The Accidental Spy

by Jacqueline George

  “Hmm. Better leave them alone if you do. I guess that means my hotel room is bugged as well. That’s no surprise. Anything else?”

  “They followed us here tonight.”

  “Yes? In the tatty green Mercedes?”

  “That’s not tatty! Well, not by local standards anyway. I guess they’re waiting on the road. No, don’t go that way. It’s a false trail for sure, because there’s an Army camp over there - nowhere to run. They’ll be back in a minute. Head this way and we’ll be well placed wherever the trail goes next.

  “Right, while we’ve still got time, listen to this. I asked for a meeting because there are a couple of things that Stanford ought to know and I had no other way of contacting him. First the soldiers I told Stanford about, the ones that turned up at the hospital with terrible burns. They definitely came from the camp behind the tannery. Danka told me that, and she’s sure. She’s got contacts with the Polish people in the tannery.

  “Second; they’ve got a couple of Russians working there now. The only foreigners in the place. They’re working in some kind of laboratory, I think. The boss man is called Victor Ivanovitch Kuryagin. He’s about fifty, black and grey hair and beard, bald on top. Gold framed glasses. About five foot eight and fatter than me. Calls himself professor. He’s got an assistant, a nephew or something, not much use, just brought him along for the ride. Called Boris and he says he used to work in a blood bank as a technician. Boris can’t be much over thirty. Dark hair, heavy build, near six feet I’d guess. Very good English. Seems a bit of a lightweight when it comes to work, though. The professor is definitely in charge. They’re doing a lot of repair work in the laboratory and Boris is complaining because he doesn’t know anything about that sort of thing. The professor is using a Pole from the tannery called Janusz to help with the repairs. That’s what I wanted to tell Stanford.”

  Thorpe thought about it. “Do you think it means anything?”

  “I’m bloody sure it means something, I just don’t know what. Stanford will have to figure it out himself.”

  “You may have something, from the sound of it. OK, let me repeat it.” He was good; almost word perfect.

  As they walked on behind the pack, Thorpe started to question him. He seemed to be more interested in Boris than Victor. “What I’m thinking,” he explained, “Is that maybe Boris is a minder, just keeping an eye on the professor. A couple of years ago he would have been KGB for sure. Now, I don’t know. Perhaps they are just two ordinary men looking for some hard currency. Anything’s possible in the new Russia. Any chance of meeting them?”

  “It would look a bit strange, wouldn’t it? You’re not meant to know anything about the plant, after all.”

  “You’re right, I suppose. I’d only get my wrist slapped when I get home for thinking for myself. Do they ever leave the plant?”

  “Well, they’re allowed to visit the Poles next door and that was all until recently. Now they say they’re going to church on Sunday evening with the Poles as well.”

  “On Sunday? You told us Sunday comes on Friday here. I particularly remember that.”

  “That’s right. Delights of Tabriz. So the morning mass is on Friday and everyone’s off work. But the Poles have their service on Sunday evening, and that’s when the Russians are going. Anyway, I don’t think they’ve seen the light or anything like it. They just want to get out of the plant for a while.

  “I’ll tell you what’s bothering me though. I guess these guys are going to be the ones receiving the shipment. I don’t know how long it’s going to be before the professor figures out he hasn’t got what he expected, and then you can imagine whose door they’ll be knocking on. That’s another good reason for this meeting. So what are you planning?”

  “Planning? God knows! I certainly don’t. They just sent me to bring some moral support. You know, tea and sympathy. Why are they running over that way?”

  The Virgin was stunned. “But you’ve got to do something! Listen, I’m scared of these guys. If they receive that tank of solvent, I’m finished. I mean, chopped up in little pieces and fed to the cats. So whatever you do has to happen very fast, OK? And it has to be guaranteed.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m sure Stanford’s got it all thought out. Look, they’re getting away from us - shall we run for a bit?”

  The Virgin jogged alone for a while. He was shocked at Thorpe’s nonchalance. It’s OK for him, he thought, he’ll be safely tucked up in his London bed while Victor is testing samples of the solvent. The solvent would come off the boat during the day - no one worked nights in the docks. He was sure that Major Jamal would not have to wait for Customs clearance; he would have a truck standing by beside the boat. That meant the container would be in the Army camp the same day the vessel docked, and you would have to assume that Victor would drain off a sample as soon as he could. That gave a maximum time window of half a day to trigger the explosion. Any earlier and it would not damage the plant. Any later and The Virgin might already be on his way to an appointment with Major Jamal’s manicurist.

  He looked around for Thorpe. He looked fit and had worked his way through the pack and was running down a likely false trail with some of the fast runners. The Virgin took a guess at where the real trail must be and took off to one side. It was his lucky day; a lavender paint spot appeared at the base of an old fence post. Another, two metres further on, was hidden behind a small stone. In spite of his troubles, his blood was up. “ON-ON! ON-ON!” he cried and following the paint spots he plunged into the scrub beside the path. Behind him the rest of the Sabah Hash took up the cry. For a rare few minutes The Virgin led the pack.

  By the time Thorpe came up behind him, The Virgin felt he had run enough for the moment. He slowed to a walk and reined Thorpe in as well. The rest of the pack jostled past them, seeking for the next check. “Look, we have to get this sorted out now because it’s about the only place we can talk. You have to tell Stanford that I want to know one hundred percent that the container is going to be triggered as soon as it gets to the plant, or I want out. We had more time when the Tabrizis were going to receive it themselves. It would take them a little time to sort out what they’ve got. But now...”

  Thorpe looked at him. “Well, I’m not really sure what you’re talking about. I mean you’re talking about things that I obviously haven’t been told about. Things I don’t need to know. So I can’t answer you. All I can do is tell Stanford you’re worried.”

  “Tell him about the Russians too. It’s important!” but Thorpe had already run on.

  The green Mercedes trailed them to the villa where the party was held. Noddy decided to call Thorpe ‘Jeremy’ after the British politician with the unusual sexual tastes.

  - 17 -

  Once Thorpe had gone, The Virgin was plagued by the sensation that he had been launched on a terrifying roller-coaster ride from which there was no escape, and quite possibly no happy ending either. Life went on. He kept calling Elena once or twice a week. The 9-5/8” cement job for RomDril-1 was getting nearer and Florian had started to send up cement and chemicals already. Tayfun in TAMCO seemed more interested in his forthcoming Athens field-break than planning the job. He was happy to cut and paste an old cementing programme, changing the casing setting depth and cement quantities.

  Abdul had received advance copies of the shipping documents for the charter vessel. The documents for the solvent had come separately because that would have to be picked up in England. The Virgin called Major Jamal and passed them over. The next thing to be received by Abdul would be the original invoices and bill of lading. And the anti-Israel declaration that stated that every part of the vessel and its cargo was absolutely untainted by contact with the International Zionist Conspiracy. Last of all to come, if the Tabrizi Embassy in The Hague could be persuaded to co-operate in time, would be the legalised certificates of origin. An unlegalised certificate was absolutely unacceptable. The certificate had to be delivered to the Embassy where, at the price of a large fee and a
delay of a week or two, a clerk would put a rubber stamp on the back of a document which he could not understand. That made the shipment safe for Tabriz.

  The Virgin was waiting. Waiting for the cement job. Waiting for the documents to arrive. Waiting for the ship to arrive. Waiting for the start of Ramadan, now only days away.

  He had mixed feelings about Ramadan. It was true that it made life very much more difficult. Devout Muslims always refrained from smoking, alcohol and of course fornication, but in Ramadan they also refrained from eating and drinking from sunrise to sunset. Instead they meditated on their sins over the past year and strove to improve themselves. It was a time for quiet fasting and self-mortification.

  The reality differed from the ideal even more than a Western Christmas does. In Tabriz, Ramadan meant that every Tabrizi worked six days a week from nine o’clock until two o’clock. They slept in the afternoon until dusk when they would sit at the family table, cutlery in hand, until they heard the muezzin’s call. Then they would tuck into a large meal. These evening breakfasts were grand affairs; a minimum of three different kinds of meat were required, plus a selection of side dishes and sweetmeats. After breakfast and a period of relaxation to aid digestion, it was time to go shopping. During Ramadan the streets were deserted at the time of the evening breakfast and then burst into life with the shops open from eight o’clock to midnight at least. When the shops closed, it was time to visit friends or for the young men to play football until the last meal of the night, another generous spread timed to finish just before dawn. Then off to bed for a couple of hours of sleep.

  This cycle of eating and partying all night was kept up for the whole lunar month of Ramadan. Everyone ate far too much and the grocers reckoned that the fasting month brought them a fifty percent increase in business. And, of course, work suffered. Not only were the working hours shortened but the workers were all short of sleep from being up all night. They came late and left early, doing as little as possible while they were in the office. Government offices, never very efficient, were virtually shut down for the month.

  All of this would have been more tolerable if the Tabrizis had maintained their normally placid composure. Instead they were driven by the urge to demonstrate their devoutness by being bad-tempered and obstreperous. Driving during the day was hair-raising as the more holy a driver was, the more he threw all considerations of safety into the lap of Allah and drove like a high speed idiot. Foreigners made a point of keeping off the roads immediately before the evening breakfast; any Tabrizi on the road at that time would be racing back to his family at lethal speed.

  The positive side of Ramadan was that the foreigners, working normal hours, were largely left in peace to get on with their work. The Virgin used the quiet afternoons to finish all the paper work projects that had been set aside from earlier in the year. On balance, he preferred Ramadan over the normal run of things.

  The Virgin visited RomDril-1 regularly to receive cement from the desert, and to make a start on job planning. Terry was back after being home in Canada for Christmas and New Year. Together they visited the low-pressure manifold on the mud tanks. Terry had been given a Christmas present by RomDril. They had welded a nipple onto the discharge side of the pumps and installed one of MacAllans’ four inch butterfly valves and a Weco fitting.

  “No more worries now, Greg. We should be able to get you twelve barrels a minute through that. No problem.”

  “Looks good. I still wish they would do the displacing. That’s a lot of barrels to pump and they’re better set up for it.”

  “You guys just don’t want to wear your little pumps out, that’s all. No - there’s not a chance of them being able to do it accurately, so you’ll just have to put up with it.”

  - 18 -

  The Virgin left the office early at four o’clock. If Harris called after he had gone, he could always say he was in the market buying some electrical fittings for the villa. Or some pipe fittings. Fixing the electricity or water was a common occupation in Tabriz, so his excuse would be believed. Danka was waiting at the door of the apartment building, dressed in her Sunday best. She picked her way across the mud to the car.

  “Boże, Virgin! This place is like shit. Always mud. Is not possible live like this.” She lit her cigarette as The Virgin picked his way around the puddles to the road. “Now we will see real communists come to the real church. I think they will not understand. Russians never like to understand Polish. Our church is also not like the Russian church. We are more modern.”

  The Virgin was smart enough not to respond. He fell back on the weather. “When is this lousy weather going to stop? We should be going to the beach soon.”

  “The beach? You are crazy! It is too early. It will be cold. First it will be time for mushrooms, then time for beach. In March. After February.”

  “We were on the beach last year in February. At least once. But you’re right. We should be going for mushrooms now. How about Friday?”

  Danka clapped her hands. Polish people loved mushrooms. “Yes! We will make barbecue. Wanda will come, and some people from the tannery. Janusz will bring meat. I tell him today. Perhaps Russians will come, if they know about mushrooms.”

  “I doubt it. They’re not allowed to go anywhere, except to church. Maybe later, when the Tabrizis get bored with them. I wonder if they’ll be allowed to go to the beach in summer. I wouldn’t want to stay all summer locked up like they are and not go to the beach.”

  “Ah, it is for money they are here, Virgin. Only for money.”

  It’s the same for all of us, thought The Virgin. We’re only here for the money, nothing else. Except maybe Eytie Joe. Even he probably came for the money in the early days, but now he’s too comfortable, and too uncivilised to go back. They drove on through the empty grey streets. Some shops were open for last minute shopping, but for the most part everyone was at home. The women putting the finishing touches to the evening meal and the men nursing their religious hunger, waiting for the moment of the Ramadan breakfast.

  The gate at the tannery stood wide open. The gaffirs had lost their interest in annoying visitors and retired hungry. They would not make trouble again until after they had blown out their stomachs and taken a little nap. The tannery minibus stood outside the accommodation huts, waiting for its driver. It was full of men and the windows were misted. Danka went to them, but The Virgin decided to keep out of the weather. It must be a strange life for the tannery workers, he mused. They worked normal hours, perhaps forty or so hours a week over six days. That left them free for the late afternoon and evenings, and Fridays as well, but there was nothing to do. The tannery was far from town and they had to beg the use of the minibus from the Polish manager. As he was here with his wife and had no car of his own, getting the minibus was very difficult. One shopping trip on Wednesday evenings, and church on Sunday. Practically speaking, those were the only chances of getting out of their confinement. For the rest, they might as well be in prison. There was nothing at all to keep them civilised. Inside their high wall they had the company of their work-mates, enough to eat and too much to drink. They earned their money mostly by sitting and waiting for the end of their contracts. As the old communist saying went - we pretend to work, they pretend to pay us.

  Danka got back into the car. “We are waiting for Janusz. Then we will go. The Russians are in the bus. They are wearing ties and are very serious.”

  Janusz did not keep them long. He came with his hair still uncombed and wearing a disreputable sweater. He had the same bemused expression on his face that The Virgin remembered from the party. Janusz had been deeply drunk then; The Virgin wondered if the two things went together. They drove slowly out through the gate, the minibus following. In the grey of the dusk, the road looked wet and empty.

  They were still in the empty kilometres between the tannery and town when they came to a check-point. It was an impromptu army one, with soldiers in sloppy olive-green fatigues wandering around chatting to each other.
Some of them had fitted the bayonets to their AK-47s. They stood around two battered oil drums that formed a gateway for the traffic. One of them waved the car down. The Virgin slowed down and groped for his car papers. It was not until he had stopped that he felt that something was wrong. Something aggressive in the manner of the soldiers surrounding the two vehicles. And why were they mounting a check now, when they should be back in barracks eating their breakfast?

  He wound the window down. The soldier bent to look inside. The Virgin and Danka found themselves staring into the cold blue eyes of Dov Nagel.

  “Where are the Russians?” he asked, showing no sign of recognition.

  The Virgin was stunned and could only jerk his head at the following minibus. Dov stood up and waved them on. As The Virgin picked up speed he could see in the mirror that they were opening the side door of the minibus. The memory of Dov and the Palestinian doctor hung over them both. Danka was watching over her shoulder. Then she turned back and sat with a face of stone, staring at nothing in front of them. Janusz must have sensed something because he was asking questions. Danka shut him up sharply and they continued in silence, the minibus following. In the dying light, The Virgin could see tears running down Danka’s cheek.

  She ran back to the minibus as soon as they parked near the church. The Russians had been taken but the men from the tannery were not worried. To them it was just another inexplicable freak of the Tabrizi system. Danka hurried to the church ahead of them, nearly running in her distress. She had disappeared by the time The Virgin reached the courtyard. He did not go inside but waited there listening to the Mass over the loudspeaker above the church door. He felt sick at heart and wanted to pray.

  Several men waited outside with him and the late-comers joined them. All were Polish, and followed the service intently. They sang a little and muttered the responses. When it was the time to kneel, they crouched down on one knee but just kept clear of the wet concrete. The Virgin could not recognise the course of the service and was taken by surprise when the communion bell rang. Most of the people around him filed into the church to take the sacrament. The confirmed devotion of the men, mostly manual workers from their hands and the way they held themselves, was something foreign to The Virgin.