Ultimate Issue (2 page)

“Well, Captain, I am very grateful to you. Yes, sir.”

The way it was said Verago winced.

“Eight years in Leavenworth, that isn’t too bad, is it?”

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King went on sarcastically. “I’d say you’ve done a mighty good job.”

Verago stubbed out his cigarette. “You should’ve considered the consequences before you messed with her. You should have thought of it then.”

King looked at him gravely. “She wanted it.”

“Oh, sure,” snarled Verago. He was angry. “That’s what every guy who tries to rape a woman says. Afterward. She asked for it. She wanted it. She liked it. Bullshit.”

“But I wasn’t trying to. It got out of hand.”

Verago sighed. “We’ve been all over that. You hit her, you tore her bra off, you … hell, you know what the MPs saw when they found you two.”

“She called me a black ape.”

“You told me,” said Verago, more gently.

“She said I was a black “

“Yes?”

“Forget it,” said King. “Just forget it.”

‘Yhat’s mitigation, maybe, but no defence,” Verago said patiently. “A deal was our best way out under the circumstances. And we haven’t finished yet. It’s still going through channels. I’ll do my best, Ben.”

King smiled coldly. “Don’t you worry about me, Captain. I’ll survive.”

Verago had a growing sense of claustrophobia. The wire of the cage was so finely meshed that he couldn’t see anything out of it. He felt trapped. He could hear the prisoners in the other cells, coughing, shuffling about, he felt their presence, but he couldn’t see them.

“Is there anything you need?” asked Verago. He felt the trickle of perspiration under his left armpit.

“Yeah,” said King. “A woman.”

Momentarily, Verago didn’t know what to say.

“Sorry, that’s against regulations,” he finally joked, weakly.

King looked at him unamused. “When are they shipping me out?”

“I don’t know. When the reviewing authority has finished with your case.”

“I know it wasn’t your fault, Captain,” he said unexpectedly. “I know you tried your best. Trouble is, you made one hell of a big mistake.”

“What was that?”

“You trusted them. You thought you had a deal. You

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really believed that. I got a piece of advice for you too, sir.”

Verago waited.

“Go fuckyourself, Captain.”

It was said quite mildly, almost respectfully.

Verago got up, the stool scraping on the floor. He was pale. He wasn’t a man who liked to control his temper.

“I’m sorry that’s the way you feel, soldier,” he said at last.

He turned and rattled the gate of the cage. An MP came to unlock it from the outside.

“You all through, sir?” asked the MP.

“Yes,” said Verago, “I’m all through.”

Friday, June 9, 1961

West Berlin

IDLY were just carrying the stretcher into the ambulance when Pech arrived.

He was driving himself, and he parked his official black Mercedes between a Kripo car with its blue light still flashing and the police surgeon’s Porsche. He slid into the gap neatly. Pech was an excellent driver.

He got out of the car and walked to the ambulance. A Schupo barred his way.

“Verfassungsschutz,” Pech said crisply, and flashed his ID card. The cop was vastly impressed. The Offlce for the Protection of the Constitution did not usually turn up within ten minutes of a shooting.

A doctor was bending over the body of a man in a green suit. The blood from two bullet wounds was spreading across the man’s chest.

“Is he dead?” asked Pech.

“Nearly,” replied the doctor.

“Let me see,” said Pech, almost brutally, and the doctor reluctantly gave way to enable Pech to lean over the stretcher.

The dying man’s eyes were closed.

“Can you hear me?” asked Pech

The eyes stayed shut.

“Martin, can you talk?”

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The doctor intervened. “There’s no time for that. He’s got to get to hospital now,” he protested angrily.

“I believe,” said Pech, straightening up, “that he just died.”

The doctor grabbed the man’s wrist and felt his pulse. “Right,” he said, with finality. “Take him away.”

Pech stood in front of the block of flats and lit a cheroot.

“Excuse me, sir,” a Kripo officer said respectfully. “Do you know anything about the dead man?”

“Maybe,” said Pech.

The detective was holding a wallet. “According to his papers, he’s from the other side.”

“Other side?” echoed Pech, amused.

“The Elast.”

“Really?” remarked Pech.

“If you could tell me anything about him …” The detective found Pech’s cold eyes disconcerting. “To help my report….”

“I don’t think it will really matter what your report says,” said Pech.

He started to walk to his Mercedes with the official plates.

The Kripo man always felt uneasy with the people from security. “But the investigation …” he started to say rather lamely.

“I imagine you’ll find that the case is closed,” said Pech.

“The formalities …”

“Don’t worry about them,” said Pech. “My department will look after it.”

He got into the Mercedes, smoothly reversed it, and drove into the Berlin night.

Monday, June 12,1961

London

THE! moment the jury returned to the courtroom, Daventry knew that he had won. It was a kind of sixth sense he had acquired, and it seldom let him down.

Up on his dais, Mr. Justice Rodman sat hunched, his fingers drumming impatiently.

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“Members of the jury,” said the clerk, “will your foreman please stand.”

The bald man in the brown suit rose. Daventry suspected it was the suit, reserved for the few special occasions in his life.

“Mr. Foreman,” sang out the clerk, “are you all agreed upon the verdict?”

The bald man was nervous, but he tried hard not to show it. At that moment, every eye in the Old Bailey courtroom was on him, and to be the center of attention was a unique experience for him.

“We are.”

“Do you find Michael Connor guilty or not guilty?”

“Not guilty.”

Mr. Justice Rodman stopped tapping his angers. He frowned.

“Do you find Kevin Connor guilty or not guilty?”

“Not guilty.”

Mr. Justice Rodman pursed his lips. His normally thin face looked even more pinched. He was angry. His summing up had been clear and to the point.

In the dock the two Connors broke into wide smiles They turned to each other and shook hands. Then one of them winked at Daventry. He ignored it.

“They are discharged,” said the judge, and his tone left no one in doubt of his disapproval. He gave the jury a look of cold reproof.

From the bench behind, Rippon, Daventry’s instructing solicitor, tapped him on the shoulder.

“Costs,” he mouthed, “ask for costs.”

Daventry shook his head curtly. It would only give the judge an opportunity to savage the verdict. Anyway, the Connors could well afford paying for their freedom.

Mr. Justice Rodman stood up, and everybody in the courtroom rose. The judge gave a cursory nod and swept out.

“Splendid work, Mr. Daventry,” said Rippon. He looked remarkably respectable for a solicitor who was on retainer to a dozen of London’s most undesirable citizens. “Absolutely splendid.”

“Thank you, Mr. Rippon,” Daventry replied diplomatically. Rippon, after all, provided some very lucrative briefs.

In the well of the court, Chief Superintendent Lock

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and his CID men were having a quick conference. He glanced over and saw Daventry looking at him.

“Well, sir, are you pleased?” he asked, not even attempting to hide his bitterness. The verdict had destroyed three years of work, trying to break up one of Soho’s nastiest vice kingdoms.

“That’s hardly the question, is it, Superintendent?” said Daventry coldly.

“I only hope your clients are duly grateful,” retorted Lock. Then he turned back to his men.

Daventry gathered his papers together and put them in his monogrammed leather attache case. He knew they loathed him at Scotland Yard. He got too many villains off for their liking. And they knew he didn’t lose a night’s sleep over it.

The younger Connor brother pushed his way toward him.

“You were fantastic, Mr. Daventry,” said Kevin. “Me and my brother, we’re tickled pink. You had that jury eating out of your hand.”

“Not really, Mr. Connor.” He started to move away. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

He went out of the swing doors of Number 1 court, into the big main hall on the first floor of the Old Bailey.

Over on one of the benches, Mary Donovan, the Crown’s chief witness, sat pale-faced. Two of Lock’s detectives hovered around her protectively. From the moment the jury had brought in their verdict, she was a marked woman.

She sat, her mascara smudged, tightly clutching her handbag, nervously smoking a cigarette. She knew what was in store. The Connors would pay her back. Giving evidence for the prosecution was the supreme betrayal; they had to show the other girls that it wasn’t worth it.

In the robing room, Daventry removed his wig. He was an unsentimental man, but the yellowing horsehair meant a lot to him. It was his father’s old wig, and the judge had given it to him when he was called to the bar in 1949. For twelve years Daventry had worn it at every court appearance, and it had almost become a talisman. It was nonsense, of course, but it had brought him a lot of good luck.

Without the wig he seemed younger than thirtyeight. He was a tall, thin man, with finely chiseled features, aris

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tocratic looking. The eighteenth-century barrister’s costume suited him.

He took off the black serge gown. Underneath was the daily uniform, a Saville Row tailored clerical suit. Daventry was an elegant man, in clothes and manners, and studiously careful about his appearance.

He frowned. He wished he could stop thinking about Mary Donovan. She wasn’t attractive, and her fingers were tobacco stained. She had eleven convictions for soliciting, and, in the medieval language of the law, she was listed as a “common prostitute.”

But it had given him no pleasure to reduce her to tears in the witness box and to insure the Connors’ acquittal by cutting her evidence against them to shreds.

Thornley, the Crown Prosecutor, came into the robing room.

“Ah, Gerald,” the prosecutor said. “Congratulations. Another good day’s work, oh?”

The sneer was implicit. Congratulations for getting a bunch of pimps off the hook. Full marks for making an ass of the law. I hope the fee was worth it.

“I’m just leaving, Harold,” said Daventry.

Thornley slipped out of his gown. “Give my regards to your father if you see him,” he said.

“Of course.”

Daventry looked at himself in the mirror. He was used to Thornley’s dislikes. It was one of the prices of success.

He didn’t have any qualms that a lot of villains owed their liberty to him. Daventry had often reflected about it, but he was always honest with himself, and the truth was that he rather enjoyed the reputation he had acquired of being one of the best advocates in England to get a guilty man off against all the odds.

Maybe that was why he liked defending so much better than appearing for the prosecution.

It also paid rather well.

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Tuesday, June 13,1961 The North Sea

THEY the man was a spook. He boarded the nuclear submarine, his face partially hidden by the fur-lined hood of his parka, carrying a briefcase.

All the 112 crew members were aware that something out of the ordinary was happening when they had received a signal to rendezvous with a U.S. destroyer eighty miles off the Danish coast.

At that time the U.S.S. Sharkfin wasn’t due to surface for another nine weeks, and anything that commanded the three-thousand-ton submarine to the top during one of her classified patrols was highly unusual.

Down below the man took off his jacket. Under it he wore a white turtleneck sweater and slacks. He had curiously piercing eyes.

“Welcome aboard,” Commander Douglas, the Sharkfin’s skipper, said uneasily. He disliked unexpected complications. The spook’s arrival was one.

“My orders,” said Clyde Unterberg, handing the commander a sealed manila envelope. Douglas tore it open and read the contents.

They confirmed his disquiet.

“They’re aware that the Baltic is a Soviet sea?” he asked.

“I don’t think they’re under any illusions, Commander,” said Unterberg.

“And that the part we’re supposed to search is like crossing Red Square?”

“Correct.”

Commander Douglas shrugged resignedly and gave orders to set the new course.

Later, when it was night and the control room illumination had switched to red, Douglas decided he was entitled to know a little more.

“What exactly was this plane?” he asked.

“An RB forty-seven H.” said Unterberg, surprisingly readily.

“And what the hell was it doing over the Baltic?”

“Ferreting.”

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“Eh?”

“Testing their radar defences. I guess that might describe it.”

“When did it go down?”

“It didn’t go down, Commander,” said Unterberg. “They shot it down.”

“Jesus.”

Suddenly Douglas felt cold. It had gotten to this.

“That’s going to take some explaining.”

“Not at all,” said Unterberg smoothly. “The official version is that a plane is missing on a training flight. Over the North Sea. Accidents will happen.”

On the chart table before them lay the map, with the search area marked out.

“What precisely are we looking for, Mr. Unterberg?” Douglas asked.

“Anything. A rubber dinghy. Wreckage. Maybe a body. We’d like to recover anything we can.”

“If there’s anything, the Russians will have picked it up.”

“Maybe they missed something,” said Unterberg. ‘fit had six men on board.”

“Six?”

“Three extra men. In a pressurised compartment in the bomb bay.”

Douglas was about to say something, but Unterberg cut him short.

“Electronics specialists,” he said briefly. His tone was final. Explanations would now cease.