The Freedom Trap [= The Mackintosh Man]

I

They looked after us like an international hotel looks after a couple of Greek shipping magnates. Nothing was too good for Mr Slade and Mr Rearden — nothing except immediate freedom. We asked for newspapers and we got newspapers; I asked for South African brandy and I got it — Oude Meester, too — something I had found unobtainable during my few days in London. Slade looked askance at my South African brandy; his tipple was 15-year-old Glenlivet which was also hospitably provided.

But when we asked for a television set or a radio we drew a blank. I said to Slade, ‘Now why is that?’

He turned his heavy face towards me, his lips twisted with contempt for my minuscule intelligence. ‘Because the programmes would tell us where we are,’ he said patiently.

I acted dumb. ‘But we get the newspapers regularly.’

‘Oh, God!’ he said, and stooped to pick up The Times. ‘This is dated the fifth,’ he said. ‘Yesterday we had the issue of the fourth, and tomorrow we’ll have the issue of the sixth. But it doesn’t follow that today is the fifth. We could be in France, for example, and these newspapers are airmail editions.’

‘Do you think we are in France?’

He looked from the window. ‘It doesn’t look like France, and neither does it... ’ He twitched his nose. ‘... smell like France.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know where we are.’

‘And I don’t suppose you care very much,’ I said.

He smiled. ‘Not really. All I know is that I’m going home.’

‘Your people must think you’re important,’ I said.

‘Moderately so,’ he said modestly. ‘I’ll be glad to get home. I haven’t seen Russia for twenty-eight years.’

‘You must be bloody important if my help in getting you out was worth ten thousand quid.’ I turned to him and said seriously, ‘As a sort of professional what do you think of this mob?’

He was affronted. ‘A sort of professional! I’m good in my work.’

‘You were caught,’ I said coldly,

‘After twenty-eight years,’ he said. ‘And then by sheer chance. I doubt if anyone could have done better.’

‘Okay, you’re good,’ I said. ‘Answer my question. What do you think of this crowd?’

‘They’re good,’ he said judiciously. ‘They’re very good. Their security is first class and their organization impeccable.’ He frowned. ‘I didn’t think ordinary criminals could retain that kind of cohesion.’

That thought had occurred to me and I didn’t like it. ‘You think they’re in your line of work?’

‘It’s unlikely but just barely possible,’ he said. ‘To run a network takes a lot of money. The West Germans had the Gehlen Apparat just after the war — that was more-or-less private enterprise but it was supported by American money.’

‘Who would support this kind of outfit?’ I asked.

He grinned at me. ‘My people might.’

True enough. It seemed as though Slade was home and dry; instead of growing his beard in the nick he’d be knocking back vodka in the Kremlin with the boss of the KGB before very long, and dictating his memoirs as a highly placed member of British Intelligence. That much had come out at his trial; he’d infiltrated the British Intelligence Service and got himself into quite a high position.

He said, ‘What do you think of me?’

‘What am I supposed to think?’

‘I spied on your country... ’

‘Not my country,’ I said. ‘I’m from the Republic of South Africa,’ I grinned at him. ‘And I come of Irish stock.’

‘Ah, I had forgotten,’ he said.

Taafe looked after us like Bunter looked after Lord Peter Wimsey. The meals were on time and excellently cooked and the room kept immaculately tidy, but never a word could I get out of Taafe. He would obey instructions but when I sought to draw him into conversation he would look at me with his big blue eyes and keep his mouth tightly shut. I didn’t hear him say one word the whole time I was imprisoned in that room, and I came to the conclusion he was dumb.

There was always another man outside the bedroom door. Sometimes I would catch a glimpse of him as Taafe came into the room, a dim and shadowy figure in the corridor. I never saw his face. I thought hard about him and came to a swift conclusion. It would be impossible for one man to keep up a twenty-four hour guard duty, so there would be three of them, at least. That meant at least five in the house, and maybe more.

I didn’t see any women; it was a purely masculine establishment.

I checked on the bars of the windows, both in the bathroom and the bedroom, and Slade watched me with a sardonic amusement which I ignored. It seemed that to get out that way was impossible; it was the double-barred arrangement, inside and out, that was the trouble. Besides, Taafe checked them, too. I came out of the bathroom once to find him on a tour of inspection, making very thoroughly sure they hadn’t been tampered with.

Fatface came to see us from time to time. He was affability itself and spent time by the hour discoursing on world affairs, the situation in Red China and the prospects for South Africa in Test Cricket. He would join us in a drink but took care not to take too much.

That gave me an idea. I took care to appear to drink a lot, both in his presence and out of it. He watched me swig the brandy and made no comment when I became maudlin. Luckily I have a hard head, harder than I allowed to appear, and I took damned good care not to drink too much in Fat-face’s absence, although I contrived to fool Slade as well. I didn’t know that I could trust Slade very much if things came to the crunch. It was with regret that I poured many a half-bottle of good hooch into the lavatory pan before pulling the chain for the night.

I’ve always found it good policy to appear to be what I’m not, and if Fatface and his mob thought I was a drunk then that might give me a slight edge when I needed it. There was certainly no attempt to stop me drinking. Taafe would take away the dead soldiers every morning and replace them with full bottles, and not a smile would crack his iron features. Slade, however, came to treat me with unreserved contempt.

Slade didn’t play chess, but all the same I asked Fatface if he could rustle up a set of chessmen and a board as I wanted to work out chess problems. ‘So you play chess,’ he said interestedly. ‘I’ll give you a game, if you like. I’m not a bad player.’

He wasn’t a bad player at all, though not as good as Cossie, but Cossie had more time to practise. He was certainly better than me, and after the first couple of games he gave me two pawns’ advantage and I still had to battle to beat him.

Once, as we finished a game, he said, ‘Alcohol and the type of concentration needed in chess don’t mix, Rearden.’

I poured another slug of Oude Meester. ‘I don’t intend to take it up professionally,’ I said indifferently. ‘Here’s to you... er... what the hell is your name, anyway?’

He kept a blank face. ‘I don’t think that matters.’

I giggled drunkenly. ‘I think of you as Fatface.’

He was miffed at that and inclined to take umbrage. ‘Well, I have to call you something,’ I pointed out reasonably. ‘What do you expect me to do? Whistle or shout “Hey, you!”‘

But that crack lost me a chess partner.

The Zürich Ausführen Handelsbank cheque came a week after I had woken up in that room, and it was long enough for Slade and I to get on each other’s nerves. I thought of the Swiss numbered account, of Mackintosh and of the slim chances of escape. What Slade thought about I don’t know but he also became increasingly restless.

Once he was taken out of the room under guard, and when he returned an hour later, I said, ‘What was that about?’

‘A business conference,’ he said enigmatically, and lapsed into silence.

My turn came the next day. I was taken downstairs and into a pleasant room which had just one fault — the curtains were drawn. The Scarperers were too bloody efficient for my own good; even here they were taking no chances of me finding out where I was.

Fatface came in and laid a cheque on the table. He unscrewed the cap of a fountain pen and put the pen down next to the cheque. ‘The account number,’ he said briefly.

I sat down and picked up the pen — and hesitated. Numbered accounts are funny things, and the number is something you guard as jealously as the combination of your safe.

I had to make this look good because he would be expecting it. I put down the pen, and said, ‘Look, Fatface; any jiggery-pokery with this account and you’ll wish you’d never been born. You take out of the account exactly the amount set out on this cheque — 200,000 Swiss francs and not a centime more. If you clean out this account I’ll find you and break your back.’

‘Finding me might prove impossible,’ he said suavely.

‘Don’t bank on it, buster, don’t bank on it.’ I stared at him. ‘You’ve had me checked pretty thoroughly so you know my record. People have tried things on before, you know; and I have a reputation which you ought to know about by now. The word has got about that it’s unprofitable to cross Rearden.’ I put a lot of finality in my voice. ‘You’d get found.’

If he was nervous, he didn’t show it, except that he swallowed before speaking. ‘We have a reputation to keep up, too. There’ll be no tampering with your account.’

‘All right,’ I said gruffly, and picked up the pen again. ‘Just so we understand each other.’ Carefully I wrote the number — that long sequence of digits and letters which I had memorized at Mrs Smith’s insistence — and put a stroke on the uprights of the sevens in the continental manner. ‘How long will it take?’

He picked up the cheque and peered at it, then flapped it in the air to dry the ink. ‘Another week.’

I watched the cheque fluttering in his hand and suddenly felt cold. Now I was totally committed.

II

Three days later they took Slade away and he didn’t come back. I missed him. He had become an irritant but once he had gone I felt lonely and oddly apprehensive. I did not like at all the idea of us being separated and I had assumed that we would be going along the escape route together.

Fatface had taken a dislike to me and had stopped his social visits so I spent long hours at the window, screening my face behind the pot plants, and watched the courtyard through rain and sunshine. There wasn’t much to see; just the unused gravel drive to the house and the trim lawn, much blackbird-pecked.

There was one peculiar thing that happened every morning at about the same time. I would hear the clip-clip of hooves; not the heavy clip-clop of a horse, but the lighter sound as of a pony, and accompanied by a musical clinking noise. It would stop and there would be more clinks and clanks and sometimes the faint piping whistle of a man pleased with himself. Then the clip-clip would begin again and fade away into the distance. And once, at this time, I saw the shadow of a man fall athwart the entrance to the courtyard, although I did not see him.

On an occasion when Fatface made a rare appearance I tried to talk my way out. ‘Christ, I wish I could get some exercise,’ I said. ‘What about letting me stretch my legs in the courtyard?’

He shook his head.

‘You can have a couple of your goons watching me,’ I said, but then gave up as I saw I was making no impression. ‘I should have stayed in the nick,’ I grumbled. ‘At least there was an exercise yard.’

Fatface laughed. ‘And look what happened when you used it,’ he pointed out. ‘You got away. No, Rearden; if you want exercise do some physical jerks in this room.’

I shrugged and poured another drink. Fatface looked at me contemptuously. ‘You’ll rot your liver, Rearden. You’d better do some exercise if only to sweat the booze out of your system.’

‘There’s damn-all to do except drink,’ I said sullenly, and took a swallow of brandy. I was glad he’d fallen for the line I was feeding him, even though it was becoming a strain to keep up. Reckoning by the dead soldiers Fatface would think I was getting through a bottle and a half a day, and when he was in the room I had to drink heavily in order to keep up the pretence. On this occasion I had drunk a quarter of a bottle in under an hour, I’m a fair drinker but my head was beginning to spin.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. ‘Getting edgy?’ He smiled mirthlessly. ‘Could it be there’s nothing in that bank account? Could it be there is no bank account at all?’ He stretched out his legs and looked at me thoughtfully. ‘We know you were shopped, Rearden; and the story is that it was your partner who shopped you. I know you deny it, but it won’t do you any good at all if your partner has skipped with all the loot leaving you holding the bag. I had my doubts about you when I heard Cosgrove’s report.’

‘You’ll get your money,’ I said. ‘My mate will have seen me right.’

‘I sincerely hope so,’ he said. ‘For your sake.’

But Fatface was right — I was getting edgy. I snapped at Taafe irritably when he brought my meals. It made no difference; he just looked at me with those baby blue eyes set in that battered face, said nothing and went about his business leaving me to pace the room and ignore the food.

The hours and days slipped by. Every morning I heard the clip-clip of the pony and the pleasantly fluting whistle; every day my chances became slimmer.

At last it happened.

Fatface came into the room. ‘Well,’ he said in an unusually jovial voice. ‘You’ve surprised me, Rearden.’

‘I have?’

‘Yes. I rather think you’ve been playing fast and loose. We cashed your cheque.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ I said. ‘I hope there was enough in the account to cover it.’

‘Quite enough,’ he said. ‘You’ve been trying to lead me up the garden path, haven’t you?’

‘My God!’ I said. ‘I told you the money would be there.’ I laughed a little uncertainly. ‘You’re like the man in Moscow who said, “Schmuel, you told me you were going to Minsk so I would think you were going to Pinsk, and you fooled me by going to Minsk, anyway. I can’t believe a thing you say.”‘

‘A very interesting illustration,’ said Fatface drily. ‘Anyway, the money was there — all we needed.’

‘Good!’ I said. ‘When do I leave?’

He gestured. ‘Sit down. There’s something we have to discuss.’

I walked around him to the liquor cabinet and poured a drink. This time I really needed it — I never had been absolutely sure of Mackintosh. I splashed water into the glass and sat down at the table. ‘I’ll be bloody glad to get out of this room.’

‘I daresay you will,’ said Fatface. He regarded me in silence for a long time, then said at last, ‘There’s just one snag. It’s only a small detail, but it may prove to be an insuperable obstacle. Still, if you can explain it satisfactorily — and I don’t mean explain it away — I see no reason why we can’t carry on as planned.’

‘I don’t know what in hell you’re talking about,’ I said bluntly.

He lifted his eyebrows. ‘Don’t you? I’m sure you do. Think hard.’

‘Don’t play games, Fatface. If you’ve got anything to say, then spit it out.’

‘All right,’ he said. ‘But I’m not playing games.’ He leaned forward. ‘Now, I know you’re not Rearden but, for the record, I would like to know who the devil you are.’

It was as though a giant had gripped me hard and squeezed me in the belly, but I think I kept my face straight. ‘Are you crazy?’ I said.

‘You know I’m not.’

I took a deep breath. ‘Well, I think you are. What is this? Are you trying to welsh now you’ve got the loot?’ I stuck my finger under his nose. ‘I wouldn’t try that, my friend; you’ll come unstuck so bloody fast.’

‘You’re at a disadvantage,’ said Fatface calmly. ‘You’re in no position to threaten anyone about anything. And I’d stop playing the innocent if I were you. You’re not Rearden and we know it.’

‘I’d like to see you prove it,’ I said tightly.

‘Don’t be a damned fool — we have proved it.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘You surely didn’t think we pass a man on the escape line without checking him thoroughly — turning him inside out? We had you checked in South Africa and you failed the test. No police force is incorruptible — not the British police and not the South African police. If you are Rearden you must know John Vorster Square — you’ve been bounced in and out of there often enough.’

‘But they never could prove anything,’ I said.

‘Yes, it’s police headquarters in Johannesburg, isn’t it?’ He waved his hand. ‘Oh, I’m sure you know the geography of Johannesburg well enough — but that doesn’t prove that you are Rearden.’

‘You haven’t proved otherwise yet.’

‘We have a friend in John Vorster Square, a brave policeman who does occasional odd jobs for us. He checked the files on Rearden and sent us a copy of Rearden’s fingerprints. You’ve had it, chum, because they certainly don’t match your dabs — and don’t think we haven’t tried over and over again, just to make sure.’ He pointed to the glass I was holding. ‘We’ve had plenty of chances to get your prints, you know.’

I stared at him for a long time. ‘I know what a John Vorster Square dab-sheet looks like,’ I said. ‘I ought to — I’ve seen enough of them. You bring yours to me and I’ll put my dabs anywhere you like for comparison.’

A veiled look filmed his eyes. ‘All right,’ he said abruptly. ‘We’ll do that. But I’ll tell you something — you’ll not leave this house alive until we know exactly who you are and what the hell you’re doing here.’

‘You know what I’m doing here,’ I said tiredly. ‘You bloody well brought me here. You’ve got your boodle, now keep your side of the bargain.’

He stood up. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow bright and early. That will give you plenty time to think up a good story.’ He pressed the service button. ‘It had better be a true story.’

The door clicked unlocked and he stalked out.

I sat and looked at the amber liquid in the glass before me. Fatface was full of good ideas. Perhaps it would be better to think up not one story but two — the true story and a plausible false one. It would be difficult; I’m a pretty good liar when the need arises, but I never was much good at sustained fiction.

III

Where does a thing like this begin? I suppose one might be logical and say it began at birth, but that’s the trouble with logic — it leads to silly conclusions. Again, one might say it began in Johannesburg but it was only because of who I was — and what I was — that led to me being chosen, and so the roots go further back. Anyway, Johannesburg seemed to be a convenient point to begin, so I started to think of Jo’burg, that overgrown mining camp where the streets are paved with gold.

It was a bright sunny morning with not a cloud in the sky, something which might lighten the spirits of an Englishman but doesn’t do a damn thing for a South African because most mornings are bright and sunny and clouds in winter are as rare as hens’ teeth. I lived in Hillbrow in a flat in one of the towering blocks of concrete overlooking the city — the city which, at that moment, was covered with its usual layer of greasy smog. On and off, for twenty years, the City Fathers have been thinking of introducing the smokeless zone system, but they haven’t got round to it yet.

A man living on his own either lives like a pig or develops certain labour-saving knacks, short-cuts like the egg in the coffee percolator. Within twenty minutes of getting up I was on my way down to the street. In the foyer I opened my personal letter-box and collected the day’s mail — three of those nasty envelopes with windows in them which I stuck into my pocket unopened — and a letter from Lucy.

I looked at it a little blankly. I hadn’t heard from Lucy for over six years — six slow and uneventful years — and I couldn’t really believe it at first. I read the letter again. It was just a quickly scrawled note really; green ink on expensive, deckle-edged writing paper.

I sniffed the sheet of paper and caught a delicate fragrance. Lucy was up to her old tricks again. I put the note into my breast pocket and went back to my flat to telephone the office. I forget what excuse I used but I really couldn’t tell the boss I wanted the day off to see an old girl friend. Then I took the car for servicing; it could be I would need it in a hurry and it had better be in good shape.

At a quarter to twelve I was drifting along the road towards the Zoo Lake. The expanses of winter-yellowed grass were dotted with black nannies looking after their young charges and, in the distance, the lake twinkled under the hot sun. I put the car in the restaurant car park and wandered slowly down to the water’s edge where people were feeding the birds.

There was nobody around who looked like Lucy. At least no one was wearing a gardenia. I looked across the lake at the people boating inexpertly, then turned to go back to the restaurant where, just outside, a sand-coloured man sat on a bench fanning himself with his hat. He wore a white gardenia.

I walked over and sat beside him. ‘Lucy?’

He turned and looked at me with curiously naked eyes. ‘Lucy!’ he said venomously. ‘Ever since that Russian operation in Switzerland during the war the security clots have gone nuts on the name.’ He put on his hat. ‘I know who you are — I’m Mackintosh.’

‘Glad to know you,’ I said formally.

He cast a speculative eye at the lake. ‘If I happened to be a crackerjack secret service man I’d suggest that we hire a boat and row into the middle of that bit of water so we could talk privately. But that’s nonsense, of course. What I suggest is that we have an early lunch here. We’ll be just as private, providing we don’t shout, we’ll be a bloody sight more comfortable, and I won’t run the risk of making a damned fool of myself in a boat.’

‘Suits me,’ I said. ‘I didn’t have much breakfast.’

He arose and took the gardenia from his lapel to drop it into a convenient waste basket. ‘Why people have this fetish for the sexual organs of vegetables is beyond me,’ he said. ‘Come on.’

We found a table in a corner in the outside court where a vine-covered trellis protected us from the heat of the sun. Mackintosh looked around and said appreciatively. ‘This is a nice place. You South Africans know how to live well.’

I said, ‘If you know who I am then you know I’m not a South African.’

Of course,’ he said, and took a notebook from his pocket. ‘Let me see — ah, yes; Owen Edward Stannard, born in Hong Kong in 1934, educated in Australia.’ He reeled off a string of schools. ‘At university specialized in the study of Asiatic languages. Was recruited by a department that it is better not to mention while still at university. Worked in the field in Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia under a variety of covers. Was captured in Indonesia during the upheaval which disposed of Sukarno and cover badly blown.’

He looked up. ‘I understand you had a nasty time there.’

I smiled. ‘There are no scars.’ That was true — no scars that were visible.

‘Umph!’ he said, and returned to his notebook. ‘It was considered that your usefulness was at an end in the Far East so you were pulled out and sent to South Africa as a sleeper. That was seven years ago.’ He snapped the notebook closed and put it back into his pocket. ‘That would be while South Africa was still in the Commonwealth.’

‘That’s right,’ I said.

‘Our masters are not very trusting folk, are they? Anyway, you’re here as a sleeper; you say nothing and do nothing until you’re called upon — is that right?’ He wagged a finger. ‘Forgive the recapitulation but I’m from a different department. All this secret service stuff strikes me as being a bit comic opera, and I want to see if I’ve got it right.’

‘You’ve got it right,’ I assured him.

Serious conversation stopped then because a waiter came to take our order. I ordered crayfish cardinal because it wasn’t often that someone stood me a lunch, while Mackintosh had something with a salad. We shared a bottle of wine.

When the dishes were on the table and it was safe to talk again Mackintosh said, ‘Now I want to get this absolutely straight. Are you known to the police here — or to the security forces?’

‘Not that I know of,’ I said. ‘I think my cover is safe.’

‘So you’ve never had a prison sentence?’

‘No.’

‘What about civil cases?’

I considered. ‘Just the usual things. I’ve had a couple of parking tickets. And a couple of years ago I had a legal barney with a man who owed me money; it came to a court case.’

‘Who won?’

‘He did, damn it!’ I said feelingly.

Mackintosh smiled. ‘I’ve been reading your record so I know most of these things. I just wanted to see your reactions. So what it comes to is that you have a clean record here as far as the local coppers are concerned.’

I nodded. ‘That sums it up.’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Because you are going to be working with the South African police and it would never do if they knew you to be a British plant. I couldn’t see them cooperating in those circumstances.’ He nibbled on a lettuce leaf. ‘Have you ever been to England?’

‘Never,’ I said, and hesitated, ‘You ought to know that I’ve built up my cover with a slightly anti-British bias. It’s a quite common thing here for even English-speaking people to be anti-British — especially since Rhodesia blew up. In the circumstances I thought it inadvisable to take a holiday in England.’

‘I think we can forget your cover for a moment,’ said Mackintosh. ‘I’m authorized to pull you out if I find it necessary. The job I’m considering you for will be in England.’

It was very strange. All my adult life had been spent in the service of Britain and I’d never even seen the place. ‘I’d like that,’ I said.

‘You might not like it when you hear what the job is,’ said Mackintosh grimly. He sampled the wine. ‘Very nice,’ he said appreciatively, ‘if a touch acid.’ He put down the glass. ‘What do you know about the British prison system?’

‘Nothing.’

‘I’ll let you have a copy of the Mountbatten Report,’ he said. ‘You’ll find it fascinating reading. But I’ll give you the gist of it now. Lord Mountbatten found that the British prisons are as full of holes as a Swiss cheese. Do you know how many escapes there are each year?’

‘No. There was something about it in the papers a couple of years ago, but I didn’t read it up closely.’

‘More than five hundred. If it’s any less than that they think they’ve had a good year. Of course, most of the escapees are picked up quite soon, but a small percentage get clean away — and that small percentage is rising. It’s a troublesome situation.’

‘I can imagine it would be,’ I said. I couldn’t see his point; there was nothing in this to concern me.

Mackintosh wasn’t a man to miss a nuance in a tone of voice. He looked me in the eye and said quietly, ‘I don’t give a damn how many murderers or rapists, homicidal maniacs or ordinary small-time thieves get out of gaol. That’s the worry of the prison officers and the police. My field is state security and, as far as I’m concerned, the situation is getting out of hand. The Prime Minister thinks likewise and he’s told me to do something about it.’

‘Oh!’ I said uncertainly.

‘Oh!’ he echoed disgustedly. ‘Look at it this way. We put Blake away for forty-two years, not altogether as a punishment but to keep him out of the hands of the Russians. Within five years he flies the coop and pops up in Moscow where he chirps his head off.’

He looked broodingly into his glass. ‘Suppose Blake hadn’t got clean away — suppose he’d been picked up in a month. The police would be happy and so would the prison officers, but damn it all to hell, I wouldn’t! I’d want to know what the devil he’d been doing that month — who he’d been talking to. See my point?’

I nodded. ‘If that happened the major reason for gaoling him would disappear. To slap him back in chokey for another forty years would be like closing the stable door after the horse has gone.’

‘The horse being the information in Blake’s head — not the man himself.’ Mackintosh moved restlessly. ‘They’re building a high-security prison on the Isle of Wight. Mountbatten wants to call it Vectis which shows that, among other things, he’s had a classical education. A very able man, Mountbatten. He took one look at the plans of this high class chicken coop and demonstrated how easy it would be to get a man out.’

He looked at me expectantly as though he wanted me to say something, so I obliged. ‘To get a man out?’

He grinned. ‘I’m pleased to see you live up to the good things your dossier records of you.’ He held out his glass. ‘I rather like this wine.’

I gave him a refill. ‘It’s nice to know I’m appreciated.’

‘If you read the Mountbatten Report — particularly the bits towards the end where he discusses this new prison — you’ll find yourself wondering if you haven’t come across a major work of science fiction. Closed-circuit television with delay lines and electronic logic circuits which trigger an alarm if anything moves in the field of vision is one nice idea — that’s for the defence, of course. For the attack there are helicopters and rocket-powered jump suits, for God’s sake! Very James Bondery. Do you get the drift of it?’

‘Yes,’ I said slowly. ‘Organization.’

‘Right!’ said Mackintosh. ‘For the first time in years someone has come up with a brand new crime. Crime is just like any other business — it’s conducted only for profit — and someone has figured a way to make a profit out of getting people out of prison. I suppose it started with the Great Train Robbery; those boys were given exceptionally heavy sentences — Biggs and Wilson got thirty years each — but they had money and were able to buy an organization.’

He sighed. ‘Sometimes I wonder if the judges know what the devil they’re doing. A murderer can be out in ten years or less, but watch your step if you commit a crime against property. Anyway, an organization was set up, dedicated to springing long-term prisoners who could pay enough, and you’d be surprised how many of those there are. And once such an organization gets going, like any other business it tends to expand, and whoever is running it has gone looking for custom — and he doesn’t care where the money comes from, either.’

‘The Russians?’

‘Who else,’ said Mackintosh sourly. ‘I don’t care if all the train robbers fly the coop and live the life of Riley on the Riviera, but when it comes to state security then something must be done.’ He frowned. ‘If I had my way such security risks would be collected together in a special prison and guarded by the army — military police empower to kill if necessary. But our masters prefer not to do it that way.’

I said curiously, ‘Where do I come into all this?’

‘I haven’t finished putting you in the picture,’ he said irritably. ‘The PM wanted something done about it — so something was done. The police had a crack at it, and so did the Special Branch and the more shady and esoteric counterintelligence units. They all got nowhere. There was one occasion when they did get a bit close to it; a prisoner already in gaol expressed a willingness to talk. Guess what happened to him.’

I’m a realist, so I said flatly, ‘He died suddenly.’

‘Oh, he was killed, all right,’ said Mackintosh. ‘But this gang sprung him from prison to do it. Can’t you see the flaming impudence of it? This organization is so bloody sure of itself that it can take a man out of one of Her Majesty’s prisons who doesn’t want to go. One cheep from him and he’d still be alive — but they were still able to spring him. His body was found three days later; he’d been shot through the back of the head.’

‘I didn’t see any reports on that,’ I said.

‘It was put under security wraps immediately,’ said Mackintosh a little tiredly. ‘Nobody wanted a thing like that to be aired publicly. There’s a veiled reference to it in the Mountbatten Report — look at paragraph 260.’

‘Where do I come in?’ I asked again.

‘I’ll come to you when I’m good and ready. Now, my business is state security, and you can put out of your head any guff about counter-intelligence cloak-and-dagger stuff. I work on a quite different plane, at Cabinet level, in fact — responsible and reporting to only the Prime Minister. Since everybody else has fallen down on this job he has given me the sole and total responsibility of getting the job done in my own peculiar way — but not in my own time.’ He rubbed the top of his head. ‘Of course, time is a relative thing, as I explained to the PM and he agreed. But let’s hope there are no more security escapes while I’m in charge, because it’s my head that’s on the block.’

He looked around and waved at a waiter. ‘Let’s have coffee — and I think I’ll have a van der Hum; I believe in sampling the wine of the country. Will you join me?’

‘I’ll have a Drambuie,’ I said drily.

He ordered the coffee and the liqueurs, then said abruptly, ‘Ever heard of a man called Rearden — Joseph Rearden?’

I thought about it for a while. ‘No.’

‘I didn’t think you would. Rearden is — or was — a criminal. A very good one, too. Clever, intelligent and resourceful; somewhat like you, I’d say.’

‘Thanks for the compliment,’ I said. ‘He’s dead?’

‘He was killed three weeks ago in South-West Africa. No funny business suspected — just a plain ordinary car crash. The God of Motorists sacrifices good and bad alike. The point is that no one knows he’s dead, except you, me and a few highly placed South African coppers. When the PM gave me this Godawful job certain facilities were placed at my disposal, and I immediately began to look for someone like Rearden — a newly dead rotten egg whose death could be hushed up. He could have been found in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the States or, even, South Africa. The fact is that he turned up in South Africa. Here’s his photograph.’

I laid it face down on the table as the waiter served the coffee and only turned it up when we were alone again. Mackintosh watched me approvingly as I scanned the picture. He said, ‘As soon as I had Rearden I began to look for someone who looked like Rearden, someone who could pass for a South African. Computers are marvellous gadgets — one came up with you in twenty minutes.’

‘So it’s going to be a substitution,’ I said. ‘I’ve done that kind of thing before, but it’s risky. I could be spotted very easily.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Mackintosh confidently. ‘To begin with, you’ll be in England where Rearden has never been and, even so, you won’t be moving about England much so it’s unlikely you’ll bump into any of his old pals.’

I said, ‘What happened to Rearden’s body?’

‘He was buried under another name. I pulled some strings.’

‘Tough luck on his family,’ I said. ‘Did he have a wife?’

‘No wife — and his parents will get along without him.’

I looked at this spare man with the thinning sandy hair and the colourless eyelashes and thought that he was a pretty ruthless bastard. I wondered how I would get along with him in this peculiar arrangement he was planning. ‘So I’m Rearden,’ I said. ‘And I’m in England. What then?’

‘Not so fast,’ said Mackintosh. ‘Although Rearden was clever he lost — once only. He served a prison sentence in Pretoria quite a while ago. Do you know anything about South African prisons?’

‘Not a thing, thank God!’

‘You’d better learn. I’ll have a man give you a course on prison conditions and the slang — especially the slang.’ He offered me a twisted smile. ‘It might be a good idea if you did time for a month to get the right idea. I can arrange that.’ I could see him turning the idea over in his mind and rejecting it. He shook his head. ‘No, that won’t do. It’s too risky.’

I was glad of that; I don’t particularly like gaols. He drained his coffee cup. ‘Let’s leave here; the place is filling up and I’d like to discuss the rest of it in greater privacy.’ He paid the bill and we left the restaurant and strolled into the middle distance to sit under a gum tree where there were no ears within fifty yards.

He took out a pipe and started to fill it. ‘All the people who have tried to crack this organization have failed. They’ve tried it from the outside and failed, and they’ve tried penetration and failed. They’ve tried to ring in fake gaolbirds — and failed. The organization has fantastically good security because we know as much now as we did at the beginning — and that’s only one thing. The organization is known to the underworld as the Scarperers, and that doesn’t get us very far.’

He struck a match. ‘Stannard, this is a volunteer’s job, and I’ll have to ask you to make up your mind now. I can’t tell you anything more — I’ve already told you too much. I suppose I must tell you that if anything goes wrong it’ll go badly for you — and your death may not be the worst thing that can happen. Not in my book, at any rate. It’s a tricky and dangerous task and, I don’t mind telling you, I wouldn’t volunteer for it myself. I can’t be more honest than that.’

I lay back on the grass and looked up at the sky, leaf-dappled through the branches of the gum tree. My life in South Africa had been calm and uneventful. Seven years before I had been in pretty bad shape and I’d sworn I’d never do that kind of thing again. I suppose my bosses had seen that frame of mind and had given me the job of a sleeper in South Africa as a sort of sinecure — a reward for past services. God knows, I had done nothing to earn the retainer that was piling up quite nicely in that British bank account and which I had never touched.

But time heals everything and of late I had been restless, wishing that something would happen — an earthquake — anything. And here was my earthquake in the person of this insignificant-looking man, Mackintosh — a man who hobnobbed with the Cabinet, who chit-chatted about security with the Prime Minister. I had a vague idea of what he was getting at and it didn’t seem difficult. Risky, perhaps; but not too difficult. I wasn’t afraid of a gang of English crooks; they couldn’t be worse than the boys I’d been up against in Indonesia. I’d seen whole towns full of corpses there.

I sat up. ‘All right; I volunteer.’

Mackintosh looked at me a little sadly and thumped me gently on the arm. ‘You’re a lunatic,’ he said. ‘But I’m glad to have you. Perhaps we need a little lunacy on this job; orthodox methods haven’t got us anywhere.’

He pointed at me with the stem of his pipe. ‘This is top-secret. From now on only three people will know about it; you, me and one other — not even the PM knows.’ He chuckled sardonically. ‘I tried to tell him but he didn’t want to know. He knows how my mind works and he said he wanted to keep his hands clean — he said he might have to answer questions in the House and he didn’t want to be put in the position of lying.’

I said, ‘What about the South African police?’

‘They know nothing,’ said Mackintosh flatly. ‘It’s a quid pro quo — a favour returned. They might do a bit of digging into your background, though. Can it stand it?’

‘It should,’ I said. ‘It was designed by experts.’

Mackintosh drew gently on his pipe and blew out a plume of smoke. ‘Other people have tried to penetrate this damned organization and they’ve failed — so we start from there and ask, “Why did they fail? “ One of the more promising gambits was to ring in a fake prisoner and wait for advances to be made. At one time there were no less than eight of these decoys scattered through the British prisons. Not one of them was contacted. What does that suggest to you?’

‘The Scarperers have a good intelligence service,’ I said. ‘I’ll bet they do a preliminary check before contact.’

‘I agree — and that means that our bait, which is Rearden, must stand up to rigorous scrutiny. There must be no cracks in the cover at all. Anything else?’

‘Not that I can think of off-hand.’

‘Use your loaf,’ said Mackintosh with an air of disgust. ‘The crime, man; the crime! Rearden — or, rather, you — is going to commit a crime in England. You’ll be caught — I’ll see to that — you’ll be tried and you’ll be jugged. And it has to be a particular form of crime; a crime which involves a lot of money and where the money isn’t recovered. The Scarperers have to be convinced that you can pay hard cash for your escape. Now, what does that suggest to you — in view of what I’ve already told you?’

‘Nothing much,’ I said. ‘It shouldn’t be too difficult to arrange.’

‘No, it shouldn’t be too difficult,’ said Mackintosh in an odd voice. ‘Look here, Stannard; this is going to be a genuine crime — don’t you understand that? Nothing else will do. I am going to plan, and you are going to execute, a crime of some magnitude. We are going to steal a considerable sum of money from some inoffensive British citizen who will scream to high heaven. There’s going to be no fake about it because... ’ He spaced his words very distinctly. ‘... I... will... not... risk... breaking... security.’

He turned and said very earnestly, ‘If this is so then when you are tried and gaoled you will be in the jug for a perfectly genuine crime, and if anything goes wrong there will be nothing that I, or anyone else, can do about it. If you get fourteen years then you’ll rot in prison for your sentence if the Scarperers don’t contact you. And the reason for that is because I cannot compromise security on this operation. Are you willing to risk it?’

I took a deep breath. ‘Christ! You’re asking a hell of a lot, aren’t you?’

‘It’s the way it’s got to be,’ he said doggedly. ‘A trained man like you should be able to get out of any leaky British prison without half trying. But you won’t, damn you! You’ll sit on your backside and wait for the Scarperers to get you, no matter how long they take to make up their minds. You’ll bloody well wait, do you hear?’

I looked into his fanatical eyes and said very gently, ‘I hear. Don’t worry; I’m not going to back out now. I gave you my word.’

He took a deep breath and relaxed. ‘Thanks, Stannard.’ He grinned at me. ‘I wasn’t worried about you — not too worried.’

‘I’ve been wondering about something,’ I said. ‘Mountbatten investigated the prisons when Blake flew the coop. That was quite a long time ago. Why all the sudden rush now?’

Mackintosh reached out and knocked out his pipe on the trunk of the tree. ‘A good question,’ he agreed. ‘Well, for one thing, the effect of Mountbatten is wearing off. When the Report came out and the prisons tightened security every sociologist and prison reformer in Britain let out an outraged howl — and I’m not saying they were wrong, either. There are two ways of regarding prisons — as places of punishment and as places of rehabilitation. The suddenly tightened security knocked rehabilitation right out of the window and the penal reformers say it did ten years of damage in six months.’

He shrugged. ‘They’re probably right, but that’s outside my field. I’m not interested in civil prisoners — it’s the Blakes and Lonsdales of this world who are my meat. When you catch them you can either put them up against a wall and shoot them, or you can put them in chokey. But you imprison them not to punish and not to rehabilitate, but to keep them out of circulation because of what they know.’

There was nothing in this to explain the question I had asked, so I prompted him. ‘So what now?’

‘There’s a big fish coming down the line,’ he said. ‘The biggest we’ve caught yet. God knows, Blake was big enough, but this man is a shark to Blake’s tiddler — and he must not escape. I’ve pleaded with the PM to establish a special prison for this type of prisoner but he says it’s against policy, and so Slade goes into the general prison system, admittedly as a high-risk man.’

‘Slade!’ I said thoughtfully. ‘Never heard of him.’

‘He’s in hospital,’ said Mackintosh. ‘He was shot through the hips when he was caught. When he’s fit he’ll stand trial, and if we handed out sentences like the Texans he’d get five thousand years. As it is, we must keep him secure for the next twenty — after that it won’t matter very much.’

‘Twenty years! He must know a hell of a lot.’

Mackintosh turned a disgusted face towards me. ‘Can you imagine that a Russian — and Slade is a Russian — could get to be second-in-command of an important department of British Intelligence concerned with counter-espionage in Scandinavia? Well, it happened, and Sir David Taggart, the damned fool who put him there, has been kicked upstairs — he’s now Lord Taggart with a life peerage.’ He snorted. ‘But he won’t be making any speeches or doing any voting. If he knows what’s good for him he’ll keep his mouth permanently shut.’

He blinked his colourless eyelashes and said in a passionately suppressed voice, ‘The man who caught Slade was a man whom Taggart had fired for inefficiency, for God’s sake!’ He rapped his pipe against the tree with such force that I thought it would break. ‘Amateurs!’ he said in a scathing voice. ‘These bloody amateurs running their piddling private armies. They make me sick.’

‘How do I relate to Slade?’ I asked.

‘I’m going to try to put you next to him,’ he said. ‘And that will mean breaking the law. What Slade knows is sheer dynamite and I’d break every law in Britain, from sodomy upwards, to keep that bastard inside where he belongs.’ He chuckled and thumped my arm. ‘We’re not just going to bend the laws of England, Stannard; we’re going to smash them.’

I said a little shakily, ‘Now I know why the Prime Minister wouldn’t listen to you.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Mackintosh matter-of-factly. ‘It would make him accessory to the crime, and he’s too much the gentleman to get his hands dirty. Besides, it would lie heavily on his conscience.’ He looked up at the sky and said musingly, ‘Funny animals, politicians.’

I said, ‘Do you know what kind of a tree this is?’

He turned and looked at it. ‘No, I don’t.’

‘It’s a gum tree,’ I said. ‘The thing I’ll be up if this operation doesn’t pan out. Take a good look at it.’

IV

I suppose you could call Mackintosh a patriot — of sorts. There don’t seem to be many avowed patriots around these days; it has become the fashion to sneer at patriotism — the TV satire programmes jeer at it, and to the with-it, swinging set it’s a dead issue. So with patriots so few on the ground you can’t pick and choose too freely. Certainly, to a casual eye Mackintosh bore a remarkable resemblance to a dyed-in-the-wool fascist; his God was Britain — not the Britain of green fields and pleasant country lanes, of stately buildings and busy towns, but the idea of Britain incorporated in the State. He took his views directly from Plato, Machiavelli and Cromwell who, if you think about it, aren’t all that different from Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin.

But there was more to him than that as I found out later — much later.

There was a lot of work to be done and not a great deal of time in which to do it. I studied South African prison conditions with a prison officer, temporarily donning the guise of a sociologist for the occasion. He advised me to read the works of Herman Charles Bosman which was a superfluity as I had already done so. Bosman, possibly the best writer in English South Africa has produced, knew all about prison conditions — he had done a stretch for killing his step-brother and he wrote illuminatingly about his experiences in Pretoria Central Prison — Pretoria Tronk, in the vernacular — which conveniently was where Rearden had served his sentence.

I also studied Rearden’s record, culled from the files of John Vorster Square. There was not much fact and a hell of a lot of conjecture in that file. Rearden had been imprisoned only once and that for a comparatively minor offence, but the conjecture was lurid. He was suspected of practically every crime in the book from burglary to drug-smuggling, from armed robbery to illicit gold buying. He was a many-faceted character, all nerve and intelligence, whose erratic and unexpected switches in criminal activity had kept him out of trouble. He would have made a good intelligence agent.

I smiled at that. Perhaps Mackintosh had been right when he said that Rearden was like me. I had no illusions about myself or my job. It was a dirty business with no holds barred and precious little honour, and I was good at it, as would have been Rearden if anyone had had the sense to recruit him. So there we were — birds of a feather — Mackintosh, Rearden and Stannard.

Mackintosh was busy on the upper levels of the job in South Africa — pulling strings. From the way people danced to his tune like marionettes I judged he had been right when he said the Prime Minister had given him ‘certain facilities’. This was counter-espionage work at diplomatic level and I wondered what was the quid pro quo — what the hell had we done for the South Africans that we should be given this VIP treatment with no questions asked?

Gradually I was transformed into Rearden. A different style of haircut made a lot of difference and I took much trouble with the Transvaal accent, the accent of the Reef towns. I studied photographs of Rearden and copied his way of dress and his stance. It was a pity we had no films of him in action; the way a man moves means a lot. But that I would have to chance.

I said to Mackintosh once, ‘You say I’m not likely to run into any of Rearden’s pals in England because I’m not going to be at large for very long. That’s all very well, but I’m a hell of a lot more likely to run into his mates when I’m in the nick than when I’m walking up Oxford Street.’

Mackintosh looked thoughtful. ‘That’s true. What I can do is this; I’ll have a check done on the inhabitants of the prison you’re in, and any that have been to South Africa I’ll have transferred. There shouldn’t be too many and it will minimize your risk. The reason for transfer shouldn’t become apparent — prisoners are being transferred all the time.’

He drilled me unmercifully.

‘What’s your father’s name?’

‘Joseph Rearden.’

‘Occupation?’

‘Miner — retired.’

‘Mother’s name?’

‘Magrit.’

‘Maiden name?’

‘Van der Oosthuizen.’

‘Where were you born?’

‘Brakpan.’

‘The date?’

‘28th May, 1934.’

‘Where were you in June, 1968?’

‘... er... in Cape Town.’

‘Which hotel did you use?’

‘Arthur’s Seat.’

Mackintosh stuck his finger under my nose. ‘Wrong! That was in November of the same year. You’ll have to do better than that.’

‘I could get away with it if I had to,’ I said.

‘Maybe. But this has to be a seamless job — no cracks which need papering over. You’d better get down to studying again.’

Again I pushed my nose into the files, if a little resentfully. My God, a man wasn’t supposed to remember and account for every minute of his life. But I knew Mackintosh was right. The more I knew about Rearden, the safer I’d be.

At last it was over and Mackintosh was due to return to England. He said, ‘The local coppers are a bit worried about you; they’re wondering why you’ve been picked for this job. They’re wondering how I was able to lay my hands on an Australian immigrant to impersonate Rearden. I don’t think you’ll be able to come back here.’

‘Will they talk?’

‘There’ll be no talk,’ he said positively. ‘There are only a few of the top brass who know about you, and they don’t know why — that’s why they’re becoming curious. But it’s all top-secret, diplomatic-level, hush-hush stuff and that’s something the South Africans are good at. They understand security. As far as the middle and lower levels of the police are concerned — well, they’ll be a bit surprised when Rearden gets nabbed in England, but they’ll just heave a sigh of relief and cross him off the books for a few years.’

I said, ‘If you’re right about the Scarperers they’ll be doing some extensive checking here in South Africa.’

‘It’ll stand up,’ he said with certainty. ‘You’ve done a good job on this, Stannard.’ He smiled. ‘When it’s all over you’ll probably get a medal. There’ll be a few private words with the people concerned — insurance company, whoever we rob, and so on. The Home Secretary will probably issue a free pardon and you won’t have a stain on your character.’

‘If it comes off,’ I said. ‘If it doesn’t, I’ll be up that bloody gum tree.’ I looked straight at him. ‘I want a bit of insurance on this. I know you’re nuts on security — and rightly so. As you’ve organized it there’ll be only three people who know about this operation — you, me and one other. I’d like to know who this “other” is, just in case anything happens to you. I’d be in a hell of a mess if you got run over by a bus.’

He thought about that. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘It’s my secretary.’

‘Your secretary,’ I said expressionlessly.

‘Oh, Mrs Smith is a very good secretary,’ he said. ‘Very efficient. She’s hard at work on this case now.’

I nodded. ‘There’s something else,’ I said. ‘I’ve been going over possible eventualities. What happens if I’m sprung and Slade isn’t?’

‘Then you go for the Scarperers, of course.’

‘And if Slade is sprung and I’m not?’

Mackintosh shrugged. ‘That wouldn’t be your fault. We’d have to leave it to the ordinary authorities. Not that I’d like it very much.’

‘Try this on for size,’ I said. ‘Supposing both Slade and I are sprung. What then?’

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I see what you mean.’

‘Yes; I thought you would. Which is the more important? To smash the Scarperers or to take Slade back to the jug?’

He was silent for a moment. ‘Slade is obviously the more important, although ideally I’d like you to pull off both jobs should that eventuality arise. As far as taking Slade back to prison goes you may use your own discretion. If he turned up dead I wouldn’t shed a single tear. The important thing about Slade is that he must not get loose — he must not communicate any information to a third party.’ He flicked his pale blue eyes in my direction. ‘Dead men tell no tales.’

So that was it. Orders to kill Slade — at my discretion. I began to understand the Prime Minister’s reservations about Mackintosh. A tame hatchet man must be an uncomfortable asset to have around the house. He went to England next day and I followed two months later in response to another letter from Lucy. The crime had been set up.