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Deadly States (Seaforth Files by Nicholas P Clark Book 2)

Page 17

by Clark, Nicholas P


  For the most part the old country house was used to entertain some ambitious young politician or other and show them the error of their ways, if the men at the top thought they were travelling down the wrong road. There were many high ranking visitors to the house in the early years of the Cold War; though as they were always brought there under cover, or unconscious in some cases, the house itself managed to stay off the radar. With the expanse of television, film and radio as the twentieth century progressed, an altogether different threat began to emerge. It was a threat that was more fantasy than reality but it was taken seriously enough by those who held power within the security services to be given more thought than it probably deserved—enter the celebrity. Generation after generation the voting population grew more and more weary of the same empty promises and dirty political tricks. Little wonder then that in increasing numbers the public turned to other sources for leadership and direction. In many respects

  this was a much worse outcome than a runaway politician—at least the politician could always be voted out if a smear campaign was mounted against them.

  The celebrity had no such fear, andwith thosewho thrived on controversy, such as the punks andanarchists of the seventies and eighties, dirty tricks only seemed to add to their personality, and in turn, to their popularity. There were also only so many drugs overdoses and suicides that the secret services could get away with before they drew too much attention. The Britain of the 60s right through to the early 90s was no place for a celebrity with a strong socialist agenda. And so, during those strange and dark decades the greatest democracy the world had ever known was little more than a cheap facade. It wasn’t the first time that the country had flirted with a subtle form of dictatorship; but at least when Winston Churchill and his war cabinet took the country into authoritarian rule they did so to save it from the Nazis, and they did so knowing that once the war was won then democracy would be quickly restored. Had those noble men known the kind of limited democracy that would take over and persist for more than fifty years would they perhaps have continued the fight against dictators, only this time turning their fury against those living in Britain? Jack had been summoned to the house at short notice on a hot summer’s night seven years before South Africa. There had always been rumours about the place; some said that wayward spies went there to be executed, while others insisted that they knew someone who knew someonewho said that people weretorturedat the house— and not just ordinary people, but people from the television or from the houses of Commons and Lords. They were good scary bedtime stories to tell junior spies to help keep them in their place, but Jack was much too pragmatic and grown up to ever fall for such nonsense. At worst heimagined the place was nothing more than a gloried country club where the old world charms of Empire were still observed and red cheeked footmen waited silently at the side of great rooms to attend to the every need of their unworthy masters. In Jack’s minds it was nothing more than a big boys’ club, funded by the taxpayer and beyond all scrutiny; not least the scrutiny of the members’ wives. In many respects Jack would have preferred to be tortured rather than having to suffer the chinless wittering of a bunch of public

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  school boys with an over inflated sense of entitlement. When Jack arrived at the house he was relieved to find that there were no footmen, or butlers, and almost everyone spoke with a regional accent—although a regional accent was no guarantee that an individual would not be pretentious and have an over inflated sense of entitlement, Jack could somehow endure it with much better grace than if the accent was upper class, or forced upper class in the case of the offspring of new money. There was absolutely nothing about the house that met with Jack’s expectations and the more that he learned about the place the more he wondered why they had gone to such bother to maintain it in the first place. Nothing seemed to happen there that could not be carried out in a dozen other places for a fraction of the cost. It was almost twenty four hours from the time of the urgent summons until Jack was finally informed why he was there.

  Ireland again. Like a typecast actor Jack was beginning to wonder if the only thing that he would ever be remembered for was his time in Ireland. The mission that he was being asked to carry out was odd but it was exciting. More than exciting; it was worthy. It was something that he could actually be proud of, even if it was something that he would never be able to talk about. After decades of trying and dozens of false starts, the Republican movement was finally on the brink of talking seriously to the British government. Although both sides had much to gain from the talks, both sides also had a hell of a lot that they could potentially lose, with the Republican leadership facing the biggest loss should the talks not go the right way—failure amongst Republicans normally resulted in a bullet to the back of the head and having your body dumped in a shallow grave in some mountainous area. For the government’s part they could always spin the talks in a very positive way regardless of the outcome—just one more serving of bullshit that the public would cheerfully swallow down whole.

  The daydream vanished as a cramp shot down his left leg. After almost ten minutes Jack made a decision. He planned to come out from his hiding place to take the man out—in a non-lethal way if the man was sensible; but if he wasn’t prepared to accommodate Jack then lethal force would be used. Jack shuffled to the side of the bed that was furthest away from where the man was sitting at his desk. As Jack was about to get to his feet someone knocked on the bedroom door.

  The man sighed and he got to his feet. Jack dragged himself back into his hiding place.

  The man opened the door to two men. “We found him out cold on the East side of the compound,” said one of the men.

  “There,” said the man who let them into his room.

  “We can assume that it’s Malaney,” said the man at the door as he helped the guard who Jack knocked out, into the room. He set the guard down on the edge of the bed.

  “I can take it from here,” said the other man.

  The guardleft.

  “How are you feeling?” asked the man.

  “Sore, but I’ll live,” said the guard.

  “Malaney is a highly trained killer and he is out to kill anyone who gets in his way. You are very lucky to be alive,” said the man.

  The voice was familiar but from his position on the floor, with a thick mattress muffling the sound, it took Jack a moment or two to work out why. When the man spoke again there was no room for uncertainty. It was Deeley.

  “Did you notice anything out of the ordinary?” asked Deeley. “No

  sir. I thought that everything was clear in that area. When I was heading back to the main building he jumped me.”

  “Goodness, that was a stroke of bad luck. Though if you had got in his way then you would be lying dead out there under the stars. I just a have a few more questions and then you can go and get some rest. Unless Malaney is in the building and we need another gun to take him down.”

  “I’ll do my best sir.”

  “I’m sure you will soldier. I’m sure you will. So tell me, who trained you?”

  “Sir?”

  “You are here because you are the best that the services have to offer. So, who trained you?”

  “I was trained by many instructors, sir. Did you have any particular discipline in mind?”

  “Not really. I was just wondering how someone like Malaney could get past someone as lethal as you.”

  “I guess he was just lucky sir.”

  “Very lucky, I would say. Either way I am going to have to ask you to turn over your weapon until this matter has been investigated.”

  “Sir?”

  “You heard me soldier. Hand me your sidearm. Until a full investigation has been carried out, you are suspended.”

  There was a short pause followed by some shuffling.

  “Thank you,” Deeley said.

  Deeley checked the weapon.

  “I can forgive almost everything except for two things. Treachery and incompe
tence.”

  “I don’t understand sir.”

  “Well then, let me spell it out for you. You are either helping Malaney or you don’t know how to do your job. Either way, it’s over for you.”

  “Sir?”

  Jack almost banged his head on the underside of the bed when the shot rang out. The guard’s lifeless body hit the ground in front of Jack. The dead man was facing Jack. A small trickle of blood ran from a bullet hole in the centre of his forehead. Deeley walked calmly across the room and he opened the door to two guards who had been alerted by the sound of the gun discharging.

  “This one was helping Malaney,” Deeley said. “I want this building searched from top to bottom until he is found and killed. If he can get to someone this close to the Ambassador then he can get to anyone. If any guard hesitates for a moment if they have him in their sights then I want you to consider that guard a target as well. In over thirty years protecting this country’s diplomats I have not lost a single charge, and that is not going to change here tonight. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes sir,” said the guards, in unison.

  “And have someone clean up this mess. Once I have checked on the Ambassador and you have dealt with Malaney, I will be retiring for the night. It has been a long day and I for one will be glad to see the back of it.”

  Deeley’s reference to the guard was dismissive, as if he was talking about an inconvenient sack of rubbish rather than a human being.

  “Right away sir,” said one of the guards.

  All three then left the room. Jack looked into the dead eyes of the young man in front of him. Those lifeless orbs, full of shock and be

  trayal, were further motivation to Jack, though no more motivation was needed. He would get to Deeley and find out what sick game he was playing. And once he had an answer, he would end him.

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  12

  Shadows of History

  Moscow, December 1989

  After over fifty years of war the Soviet Empire was on the verge of collapse. As wars went there hadn’t exactly been a hell of a lot of army on army fighting; at least not directly. But as wars went the stakes for humanity had never been higher. Jack had been dropped into the middle of that cold war back in the 1970s when he was a young man, and although his working life was to change focus quite quickly thereafter to concentrate on the war in Ireland, he had always maintained a professional interest in what was taking place in the Soviet Union. He often spent many hours chatting with agents fresh in from the Soviet cold about how the superpower was evolving. It was that passing interest which pushed him to the fore when the men in charge ordered a mission to Moscow to observe how the Kremlin was dealing with the growing unrest in the country.

  In the sixties and seventies the Cold War was always teetering on the brink of turning hot as America and Russia squared up to one another time and again, but with the dawn of the greedy eighties the war experienced a change in terrain as economics, technology and the

  quality of life began to take on a

  greater significance. In economic terms America had won the war and as a bankrupt Soviet Union en

  tered into an internal debate over how best to issue its surrender, the West suddenly realised something highly alarming—over fifty years trying to beat the Russians in the quiet war of the superpowers had led to one massive omission—what would take the place of the old Soviet Empire and how much of a danger would this new entity or entities be to the West? As the realisation quickly turned to fear, secret services all over the world clambered to find out what the state of play in the dying empire truly was. In that frenetic climate Jack was pressed in urgent service and sent to East Germany in the guise of a Western arms dealer wanting to acquire old Russian weapons—a trade that had mushroomed as the checks and balances of government structures drifted into chaos.

  The mission was relatively simple and the men back in London hoped that it would quickly reveal just what state the Soviet Union was in without taking too many risks. They reasoned that if the country was in a complete state of chaos then it shouldn’t be that hard for Jack to lay his hands on some weapons. The easier it was for him to do that, and the more deadly the weapons he could secure, then the more chaos was afoot. It was an exercise in pure deductive reasoning and for that reason alone Jack was quickly enthused by it.

  In West Berlin Jack met up with a driver. Much to Jack’s surprise the man was a West German police officer, but that wasn’t as much of a shock as the surprise Jack got when the man showed up wearing his uniform and driving a marked police car. Jack assumed that the police officer was going to escort him to some remote region of East Germany where he would be transferred to another less conspicuous vehicle for the journey to Russia. As it happened, that was not the case. The police Skoda spluttered and choked all the way to Moscow and for the entire journey the police officer talked to Jack as if they were the oldest and dearest of friends. They drove through every roadblock and border crossing without being stopped once, and very soon all of Jack’s legitimate apprehensions melted away. Those apprehensions came back to the fore once the grand old buildings of greater Moscow came into view. The policeman left Jack off at a small guest house two city blocks from the Kremlin and almost as quickly as he had arrived into Jack’s life the policeman was gone. The cop did have one last conversation with Jackas Jack stood on a damp Moscow street

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  looking into the police car. “If you meet that bastard friend of yours, tell him he owes me for two meals,” said the cop.

  “Who?” Jack asked.

  “You know? The guy who came before you. English. Upper class. A bit of a big prick, if you ask me. And like you my friend, he too was a spy.”

  Jack quickly looked around when the cop mentioned the word spy. No one was within earshot. That the cop could have been so reckless annoyed Jack and he quickly closed the door to the car and headed into the guesthouse. Once in his room he soon calmed down. He rebuked himself for being so foolish—the cop, like anyone else in Russia with even the slightest hint of common sense would have immediately identified Jack as a spy; or at the very least a foreigner up to no good. The only kind of people other than international politicians who ever visited Russia in those troubled times were people who were up to no good. Once he had calmed down Jack’s mind turned to the other part of the policeman’s parting comment. Who was the Englishman? He certainly sounded like someone from the service. But if he was from the service then why hadn’t anyone back in London told Jack about him being in Russia too? Had he arrived in the last few days or was he someone who the policeman had met many months or even many years before? So many questions. It was too late. His chance had now gone. The mystery of the Englishman would have to remain until he got a chance to make contact with London, and as that wouldn’t happen until he returned to West Germany in a few days’ time, then it was a mystery he would have to put to one side.

  The next morning when Jack went down to the dining room for an early breakfast he got talking to the manager of the guesthouse. It was quite clear from the tone of the man’s voice and the barely guarded comments that he was making that he too knew that Jack was a spy. With Western agents clearly so easily identified Jack wondered why they even bothered with all the cloak and dagger nonsense any longer. Perhaps it would have made everyone’s life a hell of a lot easier if someone from the KGB met with them at the border before taking them on a guided tour of Moscow? The manager also mentioned the Englishman. This timeJack was ready. Heasked when the Englishman had arrived at the guesthouse and he was surprised to learn that it had only been two days before Jack landed in Moscow. That information was more than a little odd. There was definitely something very strange going on. He should have been told about a colleague who was to be working in the same place as him, and even staying in the same guesthouse. It was an oversight or level of secrecy that displayed more competence than he knew his own side capable of.

  For the next three days Jack waited
at the guesthouse, as he had been instructed. His mood changed from moment to moment from annoyance that he had not been told about the other agent, to worry as he wondered why they felt the need to send two agents in the first place. If anything, Moscow was now one of the best cities in the world to be caught spying. In the sixties foreign spies were tortured and then quickly executed, but as the decades rolled on that policy slowly changed. First they were used as part of prisoner exchanges and then in the eighties comradeship gave way to capitalism as Westerners were exchanged for cold hard cash. Jack felt certain that Her Majesty’s government would have stumped up the one hundred thousand pounds to have him returned to the UK should the worst come to the worst; though at the same time, knowing just how ruthless the PM could be when it came to money, he really didn’t want to put that assumption to the test.

  His Moscow contact introduced himself to Jack at three in the morning on the fourth night at the guesthouse. Jack awoke to find a short, stout Russian sitting on the edge of Jack’s bed pointing a pistol at him.

  “Do not be alarmed,” the Russian began. “I am the one who you have been waiting for.”

  When the Russian was certain that Jack was not going to put up a fight, he lowered his weapon, and then he stood up.

  “You must get dressed quickly,” instructed the Russian. “We have people to meet and they will not want to wait around all night for you. Now hurry. Up out of bed. And put something warm on you. Your British balls are not used to the Russian night air.”

  Jack had thought about saying that he had no intention of introducing his British balls to the Russian night air, but he had a feeling that the comment would have led to the need for a protracted explanation, and given the earnest tone of the man’s voice, Jack didn’t feel that he had enough time to do such an explanation justice. The man kept his gun on display the entire time Jack was getting dressed. Jack appreciated that the man needed to watch him carefully in case he hid a weapon to take to the meeting, or a listening device, but that did not help him feel any more comfortable as he slipped into some warm clothes—this was how it must have felt to get showered in prison, thought Jack.

 

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