The Widow's Son E-Book

Daniel Kemp

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Three months before the invasion of Iraq, a member of a Masonic fraternity known as the Rosicrucians escapes from a British Intelligence holding station.

Orchestrated by the head of the Russian Federal Security Service, this event is somehow linked to a the highly classified CIA file only known as Gladio B. Tasked to destroy an unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics, the chairman of the British Joint Intelligence Committee plans to bring the criminals to justice.

But he is running low on both time and allies, as mass annihilation threatens the whole planet. Who are the mysterious eight families that seem to be behind the mysterious events, and what do they have to do with the ancient 33rd degree level of understanding, only known by the mysterious Rosicrucian brotherhood?

Leseprobe

The Widow's Son

Lies and Consequences Book 3

Daniel Kemp

Copyright (C) 2018 Daniel Kemp

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2021 by Next Chapter

Published 2021 by Next Chapter

Cover art byhttp://www.thecovercollection.com/

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.

Never read the words as they first appear, Seldom in life are words honest and clear. I could take you to a place where all words are true, But only if love has touched the heart of you.

Parables are recitals with a story inside. Ingenuous exposition but how many are lies? The understanding of secrets is not only what you need. Belief in the truth is the only way you'll be freed.

Daniel Kemp

The Widower's Son

We speak unto you by parables, but would willingly bring you to the right, simple, easy and ingenuous exposition, understanding, declaration, and knowledge of all secrets.

Chapter One

Part One

The Fourth Day of December 2002

Henry Mayler's Opening Story

“Let's get one thing out the way before I go any further, Mr Elijah man.” Henry took a sip of whisky from the glass on the table in front of him and the service stenographer noted the pause in Mayler's account by adding a single blank space as he stopped speaking. Her normal way of dealing with such things was a single blank for brief, with a double-blank meaning a pause of some length. Before she could contemplate the occasions she had used a triple blank space, Henry Mayler had continued.

“It was me who was effing shot at Al Hasakeh on your behalf. I'm here as the injured victim of an operation that went wrong. Anyway, now that's said I'll get back to the story. After what happened in the bazaar I was acutely aware of the danger I had put myself in, but if there was to be any reaction I was expecting it inside the market, not outside. In my haste to get away I tripped over something just before getting to the car. My knee hurt badly and the fall shook me up but I managed to stand quickly and open the car door. That was when the glass in the door shattered. I had no idea what had caused it as I had heard no sound. For a split second all I could do was stare at what was once a normal car door, thinking it was something I'd done that broke it. Other than the normal loud noises of a packed Arab market I'd heard nothing that would indicate someone would be after us so soon. When I eventually got my head into gear the first reaction was to partially turn my head towards the back of the car, that's when it hit me. The only way I can describe it is that it was like having a cricket ball bowled very hard into my upper thigh. It hurt like hell. A similar thing happened to me when I'd played in a varsity cricket game in the Parks one year against a really quick bowler. I know this will sound stupid and melodramatic, but time seemed to stand still for me. Everything was moving in slow motion to the point of stopping.

“The bazaar went silent to my ears. I have no idea why I looked to the rear of the Mercedes and not the front, but that's where I looked. I was lucky in some ways as the bullet had hit hard muscles and was imbedded in them. I was thankful to have done lots of walking and standing in my job as a photographer. There was very little blood coming from the wound and just a small hole in my shorts and my upper leg. It was as I was looking at my wound that he pushed me into the car. I was completely dazed and out of it all. He was the opposite. He just stood there in the open, firing off round after noisy round in the direction from where the bullet in my leg must have come. He was shouting, but I haven't a clue what he said. All I could see was his mouth opening and closing very quickly. My ears were hurting from his gunshots as much as my leg from the bullet. The firing stopped and I had a peep through the back window. I saw one of them. He was black, but not an Arabian black. Perhaps a European black going by his modern, stylish clothes. He was on the ground and not moving, but there was another man running away in a zig-zag fashion.

“That man was tall, thin and had blonde hair. Hadad, that was my driver, was also on the ground by the rear door of the car. He was lucky, having taken only a grazing shot to the shoulder, and was meekly seeking cover. I helped him to stand and opened the door for him to get in. He lay across the backseat holding his shoulder. Then the Russian drove the car as though possessed with its tyres screaming under clouds of dust.

“It was I who noticed the car that was chasing us. Razin, the Russian, had his eyes notched up five times their normal size and fixed like glue on the road ahead, for that I was thankful; the car was travelling as if there was a rocket under the bonnet. I told him we were being followed and he pulled a gun from under the thawb that he wore. There was another gun, I presumed that to be the one he'd used outside the bazaar, tucked under his left leg as he drove. I remember thinking that I hoped the safety was on. Very calmly he told me that as soon as he had a chance he would pull our car off the road and ambush the one behind. That wasn't the exact language he used, but that's what it amounted to. He spoke in Russian but I can understand the language. He gave me the gun from under his leg and a new clip from the trousers he wore under the robe. He asked if I'd fired a weapon; I lied and said I had.

“We rounded a sharp bend, passed some low, sandy hills and then the road turned abruptly right in the opposite direction we wanted to go. Razin slung the car behind one of those sandy hills off the road and shouted at me to get out. Clutching his gun to my chest I did. He ran across the dusty road and hid. From across there he had the clearer shot than me and hit the driver before the car had fully rounded the bend. It veered violently towards me before it overturned once, then righted itself and came to a halt. I shot the passenger from where I'd been hiding, but Razin got to the car before I had and I saw him take something from the driver. I have given thought since then about what it could have been, but honestly I have no idea what it was other than it was small and flat like a phone. But I can't swear it was a phone. It could equally have been a letter. In fact, I think it was a letter. After he put two more bullets in them both he set the car on fire and we drove off, not speaking again until we reached Aleppo. I had the shell in my leg removed when I was taken to the British Embassy in Damascus. The stitches are due out tomorrow and my limp isn't so noticeable anymore. Is that enough for you?”

“Right, yes, thank you, Henry. We were both enthralled,” Elijah announced as he left the room holding the door ajar for the stenographer who followed, leaving Henry Mayler alone with his thoughts and his whisky.

* * *

If one leaves a single word on a blank sheet of paper seldom will it convey much in the way of meaning. This was how the in-house service stenographer had begun the typed recording of Mayler's story. One word at a time, until they started to make sense. The meaning they conveyed became a sentence that could stand on its own much the same way as a writer of fiction would construct a sentence.

Gradually the sentences she typed became paragraphs resembling the opening chapter of a work of prose. The collection of words that made those paragraphs were never enough to form a cluster of chapters, nevertheless, in more ways than one, the fantasy had begun and the writer of fiction had a story to tell.

This book is simply a collection of single words that left alone would have survived without a meaning.

Daniel Kemp

Part Two

Friday Six Days Later

Have you ever noticed that no matter how much the sea changes from mountainous stormy waves to the friendly calmness that could bore a conch shell into silence, it always returns to that monotonous hollowing sound of a wind through a tunnel. However, on some occasions that hollowing sound seems to represent the chanting of an echoing death that's waiting for me below. That's how it is in my way of life. Up and down and down and up without any indication of how it will all end.

I was at home, on the sofa, watching recorded rugby games when the telephone rang. The career I had chased after like a demented dog had descended from four years of stormy hell, where bells were ringing both inside and outside of my head every day, to almost six solid months of solidified boredom in my apartment doing nothing and hating every moment of nothing. But I didn't want the change he offered over that telephone line. I was in what was politely called the latter stages of convalescence, due to a bomb going off in a pub in Ireland I'd had the misfortune to be sitting in. The prospect of going back on the front line, so to speak, was what I was waiting for, not what Geoffrey Harwood held aloft as his incentive. The repeating referee's whistle on the television was hammering my brain to death as I tuned in to Harwood's idea of normality.

“Ezra, how goes it, old man? Fit, well and healthy I hope?” Without waiting for the answer he already knew, Harwood ploughed on.

“Ready to dirty your hands again, are you? Good.” Again, I had no chance to reply, not even to comment on the dawn-shattering timing of his call. After the friendship I and a man named Job had shared, I wondered if all ex-military men were cursed with an inbuilt early morning alarm clock.

“I've been holding your medical report back for about a month now, Ezra. It says you are fitter than an average Tour de France cyclist, but I thought you deserved a bit of extra leave, dear boy. Your stint as commanding officer in Northern Ireland has not gone unnoticed. You ran things extremely efficiently over there. How do you feel about taking control at Group, old chap? Big enough job to suit those talents of yours, do you think? There's bags of prestige to be had being in charge of one of the top four intelligence agencies, enough even for your inflated ego. A much more favourable stipend than you are receiving now and far better stability than at field control in a hotspot like Northern Ireland, albeit that it has quietened down a lot over there. At Group there's the worldwide intrigues to keep you interested. And then there's the Home Office parties to mingle amongst if you're unlucky to be invited. No, dear boy, I jest. I've had some wonderful evenings at those parties.”

“I can't think of anything I'd rather not do, Geoffrey. Right at this moment I'm watching a tedious game of rugby, but even that's better than what you propose. I told them at the debrief I would not welcome a sedentary job. That was in the report they produced. I saw it. You must have read it. So what are not saying and what do you really want me for?”

“Ah, you can speak. Thought you'd died of shock. Right, got you, old man. First I want you to drive to a public phone box and call Adam. How's that for a daily bout of exercise? Adam will direct you elsewhere for you and me to meet. Please make sure nobody is following you to the place Adam points. Of course, I shouldn't have to tell you that, but you have been lazing around for some time and may have forgotten what you are supposed to do in circumstances such as these. We are off somewhere far from grand, dear boy, so wear something more suitable than a dinner jacket. I don't want you attracting unnecessary attention.”

Despite the usual ludicrous pomp and ceremony that Mr Geoffrey Harwood employed as the present head of Group, I did not accept the reason he gave for such a needless warning.

“Jack Price once told me, Geoffrey, that if the person doing the following was any good at their job then they'd be practically impossible to spot. In the last six months the only trips I've made have been back and forth to a posh clinic that's looking after my medical welfare, and to the local pub that looks after my mental side. I doubt very much that I rate a 'very good' or clumsy idiot come to that, to shadow me. But what is bothering me is why the need for so much secrecy? This line has been cleared as secure. The engineers were here two days ago, on Wednesday, working their little machines over the whole place finding nothing. I'm a recovering invalid, nobody is interested in me. Can't you stop being so long-winded and tell me what you want, old chap?” I threw in the 'old chap' bit as my way of being sarcastic. It worked!

“No, I can't. Why can you not do as I've ask without comment, Ezra? You are so predictable.” He stopped and I could sense his eyes staring at me through the phone for daring to use his snobbish means of address. “Your intransigence can be so dull after a while. I know how much you have missed us, and I also know how much you needed that break, but I'm serious about you taking on the responsibility of Group. Your performance over in Ireland was spoken of in high places and in my opinion your retirement was pencilled in far too soon, old chap. I'd positively hate to wave you goodbye. I think we can squeeze a good few more years out of you in a home based office not risking your nuts being shot away out on the street. We can leave that sort of thing to the young at our stage of life, I think you'd agree. It's your experience they need, Ezra, no good seeing it wasted and you ending up watching the piss-up at your own wake. I'm pleased you mentioned dear old Jack Price. We're in desperate need of his sort, but as he's dead, we'll have to put up with you as second choice.” I thought I heard a faint snigger of a laugh, but never having heard him laugh I thought he must have brushed his stubble against the handset.

“You're all heart, Geoffrey, and so eloquent and persuasive.”

“Good, that's that then! Go find a phone box, Ezra, and call Adam, dear boy.”

“I'll go and wind the crankshaft of the old jalopy in a jiffy, just got to find my goggles and scarf. Both she, the car that is, and I hate the cold weather,” I replied caustically.

“Phone box, dear chap. Take some coinage with you and leave the sarcasm in your flat,” and with that the line went dead.

* * *

A few months on from my birth I was christened Patrick West by my parents, but over the thirty plus years I have been engaged in covert operations for Her Majesty's intelligence service I have used a few other names: Shaun Redden, Paddy O'Donnell, Frank Douglas and Terry Jeffries or, on the one that finished six months and a few days ago; Jack Webb. On that last tour in Ireland I was in charge of all operations against the Irish Republican Army and its spin-offs; by now, however, I'm a self-taught expert on daytime television. My operational name has been changed so many times by the hierarchy in charge of Group that it was becoming more and more difficult to remember the script and the role I was meant to be playing, whilst dodging the enemies' radar for the benefit of Kipling's Great Game for our great nation. During this last period of enforced leave I've been on the sick list but it's called a different name in the corridors of power that the likes of Geoffrey walk up and down. It's known as the surgeon's list. This is the second time in my career that my name has graced that assembly. Not bad I suppose, but nobody counts the negatives and gives away gold stars for not being sick, that's taken for granted.

In my case the surgeon has never been a surgeon, but he at first, and then she for the second time, had no need to explain the lack of scalpels. They tried coaxing the screaming voices from my head by sweet talking me, not cutting me open. They called it cognitive therapy. I called it meddling in memories that were never mine to give. On my last visits to the clinic the cognitive therapy was supposed to quieten the repetitive yelling that belonged to the girl of seventeen who had her eyes gouged out for the simple reason of dating a British soldier serving with the catering corps in Derry. A month after that attack I attended her funeral. Her constant screams of pain were permanently terminated by the serenity found in the blister strips of painkillers she was prescribed, only she emptied the whole packet of fifty pills in one go washed down by a cheap bottle of gin. For me, however, her screams will never die.

After a few days of sitting beside that girl, questioning her whilst she fiercely battled against the acceptance of her blindness, I went to see a man who told me of the whereabouts of an IRA bomber of a Belfast pub. That bomb killed three and maimed five fellow Irishmen and two women in the name of freedom from Protestant choice. By the time I got to him he had entertained some members of the Ulster Volunteer Force who had nailed his feet to the floor and his hands to a wooden beam above his head then set about removing his reproduction organs by savagely hacking them from his body and as that was not enough for their shared pleasure, they slowly peeled away his facial skin. I wonder how murder and mutilation can be justified in using such terms as freedom for the oppressed while suppressing those who disagree with the philosophy of force. I would have gladly asked the hierarchy of the IRA, if I had been given permission to go and find them. But I'm a man after all and none of what I've told you should have affected me, should it? That's what I'm supposed to do, isn't it? Be the hero that Geoffrey Harwood reveres. Bite the bullet and sing 'God Save the Queen'. After all people like me should be the first through the doors to count the bits of bodies hanging from the ceilings so that the reports in the daily newspapers get the sums right. That's what we're paid for, right? But there were times during that last tour that left me thinking I was getting slower through the door and laying the blame for that on having only half of one foot. The other half had been shot away, but I do try to keep swinging on door handles, after all, who would appreciating reading there were fifty-one dead when someone had missed a body or two?

The foot thing was one of the reasons for my first visit to the surgeon's rooms in the clinic in Harley Street. I lost three toes to a bullet when on the very first mission I undertook on behalf of the SIS, Secret Intelligence Service. It was meant for my head but in the wrestle for his gun the shot took my toes off. It was when I was recruited for that mission I met Jack Price and the ex-soldier I've mentioned by the given Biblical name of Job for the first time. That adventure, and all subsequent ones were of my choosing, losing toes was not. Another reason for my first visit to the clinic was because I killed the man who had shot my fictional twin; the girl who had become very dear to me. I watched her die from a bullet that took most of her head with it when she was sitting in the passenger seat of the car I was driving in New York. When all that happened I was a baby of twenty-three years of age. Time moved on and others died for other causes, three more at my hand, but any feelings I had for the death of others were depleted from any remorseful side I may have been born with. I watched death and destruction from the distance I constructed to keep myself safe, unconnected to anyone.

But not this last time. Not on the Green for my fourth tour— No one does four tours in that shit hole of Ireland, Webby. So nobody will be looking for you.

Over the Irish Sea I went, not looking for anyone except the bastards who bomb the innocent for their version of freedom. But Ireland being Ireland, something beautiful will always emerge. Kerry found my weakness after I'd been there for less than a month. Hers were the latest and hopefully last screams the surgeon wanted to pull from my head. I played the man of courage, saying there were none, tucking them away in a place to find sleep, but everywhere was overcrowded. I awake to pictures of Kerry with her agony of both knees and hands shattered by hammers before being raped and the word TART slashed across her breasts. So what's a little drive to a phone box compared to running from IRA cell to English cell, ducking the inquisitions at both ends by the grace of my two-toed right foot? Metaphorically speaking of course, because I never ran. All I was supposed to do was gather the intelligence, collate and make sense of it then decide what others could do in response. Nothing safer, eh! How about lying on the floor of a pub amongst the carnage of desolation after the detonation of a nail bomb that kills the man I was speaking to only four foot away and leaves me with one kidney less to siphon the evil whisky through?

During that six months' idleness of mine I had managed to keep physically fit and in shape using the apparatus Job and I had added to a room in my apartment when he'd stayed for a few days. It had become part of my daily routine, but it wasn't my physical side that bothered me as I grabbed a hat and coat and waited for the lift from my top-floor apartment. It was that mental fight against the crashing waves of memories that flooded my head at times with no escape other than forming their own scream. But men aren't supposed to find bitterness in heartache, are they? I did though. When the lift door opened I shut the screams away and went in search of a new life-conquering telephone box.

* * *

The brief conversation I held with the normally gregarious and chummy Adam, who I hadn't spoken to since returning from Ireland, was concise and cold. The opposite to what I'd expected—“67 Lavington Street, Ezra. I know you know where that is. Jacob said to be as quick as you can,” and then silence apart from the sound of a replaced receiver. He could have just been having a bad hair day, he was that way inclined, although I thought I detected a hint of bitterness in his voice as though he resented my call for some reason.

Adam was the connection operatives such as I used for the verification of orders plus those things beyond the reach of ordinary soldiers. Ezra was my assigned Biblical label, while Jacob was the soubriquet of whoever sat in the chair overseeing Group. I never had enough of an interest to enquire into the motives or calculations for everyone who worked directly inside that secret organisation to have a biblical name. The 'point' of any decision is for others to justify and find a cause. It was not mine. There were a host of similarly constructed names; Job being one. Jack Price worked outside of Group for a separate party who held the shared interests of putting the British Isles above all else. I could, as a man on the spy as it was known, appreciated the need for covert arrangements, but asking me to visit an established, well-known company location would put a face to a name and was tantamount to declaring my decision to leave the service. Had I refused Geoffrey's 'invitation' my dissent would have brought about the same end result; resignation. Whereas by going to the appointment, I turned the word resignation into the phrase of retirement from street work, with one hand holding on just in case it hadn't completely disappeared as the yearly manure added to St Stephen's Green, in Dublin, Ireland no doubt had.

Chapter Two: The Borough

Number 67 was halfway along Lavington Street notable by its boarded up windows and general dilapidation to the upper two floors. The sign on the plain black-painted door was broken; reading 'undry Supplies' which I presumed meant Sundry, rather than something wet. I could identify two distinct company cars with four indeterminable men inside, amongst the parked vehicles along the street, making my prognosis of retirement all the more probable. But why two, I wondered? One would obviously be Harwood's car, but I was at a loss to explain the other one.

This part of London, known as the Borough, was undergoing a huge redevelopment agenda giving rise to many properties left to decay in outward appearance but appreciate in value. I wondered if that was the decision behind its continued government use. The lack of a bell push came as no surprise, which along with a dreary sense of melancholia rekindled my dislike of every government that had reached the power they sought since my coming of age and how little had been spent on improvements anywhere. I knocked loudly, using the hooked end of the walking stick that in the cold of winter I found more and more obligatory owing to the pain in my foot. A light shone from the camera lens, beside the door, and a distorted voice addressed me asking who I was and to show some identification. I did, and as all was considered to be in order, a buzzer sounded and I was instructed to pull open the heavy door. It closed decidedly quicker than it opened.

I was standing in front of a thick glass transparent screen which crossed the whole width of the passageway. Beyond the screen stood five armed Ministry of Defence guards. To gain entry into this secure area, and subsequently the whole of the building, one had to pass through an electronic scanning machine. The place had changed!

I was in charge of an operation from here some eight or nine years earlier when Geoffrey Harwood was Director General at Group and when a Scotsman named Fraser Ughert was Chairman of The Joint Intelligence Committee, or JIC. I was working alongside one of the men I previously mentioned; Job. Being used to shortened names, Job and I christened what was a hovel in those days, The Hole. That was when the walls were covered in graffiti, bare bulbs were dangling from single wires giving off a cold dim light that cast murky shadows wherever its impalpable glare failed to reach, and rats could be heard scurrying around on the two floors above where we worked. That was then, when devices to examine what's under clothes did not exist, well not in places like The Hole. Now with its battleship grey painted walls and downlighters sunk into smooth plastered ceilings with the ornate coving restored to its Victorian beauty, I was waved through the twenty-first-century contraption into the guarded winding corridor. As I was thinking how wrong I was about quintessential government stinginess, I was addressed by another one of the guards.

“Good morning, Mr West, sir! They are waiting for you in the basement.” Who told this man my name? Does everyone I've passed by in here know it?

Totally confused by my recollections of the past and unable to focus on any actuality, my disjointed thoughts took hold.

Was I still out on the 'spy' trapped by some shit-arsed official Irish Republican Army terrorist group who were fishing for a name and threatening me with a gun? What to do next? Training, man! Training. If it's there, use it.

Reeling from the shock that my body and mind was in, I stepped backwards as though making room to swing a punch into his throat to disarm him, use his weapon first then my own and shoot my way out the front door. That's what I was taught. If caught, shoot them all and get away, half a foot or not. I felt for my holstered, service issued handgun, but it wasn't there.

Why am I unarmed? Was Adam so unusually matter-of-fact because he and Harwood were working together and I was in a trap of their making?

Perhaps it was remembering Geoffrey's name that switched my mind into logical thought. My gun was left the other side of the glass screen. Of course I had left it there, I'm on service premises, you fool. If the sentry thought I was insane his manner never reflected it. He carried on as usual as this garbled mind of mine speculated as to the they whom the guard referred to. Were they beer swilling Group disciples waiting to condemn me to an office on the back of a sausage roll party? Or a party of Group's finest interrogators wanting to know the names of my agents to pass on to the Irish desk at MI5's prestigious property on Millbank?

That's why I'm here without a sidearm. It's clocking-off time and playing the clown in appreciation of a ring-fenced, inflation-proof, armoured-lined pension. I couldn't be bothered to ask who the they, who waited for me, actually were.

I headed off along the well-worn stone floor in the direction of an under–the-staircase door which Job and I never opened but always smelled of damp when walking past it towards the noxious toilet. The staircase had gone. There was no door!

“I'm sorry, but there's nothing in that direction apart from the boiler and service areas. The lift that will take you to the basement is over here, sir,” my personable guard politely told me.

Feeling rather conspicuous by both the awkwardness of my movement and the raw naivety of my surroundings, I turned to see a door that simply blended into the side of a painted wall. The guard pushed it and as though anaesthetised I entered and pressed the Down marked button. Quite a few seconds later the door opened onto a far more spacious open area than where I'd left. What appeared to be bank after bank of droning electronic television screens greeted me. In front of these flickering machines sat lines of motionless headset-wearing figures. Some were quietly speaking into their microphones, others were staring straight ahead. On the furthest brick wall was yet another screen but unlike the others. This one took up the space of the whole wall, made up of smaller screens mounted together with the pictures alternating between seemingly unrelated sites then switching to one enormous location I'd seen on the smaller screens.

The place smelled of artificially warmed air with a whisper of the standard authorised civil-service disinfectant. It was neither pleasant nor unpleasant. It was just another impediment of an office job. From this huge central surveillance area I could see six opaque glass-door-protected corridors leading off in opposing directions. On the walls in between each spoke of this imaginary wheel were more television screens that kept switching from one scene to another. The two middle screens on each of the walls were showing overhead shots of a barren, sandy terrain devoid of movement other than a few birds on some expanse of water in the far distance, and the second, the inside of what appeared to be a fairly busy airport departure and arrivals lounge with people going to and fro carrying, or pulling, suitcases of various colours and sizes. I was gazing around, open-mouthed, when one of the glass doors opened with Geoffrey Harwood standing in the opening.

“West, how splendid and on the same day as invited! Welcome to the Hub, come through.” He turned and I followed like his pet dog waiting to be patted on the head and shown where to sit and beg. I didn't have long to wait. After a short walk along the softly lit passageway he turned left and entered a spartanly equipped large office that had a fresh appeal to it I had not experienced elsewhere.

“Take a seat,” he instructed as he walked behind the centrally positioned white marble topped desk supported either end by two matching rounded white pillars. In front of this monument to power were four soft white upholstered, wingback chairs. His seat, the Joseph seat, was a red and yellow leather wrap-around, tilting chair that he delighted in showing me how it effortlessly rolled across the floor.

“Better than the last time you were down here in the basement, eh?” he asked, spreading his arms wide to encapsulate the whole room.

“I never came down here, Geoffrey. I thought there were only rats living down here.” As I sat I thought better of that childish comment. “I had better stop making stupid, derisive statements like that, hadn't I?”

“Yes, I think that would be wise. Let's get down to future business and forget the past, shall we?” I nodded my agreement, but could not resist smirking as I moved my chair closer to his throne.

* * *

Until roughly a year ago my role within the secret service had demanded being on my own or part of a small team answerable to a single master. During the last eight years or so of my covert operational usefulness of being on the spy, Geoffrey was that master, but I hadn't always obeyed his instructions. Geoffrey was one of those who cared passionately about the correctness of, and suitability of a person to an assignment and the willingness to agree to his uniformity of thought. I didn't always do that. My regard centred on how the operation could be accomplished without my, or any other, unnecessary death.

He explained how the position I was being offered became vacant because of his promotion to the chair of permanent secretary to the Her Majesty's Minister for Home Affairs, becoming the one that the Director General of Group would have to ask before dropping a bomb on someone or the need to replace civil service toilet rolls. Not only does the Minister rarely know about those sort of things that I and my like do during his or her five years of elected tenure, he or she is dissolvable. Whereas Director Generals of intelligence departments are not. They are immutable, unless the lure of retirement beckons too strongly. Up until now it has been the order of things that Harwood, and those who went before him, and those who will follow, are the ones I must listen to and comply with, albeit in my own way. He removed his heavy framed spectacles, picked the sleep from the corner of each eye then gently massaged the bridge of his nose. He began as he replaced his glasses.

“A package arrived at the Russian Consulate in Notting Hill Gate last Monday. The Russians have him listed as an under assistant trade attaché, but unless Hampshire has fallen into the English Channel he's anything but. He certainly is not here to underwrite trade agreements. I want you in charge of finding out what he's up to and why, that is, Patrick.”

Instead of directing his gaze at the screens on the wall, he paused to look at me as if he was expecting me to say something. The lines of age were drawing their patterns across his tanned forehead and around his mouth and eyes, which were of a cloudy iris with dull hazel pupils. Despite the amount of time he spent in the gym the skin of his neck had creased as had his once taut but now heavy jowls. His voice and alert manner may have belied the truth of his years but his features could not deny the severity of it.

“We have him registered as a spook and an important one at that. Fyodor Nazarov Razin, a full lieutenant general with rows of medals of honour to his name. He is an old school Moscow Centre trained hood. His relatively narrow file records him under that name with the appendage of Raynor as his working code. As I said, he arrived at the consulate last Monday and has visited the Russian Trade Delegation on Highgate West Hill each day since. He goes nowhere else, Patrick. Which is strange to say the least. The Delegation premises have been on statutory watch for donkey's years and the Russians have known of the house opposite since the day we unloaded our camera equipment. There was no point in trying to keep it secret. It's now an automated site, permanently staffed by two lamp-burners from this department who spend all day drinking tea and eating my budget out of biscuits. The Russian General's travelling arrangements have not altered one iota. Tube to Charing Cross, an unhurried stroll to the Savoy for a late breakfast, then on to the Silver Vaults in Chancery Lane and when finished in there, a number 191 bus from High Holborn to the Swains Lane bus stop at Highgate. He then walks sedately up the hill to the Delegation. Likes a walk, does our Mr Raynor hyphen Razin, but not as far as the Karl Marx family's tomb in the cemetery. Strange race of people, the Russians.”

The 'wall' along the passageway to this office had appeared to be solid as we walked along the corridor but from where I was now seated I could make out the shadowy silhouettes of those I had seen in the Hub moving about their business; however, I could discern no sound. There was no obvious means to deaden the noise, no acoustics tiles lining the ceiling, walls or floor, nevertheless Harwood's usual gravel voice was softened and slightly faint. Normally, after this amount of time spent listening to him, I would have the start of a headache. I wasn't fearful of one just yet.

“We see him walk out of the Consulate and then in at the Delegation at Highgate, with not much in between. We know where he goes, but he caught us flat-footed on that first day. We had British Transport cameras in Notting Hill Station and Charing Cross to review, but neither were of any use. Crap stuff really. There was nobody on watch or notified at the Savoy in the Strand and no eyes inside the Silver Vaults at Chancery Lane. Apparently, he had the full English at the Savoy including that disgusting black pudding thing they serve. He washed it down with a pot of English breakfast tea. Not a drop of vodka to be seen. I have assigned cover to each of the locations now, but …” His voice died away and was replaced by a languid sigh. I said nothing, waiting whilst he gathered himself until at last he could continue.

“Even though this Raynor file dates back almost twenty years there's not a lot in it. Our first sighting is logged as being in Istanbul in 1983. Incidentally, before I get too far ahead of myself I have arranged for the Home Secretary to telephone us here to officially appoint you as Director General of Group.” He checked his ostentatious gold watch. “Any time in the next thirty minutes Oliver Nathan will declare you in charge of this place and the offices at Craig Court, Westminster, but not the offices at Greenwich. I have set something up there that I'm taking as the outside source to my new role. I'm unsure of its practicality to me and I may offload it in your direction at some point in the future. That's of course if it doesn't go with the new me, old chap.”

Another groan, followed by the removal of his spectacles, holding them up to the light this time to check the clarity. He waited until satisfied before going on.

“After you have accepted Oliver's gracious offer I will require you to move into the rooms on the two newly furnished floors above the entrance to this building.” He stopped speaking and glared me, daring me to argue. I didn't, thinking that my overused sofa at home might recover from the indentation in my absence.

“Your current apartment at Canary Wharf cannot be sufficiently secured for what your new status will require. Unless that is, the government buys the whole block,” he laughed. I didn't. “That's not going to happen, Patrick, no matter how long a face you pull.” At first I thought that remark was aimed at my lack of appreciation of his 'buying the whole block' comment, but I was wrong.

“No, in fact you may come out this considerably richer. I can recommend a man in the Acquisitions and Disposals sections of the Audit Office who knows absolutely everyone when it comes to buying and selling property.” Why am I not surprised at that, Geoffrey? I thought.

“That's for the future of course, for now upstairs is secure and the available rooms are perfectly habitable for a short period of time. A long way from the shabby mess they were in your day, I can positively assure you of that.” I swear those thick grey eyebrows rose a full inch as he emphasised his importance and his renowned faultless memory.

“Did you ever stay in those upstairs rooms, Geoffrey?” I asked scornfully.

“I did not, no. There has been no need for me to stay, but you do have a need, Ezra, so we will dispense with any implied disadvantages of the working-class boy that may be developing in that contemptuous mind of yours. From this day on you are one of us, old man; a giver of orders as you were in Ireland, only now on a far grander scale. You now have a size twelve shoe-print on the upper floors of HM management, got it?” He didn't wait for an answer, he was not used to people disagreeing. Onwards he ploughed.

“I will give you a cursory introduction to the facilities and staff on duty today. However, we are on the starting line so to speak, so you will have to familiarise yourself at a later date. As you've no doubt noticed, this is a state-of-the-art establishment. I instigated and designed it all and had it overhauled and updated in the spring. Your personal assistant will be the one to fully brief you on the toys and gadgets I've installed, but for now let me show you one. In here,” he was leaning over towards the lower drawer of the desk, “there is a push button. Dig around a bit and you'll find it. If I were to press it, like so, up pops a high-security safe from the floor. How's that!” Abracadabra, up popped a tall, grey polished safe beside his chair.

“It is unlocked by fingerprint identification and a key.” He threw it across the desk. “Your prints have been uploaded to system. Don't lose the key. It's the only one in the building. Copies are kept somewhere, but it would take a decade to find them. In the security operations room, the SOR, you passed it when you entered the building, there is another safe, a combination one. All documents, both into Group and away from Group, will be held in that safe, not the one here. This one is for the in-house, top security, Director General eyes only. Once a day, at varying times chosen by you, a courier will attend and papers being forwarded on will be handed over to him or her, and incoming mail distributed from that operations room safe by your duty officer. Your PA, along with the station and duty officers are cleared to A Grade classified level of documentation. All communication above classified and addressed directly to you as Director General Group will be in cipher and can only be read in the Pink Room.” My eyes lit up in surprise, expecting some flamingo-dressed girls as waitresses in there. I asked the question.

“Are the drinks served by scantily dressed maidens waiting to see to my every need in that room, Geoffrey?”

“Don't be silly and try not to think about sex every second of the day, dear boy. The room is not pink and in fact it's not a room. It's a secured cubicle behind a door off your dayroom beyond this office. Where was I?”

“Talking about paperwork, Geoffrey; as always—old boy.” A narrow-eyed stare was my punishment for that remark.

“All paperwork will be locked away when finished with in either your safe here, your PA's safe or the combination one in the security operations room. No casual behaviour with my precious files will be permitted.” He paused for breath. As his chest expanded he clasped his hands together behind his neck, rolling his eyes towards the ceiling as his head was pressed firmly backwards into his grip. It was from that position he next spoke.

“If you remember nothing else remember this, Patrick; I remain your boss. As permanent secretary to the Minister for Home Affairs it's my role to keep the wheels turning without disturbing the minister from his political duties. You report to me and only me. I will not tolerate the peddling of trivia. I am not one of the pettifogging civil servants that no doubt you will come across. Got it?”

A light was flashing on a multi-coloured console sunk into the surface of the desk. As I hadn't a clue as to the meaning of the word pettifogging, I was pleased for the interruption.

“Press it, dear boy. It will be Oliver. We are on speaker but nobody outside this office can hear.” I followed his instructions and as I listened to the Home Secretary I was subjected to the hostile Harwood stare. He was waiting to pounce as my final, “Thank you, sir,” left my lips.

“Both inside this address and controlled from this address, you have a variety of expensive equipment at your disposal, Patrick.” He looked concerned, as the furrows on his forehead grew deeper.

“Perhaps I should call you Joseph now, dear boy. Let's see how we go, shall we. Solomon, your station officer, can fill you in on the subtleties and capabilities of that equipment along with the open loop to GCHQ. Please, use it all prudently and whilst you're finding your feet ask either Solomon, or the duty officer Abraham if you're unsure about anything. Do not antagonise the Americans.” I interrupted him at this point.

“Was all the expensive gear made in America and leased from them, Geoffrey?” I tried to appear disdainful in dismissing my own country as the place of manufacture. It worked.

“Most certainly it was not. Made within the shores of GB and stamped with the Queen's monogram. English technology mixed with a bit of Scottish innovation, as I understand.”

“Fraser Ughert must be pleased then.” All I got was a wearisome hmm as a reply to my introduction of Fraser's name.

“Look after the personnel here and do not encourage them into your questionable habits. Your old name of Ezra has been returned to the database awaiting reassignment sometime in the future. That incidentally is now one of your duties.” Did I detect a slight tone of regret there and if so what for? I tried to prise him open.

“Strange day to pick for an appointment of this kind, Geoffrey; a Friday. I would have thought Monday would have been far more suitable. Perhaps an introduction to the place today with some walk-throughs by the station officer or his deputy over the weekend, and then I'd have more time to absorb all of it. Is there an urgency that you're not willing to divulge?”

“No, no urgency at all, dear boy. The truth is today's perfect for me. I'm not in town over the weekend and those plans of my appointment are set in concrete. There is no possibility of anything of mine being rearranged.” I had always found that if there was a need to repeat something then something else was being covered up.

“I am to sit at my new desk on Monday, so it was today or put it off until I had my feet well and truly under the table in the realms of Whitehall. It would be impossible for me to run both departments in tandem for the time it would take to be settled into my ministerial work.”

“Jolly hockey sticks for you then, and sod me, is that about the strength of it? You have certainly dropped me into the mire with this one. The whole of this place to assimilate with staff to get to know and a top-ranking Russian spy on the prowl. That's a lot to deal with first up. Anything else to unload on me, like the Russian fleet about to drop anchor in Portsmouth?” He smiled broadly and simply shook his head.

I had not had enough face-to-face meetings with Harwood to appreciate any change to his nature, but I did know that he hadn't always occupied a desk inside the security services of this country, in fact, my closing route into Group had not been dissimilar to his own.

* * *

In November 1989 Geoffrey Harwood, then aged forty-nine, was outside of a small town named Belcoo, near a crossing between the north and south of Ireland waiting for a car carrying the two members of the provisional IRA responsible for killing eleven Marine musicians at the Deal Army Barracks, in Kent on the mainland of Britain the previous month. He'd had a tip-off. They had been in hiding in the south, but unfortunately for them their brigade commander wanted them back to inflict more bloodshed upon the Protestants of the north. They were warily taking the circuitous route favoured by Irish terrorists returning from atrocities to the relative safety of Belfast. In those days, Geoffrey was in the same role as I had been; blending in with all around, on the spy and operating on his own.

The grey coloured Ford car was on time crossing the unguarded border and was carefully approaching Harwood's parked, battered Land Rover on the Sligo Road at a little after three o'clock on the autumn morning. As nobody could be seen inside the suspect vehicle, the driver of the Ford increased his speed with renewed confidence. Nevertheless, time spent in murdering others had taught them to keep their Uzi machine pistols close at hand.

Geoffrey was three hundred yards further on from his Land Rover, well hidden in a shallow trench he had prepared behind the stone pillar of a gateway leading into a field used by grazing cattle. When the car was almost on top of him he powerfully threw a newly designed tyre shredder across the carriageway, causing all four tyres of the Ford to burst and the car to slam heavily into a ditch twenty yards on. On reaching the vehicle Harwood withdrew the two syringes of the toxic Botulinum poison from the small bag he carried. It was the standard service issue toxin in that day and age. Both syringes were emptied into the IRA murderers whose heads were embedded into the broken windscreen. Next, he carefully unscrewed the caps of two metallic tubes that remained in his holdall until they made an audible click. These he laid side by side inside his bag on the rear seat of Ford. He sprinted back to his Land Rover before the pale greenish-yellow liquid slowly emerged from one. As he drove hastily away from the scene towards Belcoo, another car approached on the same side of the road as the crashed Ford. The colourless gas from his second phial mixed with the coloured liquid at the precise time that extra car stopped beside the crashed Ford. There was nothing left of either vehicle and nothing recognisable left of the bodies inside the Ford, but parts of the two bodies from the other car were identifiable. One was a woman of twenty-four years and the other, a child of five.

The number of times Harwood visited the surgeons' clinic was not recorded in his personal file nor was there any medical prognosis, but Adam, in one of his 'need to gossip moments', had declared that the incident had led Geoffrey to be obsessed with detail.

'Before all that happened he was never interested in the specifics of how an operation was to be undertaken. He just wanted the who and the where and leave the rest up to him, but not now he's been shunted home to Group and placed in charge. When he was out on the streets he was good. But now it's all numbers to him. Even the number of paperclips needed before Branch has finished with a folder is itemised. He's a pain in the arse, Ezra. They have a name for it. Obsessive compulsory personality disorder, OCPD. His is the obsession with perfection.'

If Adam had my security clearance, and read of the circumstances of Harwood's experience in Ireland, he might have looked at Geoffrey's subsequent behaviour less critically, but, then again, I never came across a side of Adam's nature anything but confrontational and at the end of the day does any assassin give a toss about what a psychiatrist called a surgeon thinks of them, because I certainly didn't.

* * *

My attempt to extract more from Geoffrey on the timing of this appointment had not worked; his renowned reputation for stubbornness was well earned.

“As you are Group's official Biblical Joseph, Patrick, I think it's time to change seats.” With that royal pronouncement he rose from behind the multi-functional desk and with another melodramatic sweeping gesture offered the chair to me. I remained where I was.

“Why so much interest in this Russian going between two points that are well known to us, Geoffrey? Surely if there was anything of interest he would be going somewhere we do not know of? Can't a detail out of Faction, at MI5 do their job and simply follow and report on him?” He stared at me as would a father at his dull-witted child.

“No, I think not and I wonder about your powers of assimilation, dear boy. This one is a big fish swimming in our pool, Joseph. Note the word—our. He would spot a follower and what's more, expect one. He's fresh out of Syria with a hands-off sign plastered on him by the Yanks. Oliver doesn't like that, nor do I. Oliver wants it treated by Group before other departments become too deeply involved, i.e. we do not want 5 and their guns looking at our Raynor. Okay?”

His fingers started tapping the top of the desk where he stood with his eyes flashing towards that watch of his. He seemed to be in a hurry, but as I only had old rugby games to watch I didn't move.

“If you're not feeling in a symbolic take-over mode, Joseph, let's involve your man Solomon and have a quick breakdown on what's going on around the world.” Another theatrical wave directed towards the door. I still wasn't budging.

“At this stage, Geoffrey, I have no wish to know who Solomon may be, and I'm not moving anywhere until I know why this Razin, or Raynor, is so special that he warrants me giving up my sofa and my televised sport.”

“It is simple, dear boy, look upon it as one more job for Queen and country that requires your deft hand of experience. Nothing more than that, I can assure you. You are the exact man for the work. After it's finished you can triumphantly pat yourself on the back for your outstanding efforts in Ireland and if you wish go home.” He had moved towards the office door and opened it ajar, letting in the sounds from the Hub. His voice became more distinct and louder as his fidgeting increased.

“Originally, I was instructed by those above to invite you to a slap-up meal to celebrate the highly complimentary remarks coming their way from the Home Office after the Sinn Féin member Donald Donaldson opened up fully to the Northern Ireland enquiry. Using him in the way you did was a pure work of genius. He will be suitably taken care of when he's finished delivering all that's been siphoned away. The talks in Belfast are going well, with the concessions coming along just fine. I'll tell you the truth, Joseph.” He held on to the long chrome door handle, still keeping it ajar.

“When your name was first put forward I was against promoting you to Controlling Officer, Ireland, but I must give credit where it is due. I had you marked down as nothing more than a meat and potato street plod. A good plod I grant you, but only as good as the next Irish bullet. Despite my misgivings I have to bow to your commendable action in the CO Ireland seat.” Another pause. His silence coincided with some sort of isometric exercise pushing clenched fists into alternating hands, thereby leaving the door to softly close, accompanied by an electronic clicking of the lock to the safe before it retracted into the floor. He passed no comment on his toys.

“Partial retirement packages had been settled upon, dear boy. Withdrawal from the line with a peaceful few years ahead overseeing some NATO dispatches, or a seat at the American desk at Vauxhall and then it goes pear-shaped as they say. Up pops one of old Fraser Ughert's pet poodles. A certain Armenian German chappie by the name of Henry Mayler. Who else other than you could I appoint as Director General at Group at this point in time to look after him?” He looked at me for an answer, or perhaps some sign of gratitude. When only a quizzical look was forthcoming, he carried on.

“The arrival of the Russian package is a pain in the backside I'll grant you, but he comes second to Fraser's operative. Mayler is a German with strong Armenian roots. Top drawer material and once again exclusively ours, or more to the point—Ughert's. Mayler is who we are off to see when we can finish with the formalities here.”

I butted in. “Henry, Geoffrey? Sounds more English or French than German. And he's a long way from Armenia. Did he lose his way?”

“Complicated situation and I'm only too pleased to confess to my incomprehension of it all. You, being Ughert's pseudo son, or at least close relative can put his mind to it and unlock the secrets. Case notes are in your floor safe. Most of the documentation on Razin is in here.” He went to open the top drawer of the shiny chrome filing cabinet that stood alone against the wall by the doorway opposite the desk. The drawer wouldn't open.