Under the Freeze

by George Bartram

  “Are you asking me a question?”

  “Let us say that I am laying the groundwork.”

  “For what?”

  “For, let us say, something in the way of an official statement.”

  “Make it.”

  “I should like some indication that at the very least I am being heard.”

  “I hear you.” Not entirely perfectly, because his ears were still humming with the noise of the explosion, but he could hear well enough for Matthiessen’s purpose. Matthiessen inhaled very deeply, the breath an expression of long-suffering, aristocratic patience. He walked in a very small circle, all that could be managed with the billiard table taking up so much of the room, still with his hand thrust into the small of his back. “How very annoying you are being,” he murmured when they had come face-to-face again. “No matter. Well!” He pushed his buttocks back against the billiard table and folded his arms. “Her Majesty’s government wish you to know that as you have chosen to accept a professional liaison with the government of the Soviet Union, you are not welcome in Great Britain.” He cocked an eyebrow at Tarp. “H.M.’s gov have found it necessary to formulate a policy independent of other nations. Since the unfortunate adventure by Argentina in the Falklands matter, when we didn’t receive the sort of support from traditional allies that we might have expected, we have found it advisable to, in the words of a rougher and more direct speaker than I, ‘go it alone.’ In brief, Mr. Tarp, we do not condone helping the Soviets with their internal security apparatus, which is notorious both for its inhumanity and its antipathy to English — and, I should have said, American — ideas of decency and freedom. We do not believe that the Devil will be easier to deal with if the kink is taken from his tail. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Are you going to throw me out of the country?”

  “Dear me, no. Not if you behave yourself.” Matthiessen was enjoying himself. “But I want to be very clear when I say that you will receive no help here. Was I very clear?”

  “Why don’t you explain.”

  “Oh, very well. No weapons, no identity papers, no information, no shoulder to weep upon. You will be kept always under surveillance. You will be made uncomfortable. You will be encouraged to take your enterprises elsewhere. You will not be allowed, for example, to travel about using a forged passport.”

  “Is that what I’m doing?”

  “Let me see your passport.” He held out a hand.

  “Why don’t you try to take it?”

  “Oh, shame. Oh, the bully-boy! Really, Tarp, that’s too vulgar, even from you.” Matthiessen was delighted with himself. He bit his lower lip and his eyes flicked happily over Tarp’s face. “Have I made myself clear, then?”

  “I think so. It seems fair enough.”

  “Oh. You disappointed me. I’d so hoped you’d want to bargain, so that I could say no. Alas.” He flashed his teeth. “Another time, perhaps.”

  There was a noise behind Tarp; the door opened and the cacophony of the house swelled in. “Aha!” Matthiessen cried in a different voice. “Her Majesty’s messenger riding comes. What news of the Rialto, Carrington?”

  “Ami interrupting, sir?”

  “Not at all, not-at-all, my boy!” Matthiessen clapped Tarp on the shoulder. “We just had our little chat. Mr. Tarp has an excellent grasp of the situation now — am I right, sir?”

  “I believe so.”

  “There, you see. How perfectly splendid. Well, this was a pleasant meeting! Carrington, I leave our guest in the capable hands of youth; I’m off to dinner with some perfectly dreadful people from the Exchequer. Love to stay and jabber, but I daren’t.” He smiled at Tarp. “Do try the Dover sole if you dine here; they don’t do much well here, but the Dover sole is not inedible.” With that, he saw, or pretended to see, somebody he knew outside the open door. “Aha, Jepney, there you are! Hold on, Jepney!”

  Johnnie Carrington looked shamefacedly at Tarp. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize. I can’t think of anybody I’d rather have order me out of the country.”

  “He’s under a strain. His wife’s been ill.”

  “That must be convenient for him. He enjoys being a bastard so much.”

  Carrington blushed. “I am sorry. I can’t help you with any of the things you asked about last night.” He spread his hands, then plunged them into his coat pockets. “Orders.”

  “It’s all right. It’s perfectly all right.”

  But it wasn’t all right at all.

  Chapter 23

  They stood just inside the door of Prong’s, making that meaningless final chatter that ends a stiff evening. Johnnie Carrington was still embarrassed and probably angry about Matthiessen; Tarp had shrugged it off and was thinking how best to cut his losses.

  “Am I to be followed?” he said.

  Carrington grimaced. “That’s a bit low, isn’t it?”

  “Am I?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many?”

  “Really, I can’t —”

  “I’ve been attracting violence, Johnnie. I don’t want to lead your people into a mess that’s not of their making.”

  “Whyever should you do that?”

  “I’ve been thinking that if somebody wanted to set me up, what a good way this would be to do it.” He decided to be honest with Carrington, although he was suddenly wary of him because of the meeting with Matthiessen. “I was in a mess in Paris this morning. Very bad.”

  Carrington looked grim. “Let me get you some protection.”

  “Not necessary.”

  Carrington stiffened. “I’m sorry, but it is. While you’re on British soil, you’re our responsibility — both to neutralize and to protect. Give me three minutes.”

  Tarp did not wait the three minutes but strode up the short street and turned into the thoroughfare. It was about forty-five minutes before he was to meet Mrs. Bentham. He headed northeast, rather away from the Shaftesbury Avenue theaters, into streets that were at first packed with people and then, after he crossed Oxford Street, much quieter and darker. A car passed him, going slowly; he saw a man and a woman and wondered if they were part of the protection that Johnnie had laid on.

  He had not seen his trackers yet. He would have to lose them before heading back toward the theater. He came to a passage that was lined with shops and whose ends had been closed to cars with concrete posts. He turned into it. It was a city block long; the shops were all locked now, the only lights those high up on the buildings. He walked slowly, his long strides easy, his footsteps falling dully on the concrete. A third of the way along, he stepped into the deep shadow under an overhang. The night sounds of nearby streets came clearly.

  He moved into a shop doorway. In the angled window next to him, he could see the reflection of that part of the passage he had just walked; through the window and the front window of the shop, he could see the passage’s other end. As he looked, two figures turned into the passage behind him. Seconds later a car pulled across the other end. It was not the car he had seen before.

  He turned up the collar of his jacket and folded it across his white shirtfront. He took the cigarette lighter from his pocket. The situation was rather like the attack in Buenos Aires, and he was reminded of the empty gun he had carried then. He had fired one round from the .22 that morning: had Laforet’s people removed the other? Very deliberately, he pulled up the end of the lighter so that it made no noise. One copper-colored casing showed in the dim light from overhead.

  One is better than nothing, although with this thing, it’s not much better.

  Now there was some question as to whether the two men in the passage were Carrington’s “protection” or something more dangerous.

  The two came up the passage slowly, walking about ten feet apart. The one closer to Tarp was a half step ahead. They both looked like quite ordinary men, upon whose cheap overcoats and tired faces the light fell cruelly. Tarp noticed a plastered-down lock of hair, a pug nose, a habit in the lead m
an — perhaps born of tension — of carrying his head very high, as if he were constantly looking overhead.

  Tarp wondered if they would use guns. Guns were still somewhat a rarity in London, and it was not like Moscow to shoot people down here as if it were Chicago in the twenties. On the other hand, if they had hired local talent — Irish or splinter Maoists — anything might happen.

  In Buenos Aires, they wanted me alive. Maybe here, too. He thought of what Laforet had said. Twelve men, not one. Maybe there would be a difference in style, then.

  He moved to his right and pressed hard against the wall. There was no window on that side. The wall was cut stone, with a deep crevice every fourteen inches and a rounded nosing at the corner. He pressed the bottom of his right fist into a crevice and pushed it forward against the rounded corner. Even braced that way, the little gun would be laughable.

  Tarp listened to their slow footsteps.

  Staying alive is knowing when to shoot first.

  At the far end of the passage, the doors of the car were open as if to receive anything that was driven up that way.

  Tarp braced himself to shoot. Three steps, he told himself.

  “Excuse me!” The voice was rather high and very polite in the tone that well-bred Englishmen use when they are giving a definite command but are not yet angry. “Excuse me, please — you men there.” Tarp recognized it as Johnnie Carrington’s voice.

  The footsteps coming up the passage stopped. A shoe scuffed.

  He could see their dark reflections in the slanted window. The angle was wrong for him to be able to see Carrington, who must have been back at the entrance.

  “That bitches it,” a male voice said very low.

  The two men began to run. At the other end, a car door slammed. Tarp fired the .22 as the men lumbered past him. He had aimed low; neither man paused, but two steps beyond him one of them gave an odd bouncing step, almost a hop, and then limped as he ran. As he did, the man farther away drew a gun from his overcoat pocket. It looked enormous. It was a big revolver, probably a .44 with a four-inch barrel, he thought.

  The man was trying to fire while he ran, aiming behind him and trying not to hit his companion. He fired one shot, seemingly for the hell of it. Tarp was crouching in the doorway by then and he ducked under his own arms as glass shattered above him. The noise of the gun in the enclosed passage was hideous.

  “Stop!” Johnnie shouted in his polite tenor. Then he said in an almost conversational tone, apparently to somebody with him, “One of them has a gun.”

  From the other end of the passage came a squeal and a very loud thud. In seconds the situation had turned upside down; now it seemed to be the two gunmen who were on the run, with their way out blocked now by the arrival of the MI-5 car that Tarp had seen earlier.

  Tarp shook glass from his back and peeped out under his arm. Johnnie Carrington was walking up the very middle of the passage, carrying a walkie-talkie. A man in a belted raincoat was walking up the far side, keeping pace with him. “No shooting,” he heard Carrington say into the device.

  With that, there was another deafening shot from Tarp’s left, then another, and the man coming up the passage with Carrington gave an involuntary squeal, as if he had grabbed a hot pan handle. Tarp saw Carrington hesitate, and then his attention was taken by noise on his left as the two gunmen began to come back down the passage, one of them limping badly. He had a gun now, too, however.

  They fired almost deliberately as they came. Somebody shouted. Glass erupted from a window across the way. Tarp put his back against the shop entry wall and kicked at a big piece of jagged plate glass that still stuck out of the frame like a tooth; then he put his foot on the chipped stone ledge and vaulted inward, knocking a display of extra-illustrated books into a pile of debris, striking a pasteboard wall that separated the window display from the shop within and taking it all with him as he went crashing through.

  He crouched in the lee of the window, hearing glass explode and the big guns boom. The footsteps pounded past; there were more shots and a cry, and then silence.

  Tarp raised his head.

  “Mr. Carrington?” a small, tinny voice said. “Mr. Carrington, are you there?” It was the walkie-talkie.

  Tarp got cautiously to his feet. He shook himself like a dog. He stepped up on the window ledge, hearing glass crunch under his weight; he shuffled into the display area of the window. The air felt cold as it blew through the glassless frames.

  A car swung into the far end of the passage and shone its lights between the concrete posts. Somebody stood just at the edge of the dazzling beams and called, “Mr. Carrington? Mr. Carrington, are you there?”

  “Down here!”

  Tarp looked to his right.

  The tracker who had come with Carrington lay almost in the center of the passage. Even in the watered glare of the headlights, it could be seen that he was lying in his own blood. Farther along, Johnnie Carrington was just sitting up. His left arm seemed to be of no use to him. He looked to be in shock, but he said, “Down here. Billups needs help, I think.”

  The two gunmen were gone.

  Tarp got out of the window and went to Johnnie. “Billups doesn’t need help,” he said.

  “Oh, yes, he’s hurt.”

  “He’s dead.”

  Carrington looked up at him numbly. He tried to stand. Tarp reached for him and then saw what he had missed in the tricky light. Blood was spurting from Carrington’s sleeve.

  “I was hit, you see …” he said.

  Tarp grabbed for the arm, feeling for a pressure point and realizing sickeningly that where the bullet had hit there was no arm anymore. It had been almost severed, the bone and muscle blown through. Magnum. Softnose, he thought. Tarp jammed his own hand into the armpit, feeling for the pressure point, knowing that Carrington’s strong heart would pump his body empty of blood. He paid no attention to Carrington’s attempt to get up, gave no thought to being gentle with him; instead, he was thinking of the morning and his feeling of helplessness as he had tried to stop Juana’s bleeding. Now, he manhandled Johnnie Carrington, ripping back his silk-lined black overcoat and his dinner jacket and reaching into the sodden mass above the elbow to shut off the blood with a grip that in other circumstances could have killed.

  “It’s Billups who needs —”

  “Shut up.” Tarp turned to look into the headlights. “Down here!” he bellowed. “For Christ’s sake, get an ambulance down here!”

  “I really must insist that you see to Billups,” Carrington said.

  One moment they were alone in the peculiar light; the next, people swarmed around them. One was a woman. They all seemed confused. The death of Billups had unstrung them. One man was being sick by a shopfront. They looked like actors getting ready for a scene they had never rehearsed, carrying walkie-talkies and big flashlights like props they had never seen before.

  “The chiefs hit.”

  “It’s only his arm.”

  “Poor Billups.”

  “I can’t look. Poor Billups. Poor Harriet. Who’ll tell her? God, telling Harriet will be awful.”

  The woman bent over Carrington. “We’ve called an ambulance, sir. Just in case.”

  Just in case you don’t bleed to death in the next thirty seconds. Tarp kept the grip on the arm. The blood had slowed to a steady trickle.

  “I should like to stand up,” Carrington said.

  “Stay where you are,” Tarp growled. “Shut up.”

  Lights flashed where the gunmen had got away, and somebody said disconsolately, “They got away.” He seemed surprised.

  “How did that happen? I thought we had them.”

  “The chief said no shooting. Then they started shooting.”

  “Billups was armed.”

  “Was he?”

  “Wasn’t he?”

  “He didn’t defend himself.”

  “The chief said no shooting.”

  “What about that car?”

  “They rammed o
ur vehicle and got clean off.”

  “I thought Gregson was following.”

  “He was, he was, but he lost them.”

  “Oh, Christ.”

  “What was all this about, anyway?”

  People with a dolly came running. They alone seemed to know what to do, and they pushed the MI-5 folk out of the way like professionals moving among rank amateurs. They plunged a needle into Carrington’s good arm while another medic was tightening off the closure on the shattered one. One of them tried to peel Tarp’s fingers away.

  “You can let go now,” he said, having been no more successful than if he had been a child try ing to loosen the hold of an adult.

  “You sure?”

  “Yes, please. Let him go now, would you? We want to get him to hospital.”

  “What hospital?”

  “Grimes.”

  Tarp took his hand away. The wheeled stretcher began to roll.

  “What’s the procedure here?” one of the MI-5 men was saying. “Don’t Metropolitan Police have to be called?”

  “Don’s looking it up.”

  “Well, doesn’t he know? Christ, I was just assigned to this group; I’ve been in bloody Taiwan for three years. I’m an escape specialist. Come on, people, has anybody noticed that we have a dead man here?”

  Tarp walked away. When he was near the end of the passage, he heard quick footsteps.

  “Where are you going? Sir?” It was the woman.

  “Home.”

  “Do not move another step!”

  Tarp looked at her. “Shoot me. It would cap the evening for all of you.” He turned into the darkness and was gone.

  He went into an Indian restaurant on the Queensway and washed the blood away. The tweed jacket was a mess, soaked in blood to the elbow. He soaked it again and again. It was Johnnie Carrington’s life, running down into the sewers.

  Who’ll tell Harriet? He thought of Johnnie’s beautiful, flirtatious wife. Who’ll tell Gillian?

  He had never seen such bungling before. Even for an operation put together too quickly, it had been mismanaged. It was a nightmare example of bad work, and MI-5 would be very lucky if some sort of question were not raised in the House of Commons.