Pay Any Price

by Ted Allbeury

  “What is it, son,” she said softly, “tell me what’s the matter.”

  “I don’t really know, mom, I just don’t know.”

  “Are you worried about not getting those jobs?”

  He sighed. “That’s part of it.”

  “What’s the other part, boy?”

  He shook his head slowly. “I have nightmares.”

  “What about?”

  “About killing people.”

  “You mean when you were in the army?”

  “I think so. I’m not sure.”

  “Tell me what happens in your dreams.”

  For long moments he was silent, looking vacantly at the wallpaper beside his head. And when he spoke she could barely hear him.

  “It’s in a barn … there’s a wooden table … an army issue table with papers and maps on it. And two men tied to chairs. There were two officers in battle dress. One of them told the two men if they didn’t talk they would be shot … the one with ginger hair spits at the officer who tells me to shoot him. And when I shoot him there’s stuff comes out of his chest, like spaghetti and blood and …” His eyes closed, and his head fell back on the pillow and the woman realized that he was actually asleep.

  It was almost an hour before his eyes opened. She wished that she could hold back and wait, but her tension and worry were too much.

  “Where was this place?”

  “What place?”

  “Where you killed this man in your dream. Was it a place you know?”

  “I don’t know. I think so.”

  “But you were in Bradford for a year and then you were at the depot place where you were in the stores. It must be one of those places.”

  “No. I can remember signposts on a motorway. They were in German.”

  “Did your unit go to Germany? Maybe one of those NATO exercises?”

  “No. I never left this country.”

  “Have you seen a film like this or seen it on TV?”

  “I don’t think so. I just don’t know.”

  “Maybe we should write to the War Office. Maybe they could help.”

  He shook his head violently. “I don’t want to know, mom. I want to forget it.”

  “That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said, my boy. Maybe you should see the doctor. He always asks after you. He could give you a tonic. That’s what you need.”

  George Walker found a job, working on the forecourt of a local garage, and in six months he had the nightmare only twice.

  It was when he came home one evening and the two letters were waiting for him that he was finally driven to consult the family doctor. One letter was his weekly football pools coupon and the other was in the standard buff envelope overprinted “WAR OFFICE.” His hands trembled as he opened the letter in the privacy of his bedroom. It was only two lines and a formal confirmation that he had served his full time and had been demobilized at Catterick Camp in the previous August.

  His father came into his bedroom in the early hours of the morning: Roused by his son’s screams and his complaint of acute stomach pains, he dissolved an Alka-Seltzer in warm water and watched as his son drank it down. The next day Mrs. Walker went down to the call-box in the High Street and asked the doctor to call. Before he went up to see her son she told the doctor all that she could remember about his failure to get a real job and the story of the nightmares.

  When he talked with the young man he knew at once that he needed help that was beyond a general practitioner’s expertise. George Walker had suffered some kind of shock and only a psychiatrist could help him. He prescribed some mild tranquillizers and didn’t probe too deeply into the problem. His questions were more to show his concern than to establish a diagnosis, and he told George Walker that he was arranging for him to see a specialist.

  Armed with a sealed letter from the doctor Walker went to his appointment at the hospital in Manchester. He was surprised and uneasy when he was directed at the gate to follow the blue signs to the Psychiatric and Neural Research Department.

  When he was shown into the interview room he saw that the doctor was young. Not more than thirty-five. Doctors were generally father figures where he lived. The doctor was casually dressed in a blue shirt and jeans but there was nothing casual about his approach. He read the GP’s letter, put it to one side and leaned back in his chair.

  “How long were you in the army?”

  “Four years and one month.”

  “Did you like service life?”

  Walker shrugged. “It was OK.”

  “What was your rank when you came out?”

  “Corporal.”

  “What were you in?”

  “I don’t understand?”

  “Were you signals, transport or what?”

  “I was infantry. And when I was promoted I worked in the depot stores.”

  “How did you get on with the other men?”

  “OK.” He shrugged. “It’s hard to tell.”

  “Anybody you particularly disliked?”

  “No.”

  “Any quarrels at all?”

  “No.”

  “Any charges laid against you?”

  “No, none.”

  “Were you glad to be out?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Why?”

  “I wanted to earn some money.”

  “Do you earn more now?”

  “A bit more.”

  “You applied for several jobs. I understand you had all the necessary qualifications but you didn’t get them. Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The doctor noticed the beads of sweat that broke out on the young man’s face.

  “You’ve been having nightmares. Tell me about them.”

  He listened without comment as Walker haltingly described his dreams, making no attempt to prompt him in the gaps of silence or the searching for words. When Walker finished the doctor was silent for a moment.

  “Can you come again on Friday at the same time?”

  “Yes. Providing the boss doesn’t object.”

  “D’you want me to give you a medical note for him?”

  “No. He’ll be OK.”

  Walker lay back on the couch uneasily and as Dr. Ansell looked at his notes he said, without looking at Walker, “Just relax, George.”

  Then the doctor put his hand on Walker’s wrist. Without counting he could tell that his pulse was fast, and he wondered for a moment if maybe Walker had been hypnotized before.

  “Have you ever been hypnotized, George?”

  “No, doc.”

  “Well I’m going to relax you so that you can talk more easily. You don’t mind that, do you?”

  Walker shook his head.

  “Close your eyes … that’s right … now relax … good … just relax. When I count from ten you’re going to be completely relaxed and perfectly comfortable. Ten … eyes closed … nine, eight … deeper and deeper … seven, six, five … just nod if you can hear me … good … four, three … two, one and zero … Can you still hear me?” Walker nodded, and the doctor checked the blood-pressure reading on the instrument panel as he spoke. “Let’s talk about your dream, George. Just tell me what you can remember.” He saw the needle swing on the dial and stay well above the normal reading.

  “Where did it happen, George? Where was the room?”

  “The road sign said Hamburg. But outside in the country. A big house near the woods.”

  “Who was there?”

  “Captain Ames and Lieutenant Leclerc, and Mason and Fox.”

  “The officers were British Army officers, were they?”

  “They were both Grenadier Guards.”

  “Who else was there?”

  “There were two soldiers … prisoners.”

  “Why were the two men prisoners?”

  “Because of Mason’s girl-friend.”

  “Go on.”

  “She was a Kraut. They said she was working for the East Germans and one of them was giving her do
cuments.”

  “What sort of documents?”

  “Orders of battle and NATO sitreps.”

  “What’s a sitrep?”

  “A situation report.”

  “Who told you to kill him?”

  “Ames.”

  “What did he say?”

  Walker sighed and Ansell saw the beads of sweat forming on the forehead and round the mouth. He said softly, “Tell me what he said.”

  “He called me Mr. Dickens and told me to kill Fox.”

  “And did you?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you kill him?”

  “With a gun. A Luger.”

  “Why did he call you Mr. Dickens?”

  “That’s my name.”

  “But your name’s Walker. George Walker.”

  “No. It’s Dickens.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “The aeroplane.”

  “Where did it go to?”

  “US air force base in Norfolk.”

  “Where in Norfolk?”

  “I don’t know. But always fried egg and bacon.”

  Ansell sat silent for several minutes, and then went through the ritual to bring Walker out of hypnosis. As his eyes flickered open Ansell said, “How do you feel, George?”

  “I feel good. Kind of lighter, somehow.”

  “Good. I want you to come back to see me again next week. Friday, same time.”

  “OK.”

  13

  As the small group of Concorde passengers filed out on to the tarmac at Dulles International Airport Boyd turned and waved to the two men standing at the observation windows. His time with the CIA was over. Schultz and Friedlander had been his closest colleagues, and he counted them as more than colleagues, they were friends. Men he admired for their professional skills and experience, but even more for their judgement. He knew that he would miss them both.

  As usual the Concorde was only two-thirds full and the roomy seating gave space for him to stretch out his long legs and sleep.

  At Heathrow Boyd showed his passport at the immigration desk and the officer smiled and nodded as he handed it back. He had spotted the tell-tale “S” that preceded the passport number. He showed the cover of his passport to the customs officer who waved him through. And as he went through the doors there she was. The beautiful Kate, smiling, almost laughing, because she was so pleased to have him back.

  “I’m sorry we’re late, honey. There were headwinds.”

  She looked up at his face, eyebrows raised. “What’s all this honey business. Who’s been teaching you to call her honey?”

  He smiled. “Let’s go grab a drink before we go home.”

  “Where are your cases?”

  “They’re by the carousel. We’ll pick them up later.”

  When he had ordered their drinks he sat on the bar stool, smiling as he looked at her. “It’s wonderful to be back with you, kid. I missed you so much after you’d gone.”

  “Did you sell the lease of the apartment?”

  “You bet. My relief bought it. I made five hundred bucks.”

  “You’re an old softie. You told me it was worth at least another thousand when I was over with you, and that was three months ago.”

  He looked down at his drink and then back at her face. “Doesn’t matter. We’ve always got your painting.”

  She opened her handbag and handed him an envelope. “They brought that round and asked me to give it to you.”

  He hesitated for a moment and then slid the letter into his jacket pocket. She smiled. “Read it. You know you want to.”

  It was very brief. No words of welcome. Just asking that he phone Arkwright as soon as possible. He folded it, put it back into the envelope and stuffed it into his pocket.

  “Why don’t we eat here? The food’s not bad if we go for the plain things.”

  “Let’s do that.” She smiled.

  When they were back at Hampstead he phoned Arkwright. The duty officer gave him another number and Arkwright asked if he could attend a meeting the next day at three in the afternoon.

  “It’s a Sunday, for God’s sake.”

  He could hear the smile of satisfaction in Arkwright’s languid tones. “We’re heathens over here, James. You must have forgotten.”

  “I’ve got two weeks’ leave. I’m not on duty.”

  “It’ll only be an hour. Blame Cartwright not me.”

  “Where can I get hold of him?”

  “Right at this moment he’s airborne, chum. From Hong Kong. See you tomorrow.” And Arkwright hung up.

  But not even Arkwright could spoil his pleasure at being home. There was a pile of mail on his desk but he wasn’t curious, it could wait. There were new curtains in the sitting room and half a dozen vases crammed full of Sweet William, his favourite flower; and a crayon portrait of Katie on the wall over the settee. It was signed Leslie Grosvenor, and as he looked at the gooseberry-green eyes, and the whiteness of the teeth behind the full sensual lips, he felt a fleeting twinge of jealousy. The bastard had painted a bedroom face. It was true and authentic, but how did he know that she looked like that when she was making love?

  She came into the room naked, brushing her long dark hair.

  “D’you like it, Jimmy?”

  “It’s beautiful. Who’s the lucky man?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Who’s the artist?”

  She laughed. “I can’t believe it. You’re jealous, aren’t you?”

  “A bit.”

  “Leslie’s a girl. She’s coming to tea tomorrow with her husband. He plays fiddle in the Philharmonic.”

  “Sounds interesting.”

  She put her arms around his neck and kissed him gently. “I love you so much.”

  Boyd got on well with Cartwright. They were nothing like each other in character or temperament but they had both managed to avoid that totally implacable immersion in their jobs that most SIS men suffered from. Divorce was par for the course, and most of the marriages that survived, survived because the couple concerned had found some modus vivendi that only the most cynical or naïve observer could call a normal marriage.

  The breakdowns were seldom indicative of any unusual failure on the part of the people concerned, but there can be few forms of employment more likely to guarantee disaster than a job where the husband is prohibited from telling his wife how he spends his days and nights, and that makes sudden, unannounced trips overseas frequent events. And when the training and experience make subterfuge, suspicion and lying into virtues that could preserve a man’s life, it’s not easy to be a good husband. Add to this that most of the men were self-confident, and sure of themselves, traits which attracted many young women. And on the other side take account of the fact that this kind of man generally chooses attractive women, and the apparent neglect, secretiveness and jealousies are magnified grossly in a marriage which would have had the usual teething troubles even in normal life. Add up all this and you have a well proven recipe for emotional disaster.

  Boyd had kept his work at arms-length so far as his marriage was concerned. Despite signing the Official Secrets Act he had told Katie roughly what he did before he asked her to marry him. Not all that much, but enough to show that the hazards would not be solely of his making. It would be wrong to say that they trusted each other completely, but only because it never entered their minds to be suspicious of each other. If there had been grounds for jealousy they were both of a temperament that would have shown it, openly and destructively. It was perhaps more difficult for the man, who was trained to trust nobody and to be suspicious of everyone.

  Cartwright had never married and he had preserved his independence by music. With a natural violin-playing talent and a catholic taste in music he was welcome at jazz sessions in Islington pubs, and in trios and quartets whose tastes were more inclined towards Beethoven and Schubert. He had girl-friends, but he didn’t inhale.

  Cartwright was Boyd’s section head. A section
that had no traditional role and which only handled those problems that regularly came up which didn’t fit into the normal MI6 structure.

  Cartwright was waiting for him in the reception lobby of Century House, a courtesy that was typical of the man. As they went up to the seventeenth floor he asked after Katie and told Boyd briefly of his trip to Hong Kong.

  “We’ve been getting a run of defectors from the Chinese Intelligence Service in the past two months. All coming through Hong Kong, and our people were getting bogged down trying to sort the sheep from the goats.”

  “How do you sort them out?”

  “Well, we start by assuming that they’re all planted on us. The Chinese aren’t natural defectors, you know. They don’t like living outside China. And they’re not interested in doing exchanges of captured intelligence agents. If one of their chaps get caught they just see it that he’s fallen down on the job and that’s it. In this particular case it turned out that it was a check that Peking were doing to try out our narcotics people. We sent them all back and closed the frontier for a week just to show we didn’t approve. They’ll find some other way to get the heroin through, but that’s not our problem, thank God.”

  “Why are they so active in drugs? Is it because Peking needs foreign currencies?”

  “Partly that, but mainly it’s ideological. They want to help the decline of the decadent West. And now that the Americans have clamped down on Turkey the Chinese want to fill in the gaps.”

  Cartwright ignored his desk and pointed to the two armchairs.

  “I apologize for dragging you back off leave but I shan’t take up much of your time. I’ve got a little douceur for Katie.”

  He fished around in his pocket and pulled out a small box wrapped in tissue paper. As he handed it to Boyd he said, “Don’t open it. It’s a jade brooch to go with those lovely green eyes of hers.” He paused. “She must be glad to have you back.”

  “I’m glad to be back myself, Ken.”

  “I’ve got an enquiry that should keep you in this country for some time. It could be a sheer waste of time but I’d like you to give it a whirl until you can confirm that it’s a nonsense.”

  “What is it? KGB?”