The Widow's Son

by Daniel Kemp

  Fraser and Molly had two sons, Gerry aged forty-three, and Hamish aged thirty-nine. Gerry lived in Australia with a wife and their three children and Hamish was in New Zealand, divorced and in a partnership. They would all be coming for the New Year. I wondered how they would take to Suzanna. Come to think of it, I had not asked Hannah what she was doing for the festive season. That could be remedied now as I heard her replacing my night time assistant, but before I could speak to her, the number two at the Home Projects desk at Sir Elliot Zerby's department wanted words. A British passport had been found in Bruges, in Belgium, and turned in to the local police. They in turn contacted Interpol who had contacted the top floor at MI5. The name inside the passport was a one-time Dark name used by Henry Mayler. Belgium, no! I didn't buy it. My enquiry of the burners as to any luck they'd had drew a blank, but I stuck with my intuition and told them to run them again.

  Hannah breezed into the office bearing coffee and a smile. I briefed her on the drone strike and as her hand was still resting on the Directorship of Group I left the gathering problems over Arif Belmokhtar's circle of associates with her. As the coffee breathed new life into my aching body I broached the selection process and the two names I would be putting forward. On hearing her position could be made permanent her jubilation was not difficult to see, wishing good luck to an absent Michael Simmons and heaping 'thank you' after 'thank you' upon me until I almost blushed. Despite the pleasure I could see on her face and the one I was anticipating on Michael's, I was not happy in this position of power in deciding on what could become someone's future. I think the irony of that stupidity focused my thoughts on the job in hand.

  For the next hour I threw myself at inquiries of Special Branch and Interpol. I persisted in believing that Belgium was a blind alley and it was to France they had gone, but proving my suspicion was extremely hard. After two runs of the videos of the departure point at the port there was still no sign of Razin and Mayler leaving from Poole harbour. I backed my guess. I asked Interpol for the name of the person who handed in the passport. We ran that name through every computer we could use and half an hour later we had him and how the scam was run. Henry Mayler had freelanced for the same magazine our concerned citizen in Belgium worked for. He lived at a place just off the A419, heading south outside of Swindon, called Chiseldon. 'Yes', said his wife, he was home Saturday evening when a colleague knocked. 'Yes', she said again when asked if he was working in Belgium. 'Around Bruges was it?' the police officer inquired. 'Yes, it is', she replied, asking if everything was alright with her husband. My hunch had proved to be correct, but not always do the spoils come with victory.

  Mayler had clearly travelled with Razin voluntarily and set up his disappearance without help. At first glance it would seem as though it had been planned some time in advance, but how? If my maths were right Henry had been at the farm for more than fifteen days, how would he know this other reporter was going abroad? My mind was in overdrive yet again, ploughing through the possibilities and running into brick walls. One possibility was the pair of them were still in England. But if that was correct where would they go, and why? The theory that Fraser held about Razin abducting Mayler because he needed to get inside the Gladio files was lying in tatters, so why did Razin jump and how did Mayler persuade him? That question had to wait as my burner phone that I'd almost forgotten about resonated in my pocket. It was Razin!

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Cyanide

  “I took a call from Geoffrey Harwood on Saturday morning saying that signal traffic emanating from the Americans in London would identify me as an agent of British intelligence later that night. He didn't tell me how he knew, but he said he wanted to give me a head start. Loved Russian spies, I guess. Said he was doing it to cover Ughert's arse. Didn't want it to blow up around Whitehall whilst he, Harwood, was briefing a Minister of the Government. I asked if he was sure it wasn't to cover his own arse and he just laughed at me. Told me he wanted Henry Mayler out of the country and far away. He could find room for me to go too, he said. You can start a new life in North America, he suggested.

  “He said I should contact Henry Mayler at his location at a farm and scurry him away somewhere until it was safe for him, Harwood, to arrange transport for us both. Henry Mayler expected my call. He had it off to a tee. Times of camera sweeps, guards' patrols and even the fact of an arrival that Saturday afternoon that would require the attention of most of the staff to be looking elsewhere than at his hut. You will love this, he even told me where he would end up living—Springfield, Missouri. But then he killed himself! He took a cyanide tablet after apparently speaking to Arnold on his mobile telephone. I've got no idea what about.”

  The widow's son was dead.

  Razin's voice was shaky and sounded far from composed, but given the circumstances of having a poisoned British asset lying at his feet in a part of the country he knew nothing of, quite understandable. His command of the English language was brilliant, as was his tradecraft, so I had no worries about him tripping over Henry's body and throwing himself in the arms of a local bobby by mistake, but he was in over his head with only me as his back-up. The secret relationship that Fraser and Fyodor Nazarov Razin had was always going to be difficult to conceal forever, but for it to be leaked beyond our intelligence service would require someone inside betraying it. Razin had no idea where Henry had got his phone. On my first visit to Brightwalton Farm I distinctly remembered seeing a telephone listed on the inventory I'd signed for. All his personal property that remained with him was recorded, but phones were prohibited in huts whilst under our protection. It would not have been easy to conceal a cyanide tablet either. There was no way a phone and a tablet could have remained in Henry's possession in that hut.

  It is possible for any fool to make things more complex by loading the problem with unnecessary detail. Geoffrey Harwood was many things, but I never marked him down as a fool. However, although I'd left my analytical mind on my daybed anaesthetised by morphine, even in the state I was in I could see no rational reason why, if it was Geoffrey, he would be so obvious. Mayler could only have got a phone and a cyanide tablet from him whilst I was in the commander's office at Brightwalton signing the transfer forms on my first day as Director General Group. If that was not enough evidence to convict Harwood then how about the warning to Razin about the radio traffic from Grosvenor Square hours before it was transmitted? As much as I could make a case for him shielding Razin from being exposed and caught in the open, I could not explain how Harwood knew of those signals.

  “Tell me about the last call Henry Mayler took, General.”

  “He knew it was from Arnold before he answered it. How he knew that I've no idea as when I checked his phone all calls were deleted. There were no messages in his message box either. Whatever Arnold said it did not require much comment from Mayler. He never really spoke. All he did was shake his head and mumble 'yes', 'no', and 'I didn't know' a few times. You've met him and know that he wasn't a healthy athlete by any standard, but as he stood and took that call I truly thought his tiny legs would give way and he would topple over and fall. Within two or three minutes of him putting the phone into his coat pocket he was dead. I wasn't expecting cyanide. How could I know?

  “Whoever told Harwood that the Americans would expose me has my balls in his vice. I don't like that. I don't trust any of you, including Ughert. You tell him that. The phones we are using are good, mine can't have been traced and nor can yours, if they had been then we would both be behind bars, but we will have to keep our contact down to the minimum. I cannot come back to London,” he added in a sad voice.

  When I agreed he carried on in a less hurried fashion. There was a side of me that couldn't stop feeling sorry for him. My professional side agreed with Fraser's synopsis, to leave him hanging, but I shared a kind of empathy with him. I'd faced some of the dangers he had. I feared the loneliness of street life and the constant risk of unmasking every time I raised my head on operational duties. It was always
that way.

  “I shall move on from here and keep moving until you can find a way out for me. I cannot go to Russia. Mayler told me you were thinking of sending him to Canada. I can go in his place. I think you owe me that for all the information I've given you and Ughert. I can get a passport. We have a man who can do them. I will need money though and you will need a way of getting it to me. Any ideas, Mr West?”

  “Where are you?” I asked to which he replied that he wouldn't say, adding rather chillingly that he didn't fully trust me but had no option but to call. He did, however, tell me where Henry's body lay. He was in a house in the hamlet of Draycot Foliat, not far from the Cotswold Flying School.

  Perhaps that was his escape route. I suggested that Sir Elliot's operational command send a team to scrub the place crystal clean and Special Branch liaise with the local police when questioning the pilots at the flying school. One section of our skill-laden intelligence service would be cleaning away a mess in Draycot Foliat, whilst another section, skilled in the art, would be telling the village gossips and the press that attended a completely different story than the one that had happened. Black arts they called it, but black magic may have been a better description.

  * * *

  I repeatedly tried to call Geoffrey on both his private numbers, but had no luck. In confidence I asked Peter, Group's head of control in the communications Hub, if there was any way heads of departments could be contacted or traced, if unreachable by telephone.

  “Oh most certainly there is, sir. I would have thought you knew of it.” Obviously I didn't, otherwise there would no need to ask, but I figured it would serve no purpose to point that fact out.

  “It was Mr Harwood's suggestion some, oh I'm not sure exactly how long ago, but I could look up the exact date if you wish, sir?” He looked at me, expecting a reply. I had every reason to want to know the exact date and every reason I could think of for not being bored by gratuitous detail.

  “When you find the date send it through to Hannah, please, Peter. For now just a rough guess will do.”

  “It was when he was developing the facilities at Greenwich. He intended his project there to have simply every surveillance device that could be supplied. One of them was what he christened the clucked box. I thought Mr Harwood was making a sardonic joke, sir.” Oh dear, a Geoffrey Harwood joke and I would have to ask what a clucked box was.

  I did ask, and I was pleased I did. Someone in one of our pipeline department had invented a device that protected the integrity of a minister's car, or those who used it in our name. It eradicated the effectiveness of fixed positioning bugs applied by foreign agents and at the same time indicated the precise location of each car on which it had been installed to a central point. I successfully skated around the nuances of clucked boxes and discovered Geoffrey's whereabouts. I tried his private mobile phone again. He answered.

  “Good morning again, Patrick! I've had some things to do and I'm out of the office for a while, but I'll be on my way back shortly. If you're calling about your selections could you fax them over, please? It would be much easier that way.”

  “It wasn't about them, Geoffrey. Something more serious cropped up. Why is your location not logged?”

  “Why the bloody hell should it be? That standing order is redundant. You really must find time to read departmental memos and updated protocols. Perhaps you could study them after the festivities at the Ugherts', as I understand you might have plenty of time on your hands. I was sorry to hear that Geraldine has company this year, dear boy.”

  It was true to say that his first spirited response to my question had disarmed me, and for a moment it was my reasoning that I doubted rather than him. But then came his normal unmerited comment which spiralled my intolerance level beyond where it should have been.

  “We have you at a private address in Wimbledon Village, Geoffrey, a house belonging to a Giles and Paige Wilmington. A crew from D Department at Millbank should be outside this Wilmington person's front door any second. You are to be detained for questioning. I'm afraid you didn't cover your tracks well enough. I had the garage log of your car looked at. You removed the clucked box your department developed on the day it was fitted. Unfortunately you never told fitters of that contraption that you that didn't want it refitted. They were doing a routine roll call of departmental cars when they found yours without one. The one you took off was replaced three hours later.”

  I heard a muffled 'What?' coinciding with the crashing sound of a door being smashed open. There were sounds of heavy boots running up stairs and the pathetic voices of a female and a man that I did not recognise pleading to be left alone and allowed to dress. Then Geoffrey spoke on the still open phone link to me. “I hope you have enough to justify this intrusion into my privacy, West. Because if not you will be spending the rest of your life regretting you and I ever met.”

  * * *

  It was just approaching 8am when I telephoned Oliver Nathan at his home before informing department heads of Geoffrey's detention. The Home Secretary was clearly disturbed by the news but after hearing a brief outline of what I considered to be the justifications of it, he agreed that I had no other choice. With that vindication in my back pocket I actuated one of the only protocols I was aware of; the one that goes—

  We have a mole. Secure all sections of the service until further notice. Issued by Director General Joint Intelligence.

  It was Oliver Nathan who reminded me that I had the responsibility of telling the Prime Minister. “What do I say?” I asked, as if I was to see the headmaster and beg for forgiveness after breaking a window on the quad?

  “Tell him as it is, Patrick. You're the one in charge now. You will need a new Director General Group and I will need a new liaison officer. You concentrate on Group and my chief civil servant can do here. Do you have the scramble line for Number 10 where you are now, or shall I patch you across?”

  I ducked out of appointing Hannah as Director General Group. I officially appointed Michael Simmons to replace me at Group, sending coded notification to that effect to those who needed to know. Having told the PM of my deeds it seemed easy to inform Hannah of her demotion, but it was anything but. To sweeten the bitter pill of disappointment I offered her the job as my new personal assistant at the Joint Intelligence offices in Whitehall. The position came with a significant wage increase along with the grandiose title of Steward to the Privy Council. The possibility of both changes did not immediately overcome her despondency, but as the day wore on, and the demands on our combined resources were ever increasing, she grew into her role as my right hand. The offices that came with the job were on the third floor of the Foreign and Commonwealth Building in Whitehall. Their operational status was immediate with both the Director's desk and the Steward's desk fully functioning within a matter of minutes and both adjoining apartments were made ready within a couple of hours. Until someone was appointed, Frank, with two other principal protection officers became my own version of Fraser's Mrs. Bayliss, but mine were wearing trousers and carried shoulder holstered side-arms.

  With Frank in front and Hannah, also armed, beside me, off we went to meet with Fraser Ughert, but it wasn't to Chearsley, in Buckinghamshire, this time.

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Prime Minister

  By the time Fraser and I had exchanged the formal documents of occupation of the suites at the Foreign and Commonwealth building Geoffrey Harwood had been secured at the interrogation holding centre in the New Forest at Beaulieu, in Hampshire for some considerable time. He was in the same block as Martin Lennox, but they couldn't see nor hear each other. It was a lonely place at the best of times and in a cold winter a place for hardy creatures only. I had told Fraser of the morning's events leading to Geoffrey's incarceration, but even allowing for that prior warning the sorrow on his harrowed face when we met was unmistakable and genuine. Mayler's death had hit him hard, and now he had to contend with Harwood's arrest.

  The opening reports of Geoffrey's emphatic p
rotestations of innocence, when the evidence pointed in the opposite direction, were compelling, and as more questions were put and his answers forwarded on to me, credible, but I could not allow any doubts to affect my performance in front of the Prime Minister. There I had to be confident and composed. Fraser had carried this responsibility for years and none of it was as daunting to him as it was to me.

  It was not the cold that caused me to shiver on the short walk from the car to the black glossy painted door and then the continuation along the thick carpeted hallway, it was, I believe, excitement. I had travelled a long way since being a young know-nothing, adrenaline-driven detective in London in the early 70s to the head of intelligence in this country in a relatively short time. It crossed my mind whether I would be able to remain in the job after the Harwood investigation and that enveloping world dominating business alongside Henry Mayler's Rosicrucians.

  According to the floor indicator in the mirrored lift we plunged six floors from ground level to reach our destination. Hannah had stayed with the car with Jimmy and Frank, so it was Fraser and I who were escorted to combat against the establishment, except we weren't fighting them, we were warning them. The comparison to the Hub was obvious but the single fact of both being underground was where that similarity ended. The Hub was filled with vivid changing colour and activity motivated personnel with a mild buzz of quiet conversation in the air. Here the wide straight, carpeted corridor was brightly lit from overhead, lined its full length by a maroon coloured padded covering, and as silent as the British Library would be when closed to the outside world. There was a uniformed porter on the door which was opening as we approached. My breathing was normal, but I could see that Fraser was getting a little breathless. I asked if he was okay and he replied it was merely the nerves of an actor about to give a farewell performance in front of royalty.