“The Flight Line Supervisor apologises for the delay, sir. There was a problem of some kind loading the Marines’ heavy equipment into the hold.
Julian Christopher hadn’t felt it necessary to take his own security detachment with him; the Prime Minister had put his foot down. B Platoon, 3rd Battalion, 43 Commando equipped with enough guns and ammunition to re-enact a World War Two night time hit and run raid on the Atlantic Wall would be accompanying him to Malta.
He reached down to collect the battered attaché case containing his orders, the Queens’s graciously sympathetic and unambiguous hand-written letter to Hugh Staveley-Pope recalling him to England, and a sheaf of briefing papers.
Lieutenant Alan Hannay got there before him and clutched the case.
“Let me, sir.” The younger man hesitated, then launched on: “Will you be all right getting up the steps to the aircraft, sir? It is very wet and windy out there?”
Julian Christopher struggled to hold down a guffaw of genuine amusement.
“Lieutenant,” he murmured quietly, “I’ve raced an America’s Cup yacht in a force ten wind, I survived the old Prince of Wales’s parties in the twenties, I survived having my ship torpedoed under me in the Second War, the Yanks couldn’t get me sacked when I was in the Pacific, and a few days ago a castle fell on me. I think I’ll live through walking up a few steps in the rain,” he fixed the younger man with a mildly admonishing severity, “don’t you?”
“Oh, yes, rather, sir,” the youngster hastily agreed.
Chapter 29
Major Denzil Williams, head of Station of SIS on the Rock wore the dark frown of a man whose pet parrot had just escaped from the aviary. He glared at the two lovers sitting side by side on the hospital cot in the white-washed underground room. Women were strange creatures. He’d never — not in a million years — expected Clara Pullman to forgive Arkady Pavlovich Rykov. The man had lied to her about everything and spent most of the last year trying to get her killed. She’d been angry, upset, wounded but somehow, he didn’t begin to know how, she’d got over that and forgiven the duplicitous, scheming and lethally dangerous KGB Colonel. Now the pair of them sat together like two peas out of a pod although since he’d arrived they’d stopped holding hands. That was a relief, at least.
Arkady Pavlovich Rykov, formerly of the First Chief Directorate of the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, looked a mess. X-rays had identified undisplaced fractures to his swollen lower left jaw, three ribs and to bones in his right hand. One of his eyes was still virtually closed by swelling and bruising and beneath the hospital gown his torso and abdomen were half covered in purple-black contusions and livid, bone deep welts.
The SIS Station Chief still regretted calling off the beating so soon. But Clara Pullman had been beside herself and he hated seeing a comely woman crying, so he’d blown the whistle a second time and the boys had, eventually, stopped what they were doing. He was getting soft in his old age! If he’d learned anything in his career in SIS it was that some people were simply better off dead. Especially, people like Arkady Pavlovich Rykov. Never mind, what was done was done. The chaps with the over-sized brains in Cheltenham had spoken and bad things happened to people who didn’t obey orders.
Dammit!
If he’d let the boys go about their work another few seconds he wouldn’t have to be eating humble pie now. He was sorely tempted to drag things out, make a meal of carrying out his new orders but that would have been churlish. Major Denzil Williams was many things; churlish was not one of them. His hatred of Arkady Pavlovich Rykov was real, visceral and wasn’t about to go away any time soon. The man was responsible for the death of too many good men and the news that he’d been in the American’s pockets for several years before the October War rubbed salt into old and very painful wounds. But orders were orders.
Denzil Williams’s mood was not enhanced by the nagging certainty that it was only a matter of time before some trigger happy Falangist decided to start lobbing artillery rounds into the tightly packed streets of the colony. The BBC had reported that large fires were still burning in Santander, Cadiz and on the outskirts of Madrid, where it was believed an airfield, a supply depot and several road and rail bridges had been attacked. Spanish radio was playing patriotic music and a period of seven days national mourning had been declared.
When he’d heard about an airfield near Madrid being hit, Denzil Williams had paused for thought. The only airfield anywhere near the Spanish capital was Madrid Airport, which made him wonder what else the RAF had targeted within the Iberian hinterland.
“Something has happened?” Arkady Rykov observed.
“The Navy shelled Cadiz and Santander. We think a Spanish destroyer was sunk in Cadiz Roads. At the same time the bombardment was going on the RAF was ‘demonstrating’ over Madrid. Right now we’re waiting for the Dagoes to retaliate.”
“Oh, I see.” The former KGB Colonel’s English was lightly accented with hints of his Slavic mother tongue. He found it pleasurable not to be having to mind — literally speaking — his Ps and Qs; although he would have preferred to have reached this juncture without being beaten to a pulp in the process. “Your attack on the fascists was without warning?”
Denzil Williams nodded.
“The bully has had his fingers burned and a sharp kick administered to his hind quarters,” the man on the bed went on. He’d never really been a citizen of the Soviet Union in his head. He’d always remained a Russian, perversely proud of his Muscovite routes. He’d been born in Tulskaya near the banks of the Moskva River. As a child he’d been able to make out the spires of the Kremlin from the window of his family’s fourth floor apartment. His childhood had been as miserable as any of his peers, years of hunger and fear punctuated with savagely cold winters that killed the old and the weak and sick even more effectively than the NKVD’s death squads. He’d become an apparatchik to survive and discovered a brutal, cynical world in which he’d eventually become hunter rather than prey until finally, his Achilles heel had tripped him up. The one thing a man in his position could not afford was a conscience. “Before Generalissimo Franco retaliates he will do what all dictators of his kind do,” he decided. “He will blame his subordinates for not warning him of the consequences of his actions. He will punish the innocent, rage a while, and probably wet himself in his panic. All this he will be doing from the deepest underground bunker in Spain. Also,” he grinned crookedly, an act that sent a splinter of red hot pain across his face, “we might have wounded him more deeply than we know.”
The Head of Station of SIS in Gibraltar grunted.
“Perhaps. Anyway, the people in England want to ‘debrief’ you.”
The Russian said nothing.
“And Miss Pullman.”
“Oh.”
“They probably want to hear what you’ve got to say about Red Dawn before they hang you.” Denzil Williams held up hand. “No, they won’t hang you, Miss Pullman. Just Comrade Rykov.”
“Red Dawn is no figment of my imagination,” Arkady Rykov said wearily.
“Don’t waste your breath trying to convert me.”
“How on earth are we ever going to get back to England?” The woman demanded angrily.
“Arrangements are in hand, dear lady.” Denzil Williams would have elaborated had he not been distracted by the noise of running feet in the corridor.