The Desolate Garden

by Daniel Kemp

  “Be careful the cheese doesn't give you nightmares, Harry. You might see yourself in them. Drink some more of your single malt, and let the real world pass you by.” She disappeared after offering her advice, giving 'work to do' as an excuse. I hoped it was simply that, and not a return to her isolation before our candid conversation of the Common.

  My world was empty of real people and meaningful emotions. The simple summary that Judith had awarded me was correct. Alone, on Paulo's vacated soft settee, watching groups and couples laughing or in earnest conversation, I felt as wanted and welcome as the hot roast pork sandwich that I had ordered would have been at a bar mitzvah. I was lonely. I had always been at the centre of things, from school days to squire, the one everybody chose to know. Now, examining those relationships, not one of those souls who had rubbed shoulders with me could I truly call a friend. My family name had been the fly in the web that had attracted all this attention, yet I felt outside of what was happening. Even the threat of my own death was abstract and speculative. If an attempt was to happen, then I would feel connected; as it hadn't, I had nothing to equate it with. I was detached from it all, impervious to everything except my own superfluous life. “Superfluous,” I said aloud, then quietly to myself. “You're right, Judy. I am.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four: Help With Parasites

  “You're a fool, Harry. Most importantly, a fool to yourself. Move up a bit…I want to sit next to you.” She had been gone for about an hour, but to me it felt like a lifetime that I had been on my own. “I was pretty hard on you…I'm sorry. I had forgotten what grief can do to a person, and I was being completely thoughtless in not considering how you felt. Please forgive me for my selfishness.”

  “There was a lot of truth in what you said, Judy. It made me think about things and reflect on my sorry excuse for a life. I seemed to have screwed up somewhere, particularly in relationships, where maybe I've put myself before others.”

  “You haven't screwed up on anything. The trouble with you is that you have never known anyone that you wanted to share that life with. You've got some high principles, Harry, tough for others to live up to, but you're not wrong in having those ideals. It's just that you haven't met the right one who believes in the same.”

  “Perhaps I should have met you before we both became so cynical?” Perhaps it was the flight and the drinks that had made be become sentimental, or perhaps it was something else entirely.

  “You're not cynical, Harry. You're just fed up that you can't get your own way all the time, and when you do get your own way you want someone to tell you that you're right. You're just a little insecure like the rest of us. Like me, you need to be reassured sometimes.” The uncertainty had left her, and her confidence had returned.

  Suddenly, a spotlight hit me. Someone had fired a flare gun and the gloominess that had overshadowed me was lifted. There was a distinct sly grin on Judy's face, and it was widening as she rubbed her hands together, with relish.

  “You're the most big headed person I know. You've found something out, haven't you, Judy? And you've come back to gloat. That's it…and there was I thinking you cared for me? You had me going there, almost fooled me completely. Go on, then. What have you heard at Paulo's keyhole?”

  “No, not there, Harry, from Sir David! Both Willis and Howell have confessed to dealing with the Russian Mafia. They gave away more than that though, playing for a pardon, I expect. They said a Katyerena was the link. Alexi Vasilyev has fingered Katherine for us. Why has he done that? I hope you're on the same page, Harry. Snap out of the melancholy, and start following what I'm saying. The first rule of name change is what?” She was sitting opposite now, having moved hurriedly away when I had regained my sanity fearing, I hoped, that I might have strangled her.

  “Change them all,” I obediently answered, the same question that she had put before.

  “Correct, he never changed hers far enough. Take a coveted gold star, and put it on your chart. Alexi's done it on purpose. What's he telling us, H?”

  “I've no idea. Have you thought that maybe it isn't her, or that he doesn't follow the same rules as you, or perhaps he just slipped up and made a mistake, like Paulo, with those two names? We're not all perfect like you, my dear. That would make for a dull unedifying world, where people like me could not exist.”

  “Oh, stop feeling sorry for yourself! Of course he did it on purpose. I reckon he had Katherine tell her father about Willis and Howell so that he would turn them in. He was on to him, but needed cast-iron certainty. He had all his money on it. He's done it, you dumb head, because he's on our side. Leaving Katherine's head on the block is his signature on the surrender letter…I'm yours. Read the signs!”

  “Wouldn't you know if he's SIS? Wouldn't Peter have told you? Or, if he didn't know, how about Haig? I'm still unconvinced that he isn't involved.”

  “Of course he's not involved…I've told you that. Change your life, and stop being wrong all the time. Alexi is one of our cousins, Harry divided from us, thank God, by a huge sea of water. He speaks the same language some of the time with different spelling and a different dialect, often unintelligible, especially where humour is concerned. If I'm right, and I just know that I am, he's been hanging out in Paulo's Russia for a very long time. What's worrying me is why drop his trousers now? Can you figure it out?”

  “I know I would like to ask Korovin why he changed from the SIS to Sir David. That is, if Paulo made the choice, or if it was forced upon him,” I had fully recovered from the conceptual mentality that had overcome me, but still suspicious about Haig.

  Chapter Thirty-Five: Beneath the Topsoil

  Theoretical concepts made up the main part of Rudi Mercer's life that was devoted to the cause of American security, conducted from various bunkers around the world; but his all-time favourite was in Regent's Park London, beneath Winfield House, sold to the American nation by Barbara Hutton for one dollar at the end of the Second World War. As heir to the Woolworth Winfield empire, she could afford such charity. When in 1955 the Ambassador to the Court of St James took up residence he, and those that followed, praised her bigheartedness. They strolled around the private garden before being ushered, on yet another practise drill, into the nuclear war protection level, five hundred foot below those manicured grounds.

  Rudi, on the other hand, could ill-afford philanthropy in his daily dealings with the secret world through which he travelled. Magnanimity of spirit was a phrase never heard there, as generosity and understanding of failure could not exist side by side with international deceit and duplicity. Rudi was an asset runner, not an operative living the lie, but the orchestra conductor who signalled the time for the soloist's performance.

  Over the decades that past, since Rudi first appended his signature to the CIA, his twinkling light had held the gaze of his masters as they scanned the skies searching for new stars to pin their hopes on in the fight against the communist enemy. Rudi's personal star was coded Vagabond, and Rudi became the sun and water bearer. He brought forth a steady growth of information on which that glint, spotted in dark space, grew into a huge planet. A planet around which dignitaries as powerful as Presidents orbited, lured like moths to his atomising radiance.

  Mother had been Vagabond's first significant disclosure, and Rudi had feasted on it in Regent's Park like the lions caged in the zoo next door gorging on the food thrown to them by their keepers. Mother had been traded around the ears of the whole floor of the Sixth Directorate in Moscow, reaching as far as Alexi Vasilyev who was diligently obeying his Colonel's orders. Except Vladimir's directives were not the only concerns for Alexi; he had Rudi Mercer's desires to consider. Alexi was the star of the show with top billing as Vagabond, and it was his investigations that uncovered more about Paulo than any Chief of the SIS or Permanent Secretary of the British Foreign Office ever knew, or was written in the Garden file. Unfortunately, there was more to come that Rudi kept to himself, not even telling his priest or his granddaughter. However, he did shar
e it with the third member of his holy trinity: the President of the United States of America.

  Margret and Mikhail were doing bundles of business with Ronnie, setting the price they could all live with for the Intermediate Nuclear Force Treaty which was up for auction. The year was 1986 and Mikhail, with Paulo at his side, was speaking words of détente and the reduction of Nuclear Arsenals, of more cooperation with the West and a free and just world for all the oppressed that live in it. At least those that lived next to oil; and Mikhail had it leaking out everywhere. The meeting took place in Iceland where, to the surprise of almost everyone, Ronnie struck a deal with Mikhail. ICBM's were to be cut back: no need for so many, we're friends now, they said. Then the world went topsy-turvy again when a bomb blew up the 'La Belle' discotheque in Berlin, detonated by the Red Brigade and killing hundreds of nightclub users.

  Vagabond had the intercepted communications from the Libyan Embassy in East Berlin, and it did not take long before Margret stepped in with offers of RAF bases for her best mate's use. When France and Spain refused air passage, the Sovereignty of the Straits of Gibraltar were given for the bomb-laden jets to fly through, on their way for revenge on Gaddafi's head. Ronnie would not allow his support for the perpetrators to go unpunished this time.

  Alexi had intercepted more for Rudi. “Mr President, I have disturbing news. Evidence from Vagabond shows conclusively that London is not secure. Our Cruise Missile sites are known to the Soviets. We have arrested a Navy Commander who's a faggot, sir. He gave away firing sequences and targets. We're unsure if codes were disclosed, but we're changing them anyway.” Rudi relayed the news to the leader of the free world.

  And so it began, way back in 1986, that the 'special relationship' that is predominately referred to over here was severed by those over there. Margret was left in the dark as an American flashlight was shone on the green and pleasant land where England will always be found, in the quest to find the hidden nasty who had sold the missiles not included in the treaty to Mikhail's nemesis: his military.

  In the USSR, the still-smarting hawk Generals, suffering from Able Archer, were ripe for Paulo's suggestions and innuendos, and he applied them well. “You see? What did I tell you? Is now the right time to split up our Federation? I think not…how about you?” He added fuel to their fire of disenchantment, supplying the bullets that they would fire in his already decided plan that their power had to be addressed, as would Mikhail's position.

  Alexi's grading throughout the concluding years of the Cold War never allowed him to eat from the same table as those who feasted on London news, and when the need for conventional political espionage was replaced by one more concentrated on industry, his opportunities of discovery of the leakage were not readily enhanced. He had all the qualities needed to be a sleeper, including the most important, exceeding those of belief and aptitude: he had endurance and stoicism in abundance enough to wait for the chance he and Rudi knew would come their way.

  Enter one Geoffrey Rowell with capitalism, couple that with the shrinking of the Russian Federation and an ever increasing eager craving for monetary reward, and the cake was baked for Alexi's inclusion as he keenly listened to Antopolov on the day he told of the missing Paulo at a hotel in Berlin, and he was made aware of why that meeting had been arranged.

  “We have a man deep inside the British secret intelligence,” Antopolov told him. “Who, for some years, had spoken of a ghost within our organisation, someone none of us could see. He was telling London all about our assets and turning our friends against us. He discovered the possibility that Korovin had connections to an English Lord who was extraordinarily rich, owning his own bank. There was speculation among the less cautious of the Politburo that Korovin could have been that ghost. The evidence pointed elsewhere until my predecessor, your once boss, cast his vote alongside those doubters. His motives behind that vote were questioned. He had ambitions of acceding the throne vacated by our last First Secretary and was miffed when Yeltsin was elected. That, along with Korovin's increased power, nullified his protestations, and the others had been similarly tarnished by envy.

  I also could have been counted amongst the envious in those days, but not now. The FSB is more powerful than the old KGB. We answer to no one, and we have no fear of Korovin or his kind. It is us that control the oligarchs, the Mafia and the Government. We are omnipotent, doing whatever we please, and it pleases me now to look further into Comrade Sergeyovitch Korovin and the money he has hidden away. I was the one who read all of Dimitriy Lebedov's original letters and passed them on to Colonel Vladimir Sokolov, as he was, then. It was I that handed them on him and you. I didn't want to touch them back then…Korovin was too powerful for me to reproach. But the tables have turned. Now it is my turn, and I am too powerful for him.

  A chemical company has been set up by our friend's influence in London. It has recruited amongst it number, relatives of an English Lord that may have supported Korovin, and his American agent named Mother. It might help to flush out Korovin…make him let down his guard. It was our man who arranged that meeting you referred to in Berlin, and it aroused my suspicions as well when Korovin did not show. Work on it, Alexi, and work stealthily. He has the ears of many influential figures, and not even I will be able to save a Pole from them. If you nail him, I will take the glory; but I promise that you will drink from the same nectar as I and taste the ambrosia on which I will feed.”

  Alexi with Rudi had their incentive. They could kill two birds at the same time and elevate Valentin Antopolov, with Vagabond following behind. Nobody was to be told not even Peter Trimble, when he became 'C' in 2007.

  Paulo changed his alliance from the SIS to the Foreign Office in the same year, but not, however, for the same reasons as Rudi's mistrust of the SIS. Paulo's reasons were purely based on what Maudlin had told him of Peter's inane attempt at incrimination of himself in his financial dealings with Andrea.

  “Dicky Blythe-Smith sent a bloody fool here! Name of Trimble…didn't know his arse from his face. They're employing anyone today…next they'll taking them from redbrick universities, or straight out of school. The Empire is in ruins, Paulo, only you can restore it!”

  Another quality a sleeper must have is luck, but Paulo was fast running out of his quota.

  Rudi Mercer voiced his misgivings in the Oval Office to a taciturn President, where the reliance on luck would not normally be entertained.

  “He's either a fool or a very brave man,” Rudi offered by way of explanation. “That message he made up could well have backfired. It was clever, though, I'll give him that. Only President Reagan knew exactly how far he was prepared to go, and if it had been to Armageddon, then there wouldn't have been much of him around to apologise. I wonder if the British knew how much damage he did to us in his days in the KGB. Three complete cells he destroyed, fifteen men and women up against a wall and shot. We should be treating them like our enemy if they knew about that. For the Brits he would sell his soul, but for us, a boot in the face. To me, he's fair game. We owe him, and the Brits, nothing.”

  “I wish everything was as simple as you would like it to be, Director Mercer, but it's not. I'm going to need the British vote on the Security Council at the UN if we are to liberate Kuwait. What I have in mind can't be jeopardised by whatever you've got going with the British. It will have to wait,” said President Bush.

  “I would like my reservations in this to be noted, Mr President. The last time we worked with the UN was in Bosnia. At that time we believed it was the French who were muddying the waters…but now, I'm not so sure. I think it is a mistake to work with the British too closely in intelligence. My department's advice would be to act with caution in your discussions and disclosures with them.”

  “I note what you say, Rudi. However, it is a shame that we can't use what you yourself describe as this man's undoubted expertise in the region. He's probably been entertained in every one of Saddam's homes, and could point them out for our missiles.”

 
; “Not only Saddam, Mr President. If he is who I suspect, then he has the background on every intelligence operative in the whole area. We could kick ass from Libya to Syria, and back again. We could turn them inside out!”

  “That is a thing to think about, yes indeed…but it will have to wait, Rudi, for another day. Who was it that used that quotation, once…it's slipped my mind?”

  “We'll have to do it the hard way then, or perhaps make a direct request to the KGB? Who knows? They might just come across.”

  In total, Rudi had served under five Presidents, just missing J. F. Kennedy, but he would not continue past Bush. He was forced to take delayed retirement over a matter he had very little control of, but it was not to do with Vagabond or Garden. The manner of his retirement was a regret to Rudi; but not as much as not being there when the sleeper in London was unearthed by the compromising of Paulo, nor not being able to use the valuable information that Alexi supplied about Shias and Sunnis and the others of the Islamic faith in that huge region.

  Chapter Thirty-Six: Heavenly Scent

  Judy and I, were still in the bar talking until almost three that Friday morning, swapping stories of misspent youth and adult adventures we had never shared. I spoke of shooting parties, rugby pitches, girls, and jumping out of airplanes. She spoke of birthday parties, family, friends, and falling in love with Tony; and I fell in love with her. Why, would be a question I could never answer. It just happened that way.

  * * *

  It was with George that I travelled in the elevator later that morning, listening to the list of praises he lavished on his father. He, too, had been up half the night reminiscing.

  “He is a truly great man, Harry, as was Maudlin. Two lion hearts battling the world. He brought forward peace by many a long year. I reckon a Knighthood wouldn't go amiss…do you think you could have a word somewhere to that effect, after you listen to him, of course?” George wore a solemn expression as extolled his father's virtues.