Snark

by William L. DeAndrea

  Bellman rolled over on the bed (too soft, but then they always were) and started Sir Lewis’s report for the third time.

  It occurred to Bellman that here in England, where it was customary for newspapers to pay for hot stories, he was probably holding a cool million pounds in his hands. In between the cross-outs and strikeovers was dynamite.

  Sir Lewis’s basic premise was that British Intelligence, for the most part, was a sieve. “The difference between telling something to London and telling something to Moscow,” he wrote, “is the same as the difference between posting a letter second class and posting it first class. It may take a little longer, but it gets there all the same.”

  He had some good words for the Americans. “We are all aware of the fiascos of American Intelligence, their arrogance in Greece and Chile, their incompetence against Castro, especially the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion.

  “But the American mistakes came while America was on the offensive; they erred by an excess of zeal. Compare that, please, with our own well-publicized failures—our lack of warning over the Argentines’ invasion of the Falklands, or the shameful episode over the invasion of Afghanistan.” There were a few lines angrily crossed out here. The document resumed. “These were passive mistakes, hence mistakes inherent in the defence of the Realm as we attempt to prosecute it. Indeed, the Afghanistan fiasco was a crime against the entire free world—a letting down of our allies, who were justifiably angry that we could for so long turn a blind eye to the situation that made this possible.”

  The situation that made that possible was the situation that prevailed at an installation called GCHQ in Cheltenham, just on the English side of the Welsh border. GCHQ stands for Government Communications Headquarters, and it is the main code and cipher department and emergency message relay center for the whole Western Alliance, but especially for the U.K. and the United States.

  The employees at GCHQ fell under Civil Service, and as such belonged to the Civil Service union. And on the day in June, 1980 when Russian tanks rolled into Afghanistan, the workers in GCHQ were engaged in an Industrial Action. That meant they were showing no industry and taking no action. Emergency reports came in, but no one decoded them. No one passed them on. Even if Mrs. Thatcher or Mr. Carter had any ideas on what to do about the invasion, they never got the chance to use them.

  That had been the last straw. The message from the United States had been to fix that situation or go it alone. That, Britain was not prepared to do, so the union had been banned at the GCHQ.

  That was not the end of it. There was publicity. There was controversy. All the political might of the British Left came into play. Eventually, with direct payoffs to the workers, and relocation aid to anyone who wanted to stay in the union and still work in the Civil Service, the Thatcher government had finally done the job.

  Until the union ban had been overturned in court last fall.

  That had really been the last straw. Washington was inches away from serving notice of a pullout, when the idea of the Alfot report was offered. Sir Lewis was loved and respected, and absolutely safe. He would, as an ostensibly impartial observer, prepare a report to be shown, secretly, to important members of Parliament, selected judges, the saner union officials, etc.

  The GCHQ situation itself was decided by the House of Lords in favor of the government but by that time the Congressman was so in love with the Sir Lewis idea as a way to cure all the ills of British Intelligence, he had insisted the project go on, despite great reluctance from the Brits.

  The report, Bellman realized, would have to be considerably toned down before it would do more help than harm. This first draft had the sound of a man at the end of his tether blowing off steam. There would have to be a lot more hedging, a lot more consideration of the feelings of the unions, before anybody outside his own Section might be allowed to see Sir Lewis’s work.

  Still, it was remarkable, and useful, if for no other reason than to give Bellman some idea of what was going on in Sir Lewis’s mind.

  Sir Lewis found the deep causes of the current troubles of British Intelligence in the Second World War. It gave Bellman a remarkable feeling of déjá vu—it might have been a cleaned-up transcript of the background his father had given him just before he’d left.

  The Congressman said the British approach to recruiting was wrong. “They recruited all these brilliant young men out of the great universities, see. And there’s no denyin’ they were brilliant. Did a great job against Hitler. Only trouble was, they were doin’ it because Hitler was fightin’ Russia. These boys had their hearts in—what do you want to call it? Socialism? A Just Society? A Workers’ Paradise? They had their hearts in that stuff more than my mama had hers in the Antioch Baptist Church Choir.

  “When Russia became the problem, their hearts and their brilliant minds sort of dozed off, if you know what I mean. It made things tough on us, I’ll tell you.

  “Not all of them, of course, not even most of them. Hell, son, if people like Lew Alfot weren’t there, they’d be singing God Save the Central Committee of the Workers by now.

  “But there were a damn lot of them. Too many. Couldn’t get rid of them—they were heroes from the war. Some got caught, yes. A lot of them just stayed in place, hiring people they were comfortable with. Establishing rules and procedures that made it tough to do anything about it. Retiring on pensions from a Grateful Nation.

  “Thank God for Margaret Thatcher,” the old man had said. “If old Denis ever cashes in his chips, I swear you’re gonna have a stepmother. First person in charge over there with any balls turns out to be a woman.”

  Bellman did not smile.

  “But then,” the Congressman said, “maybe it takes a woman to clean house right.”

  A woman, Bellman thought, or a fanatic. Somebody like Sir Lewis Alfot, or the silver-haired man in Washington who shared so many of his opinions.

  In a way, Bellman envied them their commitment. As it was, he had no opinions other than the one that said Leo Calvin was in Britain, and that he ought to be killed before he could exact his promised revenge on Bellman.

  And that, Bellman realized to his surprise, presupposed the opinion that he thought it was a good idea to go on living. He hadn’t always felt that way. He was trapped in the world of espionage, born into it, and had no way out.

  The stepmother joke hadn’t been funny because Bellman had never known a mother. His mother had been a captured Russian spy his father had impregnated when he’d realized he’d never be able to make her talk. Bellman had been born by cesarian section when his mother had beaten her brains out against a metal bedstead rather than carry the pregnancy to term.

  Bellman had been raised by his father and a succession of tutors. He’d been taught espionage the way a circus child is trained to the trapeze. He’d begun to do analysis at fifteen. By seventeen he was in the field.

  After the Cronus operation, after years of trying to get away, he had enlisted the help of an FBI man named Fenton Rines to get his father off his back. He was independent now, but not free. Not as long as Leo Calvin was out there. So Bellman was back in harness. Doing the job and listening for footsteps coming up behind him.

  It was really beginning to look as if it was always going to be that way. Fate.

  He wondered about volunteers. His dead colleague, Miles. Felicity Grace.

  Felicity Grace. What was a nice girl like that doing in a dirty business like this? If she was a nice girl. Still, she must have been once. A family, even an orphanage to grow up in. Comic books and cartoons, dolls, something. Boyfriends. Ambition to be a nurse or a business executive or a mommy or Commissioner of Scotland Yard. Options.

  A normal life.

  More than Bellman had ever had. More than he ever would have.

  Why in the name of God would anyone give it up?

  Bellman sighed again, rolled over, and drifted into a troubled sleep.

  8

  THIS, MARGARET DECIDED, WAS no time to break the news
to Leo. He wasn’t going to like it no matter when he heard it, but today he might get nasty. Even violent.

  She’d seen him this way once before, shortly after they met. She was up in Yorkshire, organizing support for the striking miners, trying to get local shopkeepers, the postmen, rubbish collectors, from servicing the working miners in any way. She stressed class loyalty, and the need to keep the pits open no matter what the cost to the bourgeois ratepayers in the rest of the country. Margaret was very persuasive in a reasoned argument—all the instructors at her university had told her so.

  With all her skill, though, Margaret was nowhere near as successful as Leo had been. After the first shop caught fire, the rest fell into line.

  Margaret had not, at first, approved. Violence was sometimes necessary, but only as a last resort. Besides, any strenuous action was twisted and distorted in the capitalist press until it was something quite unsavory.

  She tried to tell this to Leo when she met him. He didn’t get angry—at least not outwardly. He slipped into a calm more frightening than any rage, a calm that hinted at deliberations that barred no action, and considered no one. Margaret had hastily changed the subject. It wasn’t only fear. There was something fascinating about this American.

  It wasn’t surprising that he should be in the midst of this particular skirmish of the class struggle—there were many of these American brothers and sisters helping in the fight.

  It wasn’t his looks—that particular concept was hopelessly sexist. Leo was tall, fair, and bony, all planes and angles and bumps. In a rare lighthearted moment, he once told her someone had said he resembled an albino Abe Lincoln.

  Margaret herself, of course, was no one’s dream. She was short and plump, and at twenty-six, still fighting spots. Not that that mattered either. She had had her share of lovers, male and female, since her schooldays, and no one had ever complained.

  It might have been, Margaret decided, that despite the difference of nationalities, their backgrounds were really quite similar—the bourgeois suburban life, the feelings of emptiness engendered by the realization that so many had so much less, the guilt, the desire to help the People. The feeling of fulfillment that came from being a part of something so much bigger than oneself. The thrill of defying corrupt authority.

  They had, over the months, talked about these things, but when the defiance of corrupt authority came up, Leo became electric. He talked of justifications and plans—

  He talked about this plan. That night, in a cot in the back of a storefront office, he had told her he needed her help to bring about the victory that the miners and all the trade unionists (the ones who weren’t traitors, at any rate) had worked for for so long. It was dangerous, but it was essential.

  Margaret didn’t hesitate. Leo was offering to escort her through the first steps down the path he’d traveled, the path she knew she had always wanted to walk. Leo had told her she’d never regret it, and they had made love again.

  Margaret was sure that was the night she had become pregnant. She’d got the results of the test today—that was why she was late getting home with the marketing. The news had been in her throat as she’d come through the door, but it froze there in the blast of Leo’s calm.

  “What took you so long?” he demanded.

  She’d save the news for another time. She still felt frightened of him when he was like this.

  “I—I had some trouble finding our friend at the clinic.”

  “Did you get the tranquilizer?”

  “Of course. I just had to wait until he returned from his tea break. There was one problem.”

  “Oh?”

  “He couldn’t give me as much this time. He says—he says unless we’re reselling it, we’re using too much.”

  “I washed the dishes,” Leo said.

  Margaret tried to make some hidden sense out of this remark, when a glance into the kitchen showed her he had indeed washed the dishes. “Thank you, Leo, that was very ki—”

  “He wants more money,” Leo said.

  “Sorry?”

  “Our friend at the clinic. The greedy bastard thinks we’re a steady market, so he’s setting us up to raise the price. Or he thinks we’re selling it, and he wants a cut.”

  Margaret said, “Yes, Leo,” and went to the kitchen to put the marketing away. She felt a great relief—the deadly calm was gone, replaced with an intense concentration. This could go on for hours. When he was working on a way to sneak Alfot past all the extra police who had flooded Sussex to hunt for the Cyclops killer, it had taken a day and more. Leo was not to be interrupted at times like these, but he was no longer frightening. She might even tell him about their child before dinner tonight.

  “Margaret,” he said.

  She poked her head out of the kitchen. “Our friend at the clinic is in for a surprise,” Leo said.

  “What are you going to do?” She tried to keep the apprehension out of her voice.

  “To him? Nothing. He’s not worth the effort. I think we’ll stop needing it before we run out. Things are coming to a head. I need to work out a few details. I want to go walk by the ocean. Do you think you can handle our guest if he wakes up before I return? You’ll have to feed him and reinject him.”

  “Certainly.” It had been Margaret, after all, who had been instrumental in keeping Sir Lewis quiet in the back of the borrowed sound truck as they drove past a cordon of the filth. She injected him and hid him, while at the same time giving an excellent speech in support of the miners over the loudspeaker. Leo just drove. And, of course, bundled the old man out to the truck in the first place. But Margaret was sure she could handle one bound old man just coming out of the effects of tranquilization.

  “That’s a good girl,” he said. “I won’t be too long.” He put on his anorak, and left without kissing her.

  Margaret struck a match and lit the grill and put two chops on, one for herself and one for her guest. She’d cook for Leo when he got home.

  9

  SIR LEWIS ALFOT WOULD have been ready to escape days ago if he could trust an old man’s body. There was no way, apparently, to stop himself from groaning when coming back to himself as the drug wore off. Not that it happened all the time, of course. It hadn’t happened this time. But when it did it gave them a much better idea of the efficacy of the drug.

  The plan, since the moment he found himself a captive and felt that first needle sliding into his arm, had been to stay motionless, to act drugged as long as possible after he woke up, trying to get them to decrease the dose, and give him that much more precious consciousness. He hadn’t counted on their running low, but since they had, so much the better.

  And if he’d heard right, the American was going out. Perfect. Sir Lewis used his tongue and lips to force his gag down around his chin, then began to work on his bonds.

  He’d done a lot of eavesdropping on those two in the week they’d held him captive. They would be contemptible if they weren’t so ridiculous. This was what he’d fought all his life to protect. He swallowed bile.

  His instinct was to cough to clear the clog, but he fought it down. He mustn’t give any sign of being awake until he was ready to.

  The ropes had been expertly tied, immobilizing Sir Lewis’s thumbs as well as spreading him out on the bed. It took an effort of will to force aging muscles to twist himself so that he could bring his teeth (all his own, thank God) to bear on the rope that held his right wrist. The pain and tension were excruciating, but he was damned if he’d be beaten by this pair.

  He distracted himself with bitter thoughts. Sodding little bastards, refugees from some damn fool Marxist fiasco of a strike, hoping to sell him to the Russians. Never knowing how much the Russians would like to have him. How was the kidnapping of jovial, public-spirited Sir Lewis, though, supposed to help the bloody miners? There was no answer to that. There was never any answer to them. Except a bloody good kick in the arse, which Britain, it grieved him to say, grew more and more reluctant to administer.
They just kept turning a blind eye—

  Sir Lewis bit heavily on the rope to stifle a scream as a spasm sliced down his back alongside his old shrapnel scar. Sir Lewis fought to keep his position—if he relaxed now, he’d never be able to go back to work. Eventually, the pain abated a bit. He turned again to the rope.

  He’d show them. He’d show them all. The bastards who retired him. The bastards who kidnapped him. The bloody Russians. The government, whose only idea on how to use him was to throw him as a sop to the Americans. He’d show them, too. There was still one Briton who remembered how it should be done.

  About the only group of people he could think of he didn’t resent was the group of neighbors who’d asked him to look into the Cyclops case. At least someone wanted him for something. He had half a mind to take them up on it. Yes, dammit. When he’d dealt with this lot, that was exactly what he would do.

  Sir Lewis smiled at the thought, and at that moment the knot gave way. He pulled his right hand free, then fell back on the bed, panting, trying to get his tormented muscles to relax.

  Get a move on, you bloody fool, he told himself. She’d be in to check on him in a minute. She might even bring the tray, and try to wake him. They’d done it before. The man had, at least.

  He didn’t have much time. The rattle of pots and pans had been replaced by the rattle of china.

  Working like a mole in the dark, Sir Lewis tore frantically with teeth and fingers to free his other hand before going to his feet.

  The door creaked.

  Too late. Sir Lewis got his left hand free, lay back down, and wrapped the now loose ends haphazardly around his wrists just before she switched on the light.