Gerald Seymour

by Traitor's Kiss (b) (epub)

  'Lofty, we're all fucked up—you the same?'

  'We have a hard time the week before the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month…as long as I'm back by then.'

  All brittle answers, Lofty's and theirs. Bullshit answers.

  A little quiet whisper from Billy, 'It's everyone or it's no one. It's the team or it doesn't happen. Has to be you, Ham, because you've the language and do communications. Lofty—because we'll need the bloody launcher and you're the best man on it. And you, Wickso—and I'm not dwelling on it—the medic. Me, I lead…if I could slim it down, can't, I would. We use the big three Ss—Speed, Surprise and a Shitload of luck. We have a wing, the map, a prayer, and not much else.'

  Lofty reached out his hand in the darkness and caught Billy's fist, then Ham's gripped theirs, and Wickso's clamped them.

  London's evening light threw smeared ripples on the river below them.

  'You misunderstand me—what I have instructed is a reconnaissance, a probe. That's all.'

  The voice boomed from twin speakers behind the wide desk, at each end of the window. The voice, scrambled and distorted, spoke to them with God's own tenor. It had a resonance of calm. Bertie Ponsford prowled between the speakers, his feet silent on the pile carpet, and Peter Giles was sprawled across the room's easy chair, picking at invisible dirt under his fingernails. The Director General sat on his desk. His shoes dangled a little above the carpet and he whacked a rhythm, his heels against the desk's broad legs. Each in their own way, the DG, Giles and Ponsford, understood their affliction: they were second-guess men, and the action they could either sanction or countermand was far away. None of them could summon up a clear picture, only a vague image, of the coaster—the Princess Rose—heaving on her anchor chain out on the Baltic on a wild night. They depended on his counsel, and the beggar would know it.

  'What I'm saying, the Delta team will push forward and examine the situation on the ground. They will move with great caution. I have been very specific about that. No risks are to be taken. Nothing will be done that compromises them. I am almost certain that there is nothing they can do for Ferret, but I would be ashamed if I was not absolutely certain that he is beyond our reach…'

  The coffee was untouched, the biscuits uneaten. They listened, and the voice dominated them. To each of them, he seemed to stand with legs apart in the centre of the carpet, and the metallic tang of his tone carried an authority that was owned by none of them. In the old culture of the Service, men on the ground ruled and their initiative was backed by their seniors, but these were new times. They wriggled while he spoke through the speakers. 'I thank you for your anecdote from Grozny. An interrogator is called back to Moscow on a matter of urgency. It fits the mould. He will now be at the base at Baltiysk, a better bet than any you'll make on the Gold Cup. He will have had Ferret with him from early this afternoon, but I venture to suggest—from my considerable experience—that he will wish to keep Ferret with him, in situ, during his preliminary questioning. Myself, I'd not want to ship Ferret out until I had been through his quarters, his office, his telephone calls' list, his contacts, before he's off to the Lubyanka. We have a few more hours, probably until dawn, a little window is open. All that I suggest is a reconnaissance, an evaluation—then a speedy intervention or, more probably, an orderly withdrawal. I believe, I would emphasize it most strongly, that Ferret's loyalty to us demands we do what we can for him. We're up for it, but that's not what counts. It's in your hands, gentlemen.'

  The DG held down the microphone's button beside his hip. 'Thank you, Rupert, and as eloquent as I would have expected. Can you wait a moment, please, while we discuss?' His finger came off the button. In the atmospheric crackle through the speakers were the merged rattle of a glass, the sharp yap of a small dog, an oath and a thud, then: 'Get out, you little bugger.' He threw another switch and the speakers died. The DG's feet beat harder on the desk's legs, the habit that had become addictive in the days after nine-eleven. It was a signal to Ponsford and Giles of the stress burdening him. 'I sense mission-creep here—but when did a mission of value not assume creep? When did a mission that was worthwhile not acquire a motion of its own? Havoc, Peter, the name given the mission, is that Rupert's or yours? Who called it "Havoc"?'

  'Rupert did.'

  'And, Bertie, you gave "Havoc" your blessing?'

  Ponsford squirmed. He wanted out of the meeting, wanted responsibility off his back. 'Confusion and chaos, that's "Havoc". New names for operations are so difficult to find…'

  The DG's heels made a drumbeat. 'In the ninth year of the reign of Richard the Second, fourteenth-century stuff, the military command of "Havock" was forbidden under pain of death. A tract entitled the Office of the Constable and Mareschall in Time of War, states "the peyne of him that crieth havock, and of them that followeth him is a capital offence". You see, gentlemen, it was the medieval order to massacre without quarter. That's where we are—is it where we want to be?'

  'I didn't see it that way…' Giles muttered.

  Ponsford paced. 'It's only a name…'

  'I believe you do Rupert a disservice—a very exact man. "Massacre without quarter." Very little that Rupert does has not been planned.'

  'All right all right…can we go back to the beginning? Back to basics—why did we launch?'

  'Loyalty,' Giles mouthed the word. 'And duty to a friend.'

  Ponsford said, 'For the reputation of the Service.'

  The shoes' heels pounded the desk's legs. 'Powerful ingredients loyalty, duty and reputation—matters of pride and honour. Only reconnaissance, correct? I am trusting Rupert and that, I know, is probably unwise. It will have gone beyond his control and he will be a mere spectator. No massacre without quarter, understood? The young man there, Locke, he's sensible. By dawn they're off the ground, and out. Give Locke authority. First light, out. We should not forget that we revelled and oozed pleasure when we shared Ferret's material across the Atlantic, so we will at least try to fulfil our debt to the poor wretch. Out…by first light.'

  'Mowbray's no longer running it,' Locke said. 'I've been given authority.'

  She blanched. It was the first time he had seen Alice's shoulders droop. 'What will you do with it?'

  'Let them amble about a bit.' A coolness in his voice. 'London won't bite on it, they're still digesting Rupert's nonsense about loyalty, duty, debts—the team can do reconnaissance, whatever that means, then they abort by dawn. I have control over them.'

  'You'll enjoy that.'

  'And what I also understand from London, they're now talking "damage limitation". Your friend is being worked over by a senior interrogator. He'll crack. They all do. A bit of bravado, a little intellectual wrestling, then he'll break. Damage limitation and denial—the pity is Mowbray didn't think of it before they started this joke operation.'

  In the kitchen's darkness he could not see her face. She said 'Rupert did.'

  Bikov knelt in front of him. 'Viktor, stay awake.'

  He forced his eyes back open.

  'You have to listen to me, Viktor.'

  He did not know if he had slept, or dozed, or whether his eyes had been closed only for a few seconds.

  'We are going to go back, Viktor, over what you have told me.'

  His eyes ached, his head throbbed, and the cold seemed deep in his body.

  'And then, Viktor, you will sleep. Sleep a day and a night, and another day, if you want it.'

  The candle's wick floated in the wax pool and the light from it puckered at his knees. It did not have the strength to reach to Bikov's face.

  'Before you sleep, Viktor, I want to be very fair with you. I will repeat what you have said to me, and I will tell you the conclusion that I draw from it.'

  He craved permission to sleep, to roll down on to the darkened concrete and curl up, knees against chest, but Bikov's hand reached past the candle and held his shoulder. He could not break the hold and lie on the floor.

  'When I have told you what conclusion I
draw, Viktor, you must think very carefully. You have the opportunity, then, to contradict what I suggest.'

  His stomach hurt and pain nagged in the joints of his knees, hips and elbows, and the voice dripped into his ear.

  'If my conclusion is wrong, Viktor, you should contradict it. If it is right, Viktor, you will tell me.'

  He struggled to concentrate, could not. He did not know what he had said. 'Can we start, Viktor, so that we can finish? And then you can sleep.'

  He did not know that now a tape turned. Neither did he know that the lists of each logged telephone call he had made from his office and from his room lay in a file in a box, that more logs of each classified document initialled as having been read by him were also heaped in the box, photocopies of permission for him to go across the border, and records of every meeting attended. The box of evidence was filling. Nor did he know that a jet aircraft was fuelled and ready to taxi from a remote apron at Kaliningrad Military, that the cockpit crew were alerted to be ready for a dawn takeoff, that a flight route to Moscow had been filed with Air Traffic.

  'I am your friend, Viktor, and among friends only the truth is acceptable.'

  Nor did he know that, far away in Chechnya, a gunship helicopter picked up a beacon's signal and located its origin as a shepherd's hut on a grassland plateau in the foothills below the Argun gorge, that the helicopter prepared to fire from its four under-wing pods a total of thirty-two 57mm missiles, and would then rake the hut with its four-barrelled Gatling gun. Nor did he know who was responsible for the helicopter's flight.

  'I am an honest man, Viktor, and you are. We are going to be honest with each other. Then you shall sleep.'

  He tried so hard to remember the warnings Rupert Mowbray had given him. But he was across the candle from a friend, and the warnings had been about beatings, electric torture and drugs, not the dangers of a friend.

  'We shall start, Viktor? Four years ago you learned from your mother, on her deathbed, that your father had been ordered to make an experimental test flight through the cloud of a nuclear explosion. It killed him. It had no scientific value. He was murdered and the killing weapon was wasting leukaemia—which you saw, but it was only four years ago that you learned the truth of the test flight. I suggest, Viktor, it was what made you turn to the opponents of Russia. You were a walk-in, you offered to spy.'

  'No!' Viktor screamed. 'No—no…'

  'A spy, Viktor, because of the murder of your father.'

  'No.'

  A silky soft voice massaged him. 'Viktor, I believe you. Of course I believe you. Your grandmother, gang-raped by troops from the Motherland, abandoned. Four years ago you learned of the rape and death of your grandmother…'

  ... Chapter Fifteen

  Q. Fifty-seven years after the German surrender, what Russian city is said never to have recovered from the Second World War?

  A. Kaliningrad.

  'If it had happened to my grandmother, Viktor, it would have been like a poison to me. To you, was it a poison?'

  Better if he had not pared down his fingernails. He forced them into the palms of his hand, his fist clenched. He tried to make pain. Pain would hold his alertness. If he did not hurt himself he would slip back into exhaustion and betray himself. His fingernails were not long enough to make the pain bad. He knew he hovered at the edge of collapse. The candle's last light played on his shoes and on Bikov's boots. The wick was too far burned for him to see Bikov's face. When he failed to make the pain, Viktor tilted his head up and looked for a focus point that would combat the drip of the voice, so near to him and so understanding.

  'Viktor, I mean it with all sincerity. If it had been my grandmother I would have demanded vengeance.'

  He could find nothing to lay his eyes on. The block, Piatkin's palace, was one of the old buildings of the base, German-built. Senior men would have used it when the base was in the hands of the German navy. Viktor had not been to this room before, but he had been in the outer office where Piatkin held court. The ceiling that he could not see now would be high. The room's walls, which were cloaked in darkness, beyond his reach, would be thick and the floor under him was solid concrete. To Viktor, the room was a tomb and the voice of a demon was in his ears.

  'I don't hear your answer, Viktor. I was asking about vengeance, about poison. A young woman kills herself having left her baby boy on the steps of an orphanage. Do you not feel hatred?'

  'I don't know…'

  'Can you not trust me, Viktor?.

  'I don't know…'

  'If your grandmother had been mine, the hatred, the need for vengeance, would poison me.'

  He blurted, 'No.'

  'Vengeance…'

  'No.'

  'Together, they poison you.'

  'No.'

  He heard the sad sigh, then the syrup of the voice. 'I am disappointed in you, Viktor. I come to you as a friend. I admire you, and I respect you—but you give me no friendship and no respect. What do I have to do, Viktor, to be trusted by you? I have come to help you. You want to sleep, Viktor, and I want you to sleep. You have a burden on your back, Viktor, and I have come to share the weight of it, then to take it from you. When the burden is off, Viktor, you can sleep, and you will be at peace. Do you hear me, Viktor?'

  'Yes.'

  'First you learned of your father's death, then of your grandmother's death. The vengeance has to be vomited out of your mind. The hatred is there every minute of the day, and when you sleep there is no freedom from it. You will repay the killers of your father and your grandmother, repay them in kind. How? What is possible for you? There is only one way. You walk-in. Four years ago you were based with the Northern Fleet. I don't think there would have been Americans, but there would have been British ships and British businessmen, and you made your approach. Were you very frightened then, Viktor? What did you give them? A bundle of papers from a safe—plans and blueprints as credentials? You became a spy. You want to sleep, Viktor, and it is very easy to sleep. You became a spy, yes or no? Answer the question and then you can sleep in peace. I am your friend. Yes or no?'

  He gasped, 'No.'

  Perhaps Viktor hoped to hear a little singing hiss of breath off the teeth of the man opposite him—frustration, irritation. He did not.

  'Then, we shall move on…' Bikov said softly, calmly.

  The searchlight's beam played on the Princess Rose and caught a porthole at the top of the ladder leading down to the engine room.

  'I'm not going in there without this little piece of vermin,' Mowbray insisted.

  He held the dog by the scruff of its neck as, once more, the mate unscrewed the steel plate that covered the hidden place between the hull and the engine-room's wall. The master was on the bridge, shouting into the radio link to the patrol-boat, and Tihomir had been given the job of hiding the old man. He didn't think they would be boarded but it was possible. The light moved on and for a second time the patrol-boat circled them. He pushed the Englishman, who still clutched the dog, into the little black space, and heard a sigh of misery, and the dog's yelp, as he heaved the metal plate back into place. He worked frantically with his screwdriver to tighten the fastenings, then replaced the debris against the wall.

  He stepped back.

  'Why do we do this?' the engineer, Johannes, growled.

  The grimace set at his mouth. 'Why we do anything—only for money.'

  'She can blow us out of the water—it's an idiot's way to earn money.'

  The mate asked if the engine was ready, and the engineer shrugged: the engine was ready. 'We were fools to take the money.'

  The mate grinned. 'Big fools, but it was big money.'

  Tihomir levered himself up the rungs. The searchlight beam fell on the little landing outside the accommodation cabins, below the bridge. The patrol-boat was a hundred metres off their starboard side and he could not look into the strength of the beam: it lit every paint fleck, every rivet on the tired boat's deck.

  'It is still possible they can succee
d. You have my guarantee, the guarantee of a master mariner of twenty-four years, the guarantee of Andreas Yaxis—by dawn we will be gone.'

  Tihomir thought it was crazy to imagine anything about this was or ever had been possible. They must be back by dawn, the fighting men, or their retreat was cut off. In Karlovac, by the main square and close to the old barracks that had been built by the Bonapartists, was a church where the women, eleven years ago, had lit candles for the men in the trenches, and said quiet prayers. Each time he had come out of the trenches, before he washed the mud, blood and cordite stains off his body, he had gone to the church and added his prayer. He prayed now and the words came easily to him.

  The searchlight beam was cut. A dull half-gloom settled on the bridge. The master sagged. Tihomir knew the subterfuge had almost failed, but had not. With the gratitude of a survivor, he said his prayer again, heard the rumbling thunder of the patrol-boat gathering speed as it turned away.

  He went back below.

  With his screwdriver he unfastened the sheet of metal plate.

  The dog came out first. Hanging from its jaws was a writhing rat.

  The old man blinked. 'Worth its weight in gold, the bloody little hero! Any fireworks over there?'

  Tihomir shook his head. The dog pinioned the rat under its front paws then bit at the back of its neck and the squirming stopped.

  'Ten minutes, ten minutes' recovery,' Billy whispered. He couldn't hide the panting in his voice.

  Lofty was at his shoulder. The message was passed back. Less than a hundred metres in front of them was the canal, a black ribbon between the twin sets of shore lights on which the mist had settled like a greying pillow. Billy could smell the canal, salt water and engine oil. And the decay. They were hunched down beside a wooden building, their backsides resting on winter-flattened grass and weeds. On the open side there was cover from hazel and birch scrub. Above the far side of the building were dull overhead lights, but the building shielded them. Billy had a good clear view of the canal ribbon and the myriad maze of lights beyond it. He felt Lofty close up on him, and the others behind him. He knew that Wickso was the only one of them who looked after himself, kept himself fit, ran the pavements at night. Himself, he'd thought he was fit: he climbed Sgurr na Greine and Croit Bheinn for vantage-points where he could see eagles below him—he lugged his table-top and his paintbox up to summits. They had travelled a little more than eleven kilometres, and the load on Billy's back was like lead compared to that table-top and the box.