by Tom Sharpe
‘The media?’ bellowed the General. ‘Don’t mention that fucking word in my presence. I have given Glaushof a Directive Number One, Toppest Priority, there’s to be no media intervention and I am not countermanding that order.’
‘I am not suggesting you do. What I am saying is that the way Glaushof is handling the situation we could find ourselves in the middle of a media onslaught that would get world coverage.’
‘Shit,’ said the General, cringing at the prospect. In his mind’s eye he could already see the television cameras mounted on trucks outside the base. There might even be women. He pulled his mind back from this vision of hell. ‘What’s wrong with the way Glaushof’s handling it?’
‘Too heavy,’ said the Colonel. ‘The security clamp-down’s drawing attention to the fact that we do have a problem. That’s one. We should cool it all off by acting normal. Two is we are presently holding a British subject and if you’ve given the Major permission to beat the shit out of him I imagine that’s just what –’
‘I didn’t give him permission to do anything like that, I gave him … well, I guess I said he could interrogate him and …’ He paused and tried the comradely approach. ‘Hell, Joe, Glaushof may be a shitass but he has got him to confess he’s a commie agent. You’ve got to hand it to him.’
‘That confession’s a dummy. I’ve checked it out and had negative affirmation,’ said the Colonel, lapsing into the General’s jargon to soften the blow.
‘Negative affirmation,’ said the General, evidently impressed. ‘That’s serious. I had no idea.’
‘Exactly, sir. That’s why I’m asking for an immediate de-escalation of the security directive intelligence wise. I also want this man Wilt handed over to my authority for proper questioning.’
General Belmonte considered the request almost rationally. ‘If he isn’t Moscow-based, what is he?’
‘That’s what Central Intelligence intend to find out,’ said the Colonel.
Ten minutes later Colonel Urwin left the Airbase Control Centre well satisfied. The General had ordered a security stand-down and Glaushof had been relieved of his custody right to the prisoner.
Theoretically.
*
In practice getting Wilt out of the Glaushof’s house proved rather more awkward. Having visited the Security building and learnt that Wilt had been taken off, still apparently unharmed, to be interrogated at Glaushof’s house, the Colonel had driven there with two Sergeants only to realize that ‘unharmed’ no longer applied. Ghastly noises were emanating from upstairs.
‘Sounds like someone’s having themselves a whole heap of fun,’ said one of the Sergeants as Mrs Glaushof threatened to castrate some horny bastard just as soon as she stopped bleeding to death and why didn’t some other cocksucker open the fucking door so she could get out. In the background Glaushof could be heard telling her plaintively to keep her cool, he’d get the door undone, she didn’t have to shoot the lock off and would she stop loading that fucking revolver.
Mrs Glaushof replied she didn’t intend shooting the fucking lock off, she had other fucking objects in fucking mind, like him and that fucking commie agent who’d bit her and they weren’t going to live to tell the tale, not once she’d got that magazine fucking loaded and why didn’t shells go in the way they were fucking supposed to? For an instant Wilt’s face appeared at the window, only to vanish as a bedside lamp complete with a huge lampshade smashed through the glass and hung upside-down from its cord.
Colonel Urwin studied the thing with horror. Mrs Glaushof’s language was foul enough but the shade, covered with a collage of sado-masochistic images cut from magazines, pictures of kittens in baskets and puppy dogs, not to mention several crimson hearts and flowers, was aesthetically so disgusting that it almost unnerved him.
The action had the opposite effect on Glaushof. Less concerned about the likelihood of his drunken wife murdering a Russian spy with a .38 she had been trying to load with what he hoped was 9 mm. ammunition than with the prospect of having his entire house torn apart and its peculiar contents revealed to the neighbours he left the comparative safety of the bathroom and charged the bedroom door. His timing was bad. Having foiled any hope Wilt might have held of escaping by the window Mrs Glaushof had finally loaded the revolver and pulled the trigger. The shot passed through the door, Glaushof’s shoulder, and one of the tubes in the hamster’s complicated plastic burrow on the staircase wall before embedding in the tufted carpet.
‘Jesus Christ,’ screamed Glaushof, ‘you meant it! You really meant it.’
‘What’s that?’ said Mrs Glaushof, almost as surprised by the consequences of simply pulling the trigger, though definitely less concerned. ‘What you say?’
‘Oh God,’ moaned Glaushof, now slumped to the floor.
‘You think I can’t shoot the fucking lock off?’ Mrs Glaushof enquired. ‘You think that? You think I can’t?’
‘No,’ yelled Glaushof. ‘No, I don’t think that. Jesus, I’m dying.’
‘Hypochondriac,’ Mrs Glaushof shouted back, evidently paying off an old domestic score. ‘Stand back, I’m coming out.’
‘For fuck’s sake,’ squealed Glaushof, eyeing the hole she’d already made in the door near one of the hinges, ‘don’t aim at the lock.’
‘Why not?’ Mrs Glaushof demanded.
It wasn’t a question Glaushof was prepared to answer. In one final attempt to escape the consequences of her next fusillade he rolled sideways and hit the stairs. By the time he’d crashed to the bottom even Mrs Glaushof was concerned.
‘Are you OK, Glausie?’ she asked and simultaneously pulled the trigger. As the second shot punched a hole in a Liberace-style bean bag, Wilt acted. In the knowledge that her next shot might possibly do to him what it had already done to Glaushof and the bag, he picked up a pink furbelowed stool and slammed it down on her head.
‘Macho man,’ grunted Mrs Glaushof, inappropriate to the end, and slid to the floor. For a moment Wilt hesitated. If Glaushof were still alive, and by the sound of breaking glass downstairs it seemed as though he was, there was no point in trying to break the door down. Wilt crossed to the window.
‘Freeze!’ shouted a man down below. Wilt froze. He was staring down at five uniformed men crouched behind handguns. And this time there was no question what they were aiming at.
21
‘Logic dictates,’ said Mr Gosdyke, ‘that we should look at this problem rationally. Now I know that’s difficult but until we have definite proof that your husband is being held at Baconheath against his will there really isn’t any legal action we can take. You do see that?’
Eva gazed into the solicitor’s face and saw only that she was wasting time. It had been Mavis’ idea that she should consult Mr Gosdyke before she did anything hasty. Eva knew what ‘hasty’ meant. It meant being afraid of taking real risks and doing something effective.
‘After all,’ Mavis had said, as they drove back, ‘you may be able to apply for a court order or habeas corpus or something. It’s best to find out.’
But she didn’t need to find out. She’d known all along that Mr Gosdyke wouldn’t believe her and would talk about proof and logic. As if life was logical. Eva didn’t even know what the word meant, except that it always produced in her mind the image of a railway line with a train running along it with no way of getting off it and going across fields and open countryside like a horse. And anyway when you did reach a station you still had to walk to wherever you really wanted to go. That wasn’t the way life worked or people behaved when things were really desperate. It wasn’t even the way the Law worked with people being sent to prison when they were old and absent-minded like Mrs Reeman who had walked out of the supermarket without paying for a jar of pickled onions and she never ate pickles. Eva knew that because she’d helped with Meals on Wheels and the old lady had said she never touched vinegar. No, the real reason had been that she’d had a pekinese called Pickles and he’d died a month before. But the Law hadn’t see
n that, any more than Mr Gosdyke could understand that she already had the proof that Henry was in the airbase because he hadn’t been there when the officer’s manner had changed so suddenly.
‘So there’s nothing you can do?’ she said and got up.
‘Not unless we can obtain proof that your husband really is being held against …’ But Eva was already through the door and had cut out the sounds of those ineffectual words. She went down the stairs and out into the street and found Mavis waiting for her in the Mombasa Coffee House.
‘Well, did he have any advice?’ asked Mavis.
‘No,’ said Eva, ‘he just said there was nothing he could do without proof.’
‘Perhaps Henry’ll telephone you tonight. Now that he knows you’ve been out there and they must have told him …’
Eva shook her head. ‘Why should they have told him?’
‘Look, Eva, I’ve been thinking,’ said Mavis, ‘Henry’s been deceiving you for six months. Now I know what you’re going to say but you can’t get away from it.’
‘He hasn’t been deceiving me the way you mean,’ said Eva. ‘I know that.’
Mavis sighed. It was so difficult to make Eva understand that men were all the same, even a sexually subnormal one like Wilt. ‘He’s been going out to Baconheath every Friday evening and all that time he’s been telling you he’s got this prison job. You’ve got to admit that, haven’t you?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Eva, and ordered tea. She wasn’t in the mood for anything foreign like coffee. Americans drank coffee.
‘The question you have to ask yourself is why didn’t he tell you where he was going?’
‘Because he didn’t want me to know,’ said Eva.
‘And why didn’t he want you to know?’
Eva said nothing.
‘Because he was doing something you wouldn’t like. And we all know what men don’t think their wives would like to know, don’t we?’
‘I know Henry,’ said Eva.
‘Of course you do but we none of us know what even those closest to us are really like.’
‘You knew all about Patrick’s chasing other women,’ said Eva, fighting back. ‘You were always going on about his being unfaithful. That’s why you got those steroid pills from that beastly Dr Kores and now all he does is sit in front of the telly.’
‘Yes,’ said Mavis, cursing herself for ever mentioning the fact. ‘All right, but you said Henry was undersexed. Anyway that only goes to prove my point. I don’t know what Dr Kores put in the mixture she gave you …’
‘Flies,’ said Eva.
‘Flies?’
‘Spanish flies. That’s what Henry called them. He said they could have killed him.’
‘But they didn’t,’ said Mavis. ‘What I’m trying to get across is that the reason he wasn’t performing adequately may have been –’
‘He’s not a dog, you know,’ said Eva.
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘Performing. You talk as though he were something in a circus.’
‘You know perfectly well what I meant.’
They were interrupted by the arrival of the tea. ‘All I’m saying,’ Mavis continued when the waitress had left, ‘is that what you took for Henry’s being undersexed –’
‘I said he wasn’t very active. That’s what I said,’ said Eva.
Mavis stirred her coffee and tried to keep calm. ‘He may not have wanted you, dear,’ she said finally, ‘because for the last six months he has been spending every Friday night in bed with some American servicewoman at that airbase. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.’
‘If that had been the case,’ said Eva, bridling, ‘I don’t see how he could have come home at ten thirty, not if he was teaching as well. He never left the house until nearly seven and it takes at least three-quarters of an hour to drive out there. Two three-quarters make …’
‘One and a half hours,’ snapped Mavis. ‘That doesn’t prove anything. He could have had a class of one.’
‘Of one?’
‘One person, Eva dear.’
‘They’re not allowed to have only one person in a class,’ said Eva. ‘Not at the Tech. If they don’t have ten …’
‘Well, Baconheath may be different,’ said Mavis, ‘and anyway they fiddle these things. My bet is that Henry’s teaching consisted of taking off his clothes and –’
‘Which just shows how much you know about him,’ interrupted Eva. ‘Henry taking his clothes off in front of another woman! That’ll be the day. He’s too shy.’
‘Shy?’ said Mavis, and was about to say that he hadn’t been so shy with her the other morning. But the dangerous look had come back on to Eva’s face and she thought better of it. It was still there ten minutes later when they went out to the car park to fetch the quads from school.
*
‘Okay, let’s take it from there,’ said Colonel Urwin. ‘You say you didn’t shoot Major Glaushof.’
‘Of course I didn’t,’ said Wilt. ‘What would I do a thing like that for? She was trying to blow the lock off the door.’
‘That’s not the version I’ve got here,’ said the Colonel, referring to a file on the desk in front of him, ‘according to which you attempted to rape Mrs Glaushof orally and when she refused to co-operate you bit her leg. Major Glaushof tried to intervene by breaking the door down and you shot him through it.’
‘Rape her orally?’ said Wilt, ‘what the hell does that mean?’
‘I prefer not to think,’ said the Colonel with a shudder.
‘Listen,’ said Wilt, ‘if anyone was being raped orally I was. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in close proximity to that woman’s muff but I have and I can tell you the only way out was to bite the bitch.’
Colonel Urwin tried to erase this awful image. His security classification rated him ‘highly heterosexual’ but there were limits and Mrs Glaushof’s muff was unquestionably off them. ‘That doesn’t exactly gel with your statement that she was attempting to escape from the room by blowing the lock off with a .38, does it? Would you mind explaining what she was doing that for?’
‘I told you she was trying … well, I’ve told you what she was trying to do and as a way out I bit her. That’s when she got mad and went for the gun.’
‘It still doesn’t explain why the door was locked and she had to blow the lock. Are you saying Major Glaushof had locked you in?’
‘She’d thrown the fucking key out of the window,’ said Wilt wearily, ‘and if you don’t believe me go and look for the thing outside.’
‘Because she found you so sexually desirable she wanted to rape you … orally?’ said the Colonel.
‘Because she was drunk.’
Colonel Urwin got up and consulted the sporting print for inspiration. It wasn’t easy to find. About the only thing that rang true was that Glaushof’s ghastly wife had been drunk. ‘What I still don’t understand is why you were there in the first place.’
‘You think I do?’ said Wilt. ‘I came out here on Friday night to give a lecture and the next thing I know I’ve been gassed, injected, dressed up like something that’s going to be operated on, driven all over the place with a fucking blanket over my head and asked insane questions about radio transformers in my car –’
‘Transmitters,’ said the Colonel.
‘Whatever,’ said Wilt. ‘And told if I don’t confess to being a Russian spy or a fanatical raving Shi’ite Muslim I’m going to have my brains plastered all over the ceiling. And that’s just for starters. After that I’m in a horrible bedroom with a woman dressed up like a prostitute who hurls keys out of the window and shoves her dugs in my mouth and then threatens to suffocate me with her cunt. And you’re asking me for an explanation?’ He sank back in his chair and sighed hopelessly.
‘That still doesn’t –’
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Wilt. ‘If you want insanity explained go and ask that homicidal maniac Major. I’ve had a bellyful.’
&nb
sp; The Colonel got up and went out the door. ‘What do you make of him?’ he asked Captain Fortune who had been sitting with a technician recording the interview.
‘I’ve got to say he convinces me,’ said Fortune. ‘That Mona Glaushof would screw a fucking skunk if there weren’t nothing better to hand.’
‘I’ll say,’ said the technician. ‘She’s been humping Lieutenant Harah like he’s a human vibrator. The guy’s been taking mega-vitamins to keep up.’
‘Dear God,’ said the Colonel, ‘and Glaushof’s in charge of security. What’s he doing letting Mona Messalina loose on this one for?’
‘Got a two-way mirror in the bathroom,’ said the Captain. ‘Could be he gets his thrills through it.’
‘A two-way mirror in the bathroom? The bastard’s got to be sick watching his wife screwing a guy he thinks is a Russian agent.’
‘Maybe he thought the Russkies have got a different technique. Something he could learn,’ said the technician.
‘I want a check run on that key outside the house,’ said the Colonel and went out into the passage.
‘Well?’ he asked.
‘Nothing fits,’ said the Captain. ‘That corporal in Electronics is no fool. He’s certain the equipment he saw in the car was British classified. Definitely non-Russian. No record of it ever being used by anyone else.’
‘Are you suggesting he was under surveillance by British Security?’
‘It’s a possibility.’
‘It would be if he hadn’t demanded MI5 attendance the moment Glaushof started putting the heat on,’ said Urwin. ‘Have you ever heard of a Moscow agent calling for British Intelligence when he’s been blown? I haven’t.’
‘So we go back to your theory that the Brits were running an exercise on base security systems. About the only thing that adds up.’
‘Nothing adds up for me. If it had been a routine check they’d have come to his rescue by now. And why has he clammed? No point in sweating it out. Against that we’ve got those transmitters and the fact that Clodiak says he was nervous and agitated all through the lecture. That indicates he’s no expert and I don’t believe he ever knew his car was tagged. Where’s the sense?’