The Logan File

by Philip McCutchan

  But then a very nasty thought: the young woman having failed, the Russians might now send in the young man. Hedge did not believe much in Russian altruism; the young woman had tried to pump him — he’d sussed that out in no time. He’d been clever over that, giving nothing away, not that he had anything to give away, but they might try again, misinterpreting his desires and not believing his earlier reaction to the proposal of a young man.

  Fearfully he awaited the next unlocking of the door.

  When it came, it was only a meal. A very sumptuous meal, clear soup, very good soup, caviare … a bottle of an excellent Yugoslavian wine. Hedge, though his over-riding fear robbed him of his usual appetite, ate and drank; he had to keep his strength up; also, if possible, his spirits. Hunger led to depression, he knew that.

  *

  The Siblyback reservoir near Liskeard in Cornwall was now in the clear, according to the government analysts. The bag had been intact; and it was considered unlikely that more than the one would have been deposited. There was enough botulin in the bag to have killed half the population of Great Britain. In Whitehall, spirits rose. If all the other bags could similarly be located and removed, the teeth of the threat would have been removed also. Rowland Mayes, however, uttered a word of warning, of more gloom.

  “Logan had an organisation here, Prime Minister. We must expect Brosak to have the same — Shard made that point —”

  “Well?”

  “More bags, Prime Minister. Replacements.”

  “If he gets to hear.”

  “Yes … yes, that’s true. And of course there’s no reason why he should, I suppose —”

  Mrs Heffer’s voice snapped. “There is every reason, Foreign Secretary. The man isn’t likely to be a complete fool, he’ll have people watching and reporting. When I said if he gets to hear, I meant he’s not to be allowed to get to hear, don’t you understand?”

  “I’m awfully sorry, Prime Minister, I —”

  Mrs Heffer shushed Rowland Mayes with a gesture and seized the telephone. She spoke to the Home Office. “This is the Prime Minister speaking. This is most urgent. The watch at the reservoirs including Siblyback is still to be continuously alert for any persons in the vicinity. Any such persons lurking about are to be arrested immediately. I trust that is in fact already being done, but I wish to reinforce it. All reservoirs, yes, of course, what an utterly stupid question, Under-Secretary. And another thing: full secrecy is to be observed in regard to any bags found. Word is certainly not to reach the press, is that quite clear? Good.”

  Mrs Heffer rang off, a glint in her eye. So many fools, it was very trying, very frustrating. Rowland Mayes, for one, was really no longer up to his job, he was basically an old woman who had been found out by botulin.

  Ten minutes later another of the security lines rang. It was Scotland Yard. Another bag had been found, this time in the Ladybower reservoir in the Peak District, not far from Sheffield. “Good,” Mrs Heffer said into the telephone.

  “Not good, Prime Minister. The bag was burst. We think it got snagged on some fisherman’s gear. We —”

  “So the reservoir’s contaminated?”

  “It must be regarded as so, yes.”

  Mrs Heffer became very brisk. “Warnings,” she said. “All places, all homes, all hospitals and so on — everywhere that’s on the Ladybower supply. No taps to be turned on, no water used. At this moment, not even boiled water. Police cars to go round with loud-hailers. Warnings to be broadcast on the local radio station.” She rang off. At the other end of the line, the Commissioner sighed. What a woman. All that had been ordered already.

  Mrs Heffer had turned on Rowland Mayes. Before she spoke he came up with a piece of information. “Ladybower,” he said ruminatively. “Forty years ago … they submerged the little village of Ashopton, didn’t they …? It holds ten thousand million gallons of water, Prime Minister —”

  “For heaven’s sake, Foreign Secretary, if you can’t be useful, shut up.”

  *

  Now it was night over Berlin. Shard had spent the day partly in going over the blown-up microfilm files on Wolfgang Brosak, faxed across from Whitehall, partly in carrying out a daytime recce of the Western sector. He was not over familiar with Berlin and a lot of rebuilding had taken place since the last time a job had brought him here. Moving about the streets, keeping an eye watchful for Brosak but recognising the needles-in-a-haystack element, he thought about the Whitehall files. Brosak, a one-time Hitler Youth and then a member of the SS, was on record as an associate of known war criminals. He had been involved in any number of neo-Nazi activities in the years after the war. Other things too: a natural thug, a born terrorist, he had become involved with the IRA and the Bader-Meinhoff gang. He was believed to be behind many killings, many bomb explosions, including a number that had involved children. In one of these, thirty-two schoolchildren on a coach outing had been smashed to pieces when a bridge over a deep valley had been blown up. But nothing had ever been pinned on him. He’d been much too careful, much too fly for the security services. Always cover: alibis and so on, unbreakable; just a dedicated scientist, working away in his laboratory under the noses of the British Army of the Rhine.

  In the files there had been photographs. Wolfgang Brosak at neo-Nazi rallies, Wolfgang Brosak in Hitler-style uniform, with swastikas and jackboots, giving the Nazi salute as he heiled the memory of his Führer. Deutschland Über Alles, and all that, glorying in what he had been told of the great days of the ’thirties — told, no doubt, by Logan/Schreuder among others. Seeing the leaders of the Third Reich in cars following the splendid armies marching along Unter den Linden and beneath the Brandenburg Gate into the Thiergarten for Herr Hitler to address them in his uplifting tones. Hitler, Goering, Goebbels and the rest, including even the venerable old man von Hindenburg, who had come out in support of Hitler years before to become the President of the German Reich that would last, so Hitler had said, for a thousand years. Shard knew that the old German officer class, the Prussian landowners with their long record of military prowess tempered with chivalry, had despised von Hindenburg for that betrayal, as they had despised the Führer and all his sycophants of the so-called elite SS.

  Night now; and the beer cellars and bars and drinking clubs filled with people and streaming out light when the doors were opened. Pools of light on the pavement, dappling the snow. That snow was lying thickly underfoot and more was still coming down, and there was a wind. It was a bitter night, not one for walking the streets, and there were in fact few people about, those that were either looking as though they were bound for some night work, shift work, or poor and thinly clad with no homes to go to. Every big city of the world had its homeless, the no-hopers who night after weary, chilling night slept rough and got their sustenance from the dustbins of the smart restaurants and hotels, or from the soup kitchens provided by the various charitable organisations.

  Shard drifted, openly. It was the quickest way, or could be — the only way now, for time was desperately short if Brosak knew Logan was dead. And it was possible he did; he had those contacts inside the Democratic Republic. If Logan’s body had been found, the word would leak to those whose business it was to keep ears to the ground and eyes to keyholes.

  *

  It was at 2 a.m. the next day that Hedge in Moscow was taken from his ‘comfortable custody’ and marched under escort out from the Foreign Ministry, into the cruel snow, and into the grim buildings of the Lubyanka Prison.

  14

  All the districts supplied from the Ladybower reservoir were now without water. There were two other reservoirs in the complex — Howden and Derwent — and these were so far uncontaminated. Efforts were being made to bring clean water in tankers to the distressed areas, with particular reference to hospitals and such places. By now there was considerable anxiety nationwide. Already there had been a rush on the supermarkets for bottled water of various kinds, any kind would do, and now the shelves were empty.

  The
re was no further report of burst botulin bags but the worry had gone deep. The whole country was now expectant of having no water in the taps at any moment. Life would change drastically; there wouldn’t even be standpipes, of course. In conditions where no-one washed, other diseases could spread, in the cities especially, and no-one would ever feel clean again; danger from lice and fleas could lurk in every brush-past in a train, a bus, a shop. The Prime Minister was not unaware of all this. She had conferred closely and lengthily with the officials of the Health Ministry, who were themselves in some disarray, not knowing what could be done about it if all the other botulin bags reached the limit of their water-resistance and burst. Nothing to compare with this had ever happened before.

  “Not even during the war,” the Ministry’s Chief Medical Officer said. “The Germans could have used botulin against our reservoirs, but they never did.”

  “No. And why?” Mrs Heffer demanded. “Because they knew we would have retaliated.” She heaved her breasts up, stiffly, straightening her backbone. “But this time we can’t retaliate. We’re absolutely caught. As we all know, there’s just the one way out offered by these abominable people.”

  “War with —” Rowland Mayes began but was cut short.

  “That’s not even mentionable, Foreign Secretary. It would be utterly improper and not even to be thought about.” Her face said other things: that she was thinking very hard about it and would have liked nothing better than to topple communism finally from its throne and never mind winds of change blowing out of Russia. But she knew the electorate … She went on with a touch of venom, “Which leaves us with your people, Foreign Secretary.”

  “Hedge and Shard? Yes.”

  “Unless you have anything better to offer.”

  Rowland Mayes adjusted his owl-like glasses and examined some notes he had made on a sheet of paper. Looking up a moment later he said, “America, Prime Minister.”

  Mrs Heffer was impatient. “As you know, or should know, I’ve had no assistance whatsoever from America, so —”

  “Ah — no warlike assistance, I agree. I had something else in mind, Prime Minister.”

  “Well?”

  “Water, Prime Minister. From America, in those giant tankers. Across the Atlantic, you know … as a humanitarian gesture, they’d surely not deny us that at such a time … would they?”

  Mrs Heffer gasped audibly, then spoke as if to a lunatic. “I have no idea and I’ve no intention of finding out. My dear Foreign Secretary … have you no conception at all of how long it would take your precious tankers to cross the Atlantic? They’re not jet aircraft. And have you any conception at all of what a fleabite all their combined cargoes would be to the population … the population of the whole of Great Britain? Have you?”

  Rowland Mayes had gone a deep red; he shifted very uncomfortably in his seat. “I’m sorry, Prime Minister.”

  “Have you?” Mrs Heffer pressed. When she asked a question she expected, not an apology, but an answer.

  “Have I —?” Rowland Mayes looked puzzled.

  “God give me strength,” Mrs Heffer said, ostentatiously lifting her eyes to the ceiling. “Any conception?”

  “Er … no, Prime Minister. Not really.”

  Mrs Heffer’s eyes flashed the war alternative. The future looked extremely bleak. The whole country faced death. Such a statement might seem alarmist, might seem even ludicrously melodramatic. But it was the stark truth. And Mrs Heffer knew that everything was set to go if it became necessary. Leaving no stones unturned, as was her way, she had seen to that, just as a precaution, of course … No-one in the whole country, no-one anywhere else except for the Cabinet and Defence Ministry and the brass of NATO, knew that for sure. Mrs Heffer was astonished in fact that the President of the United States, who would certainly have been kept informed by his Secretary of State — for the US supremo in West Germany would have reported — hadn’t been on the line already. And talk of the devil, a half-minute later he was.

  He was in something of a state. “Hey, look, Charlotte. What’s all this about readiness?”

  “You know very well, George. You know what we in this country are facing. This diabolical threat.” Mrs Heffer’s fingers were clenching and unclenching around a lace handkerchief and her face was formidable as she felt the emanation of American stubbornness and insularity. Just, as she’d remarked earlier in Cabinet, like last time and the time before. “You know perfectly well, we face extinction! Total extinction, total slaughter of all our people. That, we simply cannot face, George. Really, you must see that.”

  “Uh-huh. I’m sorry to hear this, Charlotte, very sorry.” There was a pause; Mrs Heffer waited, her heart thudding behind her breasts, rising to her mouth as it seemed. “Do I take it you’re asking for our support?”

  “Of course I am, George,” Mrs Heffer snapped.

  “I see. Well, now. It goes without saying that you have our moral support —”

  “I’m not interested in moral —”

  “After all, so many of us have our roots in England and Scotland. Ireland, too. We have one hell of a lot in common, Charlotte, right?”

  “Yes —”

  “And there’s the special understanding —”

  “Of course, George. Our two nations — each must back the other, I’m sure you agree.”

  “Yes, sure. Mind, the special understanding … maybe not so sure as it was with Ronald and Maggie, I don’t know. But sure, you have our support. But no war, right?”

  Mrs Heffer’s body stiffened rigidly, then she began to shake with rage. “You mean you won’t support us, Mr President?”

  “Why no, I didn’t say that. I said I would. Short of war. Only maniacs go to war, these days —”

  “Thank you for your honesty, Mr President. In that case I shall have to go it alone.” Mrs Heffer banged the receiver down. She faced her ministers angrily. Seething, in fact. “Lily-livered,” she said. “Gutless! Afraid, I suppose, to face Congress.”

  They all knew precisely what she was referring to even though the word ‘war’ had not been mentioned from the Downing Street end. Rowland Mayes, basically a brave man and with an obstinacy of his own, chanced his arm. He gave an embarrassed cough and said, “The election, Prime Minister, our British election —”

  “What about it?”

  “Well, Prime Minister — if we attack the Soviet —”

  “The electors will vote for the Green Party, is that what you’re saying?”

  “Well, not necessarily the —”

  “My dear Foreign Secretary, what a stupid fool you are. If the botulin does what this man Brosak threatens, there won’t be any electors. They’ll all be dead.”

  *

  As Hedge had feared, it was Dresden all over again. Also as he had feared, it was much worse. Glasnost and perestroika, whichever was which, had not lightened the terrible aura of the Lubyanka. The very walls were bloodstained in Hedge’s imagination and his ears seemed to hear the dreadful cries of the afflicted, the tortured millions who had passed this way but once, en route for the Siberian salt mines and labour camps, or death. He had been taken, not yet to a cell, but to what was clearly an interrogation chamber with thick stone walls and the gaunt man seated invisible but vocal behind a light the very bright beam of which was shining straight into Hedge’s eyes. Behind him were two armed guards, one of them a woman, which Hedge didn’t like at all; it was infra dig for a woman to watch a man’s humiliation, or rather for a man to be humiliated in front of a woman, and he was certain this was what was going to happen.

  For a long time the gaunt man didn’t utter. That, Hedge knew, was all part of it, part of the build-up, the induction of anxiety, of terror. In the end it was Hedge himself who broke the silence.

  “Why have I been moved?” he asked.

  “You were comfortable, Hedge?”

  “Yes, I was. I thought that was the idea. Comfortable custody.”

  “It is not the idea now.”

  “O
h.”

  “You have not signified that you will speak. That you will tell us what we wish to know.”

  “Yes, I see. So —”

  “So unless now you talk, then the uncomfortable custody. Have you read the biography of Comrade Philby?”

  This was an unexpected question. Hedge answered truthfully. “I’m afraid not, but I did appreciate the loan of it.”

  “Yes. It is of no consequence.” Kim Philby was dismissed from further consideration, but Hedge was left to wonder why he had been mentioned in the first place. Unless, of course, it was a kind of hint, a suggestion that those who threw in their lot with the Soviet Union would become honoured, well treated, given a luxurious flat near the Kremlin, live off the somewhat thin fat of the land, end up as heroes. Hedge had no wish to remain in Russia; he couldn’t wait to get back to London, his one over-riding concern being that he might never get back if he didn’t play his cards right.

  He had no cards to play.

  The gaunt man began an exposition of what uncomfortable custody was going to be like. He described the smallness of the cell to be occupied by Hedge: there would be space to stand up and to sit, but not to lie down. There would be no window and the electric light would of course be constant. The ceiling would be low, the air unfresh. He would be brought out for interrogation like now, and this would happen at odd times and, until he spoke, frequently. He would not be allowed to sleep. Through a spyhole a guard would watch, and whenever he was seen to nod off he would be awoken with a loud noise or a sharp prod. The food would be scanty and unpalatable, enough to sustain life and that was all. There might be persuasion of a very unpleasant kind.