Understrike

  UNDERSTRIKE

  John Gardner

  © John Gardner 2014

  John Gardner has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published 1965 by Frederick Muller Ltd.

  This edition published by Endeavour Press Ltd in 2014.

  For Orlando

  Double, double, toil and trouble.

  MACBETH: IV. I William Shakespeare

  Table of Contents

  Prologue: DOUBLE L

  Moscow, June

  1 – CABLE

  2 – CHICORY

  3 — ... AND LEAVE THE DRIVING TO US

  4 – SOLEV

  5 – B + P + T= C

  6 — UNDER ...

  7 — ... STRIKE

  Epilogue: DOUBLE DATE

  Extract from The Liquidator by John Gardner

  Prologue: DOUBLE L

  Moscow, June

  It was warm. Too warm for Khavichev, who, after suffering ten minutes of the stifling heat in the long room, had opened one of the tall velvet-curtained windows. Now he leaned out, hands heavy on the sill, his closely-cropped hair showing like corn stubble to the sun. To his left Khavichev could see the whorled domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral, a bright gingerbread house alone in the cobbled vastness of Red Square. Across the road, the Lenin Museum formed a rusty backdrop to the straggling sightseers jostling their way into the square to stare, or stand silent in the great queue which snaked from the Lenin Mausoleum. Below, among the foreigners with their expensive cine cameras, the sweating city men in slack formal suits, and the visiting countryfolk, drab even in floral dresses, he caught sight of a little knot of teenagers—gaudy in make-up and mock leather aping the West—the stilyagi, Moscow’s jet-set. Khavichev remembered, with some misgivings, the article passed to him from Central Information last year—clipped from the London Sunday Times—claiming that young Russian girls were clamouring for black nylon underwear. Dangerous decadence, he thought, withdrawing his head and turning back into the room.

  Khavichev was a big man, in all senses of the word. Six feet two inches in his stockinged feet, with shoulders like the back of a well-padded armchair. His face was hard—the texture of old oak bark—rarely showing emotion. His eyes were the only feature which in any way betrayed the full potential danger of the man. “Khavichev’s eyes,” the President of the Supreme Soviet had once remarked, “have the power of an expertly-handled whip. They never look at you. They either flick, lash or caress.”

  At this moment the eyes were flicking—as they always did when something big was imminent. For, like all men who had found success in high authority, Boris Piotr Khavichev—Director of Soviet Counter-Espionage and Subversive Activities—knew his limitations. He was always a shade nervous, a trifle more wary, when planning an operation which strayed near to the breaking point of his self-known power.

  He glanced at his watch. Three-ten. The meeting was scheduled, as always, for three-fifteen. He walked to the big kidney-shaped table, his slight limp—the relic of a parried knife-thrust in a Tangier alley—barely perceptible. Taking his place in the centre chair, Khavichev looked up at the oblong cinema screen which stretched blandly over the far wall. The fingers of his left hand strayed slowly down the line of little coloured buttons, set in series conveniently by the leather blotter. He pressed the button outlined in blue and spoke into the microphone desk set which connected him with the projection room high in the wall behind.

  “Is everything ready?”

  “All is prepared, Comrade General.” The answer came pat from the loudspeaker above the screen.

  “We will see the special film first. Before the main business. We will need the mosaics of San Diego later.”

  “Very good, Comrade General.”

  Khavichev pressed the white button. As though he had operated a spring mechanism, the door to the right of the screen whipped open. A young army lieutenant clicked into the room.

  “Comrade General?”

  “We will not be long. He has arrived?”

  “He is here now, Comrade General. You wish to see him?”

  “It should not be necessary. He knows what to do?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Good. I will ring when we need him.”

  “Yes, Comrade.”

  “When we have seen him you may take him straight back to the villa. He has a lesson with Professor Engler at four, I believe.”

  The lieutenant nodded. Khavichev made a sharp upward gesture with the back of his outstretched hand. A signal of dismissal. The lieutenant stiffened to attention, then turned, closing the door behind him. Almost at the same moment the main double doors of the room were thrown open by the two uniformed guards—always on duty in this part of the building on Tuesday afternoons, the regular time for the weekly conference of Heads of Staff.

  Khavichev rose, his lips forming the hint of a smile as he greeted his Departmental Chiefs: Archeyev of Naval Intelligence, young, slim, with that faint trace of effeminacy which often stamps naval officers who are wedded to the sea alone; Porovsky, Head of Military Counter-Espionage, stocky, with the unmistakable ruthlessness of a former OGPU man; and Varlamov, Commander of Strategic Air Espionage, a pompous, sarcastic face hiding an alert brain which carried—Khavichev often feared—more secrets than any other in Russia.

  One of the soldiers quickly circled the windows, softly pulling the drapes. The two large chandeliers flashed into light.

  After the usual formalities, the doors were closed and the four men took their places at the table. Khavichev unbuttoned the top of his tight jacket, cleared his throat, and began to speak: precisely, without any apparent interest in what he was saying: using the minimum number of words to convey the maximum information.

  “Before we start the main business, comrades, there is a surprise I have been saving for you. We are to see a film. It concerns one man. Study him closely. He should be of particular interest to you, Comrade Varlamov.” He glanced quickly towards the airforce man and touched the blue button. The lights went out and the screen became filled with coloured life.

  The picture showed London’s Whitehall: the camera pausing for a moment at the Cenotaph before zooming in to focus close on a nondescript door. The door opened and a man came out into the watery sunshine, stopping at the edge of the pavement in an attempt to hail a taxi. The camera zoomed closed and Khavichev gave a satisfied smile as he heard Varlamov’s slight intake of breath. The man in the picture was tall with a well-balanced athlete’s body. By Western standards the face was undeniably good-looking: a smooth brown tan contrasted with the distinguished flecks of grey that were just beginning to show at the temples. His mouth tilted slightly in an upward curve on the left side. It was a mouth, Khavichev mused, which must fascinate women. But the man’s most striking feature—like that of Khavichev—lay in his eyes: clear, ice-blue, and, in the film, laughing back at the camera.

  For five minutes they sat silently watching the man posed against a series of recognisable London landmarks—gazing up the river from Westminster Bridge, strolling in Hyde Park, smiling in front of the London Hilton and leaning elegantly against the rails of Buckingham Palace. Finally, a set of close-ups—full-face; left and right profiles. The screen went blank and the lights came on again. One of the soldiers moved to draw the curtains. There was an uncomfortable tension in the room overlooking Red Square. At last Khavichev spoke.

  “The subject of that film is especially susceptible to women. I need not tell you that the operative who took those shots risked her honour—and I might add, lost it. In the Dorchester Hotel, I believe. For security reasons her name now appears on the list of Honoured Artists of the Republic.”

  Nobody moved, Khavichev contin
ued: “We have been looking at a member of the British Department of Special Security. His name is Brian Ian Oakes. He is between forty-five and forty-six years of age and is known to his intimates by the particularly nauseating nickname ‘Boysie.’ His code letter is ‘L,’ and for some considerable time he was the chief liquidating agent for Special Security. His record until last year showed him responsible for the deaths of at least twenty-five of our operatives.”

  Khavichev paused, looking at each of his Departmental Heads in turn. “But,” he said, “information led us to believe that the man was not all he seemed. During the spring and early summer of last year we became increasingly certain that in reality the man was a neurotic dolt. There was even evidence that he did not carry out the liquidating operations himself.”

  Khavichev’s voice assumed a cold harshness. “We were proved wrong. Mr Boysie Oakes showed himself to be a most painful thorn in our flesh during the bungled, miscalculated and totally inadequate ‘Operation Coronet’* devised by Comrade Varlamov. You recall Mr Boysie Oakes, Comrade?”

  Varlamov’s face was a picture of suppressed fury: “I remember him, Comrade General.” An undercurrent of venom beneath the smoothness.

  “Good. Then watch that door.” Khavichev raised his hand towards the door to the right of the screen. His left hand slid to the white button. The door opened and a man walked slowly into the space between the table and screen.

  If the newcomer had been a naked freak, with two of everything, the effect of his appearance could not have been more startling. Varlamov half rose to his feet, his mouth forming a silent oath. The others froze—Archeyev in the act of lighting a cigarette, Porovsky with a hand to his head. The man who stood before Russia’s Espionage High Command was, to all intents and purposes, Boysie Oakes—the one-time Liquidator for British Special Security.

  “Amazing,” purred the Director. “Mr Boysie Oakes to the life.”

  Varlamov allowed the oath to escape—loudly. Khavichev continued to smile.

  “Just walk around for a moment, will you.” He spoke to the man on display who smiled back, increasing the upward curve of his mouth’s left corner. For a few moments he paraded for inspection by the quartet.

  “You may go.” Khavichev dismissed him curtly and turned back to his brother officers.

  “For your information only.” Again there was the penetrating cut of authority. “We discovered this man quite by accident. Eight months ago he was a clerk in a tractor-works. Luckily for us, an intelligent clerk. In a few days he will have completed a rigorous course of training. He walks, talks, eats, and, I suspect, thinks like Mr Bosyie Oakes. Our best linguists and our most competent instructors have worked on continuously. He has been exposed to the latest methods of hypnotic and deep-sleep indoctrination. His real name is Vladimir Solev. Bearing in mind our friend Oakes’ coding, I prefer to call him ‘Double L’.”

  They had never really heard Khavichev laugh before. The cackle seemed to reach up from dark bowels to rumble out in a witch-like wheeze. The experience of hearing Khavichev laugh was not a pleasing one, thought Varlamov. The Director had controlled his mirth and was speaking again.

  “I have not yet decided how, or when, we will use Solev. Oakes himself has been removed from his duties as Liquidator. At the moment he seems to be engaged in comparatively harmless courier work. But, my friends, I am certain that the time will come when we can perform a switch between Mr Oakes and Comrade Solev which will be to our lasting advantage.”

  He looked around almost benignly. “Good. Now to business. The change in plan is definitely on. London and Washington seem to have chosen an excellent date for their picnic, so we scrap our original Stage Three and concern ourselves with the new developments. I have been in touch with U-One—Gorilka—who tells me that the arrangements can be made without disturbing the original primary stages to any large extent. Before we discuss the details of the unfortunate accident I would like to concentrate on the political repercussions as calculated against possible military outcome…”

  The three Heads of Staff transferred their thoughts to the all-important work of the day—Stage Three of the complex operation which could possibly plant the most crippling blow yet into the hard solar plexus of the Western Alliance.

  Outside in the sun, a big black party Zis saloon—with blinds drawn—was taking Vladimir Solev back to his private villa on the Lenin Hills near the University. There he would continue to polish his impersonation of Boysie Oakes.

  1 – CABLE

  Miss Priscilla Braddock-Fairchild pulled on her midnight-blue lace briefs and ran her thumbs around the inside of the elastic to settle them firmly above her decorative hips. Sitting on the edge of the bunk she began to slide her stockings—Ballito Laceline—over neat calves and miraculous thighs. She looked down at Boysie who was far away, deep in unconscious Freudian exercises. The cabin walls shuddered to the steady thud of the ship’s great single reduction geared turbines.

  “Wake up, Boysie,” whispered Miss Priscilla Braddock-Fairchild, bending over him and putting her lips close to his ear. “Wake up. I’ve got to get back to my own cabin. It’s six o’clock.” Boysie snuggled deeper into the pillow and groaned.

  “Boysie, will you wake up!”

  He opened one eye. The half-vision, bed’s-eye-view of Miss Braddock-Fairchild thus provided caused him to snap up his other eyelid and shift his position with a sensual squirm.

  “Har-Har!” gurgled Boysie Oakes lasciviously. “Gather round, me fine buckos.”

  “Oh no you don’t. I’m sneaking back to my own cabin, darling. We dock at three and I’ve got to look reasonably wide awake when Daddy meets me.” She was about to lift the gold evening sheath dress—discarded some four hours previously over her jungle of jet hair. Boysie sighed as though resigned to the situation:

  “So be it,” he said, casually reaching out to a point just behind her tight knee.

  An hour later, Miss Braddock-Fairchild dressed again and left the cabin. Boysie, now wide awake, lay back with hands laced behind his head, and revelled in the memory of Priscilla. They had met—one of those magnetic shipboard attractions—in the Caribbean Room, on the liner’s first night out from Southampton five days before. She was a sultry, fine example of deflowered English maidenhood, and Boysie had reacted with the traditional ritualistic aplomb of the British man-about-ship. There had been martinis, gin and dancing; Bingo, smooching on the boat deck; more martinis—to the accompaniment of Sam Hawkins and his Trio in the Mermaid Bar—more gin, more dancing and, inevitably, by the second night, a delirious consummation—in Cabin B236: on the starboard side.

  Boysie was content. Since he had returned from his last leave—to find that the Department of Special Security no longer required his services as their liquidating agent—the gigantic neuroses, which had for so long been the background pattern to his life, were gradually being sifted from the somewhat tangled skein of his personality. Mostyn, the Second-in-Command, hinted at possible dark assignments for the future; but, until now, Boysie had merely been entrusted with a handful of simple courier jobs. True, these had not always gone as smoothly as he would have liked. There was the case of the rocket fuel formula which had escaped his memory, necessitating an extra return journey to Berlin; and the terrible trouble over the NATO maps which he had inadvertently left in the lavatory of that little bistro opposite the Gare du Nord. Still, it was all in the game, thought Boysie. He wasn’t the first agent to drop a ghoolie and, to be fair, both the Chief and Mostyn had been understanding.

  Now, there would be one night in New York, to deliver new code corrections—slammed into his mind during a four-hour stint with Mostyn—then back on board the Elizabeth for the return trip. There would certainly be a counterpart to Miss Braddock-Fairchild on the eastward journey. Life was good; the Elizabeth was ploughing steadily towards the Ambrose lightship and the mouth of the Hudson.

  But at this precise moment, while Boysie was ruminating on his good fortune, a cablegram was
being received in the ship’s radio room. The cablegram was addressed to Mr Brian Oakes and was, to say the least, a harbinger of chaos.

  *

  The cablegram originated from the tall drab building, just off Whitehall, which served as clearing house and central headquarters for Special Security. There, at about three-thirty on the previous afternoon, the Chief, having returned from a long and somewhat bibulous luncheon with a former Defence Minister at the Athenaeum, paced his office in a state of supreme irritation. Steady pacing was the Chief’s favourite, and automatic, method for cooling fury; a habit devised long long ago when serving on the bridges of several of England’s more indomitable warships.

  The Chief had been striding—and regularly prodding at the direct-call bell which connected with Mostyn’s office—for about five minutes before his Second-in-Command, short and suave as a high-class con man, arrived through the door at speed.

  “You wanted me, sir?” Mostyn’s voice rarely strayed from the smooth almost seductive tone of friendly menace.

  “No, Mostyn. I’m just strengthenin’ me bloody finger muscles for the Olympic Tiddlywinks Team.”

  “Very healthy exercise I’m told, sir.” Mostyn usually knew just how far he could go with the Chief, but he quickly realised that the crusty old man was not in the jesting vein today.

  “Where in the name of the Great Whore of Maida Vale have you been?” The strange oath came out coldly, lacking the warmth of true rage.

  Mostyn had, in fact, been dallying with a charming member of the Royal Opera House chorus over a lunch of delicious subtlety at the Tiberio. He could normally handle the Chief when the mood was black. But this, he realised, was not just a black mood. It was a horrible combination of alcohol and Trouble—with a capital and tremolo T.

  “Something up, sir?” His voice was level, but a tincture of concern plopped uneasily into the back of his mind. The Chief stopped pacing and faced Mostyn.