Stopping World War Three

by Stan Mason

  ‘When it comes to needing to know,’ I returned cheekily, ‘you don’t need to know.’

  ‘I warn you!’ warned the Commander sharply. ‘You’d better stop playing games for your own sake. Now listen carefully. You leave tomorrow morning. Be here at seven hundred hours. Do you think you can manage that, Mr. Scott or am I interfering with your personal arrangements!’

  He ushered us into the lift and, before we knew what was happening, we found ourselves back in the restaurant. As we left the premises, I noticed a man with the same facial structure and physique as myself. He was wearing a similar suit and strolled casually towards the restaurant. On his arm was a young woman who fairly resembled Penny. They were our doubles! I changed direction and moved towards them.

  ‘Don’t we know each other, old man? I began. ‘Trinity College!’

  He seemed startled for a moment but recovered well. ‘What a coincidence meeting you in Crete!’ he responded smoothly in a voice not dissimilar to my own. He smiled easily although I could not understand why he failed to recognise me. ‘Forgive me, old boy, I can’t recall your name at the moment. I’m Jason Scott and this is my secretary, Penny Smith.

  Chapter Three

  The unforeseen even of coming face to face with oneself is not a practice to be recommended. It does something strange to the mind beyond giving it a short sharp unexpected shock. The impact is even greater with the realisation that a conspiracy is taking place. To add to the intrigue, the imposter was holding the arm of a woman who passed herself off as my secretary. In a way, it was rather flattering. I had always considered my personal role in the grand design of life was singularly unimportant, yet someone had taken the trouble to arrange for me to have a double... and here he was talking to me in the street! In the confusion that followed, the effect of the confrontation caused me to become lost for words. To my surprise, Penny picked up the baton swiftly which led to the next development.

  ‘Commander Spring wants you to come with us to talk to Tomar Duran in a valley south of here,’ she informed them, issuing a statement which was totally untrue. ‘There’s no need to confer with him. He said it was urgent. We haven’t any time to lose.’

  The bogus Jason Scott stared at her suspiciously. ‘What’s this all about?’ he enquired. ‘I thought the Commander wanted to brief us on the flight arrangements tomorrow.’

  ‘You’ll understand when we get there,’ continued Penny in a firm tone that was not to be denied.

  The man pursed his lips for a moment deep in thought. ‘That’s odd!’ he muttered. ‘I thought Duran was covering our tracks... in case of need.’ He shrugged his shoulders aimlessly. ‘It’s too bad! They never tell us what we want to know. Well... if that’s the Commander’s decision, so be it!’

  We led them to the small Volkswagen and clambered inside before driving along the highway to the path leading to the wreckage. I had no idea what was going to happen when we got there.

  ‘I understand you play bridge,’ I ventured, testing him out. I had never seen him playing in the major competitions, nor had anyone else for they would have pointed out the likeness to me had he taken part.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘I used to play duplicate in the north of England. Then I left for the United States and took part in a lot of tournaments there. Recently, I worked for the management of a couple of clubs... gambling clubs... playing for the house.’

  ‘Which system do you use?’

  ‘Quite a few. Acol... precision club... American Standard and a few others. If you’re interested we may be able to make up a foursome.’

  I could understand why Commander Spring was so concerned. My double was far too amicable and much too casual. He needed more tutoring in my mannerisms if he was going to emulate me as well as the way I spoke. It baffled me as to the reason why he did not recognise me as the original Jason Scott. ‘ What’s your view of the Vienna Coup,’ I challenged relentlessly, testing him to the full.

  ‘Great!’ he responded easily. ‘One of my favourites on the right sort of hand of course. I love it when there’s a squeeze.’ 51

  ‘And the opening of four no trumps in Acol?’

  ‘Asking partner for aces of course. I say, you seem to know your game. Are you looking for a partner?’

  He obviously knew his stuff when it came to playing bridge but why was that the criterion? And why did anyone choose to replace me? At that moment we arrived at the spot where we had picked up the car. ‘We’ll have to walk from here,’ I told them stopping the vehicle in the same lay-by. I tried to fathom the reason why we had returned to this place but without success. ‘It’s only a short walk.’

  The second Jason Scott rubbed his eyes as he left the vehicle and blinked a number of times before starting to walk away with us. ‘I’ve got these strange contact lenses,’ he confided. ‘My eyes are grey and the Commander insisted that they should be brown. They gave me a set of brown-coloured lenses but they blur my vision terribly. I think they’ll have to go back to the drawing board or I’ll go completely blind. And this woman’s no help. She may look like Penny Smith but she’s not very bright and she doesn’t speak a word of English.’

  So that was the reason why he hadn’t recognised me and why the woman had said nothing. I was grateful to the Commander for small mercies. The four of us continued along the track accompanied by the prattle of the other man as he rambled on for what seemed to be an eternity about the island. He may have looked like me but he was not like me at all.

  ‘Do you know there are one thousand five hundred varieties of wild flowers on Crete? And three thousand caves and grottoes,’ he babbled liberally. ‘On could come to the island and live rent free simply by becoming a cave-dweller. I’m sure you’ll agree with me that any place which attracts sunshine for three hundred days a year deserves a vote for a place where one could retire at leisure. It’s known as the crossroads between Europe, Africa and Asia and it’s the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean. By the way,’ he paused staring directly into my eyes, ‘you didn’t tell me your name.’

  It was a game I could play no longer but I had no idea how to end it. However I didn’t need to worry because Penny had an immediate answer.

  ‘It isn’t necessary for you to know,’ she countered icily, producing a revolver from her handbag. ‘Step aside Jason!’

  The last time I recalled seeing Duran’s gun was at the moment Penny let it fall from her hand after she had shot him. In the aftermath of the crash, the fight with Duran, the pains in my body and the throbbing in my head, it had slipped my mind entirely. Penny must have picked it up before we left. I could only imagine that she saw it as some kind of useful insurance if we ever got into trouble. Now she threatened to use it against two other people. I wasn’t too sure of her intention but the opportunity to extract information was too good to be true.

  ‘All right!’ I snarled. ‘ What’s going on? Why are you pretending to be Jason Scott and Penny Smith?’

  ‘You’ll have to discuss that with the Commander,’ he replied flippantly, causing me to believe that nothing had been divulged to him either. He peered closely at my face and he began to recognise me. ‘But firstly you ought to tell me why the Commander arranged for another set of people to look like us. Perhaps we’re all dispensable. I wouldn’t be surprised.’

  He moved slightly starting to withdraw his hand from his pocket and, without warning, Penny fired the gun. The imposter clutched at the area of his heart before collapsing to the ground. The other woman screamed and started to run away. As she did, Penny fired again. My feet turned to clay as I stood on the same spot horrified at the sight of two bodies laying on the ground. I knelt down painfully to examine them. Both had been shot through the heart.

  Whoever they were, they hardly deserved to be the victims of such a wanton killing.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ I gasped, looking at my secreta
ry who was still pointing the gun at the bodies in case either of them moved.

  The pale expression on her face indicated that she was confused. ‘I thought he was going to pull a gun from his pocket,’ she explained, almost in a whisper as her eyes filled with tears. ‘I thought he was going to kill us.’

  I drew the dead man’s hand from his pocket to exhibit a large white handkerchief. ‘All he was going to do was to wipe the tears from his eyes caused by the contact lenses.’ I spat angrily. ‘My God! This is turning out to be a nightmare! What on earth possessed you to pull the trigger? And why did you have to kill the woman?’

  She started to cry and I pulled an unhappy face deciding not to continue with the inquisition. It was possible to accept that Penny’s nerves were so stretched that she was imagining that death was imminent from every source. After all, she was a petite innocent secretary who, ostensibly, would never hurt a fly. Yet, on reflection, she had killed three people by her own hand within the span of an hour!

  ‘Let’s get away from here!’ I urged, taking the gun from her hand and placing it in my pocket. I pulled her arm and led her along the path until we reached the highway again. As we approached our vehicle, two police cars, with their sirens blaring, scorched along the road to pull us beside us sharply. Four policemen emerged from the cars and raced across the road towards us. Two of them grabbed me roughly and forced my face down on the bonnet of the Volkswagen, pinning my arms behind me. Pain seared through my body like a red hot poker and I groaned loudly almost falling into a faint. They propped me up as I slid sideways while one of them ran his hands over my body reaching into my pocket to remove the revolver. Another one uttered something in Greek which in any language would have translated into: ‘You are under arrest!’ Then I was rudely handcuffed before being thrust into the rear seat of one of the police car like a common criminal. They drove back to the police station at tremendous speed with the siren on the roof of the vehicle wailing like a lonesome banshee as we raced towards the streets of Heraklion.

  I had expected someone to read out a charge on my arrival and then to be interrogated after contacting the British Embassy or by a lawyer who spoke English. As it happened, I was very much mistaken. There was no communication, no questions, and no explanation for my arrest. Rough hands grasped my upper arms and I was pushed down a short flight of steps before being tossed into a filthy cell. It was a dingy awful place. The only furniture available was a flea-infested mattress which lay on the floor, covering half the space, and an old stench-ridden bucket with flies darting to and fro above it. The sides of the cell were damp and covered with fungi while high on the wall, some ten feet high, was a barred window from which streamed a narrow shaft of light. After the cell door was locked, I sat on the mattress and struck it with my fist several times in frustration. Eventually I calmed down to evaluate the situation. There was no doubt the police would link the gun they took from me with the three dead bodies in the valley. They were well aware that a capital crime had been committed. I was doomed to a life of imprisonment in a foreign country! Someone must have contacted them with the information otherwise I would not have been arrested. As a result of the prima facie evidence of the dead bodies and the murder weapon , which I had taken from Penny and placed in my pocket, I was the prime suspect. No... I was the only suspect! Nothing I could say or do would change their minds. I wasn’t sure whether the authorities in Crete jailed murderers for life or whether they executed them. It wasn’t a pleasant thought either way.

  I lay down on the mattress to east the pain in my legs and to rest my throbbing head. There was a slight chance that I might have fractured my skull in the crash. It certainly felt as though something was wrong. If so, a medical examiner might be able to prove that I was out of my mind when the murders were committed... even though I knew I hadn’t carried them out. If I was saved from a death sentence, being sent to prison might be commuted to ten years.

  Primar had become angry when I insisted that Penny Smith has to accompany me on the journey. She was my secretary with whom I was having an affair... a diminutive young attractive woman who took dictation from me, ran the outer office efficiently, served me with coffee throughout the day, and looked after all my business activities. Her recruitment to Dandy Advanced Electronics had taken place seven years earlier, nearly five of which was spent as my secretary. During the past year we had become lovers, involved in an affair which we both enjoyed. Yet, strangely enough, I still loved my wife intensely. It would seem that one woman was not enough for me in life. There was nothing extraordinary to report concerning her office activities or her private life, except that we continued on a clandestine affair yet she had executed three people with considerable ease, seemingly without any remorse. Admittedly, each time she had burst into tears after the event, playing the innocent, but it was too much to believe that they were all incidental... especially with regard to the killing the woman who was her double. At the back of my mind there was something else that kept trying to trigger the answer but for the moment it just wouldn’t come. Yes... suddenly there was a phrase she had used which caused a ripple in my brain. I tried to squeeze it from my mind by concentrating my thoughts but nothing sensible emerged, It was a few moments later when the piece of the jigsaw fell into place. I had run through the events at the time of the crash in minute detail to recall something she had shouted that made me leave the aircraft when I was searching for documents. ‘Someone’s coming!’ she had called out. ‘I can see a man at eleven hundred hours!’ And then Tomas Duran appeared. A phrase of that nature was adopted only by the military. Only women employed in the armed forces would ever express a direction in such a manner. When I employed her as my secretary, I took great care to examine her records. There was no mention of service in the armed forces. Now that I had time to think it through there was evidently more to Miss Penny Smith than met the eye.

  In addition to my current dilemma, there were two acute problems which concerned me. Someone had tried to replace us with duplicate look-a-likes. Why did they want to do that? Surely it had nothing to do with the game of bridge although, apparently, that activity was a criterion. The only other possibility was my employment at Dandy Advanced Electronics. I needed far more time to deliberate on the prospects in depth. Primar knew of my indifference to my employer as well as my lack of loyalty. Like a fool, I never made any pretence of it when we were on holiday on the Costa del Sol. No doubt, if I failed to fathom the reason, someone would enlighten me at some future date. There was another problem that was far more imminent. We had told Commander Spring of the death of Tomas Duran but what would happen when he discovered that the false Jason Scott and Penny Smith were also dead? Somebody had taken a lot of trouble for find another person who looked exactly like me. Perhaps that was the reason why someone placed a bomb in the aircraft expecting to eliminate myself and my secretary to make way for the other two. But why should they do that? Yet the assumption blew a hole in my previous theory. If Penny Smith was on their side, whoever they might be, why did they want to kill her? None of it made any sense!

  A little later I fell asleep. Throughout the night I twisted and turned on the filthy straw mattress until the morning light began to filter through the bars of the tiny window. The noise made by the warder, as he slid the breakfast tray noisily across the stone floor of the cell, awoke me. I rubbed the stubble on my chin, moving my legs sideways, wincing at the pain, and rose to walk stiffly to the door. At least the throbbing in my head had stopped. As I bent to pick up the tray, which contained a cup of ugly-looking liquid and a hunk of stale brown bread filled with caraway seeds, I noticed that the cell door was slightly ajar. I shook my head to clear my sleepy mind and pushed it gently with my right hand to make sure that my eyes did not deceive me. It was definitely open! Within seconds, I discard the evil breakfast and hobbled swiftly out of the cell into the corridor making my way stealthily towards the steps. I crept up the short staircase into the main
area of the police station only to find that the desk sergeant was absent. In fact it appeared that there was no one in the police station at all. I had a golden opportunity to escape completely unnoticed. I hesitated for a moment thinking that it might be a trap so that they could shoot me to avoid embarrassment on an international scale. There was quite a lot of international pressure and activity when trials of foreign subjects came to the attention of the relevant authorities and were reported in the Press. Perhaps the method they used in Crete was simply to eliminate the problem by shooting escaping foreign prisoners. In the face of trial for murder however, I really had no option but to take my chances.

  Outside the jail, I took a deep breath of fresh air and walked at a casual pace to the end of the street trying my very hardest not to hurry. A sign displayed the name Dikeosinis and I smiled to myself as a silly pun formed in my tired mind... it was all Greek to me! From then on I turned right into the Platia El Venizuelou, through Platia Kelergon, until I reached Parko El Greco. I sat on the grass in the park for a while considering how I could make contact with the British Consul to ask for assistance. I knew that as soon as he made enquiries, the Cretan authorities would identify me as a wanted criminal... a man responsible for three murders! And they had the murder weapon to prove it! I would be handed over to the police as a formality. I would not find sanctuary with the British Consul! On the contrary... all hell would break loose! I sat there feeling sorry for myself for the best part of ten minutes when I heard footsteps approaching quickly. I looked up to see Penny Smith walking towards me dressed in a brown uniform similar to that worn by Commander Spring.