Chapter 10
The next morning Maitland looked across his desk at his two agents and listened to their report. ‘You say this Alex guy saw you and spoke to you about your hat?’
Jody Zemke looked sheepishly down at her hands at the question put to her by her controller. ‘Yeah, he did. I goofed though, and he caught me. I had to think of something fast, this guy was quick. So I told him I got it from Harrods in Oxford Street. He also noticed my accent and we told him we were here on vacation. I think he fell for it.’
Maitland turned his pen in his hands and looked at his female agent. ‘So this guy is an inspector and here this week for the Rapier evaluation, and Barnett told him and his buddy about suspecting that we are responsible for McGregor’s fall, and that we could have sabotaged the transporter?’
‘That’s exactly what he said. I read it easily from his lips.’
‘It was just like she said, sir,’ interrupted Nick Riley.
Maitland looked at his twirling pen. ‘Would you say this Alex is not actually an inspector, from what you saw, from him recognising what part of the States you both came from?’
Riley decided to answer for his partner. ‘The guys a spook, unless he has a hobby in people watching. No, he’s MI5 or a government agent. A real life James Bond. I’ll be god damned if I’m wrong.’
Maitland rose from his desk and walked to his filing cabinet, opened the drawer and extracted a file with the label BR-101 Evaluation Team. He held it in one hand while pulling out the bottle of Old Kentucky Bourbon with the other, and placed the file on the top of the cabinet while he poured himself a glass. He then put the bottle back in the drawer and closed it, opened the file, and read while taking a sip from the glass.
‘Here he is. Alex Swan, and Arthur Gable is his buddy. According to this report, they are civilian avionics systems specialists from the Air Ministry. I’ve been asked if I can have a meeting with these guys this afternoon to answer questions on the Python Hawk.’
Zemke stood up from her chair and pulled her skirt down over her knees. ‘Is there anything else sir?’
Maitland stared out of the window at the other hangars. ‘I need your reports on my desk by sundown. One other thing, Miss Zemke? Take a look at page two of the newspaper on my desk. There’s an advert for Harrods Sale. Kindly read the address of the store to me will you?’
She picked up the copy of The Times on her controller’s desk and turned over the front page. ‘Harrods, 87 to 135 Brompton Road, London, SW1X 7XL.’
Zemke gave a bewildered look at the back of her controller then he spoke directly to her. ‘That’s in a place called Knightsbridge, about three miles from Oxford Street, Miss Zemke.’
Maitland turned and stared straight into her blue green eyes.
‘You goofed alright, Jody! You played right into Swan’s hands. The son of a bitch read you like the god damned New York Times. After your report, go and pack. You’re now off Black Star. Get your ass back to Langley and report for a new assignment. You may be in luck, as the chief has just fired his last secretary, and I’m sure even you can’t screw up with typing a memo.’
Riley just sat open mouthed and watched as his surveillance colleague put the newspaper back down on the desk and walked briskly, head bowed, out of the office. Tears began to well in her eyes. She knew that she would have to spend a long time on clerical duties before she would be let back in the field again.
Maitland then looked at Riley. ‘You’ve been compromised, Nick. I’m sending you to Black Star Three in Alaska to spend the rest of the year in the Bearing Strait looking and listening to Soviet spy trawlers. Just think yourself lucky that you’re still with us.’
Maitland then chose to ignore Riley as he made his way out of the office. He walked back to his desk and sat down with the file, picking up the photo of Alex Swan on the document.
‘Okay, Alex Swan or whoever you are. You just cost me two of my best agents. You wanna war? Then you’ve got one, pal.’
Brannigan then walked into the office and Maitland addressed him. ‘Looks as though we do have a problem with Barnett. I was wondering if we could shut him up before he shuts us down.’
Brannigan sneered to his boss from his desk. ‘Maybe a threat in the right direction may help. There’s his Swiss born wife and he also has a kid, a son at a boarding school.’
Maitland glanced sharply at his colleague. ‘Is that so? Maybe it will be a good idea to get some guys to pay him a visit. It will give us a bit of leverage, should his old man start blabbing. But it’s not enough, Jake. He could open the can on the whole goddamn thing, and if that happens, all our work here will be for nothing.’
Brannigan stood up from his desk. ‘Then we have to act, and right now Frank. Let’s use the kid, and maybe then have a word with Barnett to keep him quiet.’
Swan and Gable sat in the breakfast room of The Waverley Hotel. They had been well rewarded in being early risers, as they had secured the bay window table that overlooked the small harbour.
Gable commented on it. Beautiful day. Shame that we have to spend it talking to some shady American spook.’
Swan stared at a small fishing trawler heading out towards the harbour mouth. ‘Poor HB. He looked quite shaken by the news that he had been put under CIA surveillance.’
The two men fell silent, watching the small sailing boats with their bright coloured sails floating just beyond the harbour wall.
Gable then made a suggestion. ‘I think we should also be careful this afternoon when we go and talk with this Maitland chap.’
I totally agree with you, Arthur. I suppose it depends on what his watchdogs have told him of our chat last night. I need you to observe his reactions, as I ask him questions about this Python Hawk drone thing of theirs. I’m going to also go a bit deeper and test some of those reactions. If he is CIA, then I will know by the end of our meeting.’
Gable sniggered. ‘This should be something worth seeing, a Yank spook squirm in his seat.’
‘They’re not all bad, Arthur. Look at Howard Denning, the chap who helped us on the Bloomberg affair. He bent over backwards to accommodate us. Without him that case would not have been wrapped up so quickly. Trouble is that the CIA do not operate as one happy family. They are made up of different sections, dealing with such diverse things such as strategic spying to sabotage, foreign affair infiltration and even assassination. Just look at the Bay of Pigs fiasco, when one section blamed the other and vice versa for the mess. There are operatives who do not exist on paper and ‘sleeper’ agents placed in strategic positions all over the world, who only go into action when they receive a special code word by phone.’
The two men finished their breakfast of poached eggs and coffee enjoying their view, then joined the other members of the inspection team outside to await the bus to take them to another gruelling day at Brinton Aviation.
The morning sun also shone on a small hut beside the hangar at RAF Hemingford. Sergeant Harry Woodger sat at his desk with a mug of tea in his hand as he chatted to Sergeant George Hamble, also armed with a mug of tea.
‘I still can’t believe them darts last night. When did you get time to learn a nine dart finish, you lucky sod?’
Hamble simulated throwing a dart with his free hand. ‘Just flew them nice and straight into the right beds, mate,’ he boasted.
‘Seriously though, it was a good game. Did you see everyone stop and watch when you went for it?’
‘I’ve got to confess, I did notice. So I thought to myself, George don’t fluff this up, my old son. Anyway, thanks for the tea. I’ve got a dodgy Aden cannon to strip down and fix if I can, and seeing it was the aircraft belonging to the CO of 1 Squadron that jammed over the range, I better make a good job of it, or he’ll be pinning me down on Aberforth and using me for target practice.’