The Convenience of Lies

by Geoffrey Seed

  It all seemed dreamlike and unreal. Yet he somehow knew his Mummy and Daddy were nailed inside the boxes and would never get out. Fear consumed him at this realisation. He was terrified that a box had been prepared for him as well. So he ran and hid behind the slabs of stone outside, carved with the names of the dead whose bones decayed beneath his feet.

  He was found eventually and pacified - if only for that moment - then taken away for his life to be fashioned afresh.

  But trapped in the cabin cruiser, the premonition of one day being enclosed in a small, airless space had finally come to pass as he always dreaded it would. If he’d perished in the explosion, it would have been a mercy for the alternative was surely madness.

  Yet he didn’t die - though how his escape was brought about remained beyond his understanding. But for now, he ghosted in and out of consciousness, vaguely aware of voices coming to him from far away and long ago.

  *

  Evan arrived back at Staithe End late next day with a suitcase of McCall’s clothes. They could only have come from Garth Hall. He asked Hester if McCall had revealed anything new about what’d happened to him.

  ‘No, he’s mostly been asleep,’ she said. ‘I haven’t been able to get him to eat much either, just a little soup and a piece of toast.’

  ‘How’s Lexie bearing up?’

  ‘Far from back to her old self, I’m afraid. Seems tired and a bit withdrawn.’

  ‘But the police haven’t called round again?’

  ‘No, thank God. Have you heard any more?’

  ‘I’ve talked to some people but McCall’s run out of friends in the right places.’

  *

  The two men walked along the beach beneath the bright autumn moon, feathering in and out of restless clouds to put a sheen across the flat calm sea. Neither wanted to be the first to break the silence. Yet both knew they needed to talk. Evan was concerned about McCall’s weakened state.

  ‘I’m OK,’ he said. ‘I’ve been cooped up long enough so a mooch will do me good.’

  ‘You’ve had a pretty rough time of it.’

  ‘Only because of my own stupidity. I’ve been a fool.’

  ‘To trust Larry Benwick?’

  ‘Yes… but I suppose you’ll know why I should never have done so.’

  ‘Possibly, but even had you come to me, I couldn’t have told you anything, not then.’

  ‘Why the hell not? He planned to kill me all along.’

  ‘There’s a bigger picture, Mac… there always is.’

  ‘Then please tell me what it is and who Benwick’s working for.’

  Evan didn’t reply but guided McCall towards the shelter of the dunes and their fringe of stunted gorse bushes. Far in the distance, the gloom was pinpricked by the lights of passing ships. Evan fumbled in his waxed jacket for a handkerchief to blow his nose. He was gathering his thoughts.

  ‘I’ve always believed that what someone knows is important, Mac, but not as important as what they do with what they know.’

  It was difficult for McCall to interpret the thinking on Evan’s shadowed face.

  ‘Should I take that to mean you won’t be helping me uncover this cesspit of a story?’

  ‘Depends on who you’re planning to chuck in.’

  ‘Benwick, for starters.’

  ‘Anybody else?’

  ‘Let me see now… there’s Inglis, the pervert who would be prime minister, the trade union mole who kidnapped Ruby for Inglis’s pleasure, the spooks who ran a honey trap for paedophiles and the police who let them carry on abusing kids, then whoever covered up the death of Benwick’s accomplice then tried to kill him - ’

  ‘Slow down, Mac. Much of this is lost on me but let’s think about the wisdom of going public on all this.’

  ‘Fuck wisdom, this is journalism.’

  ‘But your targets are the most influential of people, powerful people who could yet destroy you.’

  McCall said nothing but was tired of having the strings on his back pulled by different hands.

  A fresh north-easterly began to keen across the North Sea. McCall shivered. Evan insisted they return to Staithe End. The cottage was quiet but the embers of the fire which had warmed Hester and Lexie before bedtime still glowed in the open hearth. Evan resurrected it with sticks and brushwood then poured two glasses of Scotch.

  ‘Can’t have you getting ill,’ he said. ‘Your guardian angel’s overworked as it is.’

  McCall smiled bleakly and Evan settled in the armchair opposite.

  ‘So, can we play twenty questions on this story or not?’

  ‘I’ll do my best, Mac.’

  ‘Where and when was Larry Benwick born?’

  ‘Dagenham in Essex in 1950.’

  ‘Is that his real name?’

  ‘Yes, his father was a British soldier who married a German woman after the war.’

  ‘Is Benwick some kind of a spook or an agent?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who’s he working for?’

  ‘A foreign power.’

  ‘Obviously, but which bloody one?’

  ‘Patience, Mac. I know he was recruited from the Young Communist League the year before he won a place at Manchester University.’

  ‘To read what?’

  ‘Linguistics, got a 2.1.’

  ‘He told me he joined the Foreign Office for a while.’

  ‘Yes, he did.’

  ‘Why did he quit the Foreign Office and join the police?’

  ‘Because the people running him wanted a sleeper in Scotland Yard, ideally in Special Branch but when he was drafted into undercover work, that suited them, too.’

  McCall was trying - and mostly failing - to keep his hack’s excitement under control.

  ‘So he was spying for the Soviets?’

  ‘Not for Moscow, no.’

  ‘But he spoke Russian and his accomplice on the cruiser did, too.’

  ‘Maybe, but Benwick was spying for one of our notional allies.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, stop jerking me around. Which one?’

  ‘Israel.’

  ‘Israel? You’ve got to be kidding.’

  ‘I’m not, no. Back in his Young Communist days, he was what’s called a sayan or a helper for the Israeli intelligence service.’

  ‘That’s pretty damned hard to believe.’

  ‘Maybe but it’s known he was involved in at least three surveillance operations in London back then and has used multiple identities since.’

  ‘But why would a supremely professional outfit like the Mossad want, need or trust a young outsider to do anything?’

  ‘Why not? A teenage boy is just a tree in the forest. Being invisible can be useful.’

  ‘So what was his motive? He’s not Jewish, is he?’

  ‘No, but sayanim don’t have to be. In Benwick’s case, it’s all about guilt and anger.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘His mother was a Nazi concentration camp guard at Ravensbruck.’

  ‘Christ. Really?’

  ‘Yes, and one who derived particular pleasure in her sadistic work, apparently.’

  ‘And he ends up working for Israeli’ intelligence. That’s amazing.’

  After the war, she escaped capture then met Benwick’s father. They married and settled in England. When Benwick was fourteen - and unaware of his mother’s past - German prosecutors sought her extradition to stand trial for war crimes.

  ‘But rather than face that very public ordeal, she hanged herself,’ Evan said. ‘Benwick came home from school one day and found her… had to cut her body down. You can imagine the effect that had on a young boy.’

  ‘Absolutely. So is working for the Israelis his way of making up for her crimes?’

  ‘Could be. Whoever was talent-spotting for them saw the potential of harnessing his mixed-up feelings by showing him the appalling evidence against her.’

  ‘And that’s how he ultimately comes to blow up the arms shipment?’

  �
��Yes, but view this in the context of present-day politics,’ Evan said. ‘Iraq is threatening Israel with attack in order to draw them into the coalition of Western and Arab powers he’s fighting. Saddam’s banking on no Arab state being willing to be on the same side as Israel so if Tel Aviv joined the coalition, the pro-West Arabs would quit the war and leave Saddam that much stronger.’

  ‘You’re saying he’s trying to provoke the Israelis into getting their retaliation in first?’

  ‘Yes and it’s created a God-awful battle behind the scenes in London.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  Evan heaped more brushwood on the fire which spat out sparks as it flared up.

  ‘Those were British arms on the Arta but the Cabinet and the spooks were split on whether the original contract with Saddam should be honoured on not.’

  ‘Because those weapons could be turned on our troops now he’s our enemy?’

  ‘Exactly, but the arms lobby and their Arabist friends in the security services have other considerations, not least the unbelievable profits they make.’

  ‘Where does Guy Inglis stand in all this?’

  ‘With the hawks, as always,’ Evan said. ‘It was Inglis who notionally held the balance of power in the end.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘The hardliners in the spooks like Roly Vickers had Inglis threaten a leadership challenge to Margaret Thatcher if Saddam didn’t receive the weaponry on the Arta and by then, her people didn’t dare run that risk.’

  ‘Why ever not? I’d have thought if anyone could hold her ground, it’d be her.’

  ‘In earlier times, maybe. Now, it’s different… she’s running out of road politically and Inglis knows this and has his own ambitious reasons to willingly undermine her at every twist and turn.’

  ‘Wow. So the Israelis find this out and send Benwick into action… unofficially?’

  ‘Right, then the arms traders send their goons in to stop him… equally unofficially.’

  ‘And if this all comes out in the media?’

  ‘Then the sky will fall in, not least on you,’ Evan said. ‘For the sake of your health, I think we need to get you out of the country - and quickly, too.’

  Forty-Four

  McCall fought against accepting the truth of it but his subconscious self suspected that Lexie’s kiss two nights before signalled the end of their renewed affair as surely as the first embrace had marked the beginning.

  Lexie gave and Lexie took away. But this time, she appeared different. He detected a rare humility in her, maybe a desire to atone for past hurts and to make the harder of two choices now and thereby save him from the pain she feared her illness would ultimately cause.

  ‘Let me come with you,’ she said. ‘I can easily make it to the harbour.’

  Lexie couldn’t bear the idea of saying farewell at Staithe End. She hadn’t wanted the moment shared with Hester or Ruby or to have his memories of such a place despoiled by what she had to do.

  This was their last mile together. They walked it alone, hand in hand, and made their way along the opalescent shore towards where Evan said he’d wait with a car. How neat for all three of them to be on stage for this final act.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mac… sorry for everything I wasn’t able to be for you.’

  ‘Please, don’t say that. It’s what you are that I loved.’

  ‘Funny old business, life… isn’t it? I don’t know what it’s all been for.’

  ‘Nor me but listen, you’ll get better before long, you’ll be all right soon.’

  ‘Will I, Mac?’

  ‘You’re sure to, yes.’

  ‘We’ll see… anyway, Evan’s got me an appointment with a specialist he knows in Cambridge and Hester can always take care of Ruby so I have nothing to worry about, not really. Only you.’

  ‘Then you mustn’t,’ McCall said. ‘Evan says I’ve just got to keep a low profile for a few weeks, just till he’s sorted out all this fuss then I’ll be back with you. I promise.’

  Lexie looked into his face, afraid he still hadn’t understood. A single flash of headlights came from by the harbour causeway. Evan had seen them. They would have to part.

  She took McCall to herself with great tenderness. Her hair smelled of wood smoke and the damp sea-saltiness from their walk along the sands. In the half-light, her face was so grey, those once beautiful features so lightly pencilled in and leached of all natural colour.

  She kissed his lips and his eyes and clung to him as if he were her son going off to war. But the battle was hers and victory far from assured.

  Then Lexie broke free and turned away before any tears weakened her further. She headed back to Staithe End. He watched till she was gone. She didn’t look over her shoulder.

  The moon and stars lit the emptiness of the beach and the sea would soon wash away their footprints. No one would ever know who had passed that way that night.

  *

  McCall stared down from his window seat at the baking Namibian bush, ten thousand feet below. Somewhere in that vast sweep of desolation were jackals and lions, scorpions and snakes, all fighting to survive.

  But these creatures only killed to eat, like the desert tribesmen still hunting with bows and arrows and spears. Theirs was the timeless order of things.

  Yet other killers had also stalked their prey here - the crowbar men, assassins who murdered in the name of anti-terrorism to shore up the weakening influence of South Africa’s cruel apartheid regime.

  But the war was over. Namibians had won their independence, albeit the land beneath their feet was sown with skulls.

  For McCall, there was no choice but to go back, to make an act of contrition on that seared patch of earth where he’d seen the crowbar men at work - and himself for what he’d become.

  He wondered if Benwick might ever get the redemption he also craved. Evan had told him he wasn’t the assassin who’d shot Saddam’s Canadian weapons scientist in Brussels earlier that year.

  Whatever else Benwick had done, Evan said that hit was the work of three killers who’d rented an apartment in the same building.

  ‘Their appearance suggested they were Moroccans.’

  ‘And were they?’

  ‘Who knows, but wherever they called home, they were from the Mossad, operating in a unit called Kidon.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Kidon means “bayonet” in Hebrew.’

  ‘Yes, but what is it?’

  ‘The Mossad wouldn’t call it a death squad but that’s what it is,’ Evan said. ‘Kidon targets and kills those enemies of Israel who pose the greatest long term threat.’

  ‘So was Benwick in Kidon?’

  ‘Think about it. Here’s a man who’s clever, highly resourceful, psychologically strong, utterly single-minded and as ruthless as blazes so what’s your guess?’

  McCall told Evan all that’d happened after he’d found Benwick hiding in woods near the weapons factory when his attempt to bomb it went wrong and his female accomplice was killed.

  ‘He’d sprained his ankle badly and was stymied then I came along, only too willing to take her place.’

  ‘What a dangerously rash course of action for you to take.’

  ‘There speaks an academic. I don’t know any hack who wouldn’t have sold their birthright to get ringside at that guy’s fight.’

  ‘But with what you now know is at stake, do you think our lords and masters will sit idly by while you traduce their schemes and reputations in the media?’

  ‘No, probably not.’

  ‘And who’ve you got on your side?’ Evan said. ‘From what you’ve told me, Benwick’s your only source and all your supporting evidence was lost when he blew up your car. That won’t give a libel lawyer much confidence, will it?’

  Evan was only pointing out the blindingly obvious - but he didn’t stop there.

  ‘Have you considered that Benwick himself would want you kept quiet, too?’

  ‘You seriously think he’d
come back and finish the job?’

  ‘You should ask yourself why he told you so many secrets, especially since there’s a Mossad curse which goes something like may we read about you in the newspapers.’

  ‘So I was right. He told me things he shouldn’t because I was never intended to live long enough to reveal them.’

  ‘Correct, and now you’re a risk to his security and the Mossad’s,’ Evan said. ‘And I doubt that many wake up from the sort of silence they impose.’

  *

  ‘Welcome to independent Namibia, Mr McCall. What is the purpose of your visit?’

  ‘I’m planning to go to Etosha to photograph the wild life up there.’

  ‘Your passport says you are a para-legal. What is that profession?’

  ‘It means I undertake inquiries for solicitors, lawyers.’

  ‘Well, enjoy your holiday but take care in the north. It can be a dangerous place.’

  ‘Thanks, I’ll watch my step.’

  His first hurdle was overcome. He’d flown via Geneva then Portugal to get a direct connection from Lisbon to Windhoek. This route avoided Jan Smuts Airport in Johannesburg where the South African Bureau of State Security kept records on journalists whose credits appeared on British current affairs shows. They already had McCall on file after his run-in with Koevoet so he’d rather not make it easy for them this time.

  During the long cab ride into town, he thought yet again about the enigmatic Evan. It wasn’t ever mentioned directly but he’d always believed him to be a spook asset. Maybe he talent-spotted in Cambridge or his academic status allowed him freer travel behind the Iron Curtain. McCall never tapped him up for sensitive information. Roly Vickers was always on hand for that.

  But why had the funny people cleared Evan to mark McCall’s card so fully on Benwick? Maybe it was just as simple as he’d said. Not all the spooks were hawks about what should happen over the MV Arta and its deathly cargo.

  *

  Next day, McCall hired a car through the receptionist at his hotel in central Windhoek. He drove north through the capital’s colonial facades from German rule, houses with tin roofs painted pink and a few office blocks to suggest progress towards modernity.