by John Gardner
It was around two in the morning when I got back to the apartment. I had noticed the Rolls poised elegantly across the road as I paid off the cab. The chauffeur, all done up in one of those grey uniforms they have made at Harrods, was waiting by my door, cap in hand.
‘Miss Havisham sent the Rolls, sir.’
It was too enigmatic for me, but I knew the Miss Havisham bit had to be phoney. I’m not illiterate. The great names of fiction don’t go unremembered in my mind. Norman Conquest, Rockfist Rogan, Stanley Black. And Miss Havisham.
‘I don’t know a Miss Havisham.’ I used my smile-when-you-say-that-to-me voice.
‘I’m sorry, Mr. Upsdale, but Miss Havisham will be most put out if you don’t come.’
‘Breeze off.’
I was still smiling when he hit me.
Chapter Two — Have You Ever Heard Mission Bells Ringing?
It was not at all pleasant. I mean I’ve done it plenty of times on the printed page. Graphically. Beautifully. Sharp. I remember that on one occasion Gascoigne experienced a flash of brilliant light behind the eyes before the curtain of starless darkness shrouded him. How’s that for great descriptive prose?
You can write about it and make it sound vivid, but you have to experience it to really know. There was no flash of brilliant light. Just — now you see things, now you don’t.
I came round once in the airplane. There was some faded sensation in the car and a brief knowledge that the mode of transport had been changed. My head was completely detachable, I knew that. After this I would have no difficulty in getting work. On Blackpool’s Golden Mile they would display me as Rex Upsdale doing his celebrated impersonation of Charles I — after the execution.
It was a small aircraft. An executive jet like you see on the television commercials. The chauffeur was bending over me looking concerned.
‘Mr. Upsdale, I’m sorry, but you had to come, sir.’
The words for an especially filthy reply formed themselves in my mind but there was no way of making the sentence come out.
‘Just close your eyes, sir. You’ll be feeling better soon.’
I obeyed. If he had told me to leap from the aircraft I would have obeyed. Believe me there is no better way of getting instant acquiescence than bopping someone over the nut.
I slept. Somewhere along the line we landed and they carried me for a distance. Then I slept again. When I woke properly there was just a nasty lump on the back of my head and a dull throbbing ache. I was lying on a bed. A large bed in a pleasant room which could have belonged to an hotel. It had that standard finish. Dressing table built in like the cupboards, a big mirror, television, a door half open revealing a tiled floor (a quiet shade of blue) and the edge of a bath. On the wall to my left a tolerable reproduction of Picasso’s Woman in a Blue Dress leered down. I only knew it was Woman in a Blue Dress because I had picked it out of a reference book on modern art and hung it in Gascoigne’s flat in Gascoigne Comes so the clients would think This Upsdale’s a knowledgeable cove. Knows about the art scene, what. Now, I decided Woman in a Blue Dress was an utterly repellent work, though not quite as worrying as Dali’s Premonition of Civil War which hung on the other wall. Outside the windows there were wisps of branches. Birds were singing somewhere not far away. Peace, I thought.
Then there was a tap at the door.
She was around nineteen or twenty-five, I really can’t tell any more with young girls. About five feet ten. Beautifully constructed and encased in the youth uniform: red jersey trousers, flaired from the knee down, white patent boots and a white silk shirt over which hung a long red jersey waist-coat. She seemed festooned with gold chains, had bleached hair the colour of light sand and a face which one could only describe as pert.
‘Are you okay, Mr. Upsdale? Windsor was quite upset, he hit you harder than he should.’
‘Windsor?’ I could remember Clyde and Knowles.
‘Our chauffeur. His christian name’s Charles so we have to call him by his surname.’
‘I see.’ I didn’t but it could not be helped. ‘And you are...?’ I lifted my head weakly from the pillow.
She smiled. ‘I’m Miss Havisham.’
Not the Miss Havisham joke again. ‘So where’s your mouse-eaten wedding cake? I can see your great expectations but where’s the cake.’ I can be as ironic as the next man when roused.
The smile wilted. ‘Hester Havisham. I’m your photographer.’
‘Photographer?’
‘For the assignment. I shall dazzle you with the accuracy of my f stops.’
‘You will?’
‘And dazzle Kit Styles as well I hope. Control deemed it best to have a smart bit of crumpet on this one. Take the Russian gentlemen’s minds off what is going on. Hope you like the pictures, I chose them myself. I’ve read all your books.’
‘Great.’ This was disturbing. ‘Look,’ I fished for the right words, ‘no disrespect but I’m going to be hard enough pressed looking after myself let alone taking care of a bird.’
‘Oh, but you’ve got it wrong.’ Her remarkably well-placed chest rose. ‘You see, I’m taking care of you. I’ll even be one of your instructors before we leave. I’m the real MacKoy. I’m a professional.’ She pirouetted. ‘I’m Modesty Blaize, Cat Woman, Mata Hari and Helen Twinkle rolled into one.’
‘Helen who?’
‘Twinkle. She was a girl I was at school with. Had a fantasy life with James Bond and ended up in a psychiatric ward. Doing splendid work for Oxfam now.’
‘Which is where you ought to be. You’re only a baby.’
‘I’m a Civil Servant. I carry a telescopic Bowie knife in my left B cup, a folding rifle in my right and a collapsible bow and arrow in my knickers’ pocket. Want to see?’ She gave her hips a short jerk that made me forget the agony.
‘Seriously though,’ she came over and sat on the bottom of the bed. ‘They’re just the kind of things Control would like to fit me up with. They read too many books by people like you. Honestly, Rex, they’d have my tits wired up for stereo sound if I let them.’
‘We are both going to visit Mr. Kit Styles?’ The mind was quite numb.
‘Both of us.’
‘Together?’
‘Natch.’
‘At the same time?’
‘In Moscow, and aren’t I the dolliest dolly spy you’ve ever seen?’
I started nodding again. Perhaps I would stay like that until I died. Perhaps the pressures of life and spending so much time with Gascoigne had unhinged me. That was it. I was in a well appointed clinic for the mentally sick. They might even name my complaint after me. Just like Portnoy. The Upsdale Syndrome. Immortality or bust.
‘Where are we?’ I asked, sounding like a dowager demanding information from the window of the Golden Arrow.
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Achtimacrachty House.’
‘Yes I dare say, but where?’
‘If I may make so bold,’ this bird was as quaint as they came, ‘you’re a bit thick if you can’t tell where Achtimacrachty House is.’
‘I’m convalescing from an unpleasant meeting with your man Windsor, remember? I can’t be expected to react that quickly. However, Scotland?’
‘Correct. Precise location more or less classified at present, but it’s steeped in history. Three ghosts, at least six bloody murders, Mary Queen of slept here once.’
There was a thump at the door which opened before I could disclose my readiness to receive more callers.
‘Is this one of the ghosts?’ I asked Hester Havisham. A short, muscular, barrel-chested, springy young man with very little neck, stood in the doorway. He was dressed in a track suit and held himself rigidly to attention.
I smiled weakly to show he was welcome.
‘Mr. Upsdale, sah?’ He bawled, face ruddy and eyes looking straight to the front.
‘Yes.’
‘Hopper, sah, Sarnt Hopper. I will be your instructor in physical training, unarmed combat, cliff-climbing, revolver and other small
arms. As we only have seven days I feel it would be useful if we could start directly after luncheon, sah.’
It was twenty years since I had climbed a cliff, trained physically, done any unarmed combat or fired a weapon.
‘Is it really necessary?’
‘Not only necessary but vital I would say, sah. Judgin’ by my view from here, sah, if you don’t mind my sayin so, you look most unfit. I doubt as how you would be able to knock the sugar off a moderately sized doughnut, sah. Shall we say fourteen hundred hours outside the gymnasium?’ He took a pace forward, raised himself on his toes and doubled away chanting. ‘Hup-two, hup-two, hup-two.’
‘I want to see someone in authority.’
‘Why?’ Hester looked puzzled.
‘If this is real, which I very much doubt, I do not see the point of my body being battered by a physically-motivated moron like your Sergeant Hopper. I’ve had truck with his sort before, and the experience can be most unpleasant.’
‘Oh Rex, he’s very good.’ She touched my hand. There were no scorch marks. ‘Just for me.’
‘Especially not for you. We’re obviously part of the generation gap.’ I stopped to shake my throbbing head. ‘Hester, is it on? Are we going to talk to Styles in Moscow? Tell me it’s all some complicated hoax my publishers have thought up just to spite me.’
‘It’s not a hoax, darling, whatever makes you think that? You’ve been recruited for one mission. You and I go into the field together. It’s only for the once. Control’s simply trying to take care of you. You’ve got to be fit. You’ve got to be in moderately good trim before we go. You can never tell, we might have to do some running about.’
‘We’re going to ask questions, why might we have to do running? Where’re we going to do the asking? Lenin Stadium?’
‘You can never tell.’
I clutched my head. ‘I feel pretty seedy.’
‘To tell the truth you look pretty seedy.’ She held the pause too long for it to be funny. ‘But Hopper can do wonders, even with the least promising material.’ Her eyes opened wide. ‘You’d never believe I was actually round-shouldered before Hopper put me through it.’
*
The following three days were horrific: a montage of being chased by the agile Hopper. ‘Top of the wall bars...Go...Not quick enough, back again, Mr. Upsdale. Hup-two, hup-two, hup-two. Running on the spot...BEGIN. Jumpin’ with legs openin’ and closin’ and arms raisin’...GO. Press-up position...DOWN. Twelve press-ups...Go. Hup-down, hup-down, hup-down...Top of the wall bars...GO. Back again, not quick enough, Mr. Upsdale, SAH. Now grip those bars like they were your mother-in-law’s throat. Damn me I’d be grippin’ harder if that were my mother-in-law. SAH, you’re a lily. A bloody lily, SAH. Top of the wall bars...’
The wretched sadist had me out of bed by six o’clock every morning and my feet hardly touched the ground for the rest of the day. There were brief respites on the firing range, where I found that I had forgotten all I ever knew about shooting. For one thing, I now discovered that I did not like the noise. In my flickering moments of reflection I made up my mind about the future. All I required was a small cottage, a dog and a packet of seeds. Having wasted my inheritance I should attempt to regain it through the quiet, contemplative life. The neon bustle, taxi-screaming world peopled with fictitious characters wailing their way through intrigue was definitely not for Upsdale, R.
At six each evening, Hopper handed me over to Hester Havisham for her periods of instruction which consisted of feeding me well, playing soft music and teaching me elementary Russian phrases. By some miracle, it seemed that at the age of twenty-two she spoke Russian like a native. I spoke it like a native as well — a South Sea Islander.
By the fourth day I began to get my wind and bearings. Also there was an upsurge of desire to fight back as far as Hopper was concerned. My limbs were stiff, but I started to feel the meagre benefits of being fit.
‘Control will be down in a couple of days for the final briefing,’ Hester told me on the fifth evening. Then, on the sixth morning, Hopper had both of us doing heaving exercises on a rope the thickness of an elephant’s trunk.
‘What the hell’s this for?’ I gasped between tugs.
‘Perhaps we’re going to help the Volga Boatman,’ Hester answered brightly. I had a brilliant image of Styles seated nobly in a barge while we pulled him up-stream at a jog trot asking our questions as we went.
After dinner on the seventh evening, Hester drained her glass, looked at her chunky great watch and announced. ‘Control’s waiting for us in the drawing-room.’
I half expected to see Clyde and Knowles. Clyde had the right attitude for a master mind. Instead we were greeted by a short, polished man with tight, curly, greying hair and what I took to be a permanent sneer. He rose at our entrance and held out his arms to embrace Hester.
‘Angel, lovely to see you.’ His eyes seemed to lose their diamond brilliance as he turned to me. ‘Ah. The remarkable Mr. Upsdale.’
I grinned. It was a normal reflex.
‘I’m Control. I don’t think you’ve met my colleague.’
I had not even noticed him, lurking near the long drapes at the far end of the room. A big, greying handsome man in his late forties with a smile which played around the left side of his mouth and eyes like blue chipped ice. He nodded and we shook hands.
‘Just a couple of formalities.’ Control waved us into chairs. ‘Then we can begin.’
Control’s mucker was digging into a briefcase, extracting papers.
‘You’re a remarkably trusting man, Mr. Upsdale, accepting our terms without any written documents, any contracts.’
My vision was clouded by a fine red sheen. Eventually discipline triumphed. ‘I wouldn’t trust you lot if we were betting evens on Easter falling on a Sunday. Do I have to remind you that I was brought here by force?’ It sounded unutterably pompous.
‘Force?’ Control looked bemused. His nameless colleague leaned forward.
‘Windsor got a little handy. I didn’t want to bother you with it.’
‘In the old days I would have...’ Control stopped and turned his attention back to me. ‘I’m sorry you had the trouble. No hard feelings I trust?’
‘If the financial side…’ I began. Talking this way could end me face down in the gutter on Gorky Street with the back of my head missing. The prospect did not appeal, but neither did the one in which I ended up in some attic with a small bottle of methylated spirits and a bag of onion flavoured crisps.
Control looked at the paper which his assistant with the ice eyes had handed him. ‘I think the terms are in order. You do as we ask regarding Kit Styles. In turn we pay off all existing debts including current income tax liabilities and settle a sum of £10,000 tax free on you, to be paid into the friendly bank of your choice. Right?’
They say every man has his price.
‘That’s what your man Clyde agreed.’
‘Just sign here and here then, laddie, and you have your heart’s desire.’
I took the two documents from him and did a fast scrutiny test. It looked okay so I gave them my autograph. ‘Right. Where are these questions you want me to ask Styles?’
Control looked surprised. His mate had a positively sheepish expression.
‘Questions? What questions would those be?’
‘The questions compounded by your top brains and the psychiatrists. The ones I have got to ask Styles. The ones that will give you answers from which you’ll evaluate how much…’ There was an unpleasant dry sensation in the back of my throat. Hester smiled into space. Control looked blank and the Third Man gazed at the ceiling.
‘You’ll have to ask questions initially, of course. After all, you’re supposed to be a journalist. But I don’t really think it matters what the questions are.’
‘I’ll think up some lu-lus.’ Hester was showing a lot of thigh. For a fleeting second I wondered if it was meant to keep my mind off the truth which built rapidly into a thunderhead in
my mind.
‘Let’s get this straight. I’m being hired to act as a journalist because Kit Styles has said he’ll be interviewed by me.’
‘Correct.’ Control steepled his fingers but it did not make him look saintly.
‘So when we get to see him, Hester takes the pictures and I ask a special set of questions and bring back the answers to you.’
Control laughed. A jackass braying in the night. ‘Incorrect.’
‘Then the deal’s off. That’s what I fixed with Clyde.’
‘Sorry, Mr. Upsdale.’ The one with the left-handed smile and ice blue eyes spoke. ‘The paper you’ve just signed stipulates that you will do as we ask regarding Kit Styles, not what Clyde may have asked.’
‘And you’re asking?’
‘Clyde should have told you. He really should.’ Control looked almost benign. ‘You’re going to bring Styles out of Moscow. You’re going to kidnap him.’
Chapter Three — Come Fly With Me
Their argument was pretty strong.
‘No,’ I said firmly.
‘Official Secrets Act,’ they replied.
‘No. No. No.’ I shouted.
‘Several years of incarceration in durance vile.’
‘I absolutely refuse.’
‘Christmas Day in jail with that stodgy pudding. Play havoc with your bowels.’
‘The idea of doing the Styles thing’s playing havoc with my bowels.’
‘Ah, but not simply one Christmas Day. Ten. Maybe twenty. Old before your time.’
‘Twenty years without female companionship. Think of that.’ (From Hester, who else?)
‘I will not do anything as insane and idiotic as help to get Kit Styles out of Moscow. It couldn’t be done, anyway.’
‘You want to bet?’
‘I’m not a gambling man.’
‘I dare say but this time you’ve got to be. You assist in this operation or we nail you.’
‘To the gate at Wormwood Scrubs we nail you.’
How can you argue against odds like that? What would my erstwhile companion Gascoigne have done? My sainted aunt, he’d have been in there, brain as agile as a nimble flea. Fists flailing, his Colt Detective Special tucked away in the Bianchi upside-down shoulder holster and Hester straddled over the nearest Dunlopillo. Okay, if that was how they wanted it. I’d play at being Gascoigne.
