire to buy her and to run her. There was an owner’s double cabin forward of the engine room and aft were three double cabins for six guests. The crew lived forward, excepting the skipper who had the master’s cabin just behind the wheelhouse.

  I studied that plan until I had memorized every passage and door. If I had to board her I would want to know my way around and to know the best places to hide. I checked off the aft peak and the room which held the air conditioning equipment as likely places for a stowaway.

  Alison was immersed in reading the telex sheets. ‘Any joy there?’

  She looked up. ‘There’s not much more than I told you last night. It’s expanded a bit, that’s all. Wheeler fought for the Partisans in Jugoslavia.’

  ‘The communists,’ I said. ‘Another strand in the web.’

  I began to read and found that Alison was right; there wasn’t much more solid information. The picture was of a bright young man who became a tycoon by the usual clapper-clawing methods and who now had a solid base in society built up by saying the right things at the right times and by contributing largely to the right causes. The picture of a successful man now looking for new worlds to conquer—hence the politics.

  ‘He’s not married,’ I said. ‘He must be the most eligible bachelor in England.’

  Alison smiled wryly. ‘I’ve heard a couple of rumours. He runs a mistress who is changed regularly, and the story goes that he’s bisexual. But no one in his right mind would put that on the telex—that would be publishing a libel.’

  ‘If Wheeler knew what was in my mind libel would be the least of his worries,’ I said.

  Alison shrugged unenthusiastically. ‘What do we do?’

  ‘We go to Gibraltar,’ I said. ‘Will your plane take us there?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then let’s chase the wild goose. There’s nothing else to do.’

  II

  We had time to spare and in plenty. An inspection of the plans of Artina’s sister ship and a reading of the description that went with it made it quite certain that she was no high speed craft and she certainly couldn’t get to Gibraltar in less than four days. We decided to play it safe and to be in Gibraltar in three days so we would be there when she came in.

  That gave Alison time to fly back to London to see how Mackintosh was managing to survive and to dig up more dirt on Wheeler. We decided it would be most unwise for me to go back to London. Ducking in and out of Cork airport was one thing—Gatwick or Heathrow was quite another. Every time I smuggled myself incognito through the airport barriers I took an added risk.

  So I spent two days cooped up in a suburban house in Cork with no one to speak to but an old Irishwoman. I must say that Maeve was most tactful; she didn’t push and she didn’t question, and she respected my silences. Once she said, ‘Och, I know how it is with you, Owen. I went through it myself in 1918. It’s a terrible thing to have the hand of every man against you, and you hiding like an animal. But you’ll rest easy in this house.’

  I said, ‘So you had your excitement in the Troubles.’

  ‘I had,’ she said. ‘And I didn’t like it much. But there are always troubles—if not here then somewhere else—and there’ll always be men running and men chasing.’ She gave me a sidelong glance. ‘Especially men like Alec Mackintosh and whoever concerns himself with that man.’

  I smiled. ‘Don’t you approve of him?’

  She lifted her chin. ‘Who am I to approve or disapprove? I know nothing of his business other than that it is hard and dangerous. More dangerous for the men he orders than for him, I’m thinking.’

  I thought of Mackintosh lying in hospital. That was enough to disprove that particular statement. I said, ‘What about the women he commands?’

  Maeve looked at me sharply. ‘You’ll be thinking of Alison,’ she said flatly. ‘Now that’s a bad thing. He wanted a son and he got Alison, so he did the best with what he had and made her to his pattern; and it’s a strong pattern and a hard pattern, enough to make a girl break under the burden of it.’

  ‘He’s a hard man,’ I said. ‘What about Alison’s mother? Didn’t she have a say in the matter?’

  Maeve’s tone was a little scornful, but the scorn was intermingled with pity. ‘That poor woman! She married the wrong man. She didn’t understand a man the like of Alec Mackintosh. The marriage ne
ver went well and she left Alec before Alison was born and came to live here in Ireland. She died in Waterford when Alison was ten.’

  ‘And that’s when Mackintosh took over Alison’s education.’

  ‘It is so,’ said Maeve.

  I said, ‘What about Smith?’

  ‘Has Alison not told you about him?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Then I’ll not be telling,’ said Maeve decidedly. ‘I’ve gossiped enough already. When—and if—Alison wants you to know, then she’ll tell you herself.’ She turned away, and then paused, looking over her shoulder at me. ‘I’m thinking you’re a hard man yourself, Owen Stannard. I doubt if you’ll be the one for Alison.’

  And I was left to make of that what I could.

  Alison rang up late the first night. ‘I flew out to sea when I left,’ she said. ‘Artina was on course for Gibraltar.’

  ‘You didn’t make the inspection too obvious, I hope.’

  ‘I overtook her flying at five thousand feet and climbing. I didn’t turn until I was out of sight.’

  ‘How is Mackintosh?’ I still called him that, even to her.

  ‘He’s better, but still unconscious. I was allowed to see him for two minutes.’

  That wasn’t too good. I could have done with Mackintosh being awake and talkative; he wasn’t alive enough yet for my liking. Which brought me to another and delicate subject. ‘You might be under observation in London.’

  ‘No one followed me. I didn’t see anyone I know, either, except one man.’

  ‘Who was that?’

  ‘The Prime Minister sent his secretary to the hospital. I saw him there. He said the PM is worried.’

  I thought of Wheeler and the man who had been taken out of prison to be killed, and then I thought of Mackintosh lying helpless in a hospital bed. ‘You’d better do something,’ I said. ‘Ring the secretary chap and ask him to spread the word around that Mackintosh is dying—that he’s cashing in his chips.’