Cronos Rising

by Tim Stevens

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Before he died.’

  ‘He left me a posthumous message,’ Purkiss said. ‘He warned me that you might be dangerous. Though he said you were one of us.’

  ‘I recognised you when you got off the boat.’ Gideon tipped his head at the bank of monitors. ‘My first thought was that you were leading an assassination squad.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I assumed you’d turned against Vale. That you were working for them.’

  ‘Who’s them?’ Purkiss asked.

  Gideon gazed off to one side, as if marshalling his thoughts. Then: ‘Cronos.’

  He watched Purkiss closely, as if trying to read a lie in his eyes.

  In a moment, he said, ‘I see. You don’t know.’

  *

  ‘You’ve heard of the Greek myth. The Cronos myth.’

  Purkiss and the others had pulled up what chairs they could find, Kendrick perching himself on the edge of the desk at the other end from Gideon.

  ‘Yes,’ said Purkiss. ‘The titan son of Gaia and Uranus. Father of the gods.’

  ‘It’s usually spelled Cronus, or nowadays Kronos,’ said Gideon. ‘But this version has a C and two Os. The father of Zeus, whom he tried to eat, as he’d done with all his other children. Zeus turned against him, defeated him. Castrated him, in fact, though modern tellings tend to expurgate that detail.’

  Gideon paused; not, Purkiss thought, for dramatic effect, but rather because he was about to reveal something he’d never told anyone before.

  ‘You’re Vale’s man,’ said Gideon. ‘You neutralise renegade elements within the Service.’

  It wasn’t posed as a question, so Purkiss didn’t answer.

  ‘You’ll have wondered where this all started,’ Gideon continued. ‘Where Vale comes from. Whether you follow a long line of people with similar remits to yours.’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Purkiss.

  Gideon got up, took a few slow paces away, turned and came back.

  ‘In the late nineteen seventies – ’77, to be exact – a high-ranking officer in SIS decided, unilaterally and without official sanction, that the Service needed to be cleansed. We were losing the espionage war against the enemy. There’d been the Philby scandal the previous decade, and the rest of the Cambridge spies before that. Anthony Blunt was yet to be exposed publicly, but he was known about. The apple was rotten, and the worms needed cutting out. Our high-level asset decided that the best place to start was by targeting the criminals. Not necessarily the traitors or the moles, but the agents behaving in reprehensible ways, for personal gain. It was the concept of zero-tolerance policing, two decades before it became fashionable.’

  Gideon drew off another cupful of water from the cooler and drained it.

  ‘And so Cronos was born. Nobody knows if he called himself that, or if it was a moniker bestowed on him as his legend grew. But he was the father of the gods. The gods being the people who sought out the wrongdoers within the Service, and punished them for their sins.

  ‘There were four of us. Quentin Vale. Oliver Clay. Helen Marchand. And myself. You’re known vulgarly, Purkiss, as the Ratcatcher. We had no such description. Because nobody knew about us. Our activities, our countermeasures against the rogue and criminal elements within the ranks of the Service, were truly clandestine. Our job wasn’t to deter. It was to eliminate.’

  The older man’s eyes had changed, the black irises expanding so that they crowded out the whites. Purkiss could imagine that stare, thirty or forty years ago, provoking the same effect in a transgressor as any interrogator from the formal enemy, the KGB, could achieve.

  ‘We were in many ways like the gods of the ancient Greeks. And I say that without any hint of pretentiousness. Our characters, our personas, were contrasting and complimentary. There was Vale, the thoughtful, serious one. Clay the joker, the buffoon. Myself, Gideon, the irascible, restless man of action. And Helen Marchand, the mother figure, the peacemaker who held us all together, and sometimes kept us apart when it was necessary.’

  He broke eye contact for a moment.

  ‘Each of us had his or her own motivation for doing what we did. In my case, it was loyalty. That most sneered-at of virtues, in today’s degenerate world. But I owed the Service, Purkiss. And not merely for giving me employment.

  ‘I was born in 1943, in Poland. As an infant I was spirited out along with my mother and a few members of my extended family. I grew up in England, and never knew the horrors of that era first hand. But my father was left behind, in Chelmno extermination camp. I spent the first twelve years of my adult life trying to find the people responsible for the administration of the particular section of the camp in which my father was held, and in which he was murdered. The Service – SIS – helped me to find them.

  ‘It became my Service. My family. I swore a blood oath to it. And I was proud to serve it as Cronos directed, by keeping it clean. Keeping it honourable.’

  Gideon seemed to pull himself back to the present. His gaze snapped to Purkiss once more.

  ‘At some point, Cronos changed. We were in part to blame for that, the four of us. We were so successful, so effective at what we did, that Cronos became convinced we were being underused. He began to envisage us, under his leadership, as needing to broaden our scope. To start formulating and implementing policy within SIS. Even when such policy didn’t have official sanction.’

  ‘He wanted to create a fifth column,’ said Purkiss.

  ‘Yes.’ The anger was back in Gideon’s voice, but it had a different quality to that which he’d displayed when talking about his father. ‘A black-ops cell, in current parlance, although that doesn’t quite capture it. We weren’t simply to carry out unofficial operations. We were to become a guiding force within the Service, one which would steer it in the direction Cronos believed it should be heading. Freed from accountability to Parliament and the Prime Minister, invisible to scrutiny.’

  Gideon sat down again on the edge of the desk. He glanced at the monitors for a few seconds.

  More quietly, he said: ‘It was arrogance in the extreme. Hubris. And we couldn’t permit it. Couldn’t allow the Service we’d purified and nurtured with such passion to become corrupted in such a flagrant manner, turned into one man’s megalomaniacal tool. So we raised arms against Cronos, our creator. The gods turned upon their father. We castrated him.’

  Kendrick let out a guffaw, the sound startling in the enclosed space.

  Without looking at him, Gideon said, ‘Your friend takes me literally. Of course that’s not exactly what happened. But we curbed Cronos’s ambitions, and with them his power, so yes, castration is an apt metaphor.’

  He exhaled deeply.

  ‘The programme, or whatever it was that the four of us constituted, fell apart. We went our separate ways. I left the Service, as did Helen. Vale and Clay remained. And Vale took up the mantle, in his dogged way. He became the new Cronos, if you like, though a gentler, more low-key version. He began to recruit his own agents.’

  A frown creased Gideon’s forehead.

  ‘All of this, the great disruption, the neutralisation of Cronos, happened in 1999. More than two decades after it all began. You would have been a boy then, Purkiss. Twenty-three or twenty-four. Vale couldn’t have recruited you at that time.’

  ‘No,’ said Purkiss. ‘I first met him in 2008.’

  Gideon nodded. ‘So he had others before you. Interesting.’

  Purkiss let that pass. He said: ‘What happened to the rest of you? Clay, Helen Marchand? You?’

  ‘Helen died five or six years ago of cancer. I hadn’t kept in touch with her, but I made it my business to update myself about her situation.’ Gideon paused for a moment, before he clapped his hands together softly, as if closing a book. ‘I myself started a small business, providing security to the shipping lanes along the Mediterranean seaways. The business turned out more successful than I’d expected, and I was able to retire in 2006. I met Vale only once after the
great schism, but I’ve monitored his whereabouts and his movements all the way through. Right up until a few months ago.’

  ‘And the other one?’ said Purkiss. ‘Clay?’

  Gideon folded his hands beneath his chin and leaned on them. His dark predator’s eyes focused on a distant point, in time as well as in space.

  He held the position for a long time.

  ‘Oliver Clay has disappeared,’ he said. ‘My reach is extensive. But Clay has evaded my grasp. I know he remained with SIS up until at least 2002. Since then, however, he’s vanished from my radar. And that has always perturbed me. Because in order to make yourself invisible to me, you have to take special, deliberate measures.’

  Purkiss thought he knew what was coming next. But he offered no prompt.

  Gideon stood up. This time he didn’t pace.

  He said, carefully, quietly, ‘I believe this current business, the downing of the Turkish Airlines flight in order to assassinate Vale, your arrival here to find me, is ultimately at the instigation of Clay. He was always the one I trusted the least. Vale, Helen, they were undemonstrative people. Vale was the more unreadable of the two, but you always had the sense that his taciturnity was genuine, that it wasn’t a mask. Whereas Clay and I were the volatile ones, the prima donnas if you like. And my experience after more than forty years in the game, Purkiss, is that the most effective and duplicitous spies are the flamboyant ones. Not the quiet, mousy wallflowers of popular depiction. Look at Burgess. Look at Maclean. They were raucous, promiscuous drunks who actively sought the limelight. Yet they hoodwinked the establishment for years while selling out their country, precisely because they seemed too obvious to be anything other than what they appeared to be.’

  He took another sip of water from the cup of water he’d filled.

  ‘Clay was, as I’ve said, a buffoon. He was coarse and crass. But he was also calculating. He broke the rules, even by our standards. He always gave the impression that he enjoyed his status as a persecutor of renegade agents, not just because he was doing the right thing for the Service and for his country, but because he revelled in the power he wielded. I believe Clay has taken it upon himself to eliminate, after all these years, the rest of us. The other gods, and those who serve them. Helen is of course already dead, so that leaves Vale and me. Clay has been successful against Vale. I’m next. And you, Purkiss, as Vale’s protégé, are also in Clay’s sights.’

  ‘To what end?’ said Purkiss. ‘Why is Clay killing you off, after all these years as you say?’

  Gideon tipped his head. ‘I can’t be certain. But a couple of possibilities spring to mind. One is that Clay has himself betrayed the Service. Gone renegade. And he knows there are people out there who will track him down. People like me, and Vale, and you. So he’s taking us out in a pre-emptive strike.’

  ‘You said a couple of possibilities.’

  ‘The second,’ said Gideon, ‘is that Clay intends to revive the agenda which Cronos tried to implement at the end. The creation of a fifth column, an underhand and clandestine faction within the Service whose mission it will be to steer Service policy towards ends that do not necessarily have official approval, and are not subject to the usual rigorous governance. Effectively, it would turn the entire Service into a black-ops outfit.’

  ‘Clay sees himself as a new Cronos,’ said Purkiss.

  ‘Precisely. I believe this second scenario is the more likely one. Cronos is rising, reborn.’

  The questions crowded in Purkiss’s mind, jostling for priority. Something else was nagging at him, a half-formed notion that slipped out of his grasp every time he tried to concentrate on it.

  He said, ‘And the original Cronos? What happened to him?’

  ‘We dealt with him.’

  ‘You killed him?’

  ‘We dealt with him,’ Gideon repeated. ‘He has nothing to do with this. Believe me.’

  Rebecca said: ‘Look.’

  She was staring at the bank of monitors. Purkiss got up and stepped forward, peering closely.

  On two of the screens, each of them showing a different area of the island’s edge, men were clambering up the banks of rock. They moved with the quick stealth of professionals. Most of them had automatic weapons slung across their chests.

  There were at least ten of them.

  Gideon said softly, ‘And so it begins.’

  Twenty-one

  Purkiss said: ‘What’s through that door?’ He indicated the far end of the room.

  They were on the move, Gideon opening the door to the storage cupboard from which he’d fetched the spare pair of boots for Purkiss. He removed a shotgun which he tossed to Purkiss, who caught it one-handed.

  ‘More storage,’ said Gideon. ‘There’s no way out through here. We have to go up.’ He produced a handgun and held it out to Delatour.

  ‘Or, we stay put,’ said Purkiss. He worked the slide of the shotgun. It was a Remington 11-87, a US police weapon. ‘Pick them off as they come down the hatch.’

  Gideon shook his head as he jammed another pistol into his waistband. ‘Too much of a gamble. They may have teargas, grenades, whatever. Plus, the bulk of my weapons are up there in the tower.’ He nodded at Rebecca. ‘I haven’t got anything for you down here.’

  Gideon reached the rungs in the wall first and began to ascend, Purkiss close behind. He’d glanced at the monitors as he passed them. The men were gone from the screens.

  The daylight poured down as Gideon pushed the trapdoor open. Purkiss climbed out after him and crouched, turning through three hundred and sixty degrees, scanning the environment. From where he was, down among the ruins, he couldn’t see the rest of the island.

  They moved at a stoop among the ruins towards the ladder leading up to the tower. At the base, Purkiss turned again and did another survey.

  No sign of the men.

  ‘Those screens covered the northern part of the island,’ said Gideon, indicating. The island stretched back towards the sea, longer behind than it was in front. Purkiss estimated the distance to the northern tip at around one mile.

  It might buy them some time.

  He climbed up after Gideon, feeling as if a target was painted in bright neon on his exposed back. If they have long guns... But he reached the door at the top. Instead of following Gideon through, he turned and gazed across the island while Rebecca, Delatour and Kendrick climbed up the ladder. Kendrick was grinning.

  ‘Like the old days,’ he said to Purkiss.

  Purkiss propped the door open behind them. It meant that, with the window spaces in the front and side walls, they had a view in all directions.

  Gideon was busy with the RPG launcher. Rebecca had picked up the other shotgun, while Kendrick laid immediate claim to the M16.

  Purkiss said, ‘I’m going down. There’s no point all of us staying up here. If they close in, I might be able to pick some of them off from behind.’

  Gideon nodded. ‘One of you needs to stay up here. In case I get taken out.’

  Delatour said, ‘I’ve used one of those before.’ He gestured at the RPG. ‘I could take over if need be.’

  ‘All right.’ Purkiss headed for the doorway. ‘Rebecca, you stick with me. We’ll find somewhere to hole up among the ruins. Tony, you separate out and lie low nearby.’

  On the ground once more, they moved out among the ruins. Purkiss found a stretch of wall, about six feet high, along the eastern aspect of the hillock. He signalled to Kendrick to position himself on the other side.

  Purkiss sat with his back against the wall, Rebecca beside him. All there was to do was wait. The tinnitus from the grenade blast was still there, not as overwhelming as before but thin and high-pitched and distracting. It meant it would be difficult to hear any footfalls.

  Rebecca murmured, ‘How did they find us?’

  ‘They found us at the hotel,’ said Purkiss. ‘So they may have traced us from there on. Maybe the clerk who organised the boat for us told them where we’d gone.’

&
nbsp; He twisted round to look up at the tower. Gideon’s face appeared in the window on the east side. He appeared to be staring into the distance as if he’d spotted something.

  As Purkiss watched, Gideon raised the RPG launcher, propping it on the window ledge.

  Purkiss shuffled to the end of the broken wall and peered round in the direction Gideon was looking.

  At least four men were advancing, picking their way up the rocky slope in much the same way that Purkiss and the others had done, running from boulder to boulder.

  Purkiss looked back up at Gideon in the window. He wasn’t going to be able to hit all of them, but there were plenty of grenades in his stash. He was going to do it by a process of attrition, picking them off however he could, individually if necessary.

  In the next instant, Gideon’s forehead erupted in red and he dropped out of sight.

  Purkiss recoiled instinctively behind the wall as the shot rang out over the island.

  Rebecca drew close, confusion in her eyes. Purkiss said: ‘Gideon’s down.’ He ratcheted the shotgun.

  From the other side of the wall, he heard yells as the men broke cover.

  For a split-second, Purkiss had thought one of the men out there had used a long gun. But Gideon had jolted forward, not back, as the wound had bloomed in his forehead.

  It was an exit wound. The shot had come from inside the tower.

  ‘Delatour did it,’ Purkiss said. ‘Get ready.’

  Rebecca didn’t reply, and Purkiss didn’t wait to see what effect his words had had. He strained his ears to try and gauge how close the men were.

  When he felt he could delay no longer, he lunged beyond the wall, the shotgun extended.

  A man loomed ten feet away as he hauled himself over the edge of the hillock. Purkiss pulled the Remington’s trigger, feeling the shotgun buck in his hands. The blast caught the man in the chest and he dropped back with a scream.

  ‘Tony,’ yelled Purkiss, without turning. ‘Watch the other side of the hill.’

  A second man rolled over the ridge, further down. He was fast, but Purkiss swung the shotgun across and pumped the slide and fired again. The man went down.