Spy People

by Duncan James

  He wished Annie was here with her smile, to lean over him and mop his brow.

  He stirred, after a time.

  So the boss had been on asking about him, had he? The Colonel. He hated being called that, but it didn’t seem right somehow for a mere Staff Sergeant to call a colonel ‘Bill’. Good bloke, he was. Interesting outfit he ran, as well.

  Dusty wondered if he would ever be fit enough to get back to active service again. If not, he wouldn’t mind a job in the Colonel’s organisation. Nice people, too. He recalled them all, which he suddenly realised was an improvement on recent days – his brain was starting to work again. He checked them off, one by one as he lay in bed, wired up to God knows what sort of machinery.

  The guy who ran the armoury, ex-RN Petty Officer. They called him ‘Bottom’, because he once boasted of being a top-gun. Poor sod, having to live with that. But he was a bloody good shot, with almost any weapon you could give him. Dusty had only just scored higher than him when he was being put through his paces when he joined.

  Dusty frowned. The thought of a Royal Navy Petty Officer stirred another distant memory, but he couldn’t place it. It’ll come, no doubt.

  And dear old ‘Aunty’, who ran the clothing store. An ex- actor, or something to do with the theatre, and a bit precious, but he knew his job OK. Dress you up in anything you wanted, and did the make up as well, complete with false moustache if you felt inclined for a complete disguise. So far, Dusty hadn’t had to use his services, he was pleased to say.

  Then there was Gladys, who did all the Admin. He rather liked her. Knew where you were with Gladys, you did. A bit of a rough diamond, who smoked like a chimney in spite of the law, but as straight as a die. You couldn’t do much in that place unless she knew about it and you had signed one of her blasted forms. Dusty grinned. The fuss to draw an HK53 from the armoury, and take it abroad, too! But she fixed it, bless her. Try as he might, though, he couldn’t clearly remember why he had wanted it in the first place. Someone would tell him if he asked, he supposed, but it didn’t matter now.

  Commander Nick Marsden was deputy to the Colonel, and a really good guy. Special Services, like himself. Royal Marines. He had a vague recollection of meeting him somewhere unexpectedly recently, but couldn’t put his finger on it. Dreaming again, perhaps.

  Now he remembered something, though. Marsden was planning to marry the PA, Barbara. She worked for both of them. Him and the Colonel. Dusty had a vague idea that he was supposed to be the best man, but couldn’t think why or when it was or anything. He hoped he would be well enough by then. He also hoped the Commander was doing the right thing. Nice enough girl and all that, and made good coffee in the office, but Dusty wasn’t all that sure about her for some reason. Had an illegitimate son by the Colonel’s predecessor, for one thing. Not the sort of thing a nice girl does. Jarvis, that was the chap’s name. He remembered now. It had been his job to keep an eye on Jarvis. Hadn’t he eventually been killed by a Russian agent? Poisoned in a coffee bar? Yes, he damned well had! He had been there when it happened. It was all coming back to him now.

  But his leg was hurting again. And his arm. And now he had a headache as well. Too much thinking; trying to remember things. He had to, though. He couldn’t just lay there doing nothing. He needed to get everything working again, back to normal. He was doing his best. If he tried hard, he thought he could just about move his foot, or at least a couple of toes. Not long ago, he couldn’t even feel the damn thing. Perhaps he should tell someone. But the effort brought the pain back. Not a lot, like before, but enough.

  He wondered if this ball thing worked on headaches as well. He squeezed it gently and drifted off again. Where’s Annie, he wondered. Did she really exist, even?

  He wanted to think so.

  ***

  A couple of days later, and Dusty was beginning to feel more like his old self again. They had moved him, for a start, and he’d got rid of some of the bits of kit he had been wired up to for so long. He was now in a small ward with other blokes, in a proper bed, and they were beginning to give him things to eat and drink. Real food, not stuff poured down a pipe.

  What’s more, they were getting him on his feet a bit. He needed a lot of help, but it made a change just to be able to get out of bed and in to the chair next to it. They said it would be a long time before he went solo on his own feet, and then he would need a stick, but at least he still had his leg, not like some of the other poor chaps around him. They had lost arms, hands, feet, legs – you name it – and yet they were all mostly cheerful in spite of everything.

  The medical people had told Dusty that he was very lucky not to have had his left leg amputated below the knee. They said they had the operating theatre all ready to do it, but when they got there, they had decided to have a go at saving it. From now on, though, he would set off all the alarms at every airport in the world. His leg was held together with metal plates and pins. So was his right arm, too, although that had not been so badly damaged. Just as well, since he was right handed. They were as pleased as punch when he told them that he could move his toes a bit, in spite of the pain. But he had control over that himself, now, and found he needed to pump morphine in less and less often.

  They had eventually got round to telling him everything that had been wrong with him, and give him some sort of prognosis for the future. He agreed with them. He was lucky to be alive, but then so were most of the others in the trauma unit. Almost without exception, they had been blown up in Afghanistan.

  Shortly after they had moved him out of intensive care, one of them, a Corporal in the 1st Rifles, had made his way over to Dusty on a Zimmer frame sort of thing. He had only one leg, and one hand. The rest had been blown away by a roadside IED.

  “I owe you an apology,” he had said.

  “Why’s that then?” asked Dusty. “I don’t remember meeting you before.”

  “You haven’t,” he replied. “I’m Stan Archer; Corporal, 1st Rifles. But I blew my top the other day, out loud and in public, and I’m sorry. You can see I’ve lost a few bits and pieces in Afghanistan, but four of the other guys on my patrol were killed in the same explosion, so I’m the lucky one. I’m gutted, as you can imagine, so I lost my rag when I thought you’d just been skiing.”

  “Terrible about your blokes. I know how you feel. You’ll take years to get over the fact that you survived and they didn’t. But why apologise to me?”

  “Because I took it for granted that you had been hurt out there too, but when they told me you’d been skiing in Switzerland, I’m afraid I hit the roof. Totally blew my top. When he heard, the Colonel took me to one side, and explained that you were Special Forces, and why you were in Switzerland, and that you had a gallantry award for what you did behind the lines in Iraq, and all that. So I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t mention it,” said Dusty. “I’d have done the same, I expect.”

  “You badly hurt?” asked the man.

  “Nearly lost a leg, but they managed to stitch it back on, somehow. And I’ve got a dodgy arm and lots wrong with my plumbing – lungs, stomach, that sort of thing. Hypothermia was a big problem, seemingly, but luckily they got me out of the mountains before I got frostbite.”

  “Frostbite isn’t much of a problem in the desert. Who got you out, as a matter of interest?”

  “Special Forces team parachuted in.”

  “You must be quite important, then.”

  “Somebody thought so.”

  “Well, I’m really sorry, anyway. I just didn’t know. I’ll buy you a beer when you’re fit,” said Stan.

  The two men shook hands. Left handed.

  “You’ve got time to save up,” said Dusty. “I’m off alcohol for a bit, since they’ve taken out one of my kidneys. They say I’ll manage all right with just one, but no beer yet.”

  “What was wrong with the kidney?”

  “Nothing, actually. It was in perfectly good working order, so they said, except it had a bullet hole str
aight through it, so they took it out.” Dusty reached for his bed-side locker. “I’ve got the bullet, if you’d like to see it.”

  “No thanks,” said Stan. “Anyway, I’m sorry, and I’ve told everyone else who heard me loose off.”

  “Say no more about it,” said Dusty. “I must say, it’s nice to be among military chaps in here, rather than be stuck in some civilian hospital with coughs and in-growing toenails. At least we all have something in common.”

  “And the staff are totally brilliant, too, although not all of them are military. There are civilian surgeons and nurses here as well.”

  “Talking of staff,” said Dusty, “have you come across a girl called Annie since you’ve been here?”

  “Can’t say I have. Why.”

  “I’ll swear she was here when I came in, but nobody seems to have heard of her. I suppose I must have been dreaming. Pity, that. I would have liked to meet her again.”

  “Dream on! If you ever want anything to read, by the way, just shout. I’ve got loads of books, and when you’re properly up and about, there’s a decent common room where we can all sit and feel sorry for ourselves.”

  “Can’t wait,” said Dusty.

  After that, several other chaps came across for a chat. Dusty quite liked having visitors. It perked him up, and took his mind off things. But he found he got very tired, quite quickly. One day he would be able to get out of his chair and visit others, but he had more surgery to go through first.

  He wondered if anyone from the office would come down.

  ***

  Colonel Graham knew about Miller’s background because Bill Clayton had told him.

  “One of my orderlies, Corporal Phil Saunders told me you wanted a word, and I was quite keen to talk to you, too,” Graham had said.

  “Well, thanks for ringing. I really wanted a first-hand account from you of Miller’s condition. I feel directly responsible, since I sent him out to Switzerland in the first place.”

  “And I want to know why you did that,” said Graham, “and a bit of background about the man himself. Just who have I got here?”

  By the end of the conversation, both men were a lot wiser.

  “I shall need to talk to you again,” concluded Graham. “The more Miller gets his brain into gear again and remembers the past, the more he wants to know about his future. At the moment, my view is that he will not be able to return to active service, certainly not as he has known it in the past, but that he will be perfectly capable of light duties and what the RAF people here call ‘flying a mahogany bomber’. In a few weeks, Miller will be going to the Rehabilitation Centre at Headley Court, but before he goes there, I shall need to know what the future holds for him and what additional or new training he will need if you should decide to take him back, always assuming, of course, that he wants to return to your unit rather than go somewhere else.”

  “I will take him back here without hesitation, so long as he is as mentally alert as he always was, but he must be able to accept that his daring-do days in the SAS are over,” said Clayton.

  “I’ll have a better assessment for you in a week or so,” promised Graham, “but he’ll be keen to know that there’s a place for him within your organisation when he’s fit enough. It would be good for him if you or someone senior could get up here to pay him a short visit. He’s fit enough now.”

  “I’ll see if my deputy, Commander Marsden, can get over. I’m a bit tied down at the moment, but he could get away if he wants. He led the team that got Miller out of Switzerland.”

  “And brought him here from the aircraft. I remember meeting him briefly when Miller arrived. Get him to give me a ring if he can spare a few hours. I’m sure it would do Miller good, and he can chat about the future at the same time,” said Graham. “Talking about the future, what about training for Miller. Can you fix that?”

  “I can arrange whatever training he needs for whatever job I think he’ll be fit for. At the moment, it’s going through my mind to send him on an MI5 course. Intelligence Officer or something like that. I have plenty of those people on detachment here, so he would fit in nicely.”

  “Which reminds me,” said Graham. “Do you by any chance have anyone on your staff called Annie?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Why do you ask?”

  “It’s just that Miller keeps asking about someone of that name. He seems convinced that she was here when he arrived, but nobody knows who he’s talking about. Hallucinating I expect – it often happens.”

  “If he’s going off his head,” replied Clayton, “you can keep him!”

  ***

  Nick Marsden was not having the happiest time of his life.

  He was really out of training for the sort of operation he had recently led into Switzerland, and the exertion of it had taken a lot out of him. He had also shot and killed a man, something which he had never enjoyed. But it had to be done. In doing so, he had also saved at least one life, so he supposed it had been worth it. Otherwise, Dusty Miller would certainly not have been alive now, and perhaps not Roger Lloyd either.

  To make matters ten times worse, if that was possible, he got back to base to find that the woman he was supposed to be marrying had not simply disappeared, but was also most probably an enemy agent.

  Nick had known better days, no doubt about it. But he wanted to see Miller again, and apparently Miller was keen to see him, too, now that he was on the road to recovery. Miller didn’t get many visitors. In fact, not any. He had no family apart from a distant cousin somewhere, and they were rarely in touch. But that’s the only next of kin he had ever declared on his records, and everyone else he know were all working colleagues, mostly in London.

  This was why Marsden was keen to make a visit, although he had been told it would only be a short one, as Miller got very tired quite quickly.

  Before he went, they decided to make a few changes in the office. The search for the informer had been narrowed down quite significantly, and many of the people who could have been passing information to the Russians had been deleted from the list of suspects, mostly because they didn’t have access to all the information that had obviously been leaked.

  In fact, it began to look like a shortlist of one. His future wife, Barbara; or perhaps her Mother was an unlikely second bet. But they still had no idea what had happened to the Wilkinson family, and this was the key to their enquiries. So it was decided that Bill Clayton could return to his proper role as Head of Section 11, while still monitoring the ‘spy hunt’, with Nick as his deputy. That left Peter Northcot free to concentrate full time on trying to trace the Wilkinsons.

  So Nick was able to get away for a few hours to travel to Birmingham for a visit to Dusty Miller. Bill had briefed him in full about his conversation with the Head of the trauma unit at Selly Oak, so he knew what to expect. After much debate, it was decided that he would go in uniform, since it was a military unit he was visiting. The staff would respect his rank, and Miller would be just as relaxed whatever he wore, not least because Marsden had been in uniform, of sorts, when they last met. Not that he expected Miller to remember.

  He drove himself in one of the cars from the Clerkenwell garage. Gladys had made him sign for it, of course.

  He was shocked at what he saw when he arrived in Dusty’s ward. He was sitting, dozing, in a chair beside his bed, with his leg swathed in plaster and heavily bandaged, propped up so as to be horizontal. His right arm was similarly plastered, and he looked dreadful.

  He stirred when Nick appeared accompanied by Colonel Graham, and managed a broad grin.

  “You’ve no idea how nice it is to see you again,” said Miller. “I haven’t really been well enough for visitors, even if there was anybody who could have come.”

  “Great to see you, too. You’re looking a million times better than when I last saw you.”

  “I feel it, too. I was pretty badly damaged, so they say, but I can’t remember much of the detail about what happened.”

&
nbsp; “I’ve heard. We had a good briefing from your Colonel here.”

  “I’ll leave you two to chat, but don’t get him too tired,” said Graham. “Check in with me on your way out, if you would,” he said to Marsden.

  “Of course.”

  “So tell me what’s going on back at the office,” demanded Miller.

  “For a start, I’m sad to say that you will not, after all, be best man at my wedding.”

  “Why? What have I done?”

  “Not you, Dusty. Barbara. She’s completely disappeared, with her Mother and Donald, and we haven’t a clue why or where to.”

  “I’ll tell you why,” said Dusty. “She’s your informer, I’ll bet anything.”

  “What makes you so sure? If you know anything, let’s have it.”

  “Nothing in the way of what you might call evidence, but there’s always been something odd about that girl, if you ask me. I don’t want to cause offence, but … well, devious, almost.”

  Dusty shifted awkwardly.

  “I used to drop in to her office quite often for a coffee – she made good coffee – and now and then I seemed to catch her by surprise, almost. She would hurriedly shove something in a drawn or shut down the computer, or hang up if she was on the phone. Know what I mean? I wondered a couple of times, too, if she might have been speaking in a foreign language of some sort on the phone, but I’m no linguist. A bit of Arabic and that’s all.”

  “That’s very interesting, Dusty. Thanks for that.”

  “Hope I haven’t spoken out of turn, or upset you at all.”

  “Of course not. I was very upset at first, of course, to think the girl might have been two-timing me in some way, but all the circumstantial evidence seems to be pointing her way. Not only has she disappeared, but seems to have been planning it for some time. No papers or anything left behind, and she even took the hard drive out of her computers in the office and at home.”

  “There you are, then.”

  “Well, we shall see. There’s a new bloke in the office concentrating on trying to find out what happened to them. Chap called Peter Northcot, retired major in Intelligence, who did a couple of under-cover tours in Hong Kong. Good bloke. You’ll like him.”