Understrike (2 page)
Miss Priscilla Braddock-Fairchild pulled on her midnight-blue lace briefs and ran her thumbs around the inside of the elastic to settle them firmly above her decorative hips. Sitting on the edge of the bunk she began to slide her stockings—Ballito Laceline—over neat calves and miraculous thighs. She looked down at Boysie who was far away, deep in unconscious Freudian exercises. The cabin walls shuddered to the steady thud of the ship’s great single reduction geared turbines.
“
Wake up, Boysie,” whispered Miss Priscilla Braddock-Fairchild, bending over him and putting her lips close to his ear. “Wake up. I’ve got to get back to my own cabin. It’s six o’clock.” Boysie snuggled deeper into the pillow and groaned.
“
Boysie, will you wake up!”
He
opened one eye. The half-vision, bed’s-eye-view of Miss Braddock-Fairchild thus provided caused him to snap up his other eyelid and shift his position with a sensual squirm.
“
Har-Har!” gurgled Boysie Oakes lasciviously. “Gather round, me fine buckos.”
“
Oh no you don’t. I’m sneaking back to my own cabin, darling. We dock at three and I’ve got to look reasonably wide awake when Daddy meets me.” She was about to lift the gold evening sheath dress—discarded some four hours previously over her jungle of jet hair. Boysie sighed as though resigned to the situation:
“
So be it,” he said, casually reaching out to a point just behind her tight knee.
An
hour later, Miss Braddock-Fairchild dressed again and left the cabin. Boysie, now wide awake, lay back with hands laced behind his head, and revelled in the memory of Priscilla. They had met—one of those magnetic shipboard attractions—in the Caribbean Room, on the liner’s first night out from Southampton five days before. She was a sultry, fine example of deflowered English maidenhood, and Boysie had reacted with the traditional ritualistic aplomb of the British man-about-ship. There had been martinis, gin and dancing; Bingo, smooching on the boat deck; more martinis—to the accompaniment of Sam Hawkins and his Trio in the Mermaid Bar—more gin, more dancing and, inevitably, by the second night, a delirious consummation—in Cabin B236: on the starboard side.
Boysie
was content. Since he had returned from his last leave—to find that the Department of Special Security no longer required his services as their liquidating agent—the gigantic neuroses, which had for so long been the background pattern to his life, were gradually being sifted from the somewhat tangled skein of his personality. Mostyn, the Second-in-Command, hinted at possible dark assignments for the future; but, until now, Boysie had merely been entrusted with a handful of simple courier jobs. True, these had not always gone as smoothly as he would have liked. There was the case of the rocket fuel formula which had escaped his memory, necessitating an extra return journey to Berlin; and the terrible trouble over the NATO maps which he had inadvertently left in the lavatory of that little bistro opposite the Gare du Nord. Still, it was all in the game, thought Boysie. He wasn’t the first agent to drop a ghoolie and, to be fair, both the Chief and Mostyn had been understanding.
Now,
there would be one night in New York, to deliver new code corrections—slammed into his mind during a four-hour stint with Mostyn—then back on board the
Elizabeth
for the return trip. There would certainly be a counterpart to Miss Braddock-Fairchild on the eastward journey. Life was good; the
Elizabeth
was ploughing steadily towards the Ambrose lightship and the mouth of the Hudson.
But
at this precise moment, while Boysie was ruminating on his good fortune, a cablegram was being received in the ship’s radio room. The cablegram was addressed to Mr Brian Oakes and was, to say the least, a harbinger of chaos.
*
The cablegram originated from the tall drab building, just off Whitehall, which served as clearing house and central headquarters for Special Security. There, at about three-thirty on the previous afternoon, the Chief, having returned from a long and somewhat bibulous luncheon with a former Defence Minister at the
Athenaeum
, paced his office in a state of supreme irritation. Steady pacing was the Chief’s favourite, and automatic, method for cooling fury; a habit devised long long ago when serving on the bridges of several of England’s more indomitable warships.
The
Chief had been striding—and regularly prodding at the direct-call bell which connected with Mostyn’s office—for about five minutes before his Second-in-Command, short and suave as a high-class con man, arrived through the door at speed.
“
You wanted me, sir?” Mostyn’s voice rarely strayed from the smooth almost seductive tone of friendly menace.
“
No, Mostyn. I’m just strengthenin’ me bloody finger muscles for the Olympic Tiddlywinks Team.”
“
Very healthy exercise I’m told, sir.” Mostyn usually knew just how far he could go with the Chief, but he quickly realised that the crusty old man was not in the jesting vein today.
“
Where in the name of the Great Whore of Maida Vale have you been?” The strange oath came out coldly, lacking the warmth of true rage.
Mostyn
had, in fact, been dallying with a charming member of the Royal Opera House chorus over a lunch of delicious subtlety at the
Tiberio
. He could normally handle the Chief when the mood was black. But this, he realised, was not just a black mood. It was a horrible combination of alcohol and Trouble—with a capital and tremolo T.
“
Something up, sir?” His voice was level, but a tincture of concern plopped uneasily into the back of his mind. The Chief stopped pacing and faced Mostyn.
“
Something up?” He repeated Mostyn’s words as though they had been spoken in a dead language. It was unfortunate that his secretary chose that moment to tap at the door and enter with the afternoon tea tray.
“
Your tea, sir.”
The
Chief’s reply was not so much obscene as magnificently unprintable. In an admirable speech of some forty words he outlined half-a-dozen new, and hitherto untried, diversions which he suggested his secretary might try with teacup, saucer and three different brands of tea—including his own favourite Choice Rich Assam.
The
secretary—a blonde whose bombshell had exploded several years previously—had been subjected to many such humiliating moments during her service with the top brass of Special Security. She stood passively holding the tray until the Chief stopped speaking.
“
Here, or my office?” she asked, unsmiling.
“
Go to hell!” said the Chief.
“
Very good, sir.”
The
Chief made a mental note to buy her a dozen pairs of nylons in the morning.
In
the silence which followed the secretary’s departure Mostyn looked down at his elegantly-shod feet and noticed that there was a graze in the centre of the buffalo-hide toe cap of his left shoe. The Chief went over to the window and stared out at the steady stream of June rain which hissed upon London.
“
What seems to be the matter, Chief?” Mostyn was the first to speak.
The
Chief answered without turning from the window.
“
Dudley’s dead.”
Mostyn
opened his mouth, but no words came. The news had the surprise effect of an unexpected punch above the heart. For years he had known and liked Dudley—their Field Security Expert with the US High Command in Washington. In the old days they had worked together. Mostyn’s stomach contracted. Dudley was about his age. Strange that, in a business where life was not particularly expensive, the death of a contemporary could give you that dreadful chill intimation of your own mortality.
“
It’s a bastard.” The Chief’s voice was unusually soft. Dudley had been one of his particular favourites.
Mostyn
took a deep breath: “Accident or ...?”
“
Oh, accident.” The Chief waved away any thought of underground enemy action. “Car smash—‘automobile wreck’ the long-winded twits called it. On Route 66 last night. He was on his way to San Diego. That’s our stinkin’ problem.”
“
San Diego?”
“
San Diego. Gateway to Mexico. Home of the United States Pacific Fleet.” The Chief turned and rested his fat buttocks against the window-sill. “And next week—in seven days’ time—that is where they will be doin’ the firin’ trails with
Playboy
.”
“
Oh!” Mostyn began to realise the implications.
“
Yes. Bloody oh! Brand spankin’ new atomic submarine, launchin’ platform for the ... the ...” He paused, his mind feeling its way gingerly through a layer of alcohol. “... the ... what’s the name of the blasted weapon?”
“
The
Trepholite
.”
“
The Trephol-bloody-ite. Daft bleedin’ name to give a missile.”
“
Biggest sea-to-ground-sea-to-air-sea-to-sea bang yet,” murmured Mostyn: a simple statement of fact.
“
So the damn Yanks say. Believe it when I see it.” The Chief coughed, looked up and added hastily: “Not that I will be able to damn well see it. Can’t possibly get away. Realise that, don’t you?” His voice pleaded for Mostyn’s confirmation of this last remark. The Chief did not like the United States, and those citizens of the United States who were forced into occasional contact with the Chief did not take well to him.
“
Good gracious, no, sir. You can’t possibly go,” drawled the Second-in-Command, his voice taking on the calm velvet of reassurance. There was a three beats’ silence.
“
Spot of whisky?” said the Chief, his face settling into a satisfied smirk.
“
Not at the moment, sir. Thanks all the same.” Mostyn could have used a quart of whisky, but when the Chief was as tricky as this, it was better to keep the brain reasonably agile.
The
Chief had the drinks cupboard—high behind his desk—half open. Mostyn hesitated for about five seconds after refusing the proferred spirits. Then, very quietly, with a sprinkle of grated cheese round the larynx, “I might add, sir, that I cannot go either. Far too much on the boil in Europe.”
“
Understood, me dear chap.” The Chief was changing his tactics. “Quite understood. Wouldn’t expect to turf you out of London at this time of the year—‘cept for something of Top import. Sure you won’t have a snort?” He was slopping himself a large Chivas Regal.
“
Quite sure.” Mostyn shut his mouth firmly in a tight smile on the word ‘sure’.
“
Trouble is,” said the Chief dropping into his swivel chair, and taking a long pull at his drink, “trouble is, who, by all the holy monks of great renown, is going to go?”
“
Who indeed?” said Mostyn benignly.
The
Chief sighed. “There’s the bleedin’ rub, as the Bard has it. Got to be an experienced operational officer, F05: that’s essential—treaty instructions and all that cock.” There was another short pause. Mostyn felt an aura of danger pass between them. The Chief looked up at him from under those great brows—once the scourge of many a gunroom. “Took the liberty of checkin’ your operational list, old man. Bit thin on the ground, aren’t you?”
“
Suppose we are, sir. But the new continual surveillance on Cabinet Ministers—since
Operation
Keelroll
—takes a fair slice of my boys... .”
“
I’m not criticisin’.” The Chief cut in with the right hand raised pontifically and voice spiked with a pipette load of acid. They looked at one another, the space between throbbing a checkmate atmosphere.
At
last Mostyn found himself being stared out. He shifted his gaze back to the blemish on his buffalo-hide. A minute slid by unseen and unheard.
“
There is just one possibility ...” he began; then, with a sharp and definitive change of mind, continued, “No! No! No! No, that wouldn’t really do.”
He
started to pace up and down: an effete fascimile of his superior. The Chief was getting irritated again; his clenched fist pounding the desk top to a slow steady rhythm.
“
Come on, Mostyn. What’s on your mind? We’re pushed, laddie, and the old grey matter’s not functioning as smoothly as it might.” He swallowed the remainder of his whisky in an enormous gulp and leaned over the desk. “If we do not have someone on the Official Observer’s list for next week, the Ministry might start askin’ questions about our strength. Maybe the Treasury will have a go as well. Think where that could land us.”
Mostyn
thought—quickly. The idea of the Treasury poking their serrated gold beaks into the internal finances of the Department was enough to bring even Mostyn heavily up against the true heart of the matter. He took a deep breath and began to blurt, somewhat pompously:
