Bagley, Desmond - The Freedom Trap

by The Freedom Trap

  Ill Where does a thing like this begin? I suppose one might be logical and say it began at birth, but that's the trouble with logic -- it leads to silly conclusions. Again, one might say it began in Johannesburg but it was only because of who I was -- and what I was -- that led to me being chosen, and so the roots go further back. Anyway, Johannesburg seemed to be a convenient point to begin, so I started to think of Jo'burg, that overgrown mining camp where the streets are paved with gold.

  It was a bright sunny morning with not a cloud in the sky, something which might lighten the spirits of an Englishman but doesn't do a damn thing for a South African because most mornings are bright and sunny and clouds in winter are as rare as hens' teeth. I lived in Hillbrow in a flat in one of the towering blocks of concrete overlooking the city -- the city which, at that moment, was covered with its usual layer of greasy smog. On and off, for twenty years, the City F athers have been thinking of introducing the smokeless zone system, but they haven't got round to it yet.

  A man living on his own either lives like a pig or develops certain labour-saving knacks, short-cuts like the egg in the coffee percolator. Within twenty minutes of getting up I was on my way down to the street. In the foyer I opened my personal letter-box and collected the day's mail-three of those nasty envelopes with windows in them which I stuck into my pocket unopened -- and a letter from Lucy.

  I looked at it a little blankly. I hadn't heard from Lucy for over six years -- six slow and uneventful years -- and I couldn't really believe it at first. I read the letter again. It was just a quickly scrawled note really; green ink on expensive, deckle-edged writing paper.

  Darling, I'm in Johannesburg for a quick visit. Could I see you again for old time's sake? I'll be at the Zoo Lake restaurant at midday. I've changed, darling, I really have -- so I'll be wearing a white gardenia. I don't want you to put your foot in it by accosting the wrong girl.

  Please come, darling; I'm looking forward to seeing you so much.

  Ever yours, Lucy.

  I sniffed the sheet of paper and caught a delicate fragrance. Lucy was up to her old tricks again. I put the note into my breast pocket and went back to my flat to telephone the office. I forget what excuse I used but I really couldn't tell the boss I wanted the day off to see an old girl friend. Then I took the car for servicing; it could be I would need it in a hurry and it had better be in good shape.

  At a quarter to twelve I was drifting along the road towards the Zoo Lake. The expanses of winter-yellowed grass were dotted with black nannies looking after their young charges and, in the distance, the lake twinkled under the hot sun. I put the car in the restaurant car park and wandered slowly down to the water's edge where people were feeding the birds.

  There was nobody around who looked like Lucy. At least no one was wearing a gardenia. I looked across the lake at the people boating inexpertly then turned to go back to the restaurant where, just outside, a sand-coloured man sat on a bench fanning himself with his hat. He wore a white, gardenia.

  I walked over and sat beside him. 'Lucy?'

  He turned and looked at me with curiously naked eyes. 'Lucy 1' he said venomously. 'Ever since that Russian operation in Switzerland during the war the security clots have gone nuts on the name.' He put on his hat. 'I know who you are -- I'm Mackintosh.'

  'Glad to know you,' I said formally.

  He cast a speculative eye at the lake. 'If I happened to be a crackerjack secret service man I'd suggest that we hire a boat and row into the middle of that bit of water so we could talk privately. But that's nonsense, of course. What I suggest is that we have an early lunch here. We'll be just as private, providing we don't shout, we'll be a bloody sight more comfortable, and I won't run the risk of making a damned fool of myself in a boat.'

  'Suits me,' I said. 'I didn't have much breakfast.'

  He arose and took the gardenia from his lapel to drop it into a convenient waste basket. 'Why people have this fetish for the sexual organs of vegetables is beyond me,' he said. 'Come on.'

  We found a table in a corner in the outside court where a vine-covered trellis protected us from the heat of the sun. Mackintosh looked around and said appreciatively. 'This is a nice place. You South Africans know how to live well.'

  I said, 'If you know who I am then you know I'm not a South African.'

  Of course,' he said, and took a notebook from his pocket. 'Let me see -- ah, yes; Owen Edward Stannard, born in Hong Kong in 1934, educated in Australia.' He reeled off a string of schools. 'At university specialized in the study of Asiatic languages. Was recruited by a department that it is better not to mention while still at university. Worked in the field in Cambodia, Viet-Nam, Malaysia and Indonesia under a variety of covers. Was captured in Indonesia during the upheaval which disposed of Sukarno and cover badly blown.'

  He looked up. 'I understand you had a nasty time there.'

  I smiled. There are no scars.' That was true -- no scars that were visible.

  'Umph!' he said, and returned to his notebook. 'It was considered that your usefulness was at an end in the Far East so you were pulled out and sent to South Africa as a sleeper. That was seven years ago.' He snapped the notebook closed and put it back into his pocket. "That would be while South Africa was still in the Commonwealth.''

  "That's right,' I said.

  'Our masters are not very trusting folk, are they? Anyway, you're here as a sleeper; you say nothing and do nothing until you're called upon -- is that right?' He wagged a finger. 'Forgive the recapitulation but I'm from a different department. All this secret service stuff strikes me as being a bit comic opera, and I want to see if I've got it right.'

  'You've got it right,' I assured him.

  Serious conversation stopped then because a waiter came to take our order. I ordered crayfish cardinal because it wasn't often that someone stood me a lunch, while Mackintosh had something with a salad. We shared a bottle- of wine.

  When the dishes were on the table and it was safe to talk again Mackintosh said, 'Now I want to get this absolutely straight. Are you known to the police here -- or to the security forces?'

  'Not that I know of,' I said. 'I think my cover is safe.'

  'So you've never had a prison sentence?'

  'No.'

  'What about civil cases?'

  I considered. 'Just the usual things. I've had a couple of parking tickets. And a couple of years ago I had a legal barney with a man who owed me money; it came to a court case.'

  'Who won?'

  'He did, damn it!' I said feelingly.

  Mackintosh smiled. 'I've been reading your record so I know most of these things. I just wanted to see your reactions. So what it comes to is that you have a clean record here as far as the local coppers are concerned.'

  I nodded. 'That sums it up.'

  'Good,' he said. 'Because you are going to be working with the South African police and it would never do if they knew you to be a British plant. I couldn't see them co-operating in those circumstances.' He nibbled on a lettuce leaf. 'Have you ever been to England?'

  'Never,' I said, and hesitated. 'You ought to know that I've built up my cover with a slightly anti-British bias. It's a quite common thing here for even English-speaking people to be anti-British -- especially since Rhodesia blew up. In the circumstances I thought it inadvisable to take a holiday in England.'

  'I think we can forget your cover for a moment," said Mackintosh. 'I'm authorized to pull you out if I find it necessary.

  The job I'm considering you for will be in England.'

  It was very strange. All my adult life had been spent in the service of Britain and I'd never even seen the place. 'I'd like that,' I said.

  'You might not like it when you hear what the job is,' said Mackintosh grimly. He sampled the wine. 'Very nice,' he said appreciatively, 'if a touch acid.' He put down the glass. 'What do you know about the British prison system?'

  'Nothing.'

  'I'll let you have a copy of the Mountbatten Report," he said. '
You'll find it fascinating reading. But I'll give you the gist of it now. Lord Mountbatten found that the British prisons are as full of holes as a Swiss cheese. Do you know how many escapes there are each year?'

  'No. There was something about it in the papers a couple of years ago, but I didn't read it up closely.'

  'More than five hundred. If it's any less than that they think they've had a good year. Of course, most of the escapees are picked up quite soon, but a small percentage get clean away -and that small percentage is rising. It's a troublesome situation.'

  'I can imagine it would be,' I said. I couldn't see his point; there was nothing in this to concern me.

  Mackintosh wasn't a man to miss a nuance in a tone of voice. He looked me in the eye and said quietly, 'I don't give a damn how many murderers or rapists, homicidal maniacs or ordinary small time thieves get out of gaol. That's the worry of the prison officers and the police. My field is state security and, as far as I'm concerned, the situation is getting out of hand. The Prime Minister thinks likewise and he's told me to do something about it.'

  'Oh!" I said uncertainly.

  'Oh!' he echoed disgustedly. 'Look at it this way. We put Blake away for forty-two years, not altogether as a punishment but to keep him out of the hands of the Russians. Within five years he flies the coop and pops up in Moscow where he chirps his head off.'

  He looked broodingly into his glass. 'Suppose Blake hadn't got clean away -- suppose he'd been picked up in a month. The police would be happy and so would the prison officers, but damn it all to hell, I wouldn't! I'd want to know what the devil he'd been doing that month -- who he'd been talking to. See my point?'

  I nodded. 'If that happened the major reason for gaoling him would disappear. To slap him back in chokey for another forty years would be like closing the stable door after the horse has gone."

  'The horse being the information in Blake's head-not the man himself.' Mackintosh moved restlessly. 'They're building a high security prison on the Isle of Wight. Mountbatten wants to call it Vectis which shows that, among other things, he's had a classical education. A very able man, Mountbatten. He took one look at the plans of this high class chicken coop and demonstrated how easy it would be to get a man out.'

  He looked at me expectantly as though he wanted me to say something, so I obliged. 'To get a. man out?'

  He grinned. 'I'm pleased to see you live up to the good things your dossier records of you.' He held out his glass. 'I rather like this wine.'

  I gave him a refill. 'It's nice to know I'm appreciated.'

  'If you read the Mountbatten Report -- particularly the bits towards the end where he discusses this new prison -- you'll find yourself wondering if you haven't come across a major work of science fiction. Closed-circuit television with delay lines and electronic logic circuits which trigger an alarm if anything moves in the field of vision is one nice idea -- that's for the defence, of course. For the attack there are helicopters and rocket-powered jump suits, for God's sake! Very James Bondery. Do you get the drift of it?'

  'Yes,' I said slowly. 'Organization.'

  'Right!' said Mackintosh. 'For the first time in years someone has come up with a brand new crime. Crime is just like any other business -- it's conducted only for profit -- and someone has figured a way to make a profit out of getting people out of prison. I suppose it started with the Great Train Robbery; those boys were given exceptionally heavy sentences-Biggs and Wilson got thirty years each -- but they had money and were able to buy an organization.'

  He sighed. 'Sometimes I wonder if the judges know what the devil they're doing. A murderer can be out in ten years or less, but watch your step if you commit a crime against property. Anyway, an organization was set up, dedicated to springing long-term prisoners who could pay enough, and you'd be surprised how many of those there are. And once such an organization gets going, like any other business it tends to expand, and whoever is running it has gone looking for custom -- and he doesn't care where the money comes from, either.' The Russians?'

  'Who else,' said Mackintosh sourly. 'I don't care if all the train robbers fly the coop and live the life of Riley on the Riviera, but when it comes to state security then something must be done.' He frowned. 'If I had my way such security risks would be collected together in a special prison and guarded by the army -- military police empower to kill if necessary. But our masters prefer not to do it that way.'

  I said curiously, 'Where do I come into all this?'

  'I haven't finished putting you in the picture,' he said irritably. 'The PM wanted something done about it -- so something was done. The police had a crack at it, and so did the Special Branch and the more shady and esoteric counter-intelligence units. They all got nowhere. There was one occasion when they did get a bit close to it; a prisoner already in gaol expressed a willingness to talk. Guess what happened to him.'

  I'm a realist, so I said flatly, 'He died suddenly.'

  'Oh, he was killed, all right,' said Mackintosh. 'But this gang sprung him from prison to do it. Can't you see the flaming impudence of it? This organization is so bloody sure of itself that it can take a man out of one of Her Majesty's prisons who doesn't want to go. One cheep from him and he'd still be alive -- but they were still able to spring him. His body was found three days later; he'd been shot through the back of the head.'

  'I didn't see any reports on that,' I said.

  'It was put under security wraps immediately,' said Mackintosh a little tiredly. 'Nobody wanted a thing like that to be aired publicly. There's a veiled reference to it in the Mount-batten Report -- look at paragraph 260.'

  'Where do I come in?' I asked again.

  'I'll come to you when I'm good and ready. Now, my business is state security, and you can put out of your head any guff about counter-intelligence cloak-and-dagger stuff. I work on a quite different plane, at Cabinet level, in fact -- responsible and reporting to only the Prime Minister. Since everybody else has fallen down on this job he has given me the sole and total responsibility of getting the job done in my own peculiar way -- but not in my own time.' He rubbed the top of his head. 'Of course, time is a relative thing, as I explained to the PM and he agreed. But let's hope there are no more security escapes while I'm in charge, because it's my head that's on the block.'

  He looked around and waved at a waiter. 'Let's have coffee -- and I think I'll have a van der Hum; I believe in sampling the wine of the country. Will you join me?'

  'I'll have a Drambuie,' I said drily.

  He ordered the coffee and the liqueurs, then said abruptly, 'Ever heard of a man called Rearden -- Joseph Rearden?'

  I thought about _it for a while. 'No.'

  'I didn't think you would. Rearden is -- or was -- a criminal. A very good one, too. Clever, intelligent and resourceful; somewhat like you, I'd say.'

  'Thanks for the compliment,' I said. 'He's dead?'

  'He was killed three weeks ago in South-West Africa. No funny business suspected -- just a plain ordinary car crash. The God of Motorists sacrifices good and bad alike. The point is that no one knows he's dead, except you, me and a few highly placed South African coppers. When the PM gave me this Godawful job certain facilities were placed at my disposal, and I immediately began to look for someone like Rearden -- a newly dead rotten egg whose death could be hushed up. He could have been found in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the States or, even, South Africa. The fact is that he turned up in South Africa. Here's his photograph.'

  I laid it face down on the table as the waiter served the coffee and only turned it up when we were alone again. Mackintosh watched me approvingly as I scanned the picture. He said, 'As soon as I had Rearden I began to look for someone who looked like Rearden, someone who could pass for a South African. Computers are marvellous gadgets -- one came up with you in twenty minutes.'

  'So it's going to be a substitution,' I said. 'I've done that kind of thing before, but it's risky. I could be spotted very easily.'

  'I don't think so,' sa
id Mackintosh confidently. 'To begin with, you'll be in England where Rearden has never been and, even so, you won't be moving about England much so it's unlikely you'll bump into any of his old pals.'

  I said, 'What happened to Rearden's body?'

  'He was buried under another name. I pulled some strings.'

  'Tough luck on his family,' I said. 'Did he have a wife?'

  'No wife -- and his parents will get along without him.'

  I looked at this spare man with the thinning sandy hair and the colourless eyelashes and thought that he was a pretty ruthless bastard. I wondered how I would get along with him in this peculiar arrangement he was planning. 'So I'm Rearden,' I said. 'And I'm in England. What then?'

  'Not so fast,' said Mackintosh. 'Although Rearden was clever he lost -- once only. He served a prison sentence in Pretoria quite a while ago. Do you know anything about South African prisons?"

  'Not a thing, thank God!'

  'You'd better learn. I'll have a man give you a course on prison conditions and the slang -- especially the slang.' He offered me a twisted smile. 'It might be a good idea if you did time for a month to get the right idea. I can arrange that.' I could see him turning the idea over in his mind and rejecting it. He shook his head. 'No, that won't do. It's too risky.'

  I was glad of that; I don't particularly like gaols. He drained his coffee cup. 'Let's leave here; the place is filling up and I'd like to discuss the rest of it in greater privacy.' He paid the bill and we left the restaurant and strolled into the middle distance to sit under a gum tree where there were no ears within fifty yards.

  He took out a pipe and started to fill it. 'All the people who have tried to crack this organization have failed. They've tried it from the outside and failed, and they've tried penetration and failed. They've tried to ring in fake gaolbirds -- and failed. The organization has fantastically good security because we know as much now as we did at the beginning -- and that's only one thing. The organization is known to the underworld a- the Scarperers, and that doesn't get us very far.'