by Gil Hogg
“We’re ready for this.” I spoke as calmly as I could.
Both Yarham and I had pencil torches, and I could work out our route in the tunnel complex in the dark. It was a simple matter of counting intersections, and knowing which way to turn. “Stay dark for the moment, and no talking.”
I listened. There was unmistakable noise coming from the branch of the tunnel along which we should have gone, voices, movement sounds. The orders of the day were that apart from the guards, no person military or civilian was allowed in this part of the complex. I pushed Yarham and the General into another branch tunnel.
“We’ll circumnavigate,” I whispered.
A searchlight pierced the tunnel from the direction of the sounds.
A loudspeaker announced, “OK, Conway. We know you’re there. Give up, man, and come out, or we’ll come and get you!” said a voice I didn’t recognise.
A pistol shot cracked and whined strangely down the tunnel.
“Bowl them one,” I said to Yarham.
Yarham removed a grenade from the pocket of his flak jacket, and pulled the pin. “I’ll get it as far down the tunnel as I can, right?”
“Don’t show yourself too much.”
Yarham exposed only his arm for a fraction of a second as he sent the grenade bouncing down the plastic floor of the tubular concrete tunnel. The grenade must have reached nearly to the searchlight before it exploded on its four-second fuse. Darkness. We huddled in the side tunnel, with our fingers in our ears, as a wave of smoke and gas and small pieces of debris blasted past us. Then silence in the dark.
“Effective, I think. Let’s move on.” I pushed the other two along the side tunnel, bringing the map of the complex back to my mind for our more complicated journey. We felt our way along, stopping every few moments to listen. The explosions had damaged the pipework in the ceiling. The floor was running with water, and a mix of other chemicals, judging by the acrid smell.
After half an hour of blackness, and scarcely a word between us, my navigation brought us close to the airshaft, stairs and elevator that I had been aiming for, an area bathed in red emergency lighting. I halted before we stepped into the wider main shaft.
“General, I want you to remain here with Mr Yarham, hidden. I don’t know what I’ll find up there. I plan to go up, see if the coast is clear, and then come back and get you. Once above ground we’re relatively safe.”
The General was appalled and confused. “Hell, this isn’t like a war, it is war!”
“Almost a revolution, General, but not quite. You’ll agree to my request?”
“You’ve managed up to now, OK,” he said miserably.
I checked the slide on the Beretta, and stepped out into the red glow, keeping my gun hand slightly behind my back. I had hardly taken two steps before a voice rang out.
“Roger! You’re OK?”
I saw Gerry Clark in the shadows, on the first landing of the escape stairway. I stopped. He was about twenty-five yards away. “I’m fine, Gerry. Having a nice time.”
“Great,” he said tensely. “Where’s that clever-dick partner of yours?”
“Yarham’s dead.” I made it sound doleful.
“And General Madison?”
“Killed in a blast in the tunnel. I’ve been wandering round in the dark.” I gave it a hysterical note.
Gerry Clark’s voice lightened. “Well, there’s got to be something good in a bad scene. Come on up. Don’t stand there.”
“I’m just about out of steam, Gerry,” I said weakly.
“You sure are,” he said, and looked up quickly.
There was another dark figure on the next landing. I had that sense of menace, and threw myself to the ground as a shot crackled past me. I had seen the flash of fire from that dark figure, and I squeezed three or four shots from the semi-automatic Beretta, roughly in the direction of the shooter.
I knew I had probably missed, but Yarham, hidden from Gerry Clark’s view, had opened up too, with accuracy. The gunman had flopped on the stairs, and rolled to a landing.
“Nice shooting, Roger. Somebody didn’t want you around,” Clark said, under the impression that I was the marksman. “Come on up, and we’ll take a look.”
I holstered my gun, approached the stairs, and went up towards Clark. He had preceded me to the next landing, and was turning over the gunman with his foot.
“It’s Greengloss,” he said, and he didn’t sound surprised. He sat down on the step above her head. “Come, take a look at the lady.”
I went up the next flight of stairs and stood at Sally’s feet. One of Yarham’s shots had caught her in the eye, and her cheek, reddened with blood on its whiteness, was a grotesque carnival mask. Her hands, empty of the Ruger 22 she had been using, were like alabaster models.
“You knew her, I believe,” Clark said.
“Not as a C3 agent. Which is what she is. Why should she try to kill me? I’m a loyal C3 man.”
“Because you’re also a dangerous, know-all cunt-sucker, Conway.”
I could see now that Clark’s crouch on the stairway, in his bulky uniform, hid a cradled semi-automatic. The light glinted on the circular opening of the barrel. I hadn’t the slightest chance of reaching for my weapon.
“Greengloss didn’t manage to send you to bye-byes, but I will,” he grinned, his eyes disappearing into the blandness of his puffy face.
“Is this because I’ve been screwing your wife?” I said, wanting to check Clark for a second, and estimating that if I rushed him, I would take at least one bullet. If I moved fast enough, and swung sideways before the rush, the wound would be in the upper arm or shoulder.
A big vein that forked on Clark’s forhead swelled noticeably as the impact of my words inflamed him. “You’ve been doing that, have you? Well, I didn’t know, but this will make my work even more of a pleasure.”
“And your cook. Surely you know about that? Oh yes, Marie is something.” I went on with the charade to distract Clark, and it certainly had that effect. I gathered my nerve for the rush.
“You’re a lying son-of-a-bitch…”
There were three rapid shots from above, and Clark crumpled over Sally Greengloss’s body, momentarily bloodless wounds in his shoulders and neck. As I glanced up, Barney Coultas, a gun in his hand, was coming down the stairs. I leaned over and put my fingers against Clark’s throat. He was dead.
“Thanks,” I said. “Is it all clear out there?”
“Yeah,” Coultas said. “I think so.”
“You mean there could be somebody roaming around out there with a killing agenda?”
“Could be.”
I went back down the stairs, and rounded up General Madison and Yarham. “We have to get you on your plane straight away, and out of here, General.”
Coultas waited on the stairs for us. General Madison cast a horrified and incredulous glance as we passed by the bodies of Clark and Greengloss.
“What happened in the control room?” I asked Coultas.
“Two dead in the elevator serving the R40 silo. It was mined. Believed to be General Schmiesser, and Scott. What a screw-up!”
“On the planning table a week ago, it was intended to be me and General Madison in that elevator!” I said.
General Madison’s face was paper white. He turned and put his hand on my shoulder. “Thanks,” he said in a faint, dry voice.
34
Laurie and I took Yarham and his wife, Iris, out to dinner at Rico’s, to show my gratitude for his support in our latest exploit. Not a word of business was spoken at the table, but there was an added piquancy to the delicious food and wine, to share it in this peaceful American setting, with a comrade in battle.
Some weeks had passed since the tragedy at Fort Gaines. General Schmiesser had been buried with much fanfare at Arlington National Cemetery. The news media reported that a misfire had occurred during a missile firing demonstration, with the resulting loss of life. The shield of national security had been raised, and hid the
fact that two people died of gunshot wounds. The military court of enquiry found no fault in the technical apparatus of the R40, and ascribed the explosion to unknown causes, a verdict never publicised.
The official, but of course top secret, view within the CIA and the NSA, uncovered and pieced together by Yarham in his persistent OPB operations, was that dissident liberals had clumsily assassinated General Schmiesser, killing themselves in the act.
Professor Otto Reich, a leading Harvard right-wing political theorist and consultant to the NSA, had been found drowned in the Potomac, as a result of a boating accident. This event was not connected with the assassination attempt at Fort Gaines.
The Disciples had cleverly finessed the assassination story within the government agencies, so there was no suggestion that one need look further for traitors in the intelligence services. I knew, from Amory, that within the Disciples, Reich was blamed for failing to publicise the President’s near-disaster in Cuba – “A failure which you acutely pointed out, my boy,” Amory said – and Reich was held responsible for the debacle at Fort Gaines, of which he was principal architect. None of this information was available to the public.
My own management of the affair received the warmest congratulations from the Disciples, confused as they had become about the political utility of General Madison. And I should mention that quite apart from Madison’s effusive thanks – which included dinner at his home with his family – I had a private audience with the President. As I was leaving the Oval Office, the President said, “Roger, I know there is someone there whom I can turn to in times of trouble, with absolute confidence.”
When I talked to Yarham about the events at Fort Gaines, he turned his bright blue eyes up to the ceiling and said, “A pure case of the TIFU. I’ll stick to that. The Disciples want to get rid of Madison. They appoint you to do it. Simple and straightforward. Then they concoct a scheme to get rid of you too. The political wind changes. At the eleventh hour they decide not to go ahead with Madison. But they decide to kill you, because you are an embarrassment, although there’s dissension about that. On the day, you fool the people they’ve marshalled, Clark and Greengloss, by dodging out of the silo with Madison. They want to get you, and they nearly do, but…”
I thought Yarham had it about right.
I have been appointed, at General Madison’s insistence, to head C3 for a year, while a permanent successor to Clark is found. With access to many more codes, I have used the opportunity to beef up Yarham’s facility to carry out OPB ops. I expect, ultimately, to have the best overall picture of Anglo-American intelligence of any person alive.
Clark’s bereaved wife has ceased to bother me, and formed an attachment with the older, but admittedly suave, widower, Carl Bolding. Bolding is a visiting professor at Georgetown, and the couple have acquired a twee little townhouse here – where I have been a guest. But alas the meal was not cooked by Marie. She has joined the Washington Philharmonic as a violinist, and is on tour with them.
I continue to be Chalmers Amory’s golden boy, careful to dance just out of his reach, and he has promised me a high post when I return to London in a year – it would almost have to be his own job, to match the power I now wield.
The Disciples have regrouped around Amory, Bolding, Fernandez, Professor Kauffer whom I met at the time of my appointment to C3 in London, and a new young US general supposedly of great brilliance. But this is only a cell of the organisation, the one which happens to run me, and I am beginning to pick up evidence of other cells.
I have decided that if I want to continue to be a super-spy, I have no alternative but to exist within a cell of the Disciples, whether their influence is beneficial or malign. It would be blue-sky thinking to believe that I might one day produce a masterstroke which would expose and destroy them. But I might.
My work as director of C3, which includes being on the advisory committee of Fernandez’ Special Collection Service, is mainly talking to politicians and members of the military, and planning. I do it exceedingly well, with Yarham to suggest some ideas and hoover up the details, but I find it boring. I’d like to get out into the field again, although I must say I’m enjoying the dinner parties, the charming Washington hostesses, and my awesome covert reputation as The man who singlehandedly solved Cuban Missile Crisis II.
Laurie stays with me when she’s in town, and I still have the cat. Occasionally, I spare a thought for Roger Barmby, the second-hand car dealer from Oxford, England, with three A- levels and an accent that a half-colonel from Sandhurst didn’t mind.