Author: Charlie Higson
Category: Horror
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/charlie-higson/page,18,49988-by_royal_command.html
The shot never came.
Instead he heard the sound of running footsteps. Slowly he uncurled and opened his eyes.
Dandy was lying motionless on the ground, his arms flung wide. There was a neat bullet hole in his forehead and a rapidly spreading pool of blood round him.
Before James could react, before he could even properly take in what he was seeing, he felt himself gripped by two strong arms and hauled to his feet.
‘Move it,’ a voice barked, and he was frog-marched down the alley. Two more men laid a blanket over the dead body. One of them was the man with the cigarette he had mistaken for Dandy earlier.
James was being pulled at speed to the back end of the passage, his heels dragging over the flagstones. He tried to struggle but was gripped firmly and expertly. As they left the passage James caught a glimpse of the two men rolling Dandy up in the blanket.
A black car screeched to a halt by Queen’s Schools, doors flew open, and James was bundled into the back. In a moment they were off, racing down the Eton Wick Road away from town. The driver manoeuvred through the narrow streets at dangerous speed, at one point scraping against an old brick wall. He swore but didn’t slow down.
The Invisible Man was sitting next to the driver while James was alone in the back with the man who had hauled him out of the passageway. He was big and square jawed with a guardsman’s build. He kept his eyes fixed straight ahead and showed all the animation of a shop-window dummy.
James considered opening the door and trying to jump out but knew it would be futile. These men were too well organised.
For now, he was alive. If they’d wanted to kill him, he had no doubt that they would have done. Instead The Invisible Man had shot Dandy, and James was more curious than scared.
Who were these men and what did they want from him?
The Invisible Man lit a cigarette and opened his window to let the fumes out. Then he turned round in his seat to face James, his eyes pale under the thick brows. ‘We need to talk,’ he said. James wasn’t sure exactly what he had been expecting – a foreign accent of some sort, probably Russian, certainly not the soft Scottish brogue that issued from the man’s lips.
‘Back there in Jourdelay’s Passage?’ the man went on. ‘With the gardener, O’Keefe? Was it how it looked?’
‘How did it look?’ said James.
‘It looked like he was trying to kill you.’
‘He was,’ said James.
‘Why?’
‘You mean you don’t know?’
‘Just answer the question.’
James thought about it for a moment then decided to tell the truth, and he sketched out the rough details of what had happened that morning.
As he spoke nobody else said anything. The mood in the car was tense.
When James finished, The Invisible Man said something quietly to the driver who nodded. After that nothing more was said, and a few miles out of town they turned off the main road and into a short, tree-lined drive. At the end of the drive was an old redbrick house with ivy growing up the walls. It had a slightly neglected air; the windows were dark, the flowerbeds and lawn overgrown. The car drove round to the back and parked by the kitchen door, where The Invisible Man jumped out. The driver sounded the horn three times and a heavyset man in shirt-sleeves emerged from the house. He glanced briefly into the car, gave James a once-over, then opened his door and nodded for him to get out.
No sooner had James put both feet down on the ground than the car roared off back out of the drive at full pelt.
James followed the two men into the house. They were deep in hurried conversation.
The kitchen they came into was bare. There was a kettle on the hob, some tea-making things and a half-eaten packet of biscuits, but nothing more.
They went through to a dark and gloomy hallway that had a polished parquet floor. The man in shirt-sleeves knocked twice at a door and went in without waiting for an answer. The Invisible Man hurried to the other end of the hallway, snatched up a telephone and started barking terse commands. James could only make out the odd few words.
‘. . . the crypt… no, it was the Irishman… for God’s sake keep a lid on it… no, make sure everyone is out of the chapel before you go anywhere near the thing… ’
The man in shirt-sleeves reappeared.
‘Come in,’ he said, and James went through into a living room. An older man was sitting in the bay window, looking out at the garden. The smell of pipe smoke filled the room.
James could see a few overgrown apple trees standing among the long grass, a rusty abandoned bike leaning against one of them. A fly buzzed at the window, trying to get out.
There was a dreary, unlived-in feel to this room. There were a few bits of furniture that didn’t match: a couple of wooden dining chairs, an uncomfortable-looking armchair and a moth-eaten old sofa. A card table stood against one wall with a mess of papers splayed out on it.
The man at the window stood up. James recognised him instantly. His first thought was that Mr Merriot didn’t usually light his pipe.
‘Sorry about all the cloak-and-dagger stuff, James,’ he said, rubbing his beaky nose[a1], ‘but we can’t be too sure.’
He offered James a small, reassuring smile, but his eyes looked worried.
‘I expect you want some answers,’ he added.
20
The Shadow War
James sat down on one of the hard wooden dining chairs, his mind racing, trying to take this all in. He could make neither head nor tail of it, though, so he gave up trying. Too much had happened today. He would let Mr Merriot explain just what the hell was going on.
‘I’m afraid I don’t really know where to start,’ said Merriot, sitting down opposite James in the armchair. He nodded to the man in shirt-sleeves and he left the room. Merriot was evidently in charge here.
‘I hope they didn’t hurt you.’
James shrugged.
‘It was for your own safety. We had no way of knowing who else might be around.’
‘The man who brought me here?’ said James. ‘The man in the trilby? Who is he?’
‘His name’s Dan Nevin,’ said Merriot. ‘Captain Dan Nevin. He’s been watching you.’
‘Why?’
‘To make sure you didn’t come to any harm. Good thing, too, as it turned out. He’s been covering your back ever since you returned from Mexico.’
‘But why, sir?’
‘Because I asked him to,’ said Merriot, puffing hard on his pipe. He seemed nervous, fidgety, embarrassed to be talking to James like this.
‘Is he a policeman?’
‘Not exactly. Have you heard of the Special Intelligence Service, I wonder?’
‘The SIS?’ said James. ‘Yes. They’re sort of spies, aren’t they?’
‘Sort of spies. That’s the simplest way to describe what they do, yes.’
‘Are you saying those men work for the SIS, sir?’
‘Yes.’
‘Maybe you should start at the beginning,’ said James. ‘I’m finding this all rather confusing.’
‘Not surprised.’ Merriot took his pipe out of his mouth and looked at it. It had gone out.
‘Never could keep the beastly thing alight,’ he said, knocking out the tobacco and setting it down on the arm of his chair. ‘But I thought it was what a schoolmaster would do. Smoke a pipe.’
‘Are you saying that you are a spy, as well, sir?’ said James.
‘Was a spy. Pretty much retired from that side of things now, but I do still work for the SIS after a fashion.’
‘I thought you worked for Eton College, sir,’ said James.
‘That I do. That I do. I work for both.’
‘Is that allowed?’
‘Is that allowed? he asks. I am governed by a higher authority than the Head Master,’ said Merriot. ‘For me it started before the war. The British didn’t have a terrifically organised spy network back then, but any fool could see that there was trouble brewing in Eur
ope, and the powers that be wanted to keep an eye on the Germans, and in particular on their navy. Our secret service grew rapidly and went through a few changes before it was split into two parts. The army were in charge of catching foreign spies on British soil, and the navy were given the job of spying overseas. These two divisions are known as The Directorate of Military Intelligence Sections 5 and 6. More commonly – MI5 and MI6. I was recruited by MI6 – naval intelligence, overseas work – while I was at university, as I speak good German and was quite an athletic type. The man in charge, “C”, sent me to study in Hamburg.’
‘“C”, sir?’
‘That was the code-name of Captain Sir George Mansfield Smith-Cumming, the director of MI6.’
‘And why did he send you to Hamburg?’
‘It is Germany’s major seaport, and the idea was for me to keep my ear to the ground and make note of shipping movements. When war broke out I stayed on until it got too hot, then I pulled out. By then there was a great need for spies, but we had very few experienced men. It became my job to recruit and train our chaps; brief them on their missions and suchlike.’ Merriot paused, mulling something over in his mind. ‘I knew your uncle, as it happens.’
‘Uncle Max?’ said James.
‘Uncle Max. Yes. I’m glad he lived long enough to become an uncle. Most didn’t. The failure rate was horrendous. We were all still learning, you see? Making it up as we went along. But we learnt fast. He was one of the best, your Uncle Max. Of course we neither of us could talk about it. He took his secrets to the grave for the most part.’
‘He told me a little of what happened to him,’ said James.
‘A brave man,’ said Merriot. ‘After the war our operations were obviously scaled down,’ he continued, ‘but it was all too clear that we needed a permanent and organised secret service. The efforts of the SIS have been largely directed at Russia since then. The threat of Bolshevism is very real.’
‘And you are still involved, sir?’
‘The most important thing we learnt in the war,’ said Merriot, ‘was that there will always be a need for intelligence, and intelligence officers. There are men like me all over the country now, in the schools, the universities, the armed forces, in business and government, who are constantly looking out for young men and women who we think would serve the country well.’
‘As spies?’ said James.
‘Call them what you will,’ said Merriot. ‘Spies, secret agents, intelligence officers. I pulled a few strings to get you sent to Eton, you know? I wanted you here, so I could keep an eye on you. Your uncle was a good man, one of the best. I felt that perhaps his nephew might be made of the same stuff.’
‘What about my father?’
‘I knew him, too. He was never formally a part of the service. But his job as an armaments salesman after the war made him very well placed to gather certain intelligence for us.’
‘So you’ve been watching me from the start?’ said James.
‘I’ve been watching you, yes, James, following your progress. You are a remarkable boy. What you have been through has been quite extraordinary. Most grown men would have cracked before now, let alone a young boy. Your adventures have been… Well, I don’t need to tell you all that. I have had some long hard talks with the Head Master about you since you arrived, first with Dr Alington and lately with Claude Elliot. There have been times when they thought it would have been better if you had quietly left the college, but I have insisted you stay.’
‘Do they know all about you?’
‘They know enough.’
‘And did you know about Dandy’s plot?’
‘Ah, now…’ Merriot got up, unfolding his long limbs from the armchair, and began to pace the room. The walls were bare, marked here and there where paintings had once hung. There was a bookshelf with a few forgotten volumes on it; Merriot stared at the titles without really seeing them.
‘We intercepted some intelligence in Lisbon,’ he said without looking at James. ‘Rather, we stumbled across it. We have many informants there. It’s a lawless place and a hub of several international spy networks. There was some trouble in one of the Soviet networks. Some agents were killed. We don’t know the exact nature of what happened, but in the confusion we managed to intercept a coded message that was being sent to Moscow. We weren’t able to decipher it all, but we cracked enough of it to know that it concerned a major plot. We could tell it was something big, but we couldn’t be one hundred per cent sure of just what exactly the plan was. Today we found out.’
‘I still don’t understand, sir,’ said James, ‘why Captain Nevin has been following me.’
‘One of the parts of the message that we decoded,’ said Merriot, ‘was a name. Your name. James Bond.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes. We didn’t know what it could mean. We still don’t. Do you have any idea why they wanted to implicate you in this assassination?’
‘No, sir,’ said James. ‘Except that perhaps it might be about what happened with Colonel Sedova last year.’
‘Mm.’
‘When did you know about Dandy?’ asked James.
‘About twenty minutes ago when Nevin told me he had shot him,’ said Merriot.
‘You had no idea he was involved in this plot?’
Merriot’s face clouded. ‘Unfortunately not. He was not a known Soviet agent. We’re looking into his background now.’
‘But if you were watching me…’ said James.
‘There have been bigger fish than O’Keefe swimming around here lately, James,’ said Merriot. ‘Some pretty dangerous sharks.’
‘Colonel Sedova,’ said James.
‘Indeed, Babushka. We were so intent on watching her and her OGPU thugs that we took our eyes off the ball. It was pretty unforgivable, but Dandy O’Keefe was clever. He never once made contact with any of Sedova’s people. In all the confusion this morning Nevin lost you and decided to stay with Sedova.’
James nodded his head. That explained why he had seen the two of them together in the science school.
‘Quite frankly it was a mess,’ said Merriot, ‘and it nearly ended in tragedy. It is of the utmost importance that nobody knows what happened today. And we must make sure that nothing like this ever happens again.’
‘How?’ said James.
‘We need to hunt down the other members of the cell that Dandy O’Keefe was operating in. We need to follow the chain of command to the top and flush them all out. It’s clear that they were not working directly with Sedova, which means that there is a very dangerous group of people out there that we know nothing about. And that’s where you come in.’
‘Me, sir? What do you want me to do?’
‘Tell me about the boys’ maid, Roan Power.’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘She was working with Dandy? Yes?’
James sighed and looked at his feet. ‘Yes,’ he said flatly.
‘She is our only point of contact now that Dandy is dead,’ said Merriot. ‘And it is most important that she doesn’t find out what happened. She will of course know that something has gone wrong, that the bomb didn’t go off, but she won’t know about Dandy’s death. We need to keep it that way.’
‘Are you going to arrest her?’ said James.
‘Not yet,’ said Merriot. ‘We need to find out what she’s going to do next. If she cuts and runs, she may well lead us to the senior members of her cell, but if we can glean any information from her before then it would be most useful. Our hope is that she will wait until she hears from Dandy before making her move. You can help us there. We need to supply her with some false information.’
‘You mean lies?’ said James. ‘You want me to lie to her?’
‘Yes. We can use her, James. Through her we can weed out the whole nest of them.’
‘I’m not sure I want any part of this,’ said James.
‘I understand your feelings,’ said Merriot, ‘but you must understand who we are dealing wi
th. The communists executed their own royal family, and countless thousands of their own citizens. They are hell-bent on rolling out their brand of state-run thuggery throughout Europe. They constantly plot to undermine our democracies. They are fanatical and ruthless, and all we can do is guard against them. Everyone tells us that the Germans are our enemies, that sooner or later there will be another terrible war against them. There is a belief that Hitler has ambitions to rebuild the German empire, and take over Europe, but there are others among us who believe that the real enemy is Russia, and that if there is a war it will be against them. It will go either way, James – either we will side with the Soviets against the Germans, or we will side with the Germans against the Soviets. The truth is that we are already fighting a war, a secret war, a shadow war. And it’s a dirty war that is fought by its own rules. You can never win it because it will be going on forever; an ally today might be our enemy tomorrow – we spy on the Germans, the Soviets, the Americans, the French… and they spy on us. No, we can never win this war, but we can win the odd battle. We have the chance here to make a difference. If we use the girl.’
‘What do you want me to do exactly?’
Merriot looked at his watch.
‘For now, nothing. Everything has happened very fast and they have caught us on the hop. We are still putting together a plan. It is now a quarter past twelve. When did you last see your aunt?’
‘About an hour and a half ago.’
‘Good. We have created a cover story for you. One of my men has already told your aunt that you got into a fight with another boy and that I have been hauling you over the coals in my rooms. That will explain your absence and your generally dishevelled state. We’ll patch up those cuts before you go, by the way. You will join your aunt for lunch. She is waiting for you in the Shippe Inn on the river. If by any chance you see Roan, and she may well come looking for you, then you will tell her that you have a message for her from Dandy, but can’t speak until later when there are fewer people around. At half past five you will meet me on Agar’s Plough and I’ll tell you what to do next. By then we will have made up a story for you to give her.’