I saw the two soldiers sitting at the roadside when I was still a couple of hundred yards away. They were sheltering under a camouflage cape upon which the snow was settling fast. I thought they were waiting for a lift, until I saw that they were dressed in Fighting Order. They both had L1 A1 automatic rifles and one of them had a two-way radio too.
They played it cool, remaining seated until I was almost upon them. I knew they’d put me on the air, because only after I’d passed him did I notice another soldier covering me from fifty yards along the road. He had a Lee Enfield with a sniper-sight. It was no ordinary exercise.
‘Could you wait here a moment, sir?’ He was a paratroop corporal.
‘What’s going on?’
‘There will be someone along in a minute.’
We waited. Over the brow of the next hill there came a large car, towing a caravan of the sort advertised as ‘a carefree holiday home on wheels’. It was a bulbous contraption, painted cream, with a green plastic door and tinted windows. I knew who it was as soon as I saw huge polished brass headlights. But I didn’t expect that it would be Schlegel sitting alongside him. Dawlish applied the brakes and came to a standstill alongside me and the soliders. I heard him say to Schlegel ‘… and let me surprise you: these brakes are really hydraulic, actually powered by water. Although I must confess to putting methylated spirit in for this trip, on account of the cold.’
Schlegel nodded but gave no sign of the promised surprise. I suspected that he’d acquired a thorough understanding of Dawlish’s brakes on the way up here. ‘I thought it would be you, Pat.’
It was typically Dawlish. He would have died had anyone accused him of showmanship, but given a chance like this he came on like Montgomery. ‘Are you chaps brewing up, by any chance?’ he asked the soliders.
‘They send a van, sir. Eleven thirty, they said.’
Dawlish said, ‘I think we’ll make some tea now: hot sweet tea is just the ticket for a chap in a state of shock.’
I knew he was trying to provoke the very reaction I made, but I made it just the same. ‘I’ve lost a lot of blood,’ I said.
‘Not lost it exactly,’ said Dawlish, as if noticing my arm for the first time. ‘It’s soaking into your coat.’
‘How silly of me,’ I said.
‘Corporal,’ said Dawlish. ‘Would you see if you can get your medical orderly up here. Tell him to bring some sticking plaster and all that kind of thing.’ He turned to me. ‘We’ll go into the caravan. It’s awfully useful for this kind of business.’
He got out of the car, and ushered me and Schlegel into the cramped sitting-room of the caravan. All it needed was Snow White: it was filled with little plastic candelabra, chintz cushion-covers and an early Queen Anne cocktail cabinet. I knew that Dawlish had hired the most hideously furnished one available, and was energetically pretending that he’d hand-picked every item. He was a sadist, but Schlegel had it coming to him.
‘Useful for what kind of business?’ I said.
Schlegel smiled a greeting but didn’t speak. He sat down on the sofa at the rear, and began smoking one of his favourite little cheroots. Dawlish went to his gas ring and lit it. He held up a tiny camper’s kettle and demonstrated the hinged handle. ‘A folding kettle! Who would have believed they had such gadgets?’
‘That’s very common,’ said Schlegel.
Dawlish waggled a finger. ‘In America, yes,’ he said. He started the kettle and then he turned to me. ‘This business. Useful for this business. We watched you on our little Doppler radar set. Couldn’t be sure it was you, of course, but I guessed.’
‘There’s a submarine out there in the Sound,’ I said. I sniffed at Schlegel’s cigar smoke enviously but I was now counting my abstinence in months.
Dawlish tutted. ‘It’s naughty, isn’t it? We’ve just come down from watching him on the ASW screen at HMS Viking. He’s moved south now. Picked up someone, did he?’
I didn’t answer.
Dawlish continued, ‘We are going in there, but very gently. The story is that we’ve lost a ballistic missile with a dummy head. Sounds all right to you, does it?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
Dawlish said to Schlegel, ‘Well if he can’t fault it, it must be all right. I thought that was rather good myself.’
‘There’s only a broken-down footbridge,’ I warned. ‘You’ll lose some soldiers.’
‘Not at all,’ said Dawlish.
‘How?’ I said.
‘Centurion bridge layer will span the gap in one hundred seconds, the RE officer told me. The Land Rovers will follow.’
‘And the tea van,’ said Schlegel, not without sarcasm.
‘Yes, and the NAFFI,’ said Dawlish.
‘Takes the glitter off your story about looking for a lost missile warhead,’ I said.
‘I don’t like Russians landing from submarines,’ said Dawlish. ‘I’m not that concerned to keep our voices down.’ I knew that anything concerning submarines made Dawlish light up and say tilt. The best part of Russian effort, and most of their espionage successes over a decade, had been concerned with underwater weaponry.
‘You’re damned right,’ said Schlegel. I realized – as I was supposed to realize – that Schlegel was from some transatlantic security branch.
‘Who are these people that Toliver has over there?’ I asked. ‘Is that some kind of official set-up?’
Schlegel and Dawlish both made noises of distress and I knew I’d touched a nerve.
Dawlish said, ‘A Member of Parliament can buttonhole the Home Secretary or the Foreign Secretary, slap them on the back and have a drink with them while I’m still waiting for an appointment that is a week overdue. Toliver has beguiled the old man with this Remoziva business, and no one will listen to my words of warning.’
The kettle boiled and he made the tea. Dawlish must have slipped since I worked under him, for in those days he ate MPs for breakfast, and as for MPs with cloak and dagger ambitions – they didn’t last beyond the monthly conference.
‘They said the man who came ashore was Remoziva’s ADC,’ I said.
‘But?’
‘Could have been a very good friend of Liberace, for all I can tell: I don’t know any of Remoziva’s associates.’
‘But Russian?’ asked Schlegel. The sun came through the window. Backlit, his cigar smoke became a great silver cloud in which his smiling face floated like an alien planet.
‘Tall, thin, cropped-head, blond, steel spectacles. He traded a few bits of phrase-book Polish with a character who calls himself Wheeler. But if I was going to stake money, I’d put it on one of the Baltic states.’
‘Doesn’t mean anything to me,’ said Dawlish.
‘Not a thing,’ said Schlegel.
‘Says he knows me, according to your Mason – Saracen – over there. I had to thump him by the way, I’m sorry but there was no other way.’
‘Poor old Mason,’ said Dawlish, with no emotion whatsoever. He looked me directly in the eye and made no apology for the lies he’d told me about Mason being charged with selling secrets. He poured out five cups of tea, topping them with a second lot of hot water. He gave me and Schlegel one each, and then tapped the window, called the soliders over and gave a cup each to them. ‘Well let’s assume he is Remoziva’s ADC,’ said Dawlish. ‘What now? Did they tell you?’
‘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 rend
ezvous 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.’
17
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. ‘NOTES FOR WARGAMERS’. STUDIES CENTRE. LONDON
The sudden cry of an alarm clock was strangled at birth. For a moment there was complete silence. In the darkness 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.