Greenfly (Commander Shaw Book 18)

by Philip McCutchan

  The doctor hissed like a snake, and stamped his foot. “He is not connecting,” he said, although I didn’t catch this. But I did when he went on, “It is like the woman Mandrake. The result will not come. It is in their personalities.”

  I sensed disappointment in the air; also blame. Grulke and Senyavin were looking angry and the doctor seemed to have lost his confidence. I was sorry if I’d contributed to what looked very like a cock-up: that doctor could be on draft to Siberia if he didn’t succeed in what the comrades wanted. There was a lot of Russian jabber and pointed fingers and from the sound of them peremptory orders were being issued. I got the gist of some of it: the doctor was being told to explain to me, so that given my present euphoria I would co-operate.

  Looking anxious, he obeyed.

  He said, “You are required to move into the future. Please do so, mentally.”

  “You want me to prophesy something?” I asked, puzzled.

  “Not to prophesy! To record and transmit.”

  I said, “I don’t follow. I’m not,” I pointed out, “a machine.” I smiled placatingly.

  “But that is precisely and exactly what you now are! The drug, the injection, will have done this temporarily. You are now able to mingle with the wavelength as it were … the thoughts and actions currently of the people of whom you think. You are in a mental and physical state where you are a vehicle for extra-sensory perception. A kind of dream, but not quite that. You do not, I say again, prophesy. You watch and listen, and then you tell.”

  “What I see and hear … it appears on the screen?”

  “Yes! Via your mind, your brain. An eavesdropping of the conscious mind. The great Socrates stipulated that in dreams the soul can apprehend what it does not know. But you do not dream, you are awake. Your mind, not your soul, is now able to apprehend what normally it does not know. The element is precognosis but of the present not the future.”

  “Telepathy?” I asked.

  “Of a kind, yes. Induced telepathic ability. Do you now understand?”

  “No,” I said. I found my mind split, in fact. Part was already telling me what was really obvious, that this was a Greenfly attempt to get inside the minds of the British Government, though I didn’t know for what purpose; part was telling me that the attempt was doomed to failure because this doctor had got it wrong somewhere: my mind was currently too fragmented, too diversified for any useful sort of cohesive thought-transference if that was what this was all about. The doctor had been a shade too clever for his own good and had sold his crackpot ideas to Grulke and Senyavin before they were ready, at any rate in my case and, I remembered from what had been said earlier, Felicity’s as well. That was what I thought. However, the doctor was the persevering sort.

  I was given another injection.

  I was again allowed an electrode-free period for it to take effect, to seep through my mental system, while the nurse continued the pulse and blood pressure checks at short intervals. The feeling was a curious one, as though my mind had become detached and was being thrown about as if in a rough sea, darting here and there. But a little later when the electrodes were once again activated my mental processes steadied, just briefly: Max appeared on the screen in the well remembered background of the penthouse suite in Focal House. He was using the telephone and his face had a worried look, but that was about all. No words came through from my mind and in any case he was visible for only so long as it took him to put the phone down with a bang and then he seemed to dissolve in a curious red mist and after that there was nothing more that was any use to the doctor or the two comrades.

  There was some angry discussion: I think the doctor was trying to say he’d at last got a contact, which was something; but Senyavin and Grulke both thought I had just been doing some past thinking and was not projecting along the required lines. Then the three injections, perhaps, caught up with me and I drifted off into sleep. How long for I didn’t then know; but when I woke I was no longer on the table but in bed in a different room and I had a throbbing headache and a violent feeling of nausea and I was retching horribly without actually being sick. But my mind was crystal clear and all the earlier events came back to me, including the knowledge that the doctor’s scheme had failed and I had given nothing away via my mind, or by speech either of course since I hadn’t the faintest idea of what was going on in London even if I could make a reasonable guess at a certain high degree of anxiety and uncertainty.

  The nurse was there. She was no longer wearing the mask and I could see her features. These were a disappointment: she had a badly repaired hare lip. This gave her a more sinister appearance, taking into account the circumstances. Once again she took my pulse and blood pressure, made some notes on a chart, and then spoke to me, in English.

  She said, “It is good. The doctor is pleased. You are a much valuable person now.”

  I stared back at the hare lip, feeling creeping horror. Pleased, was he? Why? There was just the one answer: what he’d failed to extract while I was awake had come through, no doubt unexpectedly, while I was asleep.

  7

  I had been told to get dressed: my clothes were draped over the back of a chair. The sickness was leaving me but the headache was still there. When I was dressed the nurse pressed a bell and from somewhere a disembodied voice came through and there was a short conversation. Ten minutes later I heard an electric whirr and the door of the room, a steel door, slid back to admit a man carrying a tray.

  Breakfast.

  “You will eat,” the nurse said.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “You will eat. It is an order.” The hare lip gave the girl a kind of hideous authority; I still wasn’t quite myself and in any case it’s a good principle to keep your strength up for the future even if the food makes you gag, which at first this did. There were Kellogg’s corn flakes, that ubiquitous cereal, fried bacon and eggs, toast, marmalade and steaming hot coffee. Very English and very nicely cooked; I ate and felt the benefit. On the tray was a packet of cigarettes, also English: Benson and Hedges. I was immensely grateful but there were no matches and when I searched the pockets of my jacket my lighter had gone. I was pointing this out to the nurse and asking her to get on the blower again when the steel door slid aside once more and a man entered, with gun aimed.

  “Come,” he said.

  I shrugged; there would be no point in argument, so I picked up the packet of cigarettes and went to the door ahead of the revolver, which was thrust against my backbone. We went into a passageway and up a flight of stairs. There was a big window on a half landing and I looked out into daylight and bleak desolation and snow lying thickly everywhere, with just a hint of a sun shining redly behind the overcast, doing its best to come through.

  I was taken into a room on the next floor. Comrade Senyavin was there alone, no Grulke present, and no doctor. I was told to sit; Senyavin indicated an easy chair. The armed guard took up his position on a hard upright chair by the door. I took out the packet of cigarettes and asked for a light.

  “Certainly,” Senyavin said at once. He got up from behind a desk and walked across with matches, one of which he struck and held to my cigarette. It was heaven: I inhaled deeply and wondered how the troops would get through the next war if the do-gooders ever had their way. I felt more at ease immediately, more ready to cope with an unknown, but guessed at, situation.

  Senyavin didn’t waste time. He went back to the desk and sat in a swivel chair and said, “You have been helpful even though the help is negative, Commander Shaw.”

  “Thoughts from sleep?”

  “Exactly, yes.”

  “Not quite what the doctor ordered.” This seemed lost on Senyavin, who merely nodded abstractedly. I asked, “And the negative angle?”

  “Negative in a happy sense. For us. The British are not reacting. The British do not know – what they wished to know when you were sent to the East-West border at Braunlage.”

  “Not even worried?” I asked, trying to probe
out just what I’d been responsible for.

  “Worried, yes. There is concern over you and Miss Mandrake as is natural. The body of Frau Schulz has been found, and that of her husband and the Russian woman, the defector of Ladybird. You eavesdropped on a meeting of the cabinet. Your Prime Minister is worried and has sought audience of your Queen in Buckingham Palace.” “The press?”

  Senyavin shrugged. A little sun struggled through and lit upon Senyavin’s bald head, making it shine and reflect. “The press has been told nothing beyond the fact of a border incident – this we of course knew already.”

  I wondered just how much of this was the sheerest bull, mere propaganda – there was no hard information and any fool could have come up with something similar. Perhaps they just didn’t want me to know the doctor’s brilliant chemistry had failed, though I didn’t see why they should bother. But I did sense something phoney about it. Anyway, the ball was in my court as it were: I still had everything to find out, and when I’d done so I had somehow to contrive to pass it through even if I never got out of Russia alive myself. And of course there was Felicity. I asked about her and waited with a thumping heart for Senyavin’s answer.

  “She is well.”

  “But no use drug-and-screenwise?”

  “No use.”

  “So what are you going to do about her, Comrade Senyavin?”

  The Russian smiled. The sun vanished again and his head no longer reflected. He said, “She will remain well. You may ask why. I answer that you love her.”

  Still the hostage angle, someone to hold over me. I didn’t see the point: if Senyavin and his friends thought they could get at my sleeping drug-induced extra-sensory perceptions that was surely all that was needed? Threats or the absence of them would make no difference to what my mind latched onto – or didn’t latch onto – when asleep. But you never can tell with the Russians and I put on an air of indifference. “Love’s a big word,” I said. “We’re good friends. Both in the same line of duty – you know?”

  “But there is a relationship.”

  I remembered the bedroom scene, so much appreciated by Grulke and Senyavin. That couldn’t be denied, and I merely shrugged it off as if it were just one of those things that happen when a man and an attractive woman are juxtaposed. Then to my surprise Senyavin said, “Soon you will see her, Commander Shaw.”

  Still being non-committal I said, “Good-oh.” I was the more surprised because earlier, whilst we’d been en route from the Mar’ina Gorka area, Grulke had said in answer to my enquiry that I was not being taken to Felicity. Maybe there had been a shift of plan, and somehow I didn’t like the implications if that was the case. I could possibly have said more, or brought through more on the ether or whatever, during my sleep session than Senyavin had come out with. But again, why should he bother? He had me and he had Felicity and he certainly seemed to believe he had the availability of my curious link with high counsels in Britain. And, assuming the whole thing really was working, it would perhaps not be outside the bounds of possibility for my mind to be projected into the White House and the Pentagon … in which case I could certainly be valuable, as the nurse had said. A jewel without price, in fact. And, again assuming the viability of the doctor’s drugs and what-have-you, this could be what the Ladybirds had been so keen to warn the West about. But somehow I didn’t think so. I believed there was something firmer than this, something more precise, more concrete as a threat. There had been so much immediacy …

  Senyavin meanwhile had got to his feet and was standing with his back to me, looking out of the window at the snow-covered landscape. I fancied there was more snow in the sky, getting ready to fall. And I looked at Senyavin’s back, a great square of muscle buried in too much fat, and almost as a reflex action I gauged the distance for a sudden spring and a throttling grip around the short, thick neck. It wasn’t on, of course; I’d be dropped by the gunman behind me before I was right out of my chair. But it was something to anticipate. As for Senyavin, he was totally unconcerned, having faith in his gunman; and after a few more moments he turned and smiled across the room at me.

  “You are thinking how nice it would be to kill me.”

  “More thought transference?”

  “No. Just a simple deduction, easily made.”

  “Brilliant,” I said.

  He was still smiling. “In the Soviet Union, we do our best, Commander Shaw. As soon you will see for yourself. A car is approaching. In it will be found Miss Mandrake.”

  “She’s being brought here, d’you mean?”

  “No,” Senyavin said. “She has been here for some time. It is just that when the car stops she will be taken to it, and we shall join her. Then we go to Moscow.”

  *

  It was a big black car, a limousine, chauffeur driven. The chauffeur looked like long dead Stalin: the build, the brows, the peaked cap, the moustache. Alongside him sat a watchful man, thin and perky as a bird but with dangerous eyes, a man whom I knew would be armed to the teeth and fast with a gun. There was seating for six people in the back, four on the cushioned rear seat and two on let-down jobs behind the glass of the partition. As promised, Felicity was sitting there. We exchanged looks and that was all, but she seemed unharmed, anyway at first glance. I saw the sparkle of tears in her eyes and then she looked away from me, out at the lying snow. She was sitting between Grulke and another man, an obvious strong-arm man. On Grulke’s other side was another man I’d not seen before. The doctor was not with us. I was told to take the off-side let-down seat and behind me Senyavin got in and took the other one. When we were all settled, Senyavin tapped on the glass and the Stalin-like driver moved off, crunching through the snow on the tyre chains that I had seen were fitted. Since I didn’t know our current whereabouts I couldn’t assess how long it might take to reach Moscow, but with chains fitted it wasn’t going to be a fast journey.

  We drove through the whiteness, mostly flat country with a few trees here and there, winter dead and looking like the whitened bones of skeletons. The windows of the car misted over and I wiped mine clear with my sleeve. For some time no-one spoke; it was like a funeral procession and I began to feel like the one in the coffin. I wondered what lay ahead in Moscow: were we to be taken, Felicity and I, to the Kremlin so that the Soviet leadership, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet in full session, could see for themselves the wondrous invention of the Comrade Doctor? Put me to sleep and let my mind go into its extrasensory perception routine? If I were to project faithfully, it wouldn’t, presumably, be selective. The assembled comrades would see the mundane things, the daily round, me cleaning my teeth, the Prime Minister visiting a crèche, the Foreign Secretary taking his dog for a walk, along with the more gripping affairs of government.

  Senyavin soon began to show signs of impatience, and tapped again on the glass, making shoo-ing motions with his hand, urging more speed. The intercom came on, the comrade chauffeur in his turn urging caution. Senyavin said something under his breath and looked savage. He turned and spoke to Grulke and I was able to follow the conversation more or less. Senyavin was saying something about the Minister of Defence, Marshal Polyansky.

  Grulke said, “We have time yet.”

  Senyavin didn’t answer, just glowered. It was getting dark already: we weren’t making much progress, certainly. Just trundling along over the snow. Russia, I thought, could do with some snow ploughs but of course the land was vast and the presence of snow seemed continuous. It would take a million snow ploughs …

  As if sensing my thoughts Grulke gave a short laugh and said, “General February, Comrade! He beat Napoleon, and he beat Hitler. But we shall get there if we use caution.”

  “We must go faster!” Senyavin again.

  He was in quite a state. He spoke on the intercom, authoritatively, issuing orders. The Stalin character gave a massive shrug as if to say it was on Comrade Senyavin’s head, and obeyed orders. We went ahead at about fifty by guesswork. The chains crunched and bit but now and again
there was a spin and a sideways slide. Ahead of me, through the glass screen, I could see the chauffeur leaning forward over his wheel, even his back showing tension. We were now running along through trees growing thickly to either side of the road, and that treacherous surface could send him into a solid trunk and then Comrade Senyavin, having possibly to await rescue from a damaged car, would be sure to blame the driver notwithstanding his own orders. But he was a good driver and we kept to the track, give or take a slither here and there.

  By some miracle operating in favour of Comrade Senyavin, the snowfall was holding off. As the last of the light went I’d seen the overcast with us still but it seemed content merely to threaten. Soon the headlights showed us coming clear of the belt of trees, out of the forest into open country again, and I caught the dark glimmer from a stretch of water – ice, alongside the road to our left, a big lake. It was quite close; the driver slowed, and to hell with Comrade Senyavin. He would have no wish to spin off onto the ice and go whizzing about in all directions, helplessly, until he hit something. As for me, I was wishing he would do just that: the resulting panic and chaos in the back of the car just might give me my opening.

  But he didn’t; he moved on, slow and cautious, feeling his way, while Senyavin grumbled from his seat alongside me. He was sweating; the car was warm, having a good heating system, and Senyavin had a strong smell of BO which pervaded the atmosphere. It was mainly tension, I think: his face was tight and he’d spent a good deal of his time looking at his wrist-watch.

  When it happened, it came as suddenly as these things always do. In spite of the tense feeling in the car I was starting to drop off to sleep when the end of the world hit. There was an orange flash from in front, lasting perhaps a second only but enough for me to see earth, snow and debris showering upwards, and then the thunder of the explosion and the car’s bonnet vanishing as if it had never existed at all. The partition glass shattered, as did all the windows even though I imagine they were probably bullet proof. Next to me Senyavin slumped, a jag of glass through his throat. I felt blood pouring down my left arm. There was a strong smell of explosive and then the car caught fire. The door on my right, and on Felicity’s left, had burst open. I jumped out into the snow and dragged Felicity after me. Behind me came the gunman who had been guarding her, looked unfit to guard a mousehole; he was shaking like a leaf and pouring blood from the side of his chest. I believe Grulke and the other man in the back were dead already; they certainly were a moment later when the whole car went up in a sheet of ferocious, petrol-based flame. Felicity and I ran like the wind, the guard behind us, just the three of us left. The chauffeur and the thin, perky man would have been fragmented instantaneously.