Pay Any Price
Page 23
Back in the road he stood away from the van. A working van was never that empty. There would be job tickets, cigarette ends and packets, driver’s manuals, toffee papers. Some sign of human beings. There was something wrong but he didn’t know what it was. And then he saw it. The tiny tell-tale shadow.
Standing alongside the van he ran his nail along the edge of the “P” in Post Office and it lifted, the whole legend coming away as he peeled it off. It was hand-lettering on a self-adhesive strip. He threw the strip into the ditch and walked back to his car. Sliding into the driver’s seat he reached across and unlocked the glove recess and took out the gun. Watching the road ahead he smacked his hand against the base of the magazine and heard it snap into place.
Boyd sat there trying to remember what the area looked like on the map. All he could remember was the orchard at the back. Further back still was a pond or a lake, and marking the boundaries were rough wooden posts carrying three or four strands of barbed wire.
He walked back down the lane, past the van to the five-barred gate. It rattled and shook as he climbed over. Five or six black and white Friesians stood flicking their ears in the shade of an oak tree, chewing the cud, saliva dripping from their soft mouths as they stared at him. He looked at his watch and then at the sun: it was just touching the top of the oak tree. Boyd headed across on his rough bearing towards a hawthorn bush on the far side of the field. Beyond the hawthorn hedge was a small coppice of silver birches, and bending low he hurried towards it.
The copse had been allowed to run wild and thin saplings grew everywhere, with runners slanting up from the roots of established trees to impede his movements. At the edge of the copse he stood just behind the outer clump of trees.
Forty or fifty yards ahead of him he could see the marksman. He was dressed in a loose brown suede jacket and lightweight slacks. His rifle was on the grass beside and in front of him, turned on its side, its thin leather strap already looped to take his hand. The butt was custom-made, so was the cheek rest. As Boyd watched, the man lifted the rifle, pulled it to his shoulder, and raising his head he looked through the telescopic sights. He held the rifle there for a minute or so and then placed it back on the grass. The rifle had been aimed at the concrete slabs where he would have parked the car.
Slowly and quietly Boyd went back through the copse and skirted around it away from the sun. It was beginning to set, casting long shadows from the trees, and Boyd sat waiting for the light to go.
Almost an hour later he moved off in the darkness, heading towards the orchard at the back of the cottage. A tangle of wild blackberry bushes snagged at his clothes as he reached the first of the ancient apple trees. Their branches were so low that he had to crawl. The thick overgrown grass was wet with dew and his trousers clung heavily to his legs when he eventually stood up. He could see the back of the cottage, barely distinguishable in the special darkness of dusk before the moon comes up. There would almost certainly be a man at the back of the cottage. And then as his eyes became accustomed to the darkness he saw what could be the shadowy shape of a man at the near corner of the cottage. He waited, breathing shallowly and then the shadow moved. There were no lights on anywhere in the cottage but there could be someone inside. He would have to take this first man with his hands, or the marksman would be around to help him.
Boyd turned up the collar of his jacket to hide the light colour of his shirt. He moved forward slowly on all fours, and then a hand grabbed at his ankle and a heavy body flung itself on top of him. He twisted to one side as a hand grasped at his throat. As he bent his legs to fend off the man a boot landed deep in his belly, and above him a man called out. Boyd reached out for where the face must be and the man grunted as Boyd’s fingers scraped his face and then grabbed for his throat. The man twisted violently but Boyd’s strong fingers were squeezing his wind-pipe. Slowly his fingers pressed on the man’s throat until he felt him sagging heavily on top of him. Then a boot crashed against Boyd’s head, stunning him temporarily, a torch shone on his face and a voice said, “That’s him. Go on.” As the muzzle of the gun jabbed at his eye the pain was almost like an anaesthetic and when the bullet crashed into his skull he didn’t even feel it. He died instantly with no need for a second shot, and as Carter looked down to the pool of light from his torch he saw Boyd’s right hand shaking violently as the last messages from his nervous system did their work. The fingers closed, gripping tightly, and then they relaxed, spreading out again in the wet grass.
Grabowski gripped his gun tighter and smashed his foot against the cottage door. It swung open easily and he realized that it hadn’t been locked. He glanced around the living room and walked through to the old-fashioned scullery. There were used plates and mugs and dirty cutlery in a red plastic bowl filled with water, and all the signs that this was where they had been, but there was no sign of Symons.
Walking back into the living room he saw the narrow flight of stairs. Slowly and cautiously, peering upwards, the gun pushed forward, he made his way up the stairs. The first bedroom was empty, the second bedroom was locked. Bracing his back against the wall he put his foot up beside the lock and pushed. For a second the door held before it sprang open. Symons was lying on the bed, his hands behind his back, his ankles roped together, and a roughly cut piece of foam rubber sticking out of his mouth. His face was bruised and bloody, his nose swollen to twice its normal size.
There was a gush of blood from Symons’s mouth as Grabowski pulled out the gag and he moaned softly as Grabowski turned him over to release his hands. When he saw the handcuffs Grabowski turned him onto his back again and putting the gun on the bed he untied the ropes binding Symons’s ankles.
“How’re you feeling?”
“Terrible. I think he’s broken my nose. Why did it take so long?”
“It’s only been a few days.”
“Can you get a key for these handcuffs, they’ve cut into my wrists.”
“I’ll have to get a key from the local police.”
“Where’s Boyd?”
“He’s dead.”
“For Christ’s sake. What happened?”
“He was shot.”
“Who shot him? You?”
“No. Not me. I gotta talk seriously to you, Tony.”
“What about?”
“Remember when we were talking, way back just before Dallas? You said that if anything happened to you the bomb would go off.”
“Yes. I remember it very well.”
“And you said if you died from natural causes the same would happen. Remember?”
“Yes.”
“Well that’s always worried me. That’s what I want to talk about.”
“No harm in you talking, Ziggy.”
“I don’t need to talk much. I just want to know what you’ve done. I assume you’ve done some sort of disclosure of the MKULTRA experiments and you’ve stashed them away someplace.”
“That’s more or less right, Ziggy. But I’m not saying any more, old friend. Those things are my insurance policies.”
“I’m aware of that. Nevertheless I want to know where they are.”
“No way, Ziggy.” Symons smiled a battered smile. “You know better than that.”
“OK. We’d better get down to the essentials. I’ve known you for a long time now, Symons. You’re a clever fellow. You’ve done a good job, so I don’t want you to come to any harm. You’ve been drawing an active service special allotment for years now. The same extras that top field agents draw. But you’re not a field agent and you’d never have survived as a field agent. They’re maybe not so bright in some ways as you are. But they’ve got several things that you ain’t got and won’t ever have. Like guts for instance. When I start putting you through the wringer you’re gonna scream like a stuck pig. I don’t much like the sound of men screaming so I thought we might find a way to avoid it.”
“You mean you’ll turn the heat on me? I don’t believe it.”
“Start believing, lover boy. I�
��ll put you through the mincer without a second thought. I might even enjoy it. You’ve been a cocky bastard when you had the chance.”
Symons was trembling as he shook his head. “You wouldn’t. You couldn’t. Not after all I’ve done. I’m one of your team.”
Grabowski said softly, “See this gun?” He reversed it in his hand, the barrel gripped tightly and he slammed the butt hard, like a hammer into the palm of his left hand. “I’ll give you ten seconds to start talking, Symons. After that I’ll finish off what Boyd started on your face.”
Symons turned his head away as if to avoid a blow and he said harshly, “What d’you want to know?”
“Where’s your stuff? The cosy little time-bomb that reveals all?”
“Can we do a deal, Ziggy? We could share it. You need some insurance just as much as …”
The butt of the revolver crashed against Symons’s mouth and teeth. For a moment he was silent, wrapped in a shroud of pain. And then he screamed. Again and again. Falling back on the bed he buried his face in the softness of the pillows. And slowly a red stain spread from the pillows to the sheets.
Grabowski turned him onto his back and leaned over him. “Where’s the stuff, Symons? Or do you want some more?”
“It’s in the house … Percy House … on Kodachrome slides … in a pack … seventy-one slides.”
“Where is it? The pack?”
“It’s with … all the other packs of … slides … it’s marked on the label … ARTLUKM … our code reversed.”
“And what releases it to the waiting world?”
“A letter … my lawyer … he’s got a set too … unopened … sealed with superglue.”
“Who’s your lawyer?”
“Miles Roper … Roper and Callagan … Boston … at Harvard together.”
“No other copies?”
“No … I swear it … please Ziggy … I’m haemorrhaging … get me …” Symons’s eyes closed.
Grabowski knew that it would be safer to check on the slides first, but it would complicate things too much. He pointed the gun at the bloody mess that was Symons’s face and fired twice. Symons’s body jerked from the first shot but there was no visible response to the second.
Back at Percy House Grabowski found the pack of 35mm slides and prised it open with a knife. In the darkened room he projected the first ten slides and that was enough. He dropped all the slides and the pack into the Aga cooker in the kitchen and stood watching as the yellow pack twisted and bubbled, and then suddenly the gases ignited and the pack and the slides flared and melted, grey smoke pouring from the glowing liquid residue. He put back the hotplate ring, lowered the bolster and then walked back to Carter and Sturgiss in the sitting room. He passed Cartwright sitting on an antique chest in the hall, talking on the telephone. Boyd’s body was being flown to London. Symons’s body had been sewn up in a canvas sack.
All night Carter’s men removed all evidence of the two Americans from Percy House and from Boyd’s occupation of the cottage.
The convoy of two cars and a light van made its way to the local authority rubbish incinerator at Alnwick in the early hours of the morning. Carter and Grabowski stood watching as the sack containing Symons’s body and everything from the house and cottage were swallowed up in the glowing maw of the furnace, until there was nothing left but a layer of fine grey ash in the pit below the steel grating. Cartwright was already on his way back to London.
Grabowski went back to the hotel, booked himself into a room and put in a call to a Boston number. It was only eleven in the morning over there and that gave them ample time to carry out his instructions.
The law firm of Roper and Callagan reported the break-in to the local police the following day but neither the slides nor the sealed letter were reported missing. Just two IBM Selectrics and a Sirius microcomputer. It was Grabowski’s guess that they hadn’t even noticed the other missing items. And there was no reason why they should. He had a whisky with the night porter and then headed back to the cottage.
24
George Walker sees Dr. Ansell from time to time, just for a check-up. Once or twice a year he has one of his nightmares. They leave him screaming and sweating, but he has almost got used to them and he takes them in his stride. Ansell has tried in vain to establish what triggers them, and in his case-notes he attributes them to responses to the accumulated tensions that affect most people one way or another.
Walker now works as a computer programmer for a national insurance company that omitted by oversight to ask him to fill in an application form. He has not married and still lives with his parents. He has no friends and he devotes all his spare time to a model railway layout that he has built up in a small shed in the garden.
Debbie Shaw is in an asylum for the incurably insane. She owes her survival to being the thirty-first item on an SIS policy-making agenda on the hottest autumn day since records were kept. The item was to discuss whether she represented a security risk if left alive. The meeting had only got to item twenty-five by eleven o’clock in the evening. The DUS had been called away to the House at ten to see the Prime Minister, the man from the Joint Intelligence Committee had never heard of Debbie Shaw, and the new man from Berlin had suggested that item thirty-one should be dealt with at Cartwright’s discretion. Cartwright would be the last person to admit that he had been moved by Boyd’s words or thoughts, but he came down in favour of Miss Shaw being moved to a place of permanent care and treatment.
Debbie Shaw wears a threadbare towelling bath-robe, several sizes too big for her because it was once the property of Steve Randall. She doesn’t remember him and she has no visitors.
She gives little trouble to the staff, sitting most days in the same wicker chair. She knits a scarf that the nurses have to unravel from time to time when its length exceeds twelve feet. She sometimes sings to herself quietly as she knits, and one of the young doctors once said amiably that she ought to be a singer.
About once a year she is a problem. A passive problem, refusing to eat or drink. Sitting silently, not knitting, in her own small cubicle. Refusing to talk. It never lasts more than a week and force feeding every other day keeps her alive. She is still pretty, apart from her pale face and the purple shadows under her eyes. Male patients proposition her from time to time but she just smiles.
Steve Randall gave up his act and lives now in one room in Pimlico. He has been arrested several times on drunkenness and vagrancy charges. He goes to see Dr. Zhivago whenever it’s on and sheds tears when it comes to the bit where the man and the woman sit on the bench under the trees and the leaves blow along the street.
He appeared once on a TV show called Where are they now? and was congratulated by the producer on a gallant performance. He goes irregularly to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and despite being an obvious backslider he is well liked by everyone in the group. He survives on Social Security payments and small hand-outs from a show-biz charity.
Grabowski retired a year after his visit to Northumberland and lives on the outskirts of Kansas City. He receives a good pension and is popular in the neighbourhood. He tells tall stories of foreign parts to the young kids, and tends his garden with love but no skill. He spends his spare cash on a fine collection of foreign stamps, and is visited from time to time by men in Lincolns and foreign sports cars. Rumour has it that he had been a sports writer before he retired. He neither denies nor confirms it, but it is held as significant that on the only occasion when he was co-opted as anchorman on the tug-of-war team for High School fathers they achieved the only win in the history of the event. Only he and a doctor in Washington know that he is dying slowly of cancer. Petersen, who now teaches Psychiatry at a well-respected college in North Dakota, visited Grabowski once, but the meeting wasn’t a success. As Petersen afterwards reflected, there was not what he would call a meeting of minds.
At a meeting in a private room at The Travellers four men considered at some length what they should do about Carter, Maclaren and Sturgis
s. One of them, in the early stages of the meeting, had said a few words on the lines of “only doing their duty and should not be disadvantaged for so doing.” Nobody picked up the ball because they all knew only too well that they were not there to consider the pros and cons of the three men but how to dispose of a potential embarrassment. They had a replacement for Carter already in mind and Maclaren and Sturgiss were neither here nor there. All the meeting wanted was to make sure that whatever arrangements were made they satisfied the three men so that there was no possibility of any come-back in the future.
One of SIS’s legal advisers drew up suitable documents for the three men to sign. Carter was paid £57,000 and a tax free pension of £2,500 a year. Maclaren and Sturgiss were each paid £17,000 cash, tax free. Sums arrived at as being capable of withstanding future criticism on the grounds that there were redundant steel-workers and miners receiving similar redundancy payments.
Carter lives in Bradford, his home town, and has shares in a north-east fun-fair, a Scarborough holiday camp and a small chain of betting shops. His wife of twenty-five years, a stout, jolly woman, speaks proudly of his long service in the Merchant Navy. A cover story she always believed.
Maclaren owns fifty per cent of a drinking club not far from Debbie Shaw’s old offices in Wardour Street. He married a quiet girl who likes violent love-making and they live happily enough in a small detached house in Ilford. He sees Sturgiss from time to time who pimps for five girls in Portsmouth. Sturgiss too is happy in his work and has been financially successful, his money invested in Krugerrands. Maclaren had once asked Sturgiss what the Kraut girl had been like when he had her before she’d been shot and Sturgiss genuinely couldn’t remember either the girl or the occasion until Maclaren had retold the story. Sturgiss had thought Maclaren an odd sort of fellow to remember it all.