“You what?” Callows asked stunned.
“Run him. Like you should have done when you realised how close he was to Morton.”
“You mean get him back on service? Sir, he’s mentally unstable!”
“Not according to the doctor he isn’t. And you were trying to use him anyway.”
“At a distance,” Callows qualified.
“Run him,” Tansey-Williams said with finality.
At last, Callows relented. “I’ll make John Burmeister his controller.”
“Not Burmeister. Look in the files. There’s no love lost between ‘em. Berlin in ‘81.”
“I know about Berlin,” Callows said protectively. “But everyone gets one mistake, surely?”
“Not with Quayle, it seems. I will be recalling Hugh Cockburn from Prague. He and Quayle go way back. Anyone gets him onside again, it will be Cockburn…”
*
Quayle had watched the policemen round the house for half a day now, and the pattern seemed set. One constable in the garden walking an irregular patrol round the rear of the small garden shed and back up the narrow driveway around Black’s car. There was a Panda parked up the street with two others, but they hadn’t moved all morning, sitting in the car, allowing a second passing patrol car to drop them sandwiches just before noon. A tall dark-haired woman had stepped from the front door and walked up the street midmorning, one of the pair in the car stepping out and escorting her up to the grocery store on the corner. What Quayle noticed was that he hadn’t been carrying her bag back. His hands had been in the jacket pockets.
Armed police were still a rarity in Britain, and those walking with their hands close to their guns even rarer. Something must have happened since the first hit. He watched for another hour, then climbed back out over the roof of the empty house and walked down to the public house on the main road where he had left the car.
Visiting hours at the hospital were varied, but few visitors were admitted after eight at night. He would wait until then. Driving down to the high street, he left the car in a commercial car park and walked until he found a stationer’s shop. There, in amongst the cards and magazines and road maps, he found a lined pad, two different coloured pens, and a small pad of yellow sticky Post It notes. Stopping in a another small shop that had pre-wrapped sandwiches and pies in a warmer, he bought the least offensive looking plastic offering and a can of something that claimed to be real orange juice. He then sat in the car, and began to jot notes on the lined page of the pad, then similar references on the Post It notes, which he stuck above and below a centre line with dates, rather like a critical path analysis. Every now and then he stopped jotting, to lift up the can and drink, the sandwich dry and deserted on the seat beside him.
He worked until he needed the interior light to see, positioning the pieces of the puzzle as best he could – both on the paper and in his mind – and then, finally grunting in frustration, he put the pad face down on the seat and rubbed his eyes tiredly. Twenty minutes later, he was in the car park of the hospital, and soon he was walking through the front door, his new identity in his pocket. He took the lift, smiling dryly at the staff as they entered, and exited on the fifth floor, his tired looking overcoat and sensible black shoes identifying him as a policeman to anyone who bothered to look.
Down the corridor, sitting outside a door trying to look alert, was a real police officer, a second chair beside him unoccupied. Quayle ambled down toward him, pulling a warrant card from his pocket. He had had it for some years, but the design hadn’t changed that much and he knew it would work.
Acting bored, he held it up to the seated officer, who was rising putting his cap on.
“Go get a cuppa, son. I’ll be inside for half an hour or so.”
The officer looked puzzled.
“No visitors was what I was told.”
“I’m not a bloody visitor. I’m Special Branch. Now, be a good boy and go get a cuppa or something. I don’t want to be disturbed. Call your nick if you like...” Quayle pushed past him, knowing, like a confidence man, that the permission to call his station would be enough to prevent him doing it.
“No, that should be OK, sir,” the constable said.
Quayle just grunted and pushed the door open, silently closing it behind him.
Inside, Black sat up in the bed, his face still heavily bandaged.
“That you, nurse?” he asked. Staff usually announced who they were on entering. There were even some whose footsteps he already recognised.
“No,” Quayle said, “it’s not.”
The voice made every muscle in Black’s body turn rigid. “Who are you? How did you get in here?” he asked, pulling himself up awkwardly.
“Don’t shout out,” Quayle began. “Mr Pope asked me to give you a message.”
“Pope? He’s... Oh, my God! Quayle, you’re Titus Quayle!”
“I am. How are the eyes?”
Black was taken aback by the question. “No news is good news. What do you want?”
“Half of Europe is after me. I don’t like it much. I want to know what you know about it. I need your help.”
“Just like that?”
“Yes,” Quayle countered. “Just like that.”
“I told ‘em you didn’t do it,” Black said. “Quayle, I’m out of it now.”
“I didn’t figure you for a loser. Not the way Pope spoke of you…”
“Fuck you! Want to know the problem? Try taking my dog for a walk. Be a bit messy, Quayle! Dragging his guts around outside his body and with a cut throat. They said my wife’s next. And I don’t have any fucking eyes, so I can’t fucking see ‘em coming. OK?”
“No,” said Quayle, understanding the police presence round Black’s home. “But I can. I was at your house today. You wife is better protected than the PM.”
“I know she is,” Black snapped.
“So help me. No-one will know.”
“Why?”
“Someone threw acid in your face. That’s tough, but stop lying there feeling sorry for yourself. You know more about this whole thing than anyone. Help me and I will help you.”
“How?” Black asked angrily.
“I’ll get the bastards who did your eyes. I’ll get the bastards who killed your dog. I’ll get the bastards who won’t let your wife walk up to the corner without a diplomatic protection squad officer walking with her. I’ll get the bastards who are fucking up my life.”
“You won’t,” Black said bitterly. “From what I can see, they’re way too big, way too far up. Untouchables.”
Quayle’s eyes narrowed and he leant forward, over Black’s bed.
“Bullshit. No-one is untouchable. No-one!” He paused to let that sink in. “So?”
Black sat in silence for several seconds, the only sound the clock ticking on the wall.
“This is a breach of the Official Secrets Act. It’s everything I swore to defend,” he said miserably.
Quayle shrugged, as if Black could see him.
“You can’t use the law. You’re outside it already.”
“Who said I would use the law?” Quayle said innocently.
Black gave a short hard laugh, but his demeanour changed almost immediately. He turned his sightless, bandaged head at Quayle. “If I tell you what I know... they will try and kill you. They will do anything to prevent any further investigation.”
It was Quayle’s turn to laugh. “What’s new?”
At last, Black was weakening.
“Who is running the job now?”
“John Burmeister,” Black answered.
“That cretin?” Quayle shot back. Things were falling into place. “What am I supposed to have that they all want?”
“It began with Morton’s Daughter. The old man was working on a file before he retired. It’s been lifted. All our copies. Computer purged. Even the Russians are interested. A low grade defector came over. He knew we had a man on it back in ‘80-whatever. Immediately he mentioned it, people began to die
. We never knew its significance. Every effort to establish what the hell it was all about ended up with people dying. It’s big Quayle, very big. I thought that Morton’s daughter might know where he would have left a hard copy. It wasn’t complete, you see – and, from what I know of Teddy Morton, he would never have left it unfinished. So somewhere out there is the file. Whatever is in it is worth killing for. I sent Pope out to cover the girl. I knew that they would get to her soon. They knew I would too.”
“What’s the file about?” Quayle asked.
“We don’t know. Gabriella Kreski. Morton visited her before going to Australia. He said something to her. Led her to believe it was dangerous. But that’s all he said. The Russians call it ‘Long Knives’.”
“And Teddy left his hard copy somewhere?”
“Not just a hard copy, possibly a file nearly complete. Don’t forget he was down in Australia two years before he died. He wasn’t just teaching kids German and History, I don’t think. That wasn’t Teddy.”
“Lots of time to put it together,” Quayle agreed aloud. “It must detail the group that’s trying to keep it quiet.”
“Correct.” Black paused there, thinking quickly. Then, as if coming to a decision, he said, “I had a visitor recently. The day after I was admitted.”
“Who?”
“Dunno. I was pretty groggy. Came in very quietly. Said something. Guttural accent. Left something near my hand…” He held it up to Quayle. “What is it?”
Quayle took the small metal disc, tarnished by time, and held it to the light from the bathroom. He had seen one before.
“It’s Soviet. A medal. The ribbon’s long gone, as has the mounting, but the rest is still there. It’s old. Someone valued this.”
“What medal?” Black asked, intrigued. “Can you tell?”
“It’s a ‘Hero of the Soviet Union’,”
“Shit! That’s like a Victoria Cross, isn’t it?”
“They don’t come any higher in Russia.”
“So my visitor was a Soviet?”
“Yes, I would say so. If you figure out what he wanted, let me know. Thanks for your input.” Quayle looked at his watch. “Where can I find Gabriella Kreski?”
Black told him the address, then asked, “What was the message?”
“What?”
“The message from Pope.”
“Oh yes. He said he was sorry. He wasn’t ready for the trains.”
“Sorry for what?”
“Not coming back when he realised he’d shot three Fairies.”
“I sent him down to protect Holly Morton. He had no orders to return or to stop doing just that.”
“Wherever he is, he’ll be pleased you said that,” Quayle said.
Quayle was already at the door when Black spoke again, his hands up to his bandaged eyes in frustrated fury.
“Quayle, fuck the law! Take these people down. If you need help, I can give it – it’s yours! You hear me?”
“I hear you,” Quayle smiled.
*
Hugh Cockburn’s recall orders gave him twenty four hours to clear his desk and return to London. Frustrated by the heavy bookings on the direct commercial flights, he ended up flying to Berlin and cadging a lift on a Royal Air Force transport. He had packed enough clothing for an extended attachment and left most of his other possessions for the Embassy relocation people to forward when he knew where he was going. He had been following the communications surrounding the hunt for Titus Quayle and, in his heart, he knew that his recall to London was to involve him in the search.
He’d known Titus better than anyone in the Service, and in their convoluted thinking they had probably decided that he could help. He remembered the last time they had gotten drunk together, Quayle mellowed by at least three bottles of Hungarian red wine, quoting great English poets and filthy limericks in the same breath, a blowsy French Embassy secretary running her hand up his leg and trying to whisper into his ear. It had been a freezing cold night outside and the fire in the cafe was glowing so warm. But, as always, the Hungarian Secret Police were pacing the pavement outside.
Cockburn remembered it well. Quayle had lurched to his feet, dumping the French girl on her bottom, and walked outside, accosted their tail and dragged him to sit with them and drink. The man had shrugged with typical mid-European nonchalance and agreed. Well, it was colder than a witch’s tit outside.
On the plane, he crossed one leg over another and shifted his weight on the canvas seat. He could not imagine Quayle being involved in anything that could warrant a Metro order – and he would need solid evidence of that before he helped anyone. Holly Morton, who was also mentioned in the updates, was even more of an unlikely villain in the plot. He remembered her before she had flown to Greece: soft and feminine, a very attractive mid-thirties widow, Holly had been loaded with intelligence, sex appeal and a sense of humour. Teddy Morton’s daughter, for Christ sake! Unthinkable that she could be anything other than who she was.
A crewman twenty feet up the fuselage made a drinking motion to him and he nodded.
A moment or two later, the corporal threaded his way back, gingerly holding a Styrofoam cup that steamed invitingly. Cockburn took the cup and smiled his thanks, spilt some, swore and sat sucking a burnt finger, hating the RAF, the service and Titus bloody Quayle – who, he felt sure, had gotten him dragged into this mess.
The big jet landed at RAF Brize Norton just after dark, and a service driver was waiting to drive him to London.
The terracotta tile roof of the Valldemosa house was wreathed in the soft smoke from the barbecue as Marco, resplendent in a white chef’s hat, grilled fresh fish and huge local prawns, the soft strains of Mozart filtering through from the living room stereo. Holly sat in one of the deck chairs beneath the vine canopy and watched the show, suppressing a giggle as fat dropped into the fire and flames shot upward, threatening both Marco’s moustache and his reputation as a chef. He was determined to make her enforced stay as pleasant as possible, and had been a charming host, taking her for long walks up through the vineyards and olive groves, the armed men never far behind. There he regaled her with the history of the Islands, the people, and his love for his own native Italy.
“But why are you here, if you love Italy so much?” she had asked. “Wait, don’t tell me. You love Italy, but Italy doesn’t love you!”
“Alas, Italy loves me so much they want me to return,” he grinned like some loveable buccaneer. “A small matter of some unpaid taxes!”
They sat at the table, the big cat sleepily opening an eye at the smells, and ate the fish, their plates piled high with salads and fresh bread from the bakery in the village.
“God, I hope Titus is alright,” she finally said.
“You love him,” Marco said. It was a statement, not a question.
She nodded.
“And you really know nothing of him?”
She nodded again.
“Then it’s time you did. Maybe then you will fear for him less and fear for them more, eh?” Marco began to laugh, a rich, bass, larger than life sound. “Fill your glass and I will tell you a tale of high adventure, of heroes and dragons in another land and in another time...”
She smiled and sat back in her chair.
“I met Titus in Jebel Muhkta prison in Libya.” All of a sudden the atmosphere had changed. He was deadly serious now, the laughing pirate gone and another deeper harder man manifesting in his place. “I had done a deal with them. Milk powder. They wouldn’t pay – so I sent two of my people in to try and collect the cheque. They threw them in jail in Tripoli. I went to get them out, paid some people – as is the way there – but realised too late that I’d paid the wrong people. I had made powerful enemies. My men got away – but, as for me, I ended up in the Jebel Muhkta.” Marco paused and slugged back his wine, as if to try and clear a taste from his mouth. “If there’s a hell on this earth, then it is that place. High dry concrete walls surround a baking square and a rancid well. Above, like
a rocky shrine to the dead, stands the Jebel, the hill. Every day we would go up the hill and smash rocks with our bare hands. If someone fell, they lay there until they died. At night, if we were lucky, we were marched back to eat chicken and rice. If we were not, it was Arabic bread, stale with water from the well. We had to pray to Allah and attend prayers five times a day, and if we got the words wrong we were beaten. The guards beat men with sticks and hoses and, at night, you could hear the screams.
“No-one ever leaves the Jebel. If it’s not the beating, it’s dysentery or beriberi or one of a hundred nutritional complaints. I’d been there two weeks when Titus arrived. They’d beaten him on the truck and threw him off the back like he was dead already, laughing and joking with one another. But he stood and walked to solitary. Only the tough ones go straight into solitary.”
He stopped and took up the wine bottle, offering to fill her glass – but she shook her head, too horrified at the story to want more. He filled his own glass and carried on.
“About a week later, he joined the main population. I was one of only three other Europeans in there, so we took him with us to our room, the one we shared with seventy others. Quickly we began to learn things from him. He seemed to know when the guards were coming, when to steal something, when to speak. There was another Italian. A man called Morretti. We would pool our food, the four of us. Nurse each other when sick. Morretti was a small wizened chap, an agnostic gambler turned Christian. He had a Bible. God knows where he got it from. One day they found it. There was the usual screaming and ranting – but they found something new this time. They nailed up a cross in the square.
“Morretti wasn’t strong. He would have died the first day. So Titus said that the Bible was his. That afternoon, in front of the whole population, they gave him the choice. Acknowledge Allah as the one God and Mohammed as his prophet – or be crucified. He refused. They began to beat him, on his knees in the dust like an animal, five or six of them with long staves. He refused again so they nailed him up. They thought it a great joke, give a Christian a real Christian death.” He sipped at his wine and ran the glass round his forehead, cooling his brow. “The pictures you see of Christ on the cross? They cannot convey the pain or the despair that crucifixion brings. When your knees are bent up, your chest hanging down over, you cannot breathe. For hour after hour, you can only take short shallow breaths, each one a stabbing pain because the lungs are collapsing. And, all the time, your entire weight is hanging on the nails through your hands. The pain is excruciating, enough to make strong men beg for death. Christ was young and strong and they hurried him along on the third day with a spear thrust. It is a long lingering death.
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