Johnny Goes West

by Desmond Cory

  The idea, anyway, had been Jimmy Emerald’s. At the end of the war, he and Johnny Fedora and Nobby dc Meyrignac (who had since disappeared, no one knew where,) had been the only three men to emerge unscathed from John Squires’ “secret Ministry”: Emerald had taken up his commission again for special work with Military Intelligence, while the great Squires had settled down in Oxfordshire to compose—with a wary eye on the Official Secrets Act and the War Box—his memoirs and to write I-knew-him-then reviews of more or less true books more or less efficiently ghosted for ex-Secret Service agents making up for lost time in the matter of personal publicity. As for Fedora, he had stayed on for a while in Squires’ post-war section; but, not being an especially literate person, he soon found the constant paper-work a weariness to the flesh and the salary insufficient to support him, his French governess and the Bechstein grand he badly wanted to buy. So he commenced a distinguished career as a free-lance and, leaving lady friend and piano strewn somewhere along the route, gained in a very short space of time a diamond horde, a uranium claim and a shipment of gold ingots; he then returned to Paris as irredeemably broke as ever and only mildly annoyed to find that nobody would believe it. Several of these enterprises he had shared on a curious half-rival, half-ally basis with Sebastian Trout, who had been working all this time for British External Intelligence; and when Johnny and Emerald had bumped into each other again in Tripolitania and had changed impressions. . . then and at last in Emerald’s subtle mind the Great Plan had been born. And in January 1956, the month after Emerald’s retirement from the Army with lieutenant-colonel’s rank and the appropriate pension, E.I.E. had been launched as a going concern.

  E.I.E. would do practically anything, from inaugurating a rebellion in Mexico City to babysitting for a millionaire’s infant. It would babysit for anyone’s infant, in theory, but in practice its fees were so fantastically high that only a millionaire—and a highly eccentric one at that—could possibly have considered engaging its services for such a purpose. Its principal clients were, in fact, Government Departments of the various Nato powers. There are a number of jobs which—as Emerald knew very well from personal experience—a government cannot, for various reasons, ask its own official Intelligence Services to undertake, and it was in just such tasks as these that E.I.E. specialised. The heads of local offices (Otto Trakl, for instance, in Vienna, and Blue Lou Johnson in Chicago, and Harold Hansen in Portugal and Antoine Gervais in Paris) represented the pick of the world’s somewhat depleted Intelligence Services, and the three directors were the three men whom any of the cognoscenti would unhesitatingly have picked out as the three outstanding wartime operatives of Western Europe. The international background to the whole set-up certainly looked effective; but to those in the know, it was the names that headed the Company’s notepaper— Emerald, Trout, Fedora —that inspired confidence. They meant the same as the names Rodgers and Hammerstein at the head of a playbill, the names Dempsey and Tunney at the head of a boxing poster. They stood for something a long way in advance of all the rest of the field.

  From the point of view of Trout and Fedora, the idea was a wow. The work that now came their way was more varied and exciting than the routine tasks of peacetime Intelligence; and the pay—two hundred pounds a month plus expenses—was of course a decided improvement. Johnny had long since bought his Bechstein grand, and Trout had been able to improve noticeably his acquaintanceship with those minor Italian film stars to whom he was particularly susceptible. Only Jimmy Emerald worked all the time; and he had no cause to complain. Eighteen months from its inception E.I.E. was to be acknowledged an out-and-out success; it had tackled some twenty-odd tasks and without a single failure. Work was constantly coming in, and the directors could pick and choose; the only real snag now was the inevitable nervous strain of maintaining as a reality those nine-to-one odds of success that their names alone served to guarantee. That strain fell entirely on Trout and on Fedora: Emerald was there to get them the jobs, they were there to carry them out. And on those jobs, as on others during the war, there could be no falling down. E.I.E. could afford no failures.

  . . . Very few people had ever heard of it. But among those who had was the Director of the Department of Atomic Energy in St. Giles’ Court.

  Mr. Featherby, who normally led a tranquil and unhurried existence cocooned amongst filing-cabinets in a tiny office, spent the early days of June in an unprecedently hectic manner. In less than a week his desk notepad had recorded, in a series of mysterious hieroglyphics, a whole chain of interviews with a number of extremely important people, ranging from the Chief Geologist of the Department of Atomic Energy to the Ministers of Supply and of Defence. The last name on his list was that of Lieutenant-Colonel Emerald. And the day following that final interview, a lengthy report was delivered by hand to Emerald personally; who promptly retired to his inner office and remained locked up with it for the space of two hours. The substance of this report was something as follows:

  Classification: HIGHLY SECRET

  Our Ref: TF/EEB/131-57

  Subject: Carnotite

  From: Min. Sup. Dept. At. En., Security

  To: EIE

  Copies to: ——————

  Dear Lt. Col. Emerald,

  Pursuant to our interview of yesterday’s date we are pleased to submit to you the following resume” of our information with regard to the Robert West communications. Also attached are copies of the relevant correspondence.

  On April 7th, 1957, a letter was received by Mr. P. D. Fortescue, Chief Geologist of the Geological Museum, London. (Copy A attached.) This purported to be from one Robert West, address c/o Oficina de Correos, Los Cielos, Venezuela. It reported the despatch of a sample box of geological specimens. The letter was undated and the envelope destroyed. The sample box duly arrived on April 23rd.

  An acknowledgment of its arrival was sent the same day by Mr. Fortescue, promising a rapid assayal but pointing out that if the samples referred to were of Venezuelan origin the appropriate authority to notify would be the Ministerio de Minas e Hidro-carburos at Caracas. (Copy B attached.)

  After assayal, a letter dated April 29th was sent to Mr. West by the Chief Geologist (Copy C attached) , reporting the results, and reports were also sent to myself (Copy D attached), and to the Head of the Department of Atomic Energy in St. Giles’ Court. (Copy E attached.) The assayal revealed the presence of an extremely high-grade deposit (65-66% U302) of carnotite (K20. 2U03. V105. nH2o).

  Geological note: Carnotite is a potassium uranium vanadate and is the most important of the secondary uranium ore minerals. It is a lemon-yellow mineral with an earthy lustre, a yellow streak and a specific gravity of about 4. It is of a powdery nature, with a 2-3 hardness scale rating. It is not fluorescent. Most deposits range in scale from 0.10% to 0.50% U302.

  Geographical note: The town of Los Cielos de Aracena lies near the centre of the Guiana shield, on the upper stretches of the River Aracena. This river marks, according to the agreement of 1920, the present boundary between Venezuela and British Guiana; Los Cielos lies on the west bank of the river and is therefore exclusively Venezuelan territory, this fact having been noted in a political memorandum to the Colonial Office in 1921.

  The Department of Atomic Energy has expressed interest in this reported carnotite find and its source of origin. Much depends on whether the latter lies in British Colonial or in Venezuelan territory, and the geographical position of Los Cielos leaves either possibility open. Mr. West made no statement on this point, but the fact that the material was sent to London and not, as has been noted, to the appropriate Venezuelan Ministry gives cause for a certain optimism. A letter from the Ministry of Supply was duly drafted and despatched on April 30th, (Copy F attached), offering to buy from Mr. West all ores and concentrates from the Los Cielos lode of comparable quality to the sample and also offering financial and other assistance towards the satisfactory development of the site. To this, as to all our other communications, no reply was received.


  . . . . . . At this point, the telephone on Emerald’s desk buzzed discreetly; he placed Featherby’s report in a drawer, pushed the drawer shut and picked up the receiver. “Emerald here.”

  “Good morning, Colonel. Featherby speaking. You’ve received our report?”

  “Yes,” said Emerald cautiously.

  “Good. This is a closed line, by the way; we can talk quite freely. A further item of information has just come through which you may be glad to have.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “Yes. The Foreign Office reports that a Robert West took out naturalisation papers in the Argentine in 1939. The stated profession was that of mining engineer. West’s a common name, of course, buL . . it seems quite likely. . . wouldn’t you say?”

  “Send me the details,” said Emerald cheerfully.

  “At once. Just a small pointer, I’m afraid. . . May even be a false alarm.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that,” said Emerald. “We’ll trace him all right—I’m absolutely confident. You can expect a detailed report by the end of the week.”

  “Well, that’s fine,” said Mr. Featherby. “Good morning to you.”

  He rang off. Emerald weighed the receiver thoughtfully in his hand for a few moments, then replaced it; he took a key from his pocket, opened the drawer (which was fitted with a self-locking device), and took out the report once more. Adjusting his spectacles delicately on the bridge of his nose, he began again from the beginning. He did this because he believed in being thorough, not because the Security Officer’s call had perturbed him at all. He didn’t feel that the actual tracing of Robert West was likely to present any outstanding difficulties; it was one of the things that E.I.E. did as a matter of routine and with extreme efficiency. That didn’t worry him at all.

  And as things turned out, his confidence was justified. E.I.E.’s representative for Venezuela, Bolivia, and Colombia, a mild-mannered Spaniard called Diego Ortega Corchon, was able to meet Trout and Fedora at the airport the following day, to escort them into Caracas and, safely ensconced in their hotel room, to give them quite as full a report of Mr. West’s past activities as they required.

  “No trouble at all,” he said, lighting an enormous puro with a self-deprecatory air. “Mr. West came here from the Argentine some three years back. He was an important man, it seems, in the Peronist Ministry of Mines, but when the dictatorship fell he thought it a good idea to get out. He had a considerable sum of money already banked here in Caracas, which suggests that he was prepared for that eventuality. No?”

  “How much?” asked Trout.

  “Enough for that question never to have been asked. He stayed in Caracas for quite a while along with Peron and his crowd, and that group are pretty heavy spenders. He gambled a lot, I’m told, especially at cards. Then he took an executive directorship in an organisation called the Galdos combine, a mining firm with quite a tough reputation, tough even for the very primitive parts where it operates. It handles diamonds mostly, together with other precious stones and a certain amount of crude asphalt. West went upcountry to the sierras in the east, the part we call La Gran Sdbana, but I don’t know why or what for. Diamond mining companies are inclined to be secretive in these matters, and it’s very difficult to get reliable information—even from the employees themselves.”

  “That doesn’t matter so much,” said Trout. “But what sort of a fellow . . .?”

  “I have a photograph,” said Don Diego, producing it. “Though not a very good one, unfortunately. I understand that he was considerably taller and thinner than the photograph suggests. Also, that he normally wore a moustache of the clipped, military variety. The shot was taken shortly after his arrival at Caracas and he may then have had some vague idea of disguising himself, though of course there wasn’t the slightest necessity. He was then fifty-two years of age. The lady sitting beside him is his wife.”

  “Ah? Indeed?” said Trout, examining the photograph with renewed interest.

  “Yes. An Argentinian lady. Gracia Hernandez is her name.”

  “Any children?”

  “None. They were married a matter of weeks before leaving Buenos Aires. She’s said to have been his mistress for some time before that, though that’s only hearsay.”

  “Hot stuff,” said Trout, with regrettable though typical vulgarity. “And where is she now?”

  “Why, I presume in Los Cielos. She went there with him, anyway.”

  Trout handed back the photograph with a certain reluctance. “When West was here . .. was it the general impression that, professionally, he knew what he was about?”

  “Oh yes. He could hardly have obtained a director’s post with the Galdos combine, otherwise.” Don Diego smiled, and blew out a fat grey smoke ring that lolled in the air as on a cushion. “I should say that he knew what he was about from whatever angle one chose to look at it. Not just professionally, either.”

  “Yes, well, there it is,” said Trout. “He must have slipped up somewhere—that’s all.”

  He was thinking of Featherby’s report—which Emerald had, in due course, summoned him to read— and of its final paragraph:

  . . . As was verbally explained to you, brief newspaper reports in the Caracas daily press on the nth and 12th of May (Copies J, K, L, M, N, attached) , recorded the death by drowning of Mr. West in the Aracena River.

  (See Geographical Note.)

  Hendricks arrived half-an-hour after Don Diego had left and at precisely that minute when he was supposed to arrive. Somehow, he gave the impression that punctuality was to him as purity to Sir Galahad; looking at him, it was difficult to imagine him arriving at any given destination a minute too late or thirty seconds too early. But he was, after all, a mining engineer, a dealer in mathematical precision, and beyond all shadow of doubt brilliant at his job. Emerald would never have picked out anyone who wasn’t. He was the one who was going to do the work, and both Trout and Fedora knew it; they were going along purely in the capacity of nursemaids.

  That is not to decry an honourable profession. Being a nursemaid can be as trying and dangerous a business as any other, and the fate of Robert West seemed to indicate that on this particular trip it might be unusually so. Therefore the Executive Branch of E.I.E. examined with great care—though not obviously —this latest addition to their number. Hendricks was of more than middle height and thinnish, being in fact of much the same size and build as Fedora; though he was considerably older, probably in the late forties. He wore a neat grey linen suit with a blue silk tie; the only apparent concession that he had made to the heat of the day was to adopt a gleaming white panama hat with a multi-coloured band. He looked to be thoroughly accustomed to the tropics; he was brown as a walnut and his eyes crinkled at the corners into little protective webs of skin.

  “They gave me a briefing this morning,” he said, as soon as they had settled down into armchairs’ with a month’s supply of beer stacked on the cane table before them. “Maybe you’d like me to run over it for you, to make sure I have it all straight?”

  Trout nodded. “That might be a good idea,” he said.

  “Then . . . as I understand it, this guy West has reported a carnotite find at an unidentified site in the vicinity of Los Cielos. Last month, he died under suspicious circumstances. My job is to examine the area concerned, to locate the site if I can, and to write a full report to your people who’ll hand it on to the Atomic Energy Commission in London. You gentlemen are here to prevent the same thing happening to me as may have happened to West. As I see it, that’s it in a nutshell.”

  “You know that area?” asked Trout.

  “No, I don’t. Nearest I’ve been to it is Boa Vista up the Rio Branco. From what I hear, though, it’ll be more like the Cordillera de la Costa way beyond Barcelona, but wilder and higher and hotter. Hot as hell, even though it’s high; it’s only five degrees from the Equator.”

  “Hotter than this?” said Fedora weakly, reaching for the beer.

  “This
is cool” said Hendricks. “Why, here in Caracas it’s real pleasant. Wouldn’t say that today it’s gone over eighty-five.”

  “I see,” said Fedora. “Hotter than this.”

  “Los Cielos is really the outback. We’re going by car, I take it? . . . Yes, well, it’ll be a six-day trip or thereabouts; that’s if none of the bridges are down. No reason why they should be, this time of year. The Galdos gang runs a lorry out there monthly, so the road’s in good condition—by the local standards. That’s to say that for nine months of the year it’s at any rate passable.”

  Hendricks had the curious habit of hardly ever looking at the person he was addressing, but at an imaginary horizon somewhere beyond that person’s right shoulder. Fedora, working away at his old game of adding up the numerous intangibles that reveal an individual’s character, was so far quite favourably impressed; but there was still something about Hendricks that compelled him to make certain mental reservations. He was by no means clear in his mind, though, as to what that something was. “Do you know anything,” he asked politely, “about the Galdos combine?”