by John Gardner
Slowly they began to move and, as the pile of rifles and automatic weapons grew, Impato’s men started to emerge into the soft evening light.
*
Suffix did not like it. There were no people on the streets. No police or traffic. But perhaps that was simply the result of the first wave. They were moving at speed, coming right into the city now. He noticed that General Bushway, sitting behind him in the Land-Rover, was frowning.
“I’ve lost contact with Mr Tilitson’s force, sir.” From the radio operator.
The Land-Rover, leading five truckloads of troops, turned into the Square of Independence. Here there was a more normal scene. The four or five lines of big, polished motor cars parked in front of the residence. Police at the door.
Bushway groped on the floor for the loudhailer as they pulled up, the troops leaping out, going to their places without waiting for orders.
One of the policemen drew his revolver, but Bushway had already started to speak.
“You know me. General Bushway: Commander of the Army. I am here on government business. You will assist my troops.”
The policeman returned his revolver to its holster. They stood aside while Bushway and Suffix, escorted by some ten men, ran up the steps and through the entrance.
In the hall, Bushway drew his revolver. Suffix followed suit. From behind the reception room doors came the noise of a party in full flood.
Bushway took a deep breath and placed his hands on the doorknobs.
“Right,” he shouted, throwing the doors open and striding into the room.
They were carried forward by the momentum of their first steps, taking three paces into the room before coming to a halt.
In the centre of the reception room was a table. On the table stood a large tape recorder linked to four loudspeaker units placed near the doors. From the loudspeakers came the noises of cheerful revelry.
At the far end of the room, alone, sat Boysie Oakes sipping a large brandy.
“Nice of you to drop in.” Boysie grinned.
“I know you.” Suffix’s voice echoed against the noise from the tape. “You’re that bloody fool Oakes.”
15
The light was dimming in the square outside: a grey-out, grainy in texture, silence and tension almost splitting the eardrums. The scrape of a boot; the clank of a weapon against concrete.
Suffix’s picked men ringed the front of the residence, statue still, at the ready: great, black aggressive shapes who could spit fire and death at a couple of centimetres squeeze in their forefingers.
The police had moved to one side. They watched the residence, keeping their eyes purposefully away from the ranks of polished parked cars. The car doors were opening: slowly, without noise.
They came from the interiors of the vehicles like cats. Chosen personally by Colonel Impato, shod in rubber-soled shoes, wearing combat suits and helmets, unhung with any extra equipment: they fanned out, away from the cars in which they had been hidden, creeping softly in towards their victims.
The final assault was as silent as the first appearance of Impato’s ghost squad. In a last scurry they came up behind the stationary insurgents, choosing their individual quarries, homing in to prod their backs with sub-machine gun or automatic muzzles, or to prick the necks, in line with the jugular vein: knife points against flesh.
Suffix’s men were in no position to argue. One by one weapons clattered to the ground. There were similar noises coming from the side and back of the residence where the same action was being taken.
The police joined in the job of herding Suffix’s men into the centre of the square, away from the collected pile of weapons. The tension had begun to ease, though four of Impato’s men crouched ready, near the door of the residence. The strain returned for a second with the echo of the first shot from deep inside the house.
In the reception room the moment was frozen. Suffix and Bushway inside the door; their ten men, bewildered, behind them; the blare from the tape; Boysie leaning back on his chair.
One of the doors, to the side, on the right, opened and Mostyn walked coolly into the room. He crossed to the tape recorder and banged down the Stop key.
“That’s better. One can hear oneself think now. I suggest you drop your weapons, you are covered from behind.”
A dozen Etszikan soldiers had insinuated themselves through the doors and were beginning to prod Bushway and Suffix’s bodyguards out of the room.
Suffix looked round at the sound of movement. He shrugged and let his pistol drop. It hung, swinging like a lazy pendulum from its lanyard.
Bushway stood unmoving. Mostyn altered his position slightly so that the muzzle of his automatic could be seen above the tape recorder. The doors behind Bushway and Suffix were closed.
“The gun, General.” Mostyn’s bark had a bite sharp enough to cause the African a quick reflex. His pistol dropped on its lanyard, dangling at his knees.
Boysie carefully put down his glass: fingers shaking. He removed his left hand from the inside of his jacket, revealing the stubby Diamondback which he transferred to his right hand before standing up.
“Oh, what trouble you have caused,” said Mostyn.
“By what right …?” began Suffix, then he changed his mind. “I suppose you’re a gunboat?”
Mostyn smiled. “Something of the sort. Troubleshooter they call it these days. Americanism, but a vivid word—troubleshooter.” He rolled it, savouring the word’s flavour. “You’re in trouble, comrade Suffix. How many sides have you got to your coat?”
“I’m apolitical. Just a hireable blunt instrument and a military brain.”
Bushway slowly turned his large head. “I demand to see President Anthony.”
“You’ll see plenty of President Anthony before you’re through.” Boysie had moved up to Mostyn. Where the hell was Colefax, he thought. They had promised to come down and take this pair off their hands once the square and residence were cleared.
Mostyn walked up to Suffix, standing directly in front of him. Boysie was behind Mostyn’s left shoulder.
The clanking of the fans; Bushway sweating: a tic tightening in Suffix’s cheek, a coiling of the muscles. Boysie should have diagnosed the symptoms; Mostyn certainly should have recognised them: a man under pressure, curling, tightening himself for action.
When he did move, Suffix went like some beautifully precisioned piece of machinery. Both hands flashed up together. The left palm jabbing Mostyn in the chest, sending him sliding backwards on the polished floor. The right palm went sideways, catching Bushway’s shoulder. The General going with the push, his feet slipping, the heavy body falling.
In the stranded second, Boysie got a lot of images. Suffix shouting “General!” Mostyn’s face, a blur of shock as he slithered back. Bushway’s eyes flicking sharply: left, right, left, right, right. The head turning. The pistol on the lanyard. Suffix’s boots on the oak floor, thudding. His hand drawing up his lanyard as he made for the door.
The Diamondback came up. Boysie felt the kickback and saw wood splintering from the door as Suffix jerked at the handle: the door to Boysie’s right.
Mostyn shouting: “Boysie. Bushway.”
The great black hand closing over the pistol on the floor. The thump of Mostyn’s automatic and he fired from a sitting position behind Boysie.
Bushway’s scream as the bullet ripped and shattered the General’s shoulder.
“Get Suffix. Stop him, Boysie. Go, Boy …” Mostyn yelling as though to a dog, on his feet again now and leaping for the groaning General: not to offer aid but to get the lanyard from around his neck.
Boysie felt the vague tremor of unnatural worry behind the gout of anxiety in his stomach. He was sliding and jumping towards the door, stupidly concerned that he did not know the geography of the building.
Through the door a passage ran at right angles. The noise of Suffix’s feet to the right, out of sight, round the sharp corner, going left. Boysie felt Mostyn behind him.
�
��This way.”
“Careful at the corner, Boysie.”
Boysie skidded to a halt and jabbed his gun barrel out from the wall’s angle.
Nothing.
Mostyn was carrying two guns, his own and Bushway’s pistol. There were more feet behind them, coming down the passage. Colefax and two men.
“Bushway. Wounded in the reception room,” Mostyn shouted.
Colefax veered towards the room, one of his companions yelled that the passage led to the garden.
Boysie jumped from the angle of the wall. There was a short length of passage and then another corner, right angled, going right. As he began to move there was a shot from behind the corner and the sound of breaking wood.
Boysie dug his heels in, braking, but he was moving too fast. He rounded the corner, putting out his hand to steady himself against the far wall.
In front, a door with the latch blown off, pushed open. Through the door, the darkening garden, part-lit from the lights of the residence. Going like some priest-pursued devil was the shape of Suffix, pounding across the lawn.
Boysie leaned against the door jamb. Heart pumping, a tightening of the forehead, chest heaving, he lifted his arm and aimed over the foresight. He could still see Suffix. Squeeze. The kick. Explosion. Acrid smell. Shot went left, he had felt himself pull away. Left hand up, closing over the right. Steadying. Suffix almost blurred now, merging with the night.
Squeeze again. High.
Suffix leaping into the air and disappearing into a dark clump fifty or sixty yards away.
Right ear slammed by the noise of Bushway’s pistol in Mostyn’s hand crashing twice.
To the right, outside, there was some kind of patio with a stone seat. Boysie heaved himself towards it, hitting the dirt, as he heard the thump of a bullet into the wall above. He had the impression of a flash from where Suffix disappeared. Round the corner of the seat, he pointed at where the flash had been and fired twice.
Mostyn was beside him, huddled behind the seat.
Two more flashes and bullets punching, tearing into the doorway they had vacated. Mostyn put one round in the direction of the flashes.
Boysie tried to do some quick arithmetic to see how many rounds he had left. But the brain would not work. He felt in his pocket, removing the box of cartridges, flicking open the chamber, ejecting and reloading in the dark.
Mostyn breathed hard beside him. “Bleeder’s over there. Wish to hell they’d get some lights going.”
Boysie grunted. Then. “Hey, Frobisher and Pesterlicker?”
“What about Frobisher and Pesterlicker?”
Two more shots from across the black garden. Mostyn fired once.
“Who are they?” Boysie flinched at the pistol shot.
“Who did they say they were?”
Boysie finished reloading and closed the chamber. It made a solid reassuring click.
Another flash and a ricochet very close. Boysie sighted carefully on the flash, held in his mind, and fired twice.
“They said they were Investigation Branch: Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation.”
“Then that’s who they were.”
“But Colefax said he was Investigation Branch. Ministry of Transport.”
“Prove he wasn’t.”
“Your people?”
“Could be, Oaksie, could be. Where’re those bloody lights?”
“And who are you these days?”
“At the moment I represent HM Government. The Foreign Office.”
There seemed to be a hiss as the lights came on. A spreading flood of illumination from the garden arcs.
For a second they were both blinded by it, then Boysie saw him, silhouetted on the garden wall not sixty feet from them. Both their hands came up, but before they could fire there was a rip of sub-machine gun burst from above.
Suffix appeared to be lifted into the air, spinning like a humming top.
Their ears still sang from the noise of the sub-machine gun, but the crunch, as Suffix fell back onto the top of the wall, was clearly audible. He flopped over the stone, then, hesitating, dropped with a double thud into the garden.
Looking up, Boysie saw Mr Colefax leaning from an upper window, a Sterling sub-machine gun protruding. Mr Colefax was smiling.
“That’s the Board of Trade for you,” said Mostyn.
*
“What coup d’état, darlings?” asked Snowflake Brightwater. “We know nothing of a coup d’état.”
“We have been playing strip poker with your friends,” added Ada.
“Yes, we stripped and they …” Aida grinned, she was hanging on to the arm of Dacre who looked a happier man.
“All velly ingenious.” Alma had an inscrutable smile going.
“I heard some shooting but didn’t like to worry the girls.” Griffin grinned.
“There are still one or two things …” Boysie turned to Mostyn.
“All in good time, laddie, all in good time.”
“You set up this whole deal to knock out a coup?”
“To puncture a putsch.” Mostyn’s eyes narrowed. “I set it up on instructions. Averted a full scale fight-in and HMG is not involved.”
“But you went to all the trouble of …”
“The idea was put to me in the first place. Think, lad, think. We’ll see him when we get to London anyway. The fellow who fingered your old man. You with me?”
Boysie’s brow crinkled.
*
Mostyn pressed the bell at the door of the mews flat and they waited. It was ten o’clock in the morning, four days later, and they had come straight from Heathrow: a warm morning with sunshine painting the streets. London bright.
Nobody replied to the first ring so Mostyn pressed again.
After a minute there was a shuffling from inside. A bolt being drawn back. The door opened and a fat lady clad in carpet slippers, with a jazzy apron over her dress, was revealed.
“Yes?” As though she was afraid they wanted money.
“We’ve come to see the Admiral.” Condescension dripping from Mostyn’s lips.
“He’s gone.” She pronounced it ‘gorn’.
“Where?” Icily.
“South Africa. Yesterday. Unexpected. Left me a note. I clean for him.”
“I see. May we come in for a moment?”
She looked uncertain so Mostyn dug his hand in his pocket and presented her with a piece of plastic. Boysie tried to get a glimpse but failed.
The fat lady was impressed by what she read on the piece of plastic.
Mostyn led the way into the small sitting room where they had drunk champagne on the foundation of Air Apparent. Nothing had changed.
“Sly bugger.” Mostyn looked around.
“You mean the Chief?”
“Who else?”
“Not the Chief.”
“Drunken old bastard.” Mostyn was annoyed. “Yes, of course the Chief. I mean it. He’s always been a bit of a fascist. Covered it by saying he was true blue, but the seeds were always there. Brain a bit gone with drink, but he was still agile. He moved pretty sharpish. South Africa.”
“How did you find out?”
“He came to the wrong man, didn’t he?”
“You?”
“He brought me the blueprint of Air Apparent. More or less the same way that I brought it to you, only he named names and places. One of the places was Otuka. He knew exactly how to fix the landings and refuellings. He had a lot of contacts. Making a fortune out of the arms deals. I, being who I am, took the whole parcel to the Foreign Office. They already knew about Bushway and his plot. They also knew Suffix was in town with a shopping list. In the end they gave me a team and told me to get on with it. I came to you.”
“Bloody hell.” Boysie scratched his head. “You can never tell with people, can you?”
“I’m sorry he’s gone. For your sake.”
“My sake?”
Mostyn crossed the room to where the Chief’s old souvenir photographs hung. He
unhooked one and passed it to Boysie.
The Chief, a good deal younger, sat in the centre. He was in uniform and flanked by some fifteen or sixteen younger men in civilian clothes. The printed caption read Admiralty I Department (Europe) 1936. Boysie looked blankly.
“Recognise anyone, lad?”
He shook his head. “Only the Chief.”
“Look at the gentleman third from his left.”
Across the years Commander Robert Oakes looked out of the faded picture at his son.
“Jesus.”
“He knew.” Tight lipped, unusual for Mostyn. “One night, oh a couple of years after you joined the Department, he was in his cups. He told me you looked like your father.”
“Sod it. Sod it.” Boysie held the picture towards Mostyn.
“Keep it. For old times’ sake keep it.”
Boysie’s hand came up and the photograph spun viciously towards the wastepaper basket. “I don’t want the bloody thing. I want to work. Get on with it. Clear the bastards out. I don’t want to think about it any more and if you ever mention it to me again, Mostyn, I’ll do you. I’ll bloody do you.”
Mostyn nodded. “One thing,” he said. “If he does come back, I shall have to tell you first.”
“You do that. You bloody well do that.”
GRACE NOTE
One week later. Summer. London. Boysie’s flat. Early evening.
He came out of the bathroom, whistling and expectant. Dinner with Snowflake Brightwater with no dramas or impending dramas. He smelled of Aramis and looked healthily smart. The brown double-breasted; a cream shirt and gold tie.
Boysie straightened his tie and shot his cuffs. The doorbell rang.
It was Alma, looking lovely but sheepish.
“Hallo, dark oriental beauty.”
Alma blushed. She had always been the most shy of the three girls.
“I have come to confess, to give and to share my winnings.”
She slunk into the room.
“Confess?”
“Ada and Aida. They had cards, yes.”
