The Cilla Rose Affair (3 page)

“Dropped off the face of the earth, has she?”

“Lesley, if you’re out there, call Wally. Reverse the charges.”

“Thank you very much. We’ve been chatting with Evan Harris, ladies and gentlemen, late of
Spy Squad
, now a resident of London while he films
Bill and Ben
for British TV. We’ll be back in a moment.”

Evan stopped the tape as the telephone in the corner began to ring. He reached across the chesterfield to answer it.

“Nicholas,” he said. “Have you managed to locate my son for me?”

Sunday, 18 August 1991

Ian rolled off the bed as the keys clanked in the lock. A shaft of light blazed into the cell. There were five men, and they were wearing the makeshift uniforms of General Pinkerton’s conscripted foot soldiers.

“You—up—now!” The one doing the barking reinforced his orders with a wave of his AK-47.

Warily, Ian got to his feet. “Where are we going?”

“No questions, stinking CIA pig dog. You move now!”

They pushed him outside, and in the sudden glare of the sun, Ian saw what he had dreaded: the limp body of Colonel Mobambo, surrounded by the bodies of his loyal guards, among them the two Africans and the Australian mercenary.

“Why do this?” he said, hurling the question over his shoulder as he was marched across the sandy courtyard. “I’m more valuable to you alive. Use me—negotiate—”

“Less trouble to shoot you,” one of the soldiers replied, jabbing him with the gun, driving him into the far corner of the yard and standing him with his back to the wall.

No blindfold. No last words. Just his hands cuffed behind his back, and Pinkerton’s army, consolidating their power, eliminating witnesses. Ian fought hard against the feeling of unreality that was rapidly dropping down over him, the sense of utter disbelief—
this can’t be happening to me
—psychic denial, it was called by the professionals: the protective mental response that removed you from the abrupt shock of the truth. He needed to be alert, to be aware of an opportunity to escape—any chance he could grab. Hanging onto his thumb, he squeezed it, forcing his mind into furious reconnaissance.

A command was issued. Ian’s eyes flew around the compound.

Faintly, behind him and in the distance, he heard the wind-beating chop of a helicopter. Military manoeuvres. Land-sea surveillance.

There was a second command, and Ian got ready to run, his adrenalin surging.

The third command was rendered inaudible by a great roar and a hurricane of sand and wind. It was a Sea King, amphibious and military green, carrying no identification, its decals, flags and numbers spray-painted over in camouflage brown.

It was coming in.

There was chaos in the compound. Clouds of dust stormed through the yard. The guards dropped their rifles, breaking rank, scattering. Ian hit the ground.

The blizzard pitted grit into his eyes and clogged his nose and mouth with sand. The thunder of the engines deafened him. There were other noises, over his head, indistinct—the blurt of automatic gunfire—

A hand grappled Ian’s shoulder and he fought back instinctively, twisting over and kicking his assailant away. The hand responded with a swift, tight-fisted clout to the side of his head, stunning him. He was hauled to his feet and dragged across the yard to the open door of the Sea King and pitched inside, roughly. And when at last he was fully conscious again, the helicopter was soaring skyward. The soldiers were shooting at him from the ground, but they were rapidly dropping out of range.

Sprawled on his stomach on the pitching floor, his head hurting severely, his hands still chained behind his back, Ian tried to focus on the feet of the man who had struck him and dragged him through the whirlwind chaos, to safety.

The zippered brown suede boots were incongruous, somehow, with the hard-edged precision of the military skylift.

“Your sense of timing,” he said, digging his chin into the floor, “as usual…is impeccable.”

“Who do you think rang up General Pinkerton and told him you were a spy?”

Ian was incredulous. “I was very nearly shot!”

“Sorry, old son, I need you back in London. Had to get you outside one way or another.”

Skilled fingers were attempting to unlock the manacles around his wrists.

“Been knocking you about a bit, have they?”

“Knocking’s not the word for it. Where’d you get the Sea King?”

“Stole it.”

Ian closed his eyes.

“Well, thanks for the lift, anyway.”

“Not at all,” his father replied, humorously.

In London, hours later, Ian Fleming Harris twisted the taps off and sank down into the warm bathwater, until only his nose was poking out, like the periscope of a submarine, and he could hear his heart thudding in his ears. Action, glamour and intrigue—that was the image Hollywood liked to project, the idea the scriptwriters inked contracts over.

The intrigue existed, but in much smaller servings than were generally advertised, and the action tended to be coupled—as he had so recently experienced—with a clear element of sheer unadulterated terror. And as for the glamour…

He surfaced, and explored the little wicker basket full of soaps and shampoos that had been left on the counter next to the sink. His in-tray at work in Vancouver was a permanent study in bureaucratic clutter: unclassified manuals and notebooks, boxes of floppy disks for his PC, brochures for scuba holidays in the Caribbean. Unread bulletins. Forms he should have filled out months earlier, but hadn’t: One I.A.P.—Injured, Absent, Paid. One AS9096: Claim for Lost Personal Equipment. One SP123: Field Items Expended. One SA43: Transportation Allowance, please include copies of all airline tickets, car rental vouchers, etc. One SQ98: Work Related Expenses, fill out in triplicate, return one copy to Accounting for reimbursement, retain second and third copies on file, file third copy with Department Head when reimbursement received. He could hardly wait for the next installment, due upon his return from London.

Unwrapping a hotel-sized bar of designer soap, he aimed the paper over the side of the bath and into a plastic bin beside the toilet.

He hated London. London smelled. The smell got into your hair. It wrapped itself around you like a grimy gauze bandage and it turned a perfectly decent English summer into a warm, brown, humid stench.

London smelled, and London was not beautiful—as Vancouver was, with its backdrop of mountains and its seascapes and its dusky, Toni Onley sunsets. London was magnificent only on clear summer nights, and even then, you had to be standing at a particular point on the curve of the river, and the floodlights had to be on.

He stopped, and raised his head. What was that?

A noise in the hallway outside—a tiny tapping on his door.

Chambermaid?

No…it was five o’clock in the afternoon.

Far too late to be making beds and certainly too early to be turning them down.

And he hadn’t ordered room service.

Silently, he slipped out of the tub, flipped a towel off the heated rack and, dripping wet, padded out to investigate.

The deadbolt was totally turned, the door was partway open, and the resourceful individual on the other side was having a go at the inside chain. Incredulously, Ian watched. He was being burglarized. Some fool was actually trying to break into his room.

He considered calling the front desk and letting the hotel’s own security people look after it. And then, he had a thought.

“Is that you?” he inquired.

“No,” said his father.

Ian went back to his bath.

Some minutes later, having successfully challenged both lock and chain, Evan ambled past the open bathroom door, juggling cardboard containers of carry-out Chinese with plastic shopping bags from Marks and Spencer and Selfridges and a small, portable VCR.

Ian emptied the tub and, massaging his injured shoulder, peered into the mirror over the sink. A headful of bedraggled red hair, an acute African sunburn, assorted bruises and lacerations: he looked like a manic-depressive lobster. Discarding his towel, he eased on the white terrycloth robe the hotel had thoughtfully provided on the doorhook, and went out to see what his father had brought. Arranged on top of the dressing table were assorted white cartons of Chinese take-away: Almond Chicken and Beef Chow Mein, Sweet and Sour Prawns, Egg Rolls.

“Tempting your gallbladder?” he inquired, peering into the box containing the prawns, “or testing it?”

“A little of both, I suspect,” Evan replied, producing two pairs of paper-wrapped chopsticks from the breast pocket of his windbreaker and setting out the contents of the shopping bags on the bed: new clothes for Ian, a bundle of typewritten yellow pages. He glanced at a large, dark bruise that was sulking its way down his son’s right leg. “Did you want me to ring for the medics?”

“No thanks. I’ve met the doctor you people keep on call in London. I’d rather go without.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’ll live,” Ian said, emphatically, picking up the yellow papers. “What are these?”

“Yuri Gregchenko’s famous last words.” Evan set up the VCR while his son perched on the edge of the dressing table, paging through the manuscript. On the television, a special news bulletin announcing unfolding political developments in Moscow caused the elder Harris to pause.

“The
Cilla Rose
,” Ian said, stopping at the page his father had marked with a red paperclip.

Evan was still watching the news. “MI5 was suspicious of her from the moment Seasound went on the air. The Soviets were making regular submarine patrols of the area—and Seasound appeared to be anchored in a particularly advantageous position.”

“So they suspected radio transmissions, that sort of thing.”

“That sort of thing, yes. For a pirate station, they were exceptionally well-funded. They had a fan club, T-shirts, window stickers, high profile advertising. They published their own monthly magazine and sponsored dances in clubs around the country. There was the question of ownership, as well: offshore interests, with somewhat murky ties to the Soviet Union. The actual Seasound business office was in Romilly Square, near Cambridge Circus.”

“What about the DJ’s?”

“All of them were under surveillance.”

“Simon Darrow included…?”

“Simon Darrow along with the rest of them. We never found anything. They were either innocent…or very careful.”

“MI5 had an agent in place…?”

“Mark Braden,” Evan said. “Whatever information he was able to gather was dropped off when he had shore leave, every third week. I was his contact. We used a drop site in Covent Garden.”

“What’s happening in Moscow?” Ian asked, at last, acknowledging the television.

“Gorbachev’s been isolated at his dacha in the Crimea. They appear to be staging a coup.”

“Interesting,” Ian said, thoughtfully.

He turned his attention to the food cartons. “Your assignment with Seasound wasn’t really the bread and butter of Canadian Intelligence,” he said, impaling his chopstick upon a battered prawn. “How did you happen to be involved?”

“It was the heyday of co-operation among friends and relations, old son. The Brits were rife with compromised agents. I was in London, and I was available.”

Evan had finished installing the VCR, and a tape. Wally Green replaced CNN on the television screen, wearing a polka-dot tie and striped waistcoat, conducting an unseen orchestra while his guest of the week took a seat on the raised dais.

“Last Saturday,” Evan supplied. “Simon Darrow.”

Ian looked on with interest at the darling of mid-morning radio listeners, the hero of the housewives. Darrow was a little younger than his father, his hair streaked with grey, his face—the face of rock music programs on television in the Seventies, celebrity contests and chat shows in the Eighties, and now, in the early Nineties, multimedia adverts for private health schemes and crisis hotline numbers—deeply tanned.

“You’re a London kid,” Wally Green said, hushing his audience with a politely raised hand.

“I am indeed,” Darrow replied, modestly.

“And you’ve told me in the past—because we are very great friends, aren’t we, Simon—that you fell into radio in the 1960’s quite by accident.”

“That’s right, Wally. I was knocking about the clubs and dance halls, and one night when I was DJ’ing at the Wimbledon Palais, someone from Seasound Radio came round to listen. I was 23.”

“And the rest, as they say, is history. Now a lot of you are bound to remember this, but for the benefit of you young things out there—”

There was a rousing cheer from the older women in the audience.

“—I’ll just take this moment to jog your memories. Before 1964, pop radio didn’t exist in Britain, did it, Simon?”

“Indeed it did not,” Darrow replied. “There was Luxembourg, of course, which was basically backed by the record companies who leased airtime. And there was the BBC Light Programme. Pop music was confined to a couple of hours on weekends. Even the Beatles had trouble getting airplay in the beginning.”

“And what happened to change all that, Simon?”

“A revolution,” Darrow grinned. “Pirate radio stations operating from ships and towers just outside territorial waters. Radio Caroline was the first. Easter Sunday, 1964, I think it was. Three weeks after Caroline signed on, she had seven million listeners. In May, Radio Atlanta went on the air—the two ships merged a few months after that and Caroline sailed up to the Isle of Man and became Caroline North, and Atlanta was Caroline South. After that…” He spread his hands. “It was open piracy on the high seas. Invicta, King, Essex, London, 270, 390…”

“And Seasound,” Wally Green reminded him.

“And Seasound,” Darrow confirmed. “The GPO, which controlled communications at that time, began a campaign to ban off-shore commercial radio, but the law—the Marine Broadcasting Offences Bill—wasn’t introduced until the summer of 1966, and even then, it didn’t take effect for another year. And by that time, of course, the BBC had got into the act. Radio One went on the air in September, 1967, and they had Tony Blackburn doing the honours. He was a pirate, too, if you’ll recall, Wally—he’d been at Radio London.”