Dead Letter Drop

by James, Peter

  16

  There was a uniformed policeman on guard outside Fifeshire’s room at the London Clinic, who informed me that no one was allowed in. I scribbled a note and asked him to take it to Fifeshire. He agreed, and was back within moments, ushering me in.

  I had never seen Sir Charles Cunningham-Hope anywhere other than behind a desk before, and it was quite a shock to see him sitting, in a paisley silk dressing gown, in a small chair by the window, looking weak and vulnerable. There was an ugly mark on his neck, just below his left ear, and turning his head was evidently uncomfortable for him. There were piles of war history books all over the room, and sheaths of notes, but no despatch boxes or any other sign of official work papers.

  He rose from his chair, and we shook hands warmly; he pointed me to the chair opposite. ‘What a surprise! It’s good of you to come and see me.’ He seemed genuinely pleased I had come. ‘How are you keeping?’

  ‘Healthy,’ I said, ‘in spite of your colleagues.’

  He laughed. ‘My former colleagues,’ he said.

  ‘Former?’ He must have felt the shock in my voice. ‘What do you mean, sir? You haven’t resigned?’

  There was a long and awkward silence. He turned and looked out of the window at the busy Marylebone Road and the Regent’s Park gates opposite. ‘Not exactly,’ he said, ‘not exactly.’ There was a long pause, then he changed the subject abruptly. ‘How’s the Department?’

  ‘I don’t know – I’ve been in New York since I last saw you.’

  ‘Still on the same assignment?’

  ‘Yes. Nobody’s taken me off it.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Hagget still in charge over there?’

  ‘Yes. What do you mean ‘‘not exactly’’?’ I said, swinging the subject back.

  There was another long pause. ‘There seem to be one or two people who, ah, feel this, ah – um, mishap, ah, might be a good opportunity for my, ah, retirement; I think they could be right. This fellow Scatliffe’s temporarily in my seat – as you no doubt know, he’s a, ah, an, um, a competent man, and from all accounts he’s doing his job ably. I know you and he haven’t in the past, ah, seen eye to eye on certain matters, but I’m sure time will heal those wounds, I think you have the ability to eventually win him around. He’s younger than me – a good deal younger, and maybe more in touch. This is important, to be in touch with the world; I don’t think I can be any more; I’ve grown too old.’

  ‘More in touch? Maybe today’s agents do go roller-discoing, but it doesn’t mean their bosses have to!’

  Fifeshire smiled. ‘It’ll be a good six months before I can walk without a stick. You can’t have a cripple for a chief; that’s hardly going to inspire a team of action men! I’ll be shunted off to a nice quiet office, given a pleasant title, and my salary will be upped; but I won’t know what’s going on any more than the cleaning ladies will. This is a good time for me to bow out – there’s plenty of books I want to write; and I do feel I should step down, give the young a chance of promotion – I know you don’t want to stay in the field all your life – well, if us old ones didn’t go occasionally, there wouldn’t be any room in the building for the likes of you.’

  ‘I have some information that’s going to make you change your mind.’

  Fifeshire smiled. ‘You’ve a good future, young fellow. Maybe you weren’t too happy about joining us in the first place, but Wetherby was right – the man’s no fool you know – when he picked you. Hear he’s been transferred to MI6 and been posted to Washington; controller of operatives in the US. Good stepping stone to the hot seat, that post.’

  Fifeshire’s words slotted another piece of the puzzle into place, although I still couldn’t yet see the picture. I refrained, with considerable difficulty, from telling Fifeshire about the boating trip that this man he rated so highly was currently enjoying.

  ‘My mind is made up,’ he continued, ‘I was just starting my letter to the Minister, when you arrived.’

  ‘With respect, sir, you won’t be continuing it when I’ve gone.’

  His face hardened visibly; suddenly, for a moment, his steel showed once more; he stared that hard cold stare that must in his lifetime have destroyed a million weak ideas long before they were ever presented to him. I returned the stare as unflinchingly as I could. I concentrated with all my might, staring deep into the centre of his eyes. ‘I have a letter for you from Dr Yuri Orchnev.’ He didn’t blink. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t move one fraction, or change one shade of colour. The name meant absolutely nothing to him. I handed the letter to him. He read it quickly, then through again, slowly.

  ‘What was enclosed?’

  I handed him the chip. He looked at it.

  ‘It looks like a micro-processor chip,’ he said, ‘am I right?’

  I nodded.

  ‘What’s its speciality?’

  ‘Airline seats.’

  The expression on his face indicated his brain was searching for some significance. After a few moments the expression changed to one that indicated no significance had been found.

  ‘Does it build airline seats?’

  ‘No, it books them.’

  He lifted the chip up in his fingers. ‘That’s more than I could do when I was that size.’

  I smiled.

  ‘What exactly does it book?’

  I told him, in detail. While I talked he leaned forward and proffered a box of Havanas; I refused politely; he took one of the massive cigars and started to examine it.

  ‘How did you get hold of this chip?’ he asked when I had finished.

  ‘Room service delivered it to my apartment.’

  He started running the Havana along a course between his index finger and his thumb, a short way from his right ear. ‘Did room service say where it came from?’

  ‘Room service wasn’t in a very talkative mood.’

  He appeared to hear something interesting in his Havana, and put it closer to his ear. ‘Airline seats,’ he said, ‘Orchnev . . .’ He laid the cigar down on the table and picked up the letter, studying it closely. ‘This letter – the tone of it – it’s as if he’s had previous correspondence, or at least communication, with me. But I’ve never heard of the man. Orchnev. Orchnev.’ He repeated the name to himself a number of times but it evidently rang no bells. From his dressing-gown pocket he produced a cigar cutter; it was an old silver one with a sliding blade. He extricated the blade, then tested its sharpness with his finger. ‘What do you know of Orchnev?’

  ‘Not much, but enough to feel I had to come and speak to you right away.’

  Fifeshire began, very carefully and very precisely, to circumcise his cigar. He nodded at me to continue.

  ‘Orchnev was in a fairly senior position in the computer technology division of the KGB –’

  ‘Was?’ Fifeshire interrupted.

  ‘He’s dead – been dead about a week. For the past six months he’d been in communication on a number of occasions with a man in a very senior position in British Intelligence in London.’

  Fifeshire stopped his surgery. ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know his real name, I know him only by a code name the Russians have for him; and the name is a trifle curious; they call him the Pink Envelope.’

  ‘The Pink Envelope?’ He frowned hard.

  ‘I know it sounds odd, but I’m certain it’s true.’

  ‘Perhaps the name means something very significant in Russian.’

  ‘Or else its a poor translation of the Scarlet Pimpernel.’

  He resumed his surgery. I related to him what Karavenoff had told me; he listened silently. His interest in his cigar appeared to wane and he put it down once more. ‘How much of this have you told Commander Scatliffe?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘You realise you’re breaking orders coming to me? All your reports should be made to the Commander.’

  ‘I’m aware of that, sir.’

  ‘For all you know, this, er, Pink Envelope – could be me.’<
br />
  ‘It had crossed my mind, sir.’

  He had the grace to smile.

  ‘Who do you think it is?’ He put the cutter back in his pocket and pulled out a lighter.

  ‘The man who shot Battanga.’

  There was a single sharp report; it volleyed around the room, then faded down below the hum of the London traffic. Fifeshire had dropped his lighter onto the table.

  ‘What exactly do you mean?’

  ‘Nobody was out to assassinate Battanga.’

  ‘He had a lot of enemies.’

  ‘I’m sure he did. I’m equally sure none of them were hanging around Mount Street at a quarter to one on Friday 15 August of this year.’

  ‘Why are you so sure?’

  ‘Right now, I don’t have proof; give me a few days, and I’ll get it for you. Surely you can see that it’s possible there’s another side to the story? Battanga was an unpopular ruler and by all accounts not a particularly pleasant fellow – you may know better; if anybody wanted to kill you, whilst you were together with him would have been the ideal time: pretend they’re assassinating him but actually you were the real target. To the whole world it looks as though it was unfortunate for you that you were in the car with him. The assassin telephones a newspaper, claiming to be a Mwoaban terrorist group – it all sounds perfectly logical to everyone; the assassin, whilst failing to actually kill you, finds things are working out even better than he thought, for that very reason – that he hasn’t killed you! You are effectively silenced but because Battanga is dead, and not you, there is no suspicion that you might have been the target.’

  ‘I think you’re letting your imagination run away a little,’ he smiled.

  ‘I’m not, sir, I’m damn sure I’m not.’

  ‘So whoever it was that shot me was a Pink Envelope and not a Black Lefty?’

  I ignored the sudden snideness. ‘I’m absolutely certain that it was either the Pink Envelope himself or more likely someone hired by him, or even working with him.’

  ‘It’s possible, I must admit. You could be right – but, frankly, I doubt it very much.’

  ‘Let me continue, sir. Since the letter and the chip came into my possession, there have been several attempts to kill me: to give you an example, three nights ago my car was blown to pieces by a bomb; someone is trying very hard to silence me.’

  ‘Probably the Russians themselves,’ Fifeshire interrupted.

  ‘It would seem likely,’ I agreed, ‘but I can’t see how that fits in with the attempt made the night before last: I got to the assailant first, before he had a chance to do anything, and I very positively identified him.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘The man you spoke of so highly only a few minutes ago. Wetherby.’

  There was a long pause. Fifeshire lit his cigar, slowly and carefully, then took several long puffs on it; he leaned forward. He didn’t give the impression of being in a hospital room any more; he was once more at his Whitehall desk. ‘Go back to the start,’ he said, ‘go back to 15 August. I want to hear every single thing that’s happened since then, every single detail.’

  It was after 2.00 when I finally emerged into the Wimpole Street afternoon. It was late November yet the temperature was pushing 60, and I was sweltering in the heavy gear I had been wearing for over two days. During this same time I hadn’t bathed or shaved; I had done all my sleeping either in car, airport or aeroplane seats; and I was suffering a severe bout of everything-lag. I felt revolting; my nerves were jangling, and the 4-hour dialogue with Fifeshire hadn’t improved them much.

  I’d told him most of what I knew, although I told him I’d shot Orchnev, not that Orchnev had shot himself. Fifeshire himself had disturbing news about the department: Victor Hattan, his personal choice as successor, had drowned in a sailing accident three weeks after the shooting; a further three of his top field men had died on reasonably routine assignments; and his own secretary, Margaret, had jumped to her death from a 9th-floor hotel room while on holiday in Spain – nobody had even bothered to tell him until he had telephoned some weeks later to try and speak to her.

  The good news that came out of the session was that Sir Charles Cunningham-Hope had abandoned all thoughts of retiring. My head was crammed to its exhausted gills with instructions. It was comforting to have instructions; they had been singularly lacking during recent times.

  As the final coup de grace of whatever evil spirits currently lurked in my charts, my rented car had been towed away. Not that its destination was much out of my way. I removed my wolf coat, and started to walk. I walked among people; among old ladies and mothers with shopping baskets and children indiscriminately slung about their arms; among hurrying men in their work suits; among fruit sellers and Indian-necklace sellers and leather-belt sellers and personalised horoscope-badge sellers; among brightly coloured cars and brightly coloured shop fronts; and among pretty girls going about their day, being pretty girls in a hundred thousand different tantalising ways. I walked mostly among pretty girls.

  17

  The nerve centre of British Intelligence consists of just over 3 square miles of atom-bomb proof knowledge. It lies several hundred feet underground, below the vast acreage of greenery in the centre of London that is Hyde Park. It lies deep down beneath the famous underground car park, beneath the lowest reaches of the underground railway network, and is encased in an awesome tonnage of concrete and lead.

  Underneath the calm green of the park and the dim gloom of the police car pound – where my rent-a-wreck was no doubt languishing – and the layers upon layers of concrete, are some 5,000 men and women, all with faces pallid from lack of sunlight, from an eternal diet of civil service coffee and civil service ham sandwiches, and made worse by the cold stark glare of the neon strip lighting.

  In this weird white-walled, white-lit, white-sound-deadened grotto of corridors and windowless rooms, computers clatter and flash as far away into the distance as the eye can see; people move from department to department on electric tricycles, always clutching wads of files, always in a desperate rush. The casual observer would rapidly form the impression that everyone down here knows exactly what they are doing – much like the impression given to the casual observer of a column of ants – not that there were any casual observers down here; none that British Intelligence knew of, anyway.

  When Ian Fleming wrote his Bond books the futuristic headquarters of the lunatic megalomaniacs that adorned the finales of many of his books did not come entirely from his imagination, but in part from his own direct observations of this place during his own service in Intelligence.

  Down here everything works; in a matter of seconds one can find out what the weather was like at 3.30 pm on 8 May 1953 in Botswana; or the political affiliation of any professional football-player in the world; or the names of all the owners in England of cars made behind the Iron Curtain, their political affiliations, and probably, if one looked hard enough, the favourite colours and shoe sizes of their grandmothers. At the push of another button the name of the 927th convicted housebreaker in Durham would appear, where he bought his cigarettes from, what his favourite television programme was and what he ate while watching it. Another button would reveal all the known and suspected Communist schoolteachers there were at the present time in Wooton-Under-Edge, or in Ongar, or in Bognor Regis, together with details ranging from their family trees, down, sometimes, to as much as their menstrual cycles or which after-shave their wives gave them for Christmas.

  These 3 square miles make Big Brother look like the village idiot. The only thing I wouldn’t be able to find out down here would be when the next 2 x 4 would come swinging my way so that I’d know when to duck; on the other hand, it might be able to give me a lot of clues.

  Arthur Jephcott was a jolly fellow, tweedy and slightly clumsily built, with a thin bony head, an unkempt beard at the bottom and a short pile of tangled hair on top, sparkling eyes, and a pair of hands he never knew quite where to put. He looked as if he
would have been more at home marching country lanes with a stout stick, or buried behind piles of dusty books and yellowing manuscripts, in an office crammed full of curios, in a publishing company in Bloomsbury; behind him should have been a window with a view out over dismal, murky streets, and the office should have had an overriding smell of faded leather, damp and dust.

  Instead, the door to Arthur Jephcott’s office opened into a precision-honed vacuum of sterility; there was a desk, a chair in front and a chair behind, an extractor fan, a computer terminal built into the top of the desk with a display screen that could be seen from both sides of the desk, two overhead strip lights, and absolutely nothing else; not a picture on the walls, nothing – complete clinical nothingness.

  Arthur gave me an odd look, just for a fraction of a second, as I entered; it was a look I couldn’t immediately explain and it vanished as quickly as it appeared. He stood up, and a broad beam sprang across his face. ‘Good to see you again, dear fellow. Looking good! Trifle peaky under the gills, perhaps, but good!’ His greeting was warm, and he meant it.

  ‘You too,’ I said enthusiastically. I liked him. Always had. He often gave me snippets of news that he shouldn’t have done, little bits of classified information that gave me insights into the members and activities of the Department. Arthur was one of the best-informed men in British Intelligence, and I knew that what scraps he imparted to me were but tiny raindrops in the ocean, but I nonetheless eagerly and greedily devoured them; they helped give me a rough idea of what some of the other agents, of similar experience to my own, were up to, and generally what was going on; I would have given anything to have taken him out and got him stinking drunk and pumped his head for all it was worth. He knew so damn much because of his job. In effect his job was that of senior librarian for British Intelligence data: he controlled everything in Intelligence that involved computers, which was just about everything; all records, all incidents, all details, however small or large, about England, the British Isles and every other country in the world, anything at all in fact that could remotely be considered as concerning national security would be filed under Arthur’s personal supervision, and he would know how to retrieve it – normally within seconds; if it was particularly old or insignificant, it could take as long as one whole minute. Stored down here was every word of newsprint the Soviet Union had ever produced; every word ever printed in any language about any dissident; duplicates of all Scotland Yard’s crime records; Interpol’s records; personal dossiers on all the members of the US CIA; personal dossiers on everyone in every form of public life in every country of the world. There were dossiers on everyone in the world with a criminal record and on most of those without one who probably deserved one, from the bosses of organised crime down to the last crackpot. If it hadn’t been for the invention of the computer, both Arthur and I would have been standing knee-deep in dossiers.