The Partridge Kite

by Michael Nicholson

  ‘Kellick,’ he said, ‘I’m not taking this to Cabinet.’

  ‘No, Prime Minister.’

  ‘It goes no further than the three of us.’

  ‘Four, Prime Minister. Fry, my second in command, taped the interview and transcribed the report.’

  ‘Fry can keep his bloody mouth shut, I trust. He won’t begin to have pangs of conscience like Sanderson, will he?’ ‘He’s sound, of course.’

  ‘Of course! There’s no “of course”, Mr Kellick, you should know that, no bloody “of course”. This man is mad and those who employ him and those he directs are mad. But do they have the capability to do what you think they did last night? Blow a bank, bomb the rig and kill Scammill all in one evening? Do we take him seriously?’

  They waited. Half a minute passed. Slowly the Prime Minister lowered his head and faced them directly, both hands clasped, index fingers only pointing upwards, tip to tip. It reminded Knightley, watching from his corner, of a silly rhyme he’d been taught as a child: ‘Here’s the church, here’s the steeple, look inside, there’s the people.’

  ‘Kellick!’ The Prime Minister was sharp-voiced. ‘You will treat this as genuine. It has my priority. You will employ a man to seek out CORDON, a man not on your staff. I don’t want a regular. Get him by another agent, second or third remove. I don’t want him traceable to you, because you are traceable to me. I’ll hear nothing more from you, officially or otherwise, Kellick, until this man of yours can convince us that the Organisation Sanderson describes exists. If you are ever in such a position, I shall want to know on that date what you intend to do. If a threat exists you will tell me how you plan to erase it. Until then, Kellick, I am out of it!’

  Kellick left Downing Street, crossing the Foreign Office Square into King Charles Street. At the second arch he stopped at the row of telephone kiosks and found one that worked, keeping the door open with his foot to let out the stench of urine. He dialled a London number.

  ‘Fry,’ he said, ‘I’ve just left him. He’s heard the tape and wants a contract but he’s covered his tracks. If we’re all wrong only you and I lose. I’ll walk back home. The air will help sort things out a bit. Meet me there in forty minutes. Bring with you the A.D. files and make certain all the photographs are there too. And bring some chicken pieces from that place near you.’

  Kellick buttoned his raincoat tight under his chin, but as he turned into Whitehall, water was already trickling down between the collar and his neck. The rain like ice stung his face and the backs of his hands. The walk to his flat in Prince of Wales Drive, Battersea, would take forty minutes at this pace. By the time he got there he knew he would have settled on a short list of four, maybe five men. One would check out the fact or nonsense of CORDON; the threat or the farce.

  The paper seller on the corner of Parliament Square was shouting something Kellick couldn’t quite make out over the din of the passing traffic. But there was only one headline today and Kellick knew it now by heart. He crossed the square and passed the policemen at the gates of the House of Commons car park.

  The man with the umbrella followed ten yards behind.

  Kellick’s flat was as stereotyped as himself: austere, nothing ever out of place. If the cleaning woman cleared the chessboard for dusting, he would afterwards spend much time ensuring that each piece was back in its place, perfectly centred. Once, in one of his rare moments of carelessness, he’d put Black Queen on White Square and hadn’t realised until the next morning. It had depressed him.

  He made no apologies to himself for his fretfulness in matters concerning tidiness. It was why he insisted on wall- to-wall fitted carpets throughout his flat; no dust, no rugs to slide askew. It was why he preferred Venetian blinds to curtains, duvets to blankets and sheets. They were tidy, symmetrical, no fuss. The colour of his flat never changed, it was merely repainted the same colour every spring; cream and white to match the light-coloured natural bentwood chairs and dark brown upholstery. Being in Kellick’s flat was like being in the middle of a coffee cream.

  But the events of the past three days had upset his routine, so that he had ignored his daily chores. The sight this evening of the greasy washing-up water with last night’s dinner dishes jutting out of it like greasy shipwrecks had jarred him. Nothing like that had ever happened to him before. But then, neither had Sanderson!

  By midnight he and Fry had sifted through the twenty- two references on the A.D. file. All but three were back in the thick brown folder. Those three were neatly in a line on the sofa, a photograph of each man stapled to the top right- hand comer of the reference sheet. The A.D. file contained the names, photographs, fingerprints, voice tapes, biographies and security ratings of men not on the permanent staff of the Special State Operations. They were men employed on a freelance basis to do particular jobs - jobs that might prove embarrassing to the Department and Government if things went wrong, as things occasionally did. Sometimes a man on an A.D. contract, caught by foreign police, would throw his cover, admit in the hope of leniency or exchange to be an agent working for British Intelligence, The British Government in turn would appear outraged by the claim, identify him as a convicted bank robber or whatever his past form was, and sit and watch foreign justice take its course. It was a Catch 22 that never failed.

  Among the twenty men Kellick and Fry had looked at, two had been convicted bank robbers - one of them convicted of armed robbery and recently completing a ten-year sentence; another was a pleasant-faced confidence trickster, another a stuntman; there was a mercenary, and a forger. But on the three faces staring up from the sofa there was a small red star stuck at the bottom of each photo. It meant they were clean: no police record, no embassy contacts, hopefully unknown abroad. It meant they were professionals, and costly!

  Tom McCullin was Kellick’s first choice but Fry suggested they checked out the other two as standbys. Kellick propped up McCullin’s file on the mantelpiece, the photo on the left, the biography in a neat column on the right-hand side. Tom’s photo was not a posed one. He looked startled. His mouth was open, his hair ruffled and a bow tie crooked. He looked, as Kellick said sourly, like a second-hand car salesman caught pouring sawdust into a sump. But there was no mistaking the eyes. Few men, sober, looking into those eyes would protest too loudly at Tom’s misdemeanours.

  Kellick read out aloud to Fry, his finger passing down the typed column.

  ‘Aged forty-one, birthday January 9th. Height a fraction under six feet; weight twelve stone as of last medical two months ago. Service history, RAF Regiment National Service, transferred after two years to SAS on short service commission. Five years in Hong Kong, Cyprus, seconded to British Embassy Saigon on Military Attach^ staff, unofficially assigned to South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos for intelligence feedback. Did not renew commission after fifteen months on-off duty, Ulster. Pioneered the use of the night-sight there and established eighteen kills; previous kill ratings not known.’

  Kellick noticed the figure eighteen had been underlined in pencil by someone in the Department. He made a mental note to find out who and why. A postscript at the foot of the page noted that McCullin had left NI after his photograph had been found in a search on a Provisional HQ in Crossmaglen, South Armagh. It meant his work as a sniper and instructor on night-sights and the new M.10 rifles had been leaked to the IRA. Left with Captain’s rank. Ordnance, one service medal. Since 1974, Tom had been employed on separate contracts by the Department. He’d been away seven months on the last. All had been successful. There had been no kickbacks from inside the Department or from the foreign embassies whose various employees had sometimes been the subjects of Tom’s hard work and marksmanship.

  Kellick gave the file to Fry and went into the kitchen. The sink revolted him. He pulled at the plug-chain. Grease from the cold washing-up water stuck to his hands and covered his wristwatch. It made him want to retch. He’d taken off his shoes but his socks were still wet an
d his feet were cold.

  He was finding it hard to come to terms with all that he had heard in the past three days. He was very definitely an outer man, a good outer surface man: strong face, good voice, steel tips on the shoes man. And being in charge of Special State Operations had never troubled him before. He’d served a long apprenticeship and he’d never relied on luck to get on: which was fortunate because he’d never had even a mouse’s share of it.

  He’d always coped because it was always so predictable.

  But all that he’d learnt over the past seventy-two hours had shattered that comfortable feeling - the unpleasant combination of fighting an enemy at home with none of the usual let-outs available to him if things went wrong. He had eight years to go to retirement and a knighthood: he meant to enjoy both. A cock-up on a foreign could always be covered. There had been many before and here he was stronger than ever. But a cockup on this one would be hard to hide - he couldn’t expect to smother the Department’s recriminations. Balls this up, and he’d join the holdover list of senior civil servants waiting for a transfer. He walked back into the lounge just as Fry had finished listening to the radio news bulletin. He raised his eyebrows, nodding towards the set.

  ‘No,’ said Fry, ‘no developments. Same headlines, same blanks.’

  Kellick said, ‘The Prime Minister wants us to employ our man through a third party, so there’s no trace-back to him. I can see his point, I suppose.’

  ‘He realised,’ Fry said, ‘that we must pick someone from our own files. How the hell are we expected to employ McCullin or anyone from the A.D. without his twigging he’s working for us?’

  Kellick sat back on the sofa, pulled off his wet socks and began rubbing his feet and massaging the toes.

  ‘That’s the question. Fry,’ he said. ‘Now let’s have the answer!’

  ‘We did something of the kind with Bellinger last year, contracted him through a private detective agency that he occasionally worked for.’

  ‘Does McCullin string for a detective agency. Fry?’ ‘No!’

  ‘Then try and talk some bloody sense, for Christ’s sake!’ Kellick was tired and he never tried to hide his irritability with subordinates.

  ‘But we could invent one,’ Fry came back. ‘We could employ him - proper approach, above the table, so much a day, expenses plus, the usual way. And for cover we could make it a foreign-based agency.’

  Kellick thought for a while. ‘We’d have to be very careful with our introduction.’

  ‘Yes, but we could be recommended to him via an old contact - one that is still with us.’

  ‘Of course!’ said Kellick. ‘Someone who has or has had proper access to the file but not anyone who had the authority to offer a contract direct.’ Kellick was warming to the idea. ‘What if we could find someone who had reason to help McCullin but who is duty bound to us first. . . no suspect loyalties?’

  ‘How about Mrs Cathcart?’

  ‘Exactly! Mrs Kate Cathcart, nee Bowes. Exactly right for us!’

  ‘Are they still involved with each other?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘If they are, we could have complications. McCullin might be frightened off. She could refuse to help.’

  ‘She can’t refuse. Fry, you know damn well she can’t. And why should McCullin scurry off? She’ll have nothing to do with the offer. She’ll just be the in-between girl, trying to help an old lover. They don’t have to meet if they don’t want to. All we need is her name and status to make her recommendation authentic. And there’s no reason why he shouldn’t take to the agency offer - our make-up men will take care of that! What is essential is that he accepts the first approach. We must concentrate our cunning on that. Fry!’

  Fry moved to get his reversible blue-grey raincoat hanging on the back of the door, trying to ignore the puddle of rain that had gathered beneath it, gradually seeping into the pile of the cream Indian carpet. Kellick had seen it though, and quickly walked into the kitchen for a cloth with his usual fussiness.

  ‘Fry,’ he said, as he went down on one knee to wipe up the water, ‘have Cathcart in my office eleven Monday morning. Tomorrow would be better, of course, but Sundays are for emergencies only.’ It was one of his many standard glib phrases.

  Both men looked at each other for the first time properly that evening. . . for emergencies only . . . they’d almost forgotten what it was all about; why they were there.

  Kellick continued quickly, ‘You can begin groundwork tomorrow. Find out where McCullin is, what he’s been doing since he came back from Prague: check his bank balance, and find out what he’s been drinking recently: how much of it, too! Let me have it all before eleven on Monday in your handwriting. I shall want to be briefed before I see Cathcart.’

  Fry opened the door, stuffing the A.D. file into his Samsonite briefcase.

  ‘And remember,’ Kellick said, ‘only four of us know anything about CORDON and Sanderson. It must stay that way until McCullin either stands it up or knocks it down. I’ll set up the cover story for Cathcart by the time I see you.’

  Fry drove away along Prince of Wales Drive a few minutes past midnight. The man under the umbrella standing in the doorway at the next block of flats thirty yards along watched the red tail lights of Fry’s Range Rover swing left towards Chelsea Bridge, and disappear. He waited. Ten minutes later the lights of Kellick’s flat went out. Then the man too walked away towards the bridge and Chelsea to find a taxi. It was still raining.

  Monday, 13 December

  Tom McCullin was not a tidy man. Not unhygienic, hut scruffy. He would blame it as a reaction, in approaching middle age, to the regimentation of his youth: that and seven years of tidy Service life. His body was sagging, he’d say, but his mind would see him through!

  He’d never married. And had he stayed in one place long enough he might well have fallen into the bachelor routine of tidiness in all things, slavishly obeying the first rule of survival for those living alone: never come home to the breakfast grouts and dishes. He knew the rule well enough but had never had the energy to keep to it. He knew the sight of cold breakfast leftovers, the greying sheets of an unmade bed, the smell of whisky glasses and saucers piled high with fag ends. Bad habits that had made many a man seek the safety and orderliness of marriage.

  It wasn’t often that Tom came home to bedsitter chaos because more often than not he never came home at all. It was one of the Department’s fetishes that if off on a job - he could never call them ‘contracts’ and keep a straight face - an agent must never prepare to leave too obviously. There should never be a suitcase packed, no notes for the milkman. You must leave your accommodation - a Kellick word that, couldn’t find it in himself to call it a home - as if you were going out to buy a packet of tea.

  Sure enough, it had always worked. Everything he needed was always waiting for him at the Department: he got most of his underwear free that way, the only payola that was ever available.

  When he came back, his flat was always spick and span. The kitchen sink and the ashtrays were always empty, the beer stains had been washed out of the carpets and the bed linen was white, crisp and ironed in squares with the middle press mark dead centre of the mattress. He always felt, coming back after the grottiness of a job away, that it was New Year’s morning and someone had turned over a new leaf for him. It was a service he’d come to expect: the least the Department could do for him, pay the one pound eighty pence an hour for a decent char.

  What he didn’t know was that it was a service the Department considered essential, and not for any reason of hygiene. For security reasons only. By the time Tom was sipping his first gin and tonic thirty-nine thousand feet up on his way to some foreign assignment, his flat had already been turned inside out. It was the Department’s way of satisfying itself that he had left nothing around that could embarrass them, should the flat be visited by people outside the British Go
vernment’s employ while he was away. It was also a necessary routine, sorting out his letters and papers, to be certain of Tom’s continued loyalty to his government and country: to be certain that he continued to carry his high security rating.

  And recently he’d been blessed with yet another Departmental service. They paid all his bills for him. He’d now quite forgotten that spasm of panic every time he’d opened the front door to find an ominous pile of manilla envelopes scattered across the cold, empty hallway. It depended on his mood - that is before or after a Scotch - whether or not he would stuff them immediately into the waste bin, or some desk drawer he knew he was unlikely ever to open again. Sooner or later of course, after the solicitors’ warning notes and eventual court order had joined the rest in anonymity, the bailiffs would arrive threatening to take away silver, antiques and Persian rugs - of which Tom had none.

  On one occasion an unfortunate man, recently retired from the Metropolitan Police and acting on behalf of the South-Western Electricity Board in a civilian capacity, told the magistrate at Wandsworth how the said Mr McCullin had split open the lobes of both his ears. He was still partially deaf. It happened in an argument over whether the electricity supply should be disconnected. Mr McCullin, the injured party told the magistrate, had clapped his hands together very fast and very hard. The bailiff’s head was painfully in between. The incident had upset the Department and payments had to be made to various court reporters to ignore these particular proceedings. The payment of Tom’s bills was now the responsibility of some minor clerk in the Department, sums later to be deducted from payments made to Tom and deducted in the same way that the cost of cleaning his flat was made - something Tom would also have known about had he ever bothered to look at the slip of paper that always accompanied his cheque.

  It was mid-afternoon, Monday, and the red telephone on the floor in Tom’s bedroom had been ringing for nearly two minutes. Very few people had his number, and of that few only a handful would ring that long. Tom always let it ring long before he bothered to answer. When he was asked to explain why, he’d say that only callers who had something important to say or something equally important to ask would hang on that long. And Tom was only interested enough in the machine to use it for such reasons. He used much the same simple logic to explain why he kept his phone on the bedroom floor. If the phone rang during the day, he’d say, it was no bother walking to it.