The Protector: A gripping, action-packed spy thriller

by Mike Lunnon-Wood

  They moved off fast, back towards the refuge. Three minutes later, the last man in the team – who had been sitting on the side of the Glacier Pierre Joseph – picked up his rifle and, aiming at a spot he had isolated the day before, he fired a rifle grenade.

  There was a flat crack at the head of the snow line and a blasting roar of wind shook the valley as two million tons of snow and ice began to slide, gathering momentum down the slope. Fifty seconds later, as the ice dust and snow settled, there was no evidence of any deaths on the glacier below. The entire scene was buried under thirty feet of snow.

  The bodies would be covered for the next three hundred years.

  Quayle was moving slowly upward, Lacoste over his shoulder, when he heard the solid roar and felt the wind tug at his jacket. Barely acknowledging the event, he kept moving up and past the man, still hanging frightened below Girard. Eventually, he pushed the old guide over the lip, his arms and legs aching with the effort. Then, pulling himself over with an axe in one hand and the rope in the other, he settled down to have a look at the guide’s injuries. Girard had stopped trying to free his hand by now, his face just a mask of pain and shock, his eyes on the axe blade that protruded from his hand.

  Ten minutes later, Quayle had dressed the single entry wound under Pierre’s left armpit. There was no exit wound, and that meant that the bullet fired from a nine millimetre was still inside him. He would have to be moved soon or he would die.

  Quayle settled on his knees and pulled up the rope that the last man hung on. As he reached eye level, the Englishman spoke. “Answer my questions or you both go the way your friend did.”

  Even Girard nodded through his pain a few times, confirming the answers of the other. When he was finished, Quayle stood back.

  “You two are responsible for the deaths of many people.”

  “You won’t do anything to us. Not defenceless as we are…” The second man was gaining courage, the tearful babbling over. But Girard’s other hand was now moving now slowly towards his jacket. “You must take us in.”

  “So you can pull strings and get off?”

  “You represent the law here. You must!”

  Girard’s hand still moving imperceptibly.

  “I don’t represent the law,” Quayle said. “Just the ghosts of dead men.”

  “You won’t let us die here. You can’t!”

  Quayle leant forward. “You called me a bastard. You were right.” And as Girard’s hand came up with the gun, Quayle jerked the axe out of his other hand “I am!”

  Girard’s numb bloodless fingers slipped on the ice and, as he fell, his weight on the rope pulled the other man screaming backward into nothing.

  After they were gone, Quayle assembled the parapente in minutes and, gently taking Lacoste over his shoulder again, he ran ten feet down a sloping rock and, with his heart in his mouth and the feeling of the parachute filling with air behind him, he jumped from the ledge.

  With warm air rising from the valley floor, he was a full twenty minutes in the air before landing one hundred yards from the refuge.

  One of the Soviets took the old guide and redressed the wounds. An hour later, with a pair of randonee skis and a shovel as a stretcher, they moved onto the ice. It took all day, but they reached Chamonix by eight that evening.

  The following night, Quayle broke into a Paris apartment, slid open the ageing locks on an old wall safe and took out the contents: a series of papers, and a set of diskettes.

  *

  The Fairies at the Milburn back door were young and bored and would not have remembered Titus Quayle from his days at Century anyway. They just looked at the pass he held up and, as he was admitted to the inner secure chamber, the others in back room – watching through the cameras – barely looked at him before the steel inner door clicked open. Still slack, he thought.

  Quayle was tired, unshaven and wanted a shower. His iron grey hair seemed greyer somehow, powdered with the dust of the mountains. He still wore the guide jacket, stained brown with dried blood, and he looked like he belonged on a building site. But men like that did come in the back door of Milburn every now and then. It would be the talk of the canteen later.

  Upstairs, the pass was waiting for him. It had a bar-code, a magnetic stripe, a hologram, a familiar logo and looked very like a bank card, just like it was intended to. Running his fingers around its edge, he took the last flight of stairs. The card wouldn’t get him past the man at the top. Appointment only up here. He looked at his watch. He was on time.

  “Callows,” Quayle said to the Fairy.

  “He’s busy. Phone first.”

  “He will see me.”

  “Fuck off sunshine,” he said, indolently standing up.

  Quayle reached out, took the man’s left nostril in his hand and squeezed, his other rising and taking a pressure point on his neck. The man groaned and fell to his knees, the pain making his eyes water.

  “I’m tired. Too tired, to deal with this in a mature fashion. So take a seat over there, or you’ll be going down the stairs on a fucking stretcher. Understand?”

  Pushing the man backward into the chair, he opened the door.

  In Sir Martin Callows’ office, the faces turned to look at him: John Burmeister standing by the window, impeccable as ever in a three piece suit, Callows himself huge and leonine at his desk, Hugh Cockburn and Tansey-Williams in the chairs alongside.

  “Hail, hail, the gang’s all here,” Quayle said, his voice barely above a whisper.

  “You’ve got a bloody cheek walking in here,” Burmeister snapped. “Who gave you a pass?”

  “A blind man,” Quayle answered. “We spent a few hours last night on his wife’s personal computer.”

  He drew from his pocket the diskettes and tossed them onto the desk. As Tansey-Williams reached out, Callows’ hand closed over them.

  “Broken Square,” Quayle said. “It’s all there... the file Teddy Morton created and the stuff I took in Paris.”

  “Ah,” Burmeister said, a trace of confidence coming into his voice. “This all of it?”

  “Adrian Black has a copy, as does Alexi Kirov.”

  “What are you saying ?” Burmeister snapped

  “They earnt it”

  “Why Black?”

  “He’s back with Five now. Didn’t you know?”

  “Know what?” Burmeister snapped. The others were silent, Callows watching from big brooding eyes.

  “He’s onto you. Teddy Morton was as well.” Quayle’s voice was rasping with menace. “Long before he went to Aussie. He knew. He warned me through Gabriella Kreski. Only she didn’t know it…”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “You killed him,” Quayle said, his voice so low they had to strain to hear him. “Edward Morton was my friend. You had him burned to death. And the others. Jerry Pope seriously injured. Adrian Black. Henry Arnold. They were all your own people. It’s over…”

  “You’re mad!”

  “Take a look outside. That’s the Metropolitan Police, Special Branch, Uncle Tom Cobley and all out there.”

  “You’ve been under a lot of strain. I am sure we...”

  “Ah, yes! We! The plural.” Quayle turned to Hugh Cockburn. “You’re slipping, Hugh. Did you really think you could get away with it?” Cockburn sat, absolutely poker-faced. “That business in Hong Kong. Only you could have set up Fung Wa’s killing so fast. Very amateur. Had Milburn written all over it. And, when you’d fucked that up, you ran home to daddy’s apron strings and daddy himself had to get involved.”

  “It’s not too late to join us, Ti,” Cockburn finally said. “You don’t know what you’re destroying here.”

  “Yes I do. This went beyond just fear of reform the day you killed my friend. That day you became the beast – and I have just driven a stake into your fucking heart.”

  “Now see here!” Burmeister snapped, stepping forward.

  “You don’t learn, do you?” Quayle’s fist flicked forward, the pu
nch taking Burmeister full in the face, shattering his nose. He fell, spitting blood and teeth onto the carpet by the window.

  A gun had appeared in Tansey-Williams’ hand.

  “And big daddy himself,” Quayle said. “Henry Arnold became concerned you had him killed. Then, when Oberon called, you had to get personally involved yourself. The saviour. The gun isn’t your style, Sir Gordon. Unless you want to point it at your head and do the honourable thing, put it away – or I’ll take it from you, and that will be very painful.”

  Tansey-Williams stood up, straightening his coat.

  “Think about it Quayle. What reform will really mean! Thirty bickering mini-states, most of them with nuclear weapons, pointing them at each other, threatening each other, threatening us! Selling them to Iran and Iraq, North Korea! Age old hatreds surfacing. Islamic fundamentalists. The threat is real. On top of all that: a united Germany, ready to...”

  “So you and the Generals decided that it was your job to prevent it?”

  “Tasks fall on the shoulders of men,” Tansey-Williams said, raising his head and squaring his chin like a preacher.

  “Spare me that shit,” Quayle said. “You’re responsible for the deaths of many. No less than the Nazis were.”

  “And if your proof fails?”

  “Just hope it doesn’t. Because then I’ll take care of it myself, like the CIA have just done with Leo Gershin. He just had an accident. Believe me – you are better off in prison.”

  Callows stood, reached across and took the little silver gun from his Director General as Quayle turned and walked down the stairs.

  *

  She could feel it. He was tense and looking out of the window as they drove and she had to say something.

  “I had to,” she said fiercely.

  “What? Lie to me?”

  “I didn’t lie!”

  “You knew, dammit! You knew from the time you arrived.”

  “I didn’t know. I suspected, that’s all. It wasn’t anything I could put my finger on.” She began to cry silently beside him, turning to her window so that he wouldn’t see.

  Even so, he must have known – because his next words more gentle.

  “Like what?” he asked.

  “Remember I said I’d seen Hugh? He was odd. Behaving strangely. Wanted to know how I was getting along. He’d never cared before. Afterwards, I realised he had turned the flat over. There was nothing missing that I could tell, except a few files of daddy’s. There was a photograph too. Not an old one. New. It had been taken only days before he went to Australia. But it was missing. Only Hugh could have taken it. I was scared, then. And I knew you were a long way away and out of it.”

  “What was the photo of?”

  “A group of men at a ‘club’ dinner,” she snorted, sarcastically blowing her nose. “It was Daddy, Sir Martin, Sir Gordon, and one or two others. I think it was his farewell dinner.”

  “How long have you been working for Martin Callows?” The question came fast and caught her off guard.

  “What?” Her face was a mask of surprise.

  “Answer me!” The car screeched to a halt and he turned to face her. “How long, damn you?”

  “Since the flat was searched,” she answered in a wiser tone of voice. “He suspected too. He suggested I come to you. That then I’d be safe. But he also said that there was a chance that you might be involved. I had to take that chance…”

  “And tell him what you found?”

  She nodded. Then, wiping the tears from her eyes, she abruptly opened the door, climbed from the car and walked away into the rain.

  *

  The round up had begun immediately in a total of seven European countries, with simultaneous arrests in the USA. Charges varying from high treason to breaches of the Official Secrets Act had been laid in Britain, with many senior people agreeing to turn Queens evidence in exchange for guarantees.

  The controversy had been raging in the press for two months now, some supporting what the media had called the ‘Doomsday Group’, and others labelling them common criminals. In the Soviet Union, the whole scenario had been played down by an administration with its own problems – but an oblique reference in Tass had been made to the round ups in the West after some European leaders had talked of the conspiracy and its fast demise as a step along the path of trust and a move towards disarmament.

  The fact that massive restructuring had taken place within the Red Army and its GRU had not escaped the notice of the West, and several senior KGB and Politburo men had dropped out of sight. The Chinese-attempted deal with the Hong Kong triads and the Broken Square group had, so far, escaped publicity – and, as Quayle expected, they had remained silent and xenophobic throughout, making no comment to the world.

  He walked up from the village just before lunch, a bag of groceries in his arms and some English newspapers stuffed down his shirt front. Nico had ordered new chairs and tables for the extension to the restaurant and had insisted that Quayle view them, what with him being a partner. Quayle had nodded uncaringly and then wandered up to the small supermarket.

  There had been visitors.

  Martin Callows, now Director General of MI6, had arrived unannounced one day at the house on the hill and had sat, big and brooding, on one of Quayle’s chairs. The visit was an effort to make the peace, and his attempt to re-recruit Quayle was turned down without consideration.

  Marco had also visited and spent a week at the house, his big yacht moored in the harbour. His head had healed well and the hair was growing over the still livid red scar. That night, they got happily drunk – but Quayle missed Holly terribly and Marco, understanding the pain, had sought to take his mind off the matter with whatever came to hand, including attempting to juggle plates one night in the taverna. He gave up after two hundred odd lay broken on the floor and a crowd of tourists had gathered to watch on the street as his last attempt put paid to sixteen at once. He paid up manfully as Nico presented his massive bill. That night, too drunk to walk the hill, they slept on the boat.

  Marco had been gone for a month now and, for Quayle, the nightmares were back. Often, the lights in the house burned late into the night as he played chess with himself while Plato, the little tom cat, watched from a cushion, or worked on one of the icons that had sat waiting his loving touch in the cardboard box under the kitchen table.

  Most of the weight in the bag he hefted was bottled beer and cat food and, as he took the last steps up to the house, he pulled the papers from his shirt front.

  He had just dumped the lot on the veranda table when he heard it. The singing.

  He walked inside and there she was, drying her hair with his big towel like she always did.

  “Hello,” she said. “I’m back if you’ll have me.”

  He didn’t say anything so she continued, “You need stuff for Plato, and you’ve run out of flour and beer, and I love you and I miss you and I want to come home...”

  His kiss silenced her.

  From The Publisher

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  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  The British Military Quartet:

  Let Not the Deep

  King’s Shilling

  Long Reach

  Congo Blue (originally published as Heraklion Blue)

  Other fiction titles:

  Dark Rose

  Angel Seven

  Somewhere Out there

  About the Author

  Mike Lunnon-Wood was born in Africa and educated in Australia and New Zealand. He worked in the Middle East for ten years before moving to West Sussex. His writing was characterised by the quality of research he conducted, spending time with soldiers, sailors and airman in support of each book. Mike Lunnon-Wood passed away in 2008, survived by his son, Piers.

  Copyright Information

  This edition published by Silvertail Book
s in 2020

  www.silvertailbooks.com

  Copyright © Mike Lunnon-Wood 1998

  1

  The right of Mike Lunnon-Wood to be identified as the author

  of this work has been asserted in accordance

  with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988

  A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

  reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system,

  in any form or by any means, without permission

  in writing from Silvertail Books or the copyright holder

  All characters in this publication other than those clearly in the public

  domain are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or

  dead, is purely coincidental.