by Ted Allbeury
When Maclaren and Sturgiss first went down to Marlow and the house near the moorings at Temple, they had taken for granted that it was a waste of time. Just the usual bullshit that was meant to impress a girl enough to get her into bed. But when they saw the little dish aerial lashed to the tallest chimney they changed their minds. It wasn’t big or particularly noticeable, but it was a piece of powerful high-technology that Cheltenham had confirmed as being suitable for both long-range transmission and receiving. What was also significant was that the aerial lead went down inside the chimney so that it couldn’t be tapped from outside the house.
The American was in his late twenties, and he did have a vague resemblance to Bond in the days when Sean Connery first played the part. Except for shopping and eating he seldom went out, but whenever he went into the town he called for mail at the main Post Office. Maclaren had asked for a mail check but Century House hadn’t responded either way. Neither would they agree to a break-in without more indication that it was necessary. Maclaren despised the old-maidish reaction. In the kind of work he normally carried out for SIS the only reason you needed for a break-in was that you wanted to do it.
Except for the rustling of disturbed wood-pigeons in the copse of willows and chestnuts, and a distant quack from a restless mallard, there was complete silence. From far away Maclaren could just make out the faint sounds of the traffic on Marlow Bridge. But as often happens just before midnight a slight breeze got up, stirring the branches of the trees and flapping the shrouds of pleasure boats moored on the river bank on the far side of the house. As he looked up at the full moon the faint trails of cloud across its face were barely moving and the sky was almost clear.
It was just before one o’clock when he heard the sound of the car. It was coming up the lane from the road and he turned to look towards the gate. He was just in time to see the headlights fade into darkness. It was a small pick-up van, not a car, and it was still coming on, in the dark. He saw its outline as it navigated the pillars that had once held the wrought-iron gates and then the driver cut the engine, letting the van roll on until it was almost alongside the parked Mustang.
A man got out of the van and Maclaren pulled up his binoculars. But in the dim light he could only see that the man was big built. He watched him walk to the porch and try to turn the handle on the big white door. For a moment the man looked up at the first-floor windows and then walked to the corner of the house to be lost in the shadows.
Maclaren lowered the glasses and waited. Fifteen minutes had gone by when he heard the shouting, and a girl screaming, and five minutes later the front door was flung open, and in the bright light from inside the house he saw the girl, and the man from the van. He was holding her by her hair, her head thrown back to ease the pain, and she was whimpering as the man shoved her towards the van. She was wearing a light summer coat and Maclaren could see that she was naked except for the unbuttoned coat. She cried out as the man struck at her face as he bundled her into the passenger seat of the van. Moments later the car turned and backed, obviously deliberately, into the side of the Mustang, and then as its headlights came on he watched it head towards the gate pillars. Then it was bouncing down the pot-holed lane until eventually its red rear lights disappeared.
Looking back at the house, Maclaren saw that the big white door still stood open, the lights from the hallway sending an orange swath across the gravel drive on to the grass below the edge of the small copse. And gradually the silence settled back again. Maclaren turned his watch to the moon and saw that it was only half an hour since the van had appeared.
He waited another half hour but there was no sound from inside the house and the door was still wide open. He slid off his shoes and walked to the edge of the copse, across the gravel path to the steps that led to the door. At the door he brushed the soles of his socks and slid his shoes back on, all the while watching the stairs that he could see facing him on the far side of the hallway.
Slowly and quietly he walked inside. It was a big square hall with a stripped pine floor, and he didn’t notice the small pool of blood until another drop splashed loudly on to the wooden boards. When he looked up he saw the man’s head hanging over the side of the landing between two broken bannisters.
Maclaren walked up the thickly carpeted stairs to the landing and bent down beside the man’s body. He knew from the bleeding that he wasn’t dead, but the blow had exposed the blue-whiteness of his cheekbone and left a deep, open wound above the ear. There was not much blood from the skull wound but a trickle of colourless liquid was accumulating in the dent of the wound itself. The blood was coming from the cheek. Maclaren put his hand on the man’s chest and turned back one eye-lid. Then he stood up and looked around. He wasn’t dead yet but it wouldn’t take long.
He tried all the doors until he found one that was locked and he guessed that that was the room that mattered. It had a double lock set in a shining brass plate, and the door didn’t give as he braced his foot and shoved. He walked back to the bedroom with the light. It came from a pink-shaded bedside lamp that lay on its side on the floor. The girl’s bra, panties and dress were still in a heap beside the bed, and a silk dressing gown hung from a chair by the window. A well-cut light grey suit was draped over a stool in front of a dressing table. There was a bunch of keys in the trousers’ pocket and two brass keys on a ring in the jacket pocket.
When he had unlocked the door he switched on the light and walked inside. The room was almost bare except for a black Yaesu transceiver on a trestle table, its red digital display winking away, two telephones, two Revox tape-recorders and a double-drawer metal filing cabinet. A couple of cheap, folding wooden chairs were propped against a bare wall.
The transceiver was set at receive and as Maclaren flipped up the power supply switch the red digital read-out showed 15206 megacycles and an American was reading a news bulletin at dictation speed in basic English. It was a Voice of America broadcast. Flicking off the switch, Maclaren turned to the filing cabinet. Not only was it not locked but it didn’t have locks, and Maclaren walked over to the window pulling aside the curtains. He knew there would be some form of security for the stuff in the room. A heavy angle-iron frame was screwed to the brickwork and the window frame to prevent the window from opening, a thin loom of wires sprayed out from a rubber suction pad in the centre of the window, and a slightly thicker wire ran down to a metal Klaxon alarm screwed to the floor.
There were no files in the top drawer, just a batch of one-time pads with its adhesive band still wrapped round it, and a microdot reader that looked as if it had never been used.
In the bottom drawer were five standard blue file covers, none of them very thick, and Maclaren lifted them out and opened one of the wooden chairs putting the files beside him on the floor. The first one was marked “Personal” and it was a collection of letters from a doting mother, a whole string of girls from Texas to Teheran, notifications of dividends and correspondence with Chase Manhattan Bank. Maclaren skipped through the other four files before putting the personal file back in the cabinet. Then with the four files under his arm he walked back to look at the man’s body. There was still blood oozing from the cheek wound but it was a darker red now, and beginning to congeal.
As he walked out of the house and back to his car he wondered how much to tell them. He decided then that the stuff in the files was too good to be lost in the archives of SIS. It was the kind of stuff that Carter would find better use for. The others would be scared to use it.
He dialled the emergency number from the call-box in Marlow High Street and asked for the police. He gave the Dower House address and reported a disturbance. When they asked for his name he hung up.
Maclaren met Carter in the drinking club off Brewer Street. Carter was already there when he arrived, sitting in the far corner, barely distinguishable in the dim lighting and the haze of cigar smoke. Although Carter had his suits made by a first-class tailor in Covent Garden, whatever he wore always looked a size
too small. With shoulders, arms, chest and thighs like an all-in wrestler’s it seemed incongruous that his round, moon face always looked so amiable, almost childlike. He waved Maclaren to the empty seat beside him and offered him a cigar from a leather case, still holding it out after Maclaren had declined.
“What’s all the excitement about, sonny boy?”
Maclaren outlined what had happened on his surveillance without mentioning the contents of the files.
“Did he kick the bucket, the American?”
“I phoned the hospital. He’s in their intensive care unit. They weren’t saying much but they didn’t sound hopeful. They’ve sent for his parents from San Antonio.”
Carter beamed. “I like San Antonio. Best Angus cattle I’ve ever seen, and some nice little girls. So you think he’s had it?”
“I’d say so.”
“So what’s the rest of it? The files I suppose?”
“There’s two CIA men stashed away in this country.”
“Two. For Christ’s sake. Two hundred’s more like it.”
“I mean two CIA men who aren’t on the list. Canadian passports. No contact with Grosvenor Square, who’ve never heard of either of them.”
Carter drew on his cigar, his eyes half-closed against the smoke. He was looking straight ahead, his eyebrows raised as his mind went over the possibilities.
“What do you reckon they’re doing here?”
“Hiding.”
“Who from?”
“Practically everybody.”
“Don’t play games, boy. What’s it all about?”
“They’re both psychiatrists. They specialize in hypnotizing. And they’re both CIA agents.”
“So why the excitement?”
“Have you ever heard of the MKULTRA programme?”
“No. What is it?”
“It’s a CIA programme about the use of special drugs and hypnosis to control somebody’s mind. So that they do whatever they’re told to do but they never know what they’ve done. Or even that they’ve done anything. They don’t know that they were hypnotized at all.”
Carter tapped out the long cylinder of ash in the cracked saucer that served as an ash-tray, turning to look at Maclaren as he lifted the cigar back to his mouth.
“I heard a rumour about this. Two years, maybe three years ago. One of the Mossad boys was talking about it when I was in Tel Aviv. How much truth is there in it?”
“It’s a hundred per cent true. They’ve been doing it on scores of people for years.”
“You mean experimenting?”
“No. Actually doing it. Operationally.”
“What sort of things?”
“Everything from simple courier work to murder.”
Carter sniffed loudly and swallowed, his eyes on Maclaren’s face.
“How can you be sure?”
“It’s in those files. Code-names, the lot.”
“What are these guys doing here?”
“Like I said … hiding.”
“Who from?”
“According to the files—the FBI, the CIA, several congressional committees and a few independent investigators.”
“Why should that bunch be after them? They’re on their side for Christ’s sake.”
“Depends on what you’ve been up to.”
“Like what for instance?”
“Like hypnotizing people and using them as killers.”
“You mean they’ve actually done that?”
“Yes. According to the files they have.”
“Maybe the stuff in the files is just feasibility studies. Checking over what they’d like to do, but never got around to.”
Maclaren smiled. “You ought to read the files, Nick.”
“Better pass them to one of the evaluation teams.”
“What, and give up one of the best pieces of luck we’ve ever had? We could use those guys ourselves.”
“For what?”
“Knocking off some of the central council of the IRA maybe. In Dublin. Either these two Americans cooperate with us or we blow them.”
Carter smiled. A slow, fat-cat smile. “Now you’re cookin’ with gas, sunbeam.”
Maclaren waited for a moment and then said quietly: “These two could do it for us.”
Carter sat in silence for several minutes and Maclaren knew better than to disturb his thoughts. Twice Carter leaned forward as if he were going to speak, and twice he leaned back again in his chair. Then, without looking at Maclaren, Carter said, “Why should they?”
“So that we don’t send copies of the files to The Washington Post and Reuters.”
“How definite is the file material?”
“Definite enough. Even as it stands it would finish the CIA for good and all.”
“Where are the files?”
“At my place.”
“You’d better go and get ’em. I’ll come with you.”
“You’ll use them, Nick? You won’t let them rot?”
“I’ll think about it. Have you made copies of ’em?”
“No. Not yet.”
“Right.” He stood up, surprisingly smoothly for his bulk. “Let’s go and find them.”
Carter read the file material carefully. Again and again. He motored down to the cottage he owned outside Folkestone and spent the weekend gardening. When he left on the Sunday evening the metal map-cylinder with the files inside was a couple of feet under some Ailsa Craig seed potatoes that were neatly earthed-up in three long rows in the vegetable patch.
On the Monday he bought a stand-by ticket at Heathrow and was in Washington mid-morning local time. He looked in his little notebook and asked the cab-driver to take him to The Brighton Hotel on California Street. After consulting his notebook again, he dialled the CIA number in Langley. He asked for Mr. Grabowski. The telephone operator had no Mr. Grabowski listed but she would pass him on to someone who maybe could help. Carter recognized the standard ploy and went patiently through several levels until a man with a cool, calm voice confirmed that there was no trace of a Mr. Grabowski in any CIA division or department but if he left his name and telephone number they would go on checking and if they were successful they would call him back. Carter gave him the hotel number.
An hour later the British Embassy called him. He hadn’t given them or anyone else his number at the hotel and he smiled as they asked if they could be of help. He declined the offer, smiling to himself as he waited for their next move. And then it came. A US agency had enquired of the embassy about his status. Could he help them? He told them that he was Foreign Office but merely on holiday. They thanked him politely and rang off. He guessed it would take them less than ten minutes to find his name on the FO list. Then maybe another ten minutes to contact the CIA.
The man with the cool, calm voice called back in sixteen minutes with the good news. They had traced Mr. Grabowski and were putting him through.
He didn’t say much to Grabowski but it was enough to make him agree that he would call on Mr. Carter that evening about eight.
Despite their natural caution and experience Grabowski and Carter sized each other up favourably in the first ten minutes of social chit-chat. They did similar jobs. They were of a kind. Their outward appearance and the image they both projected were of brute force and energy, but they were both not only shrewd but perceptive, and Grabowski found no negative vibes coming from the Englishman. They sat there slowly sipping their whiskies, probing gently for basic information.
“By the way, Mr. Carter, how’d you get hold of my name?”
“The usual way, out of a file.”
“You mean you’ve got my name on one of your SIS files, for God’s sake?”
“I’m sure we have, but that wasn’t where I saw it. As a matter of fact it was an American file. A CIA file.”
“Our people don’t have my name on file over there. I can tell you that right now.”
“Did you have a young guy named Deeming?”
Grabowski shrugged an
d shook his head. “Not that I know of.”
He died about a week ago. Multiple injuries to the skull. Was doing surveillance on two CIA fellows and reporting to you.”
Carter saw the recognition dawn on Grabowski’s face. He would have plenty of other irons in the fire that could make him not recall the name, especially from an unexpected source. But he obviously recognized the circumstances of his man’s death. It was several moments before Grabowski spoke and Carter made no move to hurry him. Finally Grabowski said, “We’re treading around on thin ice, Mr. Carter. For both our sakes we’d better watch where we’re putting our feet.”
“Maybe I could get us off the ice altogether.”
“I’d appreciate that if it was possible.”
“We found his files. The police know nothing about them. At the moment only three people know what’s in them. And one of the three only knows part of the scenario. But before I go on I’d like an honest answer to a question.” Carter paused and stared at Grabowski. “If I have any doubts about whether you tell me the truth I shan’t make my suggestion to relieve the situation. What I propose would require absolute frankness between us. What do you feel about that?”
Grabowski shifted his backside in the chair. “Mr. Carter, we’re both in the same business. I already assume that if all you had in mind was to cause trouble I shouldn’t be sitting here now. You could have thrown your little bomb in the direction of Langley and that would be that.” Grabowski sighed. “So ask your question. If I can answer at all I’ll answer truthfully. If I would be going too far by telling the truth, then I’ll say so, and leave you to do whatever you choose to do.”
Carter nodded. “I’ve taken some precautions about the documents. If anybody fancied the idea of doing a ‘wet-job’ on me then the bomb would go off in hours. I thought I should mention that.”
Grabowski raised his eyebrows but said nothing, and Carter asked his question.