by Tim Heald
‘Not too rough, I hope,’ said Romany. ‘I’m not exactly the world’s greatest sailor.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’ Green’s voice sounded less beige and damp than usual. ‘We don’t have far to go.’
‘I suppose we have to do this.’ Romany’s voice sounded distinctly quaverish. Uncharacteristic. ‘It seems so terribly final.’
‘Listen…’ Green’s voice was suddenly drowned by the growl and sputter of an engine failing to ignite. Between two failures snatches of sentence floated down to Bognor and Molly Mortimer. ‘…The only way to tell the story… Glasnost has changed everything…’ Then, at the third try, the ancient engine caught. Trev revved, then throttled back so that it idled away to a gentle lawnmower throb which rattled every last bolt and rivet and drowned all speech. Bognor cursed.
Presently they heard the clump of Trevor’s boots above them. He must have been casting off because a few moments later the engine picked up power, the bows pointed out to sea and they headed for the harbour mouth. The two stowaways gazed out through a porthole as the harbour wall slipped past and the boat began to roll.
The Saucy Sue’s engines seemed to get noisier, a sharp metallic clatter mingling with the softer, regular, resonant throb that had gone before. Bognor frowned, strained hard to catch the origin of the altered note, exclaimed: ‘Listen!’
They both froze and gradually the new sound drowned out the old, rising to a crescendo, then starting to fade and drifting away to the east. Peering through his porthole, smeared now with the froth from scudding, salty spray, Bognor saw a dull grey insect shuddering overhead, wing whirring above it like a whirligig. The glass was too dirty, the weather too gurly for him to distinguish any markings. In the sky above the quintessential English seaside resort it had, even when Big Books were at stake, to be one of ours.
‘Chopper,’ he said laconically. ‘I think you may be going to get a story.’
Molly scribbled in her reporter’s note book and almost laughed.
‘Makes a change from Crime Writers’ Association annual dinners,’ she said.
Byron had made the RV with the Chariot. Now, sitting in the flimsy dragonfly a few hundred feet above sea level, he braced himself against the bucking of the wind and attempted to train the Zeiss field glasses on the horizon. They were Abwehr surplus – cumbersome but effective. Good for the image.
Immediately below them a tubby little fishing boat nosed out of the narrow entrance to Byfleet harbour. The helicopter pilot, an angular Aberdonian, turned the whirlybird on its side for a couple of seconds so that both of them could look down on the vessel through their bulbous perspex globe. One man in the wheelhouse; two matchstick figures crouched in its lee.
Jock Cameron chuckled into the mouthpiece.
Glatt winced.
‘Hope they’ve taken their Kwells,’ said Jock, flipping the machine back on to an even keel, letting the nose drop and heading off towards Denmark, leaving the Saucy Sue bobbing about astern.
Glatt pressed the Zeiss glasses back to his eyes.
‘“I saw the new moon late yestreen,”’ he murmured,
‘“Wi’ the auld moon in her arm;
And if we gang to sea, master,
I fear we’ll come to harm.”’
Parkinson pursed his lips. His man was not on the 9.10 to Bradleigh Parkway. Nor Mrs Bognor. Yet they had checked out of the Goose and Goblet. The man Bumstead was clearly an oaf. The computer search on Merlin Glatt was far from conclusive.
‘I’m not a bit happy about it. Not a bit,’ he said.
The Air Vice-Marshal in Northwood had been shifty to the point of insolence; Hereford had barely given him the time of day; Sir Pendragon Star at Six had talked loosely of a shindig at sea; Fitzroy at Five had hinted darkly, and disgracefully, that his department was on thin ice; the Cabinet office had been permanently engaged.
In a final throw he had instructed his secretary to call the Bognor home in London.
‘Please speak after the beep,’ she reported.
‘Eeny, meeny, miny, mo,’ he said, staring wistfully at the Homburg on the hat stand. ‘You know, Miss Travers, young Bognor has got me into more trouble than the whole of the rest of the Special Investigations Department put together. Not since Harold Wilson was President of the Board of Trade has anyone caused us as much gratuitous angst. And that, Miss Travers, was before you were born.’
Miss Travers, a pert child of the sixties, could only dimple acquiescence. She had seen Bognor several times in the canteen and thought him seedy. Also a bit of a dirty old man. He had looked at her the way some older men did.
‘I suppose’, he continued, ‘that I should man my desk in a manner befitting my age and station. On the other hand if the shit hits the fan I’ll end up with egg on my face, no matter what. Wouldn’t you say, Miss Travers?’
Miss Travers flinched. She was a low-level plant from Six with – unknown to Parkinson – a first in Oriental Languages. She didn’t like people who talked dirty.
Parkinson seemed to consider for a moment. Then he jumped to his feet.
‘Tell Transport I want the fastest wheels in the garage, Miss Travers. Front door, ninety seconds’ time. I’ll telephone later. Don’t leave your post until I’ve called.’
And he picked up his Homburg and was gone.
The Strobe gang were arming. Monica had never seen so much state-of-the-art weaponry outside the Richmond Odeon. Strobe himself, zipped into a natty Swiss flak jacket, had a gold-plated sub-machine gun, which he cradled in his lap, stroking it as if it was some sort of pet. That was the extent of his armament. Marlene Glopff and Hastings, however, had everything the well-dressed terrorist was wearing that year – a brace of handguns apiece, the very latest stun grenades, which homed in on people and chased them about, knives, rope, custom-built head masks with built-in anti-gas respirators, the lot.
‘It’s only bloody Byfleet,’ said Monica, ‘not Beirut.’
‘If things pan out Byfleet could make Beirut look like the Hotel du Lac,’ said Hastings, checking the cartridge on a nasty-looking little Walther and revealing an unexpected knowledge of Booker Prizes past. ‘This thing’s become bigger than all of us.’
‘You must try to understand, my dear,’ said Strobe, buckling on a lightweight kukri, ‘that we stand for the dominance of the word. In the beginning was the word – you know that. Nowadays you have to be market-led. Where the market leads, the dynamics of enterprise inevitably follow. Which is the principal reason why Megaword must have Green and maybe even Flange.’
It seemed to Monica that she must be going mad. Neither Glopff nor Hastings seemed to find this gobbledegook very interesting, but neither of them seemed amazed or even depressed by it. Glopff was sitting in the lotus position breathing deeply and staring, probably at her inner mind. Hastings was having trouble with a shoelace which had got knotted.
‘What are we going to do?’ she asked.
‘The secret of Big Books and Megawords’, said Strobe, eyes dancing like milkshakes in the blender, ‘is a crescendo of great violence. All is resolved in that penultimate climax. There is explosive violence and violently explosive sex. It is the sort of thing at which Arthur Green excels. Have you read Last Supper?’
He tested the blade of his knife with his thumb and smiled up at her. ‘I dare say your reading is of a cosier kind?’
‘More Proustian,’ said Monica bolshily. ‘What’s Last Supper?’
‘It’s Green’s Biggest Book,’ said Hastings peering down the barrel of a gun. ‘The Pope is kidnapped by extra-terrestrials and hidden in an abandoned brothel in the mountains of Nicaragua where Lance Remington discovers him and there’s this KGB General who’s infiltrated the Oval Office at the White House and in the end they set up this incredible banquet where the extra-terrestrials finally intend to assassinate the President of the USA and the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party only Lance Remington finds out just in time and discovers a magic formula which turns all the
extra-terrestrials into green jelly but not before they manage to put a grenade under the bed in which—’
‘Cool it!’ said Marlene. ‘Put that thing down, breathe deeply, raise and lower the arms as you inhale and exhale. I want to see that whole organism recharged. Think Total Body Breath.’
To Monica’s surprise, Hastings, who had been looking dangerously supercharged, did as he was told. After a few deep breaths his high colour paled and his pupils seemed less dilated.
‘You should read Last Supper,’ said Glopff; ‘it has great resonances. The KGB guy is called Juri Iscarovitch – like Judas, geddit? And the big shoot-out at the end is straight from the Book of Revelation. You know, there’s a message there.’
‘Subtext,’ said Monica. She wondered what the subtext of the present situation was. The three of them were clearly under some form of instruction from what they chose to believe to be the CIA. But was it? Was it, perhaps, some maverick branch of the organisation, spinning away like a satellite which changes orbit. Was the President still in control? Had he ever been in control? Was there an Iscarovitch somewhere behind an arras? Was Strobe from outer space? His Who’s Who entry said he was born in Romford but maybe that was cover. Monica wished she knew.
The Cellnet phone trilled again. Glopff listened, swore, and said, ‘That’s too bad. We’ll have to pray the Brits head them off. Meanwhile get some kind of transport to the pierhead. Yeah, soonest.’ She gave the phone back to Hastings. ‘We have to move our asses,’ she said. ‘The rest of the world is a step ahead. Someone goofed at Langley.’ She turned to Mrs Bognor. ‘OK, Monica,’ she said, ‘off your butt.’
It was distinctly choppy in Byfieet Bay. Bognor remembered Hemlock’s pretty little Bonington, the one of the schooner at sea. The ocean deep was so picturesque in poetry and prose and paint, he reflected, and so perfectly bloody in real life. The Saucy Sue was pitching and rolling like a barrel nearing the Niagara drop. It was impossible to hear conversation above the steady drum of the engine and the slap of the waves. The view from the porthole was spasmodic. Bognor felt like the great J. M. W. Turner, tied to the mast in the cause of art. Imprisoned below decks in the service of the Board of Trade might not have quite the same nobility of purpose or echoes of grandeur but the apparent imminence of a watery grave was none the less.
He braced himself against the heaving boat, tried to ignore his heaving stomach and said to Molly Mortimer, ‘What’s the plan?’
The Literary Editor seemed to be enjoying herself. No sign of sea-sickness, an enviable ability to roll with the punches – useful attributes for a hackette, however literary. She had also had the presence of mind to bring binoculars – not the showy, cumbersome sort of thing that Glatt favoured but discreet and ladylike, reminiscent of Glopffs little Derringer: a pair of Japanese Chinon Eight by Twenty-fours with a 5.50 field.
‘Ship,’ she said, suddenly, ‘out there on the horizon. Not that far away. Big fishing boat by the look of it.’
Bognor tried to stand but sat down again very heavily, bruising a buttock on a nautical knob.
‘What nationality?’
‘Red, yellow and black flag with a strange device. Also more dishes and antennae than the TV Centre. Oh, I think I can read the lettering on the stern. Hang on! Not easy. Just a sec’ She paused, bracing her legs like an ancient sea dog in an ancient cigarette ad. ‘Dolores something,’ she said. ‘Rostok. Dolores Iba…can’t make it out, I’m afraid.’
‘Dolores Ibarruri,’ said Bognor. ‘La Pasionaria. That terrible blood-thirsty Republican woman in the Spanish Civil War. Just the sort of person the Warsaw Pact names its navy after. East German so-called fishing boat. Actually a spy ship under direct control of the KGB and never done any bona fide fishing in the whole of its life. Come to pick up a couple of sprats. Or maybe they’ll turn out to be mackerel. If we’re not extremely careful your Green factoid is going to end up as the lead title of this year’s Russian State Publishing House’s autumn list. I don’t like it.’
The Saucy Sue lurched. Bognor’s sense of impending doom became even more acute. He was not happy.
‘Good story!’ said the Literary Editor.
Byron’s Chariot rendezvoused with HMS Snapdragon, a Floral Class Fishery Protection Vessel, about two miles east of the Houndstooth Rock. Glatt came down from the chopper swaying gently on the end of a rope like Peter Pan in the Barbican at Christmas. HMS Snapdragon was a poorly converted torpedo boat, long past her prime and with only slippery postage stamps of deck to aim at but Glatt landed on both feet, upright and well able to acknowledge the welcoming salute of Snapdragon’s commanding officer, a cadaverous but wily Cornishman, Lieutenant Dudley Tregarron. Tregarron’s steely blue eyes spoke of hidden depths. He would be a useful port in a storm.
‘Welcome aboard, sir,’ he said to the poet.
Glatt smiled. ‘You’ve made contact with La Pasionaria?’
Tregarron smiled back. He spoke most Russian and German dialects and had just finished a longish chat with the Dolores Ibarruri. They had talked freely about cod, Dynamo Kiev and the likely whereabouts of any British warships – in that order. The East Germans were under the impression that Tregarron was the commander of a deep sea trawler out of Minsk. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘may I say how much I admired “The Dartington Rhymes”? Not to mention “Box”. I have a copy in my cabin. If, when this little show is over, you’d be good enough to inscribe them I’d be most awfully grateful.’
The poet inclined his head, flared his nostrils briefly and reverted to Action Man.
‘How soon before we can make contact?’
‘If her course holds, thirty-five to forty-five minutes.’
Glatt nodded. ‘She’s fishing in British waters.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And she’s after a big catch. A literary catch. Not exactly a First Folio. But big stuff. She mustn’t hook anything. You understand me?’
It was the Cornishman’s turn to nod.
‘I’d prefer nothing too heavy,’ said Glatt. ‘My masters don’t want an international incident. No blood on these already troubled waters.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
‘“Books,”’ said Glatt, ‘“like men their authors, have no more than one way of coming into the world, but there are ten thousand to go out of it, and return no more.”’
‘“There is nothing constant in this world but inconstancy”, sir.’ The Lieutenant had read English at Trinity, Dublin.
Glatt took the Swiftian reference, assimilated it and raised the ancient Zeiss glasses to his fevering brow.
‘It’s a Big Book,’ he said, half to himself, ‘the Biggest Book of the decade.’
For a civil servant nearing retirement Parkinson was a fast mover. Never mind that others did the moving, they did so at his behest. Car, Board of Trade Lear Jet, and car again. It was faster than a stout tub bumping through choppy brine. But even allowing for the speed of his progress the old man had time for thought and what he thought of was Bognor. He’d known him for years, ever since he’d come to the Board wet behind the ears fresh from university. Wet behind the ears still, yet with a darker grey to the matter between them. In earlier days he would do the wrong thing for the wrong reason – or for no reason at all, which was at least as bad. Nowadays he was more inclined to do the wrong thing for the right reason and this was why Parkinson had himself so impulsively decided to hurry to Byfleet-next-the-Sea. Bognor left to his own devices would almost inevitably end up in some fearful scrape but the reason for that was that his hunches were usually well founded. He got himself into trouble because he knew where the trouble was. If the Board was to get its act together it would use Bognor like a tracker dog, get him to sniff out the enemy and then go in with all reasonable force, hoping not only to apprehend the villain but also – less essential – to get Bognor out safely.
Swooping low over the flat quilt of East Anglia with its irregular squares and oblongs laid out below in contrasting shades of wintry grey, Parkinson
was forced to admit that continued use of Bognor in dangerous situations betrayed a callous disregard for the man’s life. If he genuinely valued Bognor he would have taken him off Special Operations and put him on desk-bound code and cipher work as he had so often threatened. But he hadn’t and the knowledge caused Parkinson a twinge of self-revelation. He did not think of himself as a cruel or a cold man and yet he was forced to acknowledge that sooner or later he was going to be responsible for Bognor’s death. Oddly enough what upset him most about that was not the loss of Bognor but the thought of having to explain the circumstances to Monica, Mrs Bognor.
He was still trying to rationalise this when the little plane put down at Norton Fitzpriors, the old RAF base where Strobe’s chopper had landed in the middle of the night. The place hadn’t seen so much activity since 1940. Shading his eyes against an unexpected shaft of sun he saw an unmarked car in the lee of one of the hangars. Two men leaned against it, their belted macs immediately identifying them as hard men of the intimidatory tendency.
Parkinson rubbed his hands. He had never carried a weapon since the embarrassing business of Bulstrode in Berlin in ‘48. For the first time in ages the lack had made him feel naked and vulnerable. Which is why he had made the pilot radio Lowestoft and ordered Krichefski and Horowitz to drop their Customs and Excise assignment and get over to meet him p.d.q. With those two around he might not expect razor-sharp conversation but at least he’d feel safe.
Safe was more than Bognor was feeling.
The wind had increased by several knots and the sea heightened by more than a foot. At one point Trevor came down grinning broadly. He put his finger to his lips to indicate silence, made a thumbs-up signal and went away again with a large piece of rope slung over his shoulder. Bognor did not feel encouraged by this. Water was sloshing about in their primitive cabin and his feet were getting soaked. He tried to remember everything he had ever read about displacement and the effect of even a few inches of water on a ship’s stability. He could remember nothing.