by Daniel Kemp
* * *
On a harsh Friday night in late December 1951, when the relentless icy Arctic wind cut through the fabric of fur hats and heavy coats as a Siberian tiger's bite cuts through the spinal cord of a wolf, Percy hid himself in the bilges of a freighter due to sail from Salmi the following morning down the River Neva and out into the Baltic Sea. His Russian dialect had gained his entry onto the slipway, the bitterly vicious cold concealed his lack of departure from the quayside. Percy tied himself to a limber hole next to the stuffing box, two foot below the uppermost level of filth and waited. Breathing through a facial cover he had designed from a wielding mask, with an attached rubber airline that vibrated wildly when the pumping handle on the deck above was engaged. He kept telling himself that he must survive. In one way he was thankful that the pump wasn't often used, but in another, well, he just stunk. The putrid smell pervaded every pore of his outer body and although his airline helped, he could not avoid the noxious contamination entering his lungs, liver and kidneys along with every other organ inside.
Two shivering NKVD sentries, more interested in drinking vodka than a thorough scrutiny, checked the ship before it left port then stayed on board for most of the duration of its voyage including the stops at Helsinki, Turko and Gdańsk, before finally disembarking at Trave, five days later, a port at the northern end of what Churchill described as the Iron Curtain, certain in their mind that only crew and legitimate cargo were left on board, but as you now know, they were wrong. His naked body, apart from a pair of swimming trunks that he had procured before leaving Salmi, had remained submerged for all the seven days and seven nights until the ship reached Hamburg. That night, stinking of excrement, oil, fuel, urine and all manner of things both dead and alive, he cut open the thick rubber protection around the stuffing box with the knife he had, flooded the propeller shaft and pitifully swam ashore.
“I have a secret,” he said.
“What kind of a secret?” they asked.
“A bloody big one,” he replied.
It took him years to lose that stench from his nose that perhaps only children could smell, and four months of those years to fully recover the weight he'd lost on his journey to freedom. He weighed one pound over six stone, when examined by the military, after giving himself up to a surprised patrolling Welsh sentry who thought the devil had risen from the Elbe, nearly shooting him in fear. By luck, and with plenty of medical mastery thrown in, the chronic dysentery that he developed never proved fatal. The only permanent damage he suffered was the total loss of hearing in his right ear that Malcolm had referred to. One more day in that sickening hole without clean water would have seen his end, he was told.
Chapter Thirty-One: Swinging Doors
In early March 1952, Meredith Paine took the same route as I was now taking to New York, but not to meet Jimmy Mercer the second as I did, nor any past relative of his. He went to have a good old chinwag with the very highest chief executive of the American Central Intelligence Agency and discuss what his department would exchange from Percy's vital snippets of intelligence.
Jimmy, on the other hand, had nothing to exchange. He was all take. I told him everything I had discovered, minus several parts that I guessed he already knew. I made no reference to that covert knowledge of his, nor to any of the photographs in particular. In some kind of exchange I suppose, he never mentioned David Haig nor any other of my contacts, but he did expand on what he had, a bit.
“Thanks for all that, Harry. You have been a busy bee! Hope you tracked down that intruder you had. Come across the name of an experimental policy we once undertook at all? The file name was MKUltra.”
“Can't say as I have, Jimmy.”
“Heard anything of a Douglas Simmons?” he quietly asked.
“No! You'll have to give me a pass on that one too, old chap.”
* * *
“Harry, sorry to trouble you, but could we meet somewhere convenient in the not too distant future? Something strange happened earlier today and it's somewhat baffling me.”
“Funnily enough, Michael, I had something to raise with you myself. How about a glass or two at the Spy Glass and Kettle, on the moor? Do you know the place?”
When he acknowledged that he did, we arranged to meet in half an hour. Sir Michael Riven had called me two days before my departure to see Katherine, sounding very disturbed. His car, with the driver pacing alongside, smoking a cigarette, was in the nigh empty car park when John parked the Bentley. Inside it was slightly busier than I had imagined it to be, but being a Monday evening there was no sign of Jim the landlord, who usually took that night off leaving his pretty barmaids to run the place.
“Would you mind if I went first, Michael, as my question is of a trivial nature which I'm sure yours is not?” He was on his second gin and tonic when I'd entered.
“Not at all, Harry. Fire away.”
“Serena and I wondered if you would officiate as registrar at a wedding service in the chapel at The Hall later this year. It's going to be on Saturday, fifteenth September.”
“I'd be delighted, Harry! Had no idea you were to marry that lovely girlfriend of yours. Finally settling down at last, are you? At your age it's about time. Let me put another Scotch in that glass of yours.”
“No, it's not for me,” I said smiling, “it's for George, of Eton Square fame, Michael. It's he that's marrying.” I laughed but he'd missed the joke.
“Ah, yes, of course I will, but can I now tell you my news?” I nodded in agreement, as I tasted the Jura.
“You remember our last conversation about how I never knew of that chap Simmons's last known location in Germany, and how we decided to leave any enquiry in abeyance until you resolved exactly where you stood in the matter? Well, I had a phone call this morning from Sir David Haig asking the same question, but I thought he knew the answer in the way he asked, and was simply trying to ascertain whether I did or not. Of course, I answered in the negative. He knows that you and I speak, so presumably knows I would pass that on to you. Any ideas as to why that should go through me and not directly to you, Harry?”
“I haven't, Michael, but if you're worried about his loyalty and allegiance, then I can one hundred percent reassure you on that. He's no traitor in any sense. I do believe though that there are more secrets being withheld than put out in the open.”
“Did you find what you were after with that Montague chap, Harry?” he asked.
“I think there's more to come, Michael,” I replied.
* * *
“You have laid all your cards down, Harry, haven't you? I'd hate to think you've an ace hidden up each sleeve,” Mercer announced as our hitherto taciturn driver pulled to a halt outside what appeared to be an arboretum park, opposite a moderately high, glazed and yellow marbled, luxurious apartment building on Riverside Drive, Manhattan, New York. If the kindest description I had for her New Haven address was impoverished, then the best-natured thing I could say of Park View was that it was conspicuous.
“We've arrived, boss!” he exclaimed with a shrill to his voice, jumping from the car as he did so, opening my door at the same time as the front passenger agent was opening Jimmy's.
“Even both jokers, Jimmy,” I declared as we alighted from the car and crossed the lightly used thoroughfare.
It had been a hastily agreed meeting as I was quickly running out of time. However, a couple of things had arisen that needed Katherine's insight to sort out. I had left Serena, Sophie and George busily engaged in various activities, with Serena being the most active but finding time to caution me at the check-in at Heathrow.
“If you get up to any monkey business with that woman, believe me I'll know, Harry. Then all bets are off, as I understand they say over there in America. I'm in love with you, Harry Paterson, but know what a scoundrel you can be at times. It's a day and a night, not long enough to throw a whole life away over any woman.” A solemn determination was the last thing I saw before boarding the plane.
* * *
>
Instead of a burly CIA agent standing beside broken concrete steps going up to a dilapidated door, now awaiting us was an immaculate, smartly uniformed doorman in front of silvery shining revolving doors with automatically opening ones either side. He greeted Jimmy as though he was a returning uncle whom he hadn't seen for decades.
“Well hi there, Mr Mercer, how the hell you doing? The word on the street was that you struck lucky down in Vegas last year winning a new way of life. I heard you'd emigrated down to the Caribbean, living the dream with a glass of cold beer in each hand and a girl on each arm. You're looking swell, sir, healthy and wealthy.” He held out a huge right hand, palm up, for what I understood was called a low five which Jimmy gladly, by the look on his face gave.….SLAP, the noise tempered only by the ten dollar bill that Jimmy donated.
There are lots of things I don't much like about Americans, as there are an equal number of things I dislike about Londoners, English people in general, Scots, Welsh and the Irish, but if there's one thing I admire about them above all else it's their refreshing acceptance of equality of status. Jimmy could have been the King of England, and Joe the doorman would have spoken to him in just the same way.
“I see Katherine's now your rich girl in that analogy she spoke of last time we met. You must have a gigantic budget to afford this place, Jimmy. Looks like a prop from a Hollywood movie set.”
“Not our place, but hers, Harry. She bought it the day we unlocked the handcuffs and kicked her butt out. I thought you'd wired the money over,” in good humour he said.
“Not mine, old chap. It must have come from some other lover, if it's not yours?”
“It is known that we repay our debts,” impassively he replied.
* * *
“You're working on a missile that you've christened Green Cheese, Mr Paine, that the Soviets know all about. They are also aware of some proposed forward NATO bases previously only known to a few countries, including your own. All their information originated from your Ministry of Supply, and presumably from the same man who alerted the Russian army command of the German panzer formations at the battle of Kursk. That was one ally to another, acceptable and laudable, but not what's going over now. You have a serious leak on your doorstep, Meredith. It's our considered opinion that he has no identifiable Russian contact, instead he's using a child prostitution ring to pass on information.That ring of iniquity is organised by a British lord from his home in Southern Ireland. How's that for a fair exchange?” Asked retired Admiral Toby Macalister, executive director of the Central Intelligence Agency, on acceptance of the information Meredith had offered.
“Got any idea how it gets from Ireland to Moscow central, Toby?” Meredith petitioned.
“Not an idea, replied the Admiral, a cast iron fact.” Adding, “you say he has the location of eleven silos, as well?”
Meredith nodded in agreement before lapping up all what the Admiral read to him from a redacted file on his desk. He took particular care in noting Montague's and the alleged informant's name, holding back on the role that Percy's significance might play in the tale for later. For now he disclosed only the knowledge of the Soviets' progress in overcoming thermal images, nuclear missile silo locations and discussing other obstacles that were hampering communism in its quest for world domination. Meredith was a happy bunny, but rabbits always have a sad face, don't they.
Meredith's equilibrium had been badly disturbed by Percy's revelation of a King's Counsellor being a traitor, and his daughter Elizabeth, the Queen for only a few weeks, having to countenance Montague's continued position. His patriotic feelings had been reinforced also his sympathy had increased, but he could see a possible scandal ahead. To ward off that danger he wanted a stronger relationship with his cousins across the pond, thereby insuring any press coverage could be better contained. As they lunched together at Toby's naval club, surrounded by paintings and models of capital ships and aircraft carriers, Meredith put a proposal to Toby.
“Have you caught the person who's divulging your secrets from what was once our Tube Alloys project, but rechristened Manhattan, yet, or have you still a problem there, Toby?”
“We do still have a problem in that area, Meredith.”
“In that case, perhaps we could work together in trying to solve it, Toby.”
We are becoming the world's experts at concealing abominable deceit, thought Meredith, as he savoured another glass of fine French cognac.
* * *
“You're looking very suave, Harry, but if you've come to quiz me over Paulo's plan about Percy Crow, then that's where the flowing compliments stop. I have no different answer than the one I gave you when I was the poor girl the last time we met. I didn't know then what he meant by that name and I don't know now.”
Did that mean she had discussed it with her father, or was I jumping hurdles before it was necessary? Jimmy and I were in her modern apartment on the eighth floor with its panoramic view across a heavily wooded area and beyond the Hudson River. She seemed to have a liking for minimalistic furnishing by the little amount that was there: three odd-looking wooden slatted chaise lounges, with thin black hide cushions, set around a hammered, blue steel hexagon coffee table that stretched across at least one-third of the laminated floor area. As they looked anything but comfortable I chose to sit at the solid marble bar where two drinks, at either end, were already poured. One rested next to the distinctive shaped Isle Of Jura bottle, beckoning me. As I had no idea what was Jimmy's favourite tipple I presumed the opened bottle of Bollinger, with a half full glass beside to be Katherine's.
“The whisky is for you, Harry! There's also your Dunhill cigarettes in the box. I've changed my brand,” she announced, smilingly adding, “I'm a filthy rich girl now able to afford them. And I no longer play games for the CIA.”
She was wearing a vertically striped black and white chiffon dress that sensually clung to her full curvy figure. It started at her long neck, finishing just above her black stiletto shoes. Her pure blonde hair was pinned close to her perfectly shaped head, and those blue shimmering eyes reflected the light from floor to ceiling windows. She was as if a contrast to the life size painting of a very provocative nude that she stood to the side of. My eyes were fixed in only one direction, and that wasn't on the outside view, nor the understudy hanging on the wall.
“Russians are a problematic race, Harry, we intrigue as much as we numb. In the main I try to arouse curiosity rather than assuage any degree of imagination. I can see that I've succeeded in that by your stare, whereas Jimmy is a different animal. I never felt he'd be excited if I was standing naked instead of a mere painting. What do you think?”
An aroma of rose oil mixed with cinnamon and perhaps a hint of jasmine reached me before she did, sensually carrying both the glass and the bottle. I hesitated before lighting a cigarette in case it destroyed the scent. She took one from the box, placed it in my lips and lit it. I didn't answer her question, nor did Jimmy who was standing beside the closed balcony door.
“Generally we're thought of as a nation of painters and poets but some of us can acknowledge the physical needs of others as well as the spiritual ones.” She had my attention, as she imperiously sauntered away for the bar towards an alcove I hadn't seen. My eyes fell upon a huge bronze bust of a clean-shaven man, mounted atop a stone plinth. I chose to comment on the bronze instead of her piquant analysis.
“If that's the head of your last boyfriend over there, Katherine, do you mind if I decline the drink as it might be full of rat poison for all I know! Have you spoken to your father recently?”
She smiled, then returned to sit beside me at the bar, me with my whisky and cigarette, her with a cigarette and glass of champagne. Jimmy was on his own, moving cushions on one of those disagreeable looking chairs.
“If you're in as much pain as you appear to be, Jimmy, then I'm more than happy to get a cab back to the Hyatt. Not wishing to be too rude about it, but I'd be rather happy if you left, old chap!”
&
nbsp; “I didn't know who needed my protection the most. Her highness here or you, my Lord!” He attempted to smile as if his attempted joke was humorous, but I took the carpet from his feet, so to speak.
“And it was he, Katherine, who once called me a cad for dumping you.”
“Harry dumping me! Where did you ever get that idea from, mister merciless Mercer? Luckily I've only met one other American as insensitive as you. I decide who dumps whom, and when. Tonight's not the night. I've been out shopping for dinner. It's a traditional beef stroganoff for two. There's a Ukrainian deli on the corner of the block, Harry, and they told me that the Smetana cream comes all the way from Russia. I always believe everything a Ukrainian tells me. You're not invited, Mr Mercer.” Jimmy seemed relieved, or so I hoped.
“I'll stay for an answer, my princess, then I'll be off as neither of you seem to need me.”
“Neither need nor want, Jimmy. Sorry!” I winked at him, conspicuously.
Katherine smiled in a way that left me unsure as to whether it was because of the wink or the fact that Jimmy was about to leave, but one thing was abundantly clear; she most certainly was expecting my arrival this time.
“The one about my father, or the one about the boyfriend?” toying with the pair of us, she asked. I got in before Jimmy.
“Why not both questions, Katherine, I'm captivated.”
As she uncrossed her legs, she seductively hitched her dress tighter around her thighs. Jimmy showed no sign of noticing, but as I've always been a thigh man, I just couldn't but notice.
“I thought we all believed that Paulo's now playing a role in a divine comedy and as I'm no Beatrice, then I have no way of connecting with him. Have I? As for the boyfriend being the head, then again it's a no. It's an effigy of a favourite Russian poet of my late father. I have it in his memory.”
