“Then let me do the job for you—but in my own time, when I’ve got what I want.”
This sounded better. “How much time?” Sir Harry was cautious.
Gubwa thought about it, said, “A month, six weeks at the outside. That should be time enough.”
“Time enough for what, Charon? What is your interest in Garrison?”
“Ah, Sir Harry! Can’t we keep a few little secrets to ourselves, you and I? Be satisfied that I’ll kill him, that’s all.”
The Chairman still wasn’t quite satisfied. “I don’t know…”
“And I’ll do it in a way that lets you and the branch out entirely. No possible connection.”
That sounded much better. Sir Harry lingered over the proposition, letting himself be swayed. And why not? After all, no one had set a time limit on Garrison’s life. Six weeks should be quite satisfactory. And when Gubwa had done the job…that would be time enough to sort him out! Fortunately Gubwa was not probing any of this; fortunately for Sir Harry. “All right,” he finally agreed, “we’ll do it your way.”
“Good!” said Gubwa, “and there’s something you can do for me. I could do it myself, but this way is quicker.”
“Oh?” Sir Harry was cautious once more.
“Yes, I’ll need to know the name of Garrison’s minder.”
“I don’t know if he’ll have one yet.”
Gubwa laughed. “Oh, I’m sure he will! Probably your friends at MI6. They’re a trustworthy lot, in the main. Do find out for me, won’t you?”
“I’ll do my best,” The Chairman growled.
“Fine! Well, that about concludes it, I imagine. Unless there’s anything else you’d care to mention? No? Well, then. It was good to hear from you again, Sir Harry, and—”
“Save it for true believers!” The Chairman told him drily. “Six weeks then. And Charon…no mistakes, eh?” And without waiting for an answer he put the phone down…
ON THEIR WAY BACK INTO THE CITY, MI6 AND OBSERVER ENGAGED in what was at first a wary conversation. The man in the back of the car, MI6’s “aide,” sat in silence, apparently little interested.
“Er, what you were saying about Garrison,” Observer opened. “Did you mean it? About him being straight, I mean?”
“Oh, yes. Straight as you or I—no disrespect, you understand—and probably a sight straighter than a lot of the others at that little get-together.”
Observer grinned, relaxing a little. “I know what you mean. We rub shoulders with some strange ones, don’t we?”
MI6 nodded. “All part of the game, I suppose.”
“You’ve little in common with Sir Harry, then?” A tentative probe.
“The Chairman? When I started with MI6 during the war, his branch didn’t even exist. It came later. Most of the murky stuff came later. I mean, it’s all cloak and dagger, you’ll appreciate—but with that lot it’s mainly dagger! But—I suppose we need ’em. You know what they say: it takes one to know one? Well, they deal with some pretty weird jobs, with unpleasant people and nasty situations. So-called ‘obscurities.’” He glanced at Observer out of the corner of his eye. “But you know that, of course.”
“Something about it, yes. They’re a closemouthed lot, I know that much. Sort of a law unto themselves. I’ll not mislead you—I’ve a good many colleagues who’d like to see them shut down!”
MI6 nodded. “You don’t surprise me. They’re a damned sight too heavy-handed for my liking. And as for Sir Harry…” he sucked his teeth. “That guy’s a snake! Er, my personal opinion, of course. But it’s common knowledge he numbers several more than shady characters among his friends and informers. And he probably protects them. That Chinaman, for instance. Who did he represent, eh?”
“Umm,” said Observer. “I’d wondered about that myself. But, as I’ve said, they’re pretty close-mouthed—and so far they’ve had good cover from up top.” He let his eyes flick up, brought them down to glance knowingly at his passenger. “‘She’ is happy with much of their work. Personally—Sir Harry’s being a snake isn’t just your opinion, I’m afraid.” He chuckled wryly. “That’s why I want you to look after Garrison. It really wouldn’t do if anything were to happen to him.”
“Oh?” MI6 seemed genuinely taken by surprise. “You mean me personally?”
“You—or your best man. We trust you, and that covers anyone you care to recommend. In fact I especially appreciated the way you stuck your neck out for Garrison. Yes, I liked that…”
MI6 thought about it. “Of course I’d need authority, orders?”
“You shall have them. In fact you have them, as of now. The papers will come later.”
“Okay, I’ll see to it. To be truthful I half-expected the job, and I have the very man for it. He’s not much known over here. Worked mainly abroad. But he’s good stuff. Name of Stone—Phillip Stone—but of course that’s strictly between you and me…”
Behind him, in the back seat, Stone merely sat and said nothing. He had wondered why he’d been called to attend this meeting today, and now he knew.
“Good!” said Observer, “then get him on the job. Just one thing: make sure he does it with discretion. This Garrison’s a funny type. If he was to cotton on that someone was minding him, well he’d be almost sure to make a fuss about it. Which would only make the job that much more difficult.”
“Oh, he’ll not get wind of this guy, I can safely promise you that. He’s one of the best.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” said Observer, easing his foot from the accelerator as they moved into heavier traffic. “Incidentally, do you have any idea who might have bombed Garrison’s plane?”
MI6 shrugged. “Could be the IRA are still after him. Or the Mafia.”
“Mafia?”
MI6 nodded. “That Vegas job I was talking about. And if he’s been holidaying on Rhodes…it’s their neck of the woods, you know. Close enough to it, anyway.” He shrugged. “On the other hand it could be anybody. He must’ve stepped on a few toes to get what he’s got.”
Observer grunted his acceptance of that, then said: “Well, let’s just make sure—for the immediate future, anyway—that nobody steps on him…”
PHILLIP STONE SUITED HIS NAME WELL. He was like stone. A crag of a man, seventy-three inches tall and all of it with hard edges. And they had needed to be hard. As an intelligence agent (he hated the word “spy”) Stone had several things going for him. No one who looked (and was) so rough and ready could possibly be that intelligent. And no one who acted so unconcerned and disinterested could possibly be the data-collecting machine which Stone was. His third asset was his hardness itself, which over the years he’d accumulated like a stalactite collects calcium. Layer upon layer. The hard way.
Nothing had ever been easy for Stone. When you’re big and rough-looking there’s always someone waiting to knock you down, if only to prove he’s bigger and rougher. Stone had been knocked down a good many times, in a good many ways, until at last he’d learned to stay firmly on his feet.
Life that offered neither threat nor thrill was no life for Phillip Stone. At eighteen he’d joined the Parachute Regiment just to jump out of airplanes, and at twenty-three he’d been cashiered out for his persistent disobedience to the orders of his senior officers, which had culminated in a brawl with one such where he’d broken the man’s jaw. Stone had never understood how he’d become an officer in the first place—he hadn’t wanted to be one—but being broken out of the army hadn’t bothered him. Jumping out of airplanes had bored him in the end, and anyway it had entailed all that other junk—like doing what you’re told to do.
No, he was a lone wolf and the Regiment had been just a little too clannish. He still had fond memories, even now, but…there had been other places to see, other things to do. He had inherited a little money from an aunt he’d never known, and the army had given him a thirst for travel, and so—
His idea had been to work his way round the world, except it hadn’t turned out that way. He
’d got as far as Cyprus before falling in with a bunch of lads in Nicosia on a drunken night out. Believing they were squaddies from one of the local British camps, he’d gone along with them, had even let them talk him into going through some form of silly ritual. He’d been drunk and couldn’t remember a lot about it. But they hadn’t been squaddies—regular soldiers anyway—and the ritual hadn’t been silly. Not in their eyes. No, it had been their form of enlistment. And when Stone came out of his drunk he was somewhere in Africa and someone had given him a rifle!
Under orders again, this time from Colonel “Crazy” Dave Clegg, also late of Her Majesty’s Forces, Phillip Stone had found himself a mercenary in the wildest outfit any man could ever wish to desert from. But he hadn’t deserted; instead he’d proved himself worth his weight in gold to Crazy Dave; the business they were involved with came to a rapid and fruitful (if bloody) conclusion; Stone had soon found himself back in Blighty and a civilian once more.
Two weeks had been too much. There was a girl he’d known in Minden. He decided to look her up and boarded a plane for Germany.
Meanwhile…Crazy Dave Clegg hadn’t forgotten him. Stone’s name was soon being whispered in the esoteric vaults of MI6. Connections were made…
Stone’s reunion with his fräulein didn’t work out; he fell in with a couple of middle-age but sprightly American tourists, ex-GIs who’d been through this way during the war; in a few days they’d persuaded him to accompany them to Frankfurt. Shortly after that Stone had mislaid his passport, but a call to the British Consulate soon solved that one—with a speed and efficiency he later had cause to remember! His new passport, unlike the old one, made no mention of him being an ex-Army officer, but since he no longer was an officer he’d seen nothing sinister in that. Nor in the next port of call of his American friends, which just happened to be Berlin. Only a few jumps later had seen him ferrying innocuous-looking little letters to and fro between East and West Berlin (his ex-GIs had ladies over there remembered from the war, but they hated tearful and fruitless reunions and besides they were married now), and the jump after that had been straight into jail—on the wrong side of the wall!
Only then had he stopped to add things up—things which, in all his prior experience, had only ever happened in thriller or “spy” novels—by which time he was on his way to Moscow. Apparently he asked for political asylum there, or at least that’s what the reds told MI6. He was interrogated, brainwashed, became a double-agent without ever (in his eyes) first being a single-agent! Later, having been returned to Frankfurt where he was picked up by the CIA, he was “de-briefed,” shipped back to Blighty, interrogated by Intelligence and re-employed in Hong Kong. There he “went to school,” became a fully-fledged agent, improved his unarmed combat and surveillance techniques, was finally moved on into China as a “student of Oriental customs, architecture and antiquities.”
In 1977 the Chinese authorities finally cracked his cover; he was given the full treatment by the nasties in Peking; only the blossoming Chinese love affair with Great Britain and the USA saved him. He was kicked out with a minimum of publicity and a fresh-scrubbed mind, had his brain repatriated by MI6, and finally ended up back in Germany as a junior counter-intelligence adviser to NATO.
Well (he’d often consoled himself), and he’d wanted to see the world, hadn’t he? But the world hadn’t quite finished with him yet, nor he with it.
The job in Germany wasn’t to his liking—too quiet. He became restless—possibly as a result of hearing a rumor that certain parties were trying to recruit a gunrunner for Afghanistan, supplying the Khash-lun tribesmen with arms to fight the coming Russian invasion. And so Stone had moved on, becoming part of the Afghan underground. The invasion had come; on his own initiative Stone had founded a well-organized guerilla group; London had got wind of this and whipped him out of there. Lawrence of Arabia had been different, they told him: we had been at war then!
Since when he’d puttered round with the idea of selling himself to the Israelis, or of removing to South Africa where several ex-soldier friends had settled, or of moving into industrial espionage in America. Meanwhile MIs 5 and 6 had kept him employed, however low-key, usually on surveillance or in a minder capacity.
Now he was to be minder to Richard Garrison, which Stone had already decided would be far too tame for him. But…a job is a job, and at least you could live on the money. This was the last time, though, and after this it would probably be the good old US of A for him. You could still find a little fast action across the Big Pond.
These were his thoughts as he left the MI6 offices in Whitehall, where he’d chosen his cover and been “kitted-up,” and made his way across London via the underground for his flat in Richmond. There he’d pick up his car and head for Haslemere, where Garrison was in a very private and very exclusive hospital. He did not see the small, sturdy, business-suited Chinaman who followed him out of the tube and into the evening at Richmond—Johnnie Fong was an expert at not being seen—and he was not greatly interested in the pushing-and-shoving argument between two hulking, boozy yobs in a shop doorway along his way. But after that—
—The “yobs” were on him like sacks of coal, pinning him to a wall in a moment. And in the next moment, before he could muster either mind or muscle, the little Chinaman was in front of him, unloading the contents of a large hypodermic right through his shirt and into the wall of his stomach! Stone recognized the Chinaman at once—and then he reacted.
He hurled one of his attackers from him and swung his free fist round in an arc, crashing it into the face of the other. But by then he already knew that it was all over. A car had pulled up; the street was melting like soft toffee; his attackers, one of them with a mangled, profusely bleeding face, were levering him into the back of a large black station wagon. He still moved his arms a bit but they felt like rubber, with no bones in them. His legs had long since surrendered and his mind was last to go, or maybe his vision. He would later recall that before passing out he saw the Chinaman’s face, close up, and his broad slash of a smile.
That sinister yellow smile receding down a long black tunnel, and Stone’s thought going with it: You just wait, Fu Manchu. I’ll be seeing you again…you again…again…again-againagainagain again…
But in fact, he never would see him again.
RICHARD GARRISON WASN’T THE ONLY ONE IN HOSPITAL: CARLO Vicenti was there, too, in a “gentleman’s” ward in a large Central London general. He had been there all afternoon and evening while they fixed him up, and was now mildly sedated where he sat propped up, deep in painful conversation with three sharply-tailored, mean-looking and somewhat swarthy visitors.
“Yeah, yeah, we know,” Marcello Pontellari’s nasal voice was full of sarcasm. “Three cracked ribs, a busted collarbone, a sprained wrist and a busted pinkie. Oh, yeah, and lots of bad bruising—wow!” his sneer was deliberately exaggerated. “Isn’t that terrible? Girls we carve with razors or burn with cigarettes; guys we pave roads with or dump in the river; and you…? Somebody breaks a small bone or two and you scream like all hell!”
“Not just somebody,” Vicenti snapped, grimacing at the pain his reaction caused in his bandaged shoulder. “Garrison! It was him—must’ve been him—or his twin brother!”
“Your boys saw nothing,” Mario “the Dwarf” Angelli blew rings from his cigar. “They say you acted crazy but nobody was there.”
“Idiots!” Vicenti snapped again, and again groaned. “What in hell’s wrong with you guys? You think I threw myself through that wall?”
“Frankly,” said Ramon Navarro de Medici—“Ramon the Rat,” as he was known throughout the rank and file of London-based Mafia—“yeah, that’s what we think. Least, that’s what your boys tell us. A fit, they said. He went nuts, they said.”
“Went nuts!” Vicenti snorted. “I tell you I saw the guy!”
“Yeah, we know—that’s what we came to check. It’s why we’re here. The Big Guy sent us, you know?”
Vicenti
grew silent. The Big Guy? The first successful Mafia Boss in England? He was interested in this? Why?
“See,” de Medici went on, “your boys have to be right. Dead right. Garrison wasn’t there, couldn’t be there. He was trapped in a crippled plane somewhere between the Greek islands and England.”
A crippled plane? The Black brothers!
“A bomb,” Vicenti nodded his understanding.
“Yeah, your bomb!” de Medici answered. “You had him contracted out. The Black boys. We got it from Facello. You did it personal and private, which ain’t exactly in the rules, but—”
“But—” Vicenti shook his head, “—but he was there!”
“No,” Medici was emphatic, “he was on a plane with Bert Black’s bomb. But this time Bert fucked up. The plane didn’t go down. Anyway, that don’t change anything. Garrison was on the plane—couldn’t have been anywhere near you.”
Vicenti’s mind was chasing itself in ever-decreasing circles. “I don’t understand,” he said. “I just don’t—”
“Hour and a half after you say he worked you over, Garrison’s plane was coming in on a wing and a prayer at Gatwick. No wheels, controls, no nothing. But a neat landing. Garrison in hospital: nerves. Pilot crazy as a loon, says they were saved ‘by God!’”
Vicenti fell back on his pillows, groaning as his shoulder gave him more pain. But his injuries now took second place to his confusion, his disbelief. “What the hell…?” he whispered. He squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head again.
“Yeah,” said Marcello Pontellari, his tone sarcastic as ever, “what the hell…”
“Listen, Carlo,” said de Medici, “just ignore Pontellari and listen. The Big Guy is interested in all this. See, you’re not the only one who hates this Garrison. The boys in Vegas hate him, too. But see, they don’t want him dead.”