by Daniel Kemp
“Partial retirement packages had been settled upon, dear boy. Withdrawal from the line with a peaceful few years ahead overseeing some NATO dispatches, or a seat at the American desk at Vauxhall and then it goes pear-shaped as they say. Up pops one of old Fraser Ughert's pet poodles. A certain Armenian German chappie by the name of Henry Mayler. Who else other than you could I appoint as Director General at Group at this point in time to look after him?” He looked at me for an answer, or perhaps some sign of gratitude. When only a quizzical look was forthcoming, he carried on.
“The arrival of the Russian package is a pain in the backside I'll grant you, but he comes second to Fraser's operative. Mayler is a German with strong Armenian roots. Top drawer material and once again exclusively ours, or more to the point—Ughert's. Mayler is who we are off to see when we can finish with the formalities here.”
I butted in. “Henry, Geoffrey? Sounds more English or French than German. And he's a long way from Armenia. Did he lose his way?”
“Complicated situation and I'm only too pleased to confess to my incomprehension of it all. You, being Ughert's pseudo son, or at least close relative can put his mind to it and unlock the secrets. Case notes are in your floor safe. Most of the documentation on Razin is in here.” He went to open the top drawer of the shiny chrome filing cabinet that stood alone against the wall by the doorway opposite the desk. The drawer wouldn't open.
“Ah, yes! I should explain. When your office door closes the whole cabinet will lock until opened from the console built into your desktop. Incidentally, this door,” he held the long chrome handle once more, “is opened from the corridor by your palm print, an ingenious device fitted to the wall. I had absolute control over all the gizmos installed and the interior design of the whole Hub. In the dayroom, adjacent to here,” he pointed to his right, “that you will have to see some other time, I installed a lot more ultra-modern equipment, all in keeping with the rigours of the job you understand, dear boy. Nothing beyond the necessary parameters. At a push you could use the dayroom on a permanent basis, but it wasn't designed for that. It was intended as a place to think and ponder.”
That was Geoffrey Harwood's world. The one where methodical systems were the key to success; pigeon-holes filled, but never overflowing. Rooms for a lie down and rooms for sleeping. Safes popping silently in and out of hideaway locations and press button A for a shave and B for the tissue paper to stem the blood. I almost burst into laughter before I successfully managed to push away images of him locking and unlocking doors to test whatever technological devices were on the other side. Happily I managed to focus on business rather than upset him.
“I've got this Russian Razin in one corner of my mind and the English named Armenian German in the other, but I've got nothing to connect them, Geoffrey. Why are we going to see this Henry Mayler chap and not knocking on the Russian Consulate's front door?”
“There was a bit of trouble involving the two of them about a week ago in Northern Syria. Ughert dealt with it by extracting Mayler. Razin hyphen Raynor, please don't forget the file name, made his own way here. When we're all finished with Mayler we're posting him off to Canada with all the relevant legend materiel and a fistful of gratitude. It's being finalised as we speak. What you need to find out is what led to that trouble in Syria. Why, is another question we should be asking. Hopefully you can find it in Berkshire and in Uncle Fraser's notes which are neatly filed for your later pleasure in here, dear boy.” With theatrical aplomb he opened the drawer smiling as he did so, which I never knew he was capable of doing.
“You can read them when you finally use Joseph's chair or, if bored, stretched out on the heated spa bed in the dayroom of which I am completely ignorant.”
Bored by standing, he returned to what was to become my chair. As he sat he inadvertently allowed it to swivel, slightly causing his mouth to gape open and the mousey eyes behind his glasses to open wide in surprise. Settling into a more balanced position he continued in his appraisal of the situation.
“The wheel needs to spin, Joseph.” At precisely that moment the blue light on the inset console started to flash.
“I think it would be best if you take it sitting here, dear boy, and that way the game can begin in earnest.”
Chapter Three: The Farm
A modulated female voice informed me that the cars were waiting and I confirmed that Geoffrey and I were on our way out. No more than five minutes later I had shaken hands with everyone Harwood introduced on our rapid tour of the operational floors and, surprisingly, the domestic ones. Geoffrey had his high-speed skates on. Two very important people were missed out: my station officer and my personal assistant, both of whom I was told were importantly engaged. We then left the building and went to meet Henry Mayler housed on the farm outside Brightwalton, in freezing cold Berkshire.
“Why the need of two cars, Geoffrey?” I asked as we drove over Blackfriars Bridge in single file with four police outriders as escorts waving us through red lights. I wondered if this was the way Geoffrey would travel all the time when he'd moved into the powerhouse of politics or only when he wanted to impress some minion.
“I'm heading straight for home after Berkshire. I wouldn't want to leave our new Director at Group floundering in a pigsty waiting for a local cab, would I. Your position comes with certain privileges such as a car and protection.” He nodded towards the partitioned off front end of the vehicle where the driver and another man sat. I had taken notice of them and of course knew what they were, but what I did not know was that the two in the car behind were to be my protection. I chose not to acknowledge any of them, instead asking about our destination.
“I've heard of the place where you are housing Mayler, but I've never had cause to inquire about it before. Is it a working farm, Geoffrey?”
“Very much so it is, hence the usage of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries in Whitehall as Group's cover for Craig Court, your other office. Sadly that government department has now lost its name, becoming part of the Department for the Environment, but our connection continues to be the same as it was. For all intents and purposes the farm is an experimental place implementing government policies verbatim. Everyone there has signed the Official Secrets Act and although not within our direct supervision they are in-house-trained coming under the Department for Defence, the new name for the War Office.” He reached into the leather-covered divide between the rear seats of the car and withdrew two plastic wallets, but his attention was diverted elsewhere.
“I have to be home by a specific time this evening so the police escort is to ensure that I am. Oliver Nathan and his wife and a few other influential people are due for dinner.” As the distraction of an early summons home left him, he wearily passed one of the slim wallets to me.
“Here, you should keep this on you at all time now you have the Joseph chair.” It was a Department for the Environment ministerial pass in the name of George Warren.
“Do they live in Kent, Geoffrey?” I asked as I pocketed my pass.
“Do who live in Kent?” he replied quizzically.
“The Home Secretary, Oliver Nathan and his wife,” I responded, equally bemused.
“No. They live near me, outside of Guildford. What's with the Kent bit?”
“You summoned me to your home in Farnborough, in Kent, at some ungodly early hour in the morning a good few years back. You said you'd give me a lift into town after we finished speaking then kicked me out of the car in the middle of Blackheath in the pouring rain.”
“Yes, I do remember that,” he replied vacantly. “You had that big lump of a chap named Job following us if I recall correctly. You were once again sticking your nose out too far, too fast.” His impassive face turned away from me to stare at the floor of the car in thought.
“Know anything about Freemasonry, Joseph?” suddenly he asked.
“Not much other than I've heard it is a secret society with funny handshakes and even stranger symbols. I think they're pro-r
oyals, but I'm not certain of that. What's the reason for your question, Geoffrey?”
“Hmm, no matter,” he announced, shaking his head. “You will find out soon enough, probably from Ughert. But now, if you'll excuse me, I have some reading to do for the new job on Monday. Step lightly with the chap we're on the way to see. Ughert told me he's fragile material is our 'Enry, and suffice it to say Ughert is the only one to know how fragile that may be.” With an affected pronunciation to the 'E' of Enry, he closed our conversation and open his document case.
* * *
I left him to his files and assorted reading material as I dreamingly gazed out of the windows at the fast moving darkened background of London, oblivious to the sound of the escorting police sirens. The grey slate painted sky threatened either rain or snow from which the identically, coloured pedestrians hurried away to lunch appointments or simply to grab a quick bite to eat alone or with friends. I had lived the life of a cloistered monk since I'd returned from Ireland and it wasn't until now that it bothered me. Perhaps it was the thought of four people around a dinner table exchanging unimportant conversation and sharing moments of pleasure that had shaken my solitude, or perhaps it was the responsibility I had accepted so readily moments before. The nigh-instant assessment Jack Price made of me almost thirty odd years back, was spot on: I was not only after the adventure being offered, I was chasing the power to construct my own excitement. But my experience of life had taught me that often the pursuit of power exceeds the excitement to be found in its capture. Optimism for anything other than that would be stupid. Maybe that sour thought only applied to women other than Kerry, she had been different. Then again they were all different, but not the disappointment; that was always the same.
One person who wasn't a disappointment was waiting somewhere over the horizon to meet once more. The first time since our disagreement in his office at Whitehall, with Geoffrey Harwood sitting one side of him and a man I later found out to be the Prime Minister's special advisor on all things American on the other. Fraser Ughert and I nearly came to blows that day before my naivety over a woman was exposed to the undeniable truth outside of his London club in the back of his plush ministerial motor car with other large men in the front. Had I changed from those days? Had anything changed from those days? Was Ireland my moment of full comprehension of what I'd become through choice?
Perhaps I should have taken a bite from the carrot Fraser dangled in front of my gaping mouth that day and never set foot on the Green of Ireland again! Maybe Sleeping Hollow, near New York, and the sexually deprived rich women that were being offered as my income was really my vocational calling. The acceptance of Francesca Clark-Bartlett's suggestion to supply exotic sex to her wealthy friends who would use my body for their own gratification would now be nearing its closure, but I'd be a rich man with only the screams of delight to remember not, those of pain, but what of her? What of Job? The man who would walk through walls for Jack Price and later for me. Three of the closest people I'd known had gone leaving enormous holes in my life that I had never filled and never looked to fill.
For the passing of Job I blamed the man sitting beside me. I gave Harwood an earful as soon as I heard, which was three weeks after they buried the man. Adam too came into my line of fire. Both of them had valid excuses: How could we tell you? We had no way of knowing where you were for a start.
But in my mind Job's death was Geoffrey's fault. He wanted Job to remain on the books and Job was too loyal to decline. I paid my meagre respects to my friend one cold and damp winter's morning similar to this one, where he lay beside Jack Price, both beneath headstones, in graves at Plumstead cemetery, a long way from Jack's detested Guildford. I had briefly wondered who had arranged that, but then remembered a conversation Job and I'd shared where he'd told me of his plans. I was named Terry Jeffries at the time.
When I'm through with this life, young Terrance, I have made arrangements to be buried in a plot next to Jack's. Call it what you will but that's where I want to lay. We can make plans to blow up Guildford and wipe out the top floor brass of the intelligence lot. Jack will become C of everything and Woolwich will be the new exclusive suburbia for you and me and our concubines. Jack will have too much to do to care.
I was not sorrowful so much for their death, that's an inevitability we all face even those who shroud themselves with respectability in decent Guilford, but Job and I had killed together without ever knowing each other's birth name. A strange life, a strange meeting, one where I had asked him if I was to become anonymous—
Like the department you work for, Job?
Anonymity means that there's no name,—he replied, then added—You will be given a name to suit the circumstances you're needed for. People like me have no need of a name.
A sad life in which honourable people are hidden from public view in order to help the dishonourable achieve their wish of staining the world in the red, white, and blue of the Union flag in order to deserve the label as the finest intelligence service in the world.
At that moment of pointless retrospection my foot sent a sharp stinging pain through my knee into the top of my thigh, causing me to crumple in my car seat and Geoffrey to look away from his reading. He was annoyed as he asked if I was okay, to which I replied that I was, then we fell back into what we were occupied with. He, his readiness for Oliver Nathan and me more memories. The muzzle end of a gun pointed at my head. A brass knuckleduster catching the rays of sunlight bursting into my pristine New York apartment before the blow on my face. Amputated toes, a busted jaw and eye socket. Fianna, my make-believe Irish twin sister first tenderly nursing me and then what happened? The road to Damascus lined with lesbian feelings on one side and me on the other? Choices, options, a decision? A love expressed? A densely packed street in New York with two crashed cars, one with my Fianna Redden with half a head. Two gunshots, two deaths. The other dead? Did it matter who he was? Best to forget the name of Alain whoever he was. Sagacious advice from Fraser Ughert whilst Jack Price gave up his remaining stock of cancer lessening, pain relieving morphine for me during the rushed flight home to escape the consequences of a killing on American soil.
Then my meeting with Dickie Blythe-Smith at the Travellers Club after the prescribed period of convalescence in a nursing home on the sunny South Coast near Brighton, with a private medical team to soothe my honour and pain, but no help for the half a head propped against a passenger seat in a car next to me as I killed her killer. Screams, what of them? Take a life, lose a life. It all comes out in the screams.
I had been softened up for the London meeting without any need. I offered as little resistance to Dickie's bribe of a pathway to power then, as I had just done down in The Hole. A tortuous route perhaps, but nonetheless, here I was on the back seat of a luxury ministerial car and soon I would be on the back seat of my own with guards to watch over me. Would there have been any room for a twin sister, real or not, on my journey? What would Jack and Job have to say about my lofty position? Would Jack forgive my desire for the grandeur? Or would his reply be along the lines of—in order to forgive there must be something to forgive and the quest for ceremonial pomp and glory is an unfaithful quest and therefore deserves no recognition.
I smiled as the thought stayed with me. But my equable thoughts altered as I recalled the empty space which I'd allowed Kerry to fill. All grace, legs and everything else that boiled the blood inside a male more akin to shotguns against knees than what she had to offer. A brief encounter? Yes, it was. Satisfying? No. Dangerous? Of course it was. Memorable? Oh, yes, she was that. But I wish she hadn't been. And I wish there were no graves, no headstones, or plaques in remembrance to those I had loved and felt a need to cling on to.
* * *
On our arrival at the Brightwalton Farm, Geoffrey left me alone to sign several sheets of officially stamped, important looking documents, whilst he paid what he said would be his last visit to the farm's guest. There was an edge of genuine sadness in his voice as he
said that. On his return I was introduced to more who needed to know who I was. It was then that Henry Mayler was officially released into my responsibility whilst I remained on the premises. I said my goodbyes to Harwood when he declined to introduce me to Mayler, preferring to deal with the paperwork he was required to sign off on. So, I made my cumbersome way alongside one of the two men from the car that had followed Geoffrey's, across a rutted farmyard then through a cluster of small unmarked, green corrugated buildings until I found two armed Ministry of Defence guards on duty outside the one I was looking for. Thankfully the clouds had not opened and the place was reasonably dry.
* * *
It was a slightly built man who welcomed me from his perch in a comfortable looking chair in an austere but warm and light lounge with three closed doors leading off of it. On the coffee table in front of where he sat was a bottle of Scotch and two glasses, one unused. I poured a large measure into the unused glass and from the cabinet hiding the ice-making machine topped the tall straight glass up with ice cubes. Harwood's description of Mayler's confinement had been exceptional. He had been concise—the ice machine is in the roll-top wood-effect cabinet.
According to the file I had speed-read in the car, my drinking partner was thirty-two, born on the third of January 1970, but age had not been kind to him. His thick, dark, rusty coloured hair failed to cover the two inches of hairline that bore a hideous scar caused by an explosion in Iraq ten months before it all kicked off for him in Syria. The furrowed lines below the scar travelled as far down his forehead to his sad, sunken brown eyes, above which he had no discernible eyebrows. The rest of his face, although unmarked by the violence of his abnormal life, was creased with sharp edges to it around his cheekbones and to his jawline. When I went to sit on the long sofa opposite where he sat and had not moved from, he smiled, exposing heavily nicotine stained teeth. The smile widened as he lit one of his cigarettes and offered me one; a Tekel. Turkish. I took it, drawing wantonly on it, then I began.
