Greenfly (Commander Shaw Book 18)

by Philip McCutchan

  “Comrade Grulke said you have come to find Greenfly.”

  “Then you have your answer,” I said coolly. There wasn’t anything else I could say: Grulke had known it all. So far as I could see, the whole thing was blown already.

  What the future held for Felicity and me didn’t bear thinking about too much, but it all flashed through my mind like a flaming sword, since it was simple enough: a good deal of pain for the extraction of any further information, and then Siberia, or oblivion. The West wouldn’t be hearing of either of us again. I believed this squat man to be of the security police, the local big noise, wherever ‘local’ might be, of the KGB. Which, if I was right, meant that the KGB and Greenfly were hand in glove.

  And where stood WUSWIPP? Where the Ladybirds? The squat man was still staring at me in that calculating manner, a slight smile on his heavy face now. The head was like an inverted turnip, the shining bald dome coming down to a point at the chin, rather more suddenly than a turnip – a lemon was perhaps a better simile. The smile broadened and then he said something that surprised me, initially at any rate. He said, “You do not know where you are, Commander Shaw. I shall tell you. You are in the Belaruskya Sovietskaya Sotsialistychnaya Respublika – to you, the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. More precisely, you are in the regional HQ of the World Union of Socialist Scientific Workers for International Progress in Peace.”

  WUSWIPP. WUSWIPP itself. I looked at Comrade Grulke. I didn’t get it; not at first. Then I did. I said to the squat man, “So this is WUSWIPP territory. But you’re Greenfly.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “The worm in the bud.”

  The small eyes glittered at me. “I do not follow.”

  “Never mind,” I said, “it’s not important. So what comes next?”

  “A period of peace and quiet,” he said. “A time for reflection. And then perhaps … metamorphosis?”

  *

  Later, I didn’t know how much later, I woke up in strange surroundings. In the squat man’s office I had been held in a lock like a vice by the squat man himself. Ape-like, his arms were immensely strong. Held fast, my right sleeve had been drawn back by Grulke, who had used a hypodermic. Everything had grown hazy, just for a few seconds, then I must have gone out like a light since I have no recollection of what followed. But when I woke my mind was perfectly clear as to the present. I was in a white-painted room, very clean, clinically so; a ceiling light like an arc lamp was beamed down at me in full, eye-hurting brilliance. I was lying on what I believed to be an operating table or something similar and I was tied down to it helplessly. Ropes were drawn across my body from neck to ankles and secured somewhere beneath. I could breathe but I couldn’t move any part of myself except my fingers and toes. There was a bit of a headache and a slight feeling of nausea but these passed within minutes of my coming to.

  I was alone; there was no sound beyond the ticking of a clock somewhere behind me where I couldn’t see it. After a while an itch developed in my left calf, a tickling about which I could do nothing except go quietly mad if it went on for too long. It grew worse. I gritted my teeth and tried to think of something else but that didn’t help. ‘Something else’, anything else, was hurtful too: Felicity, the botching of a job that 6D2 had regarded as vital, that horrible interment in the marsh, the crucifixion, Felicity again.

  The itching continued and I gave a low moan.

  There was a movement behind me, a footstep: I wasn’t alone after all. Someone moved into view, a girl, a nurse presumably, wearing a white overall and a white mask over her face from the nose down. Even with the mask I could see she was potentially more than ordinarily pretty – I could say beautiful. Level brown eyes, a mass of dark hair with a tiny cap perched on top, good figure – nice taut breasts beneath the overall, slim waist.

  I met her eyes, and she lifted her eyebrows. What, I wondered, was the Russian for an itch in the left calf? I had no idea. I tried English; the girl spoke to me in Russian: a fat lot of good that was! However, the itch had reached its limit; it went away and I thanked God for the relief. I could see a smile in the girl’s eyes as she looked down at me, and a nod as if to herself. She moved away behind me and I heard her speaking, and when she finished there was a tinkle as of a telephone. Someone, I guessed, was being told that I had come round.

  6

  The squat man’s name was Senyavin: Grulke thus addressed him when they both came along in response to the nurse’s report. There was another man with them, tall, thin and grey-faced, wearing a long white coat like a doctor, which was what he turned out to be: Dr Kholov, they called him.

  For a while all three of them stared down at me. Then the doctor asked some questions in English, purely clinical questions.

  “There has been headache?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Nausea?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now gone?”

  “Yes.”

  “There has been no other pain than the headache?”

  “No other pain, no – ”

  “And now you feel quite well, quite normal?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  The doctor glanced at the other two and nodded in apparent self congratulation. “As I said.” He spoke in Russian but I understood that far. “It follows the pattern. He will now be feeling perfectly well and will remain so, even during the next part of the course.”

  Grulke and Senyavin nodded. Then Senyavin asked in his squeaky voice, “You will come to the house with us?” I understood that too. The doctor answered that he would of course come; some rapid and low-voiced Russian followed. I failed to get the gist of it but heard mention of WUSWIPP and I thought I heard the doctor say something about his being able to fix things so that he wouldn’t be wanted at HQ. There was a definite conspiratorial air; my mind was busy while my body was inert and it didn’t, in all the circumstances, take much cerebration to tell me that these men were using WUSWIPP to their own ends, making use so far of WUSWIPP’s scientific set-up, but that at any moment now I would be removed, with them, to somewhere more private. The next step came within a few moments: the young nurse appeared again, took a grip on the fleshy part of my right upper arm, dabbed at it with some gauze soaked in something cold, and then the doctor approached with a hypodermic, pushed the needle in and pressed the plunger.

  *

  This time I didn’t go out cold. I just felt numb and sleepy and very, very content, a most curious and happy feeling. I felt myself being untied from the table and rolled to one side while a stretcher was slid beneath my body and I was rolled back onto it. Then I was lifted and put on a trolley and pushed on this out of the compartment, back along the concrete corridor, the nurse at my side, and out into the underground parking lot where the doors of an ambulance gaped open to receive me. Two attendants took me over and I was lifted into the vehicle and deposited on a shelf-like bed. The nurse and Grulke and Senyavin got in with me while the doctor got in the front with the driver. I knew this because before we started off a panel slid back and the grey face looked through critically, making sure I was all right. Then off we went, bumpily. The ambulance had a tired look, not unlike a World War Two British Army field ambulance, and was very uncomfortable. Comrades Grulke and Senyavin had quite a job to keep their bottoms on the shelf-bed on the other side as the vehicle lurched and swayed on its journey:

  Comrade Senyavin looked after a while as though he was about to be seasick but he managed to hold onto his stomach and, more or less, his balance. It must have been a long ride for him.

  As for me, I was having extraordinary mental visions: one was of Felicity. I saw her still tied to that recumbent cross though I couldn’t make out the background. Others were of Hans Schulz lying dead near the East German border, and of Frau Schulz equally dead in the house in Braunlage. Others were of London.

  Max, in Focal House. Max on the line to Downing Street, sounding urgent. I heard him say, “A matter of days only, Prime Minister. My advice wou
ld be … “ I grew hazy at that point and didn’t entirely hear Max’s advice but I fancied there was something about readiness of missiles and the whereabouts of the Polaris submarine fleet and a reference to Faslane on the Clyde. Then I saw a meeting of the cabinet and after that I shifted to the Defence Ministry where the Chiefs of Staff were in a tizzy.

  Hallucinations. Disturbing ones, of course, but somehow I didn’t care. The world was a happy place where one could relax and forget. Comrade Grulke’s face, leering at me from his seat, was almost benign. Comrade Senyavin looked green but also friendly. It was a very weird feeling but I saw no danger in it. Not then. In fact I didn’t until very much later when I knew it was potentially lethal. Or maybe the exact opposite: just possibly benign to the point of peaceful co-existence, the ultimate concept that would stop all wars. But not so long as the know-how was confined to Russian possession only.

  When the ambulance came to rest I was taken out on the stretcher. I saw, before I was taken indoors, that I was in the grounds of a large house, something like a Black Sea dacha for the use of the top brass of the Soviet hierarchy. It was way out in the country, no other buildings to be seen, just snow-covered blankness and very flat, like the marshes. A dull, leaden sky, no sight of any sun, but it was still daylight, so back in the WUSWIPP HQ I had probably not been out all that long. Parked in the grounds was the Lada, with Grulke’s driver just getting out of it. Probably it had followed us from the underground car park.

  Once inside the house I was taken down some stone steps to a cellar, with another operating table or similar on which the stretcher was placed. This time I wasn’t roped down and I had no urge to escape: my will seemed to have gone. The cellar was well lit and as clinically clean as the compartment in the WUSWIPP set-up but there was a nasty smell of what I believe was formaldehyde and this, with its connotation of corpses, I did not like but was not unduly worried. The happy feeling was still with me. In a curious way it was almost as though I was hovering between this world and the next with plenty of promise of goodies to come. The formaldehyde was there simply as an agent to waft me across the great divide, Rubicon or whatever. Or perhaps it was the Styx. But the comrades presently looking down at me had none of the terrors of Charon standing by to ferry my soul across the dark waters, though physically the bald, squat Senyavin could well have taken that dread boatman’s part.

  The doctor was standing at the foot of the table.

  “You feel well?” he asked. “Well still?”

  “Yes,” I said, my voice sounding, to me, very far away.

  “Good. You are very happy. You will remain very happy. You will not worry about what is to be done.”

  “No,” I said. I think I wore a silly grin as I said it.

  “There is, however, something worrying you. It is Miss Mandrake.”

  “That’s so,” I said dreamily.

  “You will stop the worry, Commander Shaw. Miss Mandrake is here and is very happy too.”

  I said, “She’s tied to a cross.”

  Something, a gleam of some sort, came into the doctor’s eyes. He asked, “This you have seen?”

  I was about to say yes, I had, when Grulke spoke. He said, “I showed him a photograph.” The doctor looked a little put out, a little disappointed and tight-lipped. He didn’t say anything further, however, but moved away from the end of the table and went round behind me and I heard some mechanical sounds, a whirr of electricity and something being manhandled. A minute or so after this both the doctor and the nurse approached me and started taping things to me, electrodes, one at each side of my forehead, one behind each ear, others, after removal of some of my clothing, on my chest, wrists, stomach and inside both thighs.

  “You will not worry,” the doctor said again.

  “No.”

  “You will relax.”

  “Yes.” I was nicely relaxed already.

  “You will allow your thoughts to drift.”

  “Yes.”

  “You will not think of Miss Mandrake. Accept that she is happy, relaxed like you.”

  “All right,” I said. The image of the cross had faded for some reason or other. It was like a kind of hypnosis although I knew it wasn’t that: there was no eye work on the doctor’s part, no swinging of watch-chains or whatever it is they get up to. Sleepily, I said, “I’m sure she’s happy and content.”

  “Quite so. Very happy, very content. And also quite safe. Perhaps you will see her soon.” The doctor looked down at me with a kindly smile. “Let the drift begin,” he said.

  “The drift?”

  “The easing of the mind, the letting of the mental processes take their own course. Then we shall be ready to begin.” Once again the doctor moved away behind me and a couple of seconds later I felt some gentle stinging, no more than that, from the electrodes. Quite a pleasant feeling; and I grew more and more relaxed without feeling exactly sleepy. Then there was further mechanical sound and a trundling of wheels and a large square of white material, framed in metal, was pushed past me and set up in front of my table where I was able to see it. A screen like home movies … there were shadowy figures moving across it and as these became firmer I recognized dead Hans Schulz – of whom, for no real reason, I happened to be thinking at that moment. Then I thought of Felicity and as I did so she appeared on the screen, not on the cross but sitting in an easy chair with my London flat furniture in evidence.

  The doctor was growing excited: I could see it in his face. As I thought this, he appeared on the screen, a double of his current self. I was, to say the least, intrigued but only in a very relaxed way as though none of it really mattered. I heard the doctor saying something to Grulke and Senyavin, something about a full test first, to which they agreed, and then he spoke to me again.

  “You have hobbies,” he said. “Things you do in your spare time, yes? Perhaps chess.”

  “Not chess,” I said, and, thinking of the game, a chess board reflected from my mind, from my thoughts, onto the screen. Then I thought of golf: I played off four, not a bad handicap at all. The Royal and Ancient’s clubhouse appeared, then the little hut by the eighteenth green. The fairways whizzed past and halted by the Admiral’s bunker, so called because many years ago, long before my time, a choleric admiral had been unable to get his ball away from the sand and had had a heart attack and died in the bunker. As I thought of this, a red-faced elderly man showed up on the screen – in admiral’s uniform which was ridiculous, but Comrade Senyavin jumped on it, metaphorically.

  “An admiral! A British admiral! Why is this?”

  I explained.

  “So stupid, to become so excited about a game. Unless it is chess.” But he seemed satisfied that my thoughts hadn’t suddenly latched onto preparations for war against the Soviet, the immediate deployment of the golfing admiral to a nuclear-powered Polaris submarine with her missiles aimed at Moscow. That moment, of course – looking back – was when I should have ticked over as to what this was all about, but I didn’t. I was too relaxed, too unworried, too comfortable and happy. More golfing scenes appeared, interspersed with drinking sessions in various nineteenth holes – Muirfield, Lytham St Annes, Sunningdale and one in Spain which seemed to interest Comrade Senyavin since Spain was once again a kingdom and had been fascist. He muttered something in English about leopards and their spots. Suddenly, one of those weird shifts of the mind that come about for no reason, Felicity and I were in bed at my London flat. The doctor gave a discreet cough but Grulke and Senyavin watched as though transfixed, mouths open above sagging jaws. To their obvious disappointment, I switched off, my drugged mind roving again, and the result was a blur of several disjointed shots of Felicity and Max and the funfair at Littlehampton in Sussex where as a child I’d been taken by my parents as a last day of the summer holidays treat before going back to my boarding school. This led by natural processes to scholastic scenes and a number of canings, me being the victim.

  “Ah!” Senyavin said. He had unearthed a sexual deviation.
But the doctor shook his head impatiently and went into an explanation in Russian, doubtless a lesson on the peculiarities of British boarding schools. After this, the screen went blank as my electrodes were switched off and the three men went into a huddle. I couldn’t hear what they said, but I caught the nurse’s eye and forgot about them. That eye had a nice twinkle and somehow it made me feel better than ever, safe and in good hands and never mind the fact that the girl must obviously be in the Greenfly camp, and before that, WUSWIPP whose hands in the past, never mind their current change of heart, had been dipped in any amount of blood.

  When the huddle broke up, I was given another injection. “A booster,” the doctor said. A booster it may have been but it felt a little different: I can’t explain how. I had a weird sensation throughout my body, quite pleasant really, and my mind started doing funny things, prophetic things, as though I was looking into the future.

  Then I was left alone except for the nurse. She took my pulse and blood pressure about every five minutes.

  *

  “You will think,” the doctor said softly, bending over me. The electrodes had been activated again and were tingling, and the screen was once more alive and kicking. Kicking – almost literally. Shafts of light sped across, then more solid things in rapid succession, giving it the appearance of jerky movement. This went on and on; the doctor grew impatient, but I couldn’t help my racing thoughts. I wasn’t quite co-ordinating. The doctor said, “Concentrate, please, Commander Shaw.”

  “I’m trying to.”

  “You must not try only. You must succeed. I shall direct your thoughts again.” He repeated what he’d said at the start of this second session. “You will think of London. You will think of Whitehall, and of your Prime Minister, and of the Chiefs of Staff.”

  “I did, earlier,” I said. “In the ambulance – ”

  “Do so again.”

  “All right,” I said obligingly, and for a few fragmentary seconds I did. Fragmentary was the word: the Prime Minister turned jagged like a jig-saw and the pieces slotted into Francis Pym and immediately after this the General Belgrano sank again and the screen showed the House of Commons and a flurry of order papers coming down in a shower on Tam Dalyell.