Confessor

by John Gardner

  “Didn’t know that, Carole. You get it straight from the Chief or what?”

  “Tony Worboys.”

  “When?”

  “Last time he was down here.”

  “Came to see you?”

  “Came in for what he called an informal chat. Told me that Martin’s appointment would be approved before the week was out.”

  “So you called him to say, well done, Martin?”

  “More or less. I knew he wanted the job. Nobody’s really been in charge since Gus retired. Temporary people all the time. Temporary and unpaid from what we heard.”

  “So you said, ‘well done, Martin?’ That all?”

  “I tried to be honest with him. Said I was handing over one of the tapes and asked if that was okay.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “Follow your own judgment. He said do anything if it would help get the people who murdered Gus.”

  “He know what the tape was?”

  “No. The Fat Boy—that’s what we used to call him—did not know about Gus’s talents.”

  There was a pause, then Herb said they would put aside the telephone log for a while. “Want to ask you other things, Carole. Unpleasant things. Your little dalliance with Jasmine.”

  “Your affair with Jasmine,” Bex added.

  “It wasn’t an affair. It was a one-night stand. Not even that. A one-afternoon stand, and I felt so bloody guilty that I just kept away from him after that.”

  “What actually happened? We know Gus was away, but how did it really happen?”

  She shook her head, eyes brimming and the corners of her mouth quivering. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I’m afraid you’re going to have to talk about it.” Bex being very firm.

  “I told you. When Gus brought him here, he asked me to make him comfortable. Keep him happy. You know Gus. When he was working with someone, he liked to get the atmosphere right. Make the target feel at ease. That was partly my job.”

  “And you fancied him straightaway?” Bex again.

  Carole shook her head, not a negative shake, but a movement that looked as though she were trying physically to get rid of cobwebs in her brain. “In a distant kind of way. You never felt that, Bex? When you’re promised, or tied, to another, you see a guy and something inside your head asks you what it would be like with him?” As she asked, she automatically glanced at Bex’s left hand to note if there was a wedding or engagement ring.

  “I know what you mean. What’d he look like?”

  “He didn’t look like an Arab. That was the first thing. Yet he was a fine-looking man. A hunk, as they say. Very tall. Six two. Six three. Somewhere around that. Muscular. You felt that he could break someone with his fingers. Enormously charming. Oozed charm. Of course we were all younger then.”

  “So you thought, what would it be like with this rather striking man?”

  “Yes, but it was innocent. You never made a list, Bex? A list of guys you know and would like to do it with?”

  “No, but I know what you mean. A list of blokes that you would like to try out and then rate on a scale of one to ten?”

  “That’s it …”

  “Like the band of Royal Marines,” Herb said to nobody in particular.

  “It’s odd, thinking back. I loved Gus. Loved him like never before. We used to say that nobody had ever loved each other more than we did …”

  Herbie turned away. That’s what had happened to him. Twice. The feeling that the beloved and the loved were somehow mystically joined in a way that no other two people had ever been, or ever would.

  “But?” Bex probed.

  “Difficult to explain.” They had Carole now. They had really got her attention. “Very difficult. It was summertime …”

  And the living was easy, thought Herbie.

  “Summertime. Early summer. For some odd reason, I remember that I was terribly randy. Couldn’t get my mind off sex. It was as though everything that happened had some underlying sexual content. Even what I ate and drank. I remember that it was like a subtext to my life. Sex reared its lovely head in every action, in things I read, trees I touched, flowers I gathered for the house.”

  “And?”

  “And …Well …Well, Gus was very busy. Tied up with a lot of things, and …Well …”

  “You weren’t getting any.” Bex sounded crude, and Herb knew what she was doing. This woman is good at playing with people’s heads, he thought.

  “If you want to put it like that.” Carole bridled.

  “Gus wasn’t paying you much attention is what Bex means.” Herb stepped in.

  “That’s about right. Poor lamb, he was so busy. Dashing around like a scalded cat. Didn’t have time for anything outside work.”

  “He was a lot older than you, Carole. Never forget that.” Herbie again.

  “I never forgot that!” Again she bridled. “Don’t you ever remind me of that again, Herbie Kruger. I had been with Gus a long time before we married.”

  “He was your morning and evening star, I know this, Carole. But at that particular time there weren’t enough hours in the day?”

  “You have a row with him?” Bex remained almost callous.

  “No. No …Well, not exactly. Just a bit of a tiff. Something and nothing.”

  “And he left town, so to speak?”

  “He was away for two days, yes.”

  “So, when did it happen?”

  “The first day. I spent the whole day with Jasmine. He was charming, luxuriously charming. Told me tales, flattered me. He was very subtle in making his move. Had me like a cobra has a mongoose. His sexuality hypnotized me.”

  “Where’d it happen?” Herbie again.

  She bit her lip, then looked away. “Don’t want to talk about it.”

  Bex dug deeper. “But it’s getting you sexually worked up even thinking about it now.”

  “Shut up, Detective Chief Inspector. Shut the hell up!” She was near screaming. Bex had pressed the right button.

  “Go on, Carole. Tell us. We’re not peeping Tims.”

  “Toms, Kruger. Don’t play those tricks on me. I know you and your damned ways.”

  “Okay, but just go over it once.”

  “Do I have to do this?”

  “Afraid so, Carole.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  “Then, dear Carole, we get the cops in and tell them you been lying to us. Tell them you’re withholding information. They probably take a dim view and run you down the nick, questions, questions, questions. With us, you only have to go over the thing once. Then we finish.”

  “Promise?”

  “When I ever let you down, Carole? We been good friends. Now, you going to talk to us?”

  “Okay.” A very small voice. “All right, Herb. You’ll think me terrible.”

  “I been pretty terrible in my time.”

  “I gave him lunch. I even remember what we ate. Lamb chops, new potatoes, beans, a salad. Then chocolate mousse. I was having a chocolate fad at the time. Couldn’t live without a chocolate fix.”

  “Know what you mean. The sweet tooth can be a real problem.”

  “There was nobody about. The guest rooms were empty. The security staff were around, but that was it. I want to get this over, Herb.”

  “Go on. Fast as you like.”

  “I think maybe I had drunk a bit too much at lunch. We got to the door and he …Well, he kind of trapped me in his arms. Kissed the hell out of me. I said no and all those things a girl does, but the kisses got stronger and I began to respond. We walked over to the room he had—down here. Kissed again inside his room, then bingo. I was telling him to do it in sixty-five different positions. I’m trying to be honest. I just couldn’t stop it and it was like losing my virginity all over again. It was like having a man for the first time.”

  “And you’ve never really got it out of your system, have you?” Bex’s voice incredibly comforting. Soft. Nearly the cooing of a mother to her bab
y.

  “I’ve never forgiven myself. Didn’t see him again. Sent a message to him the next day. Told him I had no time, that something had come up. Gus came back and I even avoided him. Couldn’t tell him. You know what was funny?”

  “Tell us.”

  “For the first time in weeks, Gus made love to me again that night. He came back around three. Had been to London and came back all excited. Went to see Jasmine, then said things were moving fast. Elated, that’s the word. Gus was elated, and that night—I was going to confess, but he made such glorious love to me. Gus was always so inventive. I read a book once—espionage fiction. There was a guy in this book. Creative. A very creative lover. The author had him and his lady dressing up to make love, or reciting ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ while they were at it. Great book, because Gus was just like that.”

  “He dressed up?”

  “I dressed up. Sometimes. Turned him on. No, he set up situations. He was my white knight and I was the lady in distress; he was … oh, lots of things. Mostly it was poetry. We’d recite things line for line as we were …You know. We did it in …No, you don’t need to know. That was the only time I was ever unfaithful. Ever. Couldn’t forget about it. You know, when they came and told me, after I had taken it in—to begin with, I said there had to be a mistake. Anyway, when it sank in, when I really knew, that was the first thing I thought of. Christ, I thought, I never told him.”

  “Two-thirty,” Herbie began. “Two-thirty in the morning. Morning after Gus was killed. You took a call, Carole. It was from New York. Who’d be calling you at two-thirty in the morning from New York?”

  “For God’s sake, Herb. I told you. I have no memory of a call from New York.”

  “Okay.” Bex leaned back. “We have all the time in the world, Carole. Let’s start from the top again. Two-thirty in the morning—the morning Gus was killed. You had a call then. You say that was Gus, and if it was, we’ve got one and a half hours unaccounted for.”

  Carole gave a long sigh and nodded.

  They had not been able to hold Declan. The police were in constant touch with the Security Service people, but Declan’s brief turned up. A lawyer they knew of old. Good solid Sinn Fein lawyer. “Charge him within the statutory time, or I want him out.” The lawyer knew how to play them.

  They got a search warrant for the room he had been staying in. Nothing there, and nothing on him. At the magistrate’s hearing they showed the photographs to the magistrate only. Nobody wanted Hisham’s picture on public display. They got reasonable cause to hold him for a week without bail. Struggled for a week and got a bit more time, but, eventually, he was out. Released. No charges.

  The security boys had a team on him very fast and the lawyer banged in an injunction citing police harassment.

  They pulled off, but put in six of their best people. People Declan would not have a hope of seeing or taking action against.

  Declan was what they referred to as a live one. He knew every dodge in the book. Within twenty-four hours the ace team lost him. They alerted airports and seaports. Tight as a drum. He still slipped them, happy in the knowledge that they had no clues as to where he was.

  While Big Herbie Kruger and Detective Chief Inspector Rebecca Olesker interrogated Carole Keene, Declan sat in a safe house in Paris. He also sat on several hundreds of pounds of Semtex, and had set up its transfer to the Iraqis in London. He had called off the Active Service Unit in London. They were taking a well-earned rest in Scotland. Money was no object, for the FFIRA—and Declan as its quartermaster—provided weapons and explosives for the Intiqam teams on both sides of the ocean. Some, such as the Semtex, would be for services rendered. Four assassinations—well, three because someone had already snuffed that bastard Keene, and he presumed they had got Kruger in his cottage, though the press had not announced the actual death. Never mind, they would do it and it would be carried out properly.

  Declan smiled to himself and thought it was about time he had a jar. He would go down to the café on the corner. There was no risk.

  “She’s stonewalling, I know it.” Bex dropped into a chair in Gus’s study. “I don’t know what it is, Herb, but the barriers are up and she isn’t talking.”

  They had spent six hours with Carole, going over the same ground again and again; pressing and pushing, following the usual route of hostile interrogations. Herb nodded his big head. “There are a couple of nuggets—and you’re right, Carole holds some key.”

  “What nuggets?”

  “She’s inconsistent. First time she told the story—the other day—she told us the hanky-panky took place on the second day she was alone with Jasmine. Now she says it was the first day. Also she’s not talking Jasmine. I’ve no doubt she had the little flung with the guy, but I think she’s talking about Ishmael. For some reason she’s switched the two. It’s Ishmael she’s talking about. I got to call Worboys. See if they have any results in about Ishmael. Security Service tags him with Gus, and what’s he done for them? Like to know that.”

  “And I guess a lot of people’d like to know it as well. What’s the use of an asset if he isn’t working for you?”

  Herb was about to pick up the telephone when Bitsy tapped at the door and came straight in.

  “Ach.” Herbie gave her the big smile. “Just the person we wanted to talk with.”

  “Well, that makes a change.” Bitsy smiled at Herb and gave Bex a freezing shoulder, not even acknowledging she was there. “I wanted to make certain you’d be in tonight. I thought of doing a curry. You liked it so much that night we all went out …”

  “Sure, Bits. Curry okay for you, Bex?”

  “Brought up on it. Mother’s milk to me.”

  “Okays, so it’s curry and chips, Bits.”

  “Don’t be so damned stupid, Herb. What did you want to see me for?”

  “Talk about telephone calls. You were here that first night, yes?”

  “The night after Gus was killed? Yes.”

  “The calls in and out of here are logged. They kept the telephones wired to the main house’s system. You recall the telephone ringing around two-thirty in the morning? Almost twenty-four hours after Gus died?”

  “I remember. It would be about half-past two, yes.”

  “Who picked up?”

  “It woke me. I was just dropping off to sleep and the damned phone woke me. Rang twice, then Carole must’ve picked up. I was just reaching for it when it stopped. Didn’t intrude.”

  “You’d swear that under oath?” Bex all police and hard as nails.

  “Of course. I was here, and it happened.” Her face changed, a touch of panic mingled with shock. “Carole’s not …?”

  “Not what, Bitsy?”

  “Not, well, not in any trouble?”

  “We don’t think so, Bitsy.” Calm Bex again. “But we need to check something out regarding that call. Don’t tell anyone we even asked.”

  Bitsy went off, shaking her head, the concern showing.

  For the second time, Herbie reached out for the phone. His fingers were an inch from the instrument when it began to ring. Somehow he knew it was bad news before he even picked it up.

  “Herb,” said Worboys from Head Office. “They’ve got The Whizzer. Got him ten minutes ago. Shot down on the street. Dead before he hit the ground. The bastards’ll answer to me. The Whizzer, Herb. Gone.”

  20

  THE WHIZZER, ARCHIE BLOUNT-WILSON, had fallen into bad ways and was constantly committing the cardinal sin of all old field agents. He had become a man of habit, something he would never have been before the alarms came off when the U.S.S.R. closed up shop.

  Nowadays Archie was still on call, still attended briefings, even went into the Office a couple a times a week. Apart from that he had become a creature of custom: one who moved mainly to a set routine. In the old days they were reminded constantly of Moscow Rules, which meant always behave as you would in the field, always act as though they had you under twenty-four-hour surveillance. Always, par
ticularly in the bright little, tight little island nation of Great Britain.

  Yet the Whizzer, great fixer that he was, usually left his bachelor apartment in Bury Street at around six in the evening. He would turn right and walk down to King Street, where he would take a left, then a left again into Pall Mall. He would wait to cross the road, and so walk up to the Travellers’ Club, where he would normally find other friends of a similar persuasion.

  Friends was the operative word. For decades, members of the Diplomatic Service always referred to members of the SIS as The Friends. One of their favorite watering holes was the Travellers’ Club.

  On this particular evening he did as he was wont to do. He got as far as crossing to the correct side of Pall Mall. There was a steady flow of traffic coming towards him, as there always was at this time in the evening. The one-way system filtered into St. James’s, carrying passengers up into the fleshpots of the West End.

  He took no notice of the taxicab which slowed down almost at the door of the Travellers’ Club. He did have time to notice a young woman fumbling in her handbag for the right change to pay off the cabby. It was the last thing he saw. A violent pain seared deep into his chest; the last remnants of his dying brain signaled heart attack. The rest was silence and dark oblivion.

  The porter at the Travellers’ came running down the steps, followed by one of the younger servants. One pedestrian walking a few yards behind The Whizzer gave a detailed account to the police. The cab had pulled up, and just as Mr. Blount-Wilson came abreast of it, the young blond woman passenger wearing sunglasses had leaned towards the lowered window and shot him twice with a pistol to which a silencer was attached.

  The cab’s number plate was obscured. Some said by mud and dirt; two other witnesses claimed it had a rag half covering it. But it did not matter to Archie Blount-Wilson, who was dead and gushing blood onto the pavement.

  In the cab Dinah bent low to remove the shades and blond wig, while Ahmad pushed up the speed, slalomed through the other traffic and took to the side streets. They abandoned the taxi ten minutes later in a narrow street temporarily empty of traffic and pedestrians. Then they parted company, separately making their own ways back to the Kensington safe house.