Maestro

by John Gardner

  “Very much so. The eternal fixer. Has a nice little flat in Bury Street, St. James’s.”

  “You told him about this?”

  “One of my people is there at this moment. For what it’s worth, Five’s Iraqi friend has said he’ll make sure that all the attempts will be bungled. Said he’d see to it.”

  “Oh, sure. How in hell’s he going to do that? Tell his boys and girls that they’ve got to aim high?”

  “Know what you mean, Herb. Just keep your powder dry and your bowels open.”

  “What powder? My bowels are always open, especially when people shoot at me.”

  “It’s a saying, Herb.”

  “Bloody stupid saying.”

  “Well, nothing’s going to happen tonight. The team in London are probably looking around for new lodgings. They’re very professional, and Five says they seem to have lost contact with their friend but he’ll come back to them like a homing pigeon. Got too much to lose.”

  “Talk to you later, and will keep my powder dry.”

  Herbie went through to the dining room. Bitsy looked sour-faced but put on a show of pleasure at seeing her entire brood around the table. She had spent most of the afternoon preparing gazpacho, fillet of sole with new potatoes and haricots verts. There were melon halves stuffed with raspberries soaked in kirsch as a dessert.

  “My God, Bits, you done us proud.” Herbie attacked his food like someone who had not eaten for a week.

  “You don’t look after yourself, Herb. No lunch, working till all hours …” Bitsy began.

  “Goes with the job, Bits. Things are dangerous—just like this cold soup is dangerous for my digestion.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I …”

  “Don’t worry about it. I always live dangerously.”

  Ginger piped up with the information that there had been a bomb in Rupert Street.

  “Yea, I know. Blew out the front of one of my favorite curry houses.” Herbie gave them a superior look, as if to say he knew the whys and wherefores of the bombing.

  “Was it the people we’re supposed to be dealing with?” Ginger again.

  “Ginge, you shouldn’t ask. Now let’s change the subject. Bex, what was the funniest case you were ever on?”

  “The funniest? Why?”

  “Just to have a talk about things that don’t have anything to do with bombs.”

  “Funniest?” she repeated.

  “Yea, funniest like in ha-ha. Give us all a good laugh, ja?”

  Bex smiled, then giggled. “It’s slightly indelicate.” She was trying to control the giggles.

  “We’re all grown men and women.” Herbie tried to draw her out.

  “Oh, well. It happened when I was just a plain-Jane policewoman on the beat. It was funny, but not for the poor devil who was the center of attention,” she began.

  She had been called, with her partner, to St. Mary Abbotts Hospital around nine one night, and a somewhat embarrassed doctor explained the situation. A patient had got himself to the hospital in great pain and discomfort.

  “He has a real problem,” the doctor told the police, “and I think it should be reported to you in case he wants to bring charges of assault.” The patient in question was terrified of his wife’s finding out what had happened. He had been having a torrid affair, which had got out of control. That night, he had gone to see his lover in order to tell her that it was all over. He could not go on cheating on his wife. The girl had seemed to take it well enough, and pleaded with him to go to bed with her just for one last time.

  “They were apparently in the middle of things when she reached out, grabbed a vibrator and stuck it straight up the poor guy’s rectum.”

  “Serve him right,” muttered Bitsy.

  Bex explained that the vibrator was one of those things with rubber ridges around it. “They couldn’t get it out without causing him great pain, but he insisted they should do whatever was necessary. They pleaded with him to have it surgically removed in the operating theater under a general anesthetic, but he wouldn’t hear of it. If they gave him a general, they’d have to inform his wife and that was the last thing he wanted.

  “We said if that was the case the last thing he would want was to bring charges against the girlfriend for assault with a deadly weapon. My partner went into the cubicle and tried to argue with him, but he’d have none of it. There was nothing we could do, and the doctor said they would get the thing removed but it would cause much anguish—which it did. You could hear the guy screaming all over the Casualty Department.”

  “They got it out?” Ginger asked, laughing wildly.

  Bex nodded. “We were about to leave when his wife turned up. The girlfriend had called her on the phone, so we stayed on to try and avert any domestic violence.”

  “And did you?”

  “We managed to restrain her, but you should have seen the fellow’s face when he came hobbling out of the cubicle—contorted with pain, then terrified when he saw his wife. I gather she forgave him in the end …”

  Ginger guffawed. “In the end is right,” he managed to say through his laughter. “His girlfriend said good-bye in the end, and the wife forgave him in the end.”

  “You got anything funnier, Herb?” Bex was starting to relax.

  “Me? Nothing funny ever happens to me.”

  “Come on, Mr. Kruger. You must’ve had a couple of funnies.” Ginger had wiped his eyes and finally stopped laughing.

  “Never had a vibrator,” Herb said, deadpan, which Ginger thought was no end of a joke. Kruger very rarely told people—even colleagues—stories, funny or sad, concerning his long career. There had been funny moments, certainly, but his experiences during the old long dark days of the Cold War would remain forever locked away in his head and in the files of the SIS. Eberhardt Lukas Kruger, for all his bonhomie, was a very close bird who knew that the real adventures were not kiss-kiss, bang-bang, but mental exercises, deduction and analysis. Often dull and complex.

  After dinner they sat over coffee for a while before Herb bowed out, saying he had work to do. Bitsy once more became solicitous, saying he worked too hard and that he should relax.

  “Bitsy, this is truly important. Let me tell you when I can take time off, then maybe we’ll do some cooking together.”

  This she obviously took to be more than an invitation to spend time in the kitchen. She smiled like the cat who had at last got the cream, and disappeared.

  “You’re not really going to spend time cooking with her?” Bex said as they reached Gus’s study.

  “Keep her quiet, Bex. Me? I’ve finished with playing footsie with women. Age is catching up with me.”

  “Nonsense, Herb. You’re still an attractive man.”

  “Sure, in the dark with light behind me, sure.”

  When they had closed the door and were seated, he asked Bex about Carole.

  “I didn’t push too hard. Just had a long talk. I’ve got details about where Gus was the night he got himself killed. She was obviously very much in love with him.”

  “True. First wife, Angela, was pain like your guy with the vibrator. Carole was one hell of an interrogator as well as Gus. Once saw them working as a team. Incredible. They were like sharks. When one stopped pressing, the other took over. Never knew if you were on your arse or Easter Day. Gus taught her the ropes.” He paused, looked at her and saw her eyes full of doubt. “You got some reserves, yes?”

  “Reservations, Herb, yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve spent a lot of time with the bereaved. Seen grief and its side effects. Either Carole is a very tough cookie or she’s in denial, or she’s not grieving for some other reason. She knows something we don’t, Herb. Can’t think what it could be, but she really is holding back.”

  “Maybe it’s about the magic side of things. Gus obviously talked a lot to her. Before you came on the scene, I talked with one of our retired Deputy Chiefs. Turned out that he was Magic Circle. Wouldn’t even be drawn on the subject.
Very close. Perhaps Carole’s the same.”

  “She can do no wrong in your eyes, can she?”

  Herbie grunted. “You don’t know me proper yet, Bex. Nobody, absolutely nobody, is beyond suspicion in my thinking. I had to learn that the hard way. Go ask Tony Worboys, he’ll probably open up like a singing goldfish, but you could always ask him about Ursula. Then he just might tell you how I learned never to trust nobody—not Carole, Ginge, Bitsy, nor even Worboys. CIA man once called this profession a ‘wilderness of mirrors.’ Quote from some poet, but he had the right word. It is a wilderness of mirrors. You always look twice, then again for the insurance. You always analyze what people tell you, even people you trusted for years.” Without a pause he changed the subject, veering off at a sharp angle. “Where was Gus and what was he doing the night he got blown to pieces?”

  “Giving a magic lecture and demonstration to some magic club in Salisbury.”

  “We check that’s true?”

  “I have a name and number to call, yes.”

  “Then call it now. Never put off the moment. Apologize for ringing so late, but push your police credentials.” He gestured towards the telephone.

  The conversation was short and to the point. For once, the magician at the distant end was willing to talk. When she put down the receiver, Bex nodded. “That was where he was. The chairman of the society said he was wonderful, couldn’t praise him highly enough.”

  “Gus certainly knew his onions. I watched another video last night. He did impossible things. Made me think he really had special powers, and I got a pretty logical brain. I think Gus could’ve made more money doing the magic stuff than he did as a Confessor.”

  Bex did not respond. Presently she said it was her bedtime. “What’re we on tomorrow? Another go at Carole?”

  “Maybe. I have some files to read, then we’ll see. Meet at breakfast, eh?”

  “All bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  When she had gone, he turned on the computer again and reinserted the disk. Slowly he started to page through the document on the screen.

  After a rather formal introduction, Gus had written the story in his relaxed, slightly mocking style. He obviously thought that it might still make part of the book, and Herbie wondered if the man’s great magic had made him believe in miracles. The only way that the story could be told publicly was if Jasmine had eventually run for cover and had “gone off the books,” as they said when agents were pulled out and given new lives, new Legends—those carefully constructed backgrounds given to people who had to disappear, or become invisible. When they were given Legends on retirement, they were usually referred to as ghosts.

  To begin at the beginning, the activating of Jasmine happened at a very difficult time for me. I was already engaged in interrogating a number of people from the Middle East. The reports went straight to the Chief because we were looking for people who could be turned back in the main Mideast countries. At that time, Iran was the big enemy, but we were also trying for someone close to Muammar Qaddafi in Libya and all the other Arab countries, including the Saudis, King Hussein of Jordan and the Syrians.

  I had a couple of tickles who just might be useful in Syria, and one we thought could turn out to assist in Libya. I recall that it was all very cloak and dagger with such screening going on in London among the Arab population.

  There was always an in-depth appreciation of potential customers before they were brought down to me, and they usually arrived at night, suitably blindfolded. I used the underground facilities to both house and interrogate them and 99% turned out to be quite useless. They were either too terrified to go back to their native countries or just unsuitable for many reasons—mainly because their profiles did not make them into a reasonable risk. Some I even judged to be possible doubles anyway and I always reported this to London before they left. What happened to these individuals is unclear, though usually, I gather, they were quietly shipped back to their countries labeled persona non grata. Knowing the regimes under which these latter had to live, I did not fancy their chances when they arrived home. On the other hand, it must have become common knowledge that we were trawling for possible assets, unlike our American cousins, who continued to carry on their stand-off approach in the Middle East, relying solely on the satellite and electronic intelligence, a situation which went on almost until the collapse of the Soviet regime in Russia.

  I was forced to leave almost in the middle of a three-day interrogation of a Saudi prospect because of the Cataract business. This, as you will recall [Herbie momentarily smiled. Gus had an overachiever’s outlook. Nobody would ever have allowed the Cataract business in his book], was, in effect, a damage-control operation to cover up an unhappy incident in central London, where four members of an IRA Active Service Unit were killed.

  I carried out the operation with the assistance of some very good officers and technicians, and it was at the SIS technical laboratory, where we were reprocessing videos and adding images, that I came across Jasmine.

  She had been working for us, on the technical side, for five years, since she was twenty years old. A member of an old and wealthy Iraqi family, she had been brought to the U.K. at the age of seventeen when her immediate relatives were threatened by the Leader’s Secret Police. We got into a casual conversation about life under the current regime in Iraq and it immediately became clear that she was highly intelligent. She hated the political setup in her own country and was clearly anxious to help against the ruling Ba’ath Party in any possible way.

  I am not a saint as far as women are concerned and I made a date with her for the following evening, after the whole of Cataract was in place. The next afternoon, I went into Head Office and took a look at her file. She had been deeply vetted when she first applied for the job in the technical branch and there was already a tag against her name suggesting she could be developed—as the jargon of the day put it. In other words, Head Office had seen the potential and then immediately forgotten about it.

  The Chief and his First Deputy were out of the country, so I decided to take matters into my own hands. On the next night, I met with Jasmine and, not to put too fine a point on it, we were mutually attracted to one another. In turn, this led to me asking if she had ever thought of going back to Iraq and ingratiating herself with the establishment.

  She took her time to think about it, and finally said she would need more details. A week or so later I called the Chief direct from Warminster on a secure line and put the position to him. He told me to proceed with caution, and a couple of weeks after that Jasmine was brought to Warminster, where I worked with her for a week. She was a keen and bright young woman, and the challenge of what I was offering appeared to press the right buttons. In no way did I hold back the dangers of what she was being asked to do, including the possibility of her being tested by the authorities in Baghdad. I recall telling her that she might even be asked to kill someone.

  Eventually, she agreed on one condition, which initially posed a problem. She would return to Iraq and do her best to infiltrate the higher echelons of the establishment, in particular their teams of so-called freedom fighters (aka terrorists). However, she would do this only if I remained her sole controller. In plain language, I was to be her one and only case officer. All intelligence gleaned by her would have to come back to me; all special instructions would have to be sent by me. She would in no way countenance a third party—even though she knew third parties would exist among those who performed analysis on the raw material she would send back.

  From a personal viewpoint, this was not going to be easy, so I went directly to Head Office and talked face to face with the Chief, who came to the conclusion that, should I feel able to take on the extra workload, I would be accepted as the sole runner of Jasmine.

  Jasmine returned to Iraq the following year after an exhaustive course and briefings which covered every possible procedure. We had a series of methods to cover her
getting information out, including a high-frequency radio, which gave her the option of encrypted “burst” transmissions; carrier pigeons, which we supplied after she returned to Baghdad; and a dangerous direct encrypted mail setup in which she sent letters into Saudi Arabia which were then forwarded to me.

  In the event of her ever being sent into the U.K. on any pretext, she was to get in touch with me through the personal ads in The Times. She would simply begin the ad with the word Claudius. I was to reply using the word Jasmine and telling here where to meet me by inserting a map reference disguised as telephone numbers, which meant that I could even set up a meeting in a restaurant if need be.

  Over eighteen months passed between her return to Iraq and her first raw intelligence. We had, in fact, resigned ourselves to the fact that she had been taken, but once she established contact—using, first, the letters via Saudi—a steady stream of information began to come through.

  During the Gulf War, Jasmine went to great pains to get vital intelligence out of Baghdad. She managed, with ingenuity, to set up a mail service via Turkey, and we later discovered that she was, by this time, working within the Iraqi Secret Police. Intelligence stopped abruptly towards the end of the Gulf War and we can only presume that Jasmine perished during one of the air attacks, or that she was discovered and was dead. This, however, is only a presumption, and she will remain on the books until the year 2000.

  Herbie finished reading, closed down the machine and returned the disk to its hiding place. What they needed to do now was place a reply in The Times personal ads.

  He wondered if he should call Worboys at this time of night and was debating the subject when the telephone rang.

  “Herb.” Worboys was breathless. “The buggers have just blown up your cottage. Sorry to bring you this news, but I think we should meet as soon as possible.”

  Big Herbie Kruger spoke one obscene and unpleasant word.

  15

  HISHAM HAD CURSED THE fact that his own stupidity, years before, had put his Intiqam team at risk. So far he had kept to his side of the bargain and let the British Security Service know exactly where the bombs would be planted. The fact that the security people had acted irresponsibly in Berwick Street was not his fault; just as he had taken every precaution to make certain his team would disappear, almost in front of the watchers’ eyes. It would give them time to regroup. He also had another plan up his sleeve.