by John Gardner
“The inquest. Eleven o’clock. I’m to represent the Office. Deputy Chief Worboys called while you were, presumably, in the shower. Wants you to give him a tinkle when you’re free. I told him you’d call soonest.”
Herbie nodded and attacked the bacon and eggs, not giving his cholesterol a second thought. “You want Ginger for the inquest?” he asked Bitsy, but it was Ginger who replied, “Kenny Boyden’s driving, and Mickey Crichton’s going to mind her.”
“I thought Mickey was with the widow Keene?”
“He is, but she doesn’t seem to want him. Prudence is with her all the time. Mrs. Keene’s not good, guv’nor. It’s sunk in and she’s grieving hard. That’s the word from the Guest Quarters. I think they’ve put her on something to help.”
Yes, he thought. Prudence. Pru Frost, that was the name he could not put to the female nurse. Why the hell had they not sent two females? Mickey was in Ginger’s class: very good with his hands, and exceptional with a weapon. Someone up the Smoke, in the Office, was worried about the widow Keene, even though she was surrounded by the highest possible tech security.
He drank four cups of excellent coffee, asking Bitsy if she was expected to do all the cooking. “I like cooking, Herb,” she said. But he made a note to ask Worboys to send them a very secure chef, and lumbered off to the study to call him, as instructed, and then begin the long journey back with Gus. A Dance to the Music of Time, he thought; then, the Long March Through the Organs, which was how the old-style KGB had once spoken of the recruiting of their long-term penetration agents.
As he was leaving, Ginger asked if he had heard the news.
“What news?”
“Four large briefcase bombs on the London Underground. Waterloo, Paddington, King’s Cross and Victoria.” These are all main-line railway stations, each served also by the network of London’s Underground.
“Many casualties?”
“At least sixty. FFIRA’s denying it.”
“You bet they are.”
The FFIRA had every right to deny the bombs, for the London cell of Intiqam had begun work early. Hisham, the two youngest members of the group—Ahmad and Nabil—together with Samira, the more fanatical of the two girls, had left their house in Clapham at half-hour intervals starting at six-thirty that morning. The other two members of the cell—Ramsi and Dinah, who, by no coincidence, was Jamilla’s sister—waited. Dinah had done a preoperational job in London, similar to the work her sister had carried out in the United States: readying documents, passports and visas throughout Europe, but without having to resort to any honey-trap ops.
Ramsi was the bomb maker, a short, rather stout little man. The kind of person you did not look at twice. He was the only member of the Intiqam teams whose complexion was totally white. They could all pass as Europeans, but Ramsi, by some strange mixture of genetics, had a perfect peaches-and-cream pigment. The girls hated him for it. But they hated him for a number of things—the fact that he preferred boys to girls being only one. Before they left for the operation, Hisham had questioned the wisdom of taking Ramsi, because of his sexual preference, but to no avail. It was not considered at all odd where they came from, but Hisham knew that here the man would have to go out and search for company. There was danger in that from a security point of view.
The London cell had opted for a pleasant Victorian house in Clapham. It stood with several others of the same vintage in one of the upmarket areas, surrounded by a redbrick wall, trees and a garden, which the girls had tended and which, during the summer months, they had all enjoyed—sitting in deck chairs on the lawn and having small parties in the warm early evenings.
The four who had left so early, straggled back at around nine-thirty. Each had left a briefcase at a designated spot, well hidden behind seats and trash cans on the Underground stations. For Hisham, Ahmad, Samira and Dinah the day’s work had not finished. During the morning and afternoon they took separate flights to Paris, where they booked into modest hotels, in pairs. Four young people off on a naughty short vacation in the City of Lights.
Herbie found that Young Worboys was having calls screened—even on his red, secure, line—by the lovely Emma, personal assistant and a bit more, unless Herb had lost his intuition.
“Got a message,” he growled when Worboys came on.
“Herb.” Bright and full of spiritual friendship. “Herb, the very man.”
“How much is it going to cost?”
“Come on, Herb. No screwing around. You got positives on what was left of Gus’s Zippo and the little stickpin, I gather.”
“Only insofar as he carried a Zippo and wore a badge which she says was British Legion, but I don’ think so.” He was proud of the “insofar.”
“All we’ve got, old Herb. Personal trinkets. You try out the watch on her?”
“That would’ve been a bit heavy. She’s suffering, Tony.”
“Well, you’re going to have to show it.”
“Why?”
“Because the Anti-Terrorist cops’ll want to have details of a definite ID for the inquest, plus the medical people say there’s nothing else showing from the body—skeleton really—and they’re ready to release it.”
“Can’t they reconstruct the head, like in that movie, Gorky Park, or the TV thing with the female copper—Helen Mirren? They can do that, Tony. They can build up the head from the skull. Something amazing.”
“Something bloody expensive as well, and yes, Herb, they can build it from a computer model, which is what they are doing. Take a while, though.”
“And in the meantime?”
“You’ve heard what happened here this morning?”
“I heard. Bad.”
“Yes, very bad. But there’s interesting news as well. The two car bombs the same day as Gus bought it …”
“What about them?”
“They didn’t come up smelling of Semtex. Dynamite, Herb. Same as Gus, but I doubt if we’ll get a match. It’s going to be difficult to trace batches.”
“Better than nothing. What am I supposed to be doing, apart from raking through the ashes of old Gus’s life?”
“The Anti-Terrorist people want a definite ID and you’ll do the statement. Signed ID from Carole on the three items. I’ve faxed it through, and one of the girls is typing it up at the house now. All you have to do is show her the stuff, get an okay, and we can get a release. Everyone goes away from the inquest happy.”
After a long silence Herb said okay, he would do it. “You faxed through a statement for me as well?”
“Of course. Be grateful if you’d give us a call when it’s all done. Oh, and they’re sending down a DCI from Anti-Terrorist as soon as we can do a clearance. You need much time before that happens?”
“A few days might be useful.”
“I’ll stave it off for as long as I can without them smelling the proverbial rodent.”
“Ticketyboo.” That was a World War I expression, told to him by an older member of the Office once, a long time ago, and he did not have a clue what it meant but thought it sounded whimsical.
He went upstairs, unlocked his briefcase and took out the three evidence bags. Removing the watch, he sat on the bed and examined it: a block of metal. But a child of four could have told you it was a watch. The face had gone and the movement had melted together, but the steel casing was intact, while the band, though fused, still showed the Rolex crown on the clasp.
Herbie dropped it back in its bag, went downstairs and was about to lock the door to Gus’s study when the internal phone began to ring. The main house wanted to know if they could pick him up for a visit to the Guest Quarters.
Carole was really very good. She was being watched like a surveillance camera by the omnipresent Pru Frost, a tall girl who moved like a giraffe, sandy hair cut short, every inch of her a nurse, and very caring—or so they said.
Carole gave him a big hug, and he made it as easy as possible for her, bringing out all three pieces and moving her through them gently
and firmly.
“Don’t really know about the pin thing,” she said. “Truly I never took that much notice of it. He only wore it occasionally, but it was in his lapel that night.” She was starting to distance herself, or it might have been whatever they were feeding her to keep her together until it was all over. “But I guess that’s the lighter, and that’s certainly a Rolex. He always carried the lighter and wore the Rolex to bed. If that’s all that’s left, well …” She did break down for a moment then, but pulled herself together, signing the formal identification of her late husband’s effects, using Pru and a girl from the main house as witnesses.
Herbie gave her another hug, told her “Courage” and went back to the Dower House after getting the girls to witness his signature on the other document. It all took less than three quarters of an hour, door to door.
Bitsy was still hovering, waiting for her car and escort, peeping constantly in the small circular mirror in the hall. Preening, Herbie thought. Woman’s stuff.
“All done,” Kruger told Worboys on the secure line.
“Then you can expect some cops—Coroner’s Court officers—in about half an hour. You don’t need to be there—in the court, I mean—and one of the cops’ll do a little statement to establish what the Americans call the chain of evidence.”
“I think we also call it that. Us Brits, I mean, Tony.”
“Probably. I just want all this done, then we’ll deal with the funeral.”
“Yes, about that—”
“Later, Herb.”
“To hear is to obey.”
“That’s it.”
“Oh, Tony, give a minute, uh-huh?”
“I have to get on, Herb.”
“We need a chef down here. Deaf, dumb and blind. Can’t let Bitsy do all the housekeeping.”
“Why not?”
“Ever heard of liberated women, Tony?”
“Well, I can’t promise, but … well, I’ll try.”
The cops came in less than half an hour. They must have had the lights flashing and sirens on all the way, Herb thought. The transaction was very serious stuff. No smiles and only what might be called terse handshakes after Kruger had signed his life away in triplicate.
Once Bitsy had left, driven and guarded by the boys, like a gangster’s moll going to a trial, he went back into the haunted study and sat down at the long table.
Now, he thought, I am under starter’s orders. Let us see what Gus got squirreled away here.
He picked out a thick ring binder at random—right out of the middle of one of the piles—opened it and almost stopped breathing. Here, in this house, admittedly within the protected circle of Warminster—Fenley Hall, if you wanted to be two hundred percent accurate—he was holding the entire detailed documentation of what had been called Operation Cataract. A tale so awash with moral corruption that it had power to harm even now, ten years after the event, and, presumably, for much longer.
“What were you up to, Gus?” he asked the book-lined walls. “Gott in Himmel, what were you doing with these?”
6
THE SERIES OF INCIDENTS that finally became Cataract began in January of 1984 while Big Herbie was still officially a member of the Office, with his own little cubbyhole away from the big steel-and-concrete building that everyone knew was the hub of the secret universe: Head Office. Herbie Kruger’s operations ran out of what they called the Whitehall Annex and he was closer to going private—in plain language, retiring—than he knew.
Kruger had already been through what many thought of as a midlife crisis. In a fit of pique, following an incident in the field that had left him slightly wounded, Herb had married his former agent Martha Adler and put in his papers.
So, he had resigned from the Office and set up a permanent home with his bride in a pretty cottage close by the New Forest. For several months things were quiet. Then, almost exactly one year later, Herbie was back at the front door, pleading to return to what he described as “a life of relative peace away from relatives.” Later, he was to try to patch things up with Martha, but the marriage had obviously never really begun its takeoff run, let alone got off the ground.
Those who knew him best thought that Martha was good for him as a companion, but there was little doubt that, as a pair of lovebirds, life for the couple was really a permanent squawking fight and feud.
So it was that on this January morning, nursing a cold and in a filthy temper, Herbie arrived at the Annex some fifty-five minutes later than usual, the journey in from what they called his grace-and-favor apartment in St. John’s Wood having taken forever.
At that time, he was stuck with a junior officer called Vicki Grismer, a young woman of immense charm, a lot of guile—which, in the Service, is a compliment—and a heavy crush on Young Worboys, who had recently been elevated to the field, his particular corner of which was Belfast.
“Mr. Worboys’s been on from Belfast, sir.” Vicki shook out her pretty blond hair, which she had been tending with a handheld dryer in what they laughingly called the kitchen. She had been soaked during the last long splash and scurry down Whitehall to the Annex.
“Tony Worboys?” Herbie made the noises of a puppy drying itself off. “Sodding rain. Coming down like in the haversacks out there.”
“He would like you to call him back. He said urgent, on his second number.”
“Shit! Sorry, Vic.” He sneezed.
“I know all the words, sir. No need to be coy with me. Life is not PG 13.”
“And will you stop calling me ‘sir.’ His second number?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Hell.” Tony had obviously called the Annex from his one and only secure line, and now he was out and about with an iffy telephone. Herb dredged out the number marked “two,” prized his bulk into a chair and began to dial. One of his new chores was fixer and liaison to Tony, who ran things in the British province usually known as Northern Ireland—mainly from Belfast but occasionally even from the bandit country of Armagh and County Fermanagh, along the border. Dangerous as hell.
The distant end bripped and Tony’s voice said, “Sutton, yes?”
“Wilf here.” Only Herbie pronounced it “Vilf.”
“Joker,” said Tony.
“Oh, shit. I have to?”
“Yes.” The line went dead.
Herbie grumbled and rummaged for biscuits and coffee in the kitchen, calling through to the delightful Ms. Grismer, “Vic, book me one return tomorrow morning. Air Linctus. London-Dublin, Dublin-London, all in one day. Tomorrow, okay?”
“You get all the fun, sir—I mean, Herbie. Faraway places with strange-sounding names.”
“Sure. What you do with those custard creams, Vic?”
“We’re out. I had the last one yesterday.”
“Nobody ever tell you that you’re a granite?”
“Never, and I think you mean gannet.”
“Whatever.”
At noon the next day, Herbie sat in Bewley’s on Grafton Street. The low-pressure system that had brought the freezing, pouring rain to London on the previous day had moved, overnight, to Dublin. Outside, a roof of umbrellas jostled up and down Grafton Street, and there was the smell of damp raincoat mixed with cooking in the warm, safe womb that was Bewley’s.
Bewley’s was the one thing Herb really liked about Dublin. Sure, on a sunny day the city had a charm of its own, and a lot to recommend it, but somehow he felt at home in Bewley’s. He liked the waitresses in their brown-and-white uniforms and their blarney banter, and he loved the food. There were ketchup bottles and vinegar on all the tables, and that was the kind of thing he appreciated. Once, he had read that Bewley’s was the last bastion of the decadent fairy cakes, those little tit-shaped concoctions in corrugated paper with a half-cherry nipple on top. Big Herbie Kruger liked fairy cakes. Bewley’s made up for the crack-of-dawn rise and the hour’s ride in a 737 from Heathrow to Dublin Airport: focal point of the universe.
Tony Worboys’s trip had been
slightly more dangerous. People in his position did not like to advertise their presence in the South—in the Republic—so he had made a journey one hundred and two times more dangerous. In fact, he had moved silent and alone—but for two members of the SAS watching his back—through one of the known illegal border crossings of Armagh, where there was always the chance of coming face to face with a team of Provos bent on death and destruction. On this occasion he had breakfasted in a gray bungalow castle of a place in Dundalk. A staging post for friends who had to make clandestine hops from North to South.
His return would be easier and even more illegal, for a military helicopter would dubiously nip across and lift him from a field.
Here and now, Tony walked into Bewley’s, looking like a visiting farmer, hailing Herbie in a brogue you could have cut with a pair of blunt scissors.
They ordered from a cheeky waitress who was bent on telling them that she had seen that lovable little ET only the night before—and she did not mean at the “filums,” as she would have pronounced it. Bewley’s employed a number of fey waitresses to supply atmosphere.
The huge plates of double fish and chips arrived, followed by the pots of tea and the piles of bread and butter. Tony spoke very low as they ate.
“This isn’t a whisper, Herb. This is for real and it’s bloody urgent.” He slid an envelope under the table. “In case I get disintegrated.”
His story came from a source deep within the Provos; a source so secret that he lived in constant terror, but always came back for more, because the money was good and he really did not believe in the Cause. From this source, plus what they called ELINT—gee-whiz electronics that plucked conversations out of the air without the aid of wires and bugs.
“A new, specially recruited Active Service Unit,” Tony said in almost a whisper. “Details in the envelope. Two men and two women. Hard as nails, and all with a lot of experience.”
“We know when?”
“Within the month is all, but they are specialists, each one of them, and their operation is called Kingmaker—work that one out for size.”
“Shouldn’t I pass it to our sisters?” Herb meant the Security Service.