Spy Story (24 page)

‘You think it's all really on?' I said, with some surprise.

‘I've known stranger things happen.'

‘Through some tin-pot little organization like that?'

‘He's not altogether unaided,' said Dawlish. Schlegel was watching him with close interest.

‘I should think not,' I said with some exasperation. ‘They are talking about diverting a nuclear submarine to pick him up in the Barents. Not altogether unaided is the understatement of the century.'

Dawlish sipped his tea. He looked at me and said, ‘You think we should just sit on Toliver? You wouldn't advocate sending a submarine to their rendezvous point?'

‘A nuclear submarine costs a lot of money,' I said.

‘And you think they might sink it. Surely that's not on? They could find nuclear subs easily enough, and sink them, too, if that's their ambition.'

‘The Arctic is a quiet place,' I said.

‘And they could find nuclear subs in other quiet places,' said Dawlish.

‘And we could find theirs,' said Schlegel belligerently. ‘And don't let's forget it.'

‘Exactly,' said Dawlish calmly. ‘It's what they call war, isn't it? No, they are not going to all this trouble just to start a war.'

‘You've made a firm contact with this Admiral?' I asked.

‘Toliver. Toliver got the contact – a delegation in Leningrad, apparently – we've kept completely clear by top-level instructions.'

I nodded. I could believe that. If it all went wrong they'd keep Toliver separate, all right: they'd feed him to the Russians in bite-sized pieces, sprinkled with tenderizer.

‘So what do you think?' It was Schlegel asking the question this time.

I looked at him for a long time without replying. I said, ‘They talked as though it's all been arranged already: British submarine, they said. Toliver talks about the RN like it's available for charter, and he's the man doing the package tours.'

Dawlish said, ‘If we went ahead, it would be with a US submarine.' He looked at Schlegel. ‘Until we can be quite sure who Toliver has got working with him, it would be safer using an American submarine.'

‘Uh-huh,' I said. Hell, why would these two high-powered characters be conferring with me at this level of decision.

It was Schlegel who finally answered my unasked question.

‘It's us that will have to go,' he said. ‘Our trip: you and me, and that Foxwell character: right?'

‘Oh, now I begin to see the daylight,' I said.

‘We'd consider it a favour,' said Dawlish. ‘No order – but we'd consider it a favour, wouldn't we, Colonel?'

‘Yes, sir!' said Schlegel.

‘Very well,' I said. They were obviously going to let me bleed to death until they got their way about it. My arm was throbbing badly by now and I found myself pressing it to still the pain. All I wanted was to see the army medical orderly. I wasn't cut out to be a wounded hero.

‘We think it's worth a look,' said Dawlish. He collected my empty cup. ‘Oh, for God's sake, Pat! You're dripping blood all over the carpet.'

‘It won't show,' I said, ‘not in that lovely humming-bird pattern.'

Environment neutral. The environment neutral condition is one in which weather, radio reception, sonar operation and water temperatures remain constant throughout the game. This does not change the chance of accidents (naval units, merchant shipping, air), delays of material or communications or random machine operation.

GLOSSARY
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NOTES FOR WARGAMERS
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STUDIES CENTRE
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LONDON

The sudden cry of an alarm clock was strangled at birth. For a moment there was complete silence. In the darknesss there were only four grey rectangles that did not quite fit together. Rain dabbed them and the wind rattled the window frame.

I heard old MacGregor stamp his way into his old boots and cough as he went down the creaky stairs. I dressed. My clothes were damp and smelled of peat smoke. Even with the window and door tightly closed, the air was cold enough to condense my breath as I fought my way into almost every garment I possessed.

In the back parlour, old MacGregor knelt before the tiny grate of the stove and prayed for flame.

‘Kindling,' he said over his shoulder, as a surgeon might urgently call for a scalpel, determined not to take his eyes from the work in hand. ‘Dry kindling, man, from the box under the sink.'

The bundle of dead wood was dry, as much as anything was dry at The Bonnet. MacGregor took the Agatha Christie paperback I'd left in the armchair, and ripped from it a few pages to feed the flame. I noticed for the first time that many other pages had already been sacrificed on that same altar. Now perhaps I would never know whether Miss Marple would pin it on the Archdeacon.

MacGregor breathed lustily upon the tiny flames. Perhaps it was the alcoholic content of his breath that made the fire flicker and start to devour the firewood. He moved the kettle over to the hob.

‘I'll look at the arm,' he said.

It had become a ritual. He undid the bandage with studied care and then ripped away the dressing so that I gave a cry of pain. ‘That's done,' said MacGregor. He always said that.

‘You're healing well, man.' He cleaned the wound with antiseptic spirit and said, ‘Plaster will do you now – you'll not need a bandage today.'

The kettle began to hum.

He applied the sticking plaster and then treated the graze on my back with same care. He applied the sticking plaster there too and then stood back to admire his work, while I shivered.

‘Some tea will warm you,' he said.

Grey streaks of dawn were smeared across the windows, and outside the birds began to croak and argue – there was nothing to sing about.

‘Stay in the parlour today,' said MacGregor. ‘You don't want it to break open again.' He poured two strong cups of tea, and wrapped a moth-eaten cosy round the pot. He stabbed a tin of milk with the poker and slid it across the table to me.

I pressed the raw places on my arm.

‘They are beginning to itch,' said MacGregor, ‘and that is good. You'll stay inside today – and read. I have no use for you.' He smiled, sipped some tea and then reached for the entire resources in reading matter.
Garden Shrubs for the Amateur, With the Flag to Pretoria,
volume three, and three paperback Agatha Christies, partly plundered for their combustibility.

He put the books alongside me, poured me more tea and added peat to the fire. ‘Your friends will be coming today or tomorrow,' he said.

‘When do we go on the trip – did they tell you?'

‘Your friends will be coming,' he said. He was not a garrulous man.

MacGregor spent most of that morning in the shed, with the power-saw reduced to its components and arranged on the stone floor round him. Many times he fitted the parts together. Many times he snatched at the starter-string so that the engine turned. But it did not fire. Sometimes he swore at it but he did not give up until noon. Then he came into the parlour and threw himself into the battered leather armchair that I never used, realizing that he had a prior claim. ‘Bah!' said MacGregor. I'd learned to interpret it as his way of complaining of the cold. I prodded at the fire.

‘Your porridge is on,' he said. He called all the food porridge. It was his way of mocking Sassenachs.

‘It smells good.'

‘I'll have none of your caustic London irony,' said MacGregor. ‘If you do not fancy a sup – you can run down to the wood shed and wrestle that damned wood-saw.' He clapped his hands together and massaged the red calloused fingers to bring the blood back into them. ‘Bah,' he said again.

Behind him, the view from the tiny window, deepset into the thick stone wall, was partly obscured by two half-dead potted begonias. I could just see sunlight picking up traces of snow on the distant peaks, except when a gust of wind brought the chimney smoke into the yard, or, worse, brought it down into the parlour. MacGregor coughed. ‘It needs a new cowl,' he explained. ‘The east wind gets under the eaves and lifts the slates too.'

He followed my gaze out of the window. ‘That will be a London car,' he said.

‘How do you know?'

‘Hereabouts folks have vans and lorries – we don't go much on cars – but when we do buy them we choose something that will get us up the Hammer or over the high road in winter. We'd not choose a smart London car like that one.'

At first I thought it might turn off at the lower road, go through the village and along the coast. But the car continued on the road. It meandered along the slopes on the other side of the valley, so that we could see it climbing each hairpin for the first two or three miles. ‘They'll want dinner,' said MacGregor.

‘Or at least a drink,' I said. I knew that it was a gruelling run for the last few miles. The road was not good at any time of the year but with the pot holes concealed by snow, the driver would have to pick his way past the worst bits. He'd need a drink and a moment by the fire.

‘I'll see that the bar room fire is alive,' he said. It was only the constant replenishment of fires, at back and front, that kept the house habitable. Even then he needed an oil heater near his feet in the bar, and the bedrooms were cold enough to strike the lungs like a stiletto. I tucked Agatha Christie behind the striking clock.

The car turned in on the gravel. It was a DBS, dark blue with matching upholstery. But the Aston was dented and spattered with mud and filthy snow. The windscreen was caked with dirt except for the two bright eyes made by the wipers. Only when the door opened did I see the driver. It was Ferdy Foxwell wearing his famous impresario's overcoat, its astrakhan collar buttoned up over his ears, and a crazy little fur hat tilted askew on his head.

I went out to see him. ‘Ferdy! Are we off?'

‘Tomorrow. Schlegel is on his way. I thought with this I'd be here ahead of him. Give us a chance to chat.'

‘Nice car, Ferdy,' I said.

‘I treated myself for Christmas,' he said. ‘You disapprove?'

The car cost more than my father earned from the railway for ten years' conscientious service, but Ferdy buying a small Ford wasn't going to help my father. ‘Spend, Ferdy, spend. Be the first kid on the block with an executive jet.'

He smiled shyly, but I meant it. I'd been around long enough to find out that it wasn't the proprietors of three-star restaurants, designers of custom jewellery or the manufacturers of hand-made sports cars who were sitting in the sun in Bermuda. It was the shrewdies who did tinned beans, frozen fish and fizzy drinks.

Ferdy sniffed at MacGregor's stew. ‘What the devil are you boiling up there, MacGregor, you hairy Scotch bastard?'

‘It's your chance to taste Highland haggis, fatty,' said MacGregor.

‘One of these days you'll say that, and it really will be a haggis,' said Ferdy.

‘Never,' said MacGregor, ‘can't stand the filthy muck. I would no' have the stench of it in my house.'

‘You can put a gill of your home-made ginger wine into a double measure of your malt,' said Ferdy.

I said, ‘Make it two of them.'

‘Finest ginger wine I ever tasted,' said Ferdy. He grinned at me. MacGregor deplored the idea of mixing anything with his precious malts but he was vulnerable to compliments about his ginger wine. Reluctantly he took his time before he poured the measures into the glasses, hoping the while that we'd change our minds.

‘The Colonel is coming?'

‘The new Colonel is coming, MacGregor, my friend.' It was declared now, that we all had the same employer, and yet even during my two days with him he'd not admitted it.

The wind was backing. No longer was smoke coming down into the back yard but the radio aerial gave a gentle moan. It was an uncommonly tall radio aerial, if intended only to bring in the BBC programmes.

‘I must have the power-saw ready for morning,' said MacGregor diplomatically, for he guessed that the contents of Ferdy's document case were only for me to see.

Ferdy had the schoolboy intensity that I never ceased to admire. He'd brought all the right documents and codes and radio procedure charts marked up for the dates of the changes. No matter how much he complained, no matter, in fact, how anyone treated him, Ferdy saw himself as Mr Reliable, and he worked hard to keep his own esteem.

He hurried through the papers. ‘I suppose Schlegel poked you away up here because he didn't want us talking together.' He said it casually, while giving the edges of the pages too much attention. It was a girl's response, if I can say that about Ferdy without giving you a completely wrong idea about him.

‘No,' I said.

‘He hates me,' said Ferdy.

‘You keep saying that.'

‘I keep saying it because it's true.'

‘Well, that's a good enough reason,' I admitted.

‘I mean, you know it's true, don't you.' Again it was an adolescent's wish to be contradicted.

‘Hell, Ferdy, I don't know.'

‘And don't care.'

‘And don't care, Ferdy. Right.'

‘I've been against the Americans taking over the Centre, right from the start.' He paused. I said nothing. Ferdy said, ‘You haven't, I know.'

‘I'm not sure the Centre would still be functioning if the Americans hadn't pumped life into it.'

‘But is it recognizable? When was the last time we did a historical analysis?'

‘You know when, Ferdy. You and I did the PQ17 convoy in September. Before that, we did those Battle of Britain variable fuel load games. You wrote them up for the journal. I thought you were pleased with what we did?'

‘Yes, those,' said Ferdy, unable to conceal the irritation which my answers gave him. ‘I mean a historical game played right through the month – computer time and all – with full staff. Not just you and me doing all the donkey work. Not just the two of us scribbling notes, as if it was some new boxed game from Avalon Hill.'