Dead Letter Drop

by James, Peter

  There have been several instances of smart computer operators, who, discovering that the computers were capable of more than was required by their owners, have established profitable sidelines renting out space and time to other companies, without the knowledge of their employers. One such operator, who had advised the board of a food wholesaling combine on which computer to buy, ensured they bought one considerably in excess of their needs. Under a separate name, and in offices over a thousand miles away, he rented this same computer to a national car-hire firm, a toy manufacturer, a mining company, a travel agency and a hospital. Everything ran smoothly for over five years, and it was not until after his death in a car accident that his enterprise was discovered.

  There is scarcely an airline in the world that is not on a computer system. The video screens are as much a part of airline ticket offices or check-in desks as are the smiles on the girls who sit beside them.

  Every airline has a computer installation in each major city, and one master installation. All the installations are connected via telephone lines. Pan Am’s master installation is near New York: If Harry Smith, in Tokyo on a business trip, wants to book a seat on a flight from London to Los Angeles, a girl at Pan Am desk in Tokyo types the seat request into her terminal. That request is flashed through the telephone wires to New York, and in a fraction of a second the computer in New York checks the bookings on that flight and flashes back a reply: either the flight is full, or there are vacant seats. If there are vacant seats it says how many there are and which ones they are: first class, clipper or economy. The computer has to work fast because there may be a hundred people at Pan Am desks around the world all wanting information about that particular flight. The moment Harry Smith books his seat, the computer makes note, and tells everyone there is one seat less.

  At the same time as making the bookings, the master computer is doing Pan Am’s accounts, sending out its bills, making up the payroll, keeping track of how many gallons of fuel each plane is using on each flight, making notes of VIPs, of kosher menus, vegetarian menus, of unaccompanied children, of elderly travellers in need of special assistance, of where the planes are at any given point in time, who is flying which, what the next month’s roster is going to be, figuring out who’s ordered what from the mail order catalogues on each flight, and sending the goods off. In addition it is linked via telephone lines to all the computers of all the other airlines, so that if Harry Smith is unable to get a flight to New York with Pan Am, Pan Am can maybe book him on either TWA, or British Airways, or Air India, or Japan Airlines, or Singapore Airlines or KLM or Lufthansa or Air France, or any other of the myriad of glittering, silver-bellied birdies that shimmer and thunder through the dawn, midday, dusk and night skies of the world.

  It’s a busy little fellow.

  The international airline business is unique among all other businesses in its worldwide spread of offices. Some travel agencies and car-hire firms are making valiant efforts to join these ranks, but still have nowhere near the spread of the airlines. In every major town and in every airport of the world are offices or desks with computer terminals that have instant access to the flight data of their own and every other international airline in the world.

  The data that travels, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, freely and speedily between the countries and the cities of the world, seems innocuous enough: flight number, starting point, stopover points, destination, day of week, time of day, type of aircraft, number of seats. For most passengers there is no special information and they travel purely as names on a list. But for some there can be many lines of information. The contents of two or three pages of a novel could be stored in the space available in the computer for a single seat.

  Boris Karavenoff used the space available for seat numbers 14B for his communications with Moscow. He had, without the slightest difficulty, hooked the Intercontinental computers into the international airlines network, by tapping into the wires running from a branch booking office. Using an identically programmed silicon chip to the one I had in my pocket, he could, whenever he liked, book a seat 14B on any flight of any airline in the world. A short coded signal would inform an Aeroflot ticket desk in Moscow of the relevant flight, and the information, naturally in code, would be recorded; the reservation would then be cancelled, and the information would be gone from the teletype screens and the computer memory banks for ever. The process was reversed if Moscow wished to pass a communication to Karavenoff. The solution to part one of Dr Yuri Orchnev’s cryptic puzzle had emerged.

  Psychologists say that almost all criminals, petty or major, have a secret desire to confess their crimes, almost as an act of bravado. Under skilful interrogation the criminal can be made to open up like an enthusiastic schoolboy, to cheerfully pour out everything he knows and, while talking, to develop an obsession not to miss out a single detail. Right now Boris Karavenoff was in this frame of mind; provided I could get off this island alive I was going to have one hell of a report to make back to London.

  The one subject on which he knew nothing was the man up on the roof; he seemed genuinely surprised that there was someone there and pointed out that it could as easily be himself as me that the man was after. I nodded agreement, although I knew that wasn’t true – if it was, Karavenoff and his chum would have been dead long before I’d arrived. I asked him about Sleeping Beauty in the kitchen: he was a computer programmer in the US Defence Bureau; Karavenoff pointed up at the ceiling; in a sunken light socket. I could clearly see a camera lens. ‘Automatic,’ he said, ‘comes on with that light.’ He pointed up at one of the bulbs that was glowing brightly – just a little too brightly for normal room lighting. It was a routine blackmail setup.

  I broached the subject of the great mystery writer and nocturnal sharpshooter, Dr Yuri Orchnev. Karavenoff didn’t know much about him, other than that he was a fairly senior member of the KGB computer technology team in Moscow.

  What he did know, however, was something I had spent six years under Fifeshire’s instructions trying to verify: that there was a Russian agent in a very senior position in British Intelligence. Orchnev had had communications with him via the British Embassy in Washington on a number of occasions during the last year. His true identity had never been revealed to Karavenoff; he knew of him only by his code name. It was the Pink Envelope.

  15

  I was concerned that Karavenoff’s friend would wake soon – I hadn’t hit him hard; I was also concerned to tackle the fiddler on the roof before he got bored and left his perch, but in Karavenoff I had hit a mine of information and I didn’t want to stem the flow. Whether or not everything he told me was true, I did not know, but I had a feeling it was, and since he didn’t know what I knew I figured that, lying there stark naked and defenceless, he was unlikely to risk telling many lies.

  I cast my mind back to the note from Orchnev to Fifeshire. ‘As you may already be aware the colour scheme of this missive is not irrelevant.’ I tried to work out to whom it could be referring – perhaps even to Fifeshire himself – although I found that hard to believe. I pumped Karavenoff hard on the Pink Envelope, but he knew little more than what he had already told me: he was based in Whitehall, had been there a long time and was in a very powerful position. I believed Karavenoff – his work concerned America rather than Britain. There was no reason why he should have known any more.

  I brought up Orchnev again. Karavenoff racked his brains, then came up with a piece of information that slotted one enormous piece of the puzzle into shape for me: Orchnev had been under secret observation by the KGB for some time. He had very recently attempted to contact the head of the CIA in Washington. Somehow a Russian agent inside the British Embassy in Washington had intercepted this letter, and for some reason it had been passed over to England to the Pink Envelope. Karavenoff had no idea what it was all about. I, however, was starting to have a damn good idea.

  There was a long silence. I offered him a cigarette, and we both smoked. He lay there, lanky, skinny
, covered in goose pimples, his small penis shrivelled in its skin; he looked vulnerable and lost.

  ‘What are you going to do now?’ he asked suddenly. ‘Kill me?’

  He’d asked a damn good question. I had no intention of killing him but right now I wasn’t going to let him know that. I decided to see if he had any bright ideas before putting mine forward. I carried on smoking in silence.

  ‘I guess what I’ve told you this evening is the end of Charlie Harrison, whatever happens.’ He looked at me nervously, his eyes crystal clear with fright.

  I didn’t want to put any ideas into his head by telling him what he was saying assumed rather optimistically that I would be getting off this island alive.

  ‘I’ll get fifteen, maybe twenty years in penitentiary,’ he continued, ‘All for what? Nothing, that’s what. You rob a bank, you take a few hundred grand. You get ten years, five off for good behaviour. You do five years inside, you come out, you got half a million bucks stashed away to make up for it. What do I get? Fuck all. After twenty years I come out, get deported back to Russia. I’ll get tried over there for failure, then slung out to the back of beyond to spend the rest of my days doing something that uses my technical knowledge to the minimum –probably make me a telephone repair man.’ He gave a wry grin.

  I looked at him. ‘If they want you back they’ll get you back quicker than that; they’ll trade you for some American they have.’ It had the right effect. It made him look even more nervous still.

  ‘Why would they want me back?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be to make a national hero out of you, that’s for sure.’

  ‘I came over to do a job; nobody told me it was going to take fourteen years. Hell, that’s a big chunk of anyone’s life. A goddam big chunk.’ There appeared to me to be a distinct lack of enthusiasm for Soviet ideology in the tone of his voice. ‘I’ve grown fond of this place; truth be known, I always had a hankering to come to America. When the job came up I jumped at it. I figured if I was smart, I’d get to stay here for ever; everything was just pretty damn fine – until you walked in through the door.’ He looked as though he were about to burst into tears.

  ‘There’s another way,’ I said.

  ‘I know,’ he said. We looked very straight at each other for the first time. ‘Would they accept me?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t work for the CIA. I don’t work for the Americans at all.’

  ‘You got a British accent. I thought it was strange. You work for the Brits?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  At least he had the decency to smile. ‘As the Americans say, sometimes it just ain’t one’s day.’

  I looked at the floor and stubbed out my cigarette thoughtfully. ‘Not necessarily. Our love for the US isn’t that high at the moment.’

  His eyes opened a little.

  ‘If you want to play ball with me, I’m not going to be in any hurry to turn you over – not now and maybe not ever.’ For the first time since our brief association had begun, the cloud of abject misery lifted, a little, from his face.

  When I finally left the bungalow it was fast closing on midnight and the last ferry out before morning. I had trussed up and gagged Karavenoff and the Sleeping Beauty, and turned the place upside down to make it look like a burglary, to give Sleeping Beauty an explanation for the unpleasant headache he would have in the morning.

  I switched off all the lights and stayed in the house for some while to accustom my eyes to the dark; before finally stepping out I scoured the area with my binoculars, but could see no sign of anyone watching. The wind was now blowing very strong and that, combined with the roar of the sea, was more than adequate cover for any noise I might make. I went around to the side of the bungalow, checking every few steps with the binoculars. I didn’t have to worry about Karavenoff; in spite of my favourable views about his sincerity I had still done a good job on his ropes and it would be several hours before he wriggled free.

  As I reached the side of the bungalow I lifted the binoculars up to the roof of the house opposite; the figure was still up there, mac fluttering in the wind. I envied him his job even less than mine; I knew how he must be feeling, not that I felt a lot of sympathy. I’d had to do something similar; it had been colder than this and I’d had to stay put for near on three days.

  I crept up closer and took cover behind the garden hedge; I was within 20 feet of him. I transferred my gun to my left hand and gripped the small rock I had scooped up from the ground in my right hand. I took careful aim, knowing I wasn’t going to have a second opportunity, and flung it very hard at him. It struck right in the small of his back; even above the wind and the sea I heard the thump, followed immediately by a gasp that was a mixture of pain and surprise. There was a clattering sound of the rifle sliding down the tiles, closely followed by the scream of the man sliding down the tiles after it, a small thump as the rifle hit the ground, and a positively loud thump as the man hit the ground. My gun was back in my right hand as I looked on from behind the bush. The man lay in a still heap; I waited a while but there was no sign of any movement.

  I walked over to the man; he was unconscious but not dead. He looked familiar, even in this dark garden. I looked closer. There was no mistaking his identity. I was shocked to the core. It was six years since we had last met, in a cell in Paris, but there was no doubt at all: it was MI5’s peanut-munching recruiter, Wetherby.

  I ran my hand into his breast pocket, and pulled out a wallet containing some credit cards and a driving licence identifying him as one Arnold Edward Rolls, insurance loss adjuster, of Leeds, England. However, in his mackintosh pocket I found all the identification I needed: an old crumpled paper bag full of unshelled peanuts.

  What on earth, I wondered, was this strange man, who had gone to such extraordinary and devious lengths to press-gang me into the service, now doing going to such extraordinary lengths to get rid of me; at least I presumed it was me he had been waiting for.

  A fury welled up inside me but I told myself to calm down; there were so many peculiar happenings right now that one more wasn’t going to make any difference. It was possible that his visit to this island wasn’t connected with my own, or possible that he was here to protect me. Unlikely, I felt, but possible. I was damned if I was going to give him the benefit of the doubt, but decided to allow him a small amount of leeway.

  There was a thin trickle of blood coming from the back of his head where it had made contact with the ground. I couldn’t tell if any bones in his body were broken but his breathing was normal and I reckoned he probably had concussion and a lot of bruises. I looked at my watch; I had about thirty-five minutes to the last ferry – it had taken less time to topple him than I’d thought. We were on the Atlantic side of the island, and the wind was blowing offshore. There was a small catamaran lying at the top of the beach only a short distance away – I’d noticed it earlier in the evening through my glasses. I heaved Wetherby’s nut-nourished hulk onto my shoulders and staggered down onto the beach with him, dumping him on the sand. I heaved the boat down to the water’s edge, then dragged Wetherby down to it and pushed him underneath the tarpaulin into the cockpit.

  He was going to have one hell of a time figuring out what was happening when he came too. At worst, the craft would get sliced in half by a tanker. At best, Wetherby would be off my back for a day or two and, provided he was off my back for a day or two, I didn’t give a damn what happened to him. I heaved the boat into the water, the icy water clamming my trousers to my legs, my shoes filling with wet sand, and then suddenly the boat was afloat and without my having to give it even a parting push, it surged away from the shore; turning first this way, then that, it headed off at a steady drift in the general direction of Nantucket. Beyond Nantucket was the whole Atlantic Ocean. It was with no small grin that I thought to myself that if Wetherby missed Nantucket, he was going to find himself up something one whole lot bigger than the proverbial Shit Creek.

  I got back to my car at a quarter to
one and headed off through the night up towards Canada. I wasn’t sure how good my knot-tying was, nor whether Karavenoff really could be trusted, nor whether Sleeping Beauty would go blurting the story of the break-in to the police. If the police were to start looking for a burglar, right now I would be their most likely candidate for openers. I wanted to get back to England, and I wanted to get back quickly, before anyone found out I was coming. I had an uneasy feeling that a certain person or persons not unconnected with an outfit in London that Wetherby worked for, might be keeping more than a casual eye on the Kennedy Airport departure lounge.

  I crossed the Canadian border at half-nine in the morning, pulled into the first service station I came to and slept for half an hour in the car. I felt a little refreshed, but not much, when I awoke and downed a plateful of eggs and bacon and several cups of black coffee in a cafe before heading on to Toronto.

  I reached the airport at half-eleven and booked a seat on the first available flight to London. It was the Air Canada 7.00 pm flight. I asked for seat 14B, and the girl told me she was sorry, it was reserved, she could give me A or C. I smiled and took A.

  On an empty row of seats in the lounge I crashed out for a few hours. I slept fitfully, assembling all the events of the past few days, then pulling them apart and reassembling them again. Fifeshire wasn’t involved. Nor Sumpy. Karavenoff was telling the truth. Where did Wetherby fit in and why was he suddenly playing the role of hit man? Why had these attempts been made on me? Was it my knowledge of the way Orchnev had died, or of the contents of his letter or of the plastic chip? Nobody except me knew how Orchnev had died, so it must be because of the letter or the chip or, most likely, both. But the letter was addressed to Fifeshire. Why did anyone want to kill me for it – particularly, as it now seemed, my own side? Because they knew I had stumbled into something major and didn’t want me to screw it up? Unlikely. Could Fifeshire be the Pink Envelope? Was Orchnev trying to warn him that his cover was blown? Did my own side, knowing this, believe I was in this too and want to stop me getting away? It fitted, fitted perfectly. But I didn’t believe it.