‘We were also sceptical at first,’ said Toliver. ‘If the emphasis hadn’t been placed upon proving death …’ He stopped and looked apologetically at Wheeler. ‘But I’m getting too far ahead.’
Wheeler said, ‘We divided the problem into three separate tasks. The safest place for the transfer was obvious from the start. There’s only one place where we can guarantee security. He can fly a helicopter. We will rendezvous with him at a prearranged place on the pack-ice of the Barents Sea and bring him back by submarine.’
‘British submarine,’ said Mason.
‘A Royal Navy nuclear submarine,’ said Toliver. ‘If the Yanks got wind of it they’d spirit him away to America and that’s the last we’d see of him.’
‘Next,’ said Wheeler, ‘there is the problem of holding him for debriefing …’
‘And you thought of the War Studies Centre,’ I said.
‘Well, it’s bloody marvellous, isn’t it?’ said Wheeler. ‘War-game his debriefing, and put NATO resources against him.’
‘And programme the computer to his reactions,’ said Toliver.
Dangerous,’ I said.
Not as a war plan – just into the data bank,’ said Toliver.
‘And what about Schlegel?’ I asked.
Wheeler frowned. ‘That’s set us back a month or more – but he’ll be posted elsewhere. It was finally fixed today.’
‘And the Rear-Admiral will become Pat Armstrong?’ I said.
‘Sorry about that,’ said Toliver, ‘but you are about the right build and you’d just vacated the flat. We never guessed for a moment that you might go back there.’
‘It’s quite good,’ I admitted.
‘Only for a few weeks,’ said Mason. ‘The tenancy of the flat and all the necessary personal documentation is in your name. There will be no trace of a new person at the Studies Centre. We’ve gone to a lot of trouble. Getting that damned kidney machine up those stairs and into the flat next door to your old one … I damned near got a hernia. And then when they told us you’d gone back there, and you still had your old key. We got chewed out for that, I’ll tell you.’
‘And what happens to me?’ I asked. ‘Do I go back and take over Northern Fleet?’
‘I say,’ said Wheeler, pretending to take it seriously, ‘that would really be a coup, wouldn’t it?’ They all laughed.
‘We should have told you right at the beginning,’ said Toliver. ‘But our rule is to check out security before information is passed. Foxwell swore on a stack of bibles that you were a sound proposition. But a rule is a rule. Am I right?’
‘And the restaurant and the girl – Miss Shaw – how does that fit in? I thought you were holding the Rear-Admiral there at one time.’
‘We know you did,’ said Wheeler. ‘You’re quite a bloodhound.’
‘Miss Shaw is the daughter of one of my oldest friends,’ said Toliver, ‘and she’s turned out first class. It’s been beastly for her …’
Mason said, ‘We needed a body – a dead body – to leave at the rendezvous, to make the helicopter crash look right.’
Toliver said, ‘And it has to be a body with a diseased kidney. It gave us problems, I can tell you.’
‘Hence the cold room at The Terrine,’ I said. I didn’t tell him that Marjorie had recognized him at the mortuary.
‘And damned tricky,’ said Mason. ‘Must be in a sitting position so that we can leave it in the wrecked helicopter.’
‘Ever tried to dress and undress a stiff?’ one of the others said.
‘You try and get a pair of trousers on a sitting corpse,’ said Wheeler, ‘and you might agree that it’s the next most difficult thing to doing it standing up in a hammock.’ They smiled.
Toliver said, ‘Sara stitched every bit of that uniform together on the frozen body. She’s quite a girl.’
‘And where is the body now?’ I asked. There was only a moment of hesitation, then Toliver said, ‘It’s here, frozen. We have to be careful of what the post-mortem johnnies call adipocere. That’s what the flesh becomes when immersed in water. It’s got to look right for the Russkies when they find it.’
‘What about the hand stitching?’ I said.
‘A calculated risk,’ said Toliver.
‘And the uniform will be burned in the crash,’ said Mason.
I looked from Wheeler to Toliver and then at Mason. They appeared to be serious. You didn’t have to be living with a beautiful doctor to know that post-death discoloration was going to reveal to those same Russkies the fact that the body died full-length in a hospital bed, but I said nothing.
Toliver came round with the gin bottle. He topped up their glasses with Plymouth and put a dash of bitters into each one. Pink gins made with Plymouth. That was the common denominator, or the nearest thing they had to one: they were all ex-Royal Navy, or adopting wardroom manners with careful enthusiasm.
A message came late that night. I was told that Schlegel did not want me back in London. I was to remain with Toliver’s people on Blackstone until I was ordered to the submarine base for the Arctic trip.
I didn’t believe the message. Schlegel was not the sort of man who sent vague verbal messages via men not known to both of us. But I took great care to show no sign of my disbelief. I reacted only by attempting to establish my love of the great outdoors. If I was going to get out of this place against their wishes I’d need the few hours’ start that only a habit of long country walks could provide.
So I hiked alone across the moorland, feeling the springy turf underfoot. I found grouse, and startled hares, and I tried the tail of Great Crag that was no more than a steep slope. I went past the pines and climbed through the hazel and birch and then bare rock, all the way up to the summit. A couple of hours of such walking gave even a vertigo-prone stumbler like me a chance to look down through the holes in the cloud. I saw the black terraces and crevices of the rock face, and beyond the gully to the loch: shining like freshly tempered blue steel. And I could see where the valley was an amphitheatre upholstered in yellow deer grass and curtained with remnants of white sea mist. I took cheese and Marmite sandwiches up with me, and found a mossy ledge amongst the ice ridges. There I could shelter and blow on my hands, and pretend I’d got there by way of the chimney and three pinnacles, of which the others spoke so proudly.
I polished the salt spray from my spectacles and looked seaward. It was one of the wildest and most desolate landscapes that Britain offers. A stiff wind was striking the snow-clad peak, and snow crystals came from the summit, like white smoke from a chimney.
A mile out in the ocean, a small boat made slow progress in the choppy sea. Toliver had warned that unless the boat came today there would be no fuel for the generator and no meat, either.
And from here I could see many miles inland, to where the peninsula narrowed and dead heather gave place to rock, chewed unceasingly by the sharp white teeth of the breakers. It was a place where a natural fault of the Central Highlands had crumbled under the battering of the Atlantic Ocean, so that now a moat of rough water divided Blackstone from the mainland. There, two vast bodies of water raced headlong into collision, and turned the rock-lined gap into a pit of foam.
Neither did the far bank offer a welcoming prospect. From the water, the strata tilted up to where a copse of beeches bent almost double under the prevailing winds. The slope was scotched with the black courses of mountain streams, and a drystone wall had scattered its rubble entrails down the steep incline to the seashore, where a dead sheep, rusty tins and some bright plastic jetsam had been beached by the high tide.
For those indifferent to a north wind that numbs the ears, and damp mists that roll in from the sea like a tidal wave, the Western Isles are a magic kingdom where anything is possible. After outdoor exercise and an evening beside the open fire – a glass of malt whisky in my hand – I was beginning to believe that even the curious fantasies of my fellow guests had a logic in proportion to their enthusiasm.
That night, sitting ro
und the scrubbed refectory table, waiting while Toliver carved the boiled pork into paper-thin slices and arrayed them upon a serving platter, there was an extra guest. He was a tall, dour-faced man of about forty-five with close-cropped blond hair, going white. He wore steel-rimmed spectacles and had a harsh accent that completed the caricature of a German general, circa 1941. He offered only a few bits of phrase-book English. He’d been introduced over pre-dinner pink gins as Mr Erikson, but his home was farther east than that, if I was any judge. His suit was dark blue gaberdine, of a cut that tended to confirm my reasoning.
Erikson’s presence was not explained, and the officers’ mess atmosphere clearly forbade direct questioning, unless Toliver initiated it. There was only small-talk round the dinner table, and apart from thanking Toliver for the promise of some sea fishing the next day, the stranger was silent.
‘Did you have a good walk?’ said Wheeler.
‘To the lower ledges.’
‘You can see a long way from there,’ said Toliver.
‘When you’re not blowing on your hands,’ I said.
‘We lose sheep up there sometimes,’ said Wheeler, and gave me a nasty smile.
Erikson took the port decanter from Mason. He removed the stopper and sniffed at it. The men round the table watched him expectantly. Erikson pulled a disapproving face and instead of pouring a measure for himself he poured some for me. I nodded my thanks. I too sniffed at it before sipping some. But it wasn’t the aroma of the port-wine that I smelled but the pervasive and entirely unique smell that some say comes from the nuclear reactor, and others say is that of the CO2 scrubber that cleans the air in an atomic submarine before recirculating it. This is a smell that goes home with you, stays on your skin for days, and remains for ever in your clothes, triggering memories of those big floating gin palaces.
But this wasn’t the suit I’d worn on any of my trips on the nuclear subs. I looked at Erikson. The small boat I’d seen from the crag had been coming from the west – the Atlantic Ocean – not from the Scottish mainland, and it had brought this taciturn East European, smelling of atomic submarine.
Toliver was telling a story about a TV producer friend doing a documentary on rural poverty. The ending came … ‘… never go hungry, sir, bless your heart, we can always find a few quails’ eggs.’
‘Ha, ha, ha.’ Mason laughed louder than any of the others, and looked at me, as if trying to will me to join in.
Wheeler said, ‘Just like my chaps saying they didn’t like the jam – it tasted of fish. I told you that story, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, you did,’ said Toliver.
‘Caviare, of course,’ said Wheeler, determined at least to get the punch line in.
‘Jolly good,’ said Mason. ‘Caviare! Jam that tasted of fish. That’s a good one, Commander.’
‘The meat came today, but no petrol,’ said Toliver.
‘Whose turn to get the new gas bottle?’ said someone, and they all laughed. It was as if they were all working to a script that I didn’t have.
I sipped at my port and took a long look at Mr Erikson. There was something unusual in his manner and at first I did not recognize what it was, for he smiled at the jokes, accepted a cigar with a polite bow of the head, and met the eyes of the other guests with the confident gaze of any man at a dinner table with friends. I reached for the matches and struck one to provide him with a light for his cigar. He murmured his thanks and, pretending to have difficulty getting his cigar going, he turned in his chair. I was sure that he’d chosen a seat next to me because he feared I would recognize his face across the table. Now I became quite certain that he’d been landed from a submarine, a Russian submarine.
‘Until the fuel boat comes we’ll have to ration the generator,’ said Toliver. He got to his feet and fetched one of the paraffin lamps. ‘Plenty of oil for the lamps, though.’ He lit the lamp and adjusted the wick carefully.
‘Cold-water shaving in the morning, chaps,’ said Wheeler. ‘Unless there’s a volunteer to boil up a few kettles before reveille.’
‘I’ll be glad to do that, sir.’ Of course it was Mason, apple-polishing himself into a state of nervous exhaustion. ‘I’ll set the alarm for five. That should do it, I think.’
‘Good show, Mason,’ said Commander Wheeler. ‘That’s damned sporting of you.’
They weren’t satisfied just to create a self-congratulatory, and exclusively masculine, society, they were attempting to re-create one that existed only in their wishful thoughts. The I’ve-been-here-before feeling that all this was giving me had come undiluted from old British war films, especially those about Colditz.
‘Good show, Mason,’ I said, but they all glared at me. I suppose they didn’t like the way I told them.
The quietness of the house, the mysterious way in which food and drink seemed to arrive without human agency, added to the mysteries of what these men called ‘The Club’. In spite of the grandeur of the house itself, and of the quality of the badly worn Persian carpets and panelled doors, there was little evidence of its less spartan days. The leather sofas, the stair-carpet and the rugs had all been repaired with the same coarse grey sailcloth, and with the sort of stitches that sailors call ‘dogs’ teeth’. The flagstones, worn by the feet of countless ages into curious ring-like depressions, had here and there been carelessly filled with concrete. The bedrooms were cold and damp, in spite of the cheap electric fire that glowed bright only when the generator started. The blankets were thin and grey, the sheets were clean, but threadbare and rough-dried.
There was in the house no trace of femininity: no flowers, cushions, domestic animals, perfumed soaps, and virtually no pictures or ornaments.
I was not a prisoner in the house. That had been explained to me several times. I merely had to wait until the plane returned. I had the idea that any suggestion about taking the one and only bicycle or walking due east would be met with pleasant smiling affirmative-ridden explanations that meant no. So I didn’t make any suggestions like that. I tried to act like a happy healthy well-adjusted human, who likes playing secret agents in an unheated Scottish castle, but who occasionally needs a nice long walk. They understood that all right: they were nice long walk sort of people.
16
The ‘retreat before combat option’ is only available to land forces with intact flanking units. The ‘retreat before combat option’ is available to all naval units at sea at all times.
RULES. ‘TACWARGAME’. STUDIES CENTRE. LONDON
I had been given cramped rooms, almost circular in shape, at the top of the north tower. Above me, in the conical roof, there was the endless gurgling of the water tanks. Before it was properly light I heard Mason’s peremptory rap upon the bathroom door. ‘Hot water,’ he called.
‘Leave it there.’
‘I need the kettle for the others.’
Outside the night was still dark enough to see the stars. I sighed and went down the iron stairs to the bathroom. There was no electricity, a fact I confirmed by clicking the light switch half a dozen times. Mason knocked at the door again. ‘Coming,’ I said, ‘coming.’ A dog began to howl from the courtyard.
The light from the glazed slit window was just sufficient for me to see a white rectangle on the floor near the door. I picked it up. Mason rapped again and I put the folded sheet of paper on the washstand while I unlocked the door.
‘Locked doors?’ said Mason. His manner conveyed all the condescension of a man who had been working while others slept. ‘Who are you frightened of?’
‘The fairies,’ I said.
‘Where do you want it?’ Mason said, but before I could decide he’d poured the hot water into the washbasin.
‘Thanks.’
‘If you want more, you’ll have to come down to the kitchen. The cold’s working.’ He turned the tap to show me what cold water was, and then closed it off again. Mason was like that.
He looked around the room to see how untidy it was. Toliver had put shaving kit, pyjamas and
shirts and underwear in the chest, but now these items were distributed around the bathroom. Mason sniffed. He looked for a moment at the folded sheet of paper, too, but he made no remark.
When he’d gone, I again locked the door. I unfolded the sheet of paper. It had been torn from a school exercise book by the look of it. The message had been typewritten on a machine that badly needed a new ribbon. Some of the characters were little more than indentations:
You’re making our newly arrived friend very uneasy. I don’t have to tell you he’s Remoziva’s ADC, but he insists that everyone be coy about it. Hence the charades this evening. Did you meet him? It sounds as if it was some time when you worked for us – late ’fifties? – a conference he thinks.
Someone should tell the old man about this. I don’t think he’ll like it. I can’t go, and using the phone here would be too risky. But if you took your usual long walk and got a bit lost you could get as far as the phone box at Croma village. Just tell them about Erikson and say that SARACEN confirms it. If they give you instructions for me, wait till we’re all together and then ask Toliver or Mason where you can buy some French cigarettes. I will then offer you a packet with three cigarettes in it, so you’ll know who I am. You might think this is all going a bit far, but I know these boys and I’m staying covert – even to you.
They’re all touchy now while Erikson is here, so leave by the kitchen garden and the paddock and keep to the south side of the big rocks. Skip breakfast, I’ve left some sandwiches for you in the old greenhouse. You could always say you made them last night. Keep to the south of the peninsula, there’s a footbridge on that side of Angel Gap. It looks rickety but it will hold you. Head for the cottage with the collapsed roof, you can see the bridge from there. The road is four miles beyond (running north/south). The post office is on that road. Turn right on the road and it’s the first house you come to. The box is on the far side – take coins with you. Keep moving, I can’t guarantee these boy scouts won’t follow.