Sunstrike
Philip McCutchan
© Philip McCutchan, 1979
Philip McCutchan has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1979 by Hodder and Stoughton Limited.
This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media
Table of Contents
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1
“BURNING UP,” MAX said. He sounded comfortable about it. He studied the end of an expensive cigar, about two quid’s worth, and stared past the ash, through his penthouse windows over the City of London. “Just burning up, Shaw.”
“This island?”
“Not just one island, the whole damn group of islands.”
I felt sweat trickle down my face and drain into my collar. Not from Max’s words, nor from the weather, though it was a steamy day. Excess alcohol in the bloodstream. Last night had been a bad one: a reunion. All reunions are bad; if you don’t drink you don’t, on the whole, reunite. This had been quite a reunion: my old mates from MOD Intelligence, and a sprinkling from the navy to add more zest, the zest of blokes that used to make zip-fasteners: a pint tankard half filled with beer into which was poured two of everything and anything that happened to be in the wardroom bar: whisky, gin, port, sherry, crême-de-menthe, Benedictine, Van der Hum and ordinary brandy. Pour, stir, drink: once, the total price of that drink, duty-free, had been around fifty pence. Last night, a damfool wellwisher had spent more like a tenner on it. My hand had shaken like a pennant in a gale of wind when I lifted the telephone in the morning and heard, of all people, Max’s secretary calling from Focal House and asking me to check in. Asking — even beseeching. That wasn’t like Max. But then, of course, I’d chucked the outfit a year or two before … or had I?
Right now, sitting in front of Max’s powerful figure, I wondered. From beneath a headache I made a comment. I said, “Indian Ocean islands always burn, don’t they, except when they’re being blown away by a typhoon?”
“Not to this extent.” Max blew some smoke and by chance formed a lovely ring that hovered overhead. He looked at it with pleasure, even conceit. I hissed out a little breath: a salary of thirty-five thousand a year plus almost limitless expenses, more power in some circles than the Prime Minister, and he could still glow at a smoke ring. I suppose you could call it attention to detail. As the ring disintegrated he barked a question: “Want the fill-in?”
“No,” I said. “No, I don’t, thanks all the same.”
“Back on the pay-roll, double what you got before you resigned.” Max paused. “Plus a woman, or should I say secretary.”
“Really?”
“As cover.” Max paused again. “You’re in demand. Washington’s asked for you — our office, not the US Government, not the Pentagon though they may become involved. If they do, it won’t be overt.”
“Whitehall?”
“Yes. Wellberrow.” Francis Wellberrow, known in Focal House as Wheelbarrow, was Minister of Defence. “Also the Foreign Office —”
“As represented by whom?”
Max’s face split across the middle, laterally. He thought of it as a smile, and it didn’t last. “Call it a spokesperson. You know what that lot are. I won’t even specify the sex. But I say again, Shaw, you’re in demand.”
I grinned. “I don’t respond to demands any more!”
“You know what I mean. And I’ll tell you something else.” Max leaned across his enormous leather-topped desk, heavy, square, pugnacious, keen-eyed — powerful. “You’re getting soft, losing your outline in god-awful fat.” Fatness had always been Max’s pet hate, and to accuse an agent of being fat was the worst offensive remark he could make. “You’ll go to seed before long. You’ll get bags under the eyes. A nasty puffy face. Save yourself in time. And think of the money.”
I did, and had been ever since the call had come. When I had left 6D2 for a quiet life, the Directorate had paid me a compliment: a pretty sizeable lump sum, so sizeable that it could be lived off very comfortably indeed — then. But it wasn’t standing up to inflation quite as nobly as an early euphoria had told me it would. I had begun to need, really need, the quiet job I’d found for myself: a roving mission to buy antiques for this wealthy guy in Annapolis. Maryland, USA. I happened to know quite a lot about antiques, but I was finding the supply tending to dry up there were plenty of others in the game beside my principal, and I was paid byway of commission on results. And through my hangover came another thought: last night had been fun. I’d liked being back once again with men who were accustomed to living dangerously, even if last night they’d only been drinking dangerously. They were different from antique dealers, and auctioneers, and old ladies in towns like Bournemouth, Worthing and Eastbourne, not to mention Bexhill … The old ladies were part of my less-than-excellent results, as a matter of fact. I tried to pay them more than fair cash, and they thought I was a crook, and phoned the police after I’d gone. They didn’t realise that Victorian washstands and basins and jugs and jerries, along with the more conventional antiques, were in high demand these days. To them Victoria was still queen, not history, or something on the telly …
“I’m waiting, Shaw. I’ll tempt you further.” Max reached into a drawer and brought out something which he flipped across to me. A photograph. I caught it neatly, looked at it, and whistled, a sound Max didn’t like. I was aware of his wince, and of his pained voice saying, “That’s the woman.”
“My woman?”
“Your woman.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off her: woman was right. She wasn’t just a girl, she had poise, obvious personality, and a wonderful figure. And long, very fair hair … long hair was somewhat out of fashion, but so what? I admired a woman who wore her hair the way that suited her best. Her features showed character plus honesty and directness, and she held herself sexily. I looked up at Max. “What’s her name?” I asked.
“Miss Mandrake.”
I said non-committally, “Ah, yes.” Truth to tell, I’d been thrown by the name, but supposed something softer would lurk before it. “Background?”
“Intelligence — Foreign Office. Also worked for the CIA.”
“Recent recruit to us?”
Max pounced on that. “Us, Shaw?”
“I’ll never forget you. I’ll always feel part of the family, even when I’m a geriatric on the south coast.”
Max grunted. “I’ve a feeling it went deeper than that. How about an answer? I haven’t all day, and you’re needed, which I shall not say again.”
“Why me?”
“You’re the most experienced field man in the country, I’d go so far as to say in the political West. You’ve worked with the CIA and with our American end. They trust you — that’s important. Something else: it may be that some old friends of yours are involved, Shaw.”
“Who?”
“WUSWIPP.”
I stared, felt old hatreds stirring, and old wounds. WUSWIPP … World Union of Socialist Scientific Workers for International Progress in Peace. A shower of bastards. Through a kind of red mist I saw that US spacecraft, Skyprobe they’d called it, burning to white heat in flight, with all its crew turned to everlasting cinders in the vault of heaven. I saw that man Rencke, at that time the boss man of W
USWIPP, meeting his well deserved but horrible end as he was drawn by his filthy Masurov Beam towards the huge attractor-plate while slivers of metal and many yards of barbed ware, travelling faster than he, were drawn into and through his screaming body so that he hit the attractor-plate as a bloodied lump of shredded flesh. Suddenly Max’s comfortable office was filled with the bitter cold of the Kuriles, and the icy drifting fog from off those far distant north-eastern seas at the world’s corner-post, and I was back in the past until Max’s voice snatched me out of it, harshly.
“Well, Shaw? You swore, once, to finish off WUSWIPP. You did — but they’re back. So how about it?”
*
It was, as that devil Max knew it would be, a foregone conclusion. He gave me the fill-in, as crisp and concise as he had always been. It didn’t take long. There was a group of islands in the Indian Ocean — the Chagos Archipelago, below Gan and the Maldives and about on the same parallel as the Seychelles. To their northwest lay another group, smaller, less numerous — the Candar Islands. It was the Candars that were, it seemed, burning up. Not literally — no flames — yet, anyway. But all vegetation was curling, browning, and dying off. The few inhabitants, natives, were suffering intense heat plus starvation. Or had been, until the Americans had taken them all off in assault craft and brought them to the Chagos Archipelago.
“One of the islands in the Chagos,” Max said, “being Diego Garcia.”
I said, “The 1966 American-British agreement, the one that made the Chagos a defence availability for Britain and the US. Does this become involved?”
“Right — or it could, if the burn-up on the Candars is being brought about by some human agency.”
“WUSWIPP?”
“We believe so. What do you know about Diego Garcia, Shaw?”
“Joint US/UK naval communications facility, the 1966 agreement being implemented in ’72 and extended in ’76, the purpose being the provision of radio relay and communications support on a fast and secure basis for the national security of both signatories,” I said with a touch of pomposity: I’d recently been reading about it somewhere; it had cost around two hundred million dollars to establish the base, which included an 8000-foot runway, accommodation for some 1300 all-male personnel together with fuel-storage tanks of an impressive capacity and an air ops building. The runway was currently being further extended to take larger and faster aircraft, the fuel-storage capacity was being increased, and the lagoon was being dredged to take deep draught shipping, including probably super-tankers. Eventually, it was planned, Diego Garcia would blossom from its relatively simple communications role into a base for the anchoring, provisioning and re-fuelling of a carrier task force that could range the Indian Ocean for something over a month at a time, while the runway, fully equipped with arrestor gear and apron parking, would handle practically all carrier based aircraft and, in addition, transport planes and KC135 tanker aircraft and the C5 Galaxy. And, though in Diego Garcia no one spoke of such matters, the base was in fact well equipped to act as the communications link for the Polaris submarines on patrol in the Indian Ocean from the Arabian Sea with their swollen bellies full of nuclear-warheaded Poseidon missiles: Diego Garcia’s automatic relay network provided instant communication with the Pentagon itself. The Kremlin, so it was said, was not amused.
I mentioned this aspect, casually.
“Russia’s out for detente,” Max said, sounding severe.
“You don’t usually crack jokes.”
“And I don’t now. We have to cool it as regards Russia officially, that is. They’re not automatically guilty of everything, Shaw.”
“Maybe. I’m of the old guard to that extent, though. I see Russians under the bed. Perhaps,” I added, “I’m no use to you after all.”
Max shook his head. “Not so. All right, see Reds if you want to, only don’t concentrate too hard on Russia. Cuba exists too, and various African states, and China … and I’m not necessarily pointing any fingers there either. China today’s almost becoming one of us. Red or not.”
“Almost an adjunct of NATO,” I said sardonically but not without a touch of truth. “Let’s get this straight, shall we? The Candar Islands are being burned up, and we don’t know by what …”
“It’s your job to find out.”
“All right. Well, let’s say it’s … something like the Mazurov Beam, maybe, for the sake of argument. Do I take it you’re saying that the brass fears this beam or whatever is capable of being directed on to Diego Garcia?”
“Spot on, Shaw —”
“Not difficult, really. So the Candars are being used as a testing ground?”
Right, was Max’s answer, could be. It could also be a storm in a teacup, or just hallucinations or a weird weather pattern, but Max didn’t believe it was. The alleged involvement of WUSWIPP militated against anything pure and innocent: and there, of course, I agreed. I asked Max what he knew about this possible WUSWIPP link, and he answered me with a question of his own:
“What do you know of Nodd?”
I felt like answering Nodding, but refrained; Max was a man of little humour. Instead I said I’d never heard of Nodd and who was he? Or maybe what was he?
“Who. Nodd’s a man. A nasty specimen, hoofed out of Cambridge some years ago — he was a professor of physics. MA, PhD, FRS. His loyalties became suspect. Subsequently he became part of the WUSWIPP set-up, just a backroom boy to start with, which is perhaps why you never came across him.”
“And now?”
“We understand he’s grown big,” Max said. He closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair, a sure sign, known to me of old, that he didn’t wish to be questioned too far on what was coming next. “It seems he had a friend, a man he met in Cambridge, an American reading electrical engineering —”
“Undergraduate?”
“Yes.” Max gave a sniff and looked vigorously he-man. “A youth. They met in a public urinal in the first place — I’ll say no more. This person, by name J. Carleton Roosenbacher, which is how he signed himself — J for Jethro — ended up in Diego Garcia as a civilian appendage to the US Navy. Not so long ago he got himself blind drunk from liquor accumulated from the PX store, and went on a spree. He smashed some valuable equipment before he was overpowered by a naval patrol, and whilst being taken to his quarters uttered threats against US security. His old friend Professor Nodd, he said, not in so many words I’m told, had it in for the Pentagon, indeed the whole United States. To cut a long story short, an immediate check was put on Roosenbacher and a past balls-up by his checkers-out in Security was unearthed. He was put in arrest and labelled for return to the United States. He …”
“I’ll need to talk to him,” I said. “Can he be flown over?”
“No. He’s gone on a rather longer journey, I regret to say. Twelve hours after his arrest, in the dark hours, there was a landing on Diego Garcia. A number, not known for certain, of armed men. Europeans. They came ashore from boats, forced a sentry to take them to the cell block, and blew the locks. They killed Roosenbacher — body was like a colander. They fought their way back, causing a number of casualties, and were not seen again after they cast off, it’s believed they were picked up by a submarine which submerged immediately —”
“Russian?”
“No one has any idea, but I’m bound to admit the suggestion holds water. Don’t back it too far, though. I’m under orders not to upset any diplomatic apple-carts. That is to be borne in mind throughout.” Max pointed a finger at me. “Understood, Shaw?”
I nodded. “Understood, though it’s going to be bloody inhibiting.”
“I’m sorry about that.” Max stood up: he was a big man, but shorter than me. His cranium was on a level with my throat. “I’ve told you all I know, the work-out’s up to you. Don’t worry about expenses, I’ll square anything with the Directorate. Just find out what’s going on and report.”
I said, “Very good,” and, since I’d put myself back on the payroll, I added, “Sir.”<
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*
I reported in the first instance to Max’s Chief of Staff, a retired brigadier, late the Royal Armoured Corps — the Queen’s Own Hussars to be exact — named Cockburn-Hawkes. He sent me through the routines: accounts for pay and expenses, medical, armoury and what we called the tough-up room where an ex-Guards PTI checked that I hadn’t got quite as soft as Max had suggested. I was stiff and sore a while after, but I passed, if only just. The Sergeant gave me some tips, one of which was to have a night free of alcohol. Then, after the armoury, the shooting-range. Shooting, I reflected that the City gents walking or bussing past Focal House would be somewhat astonished if the sounds of armed conflict had reached their ears, which of course they wouldn’t: the basement was heavily sound-proofed. Focal House was really quite a place; from the outside it looked just like any other huge London edifice full of offices and boardrooms and whatnot, but without a 6D2 warrant no one could get inside 6D2 HQ Britain — Max’s fortress, we thought of it as, Max being the Executive Head, Britain, and Max being in fact the only name he had so far as we were concerned. 6D2 was a mix of Whitehall, New Scotland Yard, the State Department in Washington, the FBI and the CIA — just to mention a few. 6D2 was a clearing-house for information political, criminal, industrial and spywise and it had many, many links with the various defence departments of the Western Powers including, of course, NATO. Yet we were not official, we were not, thank God, Establishment: and that fact gave us all the scope we needed. And I, like the other field men, was the freest of the free; the departmental men and women — lab section, fingerprints, poison analysis, hush files, defence, political, finance, fraud, murder, industrial counter-espionage and training sections — these all had their perimeters and precise responsibilities. I’d liked my life, give or take a point or two here and there …
I was glad to be back.
The routines finished, I returned to the Chief of Staff’s suite, thinking that, since a message had clearly been got out to the gunmen about Roosenbacher’s drunken caper or they wouldn’t have come to fill him full of holes, Diego Garcia must hold another security risk in the person of whoever had sent the message; it could well be the place to start, but I had plenty of thinking to do yet and in the meantime I kept an open mind.
Sunstrike_The next gripping Commander Shaw thriller Page 1