Vincent tore a sheet from his notebook and placed it in front of Tarrant. ‘I want you to list everyone who is a member of the General Purpose Intelligence Committee,’ he said, ‘and then I’d like you to put a plus sign against those people with whom you regularly converse, a minus sign against those to whom you occasionally speak and a zero against those with whom you’re only on nodding terms.’
Tarrant said, ‘What do you hope to achieve by that? To highlight those who make a point of seeking me out?’
‘Something like that,’ Vincent said guardedly.
The plus signs would not necessarily be a true indication, the zeros could be equally revealing, either because Tarrant had something to hide or because the man who was using him as a front had taken good care to stay in the background. Vincent watched him closely to see if there was an instance of noticeable hesitation when Tarrant applied gradings to names, but could detect none.
Tarrant gave him the completed list. ‘I hope this is what you wanted?’ he said.
The question was to remain unanswered because Harper chose that moment to walk in and there was something about him which seemed to convey a sense of urgency and purpose to Vincent. He assumed rightly that Harper was going to take over and he phrased his question accordingly.
He said, ‘Do you want me to remain, sir?’
‘You may as well,’ said Harper. He waited for Vincent to give up his chair and then slid into it. ‘It seems your friends are anxious to stay in touch with you, Tarrant. We’ve had another message from Drabble. The tonal quality isn’t very good because it has been re-recorded over a land line.’ Harper’s knee sought the silent buzzer under the table. ‘But apart from a certain fuzziness, it’s quite audible.’
In the adjoining room, Drew, seeing the flash from the signal light, put the Grundig on playback and pushed the sound through to the interrogation room. Simultaneously, a second Grundig was switched to record.
The phone rang and a male voice said, ‘9984.’
‘This is Drabble, I have a message for Major Tarrant.’
‘He isn’t available.’
‘Mrs Tarrant?’
‘Why do you want to speak to her?’
‘Don’t stall me. I’ll call back in five minutes and you’d better make sure she is there to answer.’
The phone rang again and Alex answered it.
Drabble said, ‘Mrs Tarrant, I want you to hear this and make sure it gets through to Harper. We want to go to Brazil in a VC 10 and I don’t plan to go to the airport in a bus. Harper will arrange to collect us in a Wessex Helicopter which will then land alongside the VC 10, and the only reception committee I want to see is a WRAF Air Quartermaster from Transport Command. Stay by the phone, Mrs Tarrant, because I will be calling you again in a few minutes.’
The tape ran on for a few seconds and then the male voice said, ‘The first call was timed at 2110 hours and the second at 2119. Trace procedure proved negative.’
The third call was timed at 2135 and Drabble took the conversation up almost as if there hadn’t been a break in it.
He said, ‘The RAF can work out the details of the flight plan to Brazil, but I’m selecting the departure airfield for the VC 10, which is to be on standby from 1500 GMT tomorrow, Friday. I shall also tell them where to position the Wessex helicopter and I’ll give the pilot his course. I need a Sarbe beacon to guide the Wessex in on to the landing site and recognition panels to mark the pad. We’ll indicate wind direction with a home-made smoke pot. This is going to be a one-way trip, so we don’t want the Foreign Office fouling things up because those Brazilians have got to welcome us with open arms. Your husband will deliver the beacon and the panels, and when I call you tomorrow between eleven and eleven-thirty, I want to hear his voice on the line, and I expect to get confirmation that everything is lined up and ready to go. Understand?’
‘I think so,’ Alex said faintly.
‘I hope you do, because if anything goes wrong, I plan to blind your son.’ His voice dropped to a low hiss. ‘And believe me you’ll have proof that I’m not bluffing.’
The tape ended, cutting short a high-pitched scream.
Tarrant said, ‘Christ in heaven, was that Alex?’
‘I’m afraid it was,’ said Harper, ‘but she’s all right now. You have my word for it.’
‘What does that count for?’ Tarrant said bitterly.
‘At least as much as yours does.’
Tarrant rubbed his forehead. ‘Are you going to meet his demands?’
Harper avoided his eyes. ‘Supposing there is a defector,’ he he said evasively, ‘and the opposition has agreed to a transfer fee of half a million pounds. Wouldn’t it be safe to assume that he means to divulge information which would imperil the safety and security of this country and put countless lives at risk?’
‘What are you driving at?’
‘Surely, as a soldier, you must realise that we can’t bargain with the enemy merely because he has a hostage.’
Tarrant leaned forward. ‘I know this,’ he said fiercely, ‘that as a soldier I have an unlimited yet unwritten liability. In an extreme case, that liability means putting my life at risk, but I have yet to meet anyone who supposes that this liability also extends to my son. If you are toying with the idea of detaining me so that you can have a free hand to bluff it out with Drabble, I should forget it because you’ve still got Alex to reckon with.’
‘I’m not entertaining any such idea, you will be free to talk with Drabble tomorrow.’
‘Talking means nothing unless we do as he wants.’
Harper said, ‘We might run to the beacon and the recognition panels, but can you see the Combined Chiefs of Staff sanctioning the use of a Wessex and a VC 10? Can you see the Foreign Office clearing it with the Brazilian Government?’
‘I can, if you ask them.’
‘As an act of mercy?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, come on, Tarrant, they have an obligation to fifty-five million other people besides your son.’
‘You want a more positive reason? I’ll give you one—this is the first chance we’ve had to get close to Drabble. What’s to stop you putting a snatch party inside the Wessex? Or why not ring the VC 10 with snipers and pick them off as they transfer from the Wessex?’
Harper folded his arms behind his head and leaned back in the chair. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I rather like the idea of using a few skilled marksmen.’
‘The safety of my son comes first.’
‘Naturally.’
‘What happens now?’
‘Vincent will run you home while I fix everything up.’
‘I’d like to speak to Alex.’
‘Of course, please use the phone.’
‘Does that trick thing actually work?’
‘It will when I tell the operator to put you through,’ said Harper.
Every word which had passed between them had been faithfully recorded by Drew, and with subtle editing, Tarrant could be held equally to blame for his son’s death if anything went wrong.
*
In the absence of any instructions to the contrary, the CID team investigating the Tarrant affair were still treating the kidnapping as a criminal case. In response to an appeal by the North Riding Police, a number of witnesses had come forward claiming that they had seen a Zephyr or Zodiac towing a horsebox in the vicinity of Coxwold on Sunday afternoon. There was the usual conflict of opinion regarding the registration number and outward appearance of the vehicle, which was variously described as being light blue, aquamarine, sapphire blue and pale green in colour. Sighting reports also came from as far afield as Scarborough, Malton and Easingwold.
However, two rather more promising lines of enquiry were being pursued. Although the labels had been removed from the combat suits, Ordnance (Contracts) Branch at the Ministry of Defence had been able to identify the makers from the type of cloth, cut and stitch pattern. The four suits in question were part of a rush order for ten thousand w
hich had been placed with Keane and Parkinson to back up depleted maintenance stocks. Stock control at Bicester subsequently indicated that issues from this batch had been made to eleven regular and reserve units in the last three months, all of whom were instructed to carry out a check of these items and report any deficiencies by 1200 hours on Friday.
The long-wheelbase Land-Rover, which had never been registered with a licensing authority, was now known to have been stolen from the security compound of Wallis and Sons in Acton some four days prior to the kidnapping. Records showed that Goring, whose past form included car theft, was operating a legitimate repair service in Hounslow up to the time of his death, and a search of the premises in Hardinge Avenue led to the discovery of four empty two-gallon cans of Army Department high gloss green paint. Unfortunately, issues of this lot and batch number had been made to a large number of units in the training organisation and the reserve army, and in consequence it was estimated that the stock check would not be completed until late on Friday.
Friday
SIXTH DAY
14
FRIDAY CAME WARM AND CLOSE AND THE MUGGINESS IN THE AIR HINTED that, before the day was out, a storm would break. Julyan had spent a restless night with sleep only coming fitfully and he’d lain awake listening to the dawn chorus and the early morning sun had filled the room with light. This day was for him a point of no return, and it was only to be expected that he would experience a certain nervous tension amounting to excitement.
Months of patient planning were about to come to fruition, and somehow the day would have to be lived through as though everything was perfectly normal, and he would cope with the office and just hope that nothing would arise which would detain him beyond five o’clock. It could be no more than a hope because experience had shown that Governments were fond of making awkward decisions after Parliament had risen in the afternoon which had to be implemented over the weekend.
He wondered if he should ring Harper and ask him how the Tarrant affair was progressing but he couldn’t make up his mind whether it would seem more natural to ignore the whole business. There was always the danger that, if he showed too much interest, he might invite suspicion and he had no desire to face any more of Harper’s loaded questions. He remembered all too clearly how he’d reacted when Harper had cheerfully asked him to name someone who might be worth half a million pounds to the opposition and he had been forced to nominate himself amongst others. Those few minutes on the telephone had given him some anxious moments.
Julyan reached out for the packet of cigarettes on the bedside table; he was not a heavy smoker, but in times of emotional stress, he felt the need of one most acutely. He lit the cigarette and lay back on the pillow again and watched the thin stream of blue smoke drift up towards the ceiling, and thought about Melissa who was so very different from his first wife. Grace had had a placid nature which was just as well, since rheumatic fever in childhood had left her with a weak heart. They’d had four years together before she died and life had been a void for him until Melissa came along. Melissa was young and beautiful and selfish and vain, and passionate and exciting to be with, and she had captivated and made him young again. And she was generous and extravagant and demanding and clever and ruthless, and she was strong, strong in a way which Julyan knew he could never match. Melissa had changed his style of life and opened his eyes to what the future held in store for them if they continued to jog along in the same old rut, and perhaps he might have shrugged it off if it hadn’t been for the Hobart Committee with their recommendations for streamlining the service.
Streamlining, he thought, was pure Whitehall jargon to disguise a drastic reduction of the SIS. It implied increased efficiency at less cost and everyone knew that was just a pipe-dream. Hobart meant that a lot of people would be prematurely retired and Julyan knew for a fact that he was amongst those chosen to be axed. Until that redundancy list had appeared, he’d had every reason to suppose that one day he would be invited to fill the post of Controller, Secret Intelligence Service, because he ran the Eastern European Desk, and there was no more important branch of the Service. But now it seemed that years of loyal and often dangerous work would count for nothing.
For Julyan, the years of war and peace had been equally dangerous. In 1953 he’d parachuted into the Kiev region with a team of four in order to assess the strength and effectiveness of the Ukrainian Nationalists. His agents had been carefully selected from the remnants of Vlassov’s Army of Liberation who had managed to evade repatriation to Russia after the war, and although they were the best he could find, they weren’t good enough to escape detection. The operation had been a total failure and only Julyan and an agent code-named ‘Paul’ had made it to the Baltic where they were picked up by one of Gehlen’s fast patrol boats.
No one else amongst his contemporaries had been so close to the firing line since the end of the war and Julyan refused to believe that that one set-back in an otherwise unblemished and successful career accounted for his impending retirement. The truth was that there was a desire to save public money and the country no longer cared about the guardians of its security. The message was clear enough—it was every man for himself. Even though Hobart was still a year away, the idea of pre-empting the future had been conceived last summer when he’d made contact with Max through a double agent in East Berlin.
And Max had been very discreet in sending him a travel brochure, and Julyan had taken the hint and decided that they would go to Sweden for their summer holiday. There was nothing clandestine about his movements and the office knew where they could reach him if it was necessary, but some of his associates knowing Melissa’s tastes, might have expressed surprise had they seen the chalet in Lysekil. They had taken the ferry to Gothenburg and then driven up the west coast through Uddevalla to Lysekil. He recalled that they had arrived in pouring rain late on a Saturday afternoon and he had driven to the Turistbyraen in the market square to ask the way to the chalet, and the agency girl had phoned for the hostess. The hostess had turned out to be a plump woman who spoke not a word of English and knew no other tongue but Swedish, and she had led Julyan back the way they had come for mile after mile until suddenly she’d turned off the road and they’d bumped along a narrow cart track through the dark pine forest which had eventually opened out into a small clearing. She had left them there after showing them the well and the Elsan latrine tucked away in the woods, and Melissa had been tearful and then angry when she was faced with the prospect of cooking a meal on the two-ring electric stove.
There were two other chalets in the clearing, but although it had only been mid-August, they were apparently already closed for the coming winter. And they had spent two miserable stinking wet days up there alone before Max and his woman had arrived, and nothing had been right for the children because they were a long way from the sea, and when, in desperation, he’d taken them into Lysekil between cloudbursts, there was no beach to speak of in the fjord but only a lido surrounded by jellyfish. And but for Max, the trip would have been a disaster. It had taken Julyan less than six hours to negotiate the contract, and in return for half a million, he’d undertaken to deliver the name of every British agent east of the Oder-Neisse line.
*
Julyan stubbed out his cigarette, rolled out of bed and in bare feet, walked over to the windows and drew back the curtains. As he stood there looking out over the heath, he calculated the odds and decided they were in his favour. There could be no leak from East Berlin because the double agent had long been dead and safely buried deep within a disused coal mine, and apart from that one meeting at Lysekil, he had avoided seeing Max and relied instead on a dead-letter box for communication which, in fact, had seldom been used once the plan had been conceived. Any member of the Magic Circle knew that, for an illusion to be really successful, the audience had to be distracted; Tarrant was far removed from the pretty girl in a scanty costume and tights, but in a way, he’d served a like purpose.
*
&nbs
p; Harper arrived at the office at much the same time as the duty nightwatchmen were being relieved by the day shift. High on his list of priorities was the need to select and assemble a balanced team for the assassination of Drabble. Faced with the choice of taking them out either as the helicopter came in to the pick-up point or as they transferred from the Wessex to the VC 10, Harper decided to keep both options open for the time being. In adopting the former course, he would require specialists in close quarter combat, for the latter he wanted marksmen.
Drew and Vincent were automatic choices but he reckoned to back them up with a further six men, and for the next hour, Harper went through the card index system until he was satisfied that he had picked the best possible team. During the course of the morning he planned to send the snipers down to Bisley under Vincent, where they would zero their rifles before they moved back to the nine-hundred-metre firing point and really settled down to the serious business of getting their eye in. Although he proposed to leave the final choice to Vincent and his team, he felt sure that they would prefer to use the proven Number 4 Lee Enfield with telescopic sights to the semi-automatic FN, and he rang down to the duty armourer and instructed him to put aside two hundred rounds of competition.303 ball ammunition. Drew, of course, would want to take his group out to Braintree Hill, but Harper was reluctant to accept such a widespread dispersal of his available manpower and he therefore came to the conclusion that they would have to make do with the pistol range in the basement.
The sudden clatter of the teleprinter in the outer office came as a surprise, for it heralded the arrival of Miss Nightingale, and until then he had been unaware that time was passing so quickly. The signal which she placed on his desk had been originated by Interpol and was addressed to the Commissioner, Metropolitan Police, repeated to Director Subversive Warfare for information. The text read:
YOUR OPS 20 DATE TIME GROUP 171500 ZULU FIRST STOP LUXEMBOURG POLICE CONFIRM THEY HAVE DETAINED MRS BARBARA LEE WATERMAN AND TRAVELLING COMPANION MISS KATHLEEN GRIERSON STOP WATERMAN AND FRIEND ARRIVED GRAAS HOTEL LATE TUESDAY STOP PLEASE ADVISE YOUR INTENTIONS STOP MESSAGE ENDS STOP.
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