Confessor

by John Gardner

  He searched, flicking through the written pages, then Gus’s notes. Eventually, he came to a folder the first page of which said “Ireland.” There it all was, and it made quite a horror story. Over one decade alone, Gus had traveled to Northern Ireland no fewer than a hundred times—and these were not mere day trips. The jobs were all detailed: names, reasons for interrogations, results. This was enough to make the man a legitimate target, but there was more: meetings with the Security Forces in London, interrogations all over the place. Some of the stuff was cross-referenced, and to go through it would take a long time. In fact, the main cross-reference was to another file headed “Terrorism.” This contained a whole mass of material which showed that Gus had either carried out or assisted at the interrogations of almost one hundred known, or detained, terrorists. He had obviously had a great deal of knowledge regarding the entire spectrum of both overt and covert organizations: PLO, Red Brigade, various splinter groups, Black September, the Baader-Meinhof Gang. Gus had even assisted the Germans in their interrogations of those charming people.

  In all, Gus must have been a marked man the world over, and on the hit list of a dozen organizations. There was a huge pile of information, and two draft chapters covering the anti-terrorist work, but Herb’s mind, still jumping like a grasshopper, was not ready for that particular journey.

  He returned to Gus’s narrative. Back in Berlin he was sent to one of the outlying units dealing with the denazification process. Herb was just about to read this long and interesting section when the telephone rang.

  It was Angus.

  “What’re ye actually looking for here, Herbie?”

  “What you got? Multiple choices?”

  “I can give ye a bit of sex scandal on Maitland-Wood.”

  “You can?” Surprise, then he recalled the young Memsahib, formerly Emma Paisley of Accounts. “Bit of the lad was he, Angus? Bit of a career lecher on the side?”

  “Ye might say that. Comes as a wee surprise. I knew him, ye ken, and he always seemed ta be a pompous little fat fart to me.”

  “To everybody, Angus. You are not alone in your amazement. Does not really interest me …”

  “Aye, two long-standing affairs with girls from Registry. Much younger than himself. Nights in iffy motels; weekends in Brighton and Eastbourne. Ye ken about the marriage when he retired?”

  “Yes, I ken, Angus. Some women like older men.”

  “Aye, it’s a funny old world right enough. The man had been tupping Emma for two years before he handed in his papers, so he must have had something the girls liked.”

  “Probably a gleaming and beautiful soul, Angus. What else?”

  “Only one wee funny thing.”

  “Which is?”

  “In civilian life he was allowed to use the letters AIMC after his name.”

  “So what’s AIMC?”

  “Associate of the Inner Magic Circle. Ye have to take exams to get that, and there’s only one higher order, which is by appointment only. He was a conjurer on the side. Nobody knew that. Quite a high-up conjurer as well. Your Magic Circle doesna’ take any riffraff. They’re guy strict.”

  “What about the old Chief?”

  “Shared the same secrets as his Deputy, except he was a humble MMC—Member of the Magic Circle. Never saw either of them do any tricks except in the line of duty.”

  “Gus?”

  “Nay a whisper. Nothing—unless you count the lang affair he had with Carole before his divorce.”

  Herbie thanked him and said he might need more. Gus not on the Magic Circle list? That was odd, if only because of the pair of monklike men doing the ritual over the grave. Perhaps Gus kept his secrets out of his Blue Jacket. He leaned back in his chair and smiled at the thought of Willis doing conjuring tricks. His eyes roved around the room, and his mind went back to the days when he had spent hours here with Gus, his friendly Confessor, always reassuring him that he was on his side, yet asking the really difficult questions when you least expected them. Gus was great on the throwaway lines, like “You ever mention our American cousins to them, Herb?” Or, “What about the Hallet business?” Worst of all, “How much you tell ’em about Birdseed, Herb?”

  Herbie had nearly gone crazy about the one black mark in his otherwise distinguished record. Against all instructions he had crossed into what was then East Berlin—a very big no-no—and, after several horrors, the East German security people had got him banged up and at their mercy. Then the real authorities arrived, so that during the time he had been away Herb had been put to the question by the KGB. He had done as well as could have been expected, for everyone breaks at some point. He knew what he had given to them. At the time he had been proud. It was only later that it was revealed to him—by Gus and Tubby Fincher—that two matters were still sensitive. Not just sensitive, but things that put a deep-seated penetration in the Kremlin in a very difficult position. He remembered this room with some horror, for it was here that he found out he had just about blown someone’s cover with the Hallet and Birdseed material.

  The agent concerned had been cryptoed Stentor and was the source of all good things from well inside what the Sovs used to call the State Organs. Kruger had truly compromised Stentor.

  Now, as he leaned back in his chair and thought about Gus and his own old problems, he recalled something else. The room had changed a great deal, like the rest of the house. When he had been here before, with Gus being as subtle as a snake, there were two big mirrors, one on either side of the fireplace. Intuition had told him then that the mirrors shielded space; that the mirrors were not normal; that behind the mirrors technicians were monitoring his sessions with Gus. Audio on one side, together with someone taking notes, and video on the other. All those years ago he knew that behind the mirrors there were small rooms. Now the mirrors had been replaced by bookcases stocked with leather spines.

  He rose and went over to the books. They were real enough, but somehow he had the feeling that they had been bought by the yard as cover. There were titles here to which neither Gus nor Carole would have paid much heed.

  Leather-bound copies of Jane Austen, the Brontës and even Hardy were not Gus’s thing at all. Gus was a biography and military history buff, not to mention arcane psychological journals. The books, Herb decided, were set dressing, which meant that behind the bookcases the rooms were still in place.

  He began to move the books, one by one, in the hope that some title activated a hidden catch. Then he realized that this method was pure Hollywood, and not the way old Gus would have camouflaged a lock. He examined the molding around the shelves. Nothing. So Herb returned to the desk and began to examine the drawers, knowing this was something he should have done on the first day.

  The top drawer on his right contained a revelation in the shape of a tape deck, rigged for long play/record, and a portion of the spool had already been used. A quick examination showed that the mike had been hidden almost directly in the center of the desk: a tiny seed embedded in a fancy solar-cell calculator—an oblong affair on a small stand, with the glass touch pad working as an overlay to a hologram background of coins.

  Kruger rewound the spool and pressed play, startled as the voice came eerily from hidden speakers built into the two bookcases flanking the fireplace. Somehow, Gus had managed to hook this little machine into a larger stereo system, and the voice seemed to surround Herb: soft, a touch of amusement buried in Gus’s familiar tones.

  “If anyone’s listening to this, it means I’ve either disappeared or quietly shuffled off this mortal coil. If that’s the case, I’m sure a lot of people will demand explanations,” Gus began. “Whoever you are, out there, you will already know that my life has been measured, not in coffee spoons, but in arcane crossword puzzles—the kind I mention at the start of my memoirs. I do not see why I should have all the fun. There are things about my life and times not known to many people at the Office. Those who do know a little about these matters are unlikely to come forward, so I will have to
give you a push in the right direction.”

  The voice paused for a brief chuckle. Then: “You are probably sitting at my desk as you listen to me, and you may, or may not, suspect hidden chambers, or even passageways. Without moving the telephone on your right, just hit 62442. Then touch the REDIAL button. Don’t, whatever you do, lift the receiver. Just enter the number and hit REDIAL. Happy hunting, and if some secret idiot has seen fit to do away with me, I hope you nail him.”

  Gently, as though it might trigger an explosion, Herbie did as the dead, disembodied voice told him. Over by the fireplace, there was an audible click and the shelves of books to the left of the fireplace moved. A door opening up. Slowly he pulled himself out of his chair and walked towards the half-open bookcase, pulling it back to reveal a large U-shaped room, which ran right around the chimney breast.

  It was much larger than he expected. The main oblongs, on each side of the fireplace, were at least twenty-four feet by fifteen feet, while the space behind the chimney was around eight feet wide—probably larger in fact, for practically the entire wall space was taken up with shelving, some of it glassed-in with sliding panels.

  It was a magic cave. He only had to glimpse some of the titles neatly lining the bookcases to see that: Modern Magic, an old book, obviously, but in mint condition; a row of slim matching volumes, The Jinx, each spine giving numbers of editions; another set, The Phoenix, again with numbered spines; books on advanced sleight of hand; books on magical history; books with titles that made no sense to him—some two to three hundred titles in all. Ranged along the sides of the passage directly behind the chimney breast were lines of videos, some obviously specialized instructional tapes, but some marked neatly in ink: Damautus: Mentalism Live 1992, Damautus: Close-up Acts 1, 2 & 3 1991, and so on, each prefaced by Damautus, then either Stage, Close-up or Mentalism.

  The room to the right of the fireplace was the one where most of the shelves were protected by glass, and behind the glass neatly piled little boxes or larger items were laid out in a precise order: a pair of silver chalices; an oblong Lucite box with brass trim; glasses of various sizes. Right in the center of the room stood a beautifully crafted table, its top inlaid with very high-quality green baize, the kind you would see in the better casinos. A triptych mirror was set on the table, with a chair neatly drawn in so that you could sit facing it.

  Herbie stood there, mouth open, then wandered back and forth through the rooms, trying to take in everything, an impossible task at short notice. Why, he wondered, had Gus’s secret not been in his Blue Jacket? BMW and the old Chief had been members of the elite Magic Circle. Why not Gus/Damautus?

  As he moved back to the first room, a title caught his eye: Whaley’s Who’s Who in Magic. He slid the dark green book out of the row and turned to the D’s. There were two entries. First:

  Damautus

  (Spain: fl.1540S) A Spanish knight. Amateur Cardman who visited Milan in 1543 in the retinue of Emperor Charles V of Spain. [Ch;Dif].

  Well, that for sure was not Gus, but the following entry most certainly was:

  Damautus, Claudius MIMC

  (Britain: fl. 1975—) Birth and real name unknown. An exceptional close-up and mentalist performer, Claudius Damautus is a magical legend who refuses to announce performances or appearances—usually at major Magical Conventions—in advance. Has been offered the AMA Magician of the Year Award three times and refused. Offered the IBM Gold Medal, which he also turned down. Author of several books, The Mystique of Magic, The Secrets of Damautus, The Mystery of Mentalism. Performs for charities, and gives limited lectures within the magical community.

  “‘Curiouser unt curiouser, said Alice,’” Herbie muttered to himself. Magicians, he suspected, did not shun publicity, yet here was Gus, practicing his usual deceits with the magical fraternity. He was mulling it over, trying to work out why BMW and the old Chief had their interest in the art of conjuring squirreled away in their Blue Jackets, while Gus Keene, obviously a master of this craft, refused coveted awards and performed only when he chose the moment. He was thinking about this when he heard a light knock on Keene’s study door.

  Quickly he stepped back into the room, pushing lightly on the false bookcase until it clicked back into place. It was only as he did this that he realized the opening or closing of the door activated lights inside the secret rooms.

  Walking to the center of the study, he called out, “Yes? Come.”

  Bex Olesker poked her head around the door. “You free, guv?” she asked, using the Criminal Investigation Department’s—in all its forms from C 1 to SO 13—abbreviation for a senior officer in charge of a squad or an investigation. “Guv,” or “gov’nor,” was standard among most of the British police forces, both central and local.

  “Sure, Bex, come on in and I shall a tale unfold.”

  She had the freckled grin of a sixteen-year-old, and closed the door gently behind her.

  “It’s Herb, not guv.” In the pause, he reflected that the old devil lust had not invaded his brain when he first saw this woman from SO 13. His mind breathed a sigh of relief. Not a flicker of desire, not even a small twitch in the loins. The devil was perhaps dead, and a good thing if it was.

  She nodded, and he gestured to the leather chair on the far side of Gus Keene’s desk. “But, first, I would like you to unfold a tale to me.” Herb did his goofy smile.

  “Shoot, gu—Herb.”

  “What’s a nice girl like you doing in SO 13 and working in spook country?”

  “That’s what men are supposed to say to whores.” She did not smile, and Kruger got the distinct impression that, in some small way, he had offended her.

  “Wouldn’t know.” He shrugged. “Probably put it badly. What I mean is how were you chosen to work with an old reprobate like me?”

  “Reprobate? I was told that you were one of the best. A super spook from way back.”

  “Like athletes, we super spooks get out of training. You should know, DCI Bex, that I’m not even a member of the club anymore. Blotted my copybook a couple of times; had a few nervous breakdowns. I’m doing this as an act of respect for an old friend. I have ID, and a few other things, but I’m a retired spook, now acting and unpaid. What about you?”

  She told him; talked about the FFIRA Active Service Unit she had bottled up in a terraced house in Camberwell. How they had even spiked the place and had tapes running. How Billy Boyle the Bomb Maker had turned up and how they listened to conversations until late in the night. Then how, after some three hours, the conversations and noises suddenly stopped. “It was like someone had pulled a switch,” she said.

  At first she thought one of their mikes had gone on the blink, but with some horror quickly realized that she had committed the cardinal sin of all surveillance operations. Because they had the place spiked, and well covered from the front, she had neglected the rear. “There was no real way out of the back. No doors. Only one window that was big enough for an elephant to get through. The bloody house backed almost directly onto the rear of another terrace.”

  Herbie nodded. “So you had no way of knowing they’d rented the house behind, eh?”

  “You’d have thought of that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Ah, but I’m an old man. Well, old in experience.”

  “While I’ll be lucky if I’m not back in uniform doing traffic if I don’t make a collar on this one. The buggers had a big reel-to-reel tape player running for half the night. They were long gone and away before we even knew anything was up.”

  “So, you won’t do it again. You been briefed on this thing of ours—Cosa Nostra?” he added, knowing it was quite a good gag as gags went. She hardly smiled.

  “Up to a point.” She rummaged in her large leather shoulder bag and pulled out a thick manila envelope. She opened the bag just enough to let Herbie see she was carrying a Heckler & Koch P9S automatic 9mm pistol. “This is what they gave me.” She held out the folder. “They said you’d fill in the gaps.”

  �
��Okay.” Herbie gave an innocent grin. “You show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”

  “They said you had a strange sense of humor.” Bex Olesker leaned forward and passed him the envelope. Again, she seemed a shade offended by Herb’s remark.

  During that first evening, while Herbie Kruger and DCI Bex Olesker were exchanging information, there was another meeting between the FFIRA and the London Intiqam team. This time Hisham did not have to travel to Dublin or Belfast. Declan came to him, using a postcard and chalk mark, the age-old tradecraft of dead letter boxes—the kind of thing that the general public had thought outdated at the end of the Cold War.

  They met in the stalls crush bar of The Palace Theatre, and sat together through Les Misérables—which they both found strangely emotional—doing their business during the pre-show and the interval.

  “I’ve a personal matter I’d like you to think about.”

  “Tell me. I’ll do all I can to help you.”

  “Well, this is very personal. Something I wouldn’t want to take care of myself. You see, I was engaged to be married. Back in ’84 that was. Anne Bolan, fought for the Cause. Died for the Cause as well. Was murdered right here in London.”

  “You know who murdered her?”

  “Ah, does it matter who? The usual SAS thugs pulled the trigger. Shot four of our people. Unarmed they were. Just shot down like sacks of flour.”

  “We all take our chances.” Hisham sounded flat, completely oblivious to death. Whatever happened was the will of Allah.

  “Yes, but she was young and there only for the experience. For Anne it was a training exercise.”

  “You want us to wipe out the SAS?”

  “No. There were four people very close to the cover-up—and I swear by God it was a cover-up.”

  “You have names?”

  “Oh, yes, we have names. One’s a fella who did a lot of work in the North. An Inquisitor and fixer. Gus Keene his name was, and he was attached to the SIS—the murdering bloody Brit Secret Intelligence Service, as were the other three.”