by Len Deighton
There was in the house no trace of femininity: no flowers, cushions, domestic animals, perfumed soaps, and virtually no pictures or ornaments.
I was not a prisoner in the house. That had been explained to me several times. I merely had to wait until the plane returned. I had the idea that any suggestion about taking the one and only bicycle or walking due east would be met with pleasant smiling affirmative-ridden explanations that meant no. So I didn't make any suggestions like that. I tried to act like a happy healthy well-adjusted human, who likes playing secret agents in an unheated Scottish castle, but who occasionally needs a nice long walk. They understood that all right: they were nice long walk sort of people.
Chapter Sixteen
The 'retreat before combat option' is only available to land forces with intact flanking units. The 'retreat before combat option' is available to all naval units at sea at all times.
RULES. 'TACWARGAME'. STUDIES CENTRE. LONDON
I HAD BEEN given cramped rooms, almost circular in shape, at the top of the north tower. Above me, in the conical roof, there was the endless gurgling of the water tanks. Before it was properly light I heard Mason's peremptory rap upon the bathroom door. 'Hot water,' he called.
'Leave it there.'
'I need the kettle for the others.'
Outside the night was still dark enough to see the stars. I sighed and went down the iron stairs to the bathroom. There was no electricity, a fact I confirmed by clicking the light switch half a dozen times. Mason knocked at the door again. 'Coming,' I said, 'coming.' A dog began to howl from the courtyard.
The light from the glazed slit window was just sufficient for me to see a white rectangle on the floor near the door. I picked it up. Mason rapped again and I put the folded sheet of paper on the washstand while I unlocked the door.
'Locked doors?' said Mason. His manner conveyed all the condescension of a man who had been working while others slept. 'Who are you frightened of?'
'The fairies,' I said.
'Where do you want it?' Mason said, but before I could decide he'd poured the hot water into the washbasin.
'Thanks.'
'If you want more, you'll have to come down to the kitchen. The cold's working.' He turned the tap to show me what cold water was, and then closed it off again. Mason was like that.
He looked around the room to see how untidy it was. Toliver had put shaving kit, pyjamas and shirts and underwear in the chest, but now these items were distributed around the bathroom. Mason sniffed. He looked for a moment at the folded sheet of paper, too, but he made no remark.
When he'd gone, I again locked the door. I unfolded the sheet of paper. It had been torn from a school exercise book by the look of it. The message had been typewritten on a machine that badly needed a new ribbon. Some of the characters were little more than indentations:
You're making our newly arrived friend very uneasy. I don't have to tell you he's Remoziva's A.D.C., but he insists that everyone be coy about it. Hence the charades this evening. Did you meet him? It sounds as if it was some time when you worked for us — late 'fifties? — a conference he thinks.
Someone should tell the old man about this. I don't think he'll like it. I can't go, and using the phone here would be too risky. But if you took your usual long walk and got a bit lost you could get as far as the phone box at Croma village. Just tell them about Erikson and say that saracen confirms it. If they give you instructions for me, wait till we're all together and then ask Toliver or Mason where you ran buy some French cigarettes. I will then offer you a packet with three cigarettes in it, so you'll know who I am. You might think this is all going a bit far, but I know these boys and I'm staying covert — even to you.
They're all touchy now while Erikson is here, so leave by the kitchen garden and the paddock and keep to the south side of the big rocks. Skip breakfast, I've left some sandwiches for you in the old greenhouse. You could always say you made them last night. Keep to the south of the peninsula, there's a footbridge on that side of Angel Gap. It looks rickety but it will hold you. Head for the cottage with the collapsed roof, you can see the bridge from there. The road is four miles beyond (running north/south). The post office is on that road. Turn right on the load and it's the first house you come to. The box is on the far side — take coins with you. Keep moving, I can't guarantee these boy scouts won't follow.
And if you think they would hesitate to knock you off to make their plan work, think again. They are dangerous. Burn this light away. I'll be around if you run into problems getting away this morning.
I didn't remember the Russian skinhead. But if he was from Russian Naval Staff (Security Directorate) he could have been at any one of a dozen Joint Security conferences I'd attended in the 'fifties. If he was from the G.R.U., the chances we'd met were considerably greater. It was all getting too rich for my blood, and I wasn't any longer on salary for this kind of action. If Soviet General Staff Directorate were joining Toliver's troop, they'd put his boy scouts into long trousers and tell them about girls. And I didn't want to be around when it happened.
I read the note again, very carefully, and then tore it into small pieces. In a remote country house like this flushing it down the toilet was not good enough — it needs only one man-hole cover lifted between here and the septic tank.
I burned the paper in the sink when I'd finished washing and shaving but it left scorch marks that I could not completely erase with soap. I started to shave while the water was still warm. To say I didn't like it was an understatement. If they were going to get rid of me, a secret note — that I must destroy — advising me to take a chance on a rickety footbridge in a snowstorm… that might be the perfect way to arrange it.
But doctors can't pass a street accident, nor dips an open handbag, coppers can't pass a door with a broken lock, Jesuits can't pass sin in the making, everyone falls prey to their training. The idea of Erikson coming off a submarine weighed heavily upon me. And it would stay that way until I contacted Dawlish's office via the local engineers, as he'd so thoughtfully explained the latest system. I knew that even if I spent all morning thinking about it I would eventually try to find that damned post office phone, but I couldn't help thinking that: if Toliver had failed to bring that line of communication under his control or surveillance he was a darn sight less efficient than he'd so far shown himself to be.
Perhaps I should have passed up the post office, and the sandwiches too, and evolved a completely different plan of action, but 1 couldn't think of anything better.
I went down into the hall. It was a gloomy place with amputated pieces of game adorning the walls: lions, tigers, leopards and cheetahs joined in a concerted yawn. An elephant's foot was artfully adapted to hold walking-sticks and umbrellas. There were fishing-rods and gun cases, too. I was tempted to go armed but it would slow me down. I contented myself with borrowing a donkey jacket and a scarf and went through the servants' corridor into the pantry. There was a smell of wet dogs and the sound of them barking. I could hear the others at breakfast. I recognized the voices of Toliver, Wheeler and Mason and I waited to hear the voice of Erikson before moving on.
I welcomed the blizzard. The wind roared against the back of the house, and made the windows kaleidoscopes of scurrying' white patterns. It would take me two hours, perhaps more, to Angel Gap. I buttoned up tight.
The south of the peninsula was the high side. It was the best route if I did not stumble over the cliff edge in the snow storm. The other coastline was a ragged edge of deep gullies, inlets and bog that would provide endless detours for someone like me who didn't know the geography, and no problems for pursuers who did.
I didn't go directly into the kitchen garden, for I would have been in full view of anyone at the stove. I went down the corridor into the laundry room and from there across the yard to the barn. Using that as cover, I made my way along the garden path behind the raspberry canes and along the high wall of the kitchen garden. I stopped behind the shed to have a look rou
nd. The wind was blowing at gale force and already the house was only a grey shape in the flying snow.
The greenhouse was not one of those shiny aluminium and polished-glass affairs you see outside the garden shops on the by-pass. This was an ancient, wooden-framed monster nearly fifty feet long. Its glass was dark grey with greasy dirt and it was difficult to see into it. I pushed the door open. It creaked, and I saw my sandwiches on the potting bench, conspicuously near the door. It was a shambles inside: old and broken flower pots, dead plants and a false ceiling of spiders' webs entrapping a thousand dead flies. Outside, the wind howled and thumped the loose panes, while whirling snow pressed little white noses, against the glass. I didn't reach for the sandwiches, I froze, suddenly aware that: I was not alone. There was someone in the greenhouse, someone standing unnaturally still.
'Mr Armstrong!' It was a mocking voice.
A figure in a dirty white riding mac stepped out from behind a stack of old wooden boxes. My eyes went to the shotgun carried casually under arm, and only then up to the eyes of Sara Shaw.
'Miss Shaw.'
'Life is full of surprises, darling. Have you come for your sandwiches?' Her coat shoulders were quite dry, she'd been waiting a long time for me.
'Yes,' I said.
"Last night's pork, and one round of cheese.'
'I didn't know you were here, even;'
'That building worker's coat suits you, you know.' The smile froze on her face, and I turned to sec someone coming from the kitchen door. 'Mason, the little bastard must have seen me,' she said.
It was Mason. He was bent into the wind, hurrying after us as fast as his little legs could carry him. She had her left hand under the shotgun's wooden foregrip and raised it level.
Mason came into the greenhouse like there was no door. In his fist he had one of those little Astra automatics with a two-inch barrel extender. It was just the sort of gun I would have expected Mason to choose: about thirteen ounces total weight, and small enough to go into a top pocket.
'Where did you get that?' said Sara. She laughed. 'Have you discovered the Christmas crackers already?"
But no one who has seem a.22 fired at close range will smile into its barrel. Except maybe Mickey Spillane. I didn't laugh and neither did Mason. He pointed the gun at Sara and reached out for her shotgun.
'Give it to him,' I said. 'Don't make headlines.'
Mason took the gun and, using one hand, he undid the catch and broke it open. He gripped the stock under his arm while he removed the shotgun cartridges, and then let it drop to the floor. He kicked it under the potting bench with enough energy to break some flower pots. The cartridges he put into his pocket. Having disarmed Sara he turned to me. He ran a quick hand over me but he knew I wasn't armed, they'd searched me immediately after I'd landed in the plane.
'O.K.,' he said. 'Let's move back up to the house.' He prodded me in the arm with his automatic: and I moved along the bench towards the door, looking at the potting bench in the hope of spotting a suitable weapon.
Mason was too near. Once outside the greenhouse he'd keep me at a distance and my chance to clobber him would be gone. Lesson one of unarmed combat is that a man with a gun muzzle touching him can knock the barrel aside before the armed man can pull the trigger. I slowed and waited until I felt the muzzle again. I spun round to my left, chopping at his gun with my left hand and punching at where his head should have been with my right fist. I connected only with the side of his head but he stepped back and put an elbow through a panel of glass. The noise of it was amplified by the enclosed space. Again I punched at him. He stumbled. Another panel of glass went and I didn't dare look round to see if it had alarmed those still at breakfast. The dogs in the courtyard began barking furiously.
The girl shrank away from us as Mason struggled to bring his gun hand up again. I seized his wrist with my right hand and the gun with my left. I pulled, but Mason had his finger on the trigger. There was a bang. I felt the hot draught as the slug passed my ear and crashed out through the glass roof. I swung my elbow round far enough to hit his face. It must have made his eyes water. He let go and fell to the floor amongst the rusty gardening tools. He rolled away rubbing at his nose.
Sara was already reaching for the shotgun. 'Good girl,' I said. I pushed the little Astra gun into my pocket and ran out into the blizzard. The path was slippery, and I cut off it into the cabbages. There was a rubbish heap against the wall at the bottom of the garden. That would be my best place for climbing over it.
I was halfway down the garden when there was the deafening bang of a twelve bore and a crash of shattering glass that seemed to go on for hours.
Even before the last few pieces broke there was a second blast that took out another large section of the glass-house. She hit me with the second shot. It knocked me full length into a row of brussels sprouts and I felt a burning pain in the arm and side.
I had no doubt that more cartridges were going into the breech. In spite of the damaged arm, I set a new world record for the kitchen garden free-style, and went over the wall in a mad scramble. As I fell down the other side of it, another shot hit the weeds along the top of the wall and showered me with finely chopped vegetation. The ground sloped steeply behind the house but my feet didn't touch the ground for the first half mile. I hoped that she'd have trouble getting over the wall, but with women like that, you can't be sure they'll have trouble with anything.
By the time I reached the stream I realized that Mason — not the girl — was Dawlish's contact and the author of the note. He'd pressed the gun against me reasoning that I'd know how to break free. It was the best he could do, if he was to have any chance of talking his way out of that one. I felt sorry for him but I was glad I'd hit him hard. He was going to need some corroborative evidence to show Toliver. Sara Shaw must have followed him when he took the sandwiches there for me. Then she'd waited to see who turned up and why. I hoped that she could not guess, for now I suddenly found it easier to believe Mason's contention that they were a dangerous mob.
My arm was bleeding enough to leave a trail behind me. I changed course for enough time to make it: look as though I might be going to the bridle path. There I slipped the donkey jacket off, bound the silk scarf around the bloody part of my sleeve, and pushed my arm down into the donkey-jacket sleeve to jam it tight. It hurt like hell but there was not time to do anything more. I hoped the pressure would stop the bleeding. A shotgun spreads an inch per yard of range. I'd been far enough to get only the edge of it. My clothes were torn but the bleeding was not serious. I kept repeating that to myself as I hurried on.
I made good progress, avoiding the outcrops of rock upon which the flailing snow had settled to make a glaze of ice. But losing the use of my arm made keeping my balance more difficult, and twice I fell, yelping with pain and leaving a dull red mark in the snow.
In spite of the low visibility in the snowstorm, I felt sure that J could find the tail of Great: Crag. After that, it was merely a matter of keeping close to the edge without falling over. But everything is; more difficult in a blizzard. I even had trouble finding the big clump of conifers that marked the stepping-stones over the burn. When I did get there I became entangled in the brambles and undergrowth and had to kick hard to get out of it.
I didn't curse the weather. As soon as it cleared I would become visible to anyone with the sense to ascend to the Crag's first terrace And there were plenty of people back there with enough sense far that. And more, much more.
The clifftop path required care. I had not walked it before, though I had seen the course of it from my solitary picnics on the heights of Great Crag. The path was an old one. Here and there along its course there were metal markers. They were simple rectangles of tin, nailed to stakes that had almost rotted. The paint had long since flaked away and the metal was rusty but there was no mistaking their military origin. There is something common to all artifacts of all armed forces, from tanks to latrines. I hurried along faster whenever I had the rust
y patches to guide me. I feared that the snow storm was passing over. The dark clouds were almost close enough to touch. They sped over me, mingling with flurries of snow and allowing me sudden glimpses of the rocky seashore nearly a hundred feet below.
Not only the markers, but the path itself, had in places eroded. I stopped for a moment and made sure that: my arm was no longer leaving a blood trail. It wasn't, but there were ugly retching noises from inside my sleeve and I guessed that I was still bleeding. I was looking forward to that period of numbness that doctors say happens after wounding but I was beginning to suspect that that was just their rationalization for prodding the painful bits. Both my side and my arm were throbbing and hurting like hell.
I looked at the tiny footpath where the metal tags led. It was no better than a man-made ledge along the windy cliff face. Not at all the sort of place I ever visited, outside of nightmares. But ahead of me there was an acre of underbrush, so I took the cliff path, edging along it carefully, but dislodging pieces that spun of into space and fell somewhere that I dared not look.
After a quarter of a mile the blazed path narrowed suddenly. I stepped even more gingerly now, edging forward a step at a time, cautioned by large sections of path edge that crumbled under the touch of my toe. The ledge continued round a gently curving section of cliff. Soon I reached the point at which I could see below me a tiny bay. Through the driving sleet I studied the path ahead. I had hoped it would soon rejoin the clifftop but it continued to be a ledge. The section at the far side of the bay was especially worrying. The sharp edge of cliff resembled the prow of some gigantic ship far out over the fierce green sea. The curved profile of the cliff continued above the path. It looked as though a man would have to bend almost double to pass along it.
