Game Without Rules, page 21
In the next village they turned left. A moment later, right again. They were now heading straight up into the angle itself, an area where his map was blank. He soon saw the reason. It was thick woodland. As they dived in among the trees, they switched on their headlights.
They were running north, and climbing. After about three miles, Shura seemed to hesitate for the first time. She slowed to a crawl, her eyes on the roadside. She saw what she was looking for, swung the wheel and put the car down a sandy track.
The track seemed to go on interminably, diving into the very heart of the forest, a tunnel of darkness among the trees. Then they were in a clearing. Nichol caught a glimpse of a log hut as Shura swung the car round, brought it to a halt and switched off all the lights.
Nichol stirred, but the girl put a hand on his arm. They sat in the darkness and waited. Then the car door was opened from outside, and a man gestured them out. They stumbled across the clearing to the hut; the door was opened and they went into darkness.
A torch came on. By its reflected light Nichol saw the face of its holder. He had never met him, but he recognised him at once from many photographs carefully studied. Colonel Tyschenko had been military attaché in Ottawa and Washington and in neither case had his hosts been under any illusions as to his real interests.
“I am sorry,” he said, speaking in Russian, “to receive you in this melodramatic way. But we are waiting for the man who has been following you.”
“The man in the Saab?” said the girl.
“Yes. He should be here any moment now. We will keep silent, if you please.”
It seemed to Nichol like an hour, but was in fact only twelve minutes by the illuminated hand on his watch before there were footsteps outside. The door opened, and three men came in. As soon as the door was shut, Colonel Tyschenko snapped on the light, and the six occupants of the hut blinked at each other.
Two of the newcomers were Russian Security men, soldiers in plain clothes. They both carried machine pistols. The third was Mr. Behrens, his hands in his pockets, and a look of distaste on his leathery face.
“He parked his car a quarter of a mile down the track,” said one of the men, “and was walking toward the hut when we stopped him. He had a gun. We have taken it.”
Colonel Tyschenko had been staring in some surprise at the scholarly figure in the raincoat. Then his face broke into a smile.
“Why,” he said, “it is Mr. Behrens. This is an unexpected pleasure. Where is your friend – the fat little man – Calder?”
“He’ll be here in a moment,” said Mr. Behrens. “And he’s got six men with him.”
The colonel chuckled.
“No doubt,” he said. “No doubt. The six invisible men. It would be a good title for a film. I should be interested to know how you followed our car.”
“It’s Nichol’s suit,” said Mr. Behrens. “It has been impregnated with a particularly potent smell. When in doubt as to which way he had gone, I had only to get out of the car and sniff.”
“Remarkable,” said the colonel. “Particularly since he will have changed his clothes at least three times since leaving London.”
“We found a wireless set in the car,” said one of the men.
“I see,” said the colonel. “That opens up an interesting field of speculation.”
He turned to Nichol. “What are you carrying that you had on you, when you left London?”
Nichol said slowly, “Fountain pen, silver pencil, notecase, wristwatch, and signet ring.”
He hoped that the cigarette lighter, which he dropped as they got out of the car, had fallen into an inconspicuous place.
“The details are not important,” said the colonel. “We shall be able to work them all out when we get you and Mr. Behrens, and the contents of his car, safely into our own territory.”
He turned to the security men and said, “One stays here. One to go and check the arrangements for the crossing. We are using the normal route. Hurry.”
The man nearest the door turned and went out.
Shura spoke for the first time, “I hope, Colonel, that you do not blame me for this. I should, perhaps, have thought that some electrical device might be used.”
There was a pleading note in her voice that Nichol had never heard before; he had not imagined that such a girl could ever be humble.
The colonel said, “No, Shura. I don’t think anyone could blame you too much. Indeed, you did well to take notice of the Saab and call Herr Bauer’s attention to it.”
The girl actually blushed.
“Thank you,” she said . . .
Mr. Behrens, standing against the far wall of the hut where the guard had left him, considered the position. Even now that one of the guards had departed it was almost entirely unsatisfactory. Colonel Tyschenko was carrying a Vostok mu-2 pistol in a shoulder holster. He could see the light wooden butt as the colonel leaned forward to speak to Shura. The guard had a German-type Schmeisser machine pistol across his shoulders, carried in such a way that he could swing it round to the front and fire without unslinging it. The girl had a gun, but it was probably in her shoulder satchel on the table. He and Nichol were unarmed.
The door handle turned very gently, round, and back again.
Mr. Behrens took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. He was not fond of violence.
He said, “If you don’t mind, I have to go outside for a moment.”
Colonel Tyschenko looked at him, then said, “Of course. But I should warn you that this man can put a burst of six shots into a moving target at fifty yards.”
“I wasn’t thinking of making a dash for it,” said Mr. Behrens, sourly. He started toward the door. The colonel signalled to the guard, who slipped back the bolt of the door and swung his gun round to the ready.
Mr. Behrens did not hurry. He wanted to be in one particular spot, next to the girl. The guard put a hand on the handle of the door and turned it. The door came open fast, as if kicked, and Rasselas came through in a smooth golden curve, his teeth bared, making straight for Colonel Tyschenko’s throat.
Behind the dog waddled the squat figure of Mr. Calder. He shot the guard twice, at close quarters, through the chest, before he could get his hand to the trigger of his machine pistol.
The colonel twisted as Rasselas struck him, and the dog catapulted over his shoulder, onto the floor. In the same moment, the colonel pulled out his Vostok and shot Nichol, who was jumping at him, through the right side of the body.
Rasselas buried his teeth in the colonel’s leg.
Mr. Behrens had wrapped his arms round Shura from behind. It was a temporary advantage only. She was twice as strong as he, and better trained. She pried apart his fingers, grabbed his forearm and threw him across her outstretched leg. Then she stooped to grab her satchel, which Mr. Behrens had managed to knock onto the floor.
Mr. Calder crouched, steadied himself and shot Colonel Tyschenko. The bullet went through the colonel’s mouth and out at the back of his head. As he fell, his Vostok dropped within a few inches of Nichol’s hand. He rolled over and picked it up.
Shura’s hand was already inside her satchel, when Nichol shot her. He was lying on the ground, and the bullet went upward, through her chest and into the top of her spine. The impact lifted her onto her toes. For a moment she looked as though she were poised for a dive. Then her knees buckled. As she fell, she struck the edge of the table, and slid off it. She was dead before she hit the floor beside Nichol.
After the last shot, there was a moment of complete silence.
Rasselas crouched over the colonel’s body, motionless except for the angry twitching of his tail. The smell of the blood had excited him. His ancestors had hunted wolves and had fed on their entrails.
Mr. Behrens was the first to move. He groped for his glasses, put them on and climbed to his feet. He said, “We’ve got precious little time. That other guard will be here any moment.”
“He won’t be coming back,” said Mr. Calder. He was breathing heavily, as though the death he had dealt out had been a physical exertion. “I can promise you that.”
“In that case—” said Mr. Behrens.
“In that case,” said Mr. Calder, “we’ve still got a hell of a lot to do. And the fact that we’ve now got all night to do it in doesn’t make it any easier. I think the bodies will have to be buried.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Behrens.
“It’s sandy soil, and we’ve spades in the car. We shall have to put them four feet down.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Behrens again. It would mean hours of digging. But he could see the sense in it. It was the rule. If you made a mess, you cleared it up. But there was more to it than that. If Colonel Tyschenko, his courier and his two personal bodyguards disappeared, the first idea would be that they had defected. And the mere suspicion of this would cause their opponents the maximum of trouble and uncertainty.
“Any blood there is, is on the matting. We’ll bury that with them. We can use the girl’s car for transport. After that I’ll drive it off and leave it in the thickest part of the forest. This isn’t a part of the world where intruders are encouraged. It could stand there until it falls to pieces.”
“There’s one other thing,” said Mr. Behrens. “We ought to get Nichol to a doctor before morning. The nearest one I know of, who won’t ask a lot of questions, is a hundred miles away.”
Mr. Calder considered the problem.
He said, “Give me a hand with the first part, getting the bodies moved. Then leave me to do the rest.”
“Will you be able to finish before the morning?”
“Almost certainly not. But I can lie up by day, and finish the job tomorrow night. I’ll see you in Cologne, at our usual place, the day after tomorrow.”
And so at four o’clock that morning Mr. Behrens was driving his car once more. His head was singing with the Benzedrine he had inhaled to keep himself awake. Beside him, Nichol was propped in the passenger seat. He had been delirious for some time and was now dozing. Mr. Behrens could only pray that they were not stopped. They would neither of them stand up to much inspection. And unless he could get Nichol into a doctor’s hands in time to save his life, they were going to lose half the results of their efforts.
The continental side of Route M they now knew about and could deal with. But the English side – how it worked, who operated it – that was all locked away inside the white face and under the tangled head of black hair that lolled on the seat beside him.
A red light sprang out of the night. Mr. Behrens cursed, and slowed. But it was only the warning light for a level-crossing gate on the main line from Cologne to Basle.
Mr. Behrens coasted up to the barrier and switched off the engine. Nichol turned his head, and looked at him. The sudden silence and cessation of movement had wakened him.
“Where are we?” he said.
“Nearly there,” said Mr. Behrens.
“There’s something,” said Nichol, “that I ought to tell you.”
“Don’t talk more than you must,” said Mr. Behrens.
Nichol hardly seemed to hear him. His body was in the present, but his mind was in the past. He went on in a conversational voice.
“Last night, at that hotel, I made love to Shura. She seemed to want it. It was the most wonderful thing I have ever done. It was the first time in my life. I’ve been rather strictly brought up. You appreciate that. I’d never imagined it could be such a perfect thing. And then I shot her. I had to shoot her.” He sounded serious, and puzzled. “That can’t be right, you know,”
“In this job,” said Mr. Behrens, “there is neither right nor wrong. Only expediency.”
The night express thundered past, and the gates rose and Mr. Behrens engaged gear and drove on.
PROMETHEUS UNBOUND
Mr. Fortescue was the manager of the Westminster branch of the London and Home Counties Bank. He was also head of the External Branch of the Joint Services Standing Intelligence Committee. In his first capacity, he welcomed Mr. Behrens into his office one fine morning in May; in his second, he turned to business as soon as the heavy mahogany door had sighed shut.
“I’m worried,” he said, “about Calder.”
“I’m not too happy about him myself,” said Mr. Behrens. “We’re neighbours as well as friends, you know, and when a neighbour starts cutting you—”
“It’s come to that, has it?”
“I used to go up to play backgammon with him – at least once a week, sometimes more. For the last three or four weeks he’s been making excuses. And they’ve become such feeble excuses that I gathered the impression that what he really wanted was to be left alone.”
“He leads a somewhat solitary life, doesn’t he?”
“Entirely solitary. Apart from myself, the visiting tradespeople and an occasional hiker, I doubt if he sees anyone from year’s end to year’s end.”
“Do you think,” said Mr. Fortescue, “that he might be going mad?”
There was regret in his voice, but no surprise. Professional agents usually did come to an untimely end. The curious, involute, secretive, occasionally dangerous and always responsible way of life took its sure toll of them. A few were killed by the enemy; others took their own lives; half a dozen, as Mr. Fortescue knew, were living in quiet country houses where the furniture was fixed to the floors and the inmates ate with plastic knives and forks and were shaved by a resident barber.
“I should have thought,” said Mr. Behrens, “that Calder was the very last man to go that way.”
“It’s the strongest,” said Mr. Fortescue, “who break the most unexpectedly. If it wasn’t for Operation Prometheus this wouldn’t be so serious. I mean,” he added, as he saw the look of pain in Mr. Behrens’ eyes, “I should, of course, be desperately sorry if something like that did happen to Calder. He’s deserved well of his country. And I know that he’s a very old and dear friend of yours.”
“I quite understand,” said Mr. Behrens. “How deeply involved is he?”
“He is one of three men – the other two are myself and Dick Harcourt – who know all the details. Prometheus is an immense operation, and a great many people have to know a bit about it – you know a bit about it yourself – but we are the only three who know it all. We have been in it from the beginning. Indeed, I recollect that it was Calder who christened it Operation Prometheus.”
“Has the name any particular significance?” asked Mr. Behrens. He himself had been involved in an attempt to kidnap a Bulgarian general which had been known as Operation House Agent, and another, of such secrecy that the details cannot even now be discussed, called Operation Bubbles; and he had sometimes wondered who thought up the names, and on what principles, if any, they worked.
“There was a little more sense in this than in most,” said Mr. Fortescue. “Prometheus was born of a union between the sea, in the form of a nymph called Clymene, and a mountain, represented by the Titan, Iapetus. When we first seriously turned our minds to the liberation and advancement of Albania – a people whose original name, as you no doubt know, means ‘Sons of the Eagle’ – Operation Prometheus seemed quite an apt piece of nomenclature.”
“Do I gather that these plans may be coming to a head?”
Mr. Fortescue placed the tips of his fingers together and said, “Albania is in a state of balance. Not the balance of tranquility, but the balance of strong opposing forces. In one direction, they are drawn to Russia – Enver Hoxha is an ardent Stalinist, even now that Stalinism has become unfashionable. In another direction, they have much in common with Yugoslavia – a union with Tito would please many. To the south they have strong, ancient and sentimental ties with Greece.”
“Pull devil, pull baker,” said Mr. Behrens. “Who do we think will win?”
“We know who we’d like to win,” said Mr. Fortescue. “Our money is on Greece. If Georgiades Mikalos could be sure of our help – sure that it would be effective – then it’s pretty certain he’d have a good shot at it. But our joint timing has got to be accurate – accurate to a hair’s breadth. The stakes are too high for error. Mikalos will not forget what happened to Xoxe.”
“Where is Mikalos now?”
“In the hills behind Argyrokastron. Enver Hoxha has a fair idea where his hideout is, but he can’t do much about it. Mikalos is well protected by his own partisans, and has, besides, a convenient back door into Greece. But if he is inaccessible to Enver, he is also inaccessible to us. And when the time comes we shall have to establish liaison with him. The idea was that Calder would go. He knows the country well – he was there with our mission in 1944. And he speaks the language.”
“You say, the idea was that he should go. Do you now consider him too unreliable to send?”
“That is exactly what I want you to help me make my mind up about,” said Mr. Fortescue.
Three days later Mr. Behrens trudged up the long winding hill, overhung with trees, which led to the hilltop on which Mr. Calder’s solitary cottage stood.
He found the golden hound, Rasselas, lying on the front step. The dog seemed unhappy.
“Where is he?” said Mr. Behrens.
Rasselas thumped with his tail, and looked reproachfully over his shoulder toward the interior of the house.
At this moment Mr. Calder appeared in the hall. He was wearing what looked like a white nightgown. Combined with his bald and tonsured head, it gave him the appearance of a disreputable monk. He blinked and frowned into the sunlight, then seemed to recognise Mr. Behrens and said, “Come in. I’m very busy. But come in.”
“If you’re too busy to see me,” said Mr. Behrens tartly, “I can always go back. After all, it’s only two miles.”
“No, no. Come in. You can probably help me.”
Calder led the way into the sitting room.
“What on earth are you up to now?” said Mr. Behrens.
