Blackmail North

by Philip McCutchan

  “Have you? I wonder! I’ve just had some news from the Prime Minister. An unidentified caller rang Downing Street just an hour ago. Anonymous and threatening — the PM’s worried. The caller, it seems, didn’t sound like a nutter.” The Under-Secretary stared right into Hedge’s eyes. “The Libyans, not the government but the group we know as VAN — Voice of the Arab Nations, in cahoots with the PLO boys … am I going too fast for you, Hedge?”

  “This group, Sir Egerton. You say we know them as VAN. Frankly, I’ve not heard of them before.”

  Mornay stroked his chin. “Fair enough. As a matter of fact, there’s been a departmental cock-up, now brought into the light of day. VAN is well enough known to both Middle East Department, and Near East and North Africa Department, and your chief should have been put in the picture. Anyway, VAN is one of the nastier organisations of thugs and murderers, well supported, one that doesn’t come into the limelight but has plenty of potential for trouble. Where the PLO boys concentrate on recovery of the national homeland of Palestine, VAN concentrates on the practicalities of oil. VAN never wanted Mackintosh to be handed back by the Libyan Government, apparently, and now they’ve come up with a demand that he be handed over to them, to VAN.”

  “They don’t know he’s disappeared?”

  “Apparently not. I can’t say how long they’ll remain in ignorance, but we can take one thing as certain: they’re not the ones who’ve got him currently!”

  “Assuming the call was genuine, Sir Egerton.”

  “Quite. I rather tend to believe it was. The threat sounded logical at all events. They want Mackintosh firstly for his expertise, to be used to Arab advantage, not just Libya but all the Arab nations. And secondly to deny that expertise both to us and to the Israelis. If they look like being thwarted, the balloon goes up.”

  “In what way?”

  The Under-Secretary came from behind the desk and beckoned Hedge over to a large wall map of the Mediterranean and Middle East from Algeria to the Persian Gulf. With a finger he indicated a town in Libya’s south-west. “Murzuq,” he said “Murzuq in Fezzan. Desolate country — desert. The caller didn’t indicate this, but we happen to know that Murzuq’s the headquarters of VAN. What the caller did say was this: they’re collecting an air strike force. A mixed one.” Sir Egerton waved a hand. “Libya as such — as a stat — is antagonistic towards the Sadat-orientated Arabs — the Israel visit — and that introduces certain crossed wires and so on. However, none of that concerns VAN — they’re underground and, in an Arab sense, international. They operate in all the Arab OPEC countries plus some others. This air strike force, now: Arab pilots, many of them Egyptian, men who’ve flown sorties against Israel in the various wars, plus a number of Russians. They’ve got Russian bombers, French bombers, British and American bombers-all bought on the international black market in arms. The caller insisted they were strong, Hedge, and personally I don’t doubt that they are. Rich as well — very.”

  “And they — they mean to attack us?” Hedge stared, eyes wide. “That’s crazy!”

  The Under-Secretary shook his head. “Not crazy. They can do it if they care to take the risk. If Mackintosh is not delivered to them hale and hearty, they’ll use their members in the oil industries in all the OPEC countries to inhibit all exports to this country, and to all countries who continue to supply us indirectly with their oil products. And at the same time they’ll mount an air strike against the North Sea rigs — and against the reserve pipelines from Peterhead to Wiltshire. You know, of course, what that means.” Sir Egerton lifted a hand and aimed a finger at Hedge. “Find Mackintosh, Hedge. He’s the key.”

  *

  Back in his own office Hedge was being frustrated. “I want Shard,” he said down the internal line.

  “I’m sorry, sir, he’s not available at the moment.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Detective Inspector Linton, sir.”

  “Get Shard.” Hedge slammed the phone down. It rang back at him within a few seconds. “Yes?”

  “Linton again, sir. Mr Shard’s on a job. He can’t be contacted.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but contact’s been lost.”

  Hedge felt a sudden chill. “Are you trying to tell me Shard’s been lost, Mr Linton?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Oh, my God.” Hedge put a hand to his head. “Give me the details.” He listened, shaking, eyes staring at nothing. “I’ll be here. Report at once when you have any word.” He put down the phone again and sat motionless, almost in a trance. The country under appalling threat, and he was the man they would hold responsible, the man who had managed to drop the key down the drain. The Under-Secretary had been convincing as to the viability of what Voice of the Arab Nations meant to do. The RAF had been run down too far, some at least of a bomber force must get through. To send out an air strike from Britain to annihilate the attack threat would still leave the turning off of most of the world’s oil taps and it was not on in any case, except possibly as a last desperate resort. You couldn’t send gunboats any more, not these days, not if you were British. It would be naked aggression, interference in the affairs of a sovereign state, victimisation of the Third World and all the other claptrap pushed out by the woolly fringe of the intellectual Left and the progressive clerics. Nihil defenda Britannica!

  *

  After Sheila Branscombe had departed towards the telephone and thence the ladies, Shard had paid his bill, sat for eight minutes precisely smoking a cigarette, then got up and went down the stairs for the exit into Swallow Street. He paused for a few moments in the doorway, was aware of the disguised Scot at the head of the staircase to the restaurant. He turned back and went into the gents. When he emerged there was no Scot visible. Shard left the premises and turned for Regent Street, there catching a sight of a departmental car with Harry Kenwood embarked in the front passenger seat. Kenwood had pulled in to the kerb a little way east of the Swallow Street turn. Shard, noting that he had been seen by Kenwood, strolled casually along Regent Street away from Piccadilly Circus. They hadn’t come for him, as he had half expected they might, in Swallow Street itself; it had been because they might have done that he’d asked for the second car at the Piccadilly end. That car would be now be at Kenwood’s disposal if he called it on his radio. Shard walked on, glancing at shop window displays wasting electricity. When he reached the corner of Vigo Street the Scotsman materialised from the shadows. He went up to Shard and said, “Excuse me, do you have a light?” He didn’t wait for the response. He went on, “I’ve a gun in my pocket. It’s small but it kills.”

  “But you won’t use it in the street.”

  “Try me. I know how to get lost.” The man was close up; Shard could feel the protrusion of the automatic’s muzzle against his side. He didn’t look round but knew Harry Kenwood would be watching out: Harry knew his job, knew the way his chief’s mind worked and wouldn’t come in too soon — hopefully, not too late either. It would be a nice balance; and there was plenty of bluff around. If the Scotsman used his gun Shard would die, but the killer would never get away and he must have known that for sure, even though he might not have worked out the fact that Shard didn’t operate without reasonable support under such circumstances. The man had the look of a very amateur villain.

  The gun moved a little, digging in. “Come on, now. Move with me, keep close and don’t try anything funny, Mr Shard.”

  Shard shrugged. “All right. Where to?”

  “Into Burlington Gardens. There’s a car. Come on.” The automatic pressed again, and Shard obeyed orders. He moved round the corner and along Vigo Street. Regent Street had been crowded, they had been just two of the walkers, chatting; coming up to Burlington Gardens the human traffic was thinner, just a meagre stream flowing past the Civil Service Commission building. Once, this had been prostitute territory; even now, there were one or two drifting hopefuls who eyed Shard cagily. He was herded across the road, his shepherd goi
ng not into Burlington Gardens but into Savile Row. In Savile Row a car stood waiting, engine ticking over. Nothing special about it, a Rover 3½-litre with a P suffix, unobtrusive but fast. “That’s the one,” the Scotsman said. “Into the back with you, Mr Shard.”

  Beside the Rover as the near-side door opened, Shard turned and glanced back: no Harry in view yet. If he’d been hemmed in by the log-jam of traffic why the hell hadn’t he got out and run? Shard tried to delay but delay was not permitted. Another gun looked him in the eyes from the back of the Rover and a heavy man reached out for his coat and pulled and he dived in, thrown off balance as the driver started up. The Scotsman had got in the front. They shot ahead along Savile Row, across the junction of Boyle Street and New Burlington Street, into Conduit Street, then headed to the right to turn left back into Regent Street. At Oxford Circus they turned left into Oxford Street and fought around Marble Arch into the Edgware Road.

  And no tail.

  Something, somewhere, had gone badly wrong: if ever he got out of this, Shard promised himself savagely, he’d have Harry Kenwood’s guts for a necktie.

  *

  No-one in the Rover, except Shard, had seemed worried about a tail, but there had been a certain tension whilst blocked in the heavy traffic and questions had been left unanswered. When they picked up the M1, however, and the Rover headed north at speed, there was a general relaxation. While the heavy man kept an eye and a gun on Shard, the Scotsman, whose name had emerged as Jamie, turned and leaned over the back of his seat.

  “You’ll want to know what’s going on, Mr Shard.”

  “I can’t say I’m not curious.”

  “What d’you want to know first, then?”

  “A contradiction explained: yesterday in Aberfeldy, someone planted a device on my car. The idea was death. Now you hijack me, from which I gather you have some sort of use for me alive.”

  The Scotsman sniggered. “Why gather that? We could be going to kill you, couldn’t we, in our own time?”

  Shard nodded. “You could, if you thought you’d get away with it. Which you won’t. Right now, there’ll be an alert out for me. And don’t forget the road blocks nationwide.”

  “Not all roads, Mr Shard. You haven’t the fuzz available and you know it. As for us, we know the ways around.”

  “But not from the motorway. All exits are covered — all exits.”

  “And we’re still not worried — you’ll see. But to get back to your query: the Aberfeldy bomb, that wasn’t us, Mr Shard.”

  Shard laughed harshly. “No?”

  “No.” Jamie paused. “Just how much do you know about what’s going on in the world? About Mackintosh, I mean.”

  “And Mrs Mackintosh. Just that they’ve both been hooked off, and that you were concerned in the hijacking of Mrs Mackintosh.”

  “Right so far, I was.”

  “Why?”

  “That’ll emerge. You’re right about another thing, Mr Shard: we’re not going to kill you. You’re safe if you play along with us. And yes, we have a use for you.”

  “And a man called Knackers Bunnigan was your link, your —”

  “Aye. It was a way to you.”

  “A clumsy one —”

  “One that worked, Mr Shard, and quickly too. That was the point. Senior detectives, they’re not easy to pin down, their movements are too erratic. We needed that pinning-down manoeuvre.”

  Shard grunted; if he himself hadn’t wanted it that way, they wouldn’t have had a hope! He said, “Another question, then: why didn’t you hang onto me in the birks if you wanted me so badly?”

  Jamie laughed. “We would have, only you fell over the fence and went down. Then some people came along … we saw them in the distance and didn’t want to take that sort of risk. Someone would have gone for the police.”

  Shard nodded, eased his body on the cushions. “Next question: who’s we? Whose side are you on?”

  Jamie smiled again. “Scotland’s,” he said. “The rest’ll keep till we get where we’re going.”

  “Which is?”

  “That’ll keep too. There’s many a slip … it’s best you don’t know too much just yet.”

  Jamie turned back and faced front. No more was said. The car went on fast. Once past the Toddington service area the light began to fade. Soon the headlamps were coming on, sweeping down the southbound lane, flashing past as the Rover rushed north. It swept past Newport Pagnell, Watford Gap, Leicester Forest East. At Trowell, last service area but one before the motorway diverged into the Ml8, the Rover dropped speed and pulled in. No petrol, no refreshments: Shard was held under guard while the Scotsman, Jamie, got out. He was gone about ten minutes and when he got back in he said, “Okay, Angus’ll be coming in.” Nothing more was said; Shard assumed that a telephone call had been made. They pulled back onto the northbound carriageway and a few miles farther on they pulled off again, not this time into a service area but onto a slip road running into a works area. The Rover was driven through an open gateway and into what seemed to be a derelict factory, with crummy buildings set around a central yard. Jamie got out and the others followed and the heavy man kept his gun in Shard’s back. Jamie led the way out of the yard, past the broken-down buildings and over a wire fence at the back. They came into a field where cows had been, crossed this, went through a gate in a hedge into another field where they remained in the cover of the hedge and the darkness. Jamie began whistling softly through his teeth and the tune was ‘Scotland the Brave’. Too much, Shard thought, should not be read into the choice of tune but taking it together with Jamie’s statement that they were on Scotland’s side he fancied he might have dropped slap into some nationalist set-up, a group aiming to keep North Sea oil safe for Scotland. After about twenty minutes, by which time the three men were beginning to get restive, a sound was heard distantly and overhead: aero engines, coming closer.

  “That’ll be Angus,” Jamie said. He moved out from the hedge into a cold breeze and brought a torch from a pocket. He aimed into the sky and started flashing. Soon Shard was able to make out the squat shape of a helicopter moving in. For a moment it hovered right overhead, blowing up dust and muck and making a noise like thunder. Then, slowly, it sank and came to rest with its hatch open and light showing dimly through from the instrument panel. Jamie beckoned the others on and they approached the machine, Shard being pushed in ahead of the heavy man’s gun. As soon as all had embarked the helicopter took off with Angus, a horse-faced man with iron-grey hair, staring through the windscreen in concentration as he gained height and then swung the machine for the north. Within minutes the motorway was no more than a pencil line filled with moving light while to the west was a distant glow to indicate the city of Sheffield. The racket of the engine dinned into Shard’s ears and his body vibrated. In the ghostly illumination of the instrument panel Jamie and the other men had the aspect of resurrected corpses from Culloden as they stared woodenly ahead towards the border.

  Six

  THE BORDER WAS left behind: Hadrian’s Wall had been crossed towards its western end and Shard had picked up the night lights of Carlisle and the massive bulk of the castle, regimental headquarters of the King’s Own Royal Border Regiment: Shard thought about the border warfare of centuries past, the battles between Scots and English after the Romans had left. He glanced, as they crossed into Scottish territory, at the faces of his companions, Jamie especially: they seemed unconcerned about the past. The heavy man — he had been addressed as Jacko — was busy picking his nose, Angus concentrated on his job, the man who had driven the Rover appeared to be asleep now with his head sunk into his chest, and Jamie was still staring intently ahead as though acting as navigator.

  It was a long flight: around five hours. They crossed the Forth high up by Stirling, headed north-westerly: Jamie gave a commentary-over Loch Earn and Glen Dochart, back into Breadalbane country, on over the Grampians. They touched down in a desolate spot between high hills to the south of the road running through Glen
Coe from Rannoch Moor to Ballachulish. There was another road a little to the westwards, a narrow track that ran, said Jamie, into Glen Etive and on to the loch that joined the Firth of Lome between the mainland and the island of Mull.

  “Lonely,” Shard said, staring around on disembarkation.

  “Aye.”

  “And cold.”

  “It’ll warm up when the night’s gone. Come with me, now.” The gun pressed into Shard’s side and he was pushed ahead of Jamie, with the erstwhile driver walking beside him. Jacko and the pilot were manhandling the helicopter on its wheels towards a building that Shard now saw looming through the lifting darkness, a kind of barn standing some fifty yards clear of a small house. All around, mountain peaks rose, shutting in the glen. Lonely was a massive understatement: ghosts abounded here. Shard felt that at any moment the slain of the Glen Coe massacre would rise up, targes on their left arms, right hands wielding vengeful claymores against Campbells equally dead and gone. All that was needed now was the wail of the piper’s lament. It was all a far, far cry from the twentieth century and from oilmen and the machinations of Arabs and Israelis: but no distance at all from murder. As they neared the building, Shard saw the dereliction: this place, once perhaps a highland croft, had been uninhabited probably since the clearances. The roof was virtually non-existent, the walls gaped with windowless holes. Shard was pushed inside and his feet trod bare earth with growing grass in tufts.

  “Tired?” Jamie asked.

  “Not to tired to listen if you want to talk.”

  “I don’t. I want sleep even if you don’t. We’ll take it in shifts.” Jamie produced his torch and beamed a pencil of light into a corner of what had been a living room, a corner covered by what was left of the roof. There was a pile of sacking and an ancient filthy mattress.

  *

  “We don’t stay longer than we have to,” Jamie said when the morning light streamed through the broken roof. He scratched his bare chest, hairy like an ape. Jacko picked his nose again. Jamie looked up at the helicopter pilot, who was standing in the doorway looking out and down the glen. “Anyone yet, Angus?”