The Big Book of Espionage

by The Big Book of Espionage (retail) (epub)

  His love of the plan kept him moving forward even when, on Wednesday, Saïd’s murderer told him his real name and the name of his employer. Sam had put too much work into the plan to let it fall apart now, so he improvised. He absorbed this discovery into his tale, and even encouraged Nabil to murder Paul. He admitted the issue was personal. It was reckless, yes, but his sense of the rightness and beauty of his plan had made him delirious.

  Yet it was too late. He realized his mistake only when they plucked him off the street and drove him out of town to that finely appointed house. Even then, however, he clung to hope. They still wanted the money, and if necessary he would type in the code himself. He would prefer if Paul were beside him to accept the blast as well, but he would make do with what was possible.

  What he never expected was the politician sitting with a scotch in the living room, the fat one with the round eyes that stared in horror as he was dragged in. Their eyes met, but neither said a thing. Surprise kept them both mute. His captors dragged him to the basement and locked the door, and Sam settled at the table, thinking through the implications of Daniel Kwambai working with Aslim Taslam.

  As if he’d read Sam’s mind, some ten minutes later Kwambai opened the door and stepped inside wearing a wrinkled linen jacket stretched on one side by something heavy in the pocket. He closed the door and stared at Sam. “What are you doing here?” came his falsetto whisper.

  “You’re playing both sides, Daniel. Aren’t you?”

  Kwambai shook his head and took a seat across from him. “Don’t judge me, Sam. You’re not in a position.”

  “We don’t pay you enough?”

  “No one pays enough. You know that. But maybe after this money you’re bringing I’ll be able to quit playing any sides at all. If the money’s legitimate. Is it?”

  “Sure it is. Is the information going to be legitimate?”

  “They don’t tell me much, but no, I don’t think so.”

  Sam feigned disappointment. “You going to help me get out of here, then?”

  “Not before the money’s transferred.”

  “And then?”

  Kwambai didn’t answer. He seemed to be thinking of something, while Sam was thinking about the bulge in Kwambai’s pocket.

  “Well?”

  “I’m considering a lot of things,” said Kwambai. “For instance, how you would stand up to Nabil’s interrogation.”

  “No better or worse than most men, probably.”

  “And I’m wondering what you’d say.”

  “About you?” Sam shook his head. “I don’t think you have to worry about that. If he doesn’t follow that line of questioning, there’ll be no reason to answer.”

  A sad smile crossed Kwambai’s face. “And if he just asks for a reason to end the pain?”

  Sam knew what he was getting at, but things had become confused enough by this point that he couldn’t be sure how he wanted to answer. The obvious thing to say was that he’d protect Kwambai’s relationship with the Company to his dying breath, but no one would believe that, least of all him. The truth was that he recognized that sad look on the politician’s face. It was the same expression Kwambai had given just before accepting that initial deal, a year ago, to make contact with the Somali extremists who’d been doing business in Kenya. The look signified that, while he could hardly admit it to himself, Kwambai had already made up his mind.

  So he repeated the lie he had used to encourage the coward Paul Fisher: “You still need me. For the transfer.” He raised his hands and tickled the air with his fingers. “My prints.”

  But nothing changed in Kwambai’s face.

  “Take it out, then,” said Sam.

  “What?”

  “The gun. Take it out and do what you have to do. I personally don’t think you can. Not here in your own house. Not with your own hands. And how would you explain it to Nabil? He wants me. Like you, he wants the money. He—” Sam stopped himself because he recognized that he was rambling. Panic was starting to overcome him.

  Dutifully, though, Kwambai removed a revolver from his pocket and placed it on the table, pointing it at Sam much the way Sam had pointed the Beretta at Paul Fisher. Unlike the Beretta, this was an old gun, a World War II model Colt .45. Kwambai’s eyes were red around the edges. “I like you, Sam. I really do.”

  “But not that much.”

  “No,” Kwambai said as he lifted the pistol and shot three times before he could think through what he was doing.

  BENJAMIN

  Benjamin had lived most of his life making snap decisions and only afterward deciding whether or not they’d been correct. Intuition had been his primary guide. Even the occasional services he performed for the Americans and the Brits had begun that way. So all afternoon, as he tracked down a friend who would be willing to drive Paul Fisher to the border, he had wrestled with it, weighing Fisher’s life against the comforts of his family. If the Americans cut him off, George would probably not get to football camp this year; Elinah’s confirmation party would be more modest than planned; and Murugi, his long-suffering yet intractable wife, would start questioning the shift in the monthly budget. Was one stranger’s life worth it?

  It wasn’t until the trip back to the hotel in his friend’s Toyota pickup that he really convinced himself that he’d done right. We’re all employed by someone, he told himself philosophically, but in the end it’s self-employment that motivates us. The sentence charmed him, provoking a mysterious, proud smile on his lips, and that only made it more disappointing when he arrived at the hotel and learned that it had all been for nothing.

  His first clue was Chief Japhet Obure in the lobby, talking with the hotel manager and the bartender. The local police chief rolled his eyes at the sight of Benjamin. “Kidnapped American, and then you appear, Ben. Why am I not surprised?”

  “You know me, Japhi. I can smell scandal a mile away.”

  Benjamin’s disappointment was breathtakingly vast, bigger than he would have imagined. He hadn’t known Paul Fisher. Had he liked him? Not really. He had liked Sam, but not the feeble man who affected coldness to overcome an obvious cowardice. And it wasn’t as if Paul Fisher had been an innocent; none of the connected Americans who wandered into his country were. But his disappearance hurt just the same.

  “Looks like he hadn’t even unpacked,” Japhet said once they were both in his room.

  Benjamin, by the door, watched the chief touch the wrinkled bedspread and the dusty bedside table. But what the chief didn’t notice was the empty space, just beside the luggage stand, where the briefcase had been. As Japhet opened closets and drawers, Benjamin watched over his shoulder, but the all-important case wasn’t there. Why hadn’t Benjamin taken it with him when he’d left?

  He knew the answer, but it was so banal as to be embarrassing. He, like anyone, didn’t want to run around town carrying a bomb.

  Once everything had been brushed for prints, a long line of witnesses interviewed, and darkness had fallen, Chief Obure invited him out for a drink. Benjamin called Murugi and told her he’d be late. “Because of the kidnapped American?” It was already making the news.

  By nine he and Japhet were sitting at a sidewalk café, drinking cold bottles of Tusker and eyeing a trio of twelve-year-old boys across the road sucking on plastic bags of glue.

  “Breaks my heart to see that,” said Japhet.

  “Then you should be dead sixty times over by now,” Benjamin answered as his cell phone rang a monotone sound. Simultaneously, Japhet’s played a recent disco hit.

  A house northeast of the city, not so far from the United Nations compound in Runda Estate, had been demolished by an explosion. Benjamin knew the house, and back when Daniel Kwambai had still been in the government’s favor he’d even visited it. Still, the fact that the bomb had ended up in one of Kwambai’s
houses was a surprise.

  “Time for a field trip,” Japhet said when they’d both hung up.

  It took them forty minutes to reach Runda Estate and head farther north, where they followed the tower of smoke down to the inferno on the hill. The firefighters had left to collect more water, and Pili, one of Benjamin’s assistants, was standing in the long front yard, staring at the flames. He was soaked through with sweat.

  “The explosion came from inside. That’s what the fire chief says.”

  “What else would they expect?” asked Japhet.

  Since his boss didn’t reply, Pili said, “Car bomb.”

  “Right, right.”

  Both Pili and Japhet watched as Benjamin approached the burning house on his own. He stopped where the temperature rose dramatically, then began to perspire visibly, his shirt blackening down the center and spreading outward.

  From behind, he heard Japhet’s voice: “What’re you thinking, Ben?”

  “Just that it’s beautiful,” he answered, because that was true. Flames did not sit still. They buckled and wove and snapped and rose so that you could never hold their true form. Perhaps they had no true form. Wood popped and something deep inside the inferno exploded.

  “Do you know what’s going on here, Ben?”

  The wailing fire truck was returning, full of water. Farther out, headlights moved down the long road toward them. That would be absolutely everyone—government representatives, religious leaders, the Americans, the United Nations, the press.

  He took Japhet’s arm and walked him toward his car. “Come on. I’ll buy you a drink wherever you like.”

  “A rare and wonderful offer,” Japhet said. “You steal something?”

  “I’ve earned every cent I have,” he answered, twirling keys around his finger. “I just feel like forgetting.”

  “This?”

  “If I forget it, maybe it’ll just go away,” Benjamin said, smiling pleasantly as he got in and started the car. In no time at all, they had passed the incoming traffic and made it over the hills and back into the city. It was as if the burning house had never been. Despite the sweltering heat, Benjamin had even stopped sweating.

  THE LADY OF THE GREAT NORTH ROAD

  WILLIAM LE QUEUX

  THE AUTHOR OF more than a hundred novels and countless short stories, William Tufnell Le Queux (1864–1927) wrote detective and romance fiction but is remembered today for his espionage stories. As a correspondent for London’s Daily Mail during the Balkan War that preceded the outbreak of World War I, he is reputed to also have been a member of the British Secret Service. He was a pioneer expert in wireless transmission, mainly as it related to espionage activity. He appears to have spent the major portion of his life in behind-the-scenes patriotic activities for England and began writing stories about secret agents largely to finance his work for British Intelligence, which required extensive travel and personal contact with royalty and other high-ranking people.

  While The Bond of Black (1899), an early detective novel by Le Queux, was compared to Wilkie Collins, especially The Moonstone (1868), it was due more to his plagiarism than his style, which rarely achieved heights of a three on a scale of one to ten. He borrowed from the romantic melodramas that were so popular in the Victorian era to include a lovely and pure young woman, a handsome, fearless, heroic protagonist, and enemies of pure vileness.

  Largely because of his efforts at being an undercover agent, and certainly because of his ability to contrive so many plots, Le Queux anticipated most of the tropes of spy fiction, however inadvertently he may have stumbled upon them. His fiction was aimed at the lower middle classes as literacy became more common in the latter part of the nineteenth century and lending libraries made rented books affordable. Shopkeepers and clerks suddenly had the opportunity to read about the rich and powerful, as well as the luxurious lives they led—lives that they would never taste themselves.

  His early dedication to the importance of espionage in real life, combined with the success of the inventiveness of his fiction, convinced the British government to develop a strong Secret Service. Le Queux’s significance in the history of espionage is acknowledged in Graham Greene’s The Ministry of Fear (1943) when Arthur Rowe, its beleaguered protagonist, has a nightmare and screams, “The world has been remade by William Le Queux.”

  In the present story, a young Italian aristocrat, Count Bindo di Ferraris, like so many of the landed gentry of his time, owns a grand touring car and employs a chauffeur to take him where he wants to go, or to assist in other ways. Being well-paid enables the solid English chauffeur to turn an unquestioning blind eye to some of his chores because the count is little more than a rogue, though his chicanery is often employed to help others.

  “The Lady of the Great North Road” was originally published in the December 1904 issue of Cassell’s Magazine; it was first collected in The Count’s Chauffeur Being the Confessions of George Ewart, Chauffeur to Count Bindo di Ferraris (London, Eveleigh Nash, 1907).

  THE LADY OF THE GREAT NORTH ROAD

  WILLIAM LE QUEUX

  IT OCCURRED about a month after my return from Germany. A strange affair, assuredly; and stranger still that my life should have been spared to relate it.

  After luncheon at the Trocadero I stepped into the car, a new Bentley that we had purchased only a week before, to drive to Barnack, an old-world Northamptonshire village near Stamford, where I had to meet the audacious rascal Count Bindo. From Piccadilly Circus I started forth upon my hundred-mile run with a light heart, in keen anticipation of a merry time. The Houghs, with whom Bindo was staying, always had gay house-parties, for the Major, his wife, and Marigold, his daughter, were keen on hunting, and we usually went to the meets of the Fitzwilliam, and got good runs across the park, Castor Hanglands, and the neighbourhood.

  Through the grey, damp afternoon I drove on up the Great North Road. Simmons, Bindo’s new valet, was suffering from neuralgia; therefore I had left him in London, and, sitting alone, had ample time for reflection.

  The road surface was good, the car running like a clock, and on the level, open highway out of Biggleswade through Tempsford and Eaton Socon along to Buckden the speedometer was registering fifty and even sixty miles an hour. I was anxious to get to Barnack before dark, therefore I “let her rip.”

  The cheerless afternoon had drawn to a close, and rain had begun to fall. In a week or ten days we should be on the Riviera again, amid the sunshine and the flowers; and I pitied those compelled to bear the unequal rigour of the English winter. I was rushing up Alconbury Hill, having done seventy miles without stopping, when of a sudden I felt that drag on the steering-wheel that every motorist knows and dreads. The car refused to answer to the wheel—there was a puncture in the near hind tyre.

  It took me some time to put things right, but at last I recommenced to climb the hill and drop down into Sawtry.

  About two miles beyond Sawtry, when, by reason of the winding of the road, I had slackened down, I came to cross-roads and a sign-post, against which something white shone in the darkness. At first I believed it to be a white dog, but next moment I heard a woman’s voice hailing me, and turning, saw in the lamplight as I flashed past, a tall, handsome figure, with a long dark cloak over a light dress. She raised her arms frantically, calling to me. Therefore I put down the brakes hard, stopped, and then reversed the car, until I came back to where she stood in the muddy road.

  The moment she opened her mouth I recognized that she was a lady.

  “Excuse me,” she exclaimed breathlessly, “but would you do me a great favour—and take us on to Wansford—to the railway?” And looking, I made out that she held by the hand a fair-haired little lad of about seven years of age, well dressed in a thick overcoat and knitted woollen cap and gloves. “You will not refuse, will you?” she implored. “The life of a person very dear to me depends upon it.
” And in her voice I detected an accent by which I knew she was not English.

  Seeing how deeply in earnest she was, and that she was no mere wayfarer desirous of a “lift,” I expressed my readiness to do her a favour, and, getting down, opened the door and assisted the little lad and herself to get in.

  “Ah, sir, this kindness is one for which I can never sufficiently thank you. Others may be able to render you some service in return,” she said, “but for myself I can only give you the heartfelt thanks of a distressed woman.”

  In her refined voice there was a ring of deep earnestness. Who could she be?

  The hood of her heavy, fur-lined coat was drawn over her head, and in the darkness I could not distinguish her features. The little boy huddled close to her as we tore on towards Wansford station, her destination, fifteen miles distant. As we entered the long, old-world village of Stilton, my tyre again gave out, and I pulled up at the “Bell.”

  “You are not surely going to make a stop here, are you? No one must see us. Let us go on!” she urged in apprehension.

  “I must attend to the tyre,” I said. “No one shall see you. There is a little sitting-room at the side where you will be quite secluded.” And then, with apparent reluctance, she allowed me to lead her and the boy through the old stone hall and into the little, low, old-fashioned room, the window of which, with its red blind, looked out upon the village street.