The Schoolboy (Agent Orange Book 2)

by Stephen Langford

  “Bloody hell,” Lionel whispered. “You’re in about as deep as me.”

  “You said it,” Keeton answered. “The director’s working on getting us some backup in Washington. We’ll see about that.”

  “I wish I was better,” Lionel said. “I’d be there with you tomorrow.”

  Keeton smiled. “I know. I appreciate it. I’ll get going now. Lionel, watch your back.”

  Lionel reached into his jacket pocket and flashed Keeton the butt of a small pistol.

  ***

  Jonathan had honed his spy’s senses with a decade of deadly and dangerous work for the Soviet Union. He had killed men and women in several Western countries and had once helped topple a small African tribal government. His work required him to crave precision and order and to shun chaos and surprise. That was why by the time his taxi had pulled up to the curb half a block from the café he knew there must be something amiss. The little—what would he consider Harry, a rodent?—the little rodent had yet again, within the span of less than a fortnight, called him via the coded newspaper messages to a face-to-face meeting. Such events had been rare, and the alteration of their frequency troubled him.

  Before sitting down he ordered tea from a wandering waiter. Back in his usual corner he waited impatiently for Harry to show. The cutout man had been late before, usually with a thin excuse born of shoddy planning. Their normal time was seven o’clock in the morning—at six fifty a tall, dark-haired man in blue jeans and a leather motorcycle jacket strode down into the lower level of the restaurant and walked directly over to his table.

  “I’m the new man,” Keeton said quietly with a touch of the distinctly Cockney accent. He sat down across the table from Jonathan. “Harry’s gone missing. My name is Colin.”

  “Is that so?” Jonathan answered as he stared at Keeton and idly stirred his tea. “Can’t say I’m shocked, but I suppose that’s neither here nor there, is it? Why are we here, Colin?”

  “First things first,” Keeton said. “Have you got something to say to me?”

  Of all the elements of the plan to meet Jonathan, this moment was the one Keeton found the riskiest. Harry had given him a series of code words that would be needed to ensure both agents were authentic. There was still a chance Harry believed enough in his cause to send Keeton in with a false response, in which case Jonathan would be alerted to the ruse. Only bad consequences could follow that development.

  “Apple,” Jonathan said quietly.

  “Sunshine,” Keeton responded.

  Jonathan’s eyes narrowed slightly as he stared back. Then he nodded and smiled. “Go on then, Colin. Why are we here?”

  “Two reasons. One, to see if you might have any clues to Harry’s whereabouts—I think we both would agree that he was a bit wet. Any chance he got himself into a jam?”

  “I have no idea,” Jonathan replied slowly and coldly. “Nor do I care much.”

  Keeton snorted in derision. “Fair enough; don’t blame you there. OK then, second reason is that he was supposed to pass along some vital information to you, and I need to know if it happened or not. Message from our friend in Poland, regarding the job in Rome.”

  Jonathan leaned in with a hard look. “Colin, it’s dangerous to mention such things in public, even in a nearly empty restaurant early in the morning. Yes, he passed this along to me.”

  “So you know what to do next, then?” Keeton asked. “About the preparations and such?”

  “Yes, Colin, I know exactly what I’m to do next.”

  “I’m supposed to ask you to repeat back to me your preparations, or if you’d prefer you may return home and inform the directorate yourself.”

  “I’m not going to tell you anything, Colin,” Jonathan said. “But Colin’s not your real name, is it?”

  “The directorate, then,” Keeton replied. “That’s up to you. For security reasons they completely understand. Of course Colin is a code name. But make no mistake, I’m not your standard cutout man like Harry. And don’t let my appearance lull you into a false sense of superiority. Things have shifted—they’re accelerating, you could say—and I’m here to make sure you know what the directorate requires, so there ain’t no mistakes. Now I don’t want your, shall we say, liberal lifestyle to be taken away from you.”

  Jonathan’s eyes bore into Keeton’s, and a slight one-sided smile emerged on the KGB man’s mouth. “Do you know what I do for a living, Colin?”

  “I think I’ve got it, yes,” Keeton said. “Under that Savile Row exterior you’re an instrument of power for the state against her enemies. Something like that?”

  “Something like that, yes,” Jonathan said. “But more refined. I kill for a living, Colin. Not by knife or garrote or even my bare hands. No, I kill with bullets—usually one bullet, actually. Have you ever taken a life that way, with a rifle at three hundred yards, a single shot?”

  Keeton shook his head slowly.

  “I didn’t think you had,” Jonathan said. “No, because you don’t have the Eye. It’s the Eye that pushes up against the scope and peers through it to see your target. He moves, breathes, laughs without a care, unaware of the Eye. It’s the Eye that tells you it’s time, and then you do it. You don’t have the Eye, do you…Colin?”

  This time the pointed tone was deliberate, meant to be heard. Keeton held the gaze, but his mind was thinking of the gun under his shoulder and the team that was poised just outside the café on the street and in a van near the front door. And about Christopher, who should have sat down in a table on the other end of the room a minute after Keeton himself had entered. He should be at Keeton’s back now. What was Jonathan getting at, anyway?

  “I don’t know what you mean, mate,” Keeton said. “You’ve got your orders now, so my job is done.”

  “They say it’s the most personal way to kill someone,” Jonathan continued. “I agree with that. It’s the Eye again, looking through that scope—like a camera taking a picture. I remember the face of every person I’ve ever killed. It’s not always easy. Last year I was ordered to shoot my own lover. And I remember the faces of those I shoot at but miss. It’s very rare, but it happens. For instance, I can still see your face in that Hounslow apartment wondering what the hell was going on after I followed orders to kill Lynette right in front of you.”

  Keeton felt the blood drain from his face. His spine stiffened. His mind raced to put the puzzle together. Jakub had sent messages to Jonathan through Harry on the same night he urged Moscow to activate the asset named Racket. Racket was Philip Brown, and Philip Brown was Jonathan. So Jonathan, the man seated directly across from him at the table, was the KGB assassin headed to Rome to kill the bishop. And now the threads of the web had spun back in time to his tragedy from a year ago—Lynette, admitting that she was a sleeper agent and had another lover, from the KGB. Jonathan…John.

  John, the English version of the Russian name that Lynette had smugly thrown in his face.

  “Ivan,” he whispered aloud.

  “Andrew Keeton—Agent Orange,” Ivan said quietly. “I have a pistol on my lap. I’m fast, and there’s no way you’ll get the big Smith & Wesson out of that tight leather jacket in time. So keep your hands on top of the table. You know, Keeton, I wasn’t making any of that up. It really is like a roll of film to me. I recognized you immediately when you walked in, from that morning when I put the Eye on you. Of course, it’s always nice to put a name to the face. I got all that from Lynette.”

  “You’re not going to make it out of here,” Keeton said fiercely, all of the affected accents of his cover now stripped away.

  “Maybe not, but I think my chances are better than yours, don’t you?”

  “Your life is over, Ivan. Philip Brown has been outed as a traitor. We’ve got a team taking your house in Kingston apart. And several more men are waiting for you outside.”

  Ivan smiled cruelly. “We both know I’m not going to surrender. It’s true, you’ve cocked-up Philip Brown. You don’t think I have others?
Other names, other cars, other homes? All I have to do is get out of this restaurant alive, and I’ll be gone. Just like I did last year, except I’ll have finally completed what I tried to do back then. I was told to shoot the girl, unfortunate but necessary. She would’ve given away too much information if captured. I decided to take out the Brit on my own and was rewarded for it. You were an afterthought but embarrassing even so that I missed you.”

  Keeton’s breathing was shallow, and his pulse throbbed. Christopher should be back there, should have sat facing them pretending to read the morning Times, sipping coffee and watching for Keeton’s signal. Look straight up to the ceiling if there’s danger; they had agreed. If he gave the signal, Christopher would react by pulling his gun and covering Ivan until the team could race in and take him away. But now, if Ivan really did already have a gun at the ready and noticed either Keeton’s actions or Christopher’s, there would be shooting, and Keeton would be the most at risk. Was that little speech he had given to Harry genuine or not? What was he prepared to do? Was he ready to sacrifice it all for his country? Did he even have a choice? Now was the time to decide.

  “By the way, Keeton,” Ivan said nonchalantly. “I wouldn’t dream of shooting you, not before I took care of your partner in the tweed coat.”

  Keeton’s eyes widened. Ivan suddenly stood from his chair and brought the small-caliber revolver up in a squared shooting stance, his aim trained somewhere behind Keeton. Keeton reacted by leaving his chair and reaching for the leather jacket’s zipper. Christopher raised his head in surprise and reached into his jacket, but it was too late. Two quick shots from Ivan’s gun both hit him, and he cried out and fell back even as his hand emerged with an automatic pistol. The only other patrons in the room—a pair of working-class girls having a nosh before their secretarial shift began—screamed at the loud violence.

  Keeton’s fingers had just managed to grasp the tab of the zipper when Ivan pivoted and emptied the four remaining shots into Keeton’s torso, two hitting up near the chest and one hitting at each his shoulder and stomach. He fell to the floor facedown, motionless. Ivan took a step toward Keeton but then noticed Christopher moving his gun hand up slowly. At that moment there was also a clatter in the front part of the café and shadows of the CIA men running in after hearing the gunshots.

  Ivan turned and ran to the back of the room, through a doorway that led to the two tiny toilets and opposite them a makeshift storage closet. He had worked out and practiced the escape route after noticing a waiter one morning retrieving the key from atop the frame. Even amid the current danger of being captured or killed, he smiled at his own genius in having prepared for such a getaway.

  Once inside the closet, he locked it back up and found the decrepit narrow staircase that had once been a servant’s passage. The rickety steps weaved up two and a half stories to a similarly small room. He reached up to a length of rope dangling overhead and pulled down a retractable folding wooden ladder, which he then climbed to reach the building’s attic. A skylight window was built in to the slanted roof and was easy to unlock and open with a cranking key.

  He climbed onto the roof and carefully edged his way over twenty feet, then thirty, then fifty, then a hundred until he reached the end of the building. Fifteen feet below his position was the top platform to the fire escape, out of view of Keeton’s team. He swung over the edge of the roof and let his arms hang slackly. Then he dropped to the metal platform and quickly descended to the narrow street below.

  His training and preparation had gotten him away from the CIA and presumably their partners in MI-6. Now his instincts took over as he moved normally through the streets on his way to a second safe house, a flat bought and paid for by another cover identity designed to get him out of the country. If somehow his enemies had managed to find out about the alternate cover then so be it—he would acknowledge defeat and force them to kill him with the grim solace that he had killed Keeton first. Despite his bitterness at having his plush life as a wealthy patron destroyed, he still had a job to do. His mind had already begun planning how he would contact Moscow and confirm his next assignment: Rome.

  ***

  Stanislaw Dziedzic warily examined the envelope that had arrived by special Party courier only moments ago, as one did when confronted with single-party state correspondence. It was addressed by typewriter to Dziedzic’s boss, by his title Biskup Krakowski—the bishop of Krakow. Dziedzic noted with bitter satisfaction that the ribbon was worn and two of the letters were raised. So much for state efficiency. The awkward PZPR party emblem had been stamped in the corner. Dziedzic felt a protuberance on the back of the envelope and turned it over to see that the top and bottom flaps had been sealed with a dollop of red wax pressed again with the emblem. This last curious measure worried Dziedzic the most.

  At his own small desk outside Bishop Paszek’s office, the secretary carefully sliced the wax tablet and opened the envelope, then lifted out the single sheet of typed paper and unfolded it. PZPR letterhead, Office of the Central Committee, he noted. The letter itself was brief and direct.

  07.07.

  To Kazimierz Paszek, Bishop of Krakow

  After careful consideration the Committee has made the decision to allow your travel to Rome during the fourth session of the Ecumenical Council in September of this year, under the same conditions as were granted last year. Preparation and correspondence with the Committee through the local PZPR Deputy should commence immediately in order for permission to be maintained.

  So that was it. The signature of the First Secretary slightly above his typed name and title made it official. Today was July the third. In two months the bishop would be going to Rome again, amid all of the turmoil of his writings and his soft defiance of state power. The debate with Deputy Sitko regarding Nowa Huta was the type of issue that might have poisoned the bishop’s chances to attend the council. Dziedzic admitted to himself that perhaps that would not have been the worst outcome for Baca’s well-being. It was at that moment that the bishop, accompanied by no less than Deputy Sitko himself, entered the room.

  “Stanislaw, look who I found admiring the flowerbed outside the residence,” Paszek said amiably. The bishop had been out for a walk, which always seemed to energize him. His typical smile contrasted with Sitko’s blank stoniness. Under the circumstances, Dziedzic shared the party deputy’s sobriety.

  “I see you have received the very letter we were discussing outside,” Sitko said as he pointed to the secretary. “Very good. I came here, Bishop, in my official capacity as deputy to relay my unofficial viewpoint of your travel to Rome.”

  “Unofficial officialdom,” Paszek said thoughtfully. “Do we classify this as contradiction or government policy?”

  Sitko turned sharply toward the bishop. “You speak too lightly of grave matters.”

  “Now Eliasz, let’s not quarrel like children on such a beautiful day,” Paszek replied with a touch on the deputy’s elbow. “Please come into my office. Stanislaw, could we have tea?”

  Dziedzic nodded and handed the bishop the party letter. “One moment, Excellency, it should be ready.”

  “And for yourself, Stanislaw,” Paszek said as the secretary reached the door that led to the remainder of the episcopal mansion. “After all, I presume you’ll be allowed to accompany the Polish contingent once more.”

  “That’s one of your big problems,” Sitko began after he and the bishop were seated in the office overlooking Fransiscan Street. “That you presume.”

  “That’s part of my—our—respective offices, isn’t it? Our responsibility to presume, or at least hope, for the positive outcome of our philosophies.”

  Sitko nearly allowed a grin to form on his mouth. “I think the summer sun must be getting to you, with all this gaiety and high-minded talk of philosophies. As for hope, that’s a bit too ethereal for the party.”

  Dziedzic entered the office with a tray of tea cups and served them, then took a seat beside the bishop.

  “
So, this is why I am here,” Sitko said. “To tell you that I personally do not approve of your travel to Rome, but as a loyal party member I will of course abide the decision of the Committee.”

  “Naturally,” Paszek answered. “For my part I’m happy to continue the work with my fellow bishops. We may differ in many things, Eliasz, but perhaps we may share a moment of pride that Poland is allowed to be included in important world events.”

  “I suppose so,” Sitko answered curtly and with a dismissive shrug, then placed his cup back to its saucer and folded his hands across his torso. Little did the deputy know that Paszek was engaging in pastoral practice—ask and wait. After a silent minute Sitko suddenly leaned forward. “Allowed. Yes, that’s it. Allowed. Not by me, but who am I?”

  Paszek looked at Sitko over the mask of his tea cup, as if concentrating his communication through the glance. “It seems you have more to say, Eliasz.”

  “Not even allowed by the Committee, to be honest,” Sitko blurted in agitation. “No, not the Party of the People’s Republic.”

  “The Soviet Union,” Dziedzic said softy. “But this is nothing new.”

  “But still, why shouldn’t we be allowed to set our own rules?” Sitko said. “We believe in the socialist paradigm, we follow it. Isn’t that enough?”

  “In some circles there is never enough power,” Paszek said. “Institutions clamor for it, usually never really understanding why they want it.”

  “Control, of course,” Sitko replied. “I wonder if the Russians forced this decision just to demonstrate who’s in charge.”

  “There’s more still, though, isn’t there?” Dziedzic asked. “Deputy Sitko, if I recall, you lost a relative at the Katyn Forest massacre.”

  When Sitko picked up the cup and saucer again to take a sip; they rattled together briefly. “How do you come to know this?”