The Kobra Manifesto

by Adam Hall

  Some of his colour was coming back.

  I lifted ‘his eyelids. He wasn’t ready yet.

  Give him five minutes, then I’d have to get someone to take him away and leave him outside a police station because I wanted to put most of the stuff in my suitcase into a laundry bag for picking up, and find some clean shirts. If Egerton was sitting in at Signals it was because he was expecting something to break and he hadn’t put me on immediate call just for a laugh.

  ‘Right, I want some answers now.’

  We’re all of us sensitive to our own peculiar points and I shifted about and got him interested at last, giving him slow periodic stimulation just this side of syncope, ‘Who are you working for ?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  A certain amount of writhing about, but it looked like transfer: I was offering physiological fear rather than actual pain and he was worried about what I was going to do next, ‘Who pays you?’

  ‘Nobody. I come to steal,’ Slav accent.

  I thought the quickest way would be to take him into a steady pressure-reaction rhythm, and within fifteen seconds he couldn’t stand it anymore because his nerves were having to deal with repetition, the equivalent of the aural situation where a loud and monotonous noise begins driving you up the wall.

  ‘Tony.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tony pays me,’

  ‘When?’

  He didn’t say anything so I tried again and succeeded, ‘Monday,’ he said on his breath.

  ‘Monday nights?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In pub.’

  ‘Which pub?’

  ‘Beefeater Arms, the one -‘

  ‘All right.’ I knew which one.

  He was losing colour again so I gave him a rest.

  ‘Is that where you give your information?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where do you give your information?’

  ‘I leave in library.’

  ‘Come on then, I want the details. Don’t keep stopping.’

  ‘In library, between page ninety and ninety-one of Economic Lexington.’ He began sweating a little, “Lexicon?”

  ‘Yes, is-‘

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Five minutes till hour, when I have information.’

  That meant they must have someone in place: one of those earnest little librarians with ginger’ hair and rimless glasses and a portrait of Lenin pasted behind the Landseer in their room at the boarding-house.

  ‘What do you do if you have some urgent information?’

  ‘I already tell you that.’

  ‘Come on.’

  His leg jerked and he took a few seconds to get his breath.

  ‘When urgent information, I telephone number in Kensington and wait under tree in Park, where -‘

  ‘All right, that’s all I want.’

  I’d found a packet of Gauloises when I’d searched him for spare ammunition, and I got it out and put a cigarette between ‘his Lips and lit it for him. ‘Just sit still for a minute or two and you’ll be all right.’

  I went into the sitting-room and my study: there was nothing out of place and this agreed with my theory that he’d come straight from the kitchen to prepare an emergency exit in the hall when I’d opened the door. But I checked the upper floor just in case and found it in order. When I came down the stairs he was standing in a shadowed corner of the hall with his gun trained on me.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, ‘I’m going to drop you home.’

  ‘Where is safe?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Where is safe?’ He jerked the gun.

  It’s all spelt out laboriously for these local domestics in the little maroon booklet they issue at the Embassy: Al-ways look for the wall-safe be-fore anything else, and that sort of thing. There’s a translation into their idea of English and we keep a copy in the Caff to read to each other when we feel like a giggle.

  ‘Don’t muck about,’ I said, but he kept on his Al Capone expression and wouldn’t budge so I went right up to him and panicked him into pulling the trigger and he heard the click and ‘his face went blank, Eke a baby’s when you take away the bottle. ‘Now you’ve got the message,’ I said. ‘Listen, I’m going to take you home - you can’t walk there in all that rain.’ It was pouring again, with big drops coming through the half-open door.

  He was all right after that, and followed me down the steps and into the car and sat there in a despondent hump. I started up and got the wipers going and undipped the mike.

  Fox mobile.

  They said okay and I put the mike back and got past a bus that was sending up a filthy stern-wave. It wasn’t far, but before we got there he keeled over and came to rest with his head against the door. I don’t know exactly what happened: probably delayed reaction to the whole thing. I left him like that till we pulled up outside No. 13 Kensington Palace Gardens. There were a couple of men at the doors but they didn’t come out and I didn’t blame them in this downpour. I got him in a fireman’s lift and took him up the steps and propped him there and went back to the car already half soaked. They were coming out to take a look at him as I drove away.

  We don’t normally deliver Ruskies back to their Embassy but I suppose I was sorry for this one and felt a bit guilty. But until he’d given me the typical pattern of operation (pubs and libraries and trees in the Park) I hadn’t been sure he wasn’t a Yugoslav with some conceivable connection with Milos Zarkovic and I couldn’t just let it go.

  Halfway back to Knightsbridge they called me up, Base to Fox..

  Read you.

  Communicate 4 soonest.

  Five minutes.

  Roger. Over and out.

  There was time to spare because they’d accepted my five minutes instead of switching to speech-code and giving me a directive but I put my foot down slightly and took the short cut through the mews because Extension 4 was Travel and it looked as if Egerton had made up his mind to set me running.

  Within three and a half minutes I had the Jensen standing outside the fiat and got the ammunition clip out of my pocket and dropped it down the drain and went in and picked up the phone in my study, checking for bugs. Negative, ‘I think we’re clear, aren’t we?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  It was Jeffries, in Travel.

  ‘All right, you’re booked out on Flight AZ279 by Alitalia, Terminal 2 Heathrow, depart 19:15 today, minimum checkin time thirty-five minutes. Your night is non-stop to Fiumicino Airport, Rome, arriving 22:30 hours and the aircraft is a Douglas DC9. Your ticket is waiting for you at the checkin counter and we have a dark blue Fiat 1100 for you at Fiumicino. Any queries so far?’

  ‘No.’

  Rome was somewhere new, unless it was Brockley doing that one. According to Macklin, Smythe had last reported from Cairo and Hunter was doing Geneva and Fitzalan was keeping tabs on Fogel in Tangier.

  ‘All right, are we still clear?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your contact in Rome will be Fitzalan. You will -‘

  ‘Say again?’

  ‘Your contact in Rome will be Fitzalan. Any queries?’.

  ‘No.’ We don’t keep the office on the line arguing the toss: if Travel said my contact was to be Fitzalan they weren’t making any mistake. But the last I’d heard of him was in Tangier and he must have been getting on a plane while they were playing his report on the monitor tape in Signals: he’d said that Fogel had gone to ground but he must have come into the open again very fast and he’d broken for Rome.

  Jeffries was talking.

  The rdv is to be outside the Cielalto office on the ground floor and at this time we don’t know who will arrive there first. No code-intro necessary. Now I’ll give you the routine checks.’

  He began going through them and I half-listened: they were just fail-safe reminders to leave private keys behind or in a deposit box at the airport, look for a message at Heathrow and Fiumicino, so forth. What interested me was t
hat Fitzalan and Fogel must be arriving in Rome on the same flight from Tangier and since they were in a surveillance situation Fitzalan was going to have his work cut out to make a rendezvous with me and keep the peep on the objective at the same time. Not that I was worried: you learn to have faith in people like Parkis and Mildmay and Egerton when they’ve controlled you through half a dozen missions. If they said that Fitzalan would make contact with me and keep surveillance on his objective at the same time then that was precisely what was going to happen.

  Jeffries finished the routine checks and asked for queries.

  ‘Any backups?’

  ‘We don’t know at this stage.’

  ‘Who’s his local control?’

  ‘There hasn’t been time.’

  I should have known. Egerton had been expecting something to break because he’d been sitting in at Signals but he couldn’t have known what was going to break or he would have sent out a director to local-control Fitzalan before he got there. That man Fogel had broken ground with the speed of a ricochet and nobody in the Bureau had been given time to set up the necessary machinery to contain his travel pattern: at this stage they were relying totally on Fitzalan.

  ‘No more questions?

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘But tell Egerton there was a Ruskie in here, and get someone to put the kitchen window right when they come to shut the place up.’

  ‘Is that the only damage?’

  ‘I got him in time.’

  ‘Noted. All right, we want you to keep in continuous contact between 15 and Heathrow, and we’ll have your car picked up and put in the garage, so leave the key in the usual place.’

  ‘Will do.’

  I hung up and got some clean shirts and things and dropped them into the suitcase, stopping once to listen to the small sounds in the house: the spitting of rain on a window, me creak of a swelling timber, the drip of a tap. The place seemed already abandoned, and in the morning they’d send someone to see to the kitchen window and turn off the electricity and take the laundry bag; and afterwards there’d only be these sounds here, and sometimes the ring of the telephone that no one would answer.

  Normal introspection at this stage: ignore. It was just that we never know, for certain, whether well be back.

  I took the suitcase downstairs and passed the puddle where the ice cubes had melted and shut the front door, dropping the case into the boot of the car and starting up, reporting mobility to base.

  There was a delay going through Richmond because some bloody fool had lost traction on the wet road and wrapped his Vauxhall round a traffic-light standard and someone else had gone into ‘him: glass all over the place and bobbies’ capes motivation somewhere big enough to make the headlines and in this paper the headlines were about the dustmen’s strike in Norwich.

  I didn’t like this one.

  It was too big, and going too fast I think we ought to go back.

  Bloody little organism rearing its head; all it could mink about was survival.

  Shuddup.

  ‘Will you please fasten your seat belt? We are landing soon.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Please fasten seat belt now, sir,’

  ‘Oh. Yes.’

  I think we ought to go straight back to London when — Oh for Christ’s sake you’ve got a seat belt on now, what more do you want? Shuddup.

  Captain Lorenzo hopes you have enjoyed your trip with us.

  Not terribly.

  Won ho nulla da dichiarare.’

  They were very slow.

  ‘Sono tutti effetti personali.’

  For some reason they were going through everything, looking specially at any books and pamphlets. The new Communist regime on the lookout for subversive literature, perhaps.

  ‘Qui c’ e sol vestiario, signore.’

  But I wouldn’t advise looking inside the razor barrel, signore, because it’s meant for blowing locks.

  ‘Ha finite?’

  ‘Si, signore. Grave.’

  ‘Prego.’

  The slightest tactile sensation, right buttock.

  I waited till his fingers were well inside the hip pocket and then went for his wrist without any fuss, turning round and checking his face because it could be someone I knew: someone in the opposition. After fifteen missions I’ve come to know a lot of faces.

  I didn’t know this one.

  He wasn’t trying to get away: I think he could feel I wasn’t going to let him. His quick dark eyes flicked from my face to the customs officer and back. He looked about fourteen years old.

  Get your unworthy person the hell out of here, I told him in gutter Roman, before I pull out your gizzard and tie it in knots.

  He slipped through the crowd, rubbing his wrist, and before he was halfway to the barrier I saw him begin on someone else.

  I snapped the case shut and took it out to the main hall and looked for Hertz.

  Dark blue Fiat 1100. I told them to leave it where it was: I was meeting some journalists on a later flight. Then I told a porter to put the case into the car and bring me the keys. He found me along at the checkin area; I didn’t know which airline Fitzalan and Fogel were on, so I memorized the arrival boards from one end of the counter to the other, Moroccan, Iberian, Alitalia, Air France and the transit companies operating across the Mediterranean. The time intervals were close in some instances but there were two fifteen-minute breaks before midnight when I’d be able to slide off for some milk and orange juice at the all-night trattoria.

  There was a message for Mr. Paul Wexford at Alitalia.

  I didn’t ask for it right away because he’d been standing by the big Cinzano poster doing nothing ever since I’d come through the arrival gate, so I went along to have a look at him. He was a young Italian and didn’t belong to any kind of outfit where they’d heard of training people, because the main background coloration of the poster was white and he was wearing a dark nylon zipped jacket and if he’d had even basic training he would have been standing over there against the black futurist sculpting.

  He hadn’t looked at me directly and the only reflecting surface was twenty yards away and had a lot of glare across it from the overhead lights because it was set at an angle through the vertical so he’d have to be pretty good on the peep and I didn’t think he was, because of the background thing. I was going across to ask him where I could find the telephones when a plump girl in black satin ran up to him. He threw away his cigarette and kissed her and said something that made her give a shrill little laugh as they turned away arm in arm. I tagged them as far as the bus terminal and saw them get into one of the airport coaches. He hadn’t looked once in my direction.

  He’d been the only suspect: I’d double-checked and made two feints since leaving the exit gate and the whole area was clear. I went back to the checkin counter.

  ‘Paul Wexford.’

  I showed him my passport ‘Ecco, signore.’

  ‘Grazie.’

  I took the message slip across to the Cielalto office, reading it on the way. Please notify Alitalia if press conference is delayed. Frank Wainwright.

  It’s the simplest form of code and impossible to read without the key, and we carry the key in our heads. The pattern is very flexible and you can throw in anything you like without affecting the sense. This one could have read: Weather expected to worsen so please number all itineraries according to severity of local conditions, and the message would have been precisely the same. The theme is varied to suit the cover: press conference for Paul Wexford of Europress. (The example with the weather theme would be used for someone ostensibly following the Monte Carlo Rally, so forth.) The trigger word is please and you ignore everything preceding it. The message is contained in the initial letters of the three words following: notify Alitalia if — n-a-i. Everything that appears after the three significant words is also ignored; thus the entire message is contained in the three letters n-a-i. The key comprises a list of twenty-six directives, each of three words: Report on arrival, L
iaise with agent-in-place, Abort mission immediately, so forth. These directives are encoded into any number of varied phrases and London could have sent Number all itineraries or nullify any instances or nominate appropriate inspectors, according to the cover-theme.

  The key directive for n-a-i is No active involvement.

  I was ordered to keep off.

  If Fitzalan didn’t arrive, I wasn’t to make any enquiries. If Heinrich Fogel arrived alone, I wasn’t to tag him anywhere. If they both arrived and Fogel was able to raise a cadre of hit-men and capture, interrogate or kill Fitzalan, I wasn’t to help him.

  I was to keep off.

  Blast your eyes, Egerton, what did you send me here for?

  There could be a dozen reasons and I didn’t think I’d like any one of them and I stood in front of the Cielalto office wondering why I had been such a monumental bloody fool in letting that poor-man’s priest con me into an operation that was already running wild and counting its dead while I stood here without a hope in hell of taking the initiative, Keep off.

  Blast your eyes.

  Speeding down the sunlit slopes with the blue sky above your head, you feel as if you are flying, free as a bird! At night you will look down over the lights of the town, nestled at the foot of the giant Matterhorn.

  Rough translation. There wasn’t a lot of light on the posters and the reflective power of the window was adequate. Blown-up colour photograph: blinding white snow, dazzling blue sky, the skier in black with dark goggles, poles whirling through a slalom, his smile exhilarated, I checked my watch.

  22:44.

  The next Moroccan flight was due in at 22:50.

  There weren’t many people in the main hall: perhaps thirty. A man in a round-brimmed hat approached in reflection and stopped, eyeing the smiling skier for ninety seconds, their figures appearing on the same scale. I moved fractionally to sharpen the image and get the angle into perspective: he was watching one of the closed-circuit television screens at this end of the checkin counter. In another thirty seconds he turned away and walked down the slope of blinding snow, leaving the skier behind. When I turned round I saw him going into the trattoria on the other side of the hall.

  22:59.

  The first of the passengers off the Moroccan flight was just reaching the exit gate and I stood facing in that direction as the rest of them began coming through, spreading out into groups and individuals, many of them in robes, the fez much in evidence.