MAXIM GUNN
and
THE DEMON PLAN
By
Nicholas Boving
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2007 Nicholas Boving
eBook ISBN 978-1-896448-06-0
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CHAPTER ONE
In total silence the watcher peered through the grill at the end of the air duct, into the well-lit room below, and found it frightening. It was a contrary mixture of hard, practical technology in the shape of a bank of computers, whirring and clicking as they sorted information, the display consoles flickering eerily in the subdued light; and the weird, cabalistic signs inlaid into the cold, tiled floor, and worked into silk hangings on the otherwise bare walls.
At the control console sat a man, some sixty years of age to judge by his almost white hair, busily entering code into the programme, and from time to time checking his progress against a thick file of printouts.
The watcher remained motionless, hardly daring to breathe. The proof, the culmination of months of painstaking work and tracking had led him to where he was now; and just a few more minutes would give him the proof he needed.
For a moment he closed his eyes and lowered his head. God, how tired he was. And then he pulled himself together. One final effort and he’d be able to get out, back to base and report; to hand these people over to those more properly equipped to deal with them.
For some reason that struck him as amusing. Who was he going to hand them over to? A bunch of bloody bureaucrats, bent coppers who could be bought. There was a better way and he knew it. A bomb, a hail of bullets, sling a rope over a branch. All very illegal. He almost laughed but caught himself in time. Christ! Half of what he did was illegal: it went with the job. Do what it takes; that was the order of the day. Just don’t get caught because we’ll deny you with our hands on a stack of Bibles. But then he’d always known that; it was in his job description, or would have been if he’d had one. Plausible deniability. What a stack of horseshit. But it was the way it was. His masters sat in comfortable offices and dined with other faceless powerful men in leather smelling clubs, where the only entry qualification was the right tie and the ability to change sides or sell someone down the river so fast it’d take your breath away.
And he wouldn’t have it any other way. It was the only game in town worth playing. If you wanted safety and a pension when you retired to that cottage on the Downs with roses and a couple of panting sycophantic spaniels, get a nine to five job, work in a bank, die of fatty degeneration and a heart attack on the tenth hole when you finally got a birdie after twenty years of trying. His lip curled with contempt, and then he shrugged mentally. Maybe a wife and two kids at an expensive boarding school would have been the right way to live, rather than risk his life in obscurity and even more obscure places. And who the hell was he kidding?
The man at the console finally finished his work, typed a last group of symbols and closed the file. He glanced at his watch, got up, walked to the door and went out.
The watcher waited until he was sure no one was coming back, and then, grasping the grill firmly, he pushed it off its clips and drew it back into the duct. Then he eased himself forward, wriggled out of the opening and dropped quietly to the floor.
He crouched, listening intently, moved towards the glass windowed double doors at the far end and looked through.
The room was small, not more than eight feet square, and completely featureless apart from a chrome plated chair standing in the centre. Sitting rigidly upright and strapped into the chair was a man, his face expressionless. The eyes were wide open and had the vacant, staring look of one who could no longer call his mind his own.
The watcher instinctively started to push the doors, and then he dropped his arms and bowed his head. He knew there was nothing he could do. Instead, he took a camera out of the bag he was carrying and began to take a series of shots. In a minute he’d email them and the last bow would be neatly tied and he could slip away as unnoticed as he’d come. He decided the first thing he was going to do was spend a couple of hours in a hot bath, drink a couple of shots of whiskey, and then a couple more, and then he’d go out and find the best restaurant in town. After that, well, maybe there’d be some beautiful girl. He grinned. First things first.
So engrossed was he in taking the shots that he didn't hear the door of the computer room open, nor the silent figure which crept across the tiled floor behind him. All he was briefly aware of was a crashing blow on the back of the head and a scrambled mess of flashing lights as he lost consciousness.
Slowly consciousness returned, and with it a painfully throbbing head and a dry mouth. As his eyes focused he tried to move and found himself bound hand and foot in a sitting position, and realized with a cold chill of horror that it was now he who was strapped to the chrome plated chair.
He straightened and lifted his head, staring with dulled eyes at the double doors, and waited.
It seemed like hours, but was probably no more than a few minutes before he heard footsteps and voices in the computer room, and then the double doors opened.
Two people came into the room. One was a man; tall and imposing with a fine head of white hair, who might have been a great artist or musician if his eyes hadn’t been like those of a cobra with its prey cornered. He looked coldly at the man in the chair and turned to his companion, a woman of dark and startling beauty. The prisoner felt his skin crawl with fear.
The woman spoke, her voice low and musical, but with the chill of Arctic ice.
“No doubt you have some idea of the work we are carrying out, Mr Henderson,” she said. “Oh yes, I know your name. If so, you know too much. We must therefore ensure that your knowledge goes no further.”
Henderson heard the death sentence, and against all odds became calm. When there is no hope, then emotion dies. But at least he had got one report away. Whether it would reach its intended destination was another matter.
The woman went on. “You will not die in vain, and you will find out the truth in the process. Good-bye, Mr Henderson.” The doors swung silently behind her as she left.
***
Maxim Gunn strode along the short oak panelled corridor like a man with a mission. Which was exactly correct as he was on a mission, to blow the house he was in to hell and put one more under rock crawling drug dealer out of business. The fact that the dealer was a renegade colonel wanted for war crimes in an eastern European country made it all the more satisfying.
He reached into the backpack he was carrying, took out grenade and opened a door. He took one disgusted look at the metal shelving stacked with polythene bags of raw heroin and tossed the thermite grenade inside. He slammed the door and moved on to the next door. The first grenade exploded, blowing the door off its hinges and blasting a cloud of white into the corridor. The lurid red of the fire made it sweeter.
The second door opened to a communications room. There were two men inside, slouching casually at desks, earphones and mikes attached to their heads like growths. Gunn deliberately chose a stun grenade from the pack and, as the first man realized all was not as it should be and he didn’t know the dark-clad man at the door from Adam, he tossed it in and quietly closed the door. The bang and the flash that ripped through the gap under the door were very satisfying. The men would be incapable of thought, hearing or sight for a couple of minutes.
And then, on cue an alarm bell added to the chaos with its harsh, insistent clangour.
Gunn reached the end of the corridor, turned sharp left and came face to face with a man coming out of a door marked with the universal stick figure sign for “Men”.
Gunn skidded to a stop and pointed urgently over the man’s shoulder. The man spun around and Gunn hit him, very hard. The man dropped like a puppet with its strings cut and banged against the wall. Gunn shook his head, stepped over him and murmured.
“I can’t believe he fell for that.”
The alarm seemed to gain in strength and there were confused shouts. It was time to get out. He raced to the end of the corridor, banged open double glass doors that lead to a balcony, and without breaking stride, vaulted over the rail and vanished.
He landed cat-like on a sunroom roof below the balcony where he grabbed a rope already attached to a serviceable and well made drain pipe, and abseiled to the ground.
As he landed on the gravel path beneath, a siren added its raucous voice to the mounting cacophony. Gunn raced along the path, cut over a well manicured lawn and vanished into the cover of a stand of pines.
For a few moments he paused, pressed against the dark bole of a large spruce. The fire was taking hold nicely with flames licking out of a couple of windows. From what he’d seen of the fire fighting arrangements in the house, there wouldn’t be a whole lot anyone could do. It was an old house, well panelled with dry timber and pine floors. He gave it about an hour before the walls began to collapse. He thought it was a pity about the house as it was quite a nice one, at least a couple of hundred years old: but then they shouldn’t have had a ton of cocaine stashed in it. Gunn hated drugs: what they did, the lives they wrecked, and above all he hated the men and women who took advantage of it. Prison was too good. If he had his way it would be a quick rope over a convenient branch: cheaper than bullets and reusable.
Men were running around, shouting, barking orders, getting tangled in garden hoses, and some were starting to quarter the grounds with flashlights. It was time to stop admiring his handiwork and get the hell out.
He turned away, trotted down the pine needle covered slope to a small forest track and within a couple of minutes had reached the Porsche, parked silver and shining in the rising moonlight.
Behind him a group of heavily armed men erupted from the house. A crisp order rang out clear above the noisy confusion. The men piled quickly into two black Mercedes saloons and drove away, gravel spurting from beneath their wheels and rattling against the downstairs windows.
Moments later an explosion ripped the front door off its hinges and the upper floor windows blew out. The flames no longer licked hungrily, but roared greedily, reaching up to the guttering and onto the roof. The men who had been vainly trying to bring the fire under control knew a lost cause when they saw it and backed away to a safe distance. They no longer shouted, but watched in awe as the inevitable began to take place.
Gunn heard the explosions and saw the red glow of fire through the tress. He smiled without humour and started the Porsche. He was about to drive away with a good job done, when he saw the Mercedes’ headlights stabbing through the tress. They were being driven at speed. It didn’t take a genius to figure out they were looking for him.
He engaged first gear and floored the accelerator. Pursuit was not exactly unexpected and Maxim Gunn had prepared for it. He flipped up through the gears until the black trunks of the serried rows of pines were flashing past at eighty miles an hour. It was a dangerous speed for a single lane forest track, but even so the lights of the car behind seemed to be gaining slightly.
He pressed the sunshine roof control and as it opened he flipped the lid of a flat leather briefcase on the passenger seat. Inside it was a neat row of explosive charges and a nest of those wicked four-pointed metal stars known as caltrops. The Romans had used them to great effect against cavalry, and the Resistance in France had resurrected them to burst tires. He glanced in the mirror and tossed a couple through the sunshine roof.
The lead Mercedes ran over the first star and a front tire blew. The car swerved violently, clipped a tree with its right wing, then yawed out of control and plunged off the road into a ravine, finishing up smashed against a tree. The front seat passenger had gone through the windshield. There was a lot of blood. The second car didn’t bother to slow down, but it missed the other caltrop and came on, fast.
The road took a long, fast, looping bend to the left, dipping hard towards a single lane wooden bridge across the same ravine. The Porsche hit the bridge with a bang, rattling the ancient timbers. Gunn slowed for a moment steering with his knees, took a couple of charges, flipped the detonator and tossed them through the roof. The charges landed on the bridge, rolled, stopped and three things happened. Gunn floored the accelerator, the Mercedes also hit the bridge, and the charges went off like thunderclaps.
As the Porsche roared up the slope on the other side of the ravine Gunn saw broken timber flying like confetti, the bridge collapsing and the Mercedes plunging headlong into the muddy waters of the ravine. Gunn smiled happily.
“So perish the ungodly.” He looked up through the open roof at the band of stars that formed the Milky Way. He thought it was particularly bright. He also thought it was a nice night for a drive.
Fifteen minutes later he was driving slowly along the perimeter fence of an airfield. At regular intervals warnings were posted about the inadvisability of unauthorized access. To the average person it was apparent that anyone being so foolish was likely to get themselves shot. The notices were in the Cyrillic alphabet and Roman. Gunn was not the average person, could read both alphabets, and had every intention of ignoring the warnings.
He stopped the Porsche in the shadows of a stand of pines, got out, took a pair of wire cutters from the trunk and cut himself an opening in the fence. He waited. There were no alarms blaring, no dogs barking, no flashlights probing. He thought that sometimes a fence was just a fence. He put the wire cutters back in the trunk and crawled through the opening.
Standing up, he brushed dry grass from his pants and looked towards the lights of the group of buildings that marked the operational part of the airfield. There was a quarter of a mile to cover and not a lot of cover. He looked at the Porsche, sighed and started towards the buildings: someone was going to score a very nice car and he doubted that someone would be below the rank of colonel.
Gunn stood in the deep contrasting shadow at the corner of the building. The light over the one door shone directly down. A sign on the door translated as “Flight Crews”. Gunn waited. He was very patient when necessary. No one moved. No one coughed. There was not even the telltale smell of tobacco smoke. Either a watcher was as patient as he was, or he was alone. He decided he was alone, walked quickly to the door, opened it and slipped inside. A corridor stretched out twenty yards. A door at the end was ajar, and through the opening he saw lockers. It could only be the flight crew changing room. He slid silently along the corridor, through the door and closed it gently behind him.
There were a dozen lockers in uniform military grey, each with a name tag in a slot. He opened each in turn until he found one with a pressure suit and boots that were his size. The locker belonged to a Major Petur Tanchev. As Gunn took the flying suit out and exchanged it for his own clothes he wondered what Major Tanchev was doing right then. Probably sleeping next to Mrs Tanchev, unaware that in the foreseeable future he was going to be rudely awakened.
The fit was good. He pulled on the boots and stood up. There was a red telephone on the wall and below it a list of numbers. He ran his finger down the list and punched in a three digit number. It was answered immediately. Gunn smiled at the efficiency born of fear. He could almost see the man at the other end standing to attention. In the RAF or USAAF he’d have been lucky to get an acknowledging grunt. He snapped out in flawless Russian.
“Major Tanchev. Is my plane ready for take-off?”
The man answered, patently confused. “Yes Sir. But . . .”
“Who am I speaking to?”
“Sergeant Dakov, Sir.”
“You have a problem Sergeant Dakov?”
“No Sir.” The voice snapped to attention. Gunn smiled.
“Good. I have a mission of supreme importance for Colonel Vasily. I will be there in five minutes. You are to tell no one.”
Gunn hung up before the sergeant could reply, put on his flight helmet and left the crew room. Dachev might be confused, he might be sorting out conflicting orders. He might be phoning Colonel Vasily or Major Tanchev’s quarters. More likely he’d be doing exactly as he’d been told and getting the MiG ready. And anyway, Gunn had a feeling Colonel Vasily had his hands full right about then. He had a house burning down around his ears, a ton of merchandise going up in smoke with a street value of somewhere around a billion dollars, two expensive motor cars wrecked, and four of his goons dead. It had not been a good night so far. And if Gunn had anything to say in the matter it was about to get worse.
Gunn entered the hanger, booted and spurred, the helmet faceplate down concealing his face. Just outside the hanger entrance stood an MiG 23M Flogger B, its markings showing the black double–headed against a red background, the insignia of the Republic. A sergeant was standing by it, clipboard in hand. He saluted Gunn, who strode arrogantly to the fighter. He put his foot on the bottom rung of the ladder.
“It is ready? Pre-flight checks completed?”
The sergeant stiffened, outrage in every fibre. He handed Gunn the checklist for his signature. Gunn scanned it, then scribbled Major Tanchev’s signature. It was always the little things that tripped you up in an impersonation, and Tranchev’s signature had been on a couple of checklists in the changing room. He handed the board back to the sergeant.
“Good. Then let’s go.” He climbed into the cockpit, scanned the instrument panel and controls to re-familiarize himself with the layout, and then gave the sergeant a thumbs up.
The sergeant indicated he was going to have the MiG towed onto the apron, but he didn’t see Gunn’s sardonic smile and miniscule shake of the head. He went through the engine start checklist and flipped the switches.
Gunn depressed the start button. With the throttle set at ground idle that began the automatic start sequence. He quickly got engine rotation on the tach, followed by the familiar signs for a good lift off. He performed a final initial-reel check, wing sweep mechanism and verified position changes.
Sergeant Dachev stopped. He looked worried and confused. The plane was still in the hanger. This was not according to procedure.
Gunn gave him a sketchy salute that could have meant a lot of things depending on how you interpreted the fingers. Then he closed the canopy, released the brakes and pushed the throttle forward. Dachev froze in disbelief. He made frantic arm wavings and took a couple of tentative steps towards the plane. The howl of the turbojet engine getting the bit between its teeth changed his mind. He whipped around as if all the devils in hell were after him with the MiG close to his tail and catching up fast.
The devastation that ensued inside the hanger was a delight, for Gunn anyway. It was as if everything had been caught by a blast furnace erupting. Fuel tanks exploded: there was flame, debris, flaming wreckage – and that was before the back walls blew out and the hanger started to collapse on itself.
But by then Gunn had hit the runway, slewed hard left and as he pushed the throttle to one hundred percent the Khatchaturov turbojet slammed the plane down the runway with awesome acceleration created by a thrust of 7850 kilopounds. Gunn risked a glance over his shoulder. The hanger had turned into a fiery shambles. He eased back the stick and the MiG went up like a lady ascending a grand ballroom staircase. Gunn smiled happily.
“That’ll give them a hobby,” he murmured. The altimeter wound quickly till it registered 1,000 meters. Gunn levelled off almost immediately and kept low. He was expecting company and didn’t want a dogfight: he had other ideas to eliminate the competition.
Moments later he was flying fast through a low range of hills and Colonel Vasily’s merrily burning chateau appeared. Gunn aimed the MiG directly at it. He flipped a switch and the HUD appeared. He targetted the chateau, slid his thumb onto the firing button and pressed. The words of some comedy show parody slipped into his mind. “Don’t press the plunger.” He grinned as the two heat-seeking missiles headed directly for the chateau. He counted five seconds. The missiles struck and exploded. He didn’t wait to see the result: it was a foregone conclusion. Gunn eased the throttles back and let the MiG drift lower.
At that moment an explosion rocked the MiG. Gunn twisted and saw what he’d expected. He was being tailed by an attacked plane. Either Sergeant had used his initiative, or Colonel Vasily had barked out orders for revenge. Gunn’s face hardened. This was going to require every ounce of skill he had. Getting downed and captured was not an option.
Gunn pulled back the controls, slammed the throttle, kicked in the after burner and put the MiG into its maximum climb rate of over 45,000 feet per minute.
Canon fire flashed from his attacker. Tracer bullets stitched the night. Gunn went into evasive manoeuvres. His attacker followed, sticking to his tail like he was glued. Gunn knew the man was good, but not that good. Red hot flame from the after burners of both planes torched the night sky.
Gunn rolled and put his plane into a dive. The G-Force was incredible as he pulled out with seconds to spare, just skimming the tops of the black pines and winding through between low wooded hills at an impossible speed. One hiccup, one minute miscalculation and . . .
The dark shape of a conical hill blasted into view, outlined by moonlight. Without a second thought Gunn aimed straight for it. It came at him at mind numbing speed and needed all his iron nerve to keep from flinching.
At the last possible second he touched right rudder. His MiG missed the tallest pines by the thickness of a lick of paint.
His attacker, night blinded by the flame from Gunn’s engine wasn’t quite quick enough. The plane slammed into the hill at over the speed of sound. Gunn felt the explosion, and out of the corner of his eye saw the fireball. He pulled out of the low valley, gained 10,000 feet and called the control tower.
“Tell Colonel Vasily the insurance on his chateau was way too low.”
The answering squawk of anger was indecipherable. Gunn chuckled and cut back to ferry speed.
“And another thing,” he said. “Tell him I’ll park his plane in the North Sea.”
There was another squawk of fury. Gunn flipped the bird, flicked of the radio and banked onto a course for London. He had a maxim range of 1750 miles at ferry speed. It was going to be tight. But then, he wasn’t planning on making a return trip.
He eased the MiG up to 20,000 feet, well below commercial levels. The moon was over his left shoulder; the land unwinding below a patchwork of shades of grey dotted with clusters of lights. He wondered vaguely what the good people asleep in their beds would say if they knew what had just happened. Probably nothing. They’d just turn over and go back to sleep. They had more important worries.
Anyway, it was a good night for flying. A hunter’s moon and the feeling of a job well done. He chuckled. Vasily would be spitting blood. He supposed he could add him to the growing list of people who would rather see Maxim Gunn burning in the fires of hell.
An approach from MI5, that’s how it had started. There was this job, you see. A bit out of our jurisdiction really, but there’s this ton of heroin sitting out there and it’s going to be shipped to the UK quite shortly. Did he think he could do anything about it? Strictly unofficially of course. They had all the information: they just didn’t know when it was coming in, and did he have any idea how many trucks came in from Europe every day? And of course an operation on home turf would be bound to attract the attention of the press, whereas a neatly placed bomb in the middle of a mid-European forest . . .
And of course he’d agreed. Anyway, he was at a bit of a loose end and the idea of some action was a bit of a clarion call. And the fact that Harry Pearce had bought him the best lunch in London had helped. The clincher had come when he mention Colonel Boris Vasily. Gunn had finished the last mouthful of roast beef and carefully put down his knife and fork.
“That bastard.”
Harry Pearce had smiled blandly. “Is there anyone you don’t know?”
Gunn’s answering smile had been bland. “You’re mixing me up with Jethro Quinn.”
There was a little confusion when he entered German airspace. A couple of Eurofighter Typhoons had appeared like suspicious Dobermans, demanding to know what the hell he thought he was doing. He made nice but basically ignored them as he knew they wouldn’t push it and cause an international incident. Shooting down a MiG with the double Eagle markings would get everyone very hot and bothered; and once the North Sea had appeared they had swung away.
His fuel tank was getting low, and by the time the Essex coast slipped beneath the warning lights were getting hysterical. But he had an objective: Hyde Park. Not that you could land a MiG 29 in the middle of London, but it was the point at which he intended to set the autopilot to take the MiG back out to sea, and then he would eject, wafting down like the daring young man on the flying trapeze. He wondered if James Sweetstory would be there to greet him.
The KM-1 ejector seat kicked him in the pants like an enraged mule. He tumbled over and over until the chute deployed and brought him up with a jerk. He twisted around and just caught the vanishing lights of the MiG. Another couple of minutes and it could safely run out of gas without hitting anything but water and a few surprised fish.
He looked down. Below were the familiar landmarks of the Parliament Buildings and Big Ben, and the endless stream of traffic of a city that never slept.
At that moment his cell phone rang. He frowned and slipped it out of his breast pocket.
“Maxim Gunn.”
The bell-like laughing voice of Polly Anders was magicked out of the ether.
“Maxim, where are you?”
Gunn glanced around and down. He angled the chute controls to take him in the direction of Hyde Park.
“Oh, just sort of hanging around.”
“Vileman wants to see you.”
Gunn wrinkled his nose. “I’m not sure I want to see him.”
Polly’s voice took on her best wheedling tone. “It’s important. I’ll buy you lunch.”
Everyone seemed to think his price was lunch these days. He made a memo to himself to up the ante.
“O.K. The things I do for England.”
“How soon can you be here?”
Gunn looked down at Big Ben. The brightly lit face showed it to be 11.15
“Eleven forty-five,” he said and snapped the phone shut as the ground was coming up rather rapidly and he needed his full attention to avoid getting embarrassingly strung up in some tree.
As it was he touched down lightly. At that time of night it looked as though he had the park to himself, but then he saw a derelict sleeping on a bench. He had tried to cover himself with newspaper. Gunn noticed with approval that it was at least The Times and not some sensationalist rag. He released the harness, rolled up the parachute and started for the road. Then he stopped, went to the sleeping man and draped the parachute across his sleeping form.
“Always wear silk next to the skin,” he said softly.
He paused for a moment and looked down at the man. The moonlight filtering through the trees showed a face, once handsome, firm chin, strong nose, but now etched with lines and a growth of grey stubble.
“There but for the grace of God,” he said, about turned and strode away towards Park Lane. He entered an underground parking lot, walked quickly towards his Lagonda, popped the trunk and changed into clean clothes: a dark blue blazer, grey flannels and loafers.
As he drove out onto the street, he wondered why Vileman wanted to see him in such a damned hurry, and a small frisson of excitement trickled up his spine.
CHAPTER TWO
The clocks were just striking ten as he pulled up outside the uninspiring grey building that housed the organization for which he used to work. He looked at its facade with a marked lack of enthusiasm. It might have been the entrance of a third rate hotel: the kind that smelled of cabbage and cheap scent and rented rooms by the hour. He got out, locked the car and went up the steps and through the grimy double glass doors.
To the casual passer-by the name plates on the door suggested that it purported to house a firm specializing in the restoration of paintings, a dealer in rare books, a company which offered rather vaguely and unspecified financial advice and a Methodist Missionary Society; none of which existed.
Inquiries would be met at the front desk by polite regrets to the effect that there was either no one at home, or the company concerned had just filed for bankruptcy. Either way, that was as far as they would have got. Any attempt to press the issue would have meant getting past ex-SAS Sergeant ‘Earthquake’ Magoon or his opposite number, an ex Marine by the name of O’Rourke, both very tough customers.
The lobby was in keeping with the exterior of the building. Worn linoleum covered the floor, and peeling paint of a particularly unappetizing Ministry of Works green coated the walls to shoulder height. Above that it changed to a dirty off white before melding with the smoke blackened ceiling. Gunn walked to a glass-fronted porter’s booth stuck in a corner by an antique elevator. The man in the booth looked up quickly.
“Evening, Sergeant,” said Gunn. “A bit late aren’t you?”
Sergeant Magoon folded his copy of the Evening Standard and smiled.
“Never off duty, Sir. You know how it is.”
“Don’t remind me. And how have you been keeping?”
“Very well, Sir. And all the better for seeing you.”
“It seems I can’t keep away from the place.”
“Yes, Sir. Miss Anders told me you’d be coming.”
“The Chief wants . . .”
“What the Chief wants . . .” began Magoon, with feeling.
Gunn laughed. “Now, now.”
“Yes, Sir. You’re to go straight up.”
Gunn raised an eyebrow. “No passes, no search ?”
Magoon shook his head. “No Sir. Anyway, you don’t have one.”
Gunn nodded. “You know, that makes me feel good.”
Magoon grunted. “You know the way, Sir.”
Gunn nodded, gave him a sketchy salute and made for the elevator.
The offices of the Organization were in total contrast to the seedy atmosphere of the entrance foyer. No expense had been spared in the interests of efficiency and proper working conditions. The Establishment may not have liked Vileman, but he got what he wanted, and had gone to considerable trouble to ensure that the place where his people worked was conducive to their best efforts. The place was not sound proofed, but sound deadened, and as Gunn left the elevator he was immediately struck once again by the muted hum of efficiency. There were no loud noises, no clashing colours, nothing to take the eye from the job in hand; nothing jarred in any way whatsoever. His remarks to Magoon had not referred to the decor.
Maxim Gunn moved quietly into the third floor offices and leaned against a door jamb, one eyebrow raised and a quizzical smile on his lips, and for the hundredth time wondered how anyone who gave the appearance of being as mildly moronic as she did, could in reality be so smart.
“How do you manage it?” he asked.
Polly turned at the sound of his voice, and flashed him a bright-eyed smile. “Manage what?”
“Manage to look as if you’d just stepped out of a crisp new wrapper after a day in this hell hole. A couple of hours in here used to make me feel as if I’d just been through a fight with an alligator in a particularly messy bit of swamp.”
“Nothing to it,” answered the girl, coolly. “I just pretend it’s all part of a nasty dream and isn’t happening to me at all.”
“That’s one way,” replied Gunn. “Any idea what this is about.”
“Yes.”
“But you’re not telling.”
“No, but I’m glad you’re here. For a moment on the phone I thought you meant it.”
“I did,” said Gunn. “I’ve come to listen, nothing more.”
“Well, at least that’s something. Being a retired sloth doesn’t really suit you though, and you’re putting on weight.”
“I am not,” said Gunn. “I weigh precisely what I have always weighed.” He pointed at a leather-covered door beyond her desk. “Is he there?”
Polly nodded. “Yes, and you’d better go straight in. I’ve just about run out of excuses for you, and he’s madder than a wet hen.”
“I’m not personally acquainted with any wet hens,” said Gunn. “So the sight should prove educational.”
The girl put a hand on his arm. “Seriously, Maxim, something is worrying him badly. It might be a good idea to save the smart remarks.”
Gunn glanced at her in mild surprise and looked thoughtful. He’d never known her to advise caution where Vileman’s blood pressure was concerned. He unhitched himself from the doorjamb, walked to the door of the Chief’s inner sanctum, knocked and without waiting for an answer, went in.
Casimir Vileman - the name was a version of an old Bohemian one, somewhat unfortunately anglicized by his great grandfather - was the director of a little known arm of the government’s covert operations, simply known as the Organization. Other arms had names or letters and numbers like MI6 or Special Branch; but the Organization did not have official recognition: it didn’t really exist, being paid for by what is known as the Discretionary Budget, and Vileman was responsible to only one person - the Prime Minister of the day. He did his job with an efficiency that earned him no friends, but great respect. As Gunn came in, he pointed wordlessly to a chair in front of his desk. Gunn sat down, crossed his legs and waited, surveying the man who had been his immediate superior with mild distaste, and with definite curiosity. He thought that if one were to dress him in a loud check suit and gaiters he could have passed as a racecourse tout, or Mr Toad, with the odds in favour of the latter. He was short, thickset, balding, unprepossessing and had a steady gaze cold that had been known to make junior ministers run for cover, whimpering.
“Ever hear of Professor Edouard Shrinkker?” asked Vileman.
Gunn remained silent for a dozen heartbeats, thinking, and then answered. “Paris symposium on Psycho-Kinesis, telekinesis and the rest and the rest of the psychobabble. Caught a lot of bad press and was practically laughed out of the city. Some crackpot theory about being able to control thought over a long distance; an extension of ESP and Psyonics, that kind of thing.”
Vileman raised his eyebrows in reluctant admiration.
“Quite right, Mr Gunn; go to the top of the class. But that’s not all. His claims went further than the usual ESP and stage mind reading you hear about. Shrinkker really did mean control, with a capital ‘C’. He wasn’t talking about just ‘influencing’ or reading thoughts, and that’s what got his peers so steamed up.”
“Sounds like a mixture of professional jealousy and sour grapes,” replied Gunn.
“More than likely. It seems that they couldn’t face the possibility that someone really might have come up with the goods when all they’d been doing for years was footling about in the bushes.”
“And had he - come up with the goods?”
“Apparently so. Anyway, there was enough evidence for someone to get very interested. Interested enough to provide a lot of money for him to continue his work in seclusion.” He fiddled with his gold topped fountain pen.
“And where was that?” asked Gunn.
“That’s what I want to find out. He vanished. I must know exactly where he is, who’s behind him, and why.” Vileman swung his chair round and looked out onto the darkened street below. “All those millions of people out there; most of them wouldn’t believe a tenth of what really goes on. Most of it’s just story book fiction to them, straight out of the last episode of the Twilight Zone or a spy movie.”
Gunn looked at his back curiously. He was seeing a new side to Vileman, a worried side, and he didn’t much care for it.
“Care to tell me about it?” he said. “I presume that’s why I’m here.”
Vileman swung back, rubbed tired eyes, and then became brisk as he pulled a bulging folder from a drawer.
“Right. The Prof went back to Salzburg, smarting at the insults and mumbling strange threats. And then, as I said he disappeared - literally. Just upped and left everything; his job at the university, his house - sold, the lot, and nothing more was seen or heard of him for nearly a year. A couple of months ago one of our men spotted him coming out of an hotel, in Ankara.”
“Who was that?” asked Gunn.
“Bill Henderson,” Vileman replied. “He contacted us in the usual way and asked permission to follow up. He got it, of course, as we had Shrinkker marked for special attention if he showed up.”
Gunn did a quick mental flashback to Vileman’s remark about the Twilight Zone. What the man said was true; things of that kind did get red flagged. The para-sciences had been knocking at some very strange doors in the last few years, some which he personally felt were better left unopened, but the facts remained. Just suppose that what this man Shrinkker was doing really worked, where would it lead? Spy satellites, sophisticated surveillance techniques and the whole mess of modern espionage would be wiped out in the blink of an eye. Double agents, treachery and blackmail would all be consigned to the stories of Le Carre and Deighton. There would be no need if you could just tune in to someone’s thoughts, and then implant your own wishes. He came back with a jolt at the sound of Vileman’s voice.
“We got a couple of progress reports. It seemed he was on to something, and I was expecting another.”
“And then,” said Gunn, sensing the worst.
“And then I got these in my e-mail,” replied Vileman, and took a couple of photo prints from the file. He passed them across the desk.
One photo showed a figure, dressed in nothing but a pair of shorts, lying spread-eagled at the base of a cliff. The surrounding ground was barren and stony, and the body lay in an unnatural broken doll attitude. It had obviously fallen off the cliff, or been pushed.
The second photo was a more distant shot, apparently for effect. It showed the cliff, a perpendicular drop of about three hundred feet. The body showed as a microscopic pale dot at the base. Gunn looked up at Vileman.
“Bill?”
Vileman nodded.
Gunn swore inventively. He was as well aware as any of them that the job carried dangers, that it was damned unlikely any of them would be around to collect a pension. There’d just be a dozen red roses for Moira or whoever; a quiet little memorial service in the country churchyard in Sussex that the Organization used, and the next recruit would be moved into line and it would begin all over again. But Bill Henderson had been a particular friend of his, as far as anyone in that weird and dark world of violence and deceit could ever be called a friend.
“Why was he dressed in just a pair of shorts in the middle of the desert; and has an attempt been made to get a fix on the cliff?”
“We’ve got a team on that right now, making the rounds, questioning anyone who knows that part of the world; and we’ve called in the Geographical Society. They’re looking at Turkey and down into Syria, Iran and Iraq. They may come up with something: it’s a hell of a lot of country to cover. But in the meantime this is a much as we know, and it’ll make your hair curl.”
Gunn sat back and prepared to listen.
CHAPTER THREE
It took Vileman nearly two hours to give Gunn all the information so far collected, together with his own inferences and speculations, and to relay the Prime Minister’s unequivocal instructions as to what was required from the Organization. Gunn could imagine the conversation that had taken place, briefly, over the red telephone on Vileman’s desk, and was very glad he was no longer on the receiving end. Come to think of it, it was just as likely the Prime Minister had hung up and wiped the sweat from his brow.
But the end result would be the same, this he knew. Vileman had called him in, come to him, almost cap in hand, because of those instructions. It wasn’t so much that there had been no one else in the Organization capable of doing what he knew was going to be asked of him, but it was Bill Henderson lying dead, a broken doll at the foot of a three hundred foot cliff. Vileman knew he had been Gunn’s friend and whoever had killed him would be hunted to the ends of the earth. Besides, he was very angry and he needed Gunn’s help.
When Vileman finally finished and softly closed the file on his desk, Gunn had a clear vision as stark and as monstrous as anything he'd imagined in his wildest nightmares.
Only a little while before, a few months at most, he’d imagined that those ghosts were laid forever. Only the ghosts, it seemed, were not laid. They were creeping out again from the poisonous shadows where they had festered; made stronger and more savage by their earlier frustrations, and preparing for yet another attack on the bodies and minds of mankind.
The spectres of the past, of Hitler and Napoleon were nothing in comparison to what this power might achieve, for they had only physical strength and psychology; they had never controlled the mind.
Gunn wondered with a suppressed shudder if they, or rather she, was truly human. He shook himself to rid his thoughts of such dark and unhealthy fantasies. But somehow he couldn’t quite come to terms with the devastation he’d seen after Magoon had dropped the cliff on the schloss, and the faintest possibility that anyone had survived. Which made it all the more certain simply because it was impossible.
“Is that enough to be going on with?”
Gunn snapped his attention back and looked across the desk with narrowed eyes. “Enough? I believed she’d been killed at the Schloss. And now you tell me she is alive.”
“So we all thought,” replied Vileman. “But it seems she got away.”
“We dropped a damned great mountain on them. I saw it. Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of rock. A cockroach couldn't have got out of that alive.”
Vileman shrugged, at a loss for an explanation.
“Which ones beside her?” asked Gunn. “Confirm my worst fears.”
“Wanda Liszt and the Baron for certain. Henderson saw them.”
Gunn silently digested the information for a moment, and then Vileman went on. “There’s something going on that I just don’t understand.”
“Such as?” Gunn asked.
“We know it’s impossible that Wanda Liszt and the others got out of that collapse.”
“And yet they did you say. Bill saw them.”
“I know.”
“Why wasn’t I told right away?”
“It wasn’t your business,” Vileman replied. “You’d resigned, remember?”
“Anything about that woman is my business,” said Gunn, harshly.
“You’d be the first to agree with ‘need to know’.”
“True,” Gunn admitted. “You said impossible in a peculiar way. What are you trying to say?”
“I’m not sure I’m trying to say anything,” said Vileman. “But I’m thinking, and I don’t care for the thoughts.”
“Reasons?” Gunn asked.
“You’d laugh at me - or worse.”
“Try me. We haven’t always agreed, but I’ve never ignored your ideas.”
Vileman gave him a thin smile and asked “When the impossible happens, what do you call it?”
“Blind luck,” said Gunn, firmly.
“Seriously.”
“Okay. A miracle.”
“Those things only happen for good people,” said Vileman. “What are they for people like her?”
“You tell me,” said Gunn. “I’m not in the mood for guessing games.”
“How about Black Magic - Witchcraft?”
Gunn’s eyebrows shot up, and he bit back a laugh. “Be serious. Are you suggesting Wanda did this by . .?” He shook his head. “No. You can’t be serious.”
Vileman’s face told him that he was, and there was a strained quality in the set of his mouth that made Gunn cut off the smart remarks he might have made. Instead he said.
“Maybe you’d better tell me what this is all about. In my book, that kind of thing is the product of sick minds and wishful thinking - a lot of mumbo jumbo. But it seems it isn’t in yours.”
Vileman looked acutely unhappy. “Listen, Gunn. A month ago I’d have agreed with you, and I’d have recommended anyone who didn’t to go and see a loony doctor to get fitted for a straight jacket. Now, I’m not so sure.” He paused for a while, marshalling his thoughts, and then went on. “You didn’t go back to the Schloss after the collapse.”
“Your orders,” said Gunn. “Get away from the scene of the crime before the Swiss saw me, you said.”
Vileman nodded. “Yes. But the Chief of Staff did, and he noticed some funny things.”
“Such as?”
“A lot of ground had been moved - pushed aside, he said; and it was right about where they would have been.”
“Somebody got there and lifted them?” Gunn shook his head. “You’d need bulldozers, heavy construction equipment. Some of those stones weighed tonnes.”
Vileman shrugged. “I don’t know. But we did a lot of digging around, and there was no sign of Wanda or the other two. We found what was left of Kerstan, and that freak Tinkerbell, but not the others.”
Gunn’s face was grim. “Again, why wasn’t I told?”
“Same answer. Need to know. Anyway, you were on your way to some private job by then.” Vileman managed a crooked smile. “From what I hear the impossible is getting routine for you.”
Gunn wasn’t surprised Vileman knew what he’d been doing, but he was forced to accept the logic. “Okay. But the fact that you didn’t find them doesn’t mean they weren’t there. It was a hell of an explosion. They could have been thrown yards away.”
Vileman shook his head, and Gunn knew, deep inside, that it was so. Somehow Wanda had got away, been removed, with the others.
“So what happened then?” he asked.
“I’ve no idea. Except Shrinkker reappearing. You know it wasn’t his theories about Psycho Kinesis and E.S.P. that got him laughed at, as I said. It was what he added to it; that he had found a way to control the supernatural forces. Up to that point he had been taken fairly seriously - but that did it. Exit Shrinkker in a cloud of laughter and abuse.”
Gunn felt his mouth twitching with humour despite himself, and asked. “You think they - someone - took the body, or bodies away, and somehow brought them back to life? It’s a bit farfetched.”
Vileman sighed. “Farfetched? I agree. But whether it’s impossible, I don’t know. People get themselves frozen these days; cryogenics or whatever, don’t they? They hope some miracle of medicine will come up, and they’ll be brought back to life. It maybe bullshit now, but a few years down the road who knows. And if that could happen, why not this? Hell, Gunn,” he said, exasperated. “I don’t know, but I need to. The damned woman is out there, and so are the others, and according to Bill Henderson, they’re hatching up this thing.” He ran a hand across his bald scalp, a sure sign of frustration and worry. “Can you imagine if the world’s leaders were..?” He shook his head. “They’ve got to be stopped. It’s got to be stopped. And now they’ve turned up in Ankara - or Turkey at any rate.”
Gunn got up and walked to the door. “I’d better get started then.”
Vileman gave him an odd smile. “I didn’t ask, yet.”
“But you were going to,” said Gunn.
“Yes.”
“Then I’ve just saved you the bother.”
“May I ask why? A few months ago you swore you’d never do anything like this ever again.”
“It’s just this once,” replied Gunn quietly. “You might call it unfinished business. And besides,” he added. “Bill Henderson was my friend.”
“What are you going to do? I mean, you may be doing this as a favour, or for personal reasons: I don’t much care which, but it’s my head on the block in the end.”
Gunn smiled at the thought. “I’m not sure, but there are a couple of people I want to talk to, and Polly’s got to get things organized from this end. I’ll contact you in the usual way when I get to Ankara. By the way; can I have what I want, all the way?”
Vileman nodded. “Even to half my kingdom. Just pull it off.”
Gunn went out and closed the door softly behind him. Vileman stared at the door for a long while after Gunn had gone. The stakes were astronomical. Failure was not an option; and yet he was putting it all into the hands of one man. And then he smiled again and murmured. “We have got Maxim Gunn, and they have not.” He picked up a file, opened it, scanned it and scratched his initials at the bottom of the page.
Polly Anders was still waiting as he came out, somehow still managing to look as bright and fresh as a new rose, despite the fact that she’d been there all day and it was then well past midnight.
“Are you going to do it?” she asked.
Gunn nodded. “It seems there are a couple of loose ends.”
The girl pulled a face. “Some loose ends. How did she get out Maxim?”
Gunn shrugged. “They say the Devil looks after his own.”
“Where do you start?”
“Turkey,” he replied. “But to get things in the right order. First coffee; second, all available information on Professor Edouard Shrinkker, and then book me on a flight to Ankara. Oh, and a room - no, make that a suite - at the Buyuk Ankara Hotel. There’s an afternoon flight with Turkish Airlines, which will get me there in time for dinner. Have you an office I can use?”
Polly gave him a wry smile. “Your old one is still empty. And, of course, there’s Bill’s.”
Gunn stood in the doorway of his old room and switched on the light. It was just an empty room with a grey metal Ministry desk and swivel chair and a couple of filing cabinets. Gone were the few personal possessions, now at his home, which had given the place a personality. The silver cigarette box - an unlikely gift from the K.G.B. A Malay kris inscribed with the ninety-nine names of God, and a paperweight made from a bronze arrowhead. All mementos of people and places in his past. And there was a lighter patch on the wall where a colour print of Sherlock Holmes used to hang, which some might have thought was vanity, but would not have dared to say so.
He sat down in the swivel chair, put his feet on the desk and closed his eyes, thinking.
The first shock of discovering that Wanda Liszt was alive had passed, to be replaced by an almost irrational excitement. God knows, he’d wished her permanently out of the way many times, and on two occasions had done his best to see that it had happened; but he had to admit that life without her had begun to be just the tiniest bit dull. He knew he would never return to use this room as a right; but just maybe he could start to borrow it once in a while. He had retired from the game; that much was certain, but there was nothing in his promise to say he couldn’t consult.
There was a knock on the door and he dropped his feet to the carpet with a thud as the records clerk came in with a bulky file and a docket to sign. Gunn scribbled his signature, knowing he would not be allowed out of the building again until the file was returned, and checked. His watch showed it was nearly one o’clock. He thought he would just read the file to get the gist and reinforce what Vileman had told him, and then go home for some sleep. It was too late to do anything else, and Wanda Liszt could wait a few hours.
Polly Anders brought his coffee: hot, strong, black and sweet, as he liked it. He grinned at her, boyishly.
“How are the mighty fallen,” she said, with a satisfied smirk.
“And just what is that supposed to mean?”
“You swore you’d never come back.”
“I haven’t.”
“But I see you, sitting in that chair.”
“A one-off job. Like I said; loose ends.”
”I believe you,” the girl said. “And I suppose that’s why you came so quickly, and you’re sitting there with a Cheshire cat grin. You couldn’t stay away, could you?”
Gunn frowned at her. “Would you, with Wanda Liszt back from the dead?”
Polly poured him coffee and placed it carefully on the blotter in front of him. “How did she get of that one, Maxim?”
Gunn rubbed his chin, thoughtfully. “I must remember to ask her when I see her. Now you’d better push off, Polly. You must be beat. And besides, you’ve got to be fresh for that lunch you owe me.”
“Just you see that you’re around to collect,” she replied. “Or I’ll never speak to you again.”
Gunn stayed in the office for another hour before calling records and returning the file to the clerk, during which time he had skimmed through the information available on the dubious professor - and there was quite a lot. The red tag had meant a continuous updating since the Paris symposium; but Gunn’s phenomenal powers of concentration and acute memory had taken in more than anyone else would have found possible in the time.
The file contained notes and reports from many sources and in several languages, including Russian, German and French - all of which he read and spoke with total fluency, but nowhere was there any clue as to where the man had gone to ground. True, he had last been seen in Ankara, and that was where the trail would have to be picked up. But apart from that Gunn was going to be looking for a small needle in a vast haystack. And the devil of it was that he didn’t know how much time he had. Vileman had given him the possible end product of Wanda’s intentions, but without a location he was going to have to rely on a large slice of luck.
He left the office and walked slowly out of the building, having returned the file, and stopped briefly to say goodnight to the man who had replaced Magoon for the night shift. Ex-Marine Commando O’Rourke looked admiringly after the tall, elegant figure as he went out of the doors. He envied Magoon who had been on that job with him. Maybe one day he’d be sent along to lend a hand. God knows, he was a useful man in a scrap too, and he’d proved it a dozen times in some pretty sticky situations.
Gunn went out into the warm night, and stood for a few moments on the pavement before getting into his car. Tomorrow in Ankara it would be hot.
The Lagonda responded instantly to the starter, and he drove across the City and into the West End. Five minutes brought him to his house in Clarges Street, and he parked in his usual place.
As he mounted the steps to his front door, key in hand, it swung open to reveal the imperturbable Sweetstory, his man, and friend.