Author: Peter James
Category: Literature
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Weekends he spent with his wife at their house in Surrey, but during the week he lived alone in London; like Fifeshire, rising early and working late. His workday would begin in a peculiar manner, when a nubile black hooker would come round to his Campden Hill apartment, punctually at 6.15 every morning, and jerk him off, before the Home Office Rover collected him at 7.00 to whisk him to the office.
Fifeshire enjoyed the photographs enormously. They were the only bright spot that year. It was a rotten year. I got the lousiest jobs going, and in the extra efforts I made to do them well I invariably buggered them up. At the end of it I was beginning to feel that I might be having a better time inside a French slammer.
Fifeshire went so far as to try and get me transferred out of MI5 altogether and into MI6, or some other department of the Secret Intelligence Service, but somehow Scatliffe had gotten his claws into every area and hadn’t spread much good news about me in any of those quarters.
Then early in May Fifeshire summoned me to his office. I entered the ante-room, and his secretary, Margaret, a smart, divorced woman in her early forties, sprang up from her desk. ‘Good morning, Max,’ she said brightly, ‘I’ll just tell Sir Charles that you’re here.’
‘Thanks.’
A few moments later I was ushered through into Mastermind’s blockhouse.
‘Good morning, young fellow,’ he said.
‘Good morning, sir.’
‘You look well.’
I presumed he must have been looking at a photograph of me; I’d gone to bed at half past five that morning, having spent most of the night standing in a doorway in Wandsworth while a new junior in the department, named Rodney Tweed, rogered a window-dresser named Derek, who’d picked him up in the Drayton Arms pub in the Old Brompton Road. I was white and shaking, my eyes bright red, and I was coughing and spluttering from too many cigarettes. ‘Thank you,’ I said.
Seven fifteen in the morning is a very uncivilised hour to hold a meeting, but Fifeshire looked bright-eyed and well settled into his day’s work. He was a powerfully built man, not particularly tall, but striking all the same. He had a thick neck, with a bullet-shaped head, and a nose that was long but did not protrude much from his face; it was the type of nose that, if punched, would be more likely to inflict damage to the fist than to be damaged itself. The hair on his head was a mixture of dark greys, with the occasional black, and the silver streaks on either side of his temples gave him a very distinguished appearance. His eyebrows were very bushy, forming an awning over his penetrating brown eyes. The bags under his eyes were heavy and wrinkled; they were the only feature on his face which showed his age; he was 66. When he had finished speaking he never completely closed his mouth, his lips were always slightly parted; it gave one a reassuring feeling that he was always concentrating intently on what one was saying.
‘I’m sending you to America,’ he said. ‘It’ll be the toughest job you’ve ever had, and you’ll be walking a tightrope in a political minefield. If you fall off you’ll be landing me personally in a lot of stick, to say nothing of putting the kibosh on a couple of centuries of fairly friendly Anglo-American relations.’
He paused, staring at me hard, then continued. ‘As you may be aware we spy on friendly nations as much as we spy on hostile nations, since all nations have, historically, a habit of changing their allegiances from time to time. For our national security we must have detailed inside knowledge of what every single country in the world is up to, both internally and in its foreign policies.
‘When British agents are caught in hostile nations it does little to impair relations, since such countries accept spying as par for the course; but when our allies catch us spying on them they get very, very upset – not that they don’t all do it themselves, because they do, but because it invariably opens up a hornet’s nest of embarrassing questions from the media. So rule one, young fellow, is don’t get caught.’
‘I thought the United States was MI6’s domain?’
‘It is; and it has far more autonomy than is good for it. When I took over MI5, we actually had to report to MI6. But not any more. He smiled. It has always been my view that to do my job effectively I must keep an eye on MI6, and to do this I arranged some years ago the establishment of MI5 cover operation in all countries where enemy penetration of MI6 could be seriously damaging to us. The United States is one such place: MI6 operations there are based at the British Embassy in Washington, but our base is, for a number of reasons, in New York.
‘Apart from the Prime Minister and myself, there is only a handful of people who know of this. We operate through a very legitimate front, a large company specialising in the manufacture of computer and calculator cabinets; it has branch offices throughout the United States, a head office in New York, and a factory and offices here in England, from which the company is now actually controlled. It is called the Intercontinental Plastics Corporation, and it is one of the market leaders in its field. The advantages of a company in the computer field are obvious: we get to know of virtually every new development in the computer field in the United States, without having to go and look for them: Intercontinental is asked to tender for the manufacture of the cabinets.
‘You are being sent over by the English parent firm in order to study and report back on the company’s production control methods, a role which will give you complete autonomy to go anywhere, talk to anyone, look at anything, without arousing any degree of suspicion.
‘I have a strong feeling, for reasons I shan’t bother you with, that when we acquired Intercontinental, we may have acquired more than we realised. I want you to go through its staff with the finest toothcomb you can lay your hands on, and to miss out nothing, absolutely nothing. Now, before I go on, do you have any questions?’
‘I do, sir: I don’t know the first thing about computers.’
‘You will, before you start your job, young fellow, you will.’
On 12 August, barely three months later, I was riding the elevator up to Intercontinental Plastic Corporation’s Park Avenue offices to start my first morning’s work as the whizz-kid production control analyst from London.
For three months I’d eaten, drunk, woken, slept, breathed and belched computers and plastics, 24 hours a day. I’d attended America’s elite Massachusetts Institute of Technology, I’d visited the leading electronics firms of Japan, Germany and England, and I’d been despatched to the furthest reaches of the globe to see examples of Intercontinental’s work in operation. God alone knew how much of it had rubbed off on me; riding up in that elevator I had a horrible feeling it wasn’t enough.
Three days later, on 15 August, Fifeshire was in hospital, fighting for his life, with six bullets in him and most of his essential internal wiring in shreds. He’d been riding in a car with President Battanga of the Mwoaba Isles, who was over for a conference of the Non-Aligned Countries. Two hooded motorcyclists had riddled the car with machine-gun fire, at a traffic light, killing Battanga and the chauffeur, and critically wounding Fifeshire. An outfit calling itself the Mwoaban Liberation Army later claimed responsibility, although the Mwoaban Government angrily denied the existence of any such organisation and vehemently accused the British Government of plotting unrest in the Mwoaba Isles; it didn’t state why Britain should wish to cause unrest, but hinted strongly that the Mwoabans might be about to discover a major oil-field.
10
I heard Sumpy start the shower. I untied the blue ribbon, and ripped open the envelope: it contained a letter and a small wafer-thin object about an inch long and a third of an inch wide. It was mostly the colour of white marble but on the top side it had a small metal box with a circle of hard clear plastic in the middle, through which one could see a tiny grey rectangle that had minute shiny wires all around it like a spider’s web. On the reverse side it looked like a member of the centipede family, with twenty-four tiny metal legs bent under it. Stamped on the underneath was the word ‘Malaysia’ and a serial number. If nothing else, my three m
onths of training in the computer business had taught me to be able to recognise what this object was: a silicon chip. Doubtless it was programmed to do something, but not having a computer in which to insert it handy, I had no idea what.
I read the letter. It was short and didn’t provide a great deal of enlightenment. It said:
‘Dear Sir Charles,
The number that matters is 14B. When we meet, and I add my own information to the enclosed, I think you will agree that my credentials are satisfactory. As you may already be aware, the colour scheme of this missive is not irrelevant.’
It was signed Doctor Yuri Orchnev. On the back of the envelope was some scribbling: the name Charlie Harrison, and an address: Coconut Grove, Duneway Avenue, Fire Island.
Fire Island is a sand-bar, over 30 miles long but only a few hundred yards wide at its widest point, a short way off the south coast of Long Island. It’s treasured by the islanders to a point of jingoism seldom encountered since the heyday of the British Empire. Untypically of most of the North American continent, cars are strictly banned – not that they’d be much use, since there are no roads. The island is famed as being a gay paradise, although in fact its largely vacation-only population is drawn from a wide cross-section of well-off New York City dwellers, who spread out into the independent communities of summer houses, shops and trendy friendly restaurants strung out along its length, and live out their summer weekends in a state of chic bohemia.
It struck me as being unlikely that the late Dr Yuri Orchnev, if it was the writer himself from whom I had obtained this letter as he lay dead on my apartment floor the night before last, was either en route to, or returning from, a holiday on this island. Mid-December down this part of the world is not prime beach time.
I studied the writing on the back of the envelope carefully. I knew the name Charlie Harrison all right; he was a computer operator, in charge of Intercontinental’s own computer system.
I read through the letter again. There was no date, no address. Why did the man who came into my apartment at half past two in the morning and shot himself have this letter in his pocket? I’d searched him thoroughly at the time, but he had no identification on him whatsoever; nothing; all he had was this letter.
I wanted to find out what that chip contained, and I wanted to find out what went on at Coconut Grove, Fire Island, and where Charlie Harrison slotted into the scheme of things. It was Wednesday today. If there was anything going on at Fire Island, it would most likely be at the weekend. It became a toss-up for Charlie Harrison or the chip first. I decided on the chip. Harrison would take longer to crack; surveillance of people was an arduous task. In the four months so far I’d worked through less than a quarter of Intercontinental’s staff; I’d cleared them all except for a secretary who was having an affair, because I hadn’t yet found out with whom, and a programmer called Howie Kottle, whom I thought might be gay.
My thoughts were shattered by Sumpy, who had emerged from the shower and was repeating the breakfast order for the third time to a slow-witted and apparently hard-of-hearing room-service operator.
I was worried about what to do with Sumpy. I had a feeling that if she went back to her apartment she would find the goons had taken it apart with a meat cleaver, and they’d probably still be hanging around, waiting to take her apart with the same meat cleaver. I wanted to keep her out of harm’s way until I’d got rid of the harm. Hiding her 5 feet 11½ inch blonde-haired, sun-tanned, highly volatile frame was not going to be an easy task.
‘How do you fancy a holiday?’ I said.
‘Before I do anything, Mr Maxwell Flynn –’
‘Maximilian,’ I interrupted, ‘it comes from the Latin, not from the instant coffee.’
‘I don’t care if you’re named after a Nigerian greenfoot monkey,’ she said ever so sweetly. ‘I want to know where you come from and where you plan to go, because I’ve just about had it up to here.’ She swung her hand to the top of her forehead. ‘And if you were the short-assed midget you’re acting like, you’d know that was one hell of a long way.’
I sat and looked at her for a long pause as she stomped up and down the room. Finally I spoke. ‘What do you want me to tell you?’
‘What do I want you to tell me? What do I want you to tell me? I’ll tell you what I want you to tell me: I want you to tell me why you shoot a man dead in your room in the middle of the night; why you tell me not to let cops into my apartment; why you dig a hole through my apartment wall while I’m taking a shower, and kidnap me; why you don’t stop when the cops point a gun at you; why you make me steal a car and come out and check into a hotel under a false name; that okay for openers?’ She stood and glared at me.
Had I been in her position, I’d probably have felt the same way. But I wasn’t in her position. And I couldn’t explain anything to her. I just didn’t want her to go back to her apartment.
‘Do you want to come to Boston with me today?’
‘I can’t. I’m having lunch with Lynn. Then I have to catch the three o’clock flight to Rome – I have to go look at some pictures. I’m not even going to have time to go home and pack, and I’m going to be away several days.’
Lynn, whoever she was, had just done us both a great favour.
A couple of hours later, and wishing to hell I’d been sensible and got on that plane to Rome with Sumpy, I was peering through the misting windshield of a rented Buick, slipping and sliding her through a blizzard of snow that was fast covering the Connecticut Turnpike. The snow had already started to fall when I dropped Sumpy off at the restaurant to meet her friend. It would be stretching the truth to say we’d parted on amicable terms. The muck that was now tumbling out of the sky did nothing to lift my cheerless mood.
An endless convoy of tractor-trailers thrashed past, chucking crate-load upon crate-load of slush, grit, salt and general gunge onto the windshield, while the wipers struggled to turn the combination into a translucent smear, through which I could vaguely make out the darkening road ahead. It was three o’clock and dark was falling very quickly.
I turned on the radio for some cheerful music, and was boomingly exhorted to turn off at the next junction, find the nearest church, and rush in and pray to the Lord God Almighty for the salvation of my soul and the souls of millions of others, all of which were, apparently, in imminent peril due to a multitude of sins too long for the Reverend Doctor Lonsdale Forrester, the Motorists’ Pastor, to relate in the air time he had available between commercials. ‘And while you’re driving, looking for the next church, give thanks to the Lord, yeah, give thanks to the Lord, for the gas in your tanks, for the tyres on your wheels, for your axles, for your transmissions, for the pistons in your cylinders . . .’
I turned the tuner and an immensely cheery voice was halfway through telling us about how an entire family of five had just been wiped out in an automobile accident. I tuned again: ‘Get your children ULTRA-DEATH this Christmas, the great new family game; draw a card, throw the dice – and you might get to choose euthanasia for your favourite aunt . . .’; I tuned again and a voice told me that if my journey wasn’t essential, not to start it as it was going to snow shortly. He evidently needed either a new set of glasses or windows in his studio. I turned off the radio and lit a cigarette. What should have been a four and a half hour run to Boston was going to take a lot longer, and at this rate, I would be lucky to get there this side of midnight.
I could have used Intercontinental’s own computer to prise the secrets out of my little plastic friend in my pocket, but I had a feeling right now that staying away from the offices would be the best thing for my health. I’d telephoned Martha, my secretary, and told her I wasn’t feeling too hot and was going to take a few days’ rest. Having seen Sumpy come into the office to collect me on a couple of occasions, Martha was discreet enough not to ask whether I’d be contactable at home, and merely wished me a quick recovery. I wondered about Martha; about whether she knew who her real employers were. She was a smart girl, an
d I wouldn’t have been surprised to find she was a Fifeshire operative as well. If she was she’d covered her tracks well; since she happened to be extremely attractive, the idea of attempting to get to know her better in the not-too-distant future appealed to me as a pleasant diversion.
The traffic ahead came to an abrupt halt, and I pressed the brake pedal and released it several times in rapid succession to prevent the wheels locking up, and stopped. I thought hard about the layout of the campus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I’d spent only a few weeks there during my computer training and in that time had been shown most of the billions of dollars’ worth of equipment that were laid on for the purpose of educating the brightest echelons of America’s student scientists in the technical ways of the world. I hoped no one was going to mind a small part of that equipment being put to practical use for a short while.
The weather got worse and the road got longer, and I camped the night on the floor of the Interchange 70 Howard Johnson Motel, in the company of most of the population of the North Eastern seaboard; they all appeared to be commercial travellers with urgent nine o’clock appointments in the furthermost points of the continent, men to whom earnest conversation about inventory control on gearboxes, vacuum packing of anglepoise lamps, weekly call lists and mileage rationalisation were evidently more important than sleep.
In the morning I felt foul, and didn’t feel like joining the long queue to the washroom. I went outside to start clearing the snow and ice from my car windows. The storm had been and gone, and left behind it a glorious morning of glistening white ground and stark deep-blue sky basking in the gentle glow of the winter-weak sun. The roads were clear, though wet with the melted snow, and I covered the remaining miles into Boston in time to join in the rush-hour traffic.