Motorbike Men

by Duncan James

  There was no question about it – something had to be done.

  The more the problem was discussed, the more it became clear that there were really very few options. Some members of the Politburo had argued that the Harwell project should be sabotaged – and the project at Culham for good measure – but that would in no way neutralise the brilliance of Professor Barclay, who would simply redouble his efforts. Such action would delay the UK’s commercial effort, but that’s all, and it would therefore be of no direct or immediate benefit to Russia. So that left the man himself. There was no question of enticing Barclay to work in Russia. It simply was not worth trying, as any attempt would only serve to heighten the perception of Russia’s own weak position. Perhaps if he were kidnapped, he could be enticed to share his knowledge, although it was not thought that the man had any weaknesses that would enable him to be blackmailed. Removing him from the UK would certainly slow down that country’s development work, but keeping him alive in Russia would in itself be dangerous, as news of his whereabouts would almost certainly leak out. It was eventually agreed that it was only possible to slow down the UK effort rather than halt it, and that the removal of Barclay would also deny both America and the Gulf states of any possible assistance from him in the future.

  So that was the conclusion.

  Barclay had to be stopped from making any further contribution anywhere, by permanently removing him.

  ***

  Alan Jarvis had been quite astonished, and not a little alarmed, to receive the phone call at home from a Russian agent. He had gone over their brief conversation time after time, but could still not quite make sense of it. At first, he had been inclined to tell his Director at the office immediately, but had eventually decided to wait for a bit, to let things develop. ‘Plenty of time then to tell others’, he had thought.

  It was quite late on a Friday evening when the call had come through.

  “Mr. Alan Jarvis?” asked the man, with only the hint of an accent.

  “Speaking,” replied Jarvis.

  “Good evening,” said the man politely. “I’m sorry to bother you at home, but we thought it best not to contact you at your office.”

  “If you’re trying to sell me something, I’m not interested,” said Jarvis crossly.

  “I am not selling anything, Mr. Jarvis.”

  “Who are you then, and what do you want?”

  “You will not know me,” came the reply, “although I know almost everything about you. For example, I know how furious you are to have been sacked from your previous job, and how you would be only too happy in some way to seek revenge for the way you have been treated.”

  “Who are you?” demanded Jarvis again.

  “For the moment, that doesn’t matter,” replied the man. “Let me just say that I have been asked by my superiors in Moscow to contact you, and to tell you that we may be able to suggest a scheme which will allow you get your own back on the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, and your successor at Section 11 at the same time.”

  “What sort of scheme?”

  “Let us just say that it would also do us a favour, as well as allowing you to vent your quite justified anger.”

  “What makes you think I should do you any favours, whoever you are?”

  “When you hear details of what we propose, we are quite sure you will wish to co-operate,” said the Russian, and hung up.

  If he was honest about it, Jarvis was a bit scared. Not only that, he couldn’t make up his mind what to do for the best. In the end, he decided to do nothing. There was nothing he would like more than to get even with Clayton and the people who had put Clayton into his old job, but he wasn’t sure he wanted the Russians to help him do it. Neither was he at all sure what the man had meant when he had inferred that he, Jarvis, would want to co-operate with them. This sounded like a threat to him, almost blackmail in fact, and he could not begin to think of anything that he could be blackmailed about. However much he hated his present job, where everybody knew that he had been more or less sacked from Head of Section 11, he still had a good few years to go before he retired, and he didn’t want to get caught up working for the Russians. There was really nothing he could do, anyway, except wait for a further contact to be made. It was a great temptation to go to his Director now to tell him of the approach he had received, but he concluded that he should wait until he knew more about the Russian’s demands.

  As it happened, his Director knew of the phone call the next day. Which was why ‘Dusty’ Miller was now sitting patiently down the end of the road, watching and waiting. Although even he did not know what he was watching and waiting for.

  In fact, Miller was beginning to wish he had never taken on this particular assignment. He was getting thoroughly bored by the inaction. He had managed to fix a tracking device to Jarvis’s car, which could be useful sometime, and had been in for a quick look round the house one evening when Jarvis and his wife were entertaining friends. That was quite exciting – they hadn’t heard him, but on the other hand he had found nothing of the remotest interest either. He hadn’t even needed to fix bugs to the phone, as he knew it was already being remotely monitored. So he was stuck, following Jarvis to his Lambeth office every morning, watching where he went for lunch and whom he met, and then following him home again. At least he had been able to establish a pretty good behaviour pattern, so any activity out of the usual should be easier to spot. So far, there hadn’t been any.

  In his Clerkenwell office, ‘S’ was also beginning to wonder if Miller was wasting his time, and had said so at one of his regular briefing meetings with Sir Robin Algar. However, the Cabinet Secretary had been adamant – the tip-off from their Soviet agent had been positive enough, and there had been the phone call to Jarvis since then. We could not afford to drop our guard until we had positive intelligence that it was safe to do so.

  Not long after that, however, reports reached London from the Moscow Embassy that they had picked up conversations with ‘Barclay’ and ‘Jarvis’ both mentioned in the same sentence. Nobody could be sure why, or in what context, but it was enough for ‘S’ to call in Miller for a chat, as Clayton put it.

  “Something’s going on,” he told Miller, “although we can’t be sure what. Just to be on the safe side, I’m allocating you some support so we can keep a 24-hour watch on Jarvis from now on. We shall be briefing your new team-mates tomorrow, specially selected like you and everyone else in this outfit, but I want you here to give them a detailed run-down on Jarvis – life-style, movements, routine, who he meets and all that.”

  “A bit of action at last, perhaps,” said Miller. “I must admit, Colonel, I was getting quite bored.”

  “Well, don’t be,” replied Clayton. “Keep on your toes, and make sure you report the slightest thing that’s out of the ordinary. In particular, we’re looking for any sign of possible further Russian contact with Jarvis. We’ve got a tap on his phones, but look out for him starting to use dead letter boxes, and that sort of thing. And stop calling me Colonel.”

  “Leave it to me, Colonel,” replied ‘Dusty’, cheekily.

  “I’ve no option at the moment. I’ll let you know if we pick up anything useful.”

  A few days later, they did. It was shortly after Barclay’s acclaimed visit to America when, at about the same time, MI6’s Moscow station and GCHQ in Cheltenham both reported that instructions had been issued to ‘activate Jarvis.’

  ‘S’ immediately alerted the Fusion team and Miller, before going to an emergency meeting in the Cabinet Office.

  “It would help if we knew what Jarvis was being activated to do,” grumbled Clayton.

  “Well, we don’t,” replied the Joint Intelligence Committee chief.

  “I suspect that Jarvis doesn’t, either, at the moment,” said Clayton. “We know he’s been offered some sort of opportunity to get even with us, but that’s all.”

  “Barclay has to be the best bet,” agreed Sir Robin, “especially as
we now have reports of Russian conversations mentioning both Barclay and Jarvis together.”

  “What bothers me is whether or not we should tell Barclay of the various threats against him.”

  “We only think he’s under threat – we still don’t know for certain.”

  “It might help him to keep vigilant if he did know of what we suspect,” said Clayton. “On the other hand, it could be the last straw for the man, who we know is already under great stress.”

  “If we did tell him, we could reassure him up to a point by telling him of the protection you are offering – and have been for several months. But frankly,” said Sir Robin, “I can’t see how telling him of our suspicions will help either him or us. There’s no doubt, though, that we must stay close to the man, wherever he is.”

  “What puzzles me is the role Jarvis might be playing in all this,” said Clayton. “His conversation the other week with the Russian, who we have not yet identified, almost carried with it a threat. Saying that Jarvis would want to cooperate with them suggested blackmail, but I’ve been through his file again and again, and can’t turn up anything at all.”

  “Neither can I,” admitted Algar. “Seems happily married, no evidence or suggestion of any affairs anywhere, no financial problems, no dubious political interests – nothing.”

  The two men sat in silence for a moment.

  “I think I’ll have a quiet word with my Barbara,” said Clayton. “You know how women have a nose for these things, and she’s not only very bright, but worked with the man for four or more years before I arrived. She may have a clue.”

  The Cabinet Secretary nodded his agreement.

  ***

  Before ‘S’ had a quiet word with his PS, Barbara, he thought it prudent to talk first to Nick Marsden about Jarvis. But Nick had nothing concrete to offer, and had himself been mystified by the apparent threat contained in the Russian’s phone call.

  “Could be something from the man’s private life, I suppose,” he suggested. “Jarvis had a reputation for being a bit of a snake in the grass and something of a womaniser, but he always seemed happily enough married. It was probably all bravado, but he did once try chatting up Barbara, I remember.”

  “I was thinking I would have a word with her, to see if she could throw any light on what the Russians might have on him. You wouldn’t object, would you?”

  “Not at all,” replied Marsden.

  “I know you’ve been seeing her from time to time lately, that’s all.”

  “It’s no secret,” replied Nick. “We are getting on quite well, as it happens – dinner out, a couple of visits to the theatre, that sort of thing. She’s very loyal to the Section and to you, so I’m sure she’ll help if she can.”

  “Good. I’ll let you know if anything comes of our chat.”

  They had their chat the next morning. Barbara always attended the informal meeting Clayton had with his departmental heads every day, to keep a note of anything worth noting.

  “I hope you don’t mind staying behind after ‘prayers’, but I wanted a quiet word with you about my predecessor. You know the background, of course – mysterious phone call from the Russians offering him the chance to get his own back on us, then the apparent link to Barclay. What we can’t work out is why they should think he would want to help them in any way, but during their phone call to him, they said – hang on a minute.” Clayton thumbed through the papers of his desk. “Ah, yes. Here it is. They said, and I quote, ‘When you hear details of what we propose, we are quite sure you will wish to co-operate.’ We simply can’t work out what makes them so sure. It sounds like a threat to blackmail the man about something or other, but what?”

  Barbara shrugged.

  “You worked with the man for years, so I wondered if you might have the slightest idea.”

  “Not really,” she offered.

  “He had a bit of a reputation as a womaniser, as I hear. Anything in that, I wonder?”

  Barbara looked uncomfortable, and, Bill thought, almost blushed.

  “He did have one or two shall we say, ‘flirtations’, as I recall, but I don’t know of any serious or long lasting affair.”

  “Did he ever try to flirt with you?” asked Bill. “I don’t want to pry, of course, but I do need to find some sort of clue to what’s going on.”

  “Of course you do,” agreed Barbara, “and as it happens he did chat me up a bit in the very early days after he arrived here.”

  “Did you go out together?”

  “Yes, we did few times. I was much younger then, of course,” she added, almost as an excuse.

  Bill nodded, and looked closely at the girl. She was certainly attractive, no doubt about it.

  “I hope you don’t mind me asking,” said Bill awkwardly, “but do you still find the man attractive?”

  “No I don’t,” she replied emphatically. “Quite honestly, I can’t stand the man.”

  “And yet you didn’t leave, or apply for a transfer or anything. Why did you stay on working for him?”

  “Because I like the job so much, and I knew he wouldn’t be here for ever. So I put up with him.”

  “And he never caused you any more trouble – nothing to make you regret your decision to stay?”

  She shook her head. “And now you’re here, I’m even more glad I stayed on.”

  “And Nick was a bit of an incentive as well, I suppose,” guessed Clayton.

  “Yes, he was. I like him a lot. You know we go out together sometimes?”

  “Yes, I do know.”

  “I remember you saying when you first arrived that it was your job to know things,” she reminded him.

  “Ah, yes! And how is Donald?”

  “As wonderful as ever,” she replied.

  “Well, I’m sorry to have quizzed you like that, but I really have learnt a little bit more about Alan Jarvis, thanks to your honesty. Although I still have no idea what the Russian meant.”

  “Neither have I,” replied Barbara. “But if anything should occur to me, then I’ll tell you immediately.”

  “I’m sure you will – and thanks.”

  As Barbara stood to leave, Bill said, “By the way, does Jarvis know about Donald by any chance?”

  The girl sat down again. After a pause, she almost whispered, “Yes, he does.”

  Bill leant forward. “Did you tell him?”

  “No,” she replied, quietly. “I didn’t need to. Alan Jarvis is Donald’s father.”

  There was a stunned silence.

  “That’s something I did not know,” said Bill. “I did not have the slightest idea, I promise you.”

  The girl sighed.

  “Mrs Jarvis has no idea, either,” she said, “and I’m not about to tell her. Alan is actually very fond of my little boy, and sees him when he can get away from home for long enough. But that’s not often.”

  “He certainly hasn’t since we’ve been keeping an eye on him,” said Clayton. “We would have thought it odd, and a bit suspicious, if he had called at your home.”

  “I have to let him see the boy of course, although I wish I didn’t. Donald really doesn’t like him at all. The child can’t understand who this strange man is.”

  “Does Jarvis pay you any sort of allowance, may I ask?”

  “Not a penny. His wife would find out if he did.”

  “I asked you once before if anyone else here knew about Donald. Does anyone?”

  “Nobody did when you asked, but Nick does now. The two have actually met, and get on together like a house on fire.” She smiled.

  Bill Clayton thought for a moment.

  “Does Nick know that Alan Jarvis is Donald’s father?”

  “No.”

  “I shan’t tell him,” promised Clayton. “But perhaps you should, in view of what’s going on.”

  Barbara thought for a moment. “I suppose you’re right. I’ll tell him, at the right moment.”

  “Barbara, would you prefer from now on to be kept out
of the loop of people who know about what’s going on with Jarvis?”

  “Not at all – it’s part of my job to know what’s going on, and I have no loyalty towards the man whatsoever. Only to you and the Section. Frankly, I couldn’t give a damn what happens to him,” she said angrily.

  “Nor me, come to that,” replied ‘S’. “My job is simply to keep him away from Barclay.”

  ***

  CHAPTER NINE - THE BRIDGE IN THE PARK

  It seemed to ‘S’, and to ‘C’, and to the Cabinet Secretary, and to everyone else with any interest in the well-being of Professor Jack Barclay, that the Russians were being particularly slow to respond to the instruction from Moscow to ‘activate Jarvis’.

  Two days had passed now, and nothing had happened. At least, nothing they were aware of. The truth was that they were all getting a bit jittery and worried in case they had missed something. But, according to ‘Dusty’ Miller, Jarvis was behaving absolutely normally. He had certainly not met anyone that Miller had not seen him meet before, and nothing of any relevance had been noted from the telephone and email intercepts. The only thing that GCHQ had been able to report was that they thought they had identified the earlier caller. From his voiceprint, it seemed likely that he was a second secretary in the cultural department of the Russian Embassy. Since that was the home of many KGB members, it did not surprise anyone too much, although this man had not been used in such a prominent role before. Perhaps he’d had promotion.

  It was a bit of a shock, then, not least to Jarvis himself, when he received a late night call to his home from the same man. It certainly had the immediate effect of galvanising everyone who was told about the call.

  “Meet me on the bridge over the lake in St. James’s Park at half past twelve tomorrow afternoon. I shall be reading the Daily Mail, and have a copy of the Financial Times under my arm. I told you that you would be only too pleased to help us. By the time we meet, we shall have Donald.”

  That was all. The man hung up. A second secretary in the cultural department he might be, but what he had said had the same effect on Jarvis as if the Russian President himself had made the call.