The Protector: A gripping, action-packed spy thriller

by Mike Lunnon-Wood

  “Pro patria mori…” he quoted .

  “I’m surprised at you, Quayle. You’re one of the few honourable people I know.”

  “Oh my honour is intact, Hugh. It’s yours that is suspect. Or should I say that of your masters… This has all been a bit one sided. My risk, my money, my life. Now Six wants in on the spoils – Six, who only days ago, was gleefully trying to kill me.”

  “What do you want?”

  “A letter. Signed by Tansey-Williams. It’s to state that there was a Metro order on me and the reasons for that. A full explanation if you will. When this is over, I want some peace of mind – and that letter sitting in a vault will help explain to the hostile back benchers the nature of the beast... should I suffer an early demise.”

  “Titus,” Cockburn began, “you have my word...”

  “You word is worthless at Milburn and you know it. No-one’s word is worth a pinch of shit except the Director General’s – and then only in writing. The world, Hugh, is full of ambitious men, and you are as expedient as I am. That’s the deal. Get it and get it soon. What I have won’t wait for ever.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I get Holly back and we take these people down.”

  Cockburn got wearily to his feet. “Titus,” he said, “I’ll get it now.”

  He was away for twenty minutes. While he was gone, Kirov called room service for more coffee and Kurt stood in silence, watching from the window. No-one spoke. Chloe, who found the silence unsettling, got up and started to pace.

  At long last, Cockburn returned.

  “He doesn’t like it,” he said, “but it will be here tomorrow.”

  Quayle stood up and gave a dry laugh. “So will I.”

  They watched him leave in silence, and only after the door had closed behind him did Cockburn shake his head quizzically.

  “What?” Chloe asked.

  “I don’t think he has any intention of helping us take them down. The moment Holly is safe...”

  “Then why did he come at all?” she argued. “He needs us.”

  “No,” said Cockburn. “He can use us, and it’s easier to have us in sight than blundering around his penetration. But he doesn’t need us. Gentlemen,” he said, looking around the room, “we’re playing this game according to Titus Quayle’s rules now.”

  Quayle returned at ten the following morning, rested and clean-shaven, and gave Chloe half a smile as she opened the door to him. Eicheman and Cockburn were already here waiting, but Alexi Kirov had been gone for hours, settling in his reaction team who had arrived at dawn.

  “Do you have the letter?” Quayle asked Cockburn.

  Cockburn held up a buff envelope. “It’s got your name on it. I guess this is it.”

  Quayle took it, slit it open and pulled a single closely typed page from the envelope. Reading it, he smiled bleakly.

  “Well?” Cockburn asked.

  Quayle nodded.

  “So we can start?”

  “We can,” Quayle said. Walking to the table, he lifted the coffee pot. “Munchen Dag AG are a company registered in Munich, but they have a Bonn office and a farm outside Frankfurt. They’re in the thick of this scene somewhere.” He threw another envelope on the table. “This is my investigator’s report on them. You’ll also find a report on a Bonn law firm who have had a stringer doing work for this outfit.” He paused. “We need to push the investigation from within. Kurt will be able to find us some BND computer time after hours and an operator. Let’s see what shit we can dredge up.” He began to pour coffee into a cup that someone had already used. “Then we want a safe house and a tame shrink. Someone with experience and access to interrogative drugs.”

  “Why?” Cockburn asked.

  “I’m going to snatch two men tonight. Wring them dry and deliver them back none the wiser. We’ll need a linguist as well. Someone who speaks Cantonese.”

  “Not the Chinese,” Cockburn said. “That’s all we need.”

  “No, it’s not just them. Its the other side too.”

  “Taiwan?”

  “Hong Kong. The billionaires, the triads, maybe both. They’re the third piece of the puzzle. Destabilise perestroika. Create suspicion. I think they’re funding the bulk of it…”

  “For what?” Kurt asked.

  “My guess is for an extension of the lease on the island and territory.”

  “Say again?” Cockburn said softly.

  “I think they’ve done a deal with Beijing. If they put a halt to the reform process in Europe, they get another lease period on Hong Kong Island, Kowloon and the new Territories.”

  “Jesus Christ. That’s incredible!”

  “And profitable for everyone. This is a meeting of some great financial minds and some huge resources.” He sipped his coffee. “If I’m right, then it’s also the single largest conspiracy in history.”

  “But why would they want to give up Hong Kong?” Chloe asked

  “They never had it in the first place,” Cockburn cut in, immediately understanding Quayle’s theory. “Secondly, when they get it, they wouldn’t know what to do with it – turn it back into China proper under the regime? Allow it free port status? How to reconcile that with the new clamp down? All they really know is that they have a powerful bargaining chip with the right quarters.”

  “Why not offer it back to Britain?” she asked

  “The Brits don’t want it. They’ve been shaking off the colonies for years, and still suffering the effects. The last thing they want is to extend one of them. Boat people, nationalism, the passport issue. They can all be addressed now, once and for all. If they extended the lease, they’d extend the problems and give them time to magnify later… No,” Cockburn went on, “the Foreign office is adamant about this one. Get rid of the bloody place and make it someone else’s problem.”

  “Then why not allow it independence?” she countered.

  “Under Brit control the Chinese have been content that the subversive elements are at least kept in check. They just wouldn’t grant independence to a section of their powerbase anymore than to Canton or any other place. No, I’m quite certain Ti is right. They’ll hand over to a select few, with certain guarantees. The big business interests, the powerful families. But not for nothing. They want the world’s interest away from Tiananmen. They don’t want to be the last bastion of a system they believe works. They’re Communists remember, in the only place it ever worked.”

  Chloe looked at Quayle, who nodded and swilled around the contents of his cup.

  “How are they going to do this?” Kurt asked him.

  “Perestroika has its internal enemies, men ready to revert to the old ways, to take the seats of power. The Generals, the old party hard liners. All it needs is the...”

  “Removal of the existing reformers,” Cockburn interrupted.

  “And Alexander wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer,” Quayle misquoted softly.

  “You’re saying…”

  “They’re going to kill Gorbov, Walensa, Mladenov and the others at the Warsaw Pact Summit in Prague.”

  There was silence in the room.

  Then:

  “Oh my God,” uttered Cockburn. “That gives us less than two weeks!”

  *

  Quayle and Kirov lay in the pitch darkness beneath the trees and waited.

  It was before midnight and lights still burned in the upstairs rooms of the farmhouse. Kirov had convinced Quayle that they should have support nearby. They would enter and take the subjects, but Kirov felt they should have backup. “Remember Spain,” he had said, and reluctantly Quayle had agreed. Now, deployed out in the dark behind them were two four man sections of the Red Army’s elite special forces, the Spetznatz. Dressed in black lightweight overalls and armed for night vision assault, they were better than the Fairies could ever hope to be for work like this – but Quayle still thought of it as inviting failure. Alone and without close support, you didn’t make mistakes because you couldn’t afford
to. The mere knowledge of support often dulled an operative’s cutting edge, and he agreed only because he would rather know where they were and then put them from his mind.

  Up above, the last light went off in the house. Give it an hour, he thought, and the dogs another sweep. Kurt Eicheman and Cockburn waited at a house not ten minutes away with a clinical psychiatrist from the Hagne Institute, a man who owed Eicheman favours. According to Eicheman, he was close to developments in the clinical treatment of the mentally disturbed and the latest drugs, some of which had interesting side effects. Effects like making the subject talk about anything and everything without being able to remember later. Ethics aside, Eicheman had arranged for the man’s niece to cross the Berlin Wall three years before, and tonight the debt was being called in.

  The time had come.

  Quayle got to his feet like a dark shadow rising and began to move forward, so that he could see the dogs pass. Behind him, he could feel something moving up to take his position. The Spetznatz. On his right, Kirov was up and moving too. They didn’t have long to wait. A guard with a big silver coloured dog moved along the damp concrete path between them and the house, the dog not sniffing at the air and the ground but bored with the patrol and lagging behind his handler. Quayle was pleased. They had made the classic mistake with a dog and left it too long on the job. The handler jerked the leash and muttered a muffled curse at his canine charge, then kept moving. Quayle watched them push onward another twenty yards, then crossed the few yards to the wall fast and silent, Kirov on his heels. As soon as they were there, he began to climb the drainpipe hand over hand, his strength incredible. Fifteen seconds later, he eased open the window he had tampered with the last time and dropped through into the store room, Kirov dropping in behind him. As he reached the door, he began delving into his pack for his endoscope and microphones. The doctor had delivered instructions on the correct dosage of the clear fluid in the hypodermics he was carrying. Their instructions were simple: they had to be back with him for the second dosage within forty minutes of administering the first. From that point on, they would have just over an hour for the ‘therapy’.

  They found the American in the second bedroom they tried. A hooded red torch beam picked out his features on the pillow: his hook nose, bushy eyebrows and close cropped hair. He was breathing deeply when Kirov gave him a sniff of the gas and his eyelids fluttered briefly as he dropped from sleep into unconsciousness. Quayle pulled him upright and placed a wide band of surgical tape over his mouth, then pulled plastic restraints from his pocket and cuffed the man’s hands in front of his chest. Nodding to Kirov – who eased back into the passage with the endoscope and microphone to find the Chinese – he picked up the inert form of the American and carried him to the store room window where he lay him down.

  Part One complete.

  As soon as that was done, he went back into the passage and found Kirov at the last door, listening on his knees listening. Soon, Quayle had eased the door open and was crossing into the darkness, headed towards the bed, the gas canister in one hand and the little red torch in the other. Thirty seconds later, he was carrying the smaller man up the passage to the store room where Kirov was busy laying out a climber’s safety harness. Sliding the man into the thick nylon straps, they worked together to ease him onto the windowsill where Quayle tied a fast knot in some nylon rope and guided him over the edge, Kirov moving out after him and sliding down the pipe.

  The American was heavier and his pyjamas got caught in the straps. Quayle took his time getting it right. The dog wasn’t due for another eight minutes and, when he was on the ground, he clambered back up the pipe to close the window before dropping down and carrying the unconscious man back into the dark of the trees.

  They had been in, done the snatch, and were out in fourteen-and-a-half minutes, not one word spoken and not one mistake made.

  The doctor, a small bespectacled man with tufts of hair sprouting from his ears, stripped the gag tapes off with some distaste and arranged the two subjects in separate rooms, both devoid of anything but the chairs they sat in.

  “I don’t approve,” he said to Eicheman, who just shrugged.

  “I don’t care,” Quayle replied. “Just give him the rest of the drug and let’s start.”

  The doctor took a small metal case from his bag and extracted a hypodermic syringe and two phials.

  “Does he have any allergies?” he asked.

  “Assume not.”

  “What if he does? He may...”

  “Then we go to Plan B,” Quayle said dryly. “Just do it.”

  The doctor looked at his watch and raised an eyebrow at Eicheman who nodded. Then, rolling the man’s pyjama sleeve up, he pushed the sharp needle into the arm and pressed the plunger down steadily.

  “Two or three minutes and you can start. Shall I do the other now?”

  “No,” Quayle replied. “Give me twenty minutes here first.” Then, finding another chair, he sat down at the side of the American and began lightly slapping his wrist. “Hi there,” he said with a West Coast accent. “My name is Eddie and I am your friend.”

  The man mumbled something and shook his head. Behind them, Eicheman looked at Cockburn with a raised eyebrow. He hadn’t known that Quayle was an interrogator. Alongside them was a young bearded man in dirty jeans, the Cantonese interpreter.

  “Don’t you remember me? I’m your friend Eddie,” he said soothingly. “We always have lots of fun talking and things... Let’s talk now, shall we?”

  The man mumbled again – but this time the enunciation of the sounds was clearer.

  “So Don, how are things?”

  “Not… Don...” he said, slowly lifting his big head, eyes still closed. “Leonard. Leonard Kavics.”

  “Sure,” Quayle said. “Sorry Leonard. My mistakes! So how’s things? Pretty good?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where are we keeping the girl. Leonard?”

  “Which girl?” One eye opened a fraction.

  “The one we grabbed in Spain.”

  “The limey bitch? Oh sure…” The voice was slurred. “They gave her to the gooks. They should sell her ass on the streets...”

  “What gooks?” Quayle asked, keeping his anger in check. “The slopes? The ones in Hong Kong?”

  “Yeah. Fung Wa’s boys. They got her tight waiting for the man.”

  “What man Leonard?”

  “The Brit pinko.”

  “Quayle?” Quayle asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s our group called, Leonard?” In the next room, two tape machines faithfully recorded every word, a technician leaning over them to adjust audio record levels and enhance them wherever he could.

  “Our group? Why don’ you know what we’re called? Everyone knows what we are called” His answer had a childish tone.

  “You know me, Leonard. Had a few beers. What can I say. I forgot! So tell me again Leonard…”

  “Minutemen.”

  “We’re called Minutemen. Everywhere?”

  “Just in the old U S of A. Here it’s something else.”

  “What’s it called here?”

  “Can’t say it. Kraut something. Night guard.”

  “Nachtwatch?”

  “Yeah that’s it,” he said, smiling awkwardly, one eye open like a drunk.

  “Why are you here Leonard?”

  “I’m a Spec,” he said proudly through his haze. “Mission specialist.”

  “Wow. An expert!” Quayle said admiringly.

  “Yes, sir!”

  “An expert at what?”

  “Things that float through the air. I’m an expert aerosol,” he giggled.

  “What things?” Quayle asked, his spine going cold.

  He put one finger to his lips. “Shsss... bugs. C.D.T.B.As.”

  “What does that mean Leonard?”

  “Tactical Bacterial Agents... command dispensed.” He held up a hand like he was holding a spray can. “Yessiree. Twenty-two years at
Fort Dixon.”

  “We gonna get some lefties Leonard?”

  “They ain’t telling me, but I tell you this. You don’t use faox ATs for fruit flies.”

  “What’s faox?”

  “Fast oxidising. Two minutes later, three at most, you can breathe deep and live long.” The drugged speech had a drowsy monotone quality and Quayle tried to match it as best he could, like a bad amateur actor reading lines.

  “Getcha ha ha… breathe deep live long, ha ha. ATs?”

  “Alpha grade is sci-fi stuff. A thimble sized toxic nightmare for the baddies. Whole companies... poof!”

  “Gee Leonard, that kind of stuff must be hard to come by. Where did we find it? Tell our friend John here. John likes sci-fi. Tell us all about the alpha grade.” He signalled with his hand for Cockburn to move forward.

  Quayle stood up and looked at Eicheman, indicating he was going next door to start on the Chinese and that the interpreter should join him.

  As they reached the corridor, the young German breathed out loudly, relieving his tension.

  “My God, they must be mad!”

  “Did you here my tone in there?” Quayle asked when the interpreter arrived. “Soft, like to a child…”

  “Yes. You want that style?”

  “Must have. Will it work in Cantonese?”

  “Mandarin would be easier, but yes. I’ve done unconscious interrogations before,” he replied in English.

  “Good. We want to know where they have a girl called Holly Morton. They’re holding her somewhere in Hong Kong. But where exactly? And who is this Fung Wa character? Get all the names you can. Locations, contacts, any clues to finding them quickly. Got that?”

  “Yes,” he said, suddenly all business, “but we must record this. Cantonese and Mandarin are tonal languages. In a drugged state the tones might be out. That could give different meanings. I’ll need to listen again and again to some words he’ll use, to fix the context correctly. Also if he was an accent or a dialect.” He paused. “If they sent him here, he’ll speak English, surely?”

  “He may remember using English later. Also his English isn’t that good. Use Chinese. Just do your best. We are recording. I want Holly back. That’s first. I don’t care what Kurt has told you. We get the information on Holly first. Then you move onto anything else. That clear?” His eyes glittered for a second, the force of will flowing from him like heat from a brazier.