The Widow's Son

by Daniel Kemp

  “Was that all he said, Henry? Nothing definite about him stopping this terrorist on your behalf?”

  “Wasn't that enough, did he have to shout from the minaret at the mosque to satisfy you? Well, he didn't. He smiled and left immediately after the toes thing. I contacted Control.”

  “So you contacted Control directly? Is that how it played?”

  “Not direct, no. My call was not taken. I dialled my get-out-of-jail number and left the message.”

  “You didn't actually speak to anyone?”

  “I've just said that. No, I didn't speak to a person.”

  “And what time was it you recorded that message?”

  “Three-ten in the afternoon, but why? Did the automatic clock stop?” I did not answer.

  “How long did you have to wait for Control to reply?” I asked.

  “Two hours and five minutes.”

  “I'm all ears. Why did Control say it took that long, Henry?”

  There was a noticeable tremble in his voice throughout this reminder of the past and I foolishly thought it was because of my veiled threat. At that time I knew nothing more.

  “What did you do whilst you waited for London to call, Henry?”

  Chapter Four: Early Friday evening

  After a rummage around the two domestic floors of Lavington Street that was to become my new home, as Harwood had articulated, and hastily dismissing the sentimental thoughts of a rapidly approaching Christmas, I settled into two chicken sandwiches, my first food of the day washed down by part of an adequate bottle of single malt and set about reading more about Mayler and then, if possible, Comrade Fyodor Nazarov Razin.

  Henry Mayler officially signed on with us whilst at Oxford University. His father was a practising doctor in of all places; Harley Street, approximately fifty yards from the surgeons' clinic I had attended. The family had a house in Montagu Square, a pleasant ten-minute stroll away. The Maylers had moved into the six-storeyed spacious London home in 1954, arriving that year from the state of Washington in America carrying fictional isotopes in their hand luggage. Henry's grandfather, Arek Mayler, one part of the Armenian family link, came with his eight-year-old son, Dietmar, but not his wife. Frau Maddalen Mayler had died giving birth to their son in Germany in 1946. Dietmar changed his name to Christopher when eighteen, shortly after Arek had passed away. Christopher followed his father into the medical profession but not practising in Harley Street. When aged twenty-three and at St Bart's medical college he met and married Elizabeth Simms, a fellow St Bart's student. Henry was born to the proud young couple the following year; seven months before Christopher was killed in a road traffic accident. Elizabeth Mayler took up private medical practice in the Harley Street premises in 1976. Today the Mayler Clinic is a world famous establishment dealing in cosmetic surgery and where Elizabeth acted as a consultant until Henry was nineteen years of age when she too died suddenly. Although a healthy woman with no family history of heart disease she died of heart failure whilst asleep in her bed in Montagu Square. On the death of his mother the freehold of the Harley Street and Montagu Square properties passed to Henry, who had not only shown an interest but expressed a passion for photography after studying the sketches and photographs of his mother's reconstruction surgery.

  The imposing home in the square had been purchased a week before Arek Mayler's arrival by an insurance consultant from Richmond in Surrey named Oswald Raynor, who paid close on fifty thousand pounds for the property which was immediately leased to Arek. All this had been investigated before Henry's signature was allowed on the Official Secrets Act form on the first Sunday of June 1991 and so it said, found to be in order. The serendipitous fact of Henry being raised a stone's throw away from the psychiatrists I'd seen twice was not lost on me and nor was the name of Raynor. I needed a walk to clear my head. I was surprised to find the security office fully staffed, thinking that most would be at home by now at nine-thirty at night.

  “Going out, sir?” the young smiling face of a uniformed sergeant asked me.

  “Yes, I am, officer. I thought the hat and coat might give the game away,” I replied with the least amount of sarcasm I could manage.

  “It's just that we would expect to be given notice whenever you required an escort. I wasn't being funny, sir,” he replied, straight-faced, adding, “It is in standing orders, Mr West.”

  “In that case I will have to rewrite them. I'll have that looked at first thing in the morning. I'm perfectly capable of walking down to the local pub and back. I won't be long.” I made to go past him but he stepped across my path to prevent me.

  “Sir, I must advise against it. But if you are determined to leave without one of us I insist you sign out to that effect and you will have to use one of the rear exits from the building. The front entrance is secured by a time lock. It cannot be opened.”

  “What happens if someone is taken ill or has to go somewhere in an emergency, sergeant?”

  “We have three secure tunnels that emerge in a series of side alleys off either Blackfriars Road, Hopton Street or Stamford Street, sir. If any of those occasions arise we use one of those exits, but we try steering clear of the Stamford Street one, it is the longest. It's quite a walk.” His face had taken on that serious look that parents adopt just after they have reprimanded their child, daring them to repeat the offence.

  “Okay, I'll take that one. Point me in the right direction and I'll get out of your way,” I replied, somewhat ruffled. He smiled back, but it wasn't a warm smile.

  “Walk with me as far as the security gate, which I presume I'll have to sign out of, sergeant. You can tell me about this place as we walk.”

  * * *

  We were in the basement via the lift walking towards one of those corridors I'd seen earlier in the day. The buzzing of the television screens seemed noisier than they had been, but the amount of people had not altered. I stopped at the centre console behind a man who smelled of a scented liniment.

  “What's on television?” I asked flippantly.

  “This is a satellite picture of northern Syria, sir, just outside a place called Resafa. It's on the strategic route into Homs. At 10:16 yesterday morning GCHQ notified us that they expected something big to kick off near there, or on the banks of Lake Assad, a few miles away within the next week or so. The window of accuracy was not specific, sir.” He nodded towards one of the other screens on the mention of Lake Assad and the operator of that visual display raised a hand in recognition.

  “On our centre screens,” his tuition continued in the same cadence as it had before. “We have eyes inside and out of Aleppo International airport, monitoring all incoming and outgoing flights along with a link to the cameras in the arrival and departure lounges and in the meet and greet hall. With the technology at the Doughnut, sir, all passengers on the boarding list can be accurately accounted for coming into or leaving the airport. If any slip away before customs, we would be alerted. We are looped to GCHQ and AIS, the new installation of Mr Harwood's at Greenwich, but if and when the balloon goes up we monitor and have ringside seats here waiting to forward on your orders. Those at the Doughnut simply gauge and follow, as do the eyes at AIS.”

  How nice of you to tell me, Geoffrey, I silently thought, guessing that somewhere there would be a mention of it locked away and recorded by my orderly predecessor.

  “Tell me something if you would,” I asked of my teacher. “I'm not familiar with that AIS thing you mentioned. What is it?”

  “Its full name, sir, is Auxiliary Intelligence Supplement. It was established by Mr Harwood about four months ago. I'm not privy to knowing all its capabilities, sir, but it complements what we get from GCHQ and can implement telecommunications tap-ins which they can't. Greenwich has developed very clever practical technology, sir, but very secret. From what I understand they're years ahead of anything the Americans have in that department.”

  He had allowed the secrecy of his blessed machinery to take precedence over telling me of a live ope
ration that required my assessment and my full-time attendance at The Hole. That was either utter incompetence on Geoffrey's part or deliberate. Neither were worth thinking about at this stage. I turned back to the young sergeant who was going to show me the Stamford Street exit, and changed the destination.

  “I know my office is down the corridor to the right, but I do not know what's down the others. I think it would be an opportune time to become acquainted with what's around me. I wanted the walk to clear my head of something unrelated to what's going on. However, that will have to take second place. Now it would be more prudent to get to know this place. Consider yourself my guide, sergeant.

  By no measure of anyone's imagination had I been sufficiently briefed, but it was no point telling my uniformed friend of that, or my instructor on the capabilities of communication, and there was certainly nobody to complain to.

  “As you will, sir,” he replied in the practised resigned manner of non-commissioned officers worldwide. “The first one to our right is where the loos and showers are. I don't know offhand how many there are but there are quite a lot. I understand your facilities are en-suite, sir. The staffing lamp-burners and my security lot have our own facilities on the ground floor.”

  I met this information with the same blank stare that met all of his unambiguous descriptions of the rest of the tunnels. I was bored. The display screens were still and I needed more than just my office chair.

  “Let's go further afield, shall we,” I suggested.

  In silence he took me to where the longest tunnel emerged at a shuttered outside entrance between two buildings off Stamford Street. The two other tunnels emerged in a similar concealed fashion. Back inside The Hole I explored the back rooms of the building all the way up from the ground floor to the very top, discovering why it was that the accommodation on the two floors where I was to live was so narrow. In those adjacent rooms to my own were enough workstations for roughly ten people, but I doubted it was a comfortable place to work, as all the windows were boarded up and like my own place, the air-conditioning provided the only air. I hoped horse liniment and disinfectant were not often needed. According to Sergeant Cooper a total of eight women were employed; three in the upstairs offices and three in the basement. He never mentioned where the other two worked and neither did he comment on their appearance. I did not ask. My advanced looking dayroom was more than ample. Not only was there an impressive walk-in shower, but there was a thermal steam and spa room as well! A separate area had a television and an adjustable armchair to watch it from, or fall asleep in. There was a small gym with a rowing-machine to keep me awake if I needed to. After finding out that Geoffrey had preferred to alternate between Craig Court and Greenwich, rather than use these facilities to unwind, it became even more inviting.

  * * *

  My office seemed to have enough modern technological 'toys' to be a development area for a James Bond film. The concealed floor safe paled into insignificance against the remote controlled wall which, on depressing the button marked Command on my desk console, revolved one hundred and eighty degrees revealing a wide three-way-split screen monitoring the images displayed in the central Hub. As I peered at the lifeless images, one changed from the barren sandy deserted landscape and fairly busy airport terminal to one of moving traffic and pedestrians on visible street lighted pavements. I recognised the area. Cooper was at the door looking at the same scene as I.

  “That's the Russian Consulate at Notting Hill, is it not?” I looked at him as I asked but he had a deeply vacuous expression on his face. I lifted the telephone that Geoffrey had declared as the connection to the Hub.

  “Who am I speaking to, please?” I felt like an idiot having to ask and more so having remembered that I originally wanted a walk in the fresh air. Silently I vowed to rectify my stupidity and self-indulgence as quickly as possible.

  “I'm Hannah, sir, your personal assistant.” One of the three women basement workers Cooper had mentioned, I correctly assumed. “I was waiting to formally introduce myself earlier but our departing Mr Harwood was in a hurry. The images are as you say, Notting Hill. The monitors were alerted that our subject was on the move so the intel in your office changed automatically as all of ours did. Yes! There's our level one now, sir. See?” I couldn't see her, but already I had formed an image from her pleasant sounding voice and my resolve at curbing my egotism was starting to crumble immediately.

  It was him. Mr Fyodor Nazarov Razin, alias Raynor. Tall at six foot three inches, broad shouldered and strongly built by the look of him. He was wearing a long snake-ish green trench coat that finished inches above his brown weatherproof shoes. It wasn't only the colour and length of the coat that struck me at first, it was also the three huge pockets down each side covering the whole length. All appeared empty but having a sizeable capacity. On his head was not the traditional Papakha Cossack fur, but a flat cap more at home on the streets of Leeds, in God's own county of Yorkshire.

  “Are you hiding in some secret hiding place, Hannah?” I asked, bemused.

  “No, sir, I'm behind the wall opposite the display screens you're watching. The wall can't be moved from my side, sir, only you can do that. It slides out of sight when you require me and is replaced if you want more privacy. The button is one of those on the console. Middle-end-left, I believe.”

  My image was about to be tested. Would Hannah be the ultra-efficient civil service female employee with the same thick black-rimmed spectacles as Geoffrey Harwood and who looked more like a man than a woman, or would she resemble the goddess Fraser Ughert had as his personal assistant back in his day as Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee? There was a button to find before all could be revealed. I couldn't find it. I'd switched on a hidden hi-fi system, turned on the shower in the adjacent dayroom as well as the BBC news on the television. Middle-end-left was obviously not precise enough for me. The next thing I knew was that a beautiful, graceful woman who must be Hannah had entered my office and was standing beside me.

  “I think I had better find it for you, Mr West. Don't worry about all these gadgets, it won't take you long to get used to things, I'm sure.” Her very shapely legs had carried her pleasant voice into my domain, and I wasn't disappointed at all as she reached over and pushed the required button. Early thirties in age, tall, curvy in all the right places, elegantly dressed with straight long black hair above the porcelain white skin of a sculpted face with a small upturned nose and high cheekbones. There were no wedding ring or glasses to distract me from her cold, but huge, remote hazel-coloured, eyes as they pierced into me. I'm not sure if the look I returned carried the same remoteness of hers, but at least I tried to assuage my egotism. It's not always the clothes people wear, or the way they speak that marks them out as coming from a different way of life than most. But skin cannot lie. Smooth, unblemished, flawless skin comes from the preserve of the wealthy where nothing is allowed to contaminate it. I looked forward to investigating my assumption later.

  * * *

  With most thoughts of Hannah's obvious sexuality removed from my mind I returned to the Hub where my previous informer of AIS secrets and the inside of Aleppo airport now became my invited educator into satellite pictures. He, Peter, wanted to explain the intricacies of space cameras, but all was falling on stony ground. I was watching Razin, not caring how that came about. He was standing outside the gate of the Consulate in Bayswater Road smoking a cigarette and appearing perfectly happy to just to stand there in the evening chill. Why would he want to do that, I wondered?

  “How often has he come out of the front door for a smoke, Peter?” I asked.

  “As far as my knowledge goes it's the first time, sir. Every day since he arrived he comes out of the building at eleven am on the dot. A very punctual, and up to now a systematic man is our Russian gentleman. There is nothing in the log book about him coming out the building at any other time, sir.”

  “When did he arrive again, please?”

  “He was waiting on
our camera screen Monday morning at eleven, Mr West,” Peter replied.

  “I understand he has never varied his routine. Never a bus instead of the tube? A cab thrown in perhaps?”

  “No, sir, always a walk to the station, exits at Charing Cross on the correct side of the Strand for the Savoy then after breakfast, it's a brisk walk to Chancery Lane. From there he…”

  “Yes I get it. He takes a bus to Highgate and walks up the hill to number 177.” I'd interrupted his summary and successfully stopped him somewhere between the intricacies of fixed satellite services compared to the reconnaissance ones we were apparently 'hooked into'. I apologised for my rudeness. He seemed surprised by my apology.

  “Why is he outside now? And why's he not moving?” I asked of nobody in particular. It was Hannah who replied, standing beside me again.

  “I think that is for you to determine, sir.”

  I took a deep breath and thought back to Ireland. Things there were more straightforward. One target for both sides. They hated us and we hated them. The secret was to get to them before they could do much damage to us. Here, it was far more complicated. First the enemy sometimes turns out to be your friend and the opposite applies when it comes to a friend. Then there were the Americans. Being kept out of this one for reasons unexplained to me. Or, was it that they wanted us to stay out the way, and we were only too willing to play?

  “How many have we had on the street working this guy up till now?” I asked.

  “We started on his journey to and from Highgate on the day of arrival, Mr West. One of our static watchers at the Consulate followed his outward journey as best he could. After his destination was known, Mr Harwood arranged cover at Highgate West Hill and had the lamp-burners in a car in Robin Grove, a street forty yards from the Delegation.” The voice came from behind me and sounded calm and resolute.