The Liquidator

by John Gardner

  It meant a whole lot. Since quarter-to-five that afternoon, Boysie had been subjected to a battery of shocks. But the one innocuous word, 'Pressure', spoken by a man sitting behind a heavy, opulent desk in Whitehall, was the big pay-off: the knock-out blow, swinging up from the canvas to lift him off his feet. 'Pressure' was his personal code alert: the warning that a 'kill' was imminent.

  Even at moments of lowest physical and mental ebb, Boysie had never dared think of a situation like this. To be ordered in to the kill at this particular juncture, and in this particular place, was disastrous. The circumstances were of the stuff from which nightmares were made. A kill when he was away from home: cut off: vulnerable: out of touch with ... It didn't bear thinking about, and the first hysterical movements of panic began to come screaming out of their holes deep in the heart of his mind. He forced them back, clinging to the slender hope that, still, something might save him from yet another death.

  'Is that all he said? All Mostyn said? Haven't we got to go back to London or anything?' He was floundering for words: for an excuse: for escape.

  'No. I think, in a way, he was glad you were out when he telephoned. He doesn't want any personal contact with you. Said that was very important.'

  It was getting worse. A great thunder­cloud, heavy with depression and danger, had swept up, covering the whole limit of his lonely horizon. In the over-used words of the proverb, this was out of the blasted skillet and on to the gas ring.

  'He didn't even hint at ...' In time he stopped short at the word 'Target'. Iris knew a whole hatful of secrets; but he was pretty sure that she had no inkling of his own ghoulish position in the organisation. She was speaking again.

  '...a courier is arriving... here, tomorrow... With all the information for you. You've got to stay in the hotel and I'm to pick him up in Nice. At noon ...'

  Inserting two fingers into the shirt pocket, she drew out a sheet of embossed hotel notepaper folded into a sharp oblong. Boysie took it from her, opened it and looked down at the round, girlish capital letters:

  KIDAGLG: MYLHWLAG. WRKDUANGNDA: KDWDARG. WRBFDABR: RWTNAR, he read. That damn code, he thought. I'll be up half the night trying to make sense of it. Iris was still pattering out her instructions:

  'I've got to wait in the main lounge at the airport - noon - the courier will know me and contact. Are you all right, Boysie?'

  Boysie was not all right. With his eyes closed, he was allowing his addled brain to do some advanced research into the myriad things that could go wrong:

  'Another drink,' he muttered like a man coming out of an anaesthetic.

  'All right, love.' She laughed. 'Poor old Boysie; gets a job of work just when he wants to play. Don't look so worried. It's probably nothing very big.'

  Boysie woke up to the fact that he was making a fool of himself in front of the girl: that his inversion and desperate attitude must appear to her as an emotional over­dramatised act. Whatever else (even if he had to stay awake all night to ward off the horrors which might set him rambling loudly in his sleep), he mustn't give the game away: she was far too close to Mostyn.

  He opened his eyes and leaned back in the chair, willing himself into normality.

  'That's right.' His voice calmer now that he had faced the situation. 'Laugh at me.'

  Iris was pouring another large Scotch and mixing a gin and tonic for herself. She giggled:

  'Sorry, Boysie, but you looked like the ad on telly. You know: "I do wish he would relax. He's so tense.'" Then, serious: 'I say? Do you think this has anything to do with what happened to you tonight?'

  'Could be.' It was highly possible. 'The burkes who clobbered me were certainly tourists.' He used the general slang for opposition agents.

  Iris put the replenished glass into his hand.

  'You say the courier will make contact with you?' asked Boysie.

  'Colonel Mostyn said he would know me. After all, I suppose I know far more of the boys - by sight, anyway - than you do.'

  Boysie's stomach, reacting to the large doses of whisky, gave a low, undignified rumble. In spite of his preoccupation with the forthcoming kill, and its attendant tensions, he realised that he was very hungry.

  'Have you eaten yet?' He looked up at her: gastric juices running at the thought of vast menus written large in scrolled, Gothic, incomprehensible French.

  'No ... I ... I was waiting for you. I'd almost forgotten about food.'

  'Hungry now?'

  She nodded.

  'We'd better have something sent up.'

  He pulled her onto the chair, then realised, from the sluggishness of his bodily reactions, that he had already taken the edge off his sexual appetite earlier that evening. The ghost of Coral White passed across the room.

  'Hey! Penny for them?' Iris had her mouth half open: waiting to be kissed. He planted a quick peck on the end of her nose and stood up, lifting her with him:

  'Grub,' said Boysie.

  The events of the last few hours, particularly the most recent disturbing news, had turned his thoughts from the obsessive and inordinate desire for Iris. Now, as he stood close to her, the erotic fantasies stirred once more. Through their clothes, he could feel her young belly, soft as spring moss, moulding to his. Then, with mild dismay, he realised that, at this precise moment, he couldn't have satisfied a quick-action nymphet let alone the luxurious Iris. His enthusiastic tumble with the dear departed Coral had near-sterilised him. The dead blonde haunted him again.

  Boysie's grasshopper mind - always most active when his pride was affected - jumped, from the necrophiliac thoughts, back to the kill round the corner. It was no good getting steamed up about that either, he thought. Whatever else happened, he would not get positive target identification, or location, until tomorrow afternoon. After that there might still be a chance: still time for him to make the usual arrangements: to go through the ritual he always followed after a 'Pressure' signal arrived. In the meantime? Well, he'd have to see about that... after they had eaten. One good thing about it - he counselled himself, walking to the telephone - I'll be much safer staying in here with the door locked. Yacob and Gregory might still be on the prowl.

  'I'll ring down for a menu. Got to keep your strength up, you know.'

  Iris winced. It was the remark of an almost passé wolf trying to convince himself.

  'That's more like my Boysie,' she said silkily.

  *

  Half-an-hour later, with Boysie washed, brushed up and a little less numb, they dined. The warm night air rustled the curtains and shook the candle flames. The candles had been the waiter's idea, and the whole affair was produced with a professional romantic care resembling Hollywood in its glossy, goo period. Even the snow­coated servant performed his duties as if they were part of some exotic, complicated love­play. All that's missing, thought Iris, is the gypsy violinist. Boysie remarked:

  'You simply couldn't get service like this, at this time of night, anywhere in London. You just couldn't get it.'

  The scampi was fresh and tender (as Boysie said: 'None of your old pre-packed deep freeze stuff here'): the Sauce Tartare perfect, with an explicit blending of the tarragon, capers, gherkin and shallot: its bite accenting the full flavour of the prawns. At the arrival of the silver dish of Cote de veau Foyot - the veal nestling on a mound of sweet green peas - Boysie began to exploit his parroted culinary knowledge: giving Iris a stir by stir account of how the cutlets were rolled in Parmisan, then baked in a stock of white wine, fried onions and butter.

  When the percolator was popping regularly on the spirit lamp, and the iced melon - stuffed with raspberries marinaded in Kirsch - had been served, the obsequious waiter retired. Boysie, well mellowed by the whisky, and an insipid Couhins Rose, gave Iris a racy, highly-ornamented and, at times, expurgated version of the kidnapping incident. He omitted the last five minutes of horror outside the villa - blocking it from his mind with the excuse that he did not wish to upset the girl. The conversation flagged, picked up again and finally, with
the third cup of coffee, petered out. It was one o'clock before Iris made the first move and suggested that it was time for bed.

  The waiter returned to clear the remnants while Boysie performed his nightly toilet, emerging from the bathroom to find Iris waiting to take his place, loaded with feminine equipment:

  'Won't be long, darling. Just going to have a quick bath.' She looked him up and down.

  'Get you!' she said, and, with a flap of the wrist, was inside, with the door closed, before he could reply.

  Boysie threw his recently discarded clothes on to the chair and looked at himself in the full-length mirror which formed the door to the built-in wardrobe. It was the black lounging jacket that did it, he decided, stroking the sharkskin lapels. It went well over the midnight-blue and gold silk pyjamas, but one had to admit that the. Whole effect was a bit much. He turned slowly, studying himself from all angles, noting that the jacket was being pulled out of place by the weight of the gun in the right pocket. He went to the bedside table and opened the drawer. Taking out the pistol, he slid back the breech, cocking the weapon. He thumbed the safety-catch on to 'safe' and dropped the gun into the drawer, closed it and returned his attention to folding and tidying the clothes. He was about to drape the slacks over a hanger when he remembered Mostyn's message. The paper was there, in his hip pocket, crumpled but intact. Boysie took it to the writing table, angled in the corner opposite the bed, spread it on the blotter, and switched on the shaded lamp. The line of letters stared back at him, an inexplicable jumble:

  KDAGLKG: MYLHWLAG. WRKDUANGNDA: KDWDARG. WRBFDABR: RWCNAR.

  He looked at his watch. 1.25. Sunday morning. Right. He sat down, took a small sheaf of notepaper from the leather container, and picked a pencil from the rack. Closing his eyes, Boysie groped round his memory for the Sunday Sentence. On Sundays it was Romeo and Juliet.

  Boysie's personal code was based upon the famous Max Klausen cipher – virtually unbreakable unless one is supplied with the key sentence. From the beginning, Boysie had been provided with a sentence for each day of the week: all from Shakespeare. Hence, Monday was a passage from Coriolanus Tuesday, it was the Taming of the Shrew Wednesday, Othello - right up to Hamlet on Saturday and Romeo and Juliet on Sunday. As he rarely had to use the code, the whole business often seemed rather childish; and the decoding operation, when it had to be done, invariably took on the chalky atmosphere of prep in the Lower Third: an arduous, irksome chore. Laboriously he wrote his Sunday Sentence in large capitals - a segment from Mercutio's Queen Mab speech: 'Her chariot is an empty hazelnut, Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub, Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.' Then, following the memorised pattern, he inserted the letters of the alphabet until the key was complete.

  Boysie lit a short panatella from the box he had ordered with the dinner, and began to decode the message. The first two words came out: WQEUOWU: KMOAOEU

  'Oh, hell!' said Boysie, with feeling. 'It always happens to me. There's been a cock­up somewhere.' He got up and hammered on the bathroom door:

  'Iris!'

  'You can't come in. Go away.'

  'I don't want to come in. It's about this bloody message: are you sure you got it right?'

  'Of course I did.' A note of alarm: 'Why?'

  'I've started to decode it, and it's coming out like an optician's test card.'

  'Boysie, I'm certain I got it right.'

  'Well, I don't know what's up. You haven't been pulling my leg, have you? He did send this?' Perhaps it was Mostyn up to some trick.

  'Don't be an idiot. I took it down over the telephone - just after you left.'

  'Just after ...?' Boysie was deflated. 'It's all right. It's okay. I see where we've gone wrong.' The message had been passed to Iris early on Saturday evening. He had been using his Sunday sentence.

  'As a secret agent,' he muttered to himself, once more in the mirror, 'you'd make a damn good lavatory attendant.' He chuckled to himself, thinking of the tag-line: 'I could take holidays at my own convenience.' Then, in the voice of a TV man doing a hard sell, he added: 'Saturday is Hamlet day.'

  Once more he set to work. His Hamlet text was part of the melancholy Dane's irate comment to his Mum, Gertrude. 'Just after' - as Mostyn had once drawled - 'old man Polonius got a rapier through his arras.' ‘Look here upon this picture and on this, The counterfeit presentment of two brothers. See, what a grace was seated on this brow? Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself.’

  Fifteen minutes later, he had the full translation: KDAGLKG: MYLHWLAG. WRKDUANGNDA: KDWDARG. WRBFDABR: RWCNAR now read: CONTACT: QUADRANT. RECOGNITION: CORONET. RESPONSE: ERMINE.

  Boysie memorised the facts. The contact's code reference was 'Quadrant'; the operational identification, 'Coronet', and the reply identification, 'Ermine'. He wondered what sardonic double-entendre was contained in the words 'Coronet' and 'Ermine'. Mostyn usually thought of some bizarre twist when allocating operational codes. A project which had covered the disposal of a homosexual rocket expert, recently in Manchester, had been labelled 'Guided'; with the response 'Muscle'.

  Coronet and Ermine? Wouldn't be surprised if he wanted me to knock off the flaming Duke of Edinburgh, thought Boysie as he started to tear the little pile of papers into small pieces prior to burning them. By the time he had finished, Iris's quick bath had taken exactly fifty-five minutes. He yawned. The opiate effect of the alcohol was wearing off: the throbbing returning to his head, and a dull rheumatic ache settling into his joints. Fatigue was beginning to drown him; and, any minute now, Iris would appear, ready for the consummation: the sole purpose of their clandestine weekend.

  Boysie swore obscenely to himself. This was the climax to months of hard preparation; and now he had to admit that he felt about as much like it as a eunuch on the day shift.

  But, to some measure, he had reckoned without Iris. She came out of the bathroom looking, he imagined, like a bride on her wedding night: which, to be quite fair, had been her intention.

  The burnished copper hair, released from its elegant upsweep, was tied with a single ribbon behind her neck. A double-layer of lime nylon fussed in a waterfall of frills round her throat and over her breasts, dropped loosely to the waist, then flounced to a provocative point below the knees. Through the opaque texture of the material, Boysie could half-see the pink, fresh line of her naked body.

  'Not in bed yet?' She did not look at him, her eyes resting on a point six inches in front of Boysie's feet.

  'Whenever you say.'

  Between the sheets, with the light out and silence folding them like a heavy velvet curtain, Boysie reached out for her, his hand slipping behind her shoulders, their mouths searching for one another in the darkness. Her tongue found his, fencing and probing. Boysie battled with exhaustion, reacting to every move, vainly and without the complete abandonment and expertise which had flavoured his dreams. It was Iris who took the initiative, her hands fumbling with his pyjamas and sliding her nightdress high over her waist.

  Boysie was amazed to find how prepared she was: agile, supple, responding to each flexing move. They made love in silence, except for a low moan from Iris, between their limpet mouths, at her ultimate moment - reached, to Boysie's lasting chagrin, many minutes before he could complete the act. The long-awaited time had come and gone - an undoubted anti­climax, with Boysie near to humiliation.

  At last Iris fell asleep. Quietly disentangling himself, Boysie turned over and allowed consciousness to sink away. Then, with a falling jerk, he was awake, the sight of Coral's violent last seconds penetrating to the surface of his mind. He began to think about death and the possibility of a future existence. His stream of thoughts meandered into the region of his job and he considered the twenty-five corpses, marked to his credit since he had been pressed into service. His conscience leaped in, questioning with logical morality. Death. Death. Death. Then the real facts began to take shape, old fears whispering in his ear.

  'Oh, my God,' he murmured into the pillow. 'How ever did I
get involved in this?' And Boysie Oakes, Liquidator for the Department of Special Security, thought about Truth and the jungle of deception he had grown and twisted round himself.

  6 - Cote D'Azur

  Sunday June 9th 1963

  'L'

  All hope of sleep had gone. When Boysie's anxious neuroses started to play him up in the middle of the night, it was like being plagued by raging mental toothache. Stretched among the rumpled bed-clothes, with the gorgeous Iris reduced to the common denominator of a snore, Boysie allowed his brain to toss around, stormily sifting through the past. He put out his hand, feeling for the cigarettes and lighter.

  The spurt of flame made him screw up his eyes, until the cigarette was burning and the taste of cool smoke tickled the back of his throat. The flame left a sheet of colour dancing in his vision: a pool of red, turning to yellow and finally into sparkles of light studding the darkness. Gradually they diminished until sight returned to normal, and, through the gloom, he could make out the oblong window, the mirror and part of the chair.

  Iris had joked about his use of filter-tips. 'They're cheats,' she had said. It was true enough, he supposed. This was an outward sign of his uneasy love-hate-fear relationship with mortality. He began to wonder about the moment of death - the final drifting from familiar life into the unknowing of infinite sleep. As a boy, he had been certain that things would never change: sure that he was the big exception: the one who would never reach the grave. He used to look out of the cottage windows, up to the soft edge of the downs, and imagine that there was no such thing as decay. Remembering that time, his childhood seemed to have been one of everlasting sunshine - thirty, thirty­five years ago. Now, with his shoulder to forty-five, he felt that death was hanging round him like some outlandish aura.

  This morbid obsession was a recent facet of Boysie's continual nervousness: stemming, he imagined, from the elephantine sense of guilt: from his big deception. There had been a time - his first years with the Department - when he was able to treat the thing as a huge joke. But, of late, there were moments when the giggle had turned sour.