Pay Any Price

by Ted Allbeury

  He laid out all the things he would need on the kitchen table, checking them carefully before he loaded them into the boot of the car and locked it. As he undressed he set the alarm on his watch for seven o’clock.

  Just after midnight the last of the lights had gone out and Boyd started the car, drove down to the coast road and turned so that the car would be facing the right way for when he left. They didn’t look as if they would be a problem but the quicker he could leave the easier it would be. He stopped the car just past the entrance to the driveway. The nylon ropes and the torch were on the passenger seat beside him. The Walther was in his right-hand jacket pocket. When he got out he opened all the car doors very slightly after he had switched off the parking lights.

  He walked up the road until he guessed he was opposite the house and then climbed over the low dry-stone wall. The moon was full, and when he saw the house it looked almost as if it were floodlit. Treading slowly and deliberately he walked down the slope towards the house, across the drive and over to the porch. The porch was in deep shadow and he shone the torch on the lock as he gently pushed in the key. It turned easily and when he moved the handle he felt a soft gust of cold air as the door opened. He left the door slightly ajar and he shone the torch around the big square hall.

  The stairs creaked alarmingly despite his keeping well against the wall, but nobody stirred. The bedroom facing the top of the stairs was locked, and he tried several keys in the lock. The third one turned the tumblers and he opened the door slowly. There was a smell of stale smoke, and he guessed it was not used as a bedroom. He shaded the torch with his hand and saw that the room was unoccupied. He found the switch, turned on the light and closed the door.

  There were two trestle tables in the centre of the room. The kind that decorators use. They were piled with papers and books, with a space cleared for a portable typewriter. Against the far wall was a projection screen on a metal tripod. A slide projector and a 16mm sound projector were on a metal stand at the side of a metal filing cabinet. There were three worn armchairs and on an otherwise empty bookshelf was a small portable radio.

  Boyd walked quietly over to the tables and looked at the titles of the books without touching them. The Manufacture of Madness by Thomas Szasz, A Handbook of Contemporary Soviet Psychology, and Conditioned Reflexes by I. P. Pavlov. He opened one of the file covers and turned over a few pages. They were typed, and the names in the text were in capitals which made them leap out from the page. He read the first line on the page twice.

  “… the hypnosis programming of LEE HARVEY OSWALD was less complex. He carried out the instructions exactly, but the shooting of patrolman TIPPIT was an echo reflex. It was clear from the transcript of his interrogation at Dallas Police Station that there was no possibility of him recalling either the act or the hypnosis. Only fear on the part of the secondary collaborators outside CIA caused the killing of OSWALD by RUBY. This unnecessary action prevented us from continuing the …”

  Boyd closed the file carefully and looked at the second file. Every page was a graph or tables of figures. He took the first file and tucked it under his arm. That could be his equivalent of an insurance policy. He listened carefully at the next bedroom door but there was no sound from inside. He opened the door and put on his torch. It was a much smaller room, furnished as a bedroom with a single bed. There was nobody in it and he closed the door.

  His hand was reaching for the old-fashioned brass handle on the next bedroom door when he heard a noise inside the room. The click of metal on glass and soft shuffling, and then the door opened. A man stood there, his eyes half open, a tumbler in his hand. He was wearing a red dressing gown draped over his shoulders. The man blinked and said thickly, “Are you one of Carter’s men?” Then he saw the gun in Boyd’s hand. “Say. What is this?”

  “Go back in your room. Keep your voice down.” Boyd touched the muzzle of the Walther to the man’s naked belly. He backed away slowly and raised his arms. There was a sweater and slacks on a chair by the bed.

  “Put those on.” Boyd pointed at the clothes.

  As he pulled on his shoes the man said, “Just tell me who you are and what you want. There’s no need for all this …” he shrugged “… whatever it is.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Smith. I’m just a doctor on leave.”

  “Stand up.”

  And as the man stood up Boyd knew that the handcuffs and the nylon rope wouldn’t be necessary. He would come quietly enough.

  Boyd looked at the man’s pale face.

  “You’re Symons aren’t you?” The man nodded, and Boyd took the file cover from under his arm turning it for the man to see.

  “Did you write this report?”

  Boyd saw real fear in the man’s eyes. And the fear was not of him. He put the gun against the man’s belly and said softly, “Did you write it, Symons?”

  “Yes.” Symons’s whisper was almost inaudible and in that moment Boyd did what his training and experience both abhorred. He changed his plan. This was the man who mattered. Instinct told him that.

  “Walk quietly down the stairs to the front door.”

  “What are you going to do with me?”

  “If you cooperate and go quietly we’re only going to talk. If you try and play games you’ll get hurt. Badly hurt.”

  Boyd waved the gun towards the bedroom door. “Get moving.”

  For a moment, at the front door, Symons hesitated and stopped, but he groaned and moved on as the muzzle of the gun ground against his spine.

  At the car Boyd handcuffed Symons’s hands behind his back and slid the cut foam sponge into his mouth before bundling him into the back seat.

  Boyd drove slowly and carefully along the empty roads, through the small lanes and finally he turned into the rough drive up to the cottage.

  The two men sat facing each other on opposite sides of the kitchen table. To a casual observer they would have looked merely like two men talking as they drank from the flower-decorated mugs. Only the fact that one man held his mug with both hands might have led one to notice that his hands were handcuffed. Boyd put down his mug and folded his arms, and Symons relaxed as he noted the traditional defensive gesture.

  There had been no violence and Symons had had no sleep but he was slowly regaining his self-confidence. The Englishman was a slow talker and Symons assessed him as having a slow mind too. He could hold out without difficulty against this man’s laboured thinking. And before long Petersen would be raising the alarm and the rescue would be in full swing.

  “I can’t believe you’re an intelligence officer, Mr. Boyd.”

  “Why not?”

  “If you were bona-fide you wouldn’t be doing this. If the British authorities had any grounds for complaint they would take it up with the US Embassy.”

  “You both have Canadian passports.”

  “So what?”

  “So you’re an illegal entrant. You’ve committed at least half a dozen offences under the Immigration Regulations 1972. Any one of which allows a police officer to arrest you without a warrant.”

  Symons smiled. “But you’re not a police officer. I’m quite willing to go with you to a police station right now.”

  “Tell me about Walker.”

  Symons smiled. “I couldn’t possibly discuss a patient with you, Mr. Boyd.”

  Symons was still smiling as Boyd’s fist smashed into his face. His clenched hands came up to hold his nose and mouth as the bright red blood streamed through his fingers. Boyd made no move to help him. He just watched, still seething with anger at the man’s hypocritical jibe. Slowly his anger subsided. When Symons moved his hands Boyd saw that the man’s nose was broken and his soft lips were swollen and split.

  “Tell me about Walker.”

  Symons was trembling, shivering out of control, and as Boyd clenched his fist again Symons said, “There’s no need for that, you bastard.”

  “Talk, Symons, and stop the bullshit. The next time it won�
�t be just a punch on the nose.”

  “You’re going to regret this, Boyd. You really …”

  And this time Symons screamed as the solid fist crunched into his battered face. He tried to stand up to get away from the pain, rocking his head, his eyes closed, his throat swallowing blood as he fought for breath.

  When he eventually opened his eyes to look at Boyd they were pleading for mercy, all trace of superciliousness gone.

  “He’s British. They wanted a suitable subject. All I did was programme him the way they wanted.”

  “The way who wanted?”

  “Your man Carter. And his stooges. Maclaren and Sturgiss.”

  “Did Grabowski agree to this?”

  “You know Grabowski?”

  “Did he agree?”

  “Yes. It was a deal.”

  “What did you make Walker do?”

  “He gave the coup de grâce to men who had sold or given away military secrets.”

  “You mean he killed them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t they just do it themselves?”

  “It’s a standard precaution. If anything came to light. A body, say. Then there’s no connection with anyone except the subject. And he could never be arrested and tried because as far as he’s concerned he never did it. And was never in that place. That time or any other time.”

  “You said it’s standard precaution. You mean it’s standard for CIA?”

  “For Grabowski’s people, yes.”

  “How many murders did Walker commit?”

  “Seven.”

  “Where were they?”

  “Two men and a girl in Germany. Two men in Holland. One in Israel and one in Athens.”

  “Now tell me about the girl. Debbie Shaw.”

  “We used her as a courier while she was travelling around the service camps in the States. Then we used her for carrying gold and drugs across combat lines for dissidents.”

  “What about over here?”

  “She killed two men in Dublin and one in Belfast. They were IRA leaders. I gather your people were delighted with the results.”

  “When did you stop using Walker?”

  “He was due out of the army. And after he was released he went to see a psychiatrist, and we dropped him then.”

  “How long did you use him?”

  “About a year.”

  “Is that why he can’t remember anything about that year?”

  “Yes. I put a memory block on him.”

  “You programmed him to be a different person. What was the name of that person?”

  “Dickens.”

  “And who was Sergeant Madden SAS?”

  “That was a second level. I needed that so that I could rationalize the violence for him.”

  “And the girl?”

  “She was Nancy Rawlins at the first level of hypnosis and Lara for the second level. The two levels weren’t really necessary in her case. It was an early experiment to see if it would hold.”

  “You realize she’s a permanent patient now in a mental unit?”

  “That was only because the hypnosis was filtering. When I found that she’d gone for treatment Carter had her detained for security reasons. I told him she was ninety-nine per cent locked-in but he wouldn’t risk her being around.”

  “Did you expect her to filter, as you call it?”

  “No. It was always possible, but I’d controlled her perfectly for several years.”

  “But it’s always possible you were taking a risk?”

  “Not really.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’d arranged a terminal programme.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Self-immolation.”

  “You mean suicide?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you make that work?”

  “She’s programmed to do it when she hears a five figure number.”

  “You mean you say the number and she just kills herself?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “We had some research done. There’s a high cliff on the south coast called Beachy Head where people frequently commit suicide. If she’s in England that’s where she’d do it.”

  “And if she was somewhere else?”

  “She walks into the nearest lake or ocean.”

  “What’s the number?”

  “50556.”

  “Why that number?”

  “It doesn’t come up in dates or clock times.”

  “Can you undo it? Cancel it?”

  “Possibly. It wouldn’t be certain.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. We haven’t got that tested yet.”

  Boyd looked for a long time at Symons in silence. Then he said softly, “Does your conscience ever trouble you, Symons?”

  “Why should it?”

  “You know why it should, don’t bullshit me.”

  “You mean medical ethics and all that?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m a CIA man first, a doctor second. The Soviet Union, the KGB do it. So we have to. We have to know how to use the method and how to combat it.”

  “Forget being a doctor. Don’t you have any scruples as a human being?”

  “Are you married, Boyd?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ever thought about the animals that die in agony to test your wife’s eye-shadow or lip-salve?”

  “She doesn’t use them.”

  “Good for her. What about the drugs that save lives, or kidneys, or lungs or livers. Thousands of animals die to test them.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “Millions of people will die in the next war. We’re trying to prevent it happening. So maybe fifty or a hundred people die or get disabilities in testing. It’s a very small sacrifice.”

  “The ends justify the means?”

  “Exactly.”

  “That was the Nazis’ excuse and Stalin’s.”

  “And now you’re sitting there hoping I’ll say that maybe they were right? So that you can label me as a Nazi or a sadist.”

  “Not at all. I labelled you way back. You’re a psychopath.”

  Boyd saw the two red spots of anger suffuse Symons’s white cheeks. “You don’t know what the word means, Boyd.”

  “Now tell me about the Kennedys.”

  “That’s nothing to do with Walker and the girl.”

  “I didn’t say it was. But it is. That’s where you started. Right at the top. And you’ve been working your way down ever since.”

  “Boyd. You’re having your bit of fun but you’d better remember one thing. I’m a senior CIA officer, privy to a lot of highly confidential information. They’re not going to sit on their butts while some Brit does a bit of private enterprise kidnapping. You’ve got a few hours, maybe even a day, before Washington really starts leaning on your people. Then your people will be leaning on you. Meantime you can rough me up. There’s nothing I can do to stop you. I didn’t do the hoodlum training at Camp Peary so you’re in no danger from me. But when they come for you, you’re finished.”

  “Now tell me about the Kennedys. I’ve read your report but there’s just one thing that puzzles me. How did they persuade you to do it?”

  “Let me ask you a question. How did you trace us here? Was it one of Carter’s men? There’s only three, including Carter, who know about us.”

  “You’ve forgotten about Washington, Symons. The CIA aren’t all like you.”

  Boyd saw the uneasiness change to fear in Symons’s eyes. A different kind of fear. Disbelief fighting it out with fear that it could be true. That the sprawling machine that was used against others could be used against him. When that happens you can suddenly remember back to names and incidents, facts and rumours, when you were on the inside, when you never had to plead the Fifth or the First or the Fourth or even the Fourteenth Amendments. When it was normal to sit in a mahogany-panelled office round a table and discuss the feasibil
ity study of the assassination of a dictator or a president; the advantages and disadvantages of a change of regime in some Middle East country; and the pros and cons of shovelling a million dollars down the pipeline to dissidents with unpronounceable names in countries that you couldn’t find in an atlas because they were smaller than the State of Oregon. When altering the history, the destiny, of some foreign country was a matter of expediency not moral judgement.

  Men who dealt daily in those terms spent little time discussing the termination of an individual life. They might spend a few minutes on a list of names, but one individual, theirs or the other side’s, was not important enough to take up their valuable time. And when you had regularly sat-in on such meetings you were aware of how inexorably the machine worked. When the tick went beside your name it was just a question of time. And Symons was well aware, as Grabowski himself was aware, that not only did many top CIA people deplore Grabowski’s operations, but even those who approved accepted that an essential part of its function was its disposability. Officially, you and the others didn’t exist, and when the need was pressing you didn’t need to exist even unofficially. Grabowski would always survive. He was the exception. The rest were expendable. And he, Tony Symons, was one of the rest.

  Symons looked at Boyd. “D’you really mean that? The lead was from Langley.”

  “Concerning your identity and whereabouts, yes.”

  “Can we do a deal?”

  “What kind of a deal?”

  Symons shrugged. “You give me cover and I’ll give you what you want.”

  “Maybe. You haven’t answered my questions.”

  “What were they?”

  “About the Kennedys.”

  “They just got in the way of too many powerful groups and people. They wanted to be the guys in the white hats. The knights in armour. They weren’t, they were a couple of Irish Micks whose old man had made a pile of dough. They wanted votes; and by harassing the labour bosses, the Mafia, and investigating corruption in government, they thought they’d get the votes. And they were right. So in the end they had to deliver. Bobby was the number one target until John F got to the White House and then, as one of the mob once said … ‘Cut off the rooster’s head and his tail will just drop off naturally.’ So JFK became number one target. They were actors those two. OK, they had good scriptwriters and producers, but they had no real talent. They should have gone to Hollywood. One of these days the country will do it in reverse. They’ll go straight to Hollywood and pick a guy who plays the right kind of parts and make him president.”