From this place on the clifftop, my path was mostly downhill. This world was white and a thousand differing shades of brown: bracken, heather, bilberries and, lowest of all, the peat bogs. All of it dead, and all of it daubed with great drifts of snow that had filled the gullies and followed the curious pattern of the wind. There were red grouse, too. Disturbed, they took to the air, calling ‘Go-back, go-back,’ a sound that I remembered from my childhood.
Already I fancied I could see the dark patch that would be the pines at the little croft. I promised myself cubes of chocolate that I never did eat. I walked as soliders march, placing one foot before the other, with hardly a thought for the length of the journey, or the surrounding landscape. ‘All my soldiers saw of Russia was the pack of the man in front of them,’ said Napoleon, as though the ignorant rabble were declining his offers of side trips to St Petersburg and the Black Sea resorts. Now I bent my head to the turf.
A shaft of sunlight found a way through the cloud so that a couple of acres of hillside shone yellow. The patch ran madly up and down the slopes and raced out to sea like a huge blue raft until, a mile or more off-shore, it disappeared as if sunk without trace. The clouds closed tight and the wind roared its triumph.
Once I knew where to look, there was no difficulty in finding the footbridge. It was a good example of Victorian ingenuity and wrought iron. Two chains across the Gap were held apart by ornamented sections of iron, into which fitted timber flooring. Shaped like stylized dolphins, smaller interlocking pieces had tails supporting two steel cables anchored into the ground at each end as supplementary supports. That, at any rate, must have been how the engraving looked in the catalogue. Now a handrail was hanging in the gully and one chain had slackened enough to let the frame twist. It groaned and swayed in the wind that came through its broken flooring, singing like the music of a giant flute.
Adapted into a fairground ride it might have earned a fortune at Coney Island, but suspended above the demented waters of Angel Gap only the cliff path behind me was less welcoming.
There was no going back now. I thought of that trigger-happy girl – custom tailoring for cadavers, and cuisine française while you wait – and I shuddered. If she’d not been so keen to kill me that she’d fired from inside the greenhouse, I’d have been a statistic in one of those warning pamphlets that the Scottish travel and holidays department give people going grouse shooting.
Any kind of bridge was better than going back.
The off-sea wind had kept the cliffs virtually free of ice, but the bridge was precarious. There was only one handrail, a rusty cable. It sagged alarmingly as I applied my weight to it and slid through the eyes of the remaining posts so that I fancied it was going to drop me into the ocean below. But it took my weight, although as I passed each handrail post it paid the slack cable to me with an agonizing whinny. Without a handrail I could not have crossed, for at some places the floor of the bridge had warped to a dangerous angle. I had to use both hands and by the time I reached the other side my wounded arm was bleeding again.
I hurried up the hill so that I could get out of sight. Only when I was hidden in the copse did I stop. I looked back, at the ocean roaring through the gap, and at as much of the peninsula of Blackstone as was visible through the storm. I saw no pursuers, and I was truly thankful for that, for I could see no simple way of wrecking the bridge.
I took off the short overcoat and with some difficulty pulled my jacket off too. I’d lost a lot of blood.
It took me over an hour to do the four miles to the road. The clouds broke enough to allow a few samples of sunlight to be passed around among the trees. There were sunbeams on the road when I finally caught sight of it. Perhaps by that time I was beginning to expect a four-lane highway with refreshment areas, gift shops and clover-leaf crossings, but it was what they call in Scotland a ‘narrow class one’, which means they’d filled the ditch every two hundred yards in case you met something coming the other way.
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 gent
ly. 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 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.’
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 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 fi
rst 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.