Codename Wolf

by Gil Hogg

  Amory had supplied himself with a generous range of duty-free Chivas Regal and cognac, making resort to the room-bar unnecessary. I fetched ice from the machine, and then dodged into a single armchair with my drink, and looked restive.

  “What’s the matter, Roger?”

  “I’m very happy about the task, sir, but…”

  “Childers.”

  “Childers. I feel a bit short on briefing.”

  Amory shrugged, and took a large gulp of whisky. “I understand, my boy… ”

  I interrupted, “The cause, what we’re trying to achieve… of course I know that this threat has to be eliminated, but the larger implications if we were to unleash our missiles against Cuba, and the part the CIA is playing… ”

  “The CIA is dithering. So is the President. He’s a ditherer by nature. He’s so eminently political by nature that he’s forever counting on the one hand this, and on the other hand, that. Result – inaction. And he’s aided in this by Secretary of State Madison. General Madison is a dove. He seems to be a pacifist in an army uniform, and precisely because he wears the uniform, he is so plausible to the American people. We have to take the decisive action.”

  “We?”

  Amory’s face puckered pleasurably. “We. Our little band of Anglo-American brothers, Roger.”

  “The Disciples?”

  Amory gulped again, emptying his glass and lay back contemplatively. “I believe that’s what we’re called.”

  I filled Amory’s glass again very generously, watering my own, while Amory was supine with his weighty thoughts.

  “But how can you command the resources, Childers?”

  “Because, in the end, Roger, we command everything. With superior intellect, and all-knowledge, one only has to have one’s fingertips on the levers of power.”

  It was undoubtedly the whisky, but I had a sudden picture of GCHQ and Crypto City embracing the globe with tentacles like an enormous octopus, poised to squirt its venom.

  “The Cuban Crisis II will bring down the President, and discredit Madison,” Amory pronounced confidently.

  “You’ll precipitate a strike on Cuba, Childers, if the President hesitates?”

  “Certainly. And he will hesitate. And I will give you a further little piece of advice about your mission, because I like you, Roger, you mean a lot to me… You don’t have to be too precise about the site location. I don’t want you to take undue risks.”

  Amory was searching me now, his features crimped wickedly around his porous nose, watching for his meaning to dawn.

  “You’ll strike so hard that everything will be destroyed?”

  “Everything in a wide area, my boy, so keep safe.” His voice dropped from pronouncing political certainties to an affectionate burble.

  Childers Amory raised himself from his chair and staggered toward me, collapsing at my feet, and shoving his body between my legs, his great bald head with its black-haired ears resting on my crotch. Fortunately, he spilled the remnants of liquor in his glass over my trousers, and I was able to spring up without giving offence, and go to the bathroom for a towel.

  Had Childers Amory been a woman of my choice, this small event, the wetting, might have been used as an excuse to remove my trousers. As it was, in the bathroom, I mopped my brow rather than my trousers, and tried to work out an exit strategy.

  I hadn’t found out precisely how the Disciples would engineer their strike and whether it would be nuclear, but that would have to wait for a further opportunity. I returned to the lounge area of the suite, turning in my mind whether to plead a headache or pressure of work, and found that the liquor and jet lag had done their work. Childers Amory, the Disciple on whom the world depended for its security, was asleep on the carpet, his head lolling back, his mouth wide open and gurgling. I let myself quietly out of the room.

  14

  The arrangements for my departure from Washington were made rapidly, and I had an issue with Clark on only one point. He wanted me to take Kershaw, to work strictly under my orders. I refused, and insisted on Yarham. I told Clark I was prepared to go back to Reich if necessary and force the issue. Clark backed down.

  Yarham, whose jaw hung open with pleasure at the prospect, and I made our few preparations. We needed no baggage because we would be changing our identities in Mexico City. For me, it was a matter of saying goodbye to Laurie – who understood the demands of the service, and happened to be staying for a few days – and asking the neighbour to feed my cat when Laurie departed.

  Yarham and I were met at Mexico City airport by the expected man in a yellow Brazilian football shirt. He drove us to a safe house in the middle-class residential Petatlan district, run by Hector Rojas, a silver-haired Spaniard. Rojas said our papers would be ready the next morning, and we would be on an afternoon flight to Havana. I would become an English import-export dealer specialising in cars and light machinery, which suited me very well. As Daniel Garcia, I would be domiciled in Mexico, and travelling on a Mexican passport. Yarham, who had tolerable Spanish, would assume mixed parentage as Senor Roberto Rivero-Doyle, my partner.

  Rojas lectured us on the implications of our new business, and particularly the trade in stolen and second-hand cars. It occurred to me that if all else failed, this was a business I could manage with profit.

  My new wardrobe of clothes was excruciatingly dull, and consisted principally of two used, tan coloured-suits in polyester, ugly brown leather brogues, and a varnished straw hat. The object, Hector Rojas said, was to look like a small businessman, sound and ordinary. The dark green and brown ties I was given underlined the effect. In keeping with this object we would be staying at an old but comfortable two- or three-star hotel. We would have a safe house to bolt to in an emergency. We would be met by an MI6 operative who knew Cuba.

  “Your man in Havana,” Rojas joked. “The MI6 agent will know nothing of your mission, just as, I remind you, I know nothing. MI6 will assist you in every way they can.”

  “That’s a sort of kiss of death, Captain,” Yarham said.

  “I don’t have any information about your communications to base or vice-versa,” Hector Rojas said.

  I showed Rojas our satellite phone disguised as a laptop computer.

  Finally, he gave us a contact in Cuban intelligence. “Well, the contact may not be in the intelligence services, but has access. I don’t know, I just get the instructions.” He took me through a coded question about the yellow rose of Texas which I was to use when and if we used the Cuban contact.

  The briefing over, Yarham and I donned our new clothes, had a good laugh at ourselves in the mirror, and I reluctantly abandoned a well-cut dark blue Saint Laurent jacket and a pair of Gucci loafers. That evening, Yarham and I spent an hour working out at a local gym – something we had begun in New York and continued regularly at least two days a week.

  Then, in a leisurely way, in a torpor assisted by our exercise, the altitude and the tequila, we visited a number of local bars and clubs.

  When, in one of the clubs, I asked Yarham whether the likelihood of a nuclear war overshadowed his work and worried him, he said, “I can’t do much about it, can I, sir? Might as well enjoy the rum and Coke.”

  “Or to put it another way, Yarham, you and I alone, are doing everything that mankind can do about it. I doubt if James Bond ever had a task like this. Doesn’t it… get the blood going?”

  “Not as much as that girl,” Yarham said, looking at the gyrating legs and flying breasts of the tinsel-covered dancer who was performing the samba on the dance floor.

  I liked Yarham’s refusal to acknowledge our intimidating task. For myself, there were moments when I realised that I was achieving, or had achieved, my ambition to penetrate to the very secret heart of the intelligence world. But there were other moments when I remembered, with slight yearning, the ease and freedom from care of being a car-dealer in Oxford. I remembered making a particularly profitable sale or an astute buy, and having champagne and a gourmet dinner with a
girlfriend to celebrate; it had all been very uncomplicated.

  On arrival in Havana we took a cab to the Hotel Comodoro in a Vedado back street. I was rather pleased with my room; it was old-fashioned, built perhaps in the 1920s and scarcely repaired since, but with a lavish approach to space. The high ceilings were dominated by fans; the windows were tall. The sitting room had a balcony covered in red bougainvillea, overlooking a busy street and market used by people rather than vehicles. The bed was a wrought iron monster. The ornate red drapes and mats were faded and plaster peeled from the walls.

  We had time to sample a pina colada (what else?) on the balcony, before finding the Herradura Bar near the flea market on Calle 3, to meet our MI6 contact. I had already decided that our first step would be to visit the sites of the Cold War missile emplacements, the positions of which I had memorised from aerial photographs before I left Washington, but there were certain supplies I needed to obtain first.

  I saw a man with a small dog in the rear recess of the dark bar. I identified myself as ‘Wolf’ which made me feel strong and invulnerable on the rare occasions I had to use the code. The MI6 officer was ‘Neville.’

  Neville was affable. “Please take a seat. I’ll get you a drink. We can talk freely here.”

  Yarham and I ordered beer, and our host a whisky and water.

  “I get sick of the sweet shit they drink here,” he said.

  When we had the drinks and were seated, Neville surveyed us through his spectacles, and gave a good-humoured nod of acceptance. “I’ll give you an address you can use in an emergency. If you’re on the run. Beyond that, what can I do for you two gentlemen, Mr Doyle and Mr Garcia?”

  Neville was an Englishman in his late forties, balding, with silver hair and the coppered complexion of long exposure to a bright sky. He was too much at home in his cotton trousers and floral shirt to look like a tourist; rather the slightly uncomfortable expatriate. He was curious about our mission, but departmental constraints didn’t permit him to ask. I wasn’t going to satisfy his curiosity.

  “Two 9 mm automatic pistols and ammunition, two flick knives, two pairs of knuckles, and two pairs of cuffs,” I said.

  Neville frowned and was more curious. “Really? Serious business, eh? I’m not sure I can do the knuckle-dusters immediately. I’ll try.”

  The dog, a yappy dachshund tethered to a chair, peed on Yarham’s shoe. Neville took no notice.

  “Watch you don’t get caught with the guns. Anything else?”

  “Nothing,” I said, and we finished our drinks talking in impersonal terms about the Cuban economy. We arranged to meet at the same time the next day to receive the weapons.

  As we were getting up to leave, Neville said, “Would it help to know the CIA deployment in Havana?”

  I already knew as much about the CIA in Cuba as the NSA could find out, but I wondered whether Neville had more. “Sure.”

  “They have two US agents in the city, headed by a guy named Savage. I’ll give you an address and number. And they have a second line of Cuban agents of varying degrees of expertise and reliability.”

  “Thanks. Are you in touch with them?”

  “Sure, I can tell them…”

  “Don’t tell anybody anything!” I cut in.

  Neville was hurt by my vehemence. “I think I know enough not to do anything without your prior approval. I was just trying to be constructive.”

  When we left Neville still looked miffed.

  I said, “We might want to get in touch with the CIA.”

  “Ask the CIA to help us, you mean? We may both be part of the one mighty civil service, but actually talking to each other, that’s something else,” Yarham smiled.

  I forgot Neville and embarked on my next move of the day. Before leaving Washington I had plotted the GPS positioning of the projected missile sites of the early 1960s. Yarham and I took a cab along the Autopista La Habana-Mariel, to a location in Mariel where, with the assistance of his map-reading, we left the cab in a run-down area of failed factories and rotting sheds. Nothing vaguely resembling an old missile site was in view.

  An old missile site was admittedly an arbitrary starting point, but I thought it might yield a few clues to what the terrorists were doing. What kind of site would be used, and where would it be positioned? Was there any possibility that the terrorists would seek to use an old site? My thinking on all this was unclear, save that having a look seemed to be a prudent step; it also postponed the vital question – what next? I had no answer to this at the moment.

  The temperature was around eighty degrees. Grass sprouted through the broken tarmac. People were living under shelters, lean-tos of cardboard resting on the fences; they were living in doorways. Two strolling businessmen from Mexico in their tan suits stuck out like a dog’s balls. We walked along the road looking as though we had come to buy it. Sullen eyes watched us from behind crumbling walls and piles of garbage. A crocodile of ragged children with dancing smiles began to follow us, laughing and occasionally daring to jump in front of us holding out their hands for a dollar.

  “This is no good, Yarham,” I said, feeling like the Pied Piper.

  “There it is, sir,” Yarham said, indicating a lot heaped with rubble and stinking trash, which did not quite disguise the heavy concrete foundations and the tangled steel rods which protruded from beneath the mess.

  “You’re right. Maybe it’s completely blocked.”

  I was beginning to see that my idea of having a look at the old sites wasn’t likely to be very productive.

  “Might as well give it the once-over now we’re here,” Yarham said, patting a young girl of six or seven on the head. “I can’t give you a dollar, love. If I do we’ll be mobbed.” He made his way off the road, and on to the lot.

  Yarham found a hole covered with a plastic tent, which he removed; dark, smelly steps leading downwards were revealed. He looked at me questioningly. The children ringed us, chattering.

  “What we’re here for,” I said. “You first.”

  “Not at all, sir.” Yarham said, standing aside from the fetid black hole, and making way for me.

  “From our briefing there are three sites,” I said, starting to descend.

  “That could mean miles of tunnels, Captain,” Yarham said mournfully.

  “Don’t you think it’s a good idea to go through the tunnels that haven’t been sealed to see if there are any signs of the activity of our friends?”

  “Wouldn’t they find fresh sites?”

  Yarham was beginning to erode the common sense of my move. “Probably, but we ought to check,” I insisted.

  “Why, sir?”

  Yarham was always asking why, and in defence, I came up with a stray possibility which had been floating around in my head. “Suppose the nuclear warheads that were delivered, or said by the Soviets never to have been delivered, in 1962 are in fact here, in store, waiting for a new age rocket to carry them?”

  “It’s an interesting idea, Captain, but wouldn’t the CIA, who have been nosing around for the last forty-plus years, have found them?”

  “You’d think so, but as we know, Yarham, with intelligence agencies, anything is possible. The CIA would probably need a hundred years.”

  Yarham looked at me sadly as I conjured up a whole new mythology around missing warheads which might not exist. I went slowly, and with some embarrassment, out of the blinding light into the darkness, feeling for the cigarette lighter I carried as a useful tool. I never have smoked. The air was foul.

  “Smells of shit.”

  “Very convenient lavatory for the locals, Captain.”

  I had just about decided to leave, and declare that we should return with torches to save face, when I noticed a faint light shining on the rough cement walls. We kept going and passed a candle guttering in a jar; there was now also a strong smell of incense and weed.

  “Somebody’s here. Having a party,” Yarham muttered.

  I asked myself whether we were heading for the
terrorists’ secret assembly room, or whether we were getting our mission messily mixed up with an intrusion into the living space of the community. My cheap shoes had softened in the sludge and were letting in liquid of a composition too revolting to think about.

  Around a bend in the passage, we came upon an altar with candles, and before it, a coffin, open. We both stood still, transfixed with alarm. There appeared to be a corpse, lying in state, inside the coffin. There could have been other people there, watching from the darkness.

  I was thrown back against the wall in fright as a piercing shriek filled the space – a noise which swiftly turned into a hysterical laugh. A figure jumped in front of me, naked from the waist up, and gleaming, a large-breasted female figure wearing a crown of feathers, and sparkling bangles on her wrists. The whites of her eyes glowed.

  “Ayee! Senors!” she yelled in Spanish, “You have come into the house of spirits!”

  While we were paralysed with uncertainty rather than fear, the woman anointed her forehead with blood from a dead chicken on the altar, and screamed, and as she did so, the corpse raised itself from the coffin – an emaciated man, naked, with iridescent skeletal white lines daubed down his chest, arms and legs.

  “A judicious retreat, Captain, I implore you…”

  Yarham and I scrambled up the steps, stumbling, splashing through the stinking mud, shouting apologies to the occupants.

  15

  “What then is the plan, Captain?” Yarham asked cheerfully, as we sat in the luxurious lounge of the Excelsior Hotel on Paseo de Marti in Centro, rather than the run-down Comodoro. We sipped fresh rum and Cokes, looking past the mass of purple blooms in vases around us, toward the traffic of coolly dressed, moneyed people who crossed the lobby.

  “The plan, the plan, the plan?” I said.

  I had no plan. My feet were wet, and I fancied I could smell them. Since our undignified retreat from the santeria ceremony in the bunker, I had been trying to think of one, or at least a different starting point. By tacit consent the idea of exploring the 1960s sites for signs of terrorist activity was abandoned for the moment.