Web of Spies

by Colin Smith

  He went directly to the master bedroom with absolutely no excuse worked out to explain his presence there if he was caught in the act. The first thing he saw was innocuous enough, but it surprised him, heightened his sense of being an intruder. On their large double bed they had a pale blue duvet, German style, and not the blankets and eiderdown he would have expected. The duvet indicated approval of at least one small contemporary development in the British scene that seemed completely out of character. It made him wonder what other incongruous things he might find there. He began to feel as if his mere presence in the room was a terrible violation, as if he had somehow desecrated the place as soon as he crossed the threshold. For a moment he was sorely tempted to run away, return to the chums down stairs, make his goodbyes, flee. But he knew that if he could not do this he might as well forget the whole project, take chummy’s advice and go back to the firing line, try to lose himself in a long summer’s campaign against the guerrillas in 4C.

  He went to the nearest bedside table, which was obviously the Brigadier’s because it had some cuff-links and collar-studs on it in a little velvet-lined leather box. There was also an unreadlooking copy of last weekend’s Sunday Telegraph. On the other table there was a photograph of thirteen-year-old Emma in a riding-hat, sitting on a pony with a rosette in its bridle.

  This was all exactly as it should be and made him feel better. He held his breath. He didn’t think he had the nerve really to search the place, pull it apart.lt had to be where he thought it would be. He pulled the drawer in the Brigadier’s table open slowly, as if it might be booby-trapped. It seemed to make an incredible amount of noise. It was full of papers. Panic-stricken, he pulled at the papers and the whole drawer came out of the table and crashed to the floor like a landslide. He stood, rock still, listening to the murmur of voices from downstairs. A door opened; he waited; the door closed. The murmur continued as before. He looked down at the floor and there, smaller than he remembered it, was the revolver and two lidded cardboard boxes containing the ammunition.

  He had last seen it shortly after he and Emma got married, a civil wedding in a crowded registrar’s office and a ceremony which Emma said afterwards reminded her of getting stuck in a queue at the post office. They were spending a long weekend with her parents in an attempt to help them get over the shock. It was not very successful therapy. Her mother wept, Emma sulked and then saddled up her sister’s hunter and went galloping off without a hardhat on. The Brigadier drank too much port after lunch while casting conversational flies, trying to find out what sort of waters his new son-in-law swam in. It was soon established that he did not shoot. Nor did he fish, and when Emma asked him to hold the hunter while she was tightening the girth he was obviously terrified of the beast. His hair was too long, his accent too short and, from one or two things he had let drop, he also appeared to be a sight too liberal in his ways: everybody knew that these comprehensive schools were staffed by red cadres. The only thing the Brigadier approved of was his build. He looked like he could stop a tank attack.

  Later, the Brigadier blamed it on the port. It started when, during his interrogation, Dove revealed that he not only had no interest in killing anything, but had never actually touched a firearm in his life, never in fact pooped off at anything.

  Shortly afterwards they were standing boulder to shoulder on the ample lawn, blasting to pieces cans and cardboard boxes, first with the double-barrelled 12-bore and then with the revolver. When she came back Emma thought it was the funniest thing she had seen for ages. Dove was quite good with the shotgun and seemed to have something of a natural eye. With the pistol, like most people firing one for the first time, he was utterly hopeless.

  In any case, the piece was not designed for accuracy. It was a short barrelled Webley.38 revolver made under licence in Calcutta in the 1930s by an Indian gunsmith who sold them to officers and their wives as a weapon small enough, unlike the issue service revolver which in those days was till the cumbersome .45, to conceal easily about their persons. The short barrel brought the range down to about twenty-five yards and this particular weapon tended to throw a bit to the left. Its blueing had worn away in places, and the ring on the butt, designed to take a lanyard should the owner ever wish to wear it with uniform, had been removed. Like most revolvers it did not have a safety catch. A long time ago the Brigadier had simply wedged a large headed screw into one of its chambers, thus reducing its load to five bullets, and let the hammer rest on that.

  Dove pocketed the pistol and the ammunition, over forty rounds in all, replaced the drawer and went back downstairs. Shortly after that he left.

  As it happened the Brigadier did not open the drawer to his bedside table from one week to the next. It was almost three weeks before he missed the revolver and when he did so his primary suspect was his wife. She was still heavily sedated most of the time and he feared that either she was suicidal or had somehow convinced herself that he was. ‘You must tell me where you’ve put it, dear,’ he was likely to snap just as the drugs were about to transport her across the frontiers of some Shangri La where Emma was always thirteen and won all the gymkhanas. Over a month went by before he realised who had taken it. By that time it was much too late.

  7. Safe Houses

  Stephen Dove had more cash in hand than he had ever had in his life before. By the time he had withdrawn his life savings from the building society - almost two thousand pounds, sold his books, record-player, tape-recorder, cassette deck, and the few possessions he and Emma had acquired in their short married life, excluding her jewellery which he was loath to part with, he was able to spread a total of £2,556 across the top of his new Samsonite suitcase. The suitcase had cost almost sixty pounds which he regarded as something of an indulgence, but had excused on the grounds that he was going to be living out of it for some time to come. The Webley was in it under his shirts. Hardly a satisfactory hiding-place, but the best he could do for the time being.

  He arranged the money in neat little piles according to denomination. That, he thought, is what I have garnered in thirtytwo years on this planet: just about enough to buy one standard medium-sized car.

  His last night in the Midlands was being spent at the home of his friend, Roger Day. This was an overcrowded semi in a culde-sac with children’s bicycles and dismembered dolls in the hall, and book-shelves jammed with paperbacks. In the lounge there was a baby grand piano and underneath it a small portable television set which Roger had bought in order to be able to communicate with his pupils. Roger’s wife, a slightly overweight young Welsh woman with black curly hair, taught music. Between pupils, when she was bored, she baked chocolate cakes. The whole house exuded that warm, self-satisfied, superficially friendly yet basically xenophobic smell of successful domesticity. Its very comfiness made most visitors dismally aware of their intrusion.

  Until Emma’s death Dove had been one of the exceptions. Now he too felt suffocated by its homeliness and was anxious to be gone. His headmaster had allowed him to take the summer term off as unpaid leave of absence which, even in the circumstances, was a flattering concession granted the unemployment level among teachers. He would not have to report back to work until the start of the new school year in September - almost five months away. ‘If you’re not back then I’m afraid we’ll have to replace you,’ the headmaster had said, trying to keep his voice friendly. ‘Until then we’ll try and make do with a supply teacher.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll be back,’ said Dove. He was not sure whether he meant it.

  After dinner, while his hostess washed the dishes, he and Day drank Scotch, a measure of the importance Day attached to the occasion. Young married teachers at state schools do not, as a rule, keep spirits in the house.

  ‘How long do you think you’ll be in London?’ asked Day.

  ‘Oh, about a week I expect.’

  ‘And then the Middle East?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you sorted out what bits yet?’

  ‘Not really. I’
m leaving that to the travel agent. Egypt mostly, I think. You know, pyramids, Alexandria, and down to Luxor for the Valley of the Kings. Then Baal beck to see the ruins ...’

  ‘Isn’t that in Lebanon?’

  ‘Yes, I think it is.’

  ‘Not really a spot for tourists just now, I should have thought?’

  ‘No, well, I wouldn’t go if there was any danger,’ said Dove hastily. My God, he suspects something, thought Dove. ‘I’ll probably go to Crete as well,’ he said, to throw him off. ‘More likely to go there than the Lebanon really. Might go to Israel, have a look at Jerusalem too.’

  ‘It’ll cost a few quid, won’t it?’

  ‘Well, I’ve nothing else to spend it on, have I?’ Dove sensed that the questions were over. He didn’t like lying to Roger, but was frightened that he might do something to try and stop him. ‘You’ll keep in touch?’ said Day. ‘You know, the cultural postcard reeking of sun-tan oil, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Of course, me on a camel. From D. H. to T. E. Lawrence in one giant stride.’

  That’s better, thought Day. More like his old self. For a moment there the most crazy idea had flashed across his mind. He dismissed it. Stephen was much too steady for that. Now if he was in his position things might be different ...

  A little while later he asked: ‘Anything new on who did it?’

  ‘Only what I’ve read in the press. The police seem to think he’s probably a German connected with one of the Arab terrorist movements.’

  ‘Not much to go on, then?’

  ‘Do you think they want to catch him?’ said Dove, suddenly angry. ‘Christ, do you honestly think they really want to and have a plane of package tourists hijacked from Torremolinos or some precious bloody ambassador marched out of his garden party into a bloody coal cellar and kept there until we let the bastard go? Nobody, unless you count the Israelis, wants to catch these people. They’re on to the safest thing since duckshooting.’

  ‘Oh I don’t know ...’

  ‘Well, I do,’ said Dove. ‘Look at that Palestinian bird Leila Khaled. The police actually pulled her out of the hands of an El AI crew at Heathrow, locked her up for a few days, and then kissed her goodbye after her friends had hijacked a VC-10.’

  ‘Times have changed. Governments have learned to be tougher. They’ve taken their cue from the Israelis. They were pretty good terrorists themselves at one time.’

  Day was older than Dove. He had newspaper memories of the booby-trapped bodies of British sergeants banging in Palestinian orange groves and a bomb collapsing the King David’s hotel in Jerusalem over ninety people.

  ‘Oh, I know that,’ said Dove. ‘It’s these freelancers, these Europeans who get involved I don’t understand. What motivates them? Money? Boredom - more fun robbing banks than working in them? They like killing? The bloody world revolution? The KGB, the CIA or some other set of initials we’ve never heard of? What?’

  Koller held the envelope up to the naked light-bulb again. ‘Can you see it now?’ he said. Ruth was standing next to him in the planned kitchen, nodding her head, her eyes open wide like a child watching a magician. She was holding the lamp-shade.

  He had re-folded the envelope so what had been its edges were now in the centre. Against the bulb it was possible to see that what had been the top edge had been cut over half-way down the length of the envelope and then glued together so that a narrow margin of adhesive was visible either side.

  Koller ran through the other letters in the day’s delivery just as he had that morning, motivated by boredom more than anything else, when Ruth was out showing solidarity at the picket line of some immigrant workers. A similar shadow could be seen on two more envelopes. The third was a letter from the Inland Revenue to the journalist who owned the flat and the OHMS printed all over it had evidently secured it an unread passage.

  ‘Congratulations,’ said the German. ‘You have finally made the big time. They’re opening your mail.’

  ‘What made you suspect?’

  ‘I didn’t, but I have nothing better to do than check these things.’ It was ten days since the bombing and he had not left her flat once.

  He told her about the advances the security services had made since the days of the steaming kettle and scalded hands. There were basically three ways of opening somebody’s mail. There was this way, the sharp cut and the repair which could only be detected by somebody who knew what he was looking for. Then there was the gadget known as the spinning-needle used on more sensitive mail, diplomatic for example. The needle was inserted into a small hole in the side of the envelope and, powered by an electric motor, it spun the letter into a tight little cylinder so that, with care, it could be extracted through the hole. The third method was to use infra-red photography, but generally speaking this was only satisfactory if the letter covered no more than one side of a single sheet of paper. Even then, the way it was folded could create problems.

  ‘Christ,’ she said. ‘They’re watching the flat.’

  ‘Not necessarily. It depends how interested they are. At the moment they’re sufficiently interested to open your mail -’

  ‘And tap the bloody telephone,’ she interrupted.

  ‘I don’t think so. Not the way you mean. Do you really think you are so important? It takes hours transcribing a lot of tapes. Don’t flatter yourself, honey. I think for you, if they do anything, they connect a printometer.’

  ‘A what?’ She ignored the condescending tone. He often spoke to her like that.

  ‘They don’t listen but this machine, the printometer, is connected to your line at the exchange and prints out a record of all the numbers you call. They find out who your contacts are. It’s a German invention.’

  ‘So was Zyklon B.’ Sometimes she could not resist reminding him of her Jewishness because it was his most vulnerable point. When he was a little drunk, he only ever got a little drunk, he would talk about his father the Nazi and what a bastard he was. There was a long pause; for a moment she thought he was going to hit her, but all he said was: ‘That is not very funny.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t. Sorry.’ Don’t be a bloody fool, she thought. Don’t needle him, he’s under strain. How would you feel in his position? She had wanted to talk about the woman he killed with his bomb, but they never did. She knew she was technically an accomplice, an accessory after the facts. She had never intended to get in this deep. Not even for him.

  They sat at the kitchen table drinking cognac out of balloon glasses. She lit a cigarette. ‘The telephone has been sounding a bit funny,’ she said. It was not a serious observation. It was a remark intended to put the conversation back into gear.

  ‘That’s shitbull. You can never tell, believe me.’

  ‘The word’s bullshit.’ ‘

  ‘Can you say it in German?’

  ‘Why are we arguing?’ Now she wished she had never mentioned the telephone. It was an amateur’s remark. She hated to sound like an amateur when she was with him.

  ‘We are arguing,’ he said with one of his flashing grins, like a neon light lighting up a dark street, ‘because I have been imprisoned here for ten days. It is a very pleasant prison and the prisoner has certain privileges most prisoners do not have.’ She touched his hand, pleased. He very rarely referred to their sex life or made the slightest demonstration of affection out of bed. ‘But it is still a prison. Sometimes I would like to go out for a walk - even in the rain.’

  ‘What happens now?’ The limbo existence was wearing Ruth down as well. Each day was a struggle to disguise her fear. Immediately after the bomb the television and newspaper reports had sustained her. The enemy was out in front, giving press conferences, making appeals for witnesses. Then, after a couple of days, the bomb didn’t receive a single mention in the bulletins or a paragraph in the newspapers. It was as if the whole thing hadn’t happened. Yet she knew that it had and there were people out there hunting him - and with him, her. She wanted to see a big headline saying: ‘Police baffled’. Or -
why not? - some innocent picked up and charged, preferably some fascist Irishman who wanted to blow up members of another Christian sect. But nothing had happened. This business with the mail was the first development.

  She would have liked to talk about it with her comrades in the party, even raise the matter at one of the self-criticism sessions, but she knew she would only be told to break off her association with him or leave. It would be like a nun confessing to an affair with the gardener. They might even grass on him. They didn’t like elitists and, besides, she had just been elected to the central committee.

  He sipped his brandy slowly and asked her about the committtee. She was quite surprised. She never imagined he would bother to retain such trivia. His attitude towards the party was always one of amused contempt. The middle classes playing at revolution. Sometimes, in her darker moments, she had even doubted if he was a socialist.

  ‘Can you remember the exact date when you were elected?’ Yes, of course she could. It was only five days ago.

  ‘Please, have you got any envelopes left from letters you received before then?’

  She found two. He held them up to the light. No mark. ‘I think you have an informer on your central committee,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, c’mon ...’

  He made a clucking sound and jerked his blond head up and to the right. It was an Arabic gesture of disbelief he had first acquired in a Palestinian training camp almost ten years before.

  ‘Listen. Your letters are now being opened. A week ago, before you were on the committee, they were not being opened. Special Branch doesn’t bother with the little fish, you see. Now you’re on the committee they take an interest.’