Snark

by William L. DeAndrea

  The Cambridge mess, all the messes that grew from it, really, changed his approach. Within a week after the story broke, Tipton had walked into the old man’s office and offered his resignation.

  “What the bloody hell is this?” Sir Lewis had demanded. As usual when he was excited, his bald pate glowed red, and the Cockney accent he’d grown up speaking grew thick enough to be perceptible. “The world is coming down around our bloody heads, Arabs and Russians and all laughing at us, and you’re handing in your bloody resignation!”

  “I thought it best,” Tipton said. “Especially now.”

  “Now? Oh, that’s bloody champion. First, we find out we’ve been done by a couple of Cambridge queers—”

  “Sir, I am a Cambridge queer.”

  “Oh,” Sir Lewis had said. His jowls bubbled with repressed comments. Finally, he said, “You’re not queer for any Russians, are you?”

  Tipton had smiled in spite of himself. “No, sir. One hundred percent British made, as it were.”

  His chief sat back and looked at him. “Would you mind giving us their names? Submitting to a check? Tests? Polygraph? Pentathol?”

  “If you like.”

  “I don’t like. I bloody hate it. But if I’m going to keep you, it’s got to be done, hasn’t it? I am bloody well not going to lose you at this stage.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And Robert, don’t seduce any of the help. Things are complicated enough.”

  Felicity Grace said, “Sir?”

  “Oh, yes, Felicity, I’m sorry. What is it?”

  “Mr. Bellman. Shall I show him in now? Or is there anything else you’d like me to tell you?”

  “No, send him in, by all means.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “Shall I stay?”

  “That won’t be necessary. Arrange a visitor’s badge for him. You can show him around when I’m done.”

  “Very well, sir.”

  Tipton watched her go. Remarkable young woman. She’d even remembered to pull the door to when she left, something none of his other subordinates ever seemed to grasp.

  Tipton was treading a very narrow path for this operation—if an operation was what it could be called. He had to have Mr. Bellman’s assistance—the Americans called the tune here, and they said he had to have it. On the other hand, there was altogether too much Mr. Bellman might find out. Things that would work—what was the phrase they’d used during the War—to “the detriment of the Alliance.”

  He would need to keep Mr. Bellman distracted. Miss Grace would be better able to distract him for not knowing she was supposed to.

  Felicity Grace was still wearing the flat-heeled high boots, and the hair was still the same—copper-colored, straight, and smooth, long fringe—but in between, she might have been a different woman. She wore a severe dark gray suit and a white blouse. The only touch of color was a light green scarf at the neck.

  Her whole posture and attitude were different—she was more aggressive; she seemed to have a sharper edge. The Rising Woman Executive.

  Bellman wanted to smile. It was the nature of the work; one chameleon rarely got a chance to see another before and after the transformation. Without anything like a disguise, Felicity Grace had become a different woman.

  It was even apparent in her voice when she told him Mr. Tipton would like to see him now. The accent was still West Country—dropped h’s, round i’s, strong, almost nasal r’s—but it was a BBC, West Country accent, Londonized, with the edge taken off.

  She told him to have the secretary ring for her when he was through, and showed him into Tipton’s office.

  “Ah, Mr. Bellman,” Tipton said. “How nice to have you here.”

  “My pleasure,” Bellman said, and Tipton started to laugh.

  The Congressman had told Bellman that Tipton was famous for throwing people off their guard. So he was careful. “It’s nice to find you in such a good mood,” he said.

  “Yes, I suppose I am, now.” Tipton came out from behind his desk and offered a hand. The grip was dry, firm, and friendly. Bellman had been especially briefed about that handshake, by his father. The Congressman was one of the most un-naive men in the world, but he had his blind spots, and an inability to avoid being amazed by homosexuals who were not effeminate was one of them.

  Bellman turned down cigarettes, cigars, brandy, and accepted a chair. It wasn’t especially comfortable—this office, it seemed, had been designed to discourage long conferences.

  “I’ll tell you frankly, Mr. Bellman, that I have been in a wretched mood since this business started. But then, it’s always a relief to have the lies out of the way, isn’t it?

  “It is not nice to have you here, and I doubt sincerely that it is any sort of pleasure for you to be here. This whole mess, and your part in it, can only be a reminder that you—and by you, I mean the Congressman, and the American Intelligence community in general—consider British Intelligence to be a collection of overeducated upper-class twits who will leap at any opportunity to betray you—and ourselves, if it comes to that—to the other side. We make a balls-up of everything we touch, and if it weren’t for your needing Scotland to put atomic missiles in, you’d cut us loose altogether.” He stopped to take a breath. “Isn’t that the way the talk runs in Washington?”

  “It’s pretty accurate,” Bellman conceded. “We make exceptions. This Section, for instance.”

  “Thank you,” Tipton said sardonically.

  Bellman ignored it. “Also, the Congressman applauds your efforts—specifically Sir Lewis’s efforts—to straighten out the pipeline-to-Russia problem once and for all. The Congressman has the highest regard for Sir Lewis and for you. May I see his file?”

  “I have it ready for you. After you look at it, Miss Grace will show you around the building. We’ve arranged your cover—you represent an American company that is thinking of obtaining an interest in Tournament Press. That will explain your coming and going, and any meetings we might have.”

  “Fine with me,” Bellman said. “Since Sir Lewis is also on the books as a director, it will give me a legitimate reason to ask questions about him.”

  “Of course,” Tipton said. “If you like, I have a rough draft of his report to the Cabinet for you.”

  “Good. When was the final report supposed to be ready?”

  “The PM was expecting it in a month’s time. Ten February.”

  “Good. Maybe we can find Sir Lewis, and get him back alive in time to deliver it.”

  4

  TIPTON LEANED FORWARD OVER his desk. “That is the object of the exercise, isn’t it? The safe return of Sir Lewis Alfot.”

  The object of the exercise, Bellman thought, is Sir Lewis’s report, and that won’t be worth the trouble if it doesn’t work. Tipton knew that. Bellman just said, “Of course.”

  The Acting Section Chief seemed to appreciate it. He picked up a blue folder and handed it across the desk, then went to the window to look out at Bloomsbury while Bellman read.

  It opened, as they always did, with relevant photos. Sir Lewis Alfot. Bald, gray fringe. Gray eyes. Five feet ten inches (1.79 m.) tall, thirteen stone (83 kg.) in weight, stocky build. Born, 1920. Good health. Scar along back from German shrapnel during WWII. Movement of right shoulder and arm limited as a result.

  Except for the exact location of the scar (right trapezius muscle, then along back), Bellman learned nothing from the file his father hadn’t told him before he left Washington. This meant one of two things—either the Congressman’s files were as good as he always bragged they were, or Tipton and company were keeping things from him.

  The file had all the facts—Sir Lewis had been born in poverty in South London, but when he was about ten years old his father (Sidney Alfot, died under a buzz bomb in December, 1944) had opened a printing shop, got a lot of Labour Party business, parlayed that into a chain of shops, and made a whole lot of money.

  Lewis had ridden the money to public school and to university—none of the b
est, of course, but enough to see him into World War II as a second lieutenant in the army.

  The young Alfot had been a natural soldier. Just how natural could be seen from his rapid rise through the ranks. In those days, class told many times more loudly than it did today, but the printer’s son overcame the lingering prejudice against anyone who was “in trade” and advanced through the ranks. A battlefield commission made him a first lieutenant. An exploit in 1940 led to a decoration and another promotion. Lieutenant Alfot had taken command of his outfit when the last officer above him had been killed, and led his men through miles of German-held France in time to make the last boat from Dunkirk. Questions were asked in Parliament about why Alfot had not been awarded the Victoria Cross. There was a transcript in the file. The MP pushing for the award quoted one of Alfot’s men as saying, “We never would have made it without him—the senior officers didn’t have a ruddy clue.”

  That, Bellman thought, probably did in the whole project right there. It was not politic to criticize dead officers, no matter how few clues they had. Alfot himself disowned the effort, and went on with his work.

  His work until May, 1944 was Intelligence. His Labour contacts helped him coordinate with (and keep an eye on) Russian Intelligence efforts. It also brought him into contact with American Intelligence agents, among them, Bellman’s father. There was a note next to the Congressman’s name and a file number. It occurred to Bellman it might be interesting to have a look at that file.

  He gave his mind back to Sir Lewis. Alfot was a colonel by the time he parachuted back into France to coordinate Resistance efforts for the D-Day invasion. He won more medals before an artillery shell ended the war for him just around the time the Battle of the Bulge was getting hot. They sent him back to London in time to bury his father.

  He stayed in the army after the war, working mostly in Berlin, until retiring in 1950, a thirty-year-old brigadier, whose pension was paid to veterans charities.

  After that the story split off. To the public Sir Lewis (knighted in 1960, ostensibly for his charitable works) was the kind of figure the press in Britain takes very little time to start calling “beloved.” He ran his father’s business benevolently, but efficiently—his was the only large printing firm in Britain never to have been hurt by a strike. He endowed scholarships for working class youngsters of promise. He sponsored Americas Cup challengers. He saved bankrupt football clubs, earning the undying gratitude of local supporters. He stayed resolutely aloof from party politics, and so was the ideal man to serve on commissions.

  Sir Lewis Alfot served on commissions on who got the third broadcast channel. He served on commissions on working conditions, and who got to live where. His voice was sought out whenever there was a question that divided along class lines, which was practically everything in postwar Britain. He always responded with what the people (who loved him and trusted him) perceived as “plain common sense,” and what the government felt it could live with.

  Sir Lewis never married. He lived quietly and simply, first in London, now in retirement in Sussex.

  “Keeping bees, no doubt,” Bellman muttered.

  Tipton begged his pardon, but Bellman waved it off and kept reading.

  So the public face of Sir Lewis Alfot was an open book. In fact, there had been a book about him called The Uncommon Common Man (“not a Section project—see file 9704-A”) that recorded it for the world to see.

  The other half of his life had been the Section. The Section had been his own idea, and he’d fought to get it put through. It was to be a small, largely independent, wide-ranging group that would work avenues not usually worked by the Intelligence establishment in Britain (the upper-class Oxbridge twits Tipton had referred to). He would draw his operatives from wherever he could find them, and he would use his own wide personal acquaintance and experience to make things work.

  He muscled approval through, but hardly any budget. He subsidized the Section for years out of his own pocket. But he had one thing going for him that became more important as the years went by and the scandals mounted—the Americans found him “trustable.” It was a reality of the postwar world that there was damn little Britain could do without at least the tacit support of the Americans.

  So the section had grown, in power more than in size, and prospered in effectiveness as the rest of Britain faltered. Then, the first PM since Churchill whom Sir Lewis (despite his past ties to Labour) truly approved of took office and started turning things around.

  Which made Sir Lewis so happy, he decided to retire.

  Bellman frowned. That was the way the file would have you read it, but Bellman wanted a closer look before he bought it.

  Then last week, in the midst of his latest and farthest-reaching undercover operation (and in the midst of a charity drive to aid relatives of the victims of a killer the popular press was calling the “Sussex Cyclops”), Sir Lewis had disappeared.

  The file ended with the words TO BE APPENDED...TO BE APPENDED...

  “To be appended,” Bellman said, closing the file and flipping it back to Tipton’s desk. “I’ll say. What’s the most popular theory?”

  Tipton begged his pardon again. It was getting on Bellman’s nerves. We were all supposed to be professionals around here.

  “Sir Lewis disappeared off a sizable estate. He had security men watching him. Discreetly, of course. So somebody professional did this. Was he kidnapped by the Russians, do you think? Or somebody working for them? Or did he defect? Or decide to slip down to Brighton for a short holiday?”

  “It’s anybody’s guess, Mr. Bellman.”

  “Yes, I suppose it is. I’d like to see the police reports, your people’s preliminaries, all that, after Miss Grace shows me around.” Bellman rose to his feet. “So, if you’ll just have your secretary ring for her—”

  “We’re keeping this quiet, Mr. Bellman. Please keep that in mind when you make your inquiries.”

  “I’m not clumsy, Mr. Tipton. It will be completely hush-hush. Until the time comes to make his report public. Then we make a lot of noise.”

  Tipton nodded, but his face said he didn’t like it. “I’m not clumsy either, Mr. Bellman. After that, we say he was taken by the Russians in a desperate attempt to stop his report from getting out.”

  “Exactly.” It was nice to know that Tipton had had experience with this kind of thing. The trophy they were playing for was public opinion. Get the British public outraged enough at the Russians, and Sir Lewis would achieve his objective even without delivering his report.

  “And for maximum outrage,” Tipton offered, “Sir Lewis should be found dead at the hands of the Russians.” It wasn’t a question.

  “At the hands of the Russians,” Bellman said. “Yes.” He let some silence accumulate, a good ten seconds of it. The Acting Section Chief was getting a good taste of responsibility, and Bellman wanted to give him enough time to get it swallowed.

  Finally, he said, “So the only thing to do is find him before the deadline, right, Mr. Tipton?”

  “Is that what Washington wants?”

  “It’s what everybody wants.”

  5

  LEO CALVIN STOOD AT the sink doing the washing up. Margaret would be pleased. Not to say surprised. It would be the first time since he’d tied up with her that he’d done anything like housework, in any of the houses they’d been in since early last fall, when he’d arrived in England under the name “Tyrone Slothrop” and gone to ground.

  Leo squirted green Fairy Liquid (Fairy, for God’s sake) over cheap Marks and Spencer china and scrubbed at hardened pieces of egg and Weetabix and dried ketchup with a long-handled brush.

  It occurred to him that this was perhaps the second time in his life he was washing dishes—the first had been to butter up his mother when he was eight years old. His mother never found out about it—instead, he got reamed out by the maid, accused of trying to take her job. An early lesson in the politics of labor.

  He was doing the work now onl
y in the desperation of boredom. A sinkful of suds was a change from daytime British television, at least. He was tired of looking out the window.

  It might have been different if they’d found a flat near the ocean. Brighton rose on hills from where the Atlantic lapped Britain’s ass in constant heavy waves. The waterfront was all hotels and guest houses, or places too expensive for Leo’s limited resources. Margaret had signed up for the dole, of course, but that was risky. Leo no longer had a valid visa or anything resembling one. And, in his current status (“pariah dog,” Leo thought) he had no real prospect of getting one.

  No. That was wrong. He could get one, really, anytime he wanted to.

  He could hop the train to London and spend 10p on a call to Bulanin at the Soviet Embassy. Bulanin was the Agricultural Attaché. Usually, KGB men are Cultural Attaches, but the Russians knew that most of the militarily important places in Britain—British, NATO, and American—are surrounded by farmland, and it never hurt to have an excuse to get close. Bulanin would be delighted to make the trade any time Leo wanted to.

  Not yet, Leo thought.

  Bulanin was one of the main reasons Leo had chosen England as a refuge when the Cronus operation had fallen apart back in the States, and it became known that Leo had been operational chief of it. The late Chairman of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had spent thirty years setting up and nurturing the Cronus Project before hiring Leo to put it into operation. When things went sour, the Chairman, old, sick, and desperate to hold on to his power for as long as possible, was not about to blame himself for the failure. Leo would have been put on a to-be-disposed-of list simply on the strength of his knowing too much about Cronus, much of which could still be made operational when the time came. Dead spies, as they say, tell no tales.

  But it was much more than that. There was a vindictive element to it—Cronus had failed; Leo Calvin had been in charge; Calvin betrayed us; Calvin must die. And die swift, and ugly. It made no difference that the Chairman was dead. Borzov, the cellar-dwelling gnome of the KGB, had been the other father of Cronus, and Borzov was very much alive.