The Oktober Projekt

by R. J. Dillon

  Dragged unceremoniously back to his cell the guards left Nick in embarrassed silence. He came round propped against a freezing wall, a thin blanket that had once distantly belonged to the Red Cross draped around his waist and legs, while across his bruised chest they’d tucked a towel already stained by his vomit and blood. The statement he refused to sign, the record of his criminal actions as they called it, sat next to him and somehow he found the energy to scrunch it and throw it into a corner. Above his head a small window made of clear glass blocks. And while his mind closed down all the barriers through which they were trying to break into his past, he watched the night drip slowly into the corner of each thick glass square, distorted particles of streaky cloud racing across a swollen moon.

  After his refusal to sign his confession Nick’s captivity entered a new dimension. Nudged awake by a boot at some point into a long dark night, three of them pinned Nick down taking an arm apiece and one to his legs as a strange hand felt for a vein, then the puncture as a needle entered his arm. As the drug entered his system he watched them float out of his cell, grotesque figures who’d stepped straight out of fairground mirrors, before a heavy darkness claimed his mind.

  It was the light in Nick’s head that troubled him the most. He didn’t care about the deafness in one ear, the pain eating its way through his body, or the thought of death locked in his mind. He wondered if the light had come after another beating with a kick to his head, but couldn’t be sure. He even thought, though this was far too a strong description for the fragments that went through his mind, he imagined that he had died, and this was his personal hell. But he knew it wasn’t because he had no belief for God or the Devil, knowing that the only two absolutes are birth and death, and having had one he was now most surely moving quickly towards the next.

  If only the light would go from inside his eyes. Tomorrow he would demand to see a doctor. A stronger light seemed to flash around his skull and he realised they were administering short doses of electric current. His name, he fought for a piece of it, nothing came. He dug deeper, but he saw only a face that he knew had once been his own. There came no name with it either.

  Footsteps and voices. A disjointed voice periodically checking his condition, breaking off from questions he seemed to be answering. How much Nick craved sleep. The windows were boarded, painted white, preventing him from distinguishing day from night. This phase marking the end. Nick knew the signs from his training. Once you’re denied the ability to appreciate light and dark there is nothing left for you, except the serious questions and serious pain before the confession you inevitably make. Everyone does finally, he recalled, some with relief others with hate; fighting every word that left their body, denying, struggling until the very last. Trying to turn his head to guard himself for a blow or punch, he realised he had lost all movement.

  ‘Lubov had material for a senior ex-officer only,’ mumbled Nick.

  ‘What did he say?’ demanded the army officer.

  By a low table holding a digital recorder, Anastasiya and Alexei stared at him with the same impassivity they had shown since the first day of his capture.

  Weakness, nothing but his own weakness, Nick told himself, cursing his body, its betrayal for tricking him into talking. He tried, really made an effort not to speak, but something was pulling answers over his swollen tongue, his inflamed gums that somehow dulled his words, threw them into the empty white space of the room without form, without shape; a peculiar language all his own.

  ‘Why Nick? Why an ex-officer, Nick?’ Anastasiya asked walking slowly, her steps sharp, acute, a perfect counter balance to her unhurried voice as she came and stood at Nick’s side.

  ‘Tell us, Nick, then we don’t have to put you on trial,’ urged Alexei.

  Trying to speak, but denied by the shape and swelling of his mouth, Nick, with much effort shook his head. Slowly, with measured deliberation Nick said, in a feeble parched croak, ‘Lubov had evidence,’ repeating it in a weak voice that he refused to accept as his own, especially for Anastasiya bent close to his mouth.

  A temporary lull followed his admission, a hiatus Nick vaguely registered from the ceasing of the blinding light behind his eyes. Defiantly, straining the individual muscles in his neck, Nick brought his head up a fraction, just high enough so he could register a blur of figures gathered around a low table as a murmured discussion bubbled on. Opening his cracked lips, forcing a sound past his thick tongue, Nick uttered a single fractured word. ‘Mole.’ There, Nick chided himself, you’ve gone and done it now, aware that this could be the only analysis of why Lubov wanted to deal only with an ex-senior officer from the Service. Then he sensed all the world had stopped to listen, everyone in the room had turned to hear what he had said.

  ‘You’re saying the traitor Lubov had evidence of a Moscow agent, Nick?’ Alexei checked, returning to him, laying a proud hand on his shoulder. ‘That what you’re telling us?’

  Nick wasn’t sure what he was telling them anymore, knowing that he’d have less of the electrics, drugs and beating if he played along. ‘Yes,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Where is the agent? Do you have the agent’s name?’ A voice from behind him asked, the woman VIP again, trailing her perfume as she moved closer, her mellow voice reminding Nick of a schoolteacher who had once attempted to teach him art.

  From deep inside, Nick summoned up a last strand of resolve that he used to shake his head in denial. ‘No one knows, only Lubov,’ he muttered in his strange distorted language. ‘Lubov… Lubov was the evidence.’

  ‘That is why Lubov wanted to meet an ex-officer,’ Anastasiya decided for them all, the problem solved.

  Exhausted with his effort, Nick was breathing heavily and gave the feeblest of smiles as he nodded in agreement. Carried back to his stinking cell, Nick wanted to cry for help but his ribs were too inflamed, his throat too dry and for the moment he couldn’t prevent himself toppling on his side, slipping softly into a longed-for world of sleep and release.

  Transferred during the night, Nick lapsed in and out of sleep, finally waking in a military hospital ward and a clean bed. A nurse on seeing him awake promptly marched over and ordered him to drink, holding a cup and feeding straw as he sipped a sweet milky watery mixture. Displaying the bedside manner and charm of a commissar, she said he would probably be in her charge for a week. With a disgusted wrinkle of her broad nose she asked Nick if the clear sack of clothes dumped by his bed were his? And if Nick’s ribs hadn’t felt as though they’d explode he’d have hugged her, for the sack contained not only the clothes he’d been wearing when captured, but at the bottom, one pair of very muddy boots.

  Three

  A Cool Reception

  London, November

  Nick’s stay in Moscow ran to five weeks and he was handed over in a simple ceremony on the Latvian border at Terehova. Met not by an all singing delegation from London, but a one woman British Embassy, a senior member of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office dispatched explicitly for his repatriation; Clare Lostock was his entire official reception committee. In her early fifties, she had neat straight grey hair, a full figure she covered in an elegant expensive jacket, tailored blouse, and knee length skirt. With a no nonsense face that had made her desirable in her youth, Lostock had a surface elegance that wouldn’t have been out of place on the front cover of a business magazine. Her eyes and mouth however suggested a different side, a woman who, in the right company, knew how to have fun. Recoiling at Nick’s appearance, resembling what her mother would have called a common tramp, Lostock formally received Nick on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government. As a respected FCO troubleshooter, Lostock was accustomed to bringing home damaged goods, which Nick on that day surely was.

  ‘We are going straight to the airfield,’ she briskly announced, not wishing to stare at the CO8 officer slouched beside her in a totally dishevelled sate.

  ‘Great,’ said Nick, shrugging off his lethargy.

  As part of her strict mandate, Lostock never utt
ered another word during the drive to the Latvian Air Force base at Rēzekne where a Royal Air Force BAe 125 executive jet waited. She even scolded the flight attendant, a Leading Aircraftman from Cardiff who had the temerity to enquire if Nick would like a second glass of orange juice during the flight.

  Touching down at RAF Northolt a Ford Galaxy its windows tinted grey, swept out to park by the aircraft steps.

  ‘Thanks for all the help,’ said Nick as Lostock officially handed him over to two of the Service’s security officers, its very own praetorian guard. As one of them opened the Galaxy’s rear door, Nick impishly kissed Lostock’s cheek before they could hustle him into the car.

  ‘My pleasure,’ said Lostock to the back of the speeding Galaxy.

  Sandwiched between his two minders, Nick sat back as snatches of countryside slipped by; trees stripped of leaves the grass a dismal autumn green as the Galaxy headed for Hertfordshire.

  ‘Do I get a clue where we’re going?’

  ‘Aspley.’ One of his minders answered, his scowl saying he didn’t care to be troubled again.

  Aspley Grange overlooked Berkhamsted with a proprietary air. A rambling Victorian Gothic house built for a brewing baron as a symbol of his social status, it became government property in the 1920s in lieu of unpaid taxes. The extensive walled estate was dominated by the large house with its added mansard roof, a wing with its own chapel, all set within secure grounds. Housing intelligence staff during the Second World War, it had been in Service hands since the 1950s, acquired in a surreptitious deal, or so the legend went. From three-quarters down its serpentine drive, Nick saw the chapel’s spire rising above the trees, to its right the castellated turrets covering an older part of the house. Instead of stopping by Aspley’s grand entrance the Galaxy crunched round the wide drive, turning fast off the gravel onto a tarmac avenue by a complex of uninspired annexes added sometime in the Eighties.

  Jerking to a stop outside a two-storey block, Nick’s minders ushered him inside fast, a troublesome guest who had to be brought in by the servants’ entrance. Inside, the bare breeze block walls had been tastefully rolled in cream emulsion, intensifying the strip lighting as it bounced back off floor tiles, buffed to a reflective gleam. Above the acoustic door to Suite 1, a pair of lights, one red, one green were set in the wall; as one of Nick’s minders directed him inside with a stiff, straight arm, the red light blinked on. Sitting at a table Nick waited until the door gently closed, its lock rotated home. There were cameras tucked high into each corner and a two-way glass directly opposite the table in a far wall. Nick had been in the interrogation block on numerous occasions, during training and when CO8 had brought in defectors who, according to a Service euphemism, underwent ‘active debriefing.’

  The first interrogator to arrive was Bill McEntee, an avuncular figure who reminded Nick of a history master with his round, calm indefatigable face that carried a permanent lopsided grin.

  ‘How are you Nicholas?’ McEntee asked, crossing to the table, his brown brogues scuffed at the toes gliding along.

  ‘I’ve been better Bill,’ said Nick as McEntee sat himself down, unfastening his tweed jacket, dusting a speck of dust from his lapel. ‘Thought you’d retired?’

  ‘Kept me on for the specials,’ McEntee said, taking out a small wireless receiver from his pocket, looping it over his ear. ‘Technology,’ he said, as though it was a disease, pressing it firmly in to his ear. ‘Moscow rough?’

  ‘Could have been better,’ answered Nick, knowing his debriefing had just officially begun.

  McEntee nodded slowly, as though requiring a good deal of time to digest this basic fact. During this moment of contemplation, the door slowly opened and Vincent Soleby entered. McEntee’s usual long time partner, he was thin and tall and moved slowly, a studious man dressed in a shabby cardigan, brown trousers and a white shirt. He had a creased, lined face and a thick mane of white hair encircling a bald head. With his square metal glasses, he gave the appearance of a senior college fellow whose natural field might have been philosophy, which is in fact what he had once practised before entering the Service.

  ‘Nick,’ Soleby said, in a terse acknowledgement, slipping a manila bound dossier out from under his arm, throwing it onto the table with a slap.

  ‘Vincent.’ Nick felt a little bubble of concern rise. Soleby and McEntee, two of the Service’s most revered thumbscrews were not here to shake his hand. ‘I thought you were taking it easy, writing scholarly texts?’

  ‘Mmm,’ Soleby replied, undoing the green string holding the dossier together, spreading the manila cover flat. ‘I am, but they call me in from to time to time, a complete bother,’ he said, scanning a typed report.

  ‘Shall we begin?’ proposed McEntee, for the benefit of a technical officer taking care of the cameras and recording, plus today’s observers; Hawick, watching proceedings unfold with Blackmore tucked comfortably away behind the two-way glass.

  ‘Very lax of you Nick,’ Soleby stated, staring right into Nick’s eyes, ‘Not being able to keep a check on one of your troops, allowing her to moonlight like that.’

  ‘What was Wynn working on?’ McEntee wondered.

  Nick, completely thrown, couldn’t fathom where they were leading him.

  ‘She wasn’t working on anything,’ said Nick, feeling his nerve return. ‘She was on soft duties at the Mad House.’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Soleby, licking his finger to get to a particular sheet in the dossier.

  ‘What has she done? Not filled in her return to work papers? Not pulling her weight? Insulted someone from over the river?’ Nick asked, digging for a clue.

  McEntee, taking instruction from Blackmore through his earpiece receiver, shook his head solemnly. ‘No, Nick, she’s gone and got herself killed, that’s what she’s done.’

  ‘How?’ Nick slumped deep in the curved plastic chair, his arms laced across the table as the stinging mustard and grey walls seemed to move a foot closer.

  ‘Then you have an almighty mess-up in Moscow,’ Soleby said, pushing the dossier aside, closing its cover after apparently having seen enough.

  ‘Operation Salvage, run us through it Nick,’ suggested McEntee, his lopsided smile offering encouragement.

  ‘Am I under caution?’ asked Nick, playing up for the microphones.

  ‘Don’t think so,’ McEntee said, getting to his feet.

  ‘Not as far as I know,’ added Soleby.

  ‘Moscow,’ McEntee reminded Nick, standing away to the right. With his hands buried deep in his jacket pockets, tightening the tweed over his broad shoulders, he threw endless assumptions on sloppy procedures at Nick.

  ‘They were waiting for us,’ said Nick.

  ‘Someone must have tipped them the wink then,’ proposed McEntee sourly.

  Soleby then took the initiative, his long arms clasped behind his head, asking Nick in a dozen different ways if he was working for Moscow and showed ill concealed disbelief as Nick avoided every point through his controlled evasive replies.

  ‘Come on Nick, we’re only trying to get to the truth,’ McEntee said after each blank answer, stroking his round chin.

  ‘We’re not dunderheads,’ said Soleby, a muscle in his face ticked frantically up and down.

  ‘Who did you discuss the operation with? Someone not of our parish or our calling perhaps?’ McEntee speculated, doing a brisk circuit round the room. He was familiar with every inch of this suite; the broken out piece of blue floor tile that his heels regularly caught, the dimpled fluorescent strip light cover where dead flies collected.

  ‘No one except Alistair.’

  ‘Consorting with the enemy, Nick, that what you were doing?’ wondered Soleby, his muscle ticking away. ‘What about with your wife? Break the rules in order to please her? Tell her because you’re not seeing eye to eye? That what you did?’ said Soleby.

  ‘We barely talk.’

  ‘Break your entry routine?’ McEntee wondered, pushing off from his spot against the wall with
his hands.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Suspect anything on the drive in?’ McEntee continued, taking up the chase.

  ‘Everything seemed fine.’

  ‘And you changed the plates?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Standard precaution?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then why’d you change them again?’ Soleby broke in, shaking the blood back into his wrists, hands and fingers. ‘Had an inkling, gut feeling, sixth sense? Because those on the car the Russians recovered from the Crimea Bridge didn’t match the set you took in. That’s a worry for us.’

  They were good, very good conceded Nick. Astute, smart and persistent; in other circumstances or a different time in the past, Nick would have congratulated them on their exceptional performance, how they functioned as a team and bought them a drink in the Senior Officers’ Bar in Aspley’s main house. Now it was simply a question of how long he would survive.

  ‘It’s something I do if I believe we’re entering a difficult theatre of operation.’

  ‘So you’re saying your actions were justified?’ Soleby asked.

  ‘Weren’t they?’

  ‘That’s what we’d like to hear, your version, your justification,’ said McEntee.

  He told them the events surrounding the collection without elaboration, including the little accountant’s sudden decision to defect there and then, his concern that his superiors were onto him. But he never came close to detailing their detour to Lubov’s apartment or what he carried in the sole of his boot.

  ‘Do you mind if we backtrack slightly?’ wondered Soleby.

  ‘Clearance for the operation came from RUS/OPS?’ McEntee asked.

  ‘You and Parfrey working for Moscow?’ Soleby asked. ‘A pair of traitors helping each other out?’ But this was one question too far bringing Nick flying out of his seat.