The Widow's Son

by Daniel Kemp

  “I pressed him for an opinion on that accent and he thought the man came from somewhere in Missouri. I asked him why he'd ruled out other southern states, settling on just the one. Apparently it's a colloquial thing. The man he spoke to used the word—dingnation: Don't you three go making some dingnation of a mess over this one. Guerny was certain that it was a word that Mark Twain had made up for a novel and a man from Missouri would know that. A learned man, was Guerny. Anyway, the matter these two had previously spoken of was the assassination of a Saudi Arabian general in the Gulf War conflict name of Imed Hamed Mohamed. The assassination was successful. Guerny and his two Delta Marine colleagues were to be paid a million dollars each, in ten equal instalments. By 2002 those payments had run out. I guess you can get used to having that kind of money available. Guerny told me it was the reason why they accepted another job.”

  “How did the dingnation man get in touch, Suzanna? Did you ask him that?” Hannah pitched in with a question.

  “Oh, I thought you might have fainted, Hannah. Good to have you back. Oh yes, I asked him that. But I don't think you would like me to tell you what I was doing to him when I asked.” She looked at Fraser, who returned her look with a stern shake of his head.

  “He said the Missouri man simply telephoned. After the general job, Guerny took on a false name, moved north to Canada, and opened a bar named Busters in Ottawa. He kept in touch with the other two from a distance. Our mysterious dingnation man tracked him down, called the bar and left a message. Guerny rang him back and there we have it.”

  Chapter Twenty: Rebirth

  “I have Mr Fraser Ughert on a direct landline, sir. Asked for you by Group name: Joseph.” The voice came from the communications office in the Hub on the ground floor. It echoed from the open speaker in front on the desk as if it was an accusation from Hell. I cannot tell you of my expression, but the exhibition of shock conveyed by the three sitting the other side of my desk was reminiscent of Kerry, in Ireland, as she tried to remember how to breathe with the racing spasms of pain spreading through her body quicker than the blood trickled from it or the morphine could cope with. It was only in death that she found her peace. It was not necessary for Oliver Nathan, Sir Elliot and Sir John to die for their stupor to be eased away, all I had to do was take his call. Simple, eh? Anything but, was the truth.

  If Monday was deemed a good enough day to start the week, then it should be equally good enough to allow a dead man to rise from the pathology lab where his body was supposed to be. Despite the approaching difficult ramifications of Fraser's miraculous return to life I had no alternative but accept his call.

  “Put him through,” I replied. The speaker went dead for a second and then I heard his Scottish intonation to the greeting, “Hello.”

  “As you requested, I have the Home Secretary and the Director Generals of MI5 and MI6 in front of me, Mr Ughert. I did not warn them of your resurrection.”

  It was then that the rehearsed excuses for his disappearance were recited verbatim to the script he and I had manufactured. What script? It was an imaginary one in our heads. No details or mentions were made to the murder of innocents. No specifics of operations were discussed. Some of what he said was factual, but most was pure conjecture albeit with a degree of justifications but conjecture all the same. Various points had to be covered first, but eventually he came to the fruity bits.

  “Fyodor Nazarov Razin is much more than a lieutenant general in the Russian Federal Security Service, gentlemen. Spies or double-agents can be coerced by many forms of incentives, but not Razin, or Raynor if you prefer. He was to all intents and purposes born into our service. Razin has become Putin's closest counsellor since he became President of Russia two years ago. Whatever opinion Fyodor Nazarov Razin holds on Monday becomes Russian policy on Tuesday. Whilst he was my double he proved to be exceptionally valuable. For some considerable time it was my belief that he had become overwrought with the Rosicrucian-Freemasonry connection of Henry Mayler as set out before you by Director General West. Agitation overcame his sense of reasoning as Henry's thirty-third birthday on January third 2003 approached. I firmly believe that to be an important date, but Razin feared that date more than I. He seemed to think some monster would be released from Egypt. Mayler himself quoted an ancient Rosicrucian belief in a time referred to as Zep Tepi, a violent age seeking to establish a form of globalism. It was Razin's and my judgement that this globalism, although now well underway, would reach a crescendo near that January date and then stretching into 2003 and far beyond.

  “Further apprehension began when I heard of Fyodor Nazarov Razin's appearance on the steps of the Russian Consulate after an altercation he and Mayler were involved in while in Syria. It was his way of goading me into disclosing the contents of the two American originated files; coded Gladio B, or as he would have liked me to believe, confirming their contents. When Razin learned that I had authorised the destruction of the first Gladio B file he was distraught, as, contrary to what he wanted me to believe, he had never seen inside the file. He had, as I suspected, lied on numerous occasions. When West, as Director General Group, cleverly told him of Henry Mayler's knowledge of the file he knew Henry Mayler would be his last chance to see inside it where he believes he will find the secret to this mystery. He cannot kill Mayler to achieve that because Mayler is pivotal to the future. No Mayler, no insight into what's to come. All of this was worked out between West and myself. My disappearance was essential to draw Fyodor Nazarov Razin into the open, gentlemen.

  “Apart from Mrs Ughert there were four other people who knew of my simulated death, but not one of those was made aware of why that was necessary. It is possible to work without Mayler to uncover the extent of the present globalism, we already have a degree of penetration. The problem of finding Razin and Mayler is better left to the police rather than diverting our scarce resources.”

  “If I may, Mr Ughert.” It was the Home Secretary who spoke first.

  “By all means, Minister.”

  “According to the documentation the Director of Group here has provided, it says that we have, by that I guess it means you have, access to the second file. Am I correct in that assumption?”

  “You are, Minister.”

  “And this Fyodor Nazarov Razin has no information from that file?”

  “Again you are correct, sir. In Director Group's report he mentions the meeting he had with Razin at the Savoy Hotel where he said that he'd seen inside the second file. However, that plainly is not true. If it was then he would never have shown his hand by abducting Mayler. He's banking on Mayler seeing a code, a reference, directions or just plain instructions on how to access the second file and to decipher what's inside. The problem with that lies in the fact that Mayler has not seen inside the file and if he had, there is no magic formula to point to what it means. It was extremely difficult and challenging to get inside, Minister.”

  “What precisely is in that second file, Fraser?” This time it was Sir John Scarlett who asked.

  “I'm afraid I cannot divulge that information, Sir John. First disclosure must be for the Prime Minister's eyes only. Then I would imagine it will go before the Chairman of the Defence Committee and on to the Privy Council. It is mind-boggling, gentlemen.”

  “Be that as it may, there're somethings I need to know now, Mr Ughert. In your opinion is any asset of ours threatened by what's included?” Oliver Nathan wasted no time.

  “I'm not fully acquainted with our exact military status across the globe, Home Secretary. I've been out of the ring so to speak for some time and positions change so quickly, but from what I do know then, yes, I believe we are compromised. However, I must add a caveat to that observation. I am no expert on military weaponry, nor the effects of toxic gases, etc. That side of things would require qualified examination in greater detail than I can supply.”

  “Fine! Comment noted. Go on, please.” Fraser had passed the first stage of his renaissance board.

  “In tha
t case I'll move on and address the Berlin question. Next number on the sheets, gentlemen, number twelve of the dossier.”

  “Before you do, allow me to say that I want your talents back in some capacity, Ughert. To work alongside the Director Group, or as he now is, chairman of JIC. He's doing a fine job in extremely difficult conditions. If you can do that, then I know I speak for my colleagues here; we will all be a lot happier.”

  Hear, hear was the call. No hats were thrown into the air nor was my back being slapped by congratulatory hands, but Fraser had won the day. I had the thought of Geraldine entertaining me in a few days' times to look forward to, and Molly had two chairs occupied that might otherwise have been empty. Which left the question of where was Jordan Pond and when would Suzanna be back?

  * * *

  I met with Fraser later that Sunday afternoon at his busy home. He had been there about an hour before I arrived. Molly's brother, the one I had seen on Thursday was there, as was Molly's older sister and her daughter, husband and two children, all with happy smiles on their faces. Fraser's brother with wife from Canada had landed at Heathrow and were in the back of a cab on way to Chearsley, probably totally confused, needing explanations on arrival. Molly had laughed and then praised my performance as if it was I and not her who deserved the Oscar. Affairs of state were blamed and we all moved on.

  I had precious few moments with him to expand on the Berlin theory he had not told the audience at the Hole. The story he'd told the Home Secretary and the two heads of the UK's intelligence relied on a fanciful rogue NSA agent that he and Robert Zaehner were in the process of tracking, whereas his actual theory he had hurriedly explained to me.

  According to Robert, the Doctor, Zaehner, the Berlin NSA station was more often than not unmanned than manned. It was merely a listening and organising post, segregating the most important signals from the dross. It wasn't an open door office, neither was it a fortress. In the Doctor's words, if you were in the business of knowing where it was you were halfway through the door. At 17:07 on Saturday 3rd of December, as part of a routine inspection, the steel door into the communications room was found by an agent sent from the American Embassy to have been forced by using an abandoned hydraulic device. The CIA swept the place but found nothing. Fraser worked along the lines of Hadad, Mayler's driver, telling of Karabakh the day before Henry said he was told. Hadad had been re-questioned over the date, but was uncertain. Maybe because of that, or in spite of it, Fraser's argument rested on his suspicion that Mayler knew Arnold and it was he, or an agent of his, who had used the Berlin station to signal Guerny. To prove his point he wanted to start with that Saudi Arabian general named Imed Hamed Mohamed and find why an American wanted an ally in the Gulf War of 1991 murdered.

  * * *

  Spencer Morrell was my way into the CIA's background on the Desert Shield liberation of Kuwait and any information regarding why General Imed Hamed Mohamed was murdered. I invited him to dinner that Sunday evening at Scott's Restaurant, in Mayfair. I invited Hannah as well.

  I had been thankful that she had not left my side that whole day. The remoteness I felt when sitting next to her in her car on our journey away from Chearsley, only a few days past, seemed a huge distance away from how I felt about her now. The risk of being alone at the Hole on Saturday night with me had not stopped her coming up to the flat and although I fell asleep, nothing felt contrived or artificial. She had grown on me without me noticing and perhaps the same applied to her. I did not want her to accompany me to dinner as my personal assistant. I wanted her there as my companion, not to satisfy a part of me I did not want to reopen. I had no more room for Kerrys or Fiannas but plenty for Geraldines and her liking of casualness. My indecisive private life was bordering on a pathological disorder. Neither Fraser nor Molly had need to know that side of me.

  Spencer and I were already there when she arrived dressed in an orange coloured chiffon, three-quarter-length dress which without the coat she had left in the lobby with the cloakroom attendant she would have frozen to death in. As I stood to greet her I struggled to remember we were here on business and not in my Canary Wharf apartment on the verge of becoming better acquainted. My resolve did not last long.

  “Ahem! My, my, Patrick, you English do have some beautiful women,” Spencer proclaimed.

  “We do, don't we,” I replied as I kissed Hannah on both cheeks adding quietly so only she could hear, “If I was a younger man I don't think my intentions tonight would be completely honourable, Hannah.” She didn't reply.

  According to Morrell the general was suspected by the CIA based in Saudi Arabia of being in Saddam Hussein's pay, deliberately misinterpreting Iraqi signal traffic and failing to update the coalitions control centre. He was questioned, but simply passed the blame downwards, citing various officers not informing him of important changes to events. Without undeniable evidence it was impossible to have him removed as he was not only a hugely popular senior officer within the participating Saudi army group, he was also a powerful voice on the permanent Army Council. At the end of the war a secret American led commission was organised to examine the causes of General Imed Hamed Mohamed and his entire staff of eleven other Saudi officers being killed on a site to the rear of the battle of Khafji. The enquiry was concluded within a few hours with the blame being laid on a team of Iraqi commandos known to have been operating in the area.

  An investigating team of CIA staff drawn from another location looked further into the decision the commission had reached, mainly because of those initial suspicions that the General and the raiding commandos were on the same side. They were looking for an Iraqi agent still inside the Saudi military who was trying to divert accusing eyes away from themselves. One was never found but one thing the investigating agency did turn up. Two of the general's brothers owned an oil exploration and drilling company which was in competition with Exxon Oil, as it was known in those days, over what was called the Sakhalin Project. Sakhalin is an island off the coast of Eastern Russia where eight years earlier a Russian interceptor was launched with orders to shoot down a Korean airliner which had strayed into Soviet airspace. It did shoot it down, killing all 269 passengers. The Russians said the Korean plane was on a spying mission. The CIA had become interested in Sakhalin Island from that day onwards, but after they found out about the dead general's brothers that interest widened.

  “What exactly did they find out about Sakhalin, Spencer?” It was Hannah who asked the question and started the ball to roll down a hill that I thought might never end.

  Chapter Twenty-One: Too Late

  “It was a long time ago that I heard the name of Sakhalin Island from Razin. I would have to look it up, but I have it somewhere, laddie. What did your CIA chum tell you of it?” Fraser Ughert asked.

  “He was okay to start with, as sparkling as the wine we were drinking with information, but when it came closer to what's happening there today, he was unsure of himself. Not hesitant to share, just unsure of what was going on. According to him it was dropped from any file five years ago in 1997. He's very sure on the date as he was in South Korea, attached to a Senate delegation visiting the country. It was his Korean counterpart who told him.”

  “We have a stand-down notice on the whole area around Sakhalin Island. It came from someone high up in the CIA. Our files were closed on Flight number 007, so what's going on, Spencer?”

  “Spencer told him the truth and he didn't know. He told me that on his return he tucked his hands under his bum and left it alone. Added he was surprised I'd brought it up. But do you know what, Fraser, I don't think he was surprised at all.”

  It was a little after eleven o'clock that Sunday night when I'd spoken to Fraser from the public phone box at the opposite end of Mount Street to the restaurant. Frank had inquired if all was well and despite my reassurance that it was, he walked behind me and then waited as I made the call. I knew Fraser would still be up. From what Spencer had told me it was obvious that another visit to the Ughert resid
ence was required and there was some urgency to it. One part of me didn't want to put Hannah through another late night whilst the selfish half didn't want to be parted from her. By the time I returned the situation had been decided for me. Hannah was in the lobby with Spencer standing behind helping her into the protective, warming coat with a smile on her face as welcoming as a log fire would be on a cold night such as this.

  “I wish I had a PA half as good as yours, Patrick. Not only stunning to look at but, ahem, pays the bill as well. Maybe it was the oysters that did it.”

  “No, Spencer, it wasn't them. She has always been that beautiful and her generosity is legendary.”

  “Oh I don't know, sir. It could have been the oysters. Perhaps they got me too excited to be prudent.” I fought hard not exchange a glance with Spencer who I knew was looking straight at me waiting for a ribald reply, but I had none, or at least none I wished to share.

  “I'm afraid I can't add to any lack of prudence, Hannah. It's either dropping you off at home or an extended night listening to stories of Russian Islands.”

  “I'm up for the island tour, Mr West, in fact I'm quite looking forward to it.” We left as Spencer sighed at the moon.

  * * *

  Molly opened the door with both a word of warning about keeping her husband up late and complimentary remarks about Hannah's appearance. She ushered Jimmy and Frank into her kitchen to await her refreshments then waved Hannah off towards Fraser's office. “He's expecting you, dear. I'll only keep Patrick for a few seconds.”