The Protector: A gripping, action-packed spy thriller

by Mike Lunnon-Wood

  “Hang on cock, what Greek job?”

  “Burmeister’s three. Went to pick up some tart on Serifos and got themselves shot.”

  “What was her name?” he asked, praying no, please, no.

  “I dunno.”

  “FIND IT, you cunt!” Smith snapped angrily.

  “All right, all right, don’ get shirty,” the other said, slightly hurt.

  “Get everything on this fuck up! Right now!”

  Smith turned to the computer keyboard and slid awkwardly into the chair, his twisted back hurting at the sudden move. Tapping in his access code, he went into the system and looked for his entry, advising Oberon of the off-the-board-deployment he had made. It wasn’t there. He scrolled back into the history files, watching the green figures roll over before his eyes, but couldn’t find it.

  Oh Jesus, sweet Jesus. It’s gone. Oberon never knew about Mr Pope. They sent in three snotnoses against the old man himself. No wonder they’re fucking dead!

  His replacement shambled back and handed over a set of hard copy documents and bulletin records. Snatching the pile, he dropped straight to the objective brief and then, slowly putting the pages down, dropped his face into his hands.

  Titus Quayle. It gets worse.

  “Whatsa matter, Jonno?” the other asked.

  Oberon sat in his chair, listening to the tale, his face like thunder.

  “When did Black ask for the job?” he ventured. He was in on his day off, but he had forgotten that already.

  “A couple of days before he was hit.”

  “And you put it on the screen?”

  “As God is my witness, I don’t make mistakes like that. You know it too.”

  “What are you saying Jonno? That someone got at your report?”

  “Yes I am,” Smith replied. “And Quayle isn’t your man.”

  “What?”

  “Come one Reg, you remember Quayle! You know the stories! It was him who beat the crap out of two of the Acton instructors in the mess that night. He doesn’t like guns. Doesn’t need them. Count the number of times he ever used one? Twice, three times in twenty years?”

  Oberon thought about that. Smith was right. The stories said that, if Quayle ever said he wanted a gun, World War Three was going to start.

  “Then who did it?” he asked, fighting the logic.

  “Pope did it, for fuck’s sake!”

  “What? Gunned his own players?”

  “He wouldn’t know, would he? Quayle is such a difficult prick he probably wouldn’t let Pope near the girl. The old bugger was probably trying to do his job hidden in a bush or something. Three geezers turn up, things get nasty, someone pulls a shooter and it’s old man Pope on the scoreboard!”

  “Quayle could have done it. He’s cuckoo, remember.”

  “That’s crap. So cuckoo he’s gone underground and with every player in Europe after him, and we still can’t find him? He’s as crazy as you and me!”

  “Someone found him. A couple of freelancers in Italy came off second best in the contact…”

  “Pope?”

  “Nothing. He would be on the job. Wherever the girl is. Jesu, the two of them teamed up! Pope going out in blaze of glory. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”

  “I rest my case,” said Smith, holding up his hands.

  Oberon’s face was like stone, the anger solid and real and terrible. “My boys killing my boys.” He paused then and looked at Smith, “If you’re lying about that computer entry, I will find out and I will cut your guts out, boyo...”

  “I’ll cut my own out!” Smith snapped. “We’ve been got at, Reg, well and truly got at! You and me, the three dead boys, Pope and Mr Black, even bloody Titus Quayle…”

  “Keep this schtum. Not a whisper. Get your opo in here. Anyone else know about this?”

  “No.”

  “Keep it that way. Just us three and Sir Martin until we find out what gives. OK?”

  Sir Martin Callows stood glowering, his back to the ornamental fireplace, his big craggy head lowered like a bull.

  “He wasn’t to become a factor in this,” Burmeister said.

  “I should hope not! So now we don’t have a madman on the loose at all. We have a professional bodyguard and a trained intelligence agent hiding the woman we need. Bloody clever! I just hope to Christ the House doesn’t get to learn of this. Those liberal idiots would hang the service out to dry.”

  “Quayle is still dangerous,” Burmeister said. “He is unstable.”

  “Is he?” Callows snapped. “Is he really? What did the shrink say? That he may have recovered? That he may, in fact, be one hundred percent fit for operational duties? That he may, in fact, be better than ever after you sent three hoodlums after this bloody woman?”

  “They were just supposed to bring her back.”

  “You ballsed it up!”

  “I will call the pack off,” Burmeister said firmly.

  “No,” Callows said.

  “Pardon?”

  “I said no. I’ve been thinking about this. We may be able to redeem something from it yet, without becoming a laughing stock. Our objective was to get Morton’s daughter here. Why? Because she may have her father’s files, or she may know where they are.”

  Burmeister nodded.

  “Don’t call off the hounds,” Callows snarled. “Blow the horn instead! Quayle was close to Morton. He’s close to the girl already. If he thinks that we aren’t going to let up until we have the information, then he’ll shake it out of the bitch. Their lives will depend on it.”

  “That’s very, very dangerous, Sir Martin,” Burmeister said, hiding his glee at the thought.

  “We are in a dangerous business! And we don’t have any choice. Who else is there? We don’t even know where to start. There are too many good men dead already to give up on this, and as far as I am concerned Quayle is expendable.”

  *

  Hugh Cockburn sat uncomfortably in a narrow row of seats, wedged between a bulky General of Tanks and a Colonel from some border regiment, and tried to keep his attention on the speaker in the stuffy auditorium. Glasnost had arrived in Hungary and he was already bored witless with its inevitable familiarisation trips and cries for global peace. On the small stage, a major swung a pointer like a sabre across huge green lines on a faded map, attempting to describe to the gathered dignitaries and reporters the field exercise they were about to visit in the hastily assembled buses outside. Taking a sneaky peek at his watch, he grinned guiltily at the Colonel who saw him do it. The Colonel grinned, winked and passed him something under a mimeographed programme of the day’s events.

  He took the offering, carefully smiling to himself when he felt the familiar weight and shape of a full hip flask. Things are looking up, he thought lifting it to his lips.

  He was a tall man, six foot three in his stockinged feet, with sandy blond hair with a frosting of grey above his ears. His face was lean and the lines around his green eyes were pressed in by a constant smile. He seemed to go through life laughing at its vagaries. Today he was here, ostensibly as cultural attaché. Somewhere behind him was the embassy’s military man, an Air Force Group Captain, wedged between other visitors.

  He burped softly and handed the flask back to the Colonel, who took a deep swig and coughed as the fiery vodka hit the back of his throat, attracting the attention of the General who glared over his substantial jowls like a walrus.

  “Sorry,” Cockburn whispered, covering for his dipsomaniac neighbour. There were another three hours to go and he thought he would need both the ally and his vodka on the bus.

  It was nine that evening when he got back to the Embassy and, as routine, headed straight to his office to clear the cipher machine and check the days status log. As Chief of Station that was his responsibility. The message regarding a new Metro order, the first in over a year that he had seen, was flashed in with a priority clear prefix, and as he read the details he went pale. He thought he had made a mistake and de-coded the messa
ge again, but the details remained constant. He sat back with his hands to his mouth in horror.

  My God, Ti, he thought, they want to kill you. What have you done?

  CHAPTER SIX

  Kirov stood deep in the shadows, watching the doorway to the building until darkness settled and the orange street lights flickered on.

  Occasionally people walked past, but few looked down the alley where he stood amongst the battered bins and hungry stray cats. One large brindle-coloured tom recognised another of its ilk through its one remaining eye and, forgetting its suspicion, bravely threaded its way through Kirov’s legs. Looking down, Kirov smiled briefly, before his eyes flicked upward again. He had watched the building for three nights now. The old woman had visitors but, so far, none after dark. Tonight she would, and he didn’t want to be disturbed – so he waited another half an hour, then crossed the street, walked into the fish and chip shop, ordered and stood politely waiting. Finally, his wrapped bundle in his hand, he walked up to the building he had been watching and swiftly picked the lock. It was done in a second and, sliding through the door, he took the stairs three at a time.

  Once at her door, he did the same trick with the pick and stepped into a small hall.

  “Who’s there?” a fierce old voice demanded.

  He walked through to a small drawing room. There the old woman sat.

  “Gabriella Kreski?”

  “Who are you?” she demanded, hands pushing at the seat, seemingly trying to stand. “Get out!”

  “Sit down. I am not going to hurt you,” Kirov said pleasantly.

  “I know you’re not,” she replied. She hadn’t be trying to stand at all. She had been reaching for something under the cushion on her seat. In her bony old hand was a small calibre automatic pistol.

  Kirov smiled fleetingly.

  “My name is Alexi Kirov,” he said in Russian. “I am from the Fourth Directorate of the Komitet Gergashnov Borsnavo… and I need your help. I have also brought fish and chips.”

  She studied him for a second speechless. In all her years in the intelligence community she had never heard a KGB officer admit his profession, but the gun didn’t waver an inch.

  “You had Adrian Black go out for fish and chips, didn’t you? I know. I was watching him.”

  “Get out!”

  “They got him, Gabriella. They threw acid in his face. He never had a chance. He is blind and burned.”

  Her eyes narrowed for a second. “If he’s hurt then it was your people! Your kind don’t change,” she said fiercely.

  “True” he said, “but I just do a job of work. I don’t scar and blind men. Any more than you did. Yes, I checked on you. Your cells are subject matter in our school. Did you know that? I never listened very well so I don’t remember, but the people in records do. They say you were considered a real menace for forty years. But Adrian is blinded and he was the only man with any feel for this thing. So I need your help, Gabriella – and Adrian needs your help too.”

  “Why Adrian?”

  “Because we are looking for the same thing.”

  “Did he send you?”

  “No.”

  He could see he would need to expand on his answer.

  “I was following him when he was attacked. A few feet closer and perhaps I could have helped. Now he’s out of the game and the English have put a desk man on it. They’re licking their wounds and, all the while, the trail grows colder.”

  “The trail of what?” she asked. The gun was still in her hand and pointing at his belly. He thought for a second, weighing the alternatives. So far everyone who knew anything of the matter was dead or injured.

  “You don’t want to know that. It would be very dangerous. I just need to know why he came here, and what you told him.”

  “It’s dangerous now,” she replied caustically, her accent thickening.

  “We call it Long Knives We have never worked out why it was not an MI5 job –but the MI6 file was called ‘Broken Square’.”

  She flinched for a second but recovered quickly. That was it! The name she couldn’t remember for young Mr Black.

  “Why Five?”

  “Because it should have been seen as an internal security problem,” Kirov answered.

  “By the British?” she queried firmly.

  “By everyone.”

  She thought about that and finally lowered the gun a measure. “Are you armed?”

  “Yes.”

  He could have come in with a gun pointed at her. That seemed to be enough.

  “Sit down, Mr Kirov,” she said. “It was a Six file because the man who wrote it was Six. And that is about all I can tell you.”

  “He is dead. You knew him?”

  She nodded.

  Sitting, he offered her the wrapped fish and chips but she shook her head. “I’ve eaten. But thank you.”

  “So, Gabriella Kreski. What was it that Adrian Black wanted?”

  “You wonder what a working intelligence agent wants with an old retired woman?” she countered.

  “Whatever it is must be from the past…”

  “He came to ask me about the man who wrote the file. What he was like, how good his work would have been. That sort of thing.”

  “You knew him well?”

  “I did.”

  “And?”

  “He was the best.”

  Kirov uttered, “Everyone says that about the old men.”

  She sat back, her eyes blazing at his impudence, and jabbed a finger at him. “You asked, so I’m telling. If your people considered me a threat then they never knew Edward Morton. You youngsters use computers and electronics and satellites. You know nothing! Teddy could look at things with his own eyes. He could smell things! He could take talk and news clippings and snippets and stock prices and give intelligence! Don’t you sit here and mock the old men. They were squaring up before others like you were even born.”

  Kirov laughed softly – not at her but with her. It was a friendly noise, rough and throaty. “So he was good, then – but surely the department has files on ex staff. Why come to you?”

  “They have files on staff. But the problem was the file itself.”

  Kirov pitched forward in his seat. “The Broken Square file? What about it?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No.”

  “Ask your mole…”

  “Ask who?”

  “Your agent in place.”

  “I’m not sure if there is one. If there was, I wouldn’t be here.”

  “Don’t treat me like a fool, young man!”

  “We had someone. A woman. Your counter people picked her up and then she was killed. By the same people who did the other killings and attacked Adrian Black.” He paused, letting that sink in. “So what about the file?”

  “It’s gone. Your agent saw to that. Try your masters,” she said with forced politeness.

  “What are you saying?”

  “Adrian Black was here because the file has gone. It no longer exists. Your agent purged it from the system.”

  Kirov had turns suddenly pale. “You are sure. The file is gone?”

  “Adrian told me. The reason he needed to know about Teddy Morton was to work out a way to try and reconstruct it.”

  “Then we have a problem, me and Adrian Black,” he said softly. “Tell me, a kill order has gone out on a retired British agent. A man called Quayle. Did you or Morton know him?”

  She looked up sharply. “A kill order?”

  “He has gone sour, so they say.”

  “Sour? No. I don’t believe a word of it!” she said defiantly. “He was one of Teddy’s boys.”

  After that, the conversation turned to other things – but Kirov would never forget the way she had hardened, triumphantly, on hearing Quayle’s name. When, at last, Kirov stood to leave, he looked down with newfound respect at the woman in the chair. “Be careful now, Gabriella Kreski. I found you. Others might.” Then, in a lighter tone and smiling in his a
wkward way, he said, “There is a cat across the road. He reminds me of you. He is old and tough. If you don’t mind, I will take the fish...”

  *

  Vehicle lights from the highway threw occasional shafts up the dark walls of the hotel room as Quayle lay back on the bed and smoked. It was a characterless room, renovated in the American style, with two double beds and a third foldout sofa. Pope slept the sleep of the dead in the adjoining room and, every now and then, Quayle crossed to the window and stared out into the car park, taking his turn to stay awake seriously in spite of the fact they were now hundreds of miles from the border.

  Holly lay curled beneath the blankets, her breathing steady but shallow – too shallow, Quayle knew, for sleep.

  “How long?” she whispered finally.

  “For what?” he whispered, crossing to her and sitting on the bed.

  “You know.”

  “We’ll have a better idea soon. It’s been two days since Venice. Things will have died down a bit. Tomorrow I go to see a man.”

  “Here in Sollonge?”

  “Geneva,” he said.

  “A friend?”

  He shrugged, non committal. “He was once. Now? I don’t know.”

  The running was over for the moment. Now he would have to go on the offensive to establish if Pope’s Metro theory was true. If it was, then he would have no friends amongst the players, and no way of finding out who in Geneva had issued the kill orders to the freelancers.

  “Can’t we just go to New Zealand or something?” she asked in a little voice.

  “They’d find us there eventually. I have got to find out what the situation is. Tomorrow night we will know.”

  “But it’s foolish showing ourselves. Ti, we’ve only just got away…”

  Quayle shrugged. “There’s only so much you can do that is reactive. Then you must take the initiative.”

  “That is macho bullshit!” she replied, sitting up.

  Smiling at her, he did a credible John Wayne impression. “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

  It seemed to do the trick. Returning his smile, she pulled him back into the bed and there they lay in silence, Quayle’s hand running through her hair.