The Liquidator

by John Gardner

  *

  'What the bloody hell d'you mean - they've gone?' Mostyn was livid. For the third time, the pale and bewildered filing clerk tried to explain:

  'The Gayborough folder's there, sir, but it's empty.'

  This was the first piece of substantial evidence. Mostyn's intuition was leading him in the right direction:

  'Who's got the duplicates? Air Ministry?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'That settles it.' To the Operations' Officer: 'I want a full enquiry when this thing's over. Get on to Air Ministry. I want everything they've got; have it ready for me to pick up in twenty minutes. Lay on a car and driver for me. Is that Fly bloke still in the building?'

  'Martin? Yes, said he felt like sticking around.'

  'Martin? That his name? Tell him to report to me, we're going for a ride. Then get a call through to the Commanding Officer, RAF Gayborough - drag him out of bed if you've got to. When I've finished with him I want a priority to Security at Buck House. Got it. Red Emergency.'

  *

  'You look gorgeous, darling.' Iris was grinning as Boysie rubbed the foul matt-black make-up under his chin.

  They had pulled down the car's blinds, and switched on the light so that Boysie could see to get the camouflage smock over his head. He looked at himself in the hand mirror that Iris was holding up for him.

  'Very humorous,' said Boysie without any enthusiasm.

  'Just load the magazine and fill a couple of spare clips for yourself, will you, sport?'

  Quadrant passed a Lee Enfield magazine, two cartridge clips and a box of blanks into the back of the car: 'Safety and all that.'

  Boysie pushed five blanks into the magazine, pressing down with the ball of his thumb to make sure the spring was working easily. He then filled the two clips.

  'Let's have the magazine and I'll load this dangerous thing for you,' said Quadrant, bending down and sliding the rifle from its hiding place under the seat.

  Boysie handed him the magazine. Quadrant dropped it noiselessly in his lap, his hand slipping into his jacket pocket, stealing out with a duplicate. He glanced down. The substitute held five long pointed cupro­nickel rounds of live .303 ammunition. Quadrant snapped it into place in front of the trigger-guard. There was a metallic clack-clack as he pulled on the bolt arm and loaded the weapon.

  'There we are, sport. There's one up the spout and the safety-catch is on. No need for you to touch it again until morning. You don't want to be fiddling around with the bolt when you're up there - noise carries the hell of a way.'

  He opened the car door: 'Now, if the lovely Iris will change places with me, I'll come and sit by our hero so that we can go over the final stages of the exercise - just for luck.'

  'You don't flippin' trust my memory, do you?' said Boysie.

  Quadrant flashed his most urbane smile: 'Frankly, no,' he said.

  *

  'Mostyn and Martin,' said Mostyn. 'Sounds like a double act, old boy, doesn't it?'

  'Or a firm of dubious solicitors,' replied Martin.

  Under the shaded light in the back of the car, they were examining the maps and photographs of RAF Gayborough: speeding along the M1.

  'It's all a bit cloak and dagger though isn't it?' From Martin.

  'It's the only theory that fits. Can you figure out any other reason for side-tracking our laddie and whipping him off to this part of the country?'

  'No, but it seems a bit way out.'

  'At this point in the game we'll have to assume that they are way out: that they've persuaded him to do the kill. Why? That's the question. As far as I can see, if we're right ...'

  'If you're right ...'

  'Don't quibble. If I'm right, their operation has two objects. One, to assassinate a member of the royal family. Two, to drop the Department right in the clag.' Against his judgment, Mostyn had been forced to reveal Boysie's true role with the Department – a decision which worried him: the fewer people who knew about 'L' the better.

  He went on: 'If they are trying to put the mockers on us, then the kill has got to be pretty obvious. He's either going to do the Duke's car on the way to Gayborough, or he'll have a go at him on the spot; and the most likely place seems to be here - when he inspects the guard of honour at the main gate. What would you do if you wanted to have a crack at him, and get caught at the same time?'

  Martin picked up the aerial photograph:

  'Pop him in that clump of trees with a noisy machine gun, or a very loud rifle.'

  'Quite,' said Mostyn. 'And that's where we're going to look for him. If he hasn't turned up by first light, then we'll have to cancel the Duke's visit and put out a general call for the whole bang shooting match of them. And if that happens, then God help friend Boysie ...'

  'The Bloody Tower?'

  'No less, Martin, old fruit. Sedition and privy conspiracy: sedition and privy ...' He tailed off. For the next ten minutes Mostyn sat in a box of private worry: his mind churning and considering the unpleasant permutations of punishment should his undoubted culpability in the Boysie saga ever get into the daily Press.

  *

  Boysie watched the Lagonda's tail-lights disappear into the thin three-in-the-morning light, the taste of Iris's farewell lipstick still rosy in his saliva. It was a mild night - clear with high white streaks percursing dawn. He glanced down at the luminous dial of his watch: ten-past-three. Below his feet, on the road's verge, there seemed to be a slight scattering of snow. Hawthorn: he could smell it - the sickly odour of summer Sundays and walks with the village girls.

  Boysie turned, hitched the rifle sling on to his shoulder and stalked through the gap in the hedge: aiming towards the skyline point which Quadrant had given him as a bearing. After the last few hours it felt strange to be alone in the quiet before sunrise: something like a parachutist, dropped from the oily roar of engines and fabric into the silence of empty air. Boysie's guts rattled at the thought of leaping – with or without a parachute - from an aeroplane: the idea of falling was another of his phobias. This was damn silly, he thought: three in the morning and traipsing across a stretch of countryside to play schoolboy games. But it was just the kind of thing you expected from a nit like Mostyn. He was probably down there now, tucked up in an officers' mess bed over the horizon, dreaming sadistic dreams about Boysie blundering about the countryside, splashing through platters of cowpats and wrenching his ankles in rabbit holes.

  The grass rustled, dew-damp under his feet. Boysie sniffed the air - a mixture of wet, growing grass and freshly cut meadows: the smell of cricket pitches and Whit Monday Sports Day at the Grammar. He plodded, excelsior-like, onwards and upwards, occasionally shifting the weight of the rifle on to his other shoulder, and thinking of long ago when the country was an open book beneath a pair of muddy boots.

  Finally, he reached the top of the rise, dropping to his knees, so that he would not be outlined against the grey gleam of sky. Below, RAF Gayborough sprawled into the murky distance: the airfield to his left, long crossed pencils of runway dotted with shielded yellow oblongs. For the past ten minutes Boysie had been conscious of the whine of jets; now, suddenly, they were released in a great eardrumming roar. He could see the red and green flashing lights alternating and moving fast along the runway; and the huge dark triangle of a V­Bomber came hurtling off the concrete, growing bigger and bigger. The noise seemed to surround him, as though the machine was bent on singling him out and smashing itself straight into his stomach. Automatically, Boysie pushed himself flat into the grass as it nosed, harmless and high, away to his left: the ground shaking under the reverberating crack of its boosters.

  This small episode brought on one of his nervous attacks. Up to now, apart from his silent insults directed towards Mostyn's person, Boysie had been relatively unflurried, tasting the freshness of the country air and dreaming of his boyhood. But the noise of this beast-plane had touched off the raw spots on the tips of his nerves.

  The clump of trees was clearly discernible, a little to the right,
downhill. Now, wholly disenchanted, Boysie descended, ears cocked for alien noises, his heart clocking up a more than average rate, and that well­known nasty abdominal sinking feeling.

  There were four trees - elms - set in a rough square bounded by bushy undergrowth; between them, the ground sloped into a narrow saucer. Boysie sat down in the centre, put the rifle at his feet and stretched. It was quite light now, almost four o'clock, and Boysie felt distinctly uneasy: as though he was not alone. Slowly he turned, shooting quick little glances into the bushes, and above to the thick branches which formed an arch of heavy leaves over his head.

  Remembering the object of the exercise, he picked up the rifle, climbed to the rim of the saucer and began to search around for a good firing point. A slight, natural fold in the ground lay directly behind a small gap in the bushes; through it he could see the road and a clear arc which covered the main gate and its surround. Dropping into the prone position, Boysie squirmed about until he was comfortable. There was plenty of cover and the rifle rested easily on a clod of earth in front of him. He pushed the butt hard into his shoulder and squinted down the telescopic lens, traversing the whole of the main gate and guard room, his right forefinger curled round the safety inactive trigger. A service policeman was wandering to and fro, on lonely duty outside the guard room. Boysie adjusted the sights and brought the centre of the crossed wires dead into position on the policeman's icecream white cap.

  'Puttew!' He made the mouth noise of gunfire which came thrusting back from the cowboy and Indian days. A noise in the trees startled him, almost making him drop the rifle and look up. But it was only the mewing of baby owls, nestling somewhere among the foliage, waiting for mama to return with a morsel of mouse for breakfast.

  Boysie put down the rifle and slid back into the centre of the saucer. He looked at his watch. Seven bleeding hours up here alone, he thought venomously. Well, at least he could have a crafty cigarette while he inflicted some mental agonies on his boss. He fumbled in the camouflage smock for his smoking equipment, lit a king-size filter and blew a modestly symmetrical smoke ring.

  He did not hear the slight movement in the bushes behind him. A moment later, he was face down and struggling hard: a pair of arms wrapped round his legs and a lump of flesh-filled sleeve clamped over his mouth. The first reaction was that he had been spotted - it was the end of the exercise. But these boys were playing it rough. Through the mouth-stopping sleeve he was mumbling:

  'All right! Coronet... bugger you, all right ... CO ... RO ... NET.'

  The sleeve relaxed:

  'Stop it, you half-baked, wall-eyed bastard!' said Boysie.

  'That's no way to talk to your superiors, Boysie, old Boysie,' cooed Mostyn.

  Heaving and fighting for breath, Boysie twisted round to face the Second-in­

  Command:

  'I might have bloody known ...' He wasshivering all over from the sudden shock: '...you ... and ... your ... bloody Coronet. Well, that's it ... I've bloody had it ... You can take your coronet and stuff it ... velvet ... ermine and all.'

  'What coronet, Boysie? Or should I say whose coronet?' Mostyn had got to his feet and was looking down at Boysie whose legs were held fast by a dishevelled Martin:

  'Come on, old lad, this isn't a TV soap opera: we can't wait for next week's instalment. I'm not a mind reader, you know. I want to hear all about coronet.' Mostyn squatted on to his haunches: his face only a few inches from Boysie: 'If you don't tell me, laddie, and quickly, I'll see you're done good and proper. You won't know whether you're on your arse or Easter Day for the next ninety-nine years - and some!'

  Boysie gave an anguished cry, not unlike that of a young bullock in extreme pain. He recognised the ground glass tone in Mostyn's voice and knew that, somehow, he had come, as they say, a real purler.

  9 - England

  Tuesday June 11th 1963

  VULTURE

  They were still among the trees: Boysie staring incredulously at the five rounds of live .303 ammunition that Martin had quietly ejected from the rifle. Mostyn held the golden quintet of death in the hollow of his palm, and thrust the hand under Boysie's nose:

  'You're useless, old Oakes. Abso-bloody­ lutely useless.'

  'I know.' Boysie, swathed in shock and misery had touched bedrock: shaking his head from side to side, numbed like a man who had just been informed of the sudden extermination of his entire family.

  He had told his story, halting and uncertain, between bouts of Mostyn's most cutting sarcasm. Now, he was a man drained of any dignity. The end, he knew, was inevitable. The job was finished, and it would only be a matter of time before the whole truth came spouting into the open:

  'There's something else I ought to say...' he began, plucking up courage, trying to end things quickly: a kind of hara-kiri.

  'Not now, laddie.' Mostyn looked at him, his face softening. 'Boysie, you're an oaf. Still, I suppose it could have happened to any of us.'

  The three men were silent: Martin, looking embarrassed, fiddling with the bolt arm of the rifle; Boysie, his face turned up towards Mostyn, like a big, daft spaniel trying to regain favour. But, underneath the look, Mostyn's switch to sympathy had served only to reignite Boysie's inherent dislike of the man. He resented the Second­in-Command's compassion, as the proud poor resent charity.

  'You realise what's happened, I suppose?' Mostyn asked. Then, not waiting for Boysie's reply, he continued: 'It isn't just the Duke they are after, you know. You'd have shot him, cold as mutton, with that damn rifle; and you'd have been topped for it. But, long before they took you on the nine o'clock walk, there would have been hints in the newspapers: little bits of tittle-tattle: gossip. Information would have fallen into people's hands. There would have been talk. Members asking awkward questions in the House. Your name would have been linked with the Department, and, no matter how much we denied and wriggled, there would have been a public enquiry. They were after us, old boy.'

  Boysie nodded painfully:

  'What do we do now?'

  'That, me old thing, is what I'm trying to decide. I suppose we'd better put out a general call for your friends. I didn't really want the Special Branch brought into it, but I don't see any other way. We're particularly interested in Quadrant ...'

  'So am I...'

  '...His real name's Skabichev, by the way. You know, I have a feeling that we ought to play this one to the limit. They're bound to have someone watching at eleven o'clock. If we cordon the area we'll stand a good chance of nabbin' him. Something tells me that we should see it through.'

  'You mean brief the Duke and let Boysie take a couple of shots at him - blanks? Do it their way?' asked Martin.

  'Not Boysie. I'm not leaving him up here.' Mostyn's brow was incised with puzzled wrinkles: 'There's something missing. Something I've forgotten. A piece not in place. There's more to it than the Duke.'

  He turned his back on the others and climbed up to Boysie's firing point. For about five minutes he lay, looking down on the brightening camp. At last, with a decisive movement, he raised himself from the ground, slid down the bank, and faced Boysie and Martin:

  'How's this then?' It wasn't a question. The plan was already fully conceived: nothing they said, or did, would change his mind now. His voice was steady as a count-down: 'Boysie and I go and get things moving straight away - Police, RAF Regiment, Special Branch. The area will be cordoned off within the hour. Maybe we'll even have them in a bag.' He paused, a quick smile switched on and off like a neon sign. 'In case we don't, I'll get on to the Duke: give him the full strength, and tell him what to do. He'd better stay in the car when it arrives at the main gate. It'll save his dignity if he doesn't have to roll around playing dead.' He pointed at Martin: 'You stay up here with the rifle. As soon as they open the car door, you give 'em five rounds rapid. The boys'll be briefed to make a fuss - slam the door, drive quickly through the gate, bit of panic, you know the kind of thing. Anyone watching's going to think they've pulled it off - they won't try anything el
se on the Duke anyway. If there is a secondary stage to the plan, they'll probably go ahead and put it into operation.' He paused, trying to measure their reactions: 'Boysie? We'll be up in the control tower. From there we can see the whole camp and airfield: be ready for any emergency: and if anything does happen, then we'll have to play it by ear. You game, Martin?'

  'Anything you say.' Martin's knee was jabbing out its warning pain signals at quick, regular intervals.

  'Right. Boysie, we'll have to risk going down in full view - they may have someone watching us already. We've got no option though.'

  'Honestly, I don't really see why we have to go through all this palaver.' Boysie was still ready to throw in his hand.

  'Neither do I, old boy. But then, for nine­tenths of the time, I work on intuition. Give those blanks to Martin and we'll get going.'

  To Martin he said:

  'We'll let you know if we catch 'em before the balloon goes up.'

  They descended to the road: Boysie, woebegone in his black-face make-up, trudging behind Mostyn. Martin thought to himself that they looked unusually like master and slave.

  *

  Ten thirty. Boysie, clean and in a borrowed RAF-blue sweater and slacks, was looking out from the control tower, across the airfield. A Valiant was coming in over the boundaries to his right; its undercarriage down, flaps and dive brakes extended. It seemed to be moving in slow motion, as though suspended by an invisible, unbreakable, wire. The aircraft touched down - puffs of smoke from the tyres: a quivering growl as the jets were reversed.

  'Metro Oscar Three Two Five. Clear taxi to dispersal. Closing down on your frequency.' The young Flight Lieutenant had a brown, dispassionate voice. From the small, round speaker, angled into the control panel in front of him, came the disembodied voice of the Valiant's co-pilot:

  'Metro Oscar Three Two Five. Roger and out. Thank you.'

  The Flight Lieutenant turned to the chief controller, a stocky Wing Commander, hot in his best blue and medals, all preened for the royal visit.