Greenfly (Commander Shaw Book 18)

by Philip McCutchan

  Half frozen now by inactivity, the over-riding need not at this juncture to draw attention by any movement, I went on watching through my binoculars and listening out for Schulz’ diversion, watching for some sight of the woman who would presumably not show until the last possible moment. The trees had been cleared for some distance on both sides of the defences, which contained more than one layer of wire, and what looked like a bit of a gap right through, with temporary barriers. The actual border was marked with an upstanding post, painted red, yellow and black in diagonal stripes, and there was a sign which I was able to read through my binoculars:

  ACHTUNG!

  BACHMITTE

  GRENZE

  The first and third words being in black, the BACHMITTE in red. Just to the left of the border post, beyond no-man’s-land and on the other side of the wire, was a grey watch-tower. There would be no cover from the remaining trees, no help there until the open ground had been traversed. The attempt looked like madness, bound to fail. But Schulz had seemed confident.

  Then I heard the shooting.

  Just a single shot to begin with; then a fusillade of submachine gun fire. Away to the north, through the trees as I started my downhill scramble towards the frontier, I caught a brief glimpse of the Schulzes, all three of them, weaving their guns in a wide swathe, then they retreated into cover, all except one of the sons who remained in full view for a moment longer as he flung a succession of grenades towards armed soldiers running out from the East German watch-tower. As the return fire started up the young Schulz vanished suddenly: I didn’t know whether or not he had been hit. I went on blindly down the slope, feeling the pumping of my heart. Then the miracle happened: ahead of me, running like the wind itself on the far side of the border, a slim figure in tattered clothing appeared behind a series of small explosions that I took, rightly, to be land mines going off – the woman was coming on behind a herd of deer, unwitting sacrifices to touch off the mines, and I saw the pathetic animals lying shattered in writhing hummocks as the ground erupted beyond the wire, beyond the temporarily filled gap in the defences. Then the human figure vanished for a moment until I picked it up again, close to the barrier and climbing.

  Schulz had been right: no electrification.

  My heart thumped.

  But now troops were coming along fast from the watch-tower, making for the woman. As they ran, the Schulzes came back into the action, pumping away with the submachine guns, not I thought to kill but to keep the East Germans back as far as possible. The East Germans hesitated and the climbing figure threw itself from the barrier and started squirming on its stomach across no-man’s-land towards the security of the West as the Schulzes kept up their fire and held the guards off.

  She seemed to be making it: miracle was the word – I couldn’t believe my eyes really, couldn’t believe the clumsiness of the attempt, couldn’t believe she had got as far as she had and never mind the element of luck that had been so strongly in her favour.

  But the miracle didn’t last.

  As the squirming figure came on the East Germans at last reacted in gunfire. Bullets swathed across, a sustained racket in the sharp cold. The woman reared up, screaming, fell back again, dragged herself on a few more feet until she lifted again, slewed, fell back, rolled over and lay still. As she did so the point of aim of the East German guards shifted and the guns fired in wide sweeps towards where I’d last seen the Schulzes. I didn’t see them again and I couldn’t say if they had been hit. By this time the military West was reacting as well: from the north what looked like British tracked vehicles were moving in and as they closed I heard a lot of barneying through loudhailers on both sides. It was going to be a military and diplomatic nightmare from now on and one I would personally be obliged to avoid. But I knew it was my duty, not that of the British troops, to approach that dissident and make quite sure she was dead; she just might not be, she just might be able to speak, she might even – though this was unlikely to say the least – have something documentary. And she had come a long way, and through unbelievable danger, to contact someone from the West.

  So far, under the eyes and no doubt the guns of the British Army of the Rhine, the East Germans were not sticking out their necks by coming over the frontier to pull the woman back behind the Curtain. But it was only a few seconds after this that I saw why: as once again the snow began falling thickly and the visibility came right down I saw the lick of flame, small at first and then quickly becoming a roar, a jet like a blow-torch: the bastards were using a flame-thrower. It came through the snowfall like a fiery sword, licked along the body, which again reared up and writhed and began to crisp, catching fire so that small blue flames danced and she became a husk.

  I was sick on the ground. Literally. It was a terrible sight. And it had been a doomed attempt from the start, one that should never have been attempted and of course wouldn’t have been if 6D2, or even M16 who gather overseas intelligence under the aegis of the Foreign Office, had been in charge throughout rather than have left it to the Ladybirds. As Arthur Webb had said. I wasn’t impressed, I have to say, by the Ladybirds at that stage: one can play things too close to the chest sometimes.

  I beat retreat, feeling very bad about it all, with the snowfall worsening fast. The job was over before it had started – but that, I knew, was a simplification. It wouldn’t be back to Focal House for Miss Mandrake and me. Max would regard the assignment as continuing, only just begun rather than ended. The information that hadn’t got through was said to be vital: I would have to dig on my own now, set up a network and start the probe. And I had nothing to go on beyond one dead girl, name unknown, and a hornet’s nest about to break upon the world via the press, the sort of thing 6D2 always does its best to avoid. Max wasn’t going to be pleased.

  I headed back on a mental compass bearing for the cover of the virgin forest, and when I hit the trees, which I almost did literally, so thick was that blinding snow, I tried to pick up the track for Braunlage. It would have been useless to make any attempt to locate the Schulzes. If they’d got away, then I’d make contact with them at their home in the forest. It was quite a climb back, with my sense of direction all haywire in the snow-storm, and then a long descent down the other side, pushing through the pines and the undergrowth. When I came down to more or less level ground I found I was well south of Braunlage and I was faced with a long walk to the Schulz home. By the time I got there, it was nine hours since I’d left, before that day’s dawn. Now it was past 1300 hours and the snow was falling still, which as I realized later was why there were no footprints or other marks visible. When I knocked politely at the front door there was no answer, and after another knock I turned the handle and went in.

  The house was silent, and very cold.

  I went into the sitting-room where we’d drunk lager the night before. The fire was almost out, just a few embers and a woody smell. No-one there: I went upstairs, taking them two at a time, really worried now. The first bedroom I came to was that of Hans and his wife. I opened the door unceremoniously. Frau Schulz lay on the bed, her face seeming more granite than ever in death. The head lolled sideways as though it had little contact with the body, which indeed was the case: the throat had been cut and there was a good deal of blood everywhere. I left the room and ran to what had been Felicity’s room. It was empty and there were signs of a struggle, the bedclothes all over the show, a chair overturned, all Felicity’s things from the dressing-table scattered on the floor, and a streak of blood, dried blood, on the dressing-table itself.

  Knowing it was useless, I searched the house from top to bottom. Nothing, no clues, no other signs of alarm, struggle or disturbance. What remained was the hard fact that someone had got hold of Felicity. I didn’t doubt that she was still alive. And my mind settled into a twin groove, the obvious one as it seemed to me: the KGB or their East German agents, or Greenfly.

  I went back into the deserted sitting-room. Half a minute later the telephone rang.

 
; 3

  The instrument was in the hall: I went out and I looked at it, letting it ring and trying to make up my mind, which was a shade disorientated for the moment. Did I answer or did I not? The first thing, really, was to make contact with our London HQ, or maybe the Bonn one who would have been put in the picture initially by Focal House. With no real reason I had a hunch the caller would be connected with recent events: in point of fact it could be anyone, a friend of the Schulzes asking them out for a meal, a girl ringing one of the sons. But my hunch said it wasn’t anything so innocent. I could have been watched, the house could have been watched and my return noted. If I didn’t answer – what then?

  Two things: the caller would come in person, or, and I believed more likely, he would know I was there and wasn’t answering, that I was following my suspicions, that he might thereby be in danger and he would scarper for the time being.

  I picked up the receiver and said in not very good German, “Hullo.”

  A voice, a man’s voice, said, “Commander Shaw.”

  “You sound very certain. Do I know you?” I couldn’t identify the voice, but I didn’t think it was German, and it certainly wasn’t English.

  “We have met, yes. We should meet again. In your own interest, Commander Shaw.”

  I asked him who he was. All he said was, “You must trust me. You come, or you do not come. I cannot force this. It is up to you.”

  “Too right, it is,” I said coolly. “If you want to meet me, I suggest you come here and – ”

  “No. We shall meet elsewhere. A little to the west of Bad Harzburg is a ski lodge. Driving out ten miles from Bad Harzburg it is on the left of the road and cannot be missed. The Three Kings … I shall wait in the car park. You will park and I shall come.”

  The call was cut. He hadn’t even asked for particulars of my car, from which it could be assumed he knew already, unless he had known me so well in the past that he would recognise me when I got out. Very likely he did and would, but I was quite unable to place him from the voice and usually I’m hot on voices; they’re almost impossible to disguise if you’re not a professional actor, there’s always a give-away to the alert ear. My caller hadn’t stipulated a time, which meant soonest possible, and, having made up my mind, I didn’t delay. The juxtaposition of events told me that the man might have information about Felicity, and if so there was urgency so far as I was concerned. It wasn’t surprising that Max disliked intimacy and involvement, emotional involvement, on the part of his field force: I would lean over backwards where danger to Felicity was concerned. We were everything short of married: we both preferred her to remain Miss Mandrake while we were still at 6D2’s beck and call for world wide assignments; one day I would retire, and then so would she, willy nilly, but that day was a long way off yet. We both liked the spice of danger and the cash was good, very good. It would continue until the shakes set-in in my hands and I had built up a large enough private income to survive inflation. But in the meantime Felicity brought her anxieties and I couldn’t wait to get on the track.

  *

  I had a good road map of the Continent and I was on my way to Bad Harzburg within five minutes of the telephone call. The Schulzes hadn’t turned up and I couldn’t afford to wait. The fact of their continuing absence meant, probably, that they’d all died under the East German guns, and I was desperately sorry it had, or might have, turned out that way for them all; but it was a risk that everyone remotely connected with 6D2 faced all the time and they’d have known that risk. They’d felt it worth while, either for the political aspect or the cash, or both. My talk with Hans Schulz the night before had told me he and his family detested communism and the Hitler-like threat it posed so close physically to their own lives, and I believed their mainspring was simple patriotism, a nice old-fashioned concept.

  It was a nasty drive in the snow, though the fall had thinned by now and the traffic was keeping the roads open. There was filthy slush and a strong tendency to skid had to be controlled. I passed through Bad Harzburg and continued west until I saw groups of skiers on both sides of the road, some of them crossing towards what looked like the ski lodge and was.

  I pulled into the car park, moving slow between the groups of men and women carrying skis and ski sticks, all colourfully dressed, all carefree and happy, not having any rendezvous with international thuggery and duplicity. I wished them all the luck in the world in getting away from what, in the majority of cases anyway, their working lives would be like: offices, accounts, sales, the rat race and the arrogance of those who’d made it over them. That would never have been for me. I got out and looked around. Opposite the main building there was a ski shop, with plenty of comings and goings. Near the ski shop was a big Volvo with a man behind the wheel, a man dressed in black and wearing a black homburg hat. He had a waiting look; his fingers drummed on the steering wheel and he kept glancing into his mirrors. In the back of the Volvo two more men sat, wearing anoraks. I was beginning to recognise the man in black: there was no doubt that we had met before but I’ve met hundreds of men and women, good and bad, and it didn’t click straight off.

  But he was my man, all right.

  I approached the car. I had my revolver in a shoulder holster, though I didn’t expect anything like a shoot-out in so public a place. As I went up to the driving window the man turned to face me and then I knew. I said, “Storvac. Bosko Storvac! I thought you were dead.”

  The face was bleak and pale. It split into a brief smile. “So did many people, but you see I am not.”

  My mind, as I stood there beside the Volvo, went back into a distant past. There had been a bomb and I and several others had been convinced Storvac had been in the middle of the explosion. Storvac, a Yugoslav, had been, presumably still was, a member of WUSWIPP. So I hadn’t been off the track when I’d seen a WUSWIPP connection with my flat and the squat, crudely-drawn greenfly.

  I asked, “What do you want, Storvac?”

  He said, “Please get into the car.” He reached across to open the front passenger door but I told him to wait a minute.

  “I’m getting into no car,” I said. “Not with you, Storvac.”

  “You wish to know … what I have to tell you. You wish to know about Miss Mandrake.”

  I felt my heart miss a beat. Of course I wanted to know. But I said, “Not alone with you and your tame thugs in the back. If you don’t get out for a private talk, Storvac, I’ll simply drive away. You won’t stop me. You won’t start anything here.”

  Storvac shrugged. “You would drive away along roads that in many places are quiet, where shooting can take place. But I wish you no harm, Commander Shaw. Had I wished this, then I would have suggested a more private place of meeting, no?”

  “Probably no,” I said sarcastically. “I might not have come, might I?”

  “You are being obstinate.”

  “Absolutely – dead right. If you’re on the level, prove it. Get out and come into the restaurant. I’ll buy you a coffee. Not your bully boys. Just you, Storvac. In there, we’re both of us safe from the other.” I paused. “Aren’t you sticking your neck out, Storvac? Or aren’t you wanted, in West Germany?”

  The pale face smiled again, as briefly as before. “No.”

  “It must be the only place outside the Curtain where you’re not.”

  “Perhaps so. But I am not to be swayed by compliments.”

  “Nor me by sick jokes. Leave the car, or bugger off.”

  “Very well, I shall go,” he said angrily, and switched the ignition on. He started to back out of his parking space, eyes ahead and using his mirrors. He was watching me at the same time, waiting for me to be overcome by curiosity and concern for Felicity, and weaken. I wasn’t going to. I fancied I had Storvac’s measure and had had it for a long time over the earlier years. Storvac, who was a WUSWIPP backroom boy, a pure scientist rather than a strong-arm, was short on endurance. His sticking point was fairly low, or had been. It still was. He circled the car park, narrow
ly missing the crowds as they stamped through the snow, and came back to where I was waiting.

  “Very well,” he said snappishly. “For now I do as you wish.” He got out, leaned back in for a word with his gunmen, a word I didn’t catch, then straightened and banged the door. We crunched away and went up some ice-covered steps to the restaurant foyer, where a number of skiers were clustered around a big relief map of the area showing the ski runs and so on. The place was pretty crowded but we found a table for two in a corner by a window where we could talk in relative privacy – there was a loud buzz of conversation interspersed with hearty laughter, the latter coming from a bunch of British hooray henries who might have been Oxbridge undergraduates or Guards’ subalterns. Inane, but I was glad just then of their lack of inhibition.

  A girl came up smiling and I ordered coffee and biscuits. It was all rather incongruous; as innocent as a hen party in Harrods in the middle of a tiring shopping morning – on the surface. While we waited for the girl to come back, I said, “Right, Storvac. You can start now.”

  “Very well. I start with your flat in London.”

  “So you do know about that.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who was responsible?”

  “WUSWIPP.”

  “I thought as much. You, Storvac?” I was pretty sure it wouldn’t have been: not Storvac’s style.

  “Not me. Greenfly.”

  “Ah yes, Greenfly. I think you’d better explain about Greenfly, Storvac. Where does he, or she, or it come in?”

  “Greenfly is an it. A grouping within WUSWIPP – ”

  “A new one on me, Storvac. What are they after?”

  “Information.”