Ian St James Compendium - Volume 1

by Ian St. James

  I watched the smoke from my cigarette curl up into the light, while above me Monique Debray smiled her confident smile and behind me Elizabeth massaged my shoulders, her long fingers working rhythmically inside the open neck of my shirt. Funny, but I had been too tensed up even to notice when she started.

  "And did you meet again?" she asked, still in her golden brown voice. "Monique Debray and you?"

  "No," I nodded at the screen. "Not until now. Who is she anyway?"

  "What about the man? The man with the girls at the end of the terrace? Did you see him? Could you describe him? Or if you saw a photo would you recognise him?"

  He had been standing almost in the drawing room, cloaked in shade. I only saw him for a split second. Tall, at least a foot taller than Suzy, dressed in a pale-grey suit, holding a glass in his hand.

  "Try," Elizabeth purred in my ear. "What colour was his hair for example?"

  "God knows. It looked dark from where I was standing, black almost, but that could have been shadow. Close up he could have been fair. I'm sorry, but—"

  "A beard? Moustache? Try Harry, it could be important."

  "Dammit, it was two years ago!" Two years is just too long to recall something which seemed quite unimportant at the time. "Clean shaven I think, but don't rely on it."

  "And his name - Suzy started to tell you?"

  "Started is right. Then the other girl interrupted her. But I'm sure it began with an A—that's all I can remember."

  "How unfortunate," Elizabeth said as crisp as dry toast. "Or fortunate. Depending on whose side you're on."

  There seemed no answer to that, so I just sat back and enjoyed the massage.

  "And this man Rawlins?" she asked quietly. "The Parliamentary Under-Secretary. Did he provide you with an interesting evening?".

  "That's just it," I laughed. "The message Tubby got was all cock. Rawlins couldn't make it. Tubby got a call saying Rawlins was at the house which he took to mean his house. Instead it meant Rawlins had been detained at the house - the House of Commons."

  1035 Friday

  It had been a risk, but one worth taking Abou decided as he sat next to Big Reilly in the back of the old Ford. In front of him the driver edged the car into Gresham Street's heavy morning traffic and began the journey back to Conlaragh.

  Reilly too was relieved to be leaving Dublin. Not that he was a wanted man, but he was certainly a watched one and with the new emergency regulations a tap on the shoulder was never more than a pace away. Especially in Dublin. But he was pleased with the outcome of the morning's work. "You'll have earned Mick's thanks for the way you've handled things," he said.

  Abou nodded. He had spent most of the night thinking about Mick Malone. Malone and the gamble of changing the driver at this late hour. But without Cassidy what choice did they have? Cassidy? Now there was a worry. Cassidy in custody, being questioned, cross-examined by sharp-witted men, who spent their lives matching the pieces of one story to those of another until they had a tale worth telling. But he would deal with Cassidy later. The problem of Mick Malone had been the most urgent and now arrangements had been made strong enough to satisfy even Reilly's suspicions.

  Reilly watched a truck pull out in front of them. "The police are looking for Suzy Katoul. Did you know that?"

  "How did you know it?"

  Reilly gave a sly grin. "Not every policeman is opposed to the unification of Ireland, you know. No matter what the Government says about it."

  Abou knew better than to question that, but it was no surprise to learn that the IRA-police relationship was not always the one read about in the newspapers. Just as it was no surprise to learn that the Irish police had been alerted about Suzy Katoul. Every police force in Europe would be looking for her by now, come to that every police force linked to Interpol.

  "It was expected," he said.

  "It makes our job harder," Reilly grumbled.

  "Nothing changes," Abou said firmly. "She stays out of sight at Conlaragh until tomorrow. Then you give her a car and that's the last you'll see of her."

  "And of you?"

  Abou's dark eyes flickered. "Tomorrow will be the last you see of any of us." He closed his eyes to discourage further conversation and hoped Reilly had not read too much into his words. The drone of the engine and the motion of the car soothed him and made him determined to finish the journey in silence. Talk was dangerous, especially when he was tired.

  Images glowed in his mind like a flickering fire in a darkened room. The darkened room at Conlaragh, the room shared with Suzy Katoul. Tonight would be their last night together - the last for a week was what she thought. But he knew better. It would be their last night. One last night spent enjoying the sight and the smell and the feel of her body, one last night witnessing her pathetic eagerness as he pumped a syringe into a vein in her arm. One last night with Suzy Katoul.

  He squeezed his eyelids until the images changed. Paris, the school in the mountains, his feelings when he first saw his new face. Memories of his homeland, of growing up as the only son in the house of a powerful man. Visits abroad with his father, trips to Washington to meet the leaders of that colossal nation.

  Men they once had trusted. He remembered the promises over the years.

  "America honours your valiant fight and is proud to recognise you as an illustrious ally."

  "Your continued straggle is a glowing example to the rest of the democratic world."

  "Our frontiers are your frontiers. Our enemies your enemies. Our two countries are as one nation."

  He remembered the men. General Douglas MacArthur President Harry Truman - President Dwight D. Eisenhower - President John F. Kennedy. So many men and so many promises. All had said the same thing: "The greatness of your task is exceeded only by the greatness of your determination. America will never desert you."

  But America was planning to do just that. Three years ago their spies in Washington had sensed a chill wind and within twelve months Abou's father and the other family heads who ruled from behind the scenes had formed the Plan. Just in case, they said, just in case the unthinkable happened and their powerful ally chose to betray them. And now the spies had sent the proof. The unthinkable was about to happen - America would betray them in 1978. And the Plan was about to be put into operation.

  1100 Friday

  We were still in the studio when the buzzers sounded. They blared like fog horns and with exactly that note of panic in them. The door opened and the doctor poked his face in and then withdrew hurriedly. Elizabeth said "Come on" to me and scuttled to the door in a walk fast enough to be a trot. I thought the Martians had landed.

  Spitari's place was like an iceberg, only the tip was visible. We headed to the mail room which was second level basement. Without Elizabeth, I would have needed a map to find it and a ball of string to get back again. Even finding it depressed me - it was like a German bunker, massive steel girders supported the roof and the walls were of reinforced concrete instead of the limestone blocks used for the upper stories. A bench ran the length of one wall, not housing scales and wrapping paper but x-ray equipment and electronic scanners. And it was run by the demon driver from Luqa. Thirty years with the Sappers had left Smithers as upright as a beanpole and about as talkative. But he had his good points - like being an armorer and explosives expert of no mean standing.

  "Bit elaborate for a mail room, isn't it?"

  Elizabeth gave me her sour look to shut me up. "Not when you've seen someone maimed and blinded by a letter bomb." Her face sweetened as she turned to Smithers. "Have you processed the mail yet?"

  "The old man collected it half an hour ago." Smithers had a jumpy look in his eye and I got the strongest feeling he would have added something had I not been there. So did Elizabeth because she switched her eyes on full power until they jolted him like laser beams.

  Back in the corridor we bumped into Dorfman, halfway through a door marked "Signals." He was sweating again, but this time really sweating. A man could get less
wet under a shower. "Ross wants you," he told Elizabeth and then shut the door in her face.

  Elizabeth shoved me into a little two-man lift and pulled the gate closed behind us. She was worried sick and I began to wonder when they would let me in on the secret. Something was going on and I seemed to be the only person in the building not in on it. The doors opened and we hurried down the corridor to Ross's office. LeClerc was there already, with two other men I had never seen before.

  Ross looked shaken. "She's made contact. She's in Scotland." Which made even less sense than Libya until he elaborated. "Or she was, look at that!"

  That was a page torn from an atlas. It showed Scotland from about Stirling upward with an enlarged insert depicting the Orkneys and the Shetlands. North of the Butt of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides lies a tiny island - Rona Island - and half an inch or so to the left of that a dot said "read text" in green ink. The "text" was on a sheet of cheap notepaper taped to the edge of the map and Suzy had written: "Nuclear test to be carried out by the Deir Yassin Memorial - 02.00 hours Saturday. Estimated strength - one Kiloton. Suzy Katoul."

  "A test explosion?"

  "It's a demonstration," Ross snapped. "One Kiloton's nothing. They've got enough plutonium for a bomb a hundred times as big. They're proving they can deliver that's all."

  The two new men were clearly as agitated as Ross. One said, "They haven't had enough time. I still say it. Even with access to the most advanced reactors - they haven't had enough time!" His partner couldn't agree fast enough. "Given the material they had, it would take at least a month to convert to fissionable material - at least a month."

  The glare Ross gave him would have blistered paintwork. "So we all sit on our butts while this bitch lights a firecracker loud enough to deafen the Pentagon."

  The first man snorted. "Oh really! A one Kiloton explosion won't be heard in Edinburgh, let alone—"

  "Ever heard of Polaris submarines?" Ross jabbed a finger at him. "Ever heard of an anchorage on the West Coast of Scotland? If you think a paper bag can burst within fifty miles of that without the Pentagon knowing, then you need your tiny scientific brain rebored right down to your ass!" He caught sight of Dorfman entering the room. "For Chrissakes Archie - you took your time."

  "The RAF can fly you out within half an hour," Dorfman panted to prove he'd been hurrying. "There's a chopper on its way over now. The Sixth Fleet have dispatched Nautilus to rendezvous this side of Cyprus. They'll fly us Phantom direct to Scotland."

  "Any word from Zebra?"

  "Not yet. We're on standby now."

  Ross turned to Elizabeth. "Get Control relayed to Nautilus - we'll pick it up there. You'll coordinate from here - usual procedures - London will be through within the hour. Key them into Langley." He looked at LeClerc. "Has that other signal been sent to Twomey?"

  "Half an hour ago."

  "Jesus, can you imagine his reaction?" Ross pulled a face and then suddenly remembered something. "Oh shit!" he turned to Elizabeth. "Nikki Orlov is coming through tonight. Buy whatever he's selling but that's all, understand?" He ran the splayed fingers of his right hand through his hair. "Not that the bastard won't know all about it by now, anyway. Jesus Christ, what else?"

  Dorfman said, "The British are making plans to clear the area of shipping now. The story is a NATO exercise involving nuclear sub—"

  "The story? You mean they've put out to the press?"

  "Not yet," Dorfman shook his head. "But if we're going to clear almost a hundred square miles of the Atlantic—"

  "Okay, okay, who's handling it?"

  "Murison - he's already on his way up from London. NATO Brussels are standing by to confirm any story he puts out and—"

  "NATO Brussels!"Ross howled. "How many people are in the act already?"

  Dorfman shook his head.

  Ross glared. "Well at least Twomey told you which level of command this has gone out to?"

  "He said he'd tell you. When he sees you."

  Ross shook his head in apparent disbelief. "Meanwhile, the bastard keeps me in the dark and shovels shit over me - what's he think I am - a goddamned mushroom or something?"

  "Coded instructions will be waiting for you on the Nautilus," Dorfman said apologetically.

  "Well," Ross growled, "isn't that dandy." The white telephone shrilled and LeClerc answered it. He said "yes" and "no" half a dozen times, then handed it to Dorfman. Ross seethed as he waited for the call to finish.

  "Those Irishmen," Dorfman said when he put the phone down. "You remember the ones who—"

  Ross purpled. "You really pick your moments, don't you?"

  "Disappeared in Copenhagen," Dorfman said in a rush.

  "Well they've vanished again. Dublin sent a routine request

  "Can it, will you!" Ross was hunting through the papers on his desk, anxiously performing some last-minute check list. Preoccupied, he said, "Ireland's not Scotland and it's certainly not Suzy Katoul. I told you to forget it." He turned back to Elizabeth. "Anderson's going up from London. Nautilus will give you our ETA Scotland - make sure Anderson gets it and is there in time to meet us."

  She nodded, white-faced and thin-lipped. Their eyes met in some private goodbye, then Ross was scooping papers into a briefcase and heading for the door, LeClerc and Dorfman a pace behind. Halfway there he remembered me. "Thank Christ you're not there! At least your typewriter won't be shooting its mouth off."

  "I'll save it for my memoirs."

  "You save this and it'll be on your fucking epitaph!"

  The helicopter arrived a minute later. It clattered over the ridge behind the Health Farm and dropped into the courtyard like some demented dragonfly seeking a final resting place. It was a big Wessex 250 on which the RAF had painted roundels in case they lost it. Yellow-clad arms pulled Ross aboard, others reached for LeClerc and Dorfman and the rotor blades never even stopped spinning. Elizabeth and I watched the machine rise and I caught a quick glimpse of Ross peering down at us - then it banked high over the ridge and into the sun.

  Ross's office was empty when we returned to it. Elizabeth told me to wait there and I stood looking out at the view, nursing my thoughts until she returned fifteen minutes later.

  "Tubby Hayes," she said crisply. "And the man in the pale-grey suit. London are interested in them."

  I was still thinking about Scotland. After all, that's what all the flap was about. "Then tell London to talk to Tubby. He only lives at Henley."

  "They tried that an hour ago. He's gone. And his house has been ransacked."

  "Gone? Gone where? Tubby's big business. He's got an office in town, staff, employees, some sort of factory just outside Paris. Men like Tubby don't just go. He'll be around somewhere - wheeling and dealing."

  "And his house?"

  "How the hell do I know? Burgled - done over? Tell the police and the insurance boys, don't tell me."

  She poured coffee for us both. "Listen Harry, it's not that simple. London think there's a line connecting Hayes to Monique Debray. And the same line links your girl Suzy to the man in the pale-grey suit." She sat in the chair opposite, her knees pressed tightly together, nursing her cup in her hands and leaning forward slightly to peer at my face. "And London are beginning to think very hard about you."

  Once I got through shock it was funny. But I lost my temper first. "I don't give a damn what London think! In fact I doubt they think at all - not rationally anyway. Who the hell are London anyway? Some faceless civil servants tucked away in a Whitehall cubbyhole—"

  "Harry!" She had the trick of shouting quietly better than anyone I know. "We haven't got time for your outraged citizen act. Put it up against the lives of half a million people and what's it worth anyway? Okay - yell to your MP, scream your head off in print, do what you damn well like afterward! But right now you're going to help, and if London want to know about Tubby Hayes or you, or anybody else, so help me God you're going to tell them!"

  "Or out come the rubber truncheons?" I asked quietly, but I was shake
n for all that.

  She put her cup on the floor and ran a hand through her hair. "It's just that we haven't got time," she said.

  "Time? If anything's a waste of time this is. I should know - I introduced Tubby to Suzy and that girl in the first place. They never said more than hello and goodbye to each other. And as for the man in the pale-grey suit, he'd gone by then anyway."

  "All right, Harry," she sighed, "have it your way."

  In a curious way she sounded almost resigned to it. But it was an act. I was beginning to know Elizabeth. My way would count as much as the doctor's when he stepped out of line in the studio downstairs. Elizabeth's way was what counted. She was a damn sight easier to look at than Ross, but under the skin they were two of a kind. There was even the same note of determination in her voice when she said, "You'd better start by telling me everything you know about Tubby Hayes."

  "I've told you. He's just an acquaintance, someone I meet now and then."

  "Someone you've known twenty years! Come on Harry what kind of man is he? You've stayed at his house. Does he like little girls, big girls, little boys or what? What do you do on those long weekends?"

  "Christ, they're not orgies, if that's what you think?"

  "Oh, for God's sake! That house at Henley is a honeypot!"

  My astonishment merely fuelled her temper, because she kicked her cup over as she stood up. She reached for the internal telephone and when someone answered she snapped. "Put the Willows film on two. Yes that's right, the new one." Then she slammed the phone back on its rest and said to me, "Close the shutters - you'll see better. I'll be back in a few minutes." And before I had a chance to answer she left, slamming the door behind her.

  The film lasted five minutes. I've never gone in much for blue movies, not even full colour ones. Sex makes a bad spectator sport if you ask me, copulation is faintly comic when it's happening to other people. I recognised Tubby straight away - even with his clothes off. Then I picked out a junior cabinet minister and the city editor of a rival paper. Life in the raw I suppose you'd call it, about twenty of them, all heaving away in Tubby's drawing room at "The Willows." There was even a shot of the garden through the french windows when someone jogged the cameraman's elbow. I said, "I bet they chewed his balls for that," without even realising it. Still they were all at it, lesbians and homos doing their stuff alongside dull old heterosexuals performing the missionary shuffle. Pity there was no sound track. It would have benefited from the grunts and groans, and a wrestling style voice-over.