Amber Nine Read online

  Amber Nine

  John Gardner

  © John Gardner, 2014

  John Gardner has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1966 by the Penguin Group.

  This edition published in 2014 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  For Elizabeth

  I should like to acknowledge the invaluable technical data given me by Captain E. Mercer, D.F.C., and John W. Young, Jnr.

  Things are seldom what they seem, Skim milk masquerades as cream.

  H.M.S. PINAFORE: Sir W. S. Gilbert

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  EMERALD EPILOGUE: BRIS SAGO.

  PURPLE POSTSCRIPT: LONDON

  Extract from Understrike by John Gardner

  PROLOGUE

  LOCATION CLASSIFIED

  THE knife was exactly 20.32 centimetres long. At its widest point—near the bone hilt—it measured 1.27 centimetres, and the blade had been blackened over a smoky candle so there was no danger of its glint being picked up in the darkness. The soldier never knew what happened. Just a second of unimaginable pain slamming through the back. For all he knew it could have been a heart attack. There was not even time to cry out.

  The man they called Phentos regretted having to kill the soldier, but he had planned well—picking the night that this particular man was on duty. The soldier, known to have many enemies here, was already down for posting away from the maximum security area. In the morning, when they found him, his death would be put down to an internal incident.

  Phentos dragged the body behind the angled wall of the concrete bunker. The wall sheltered them, the living and the dead. It was a relief to hide for a moment. The night was charity cold—an east wind slicing up from the sea, singing round the gantries a mile and a half away across the flat stretch of land. That was the eternal sound of this wilderness which reached up into the stratosphere: the sound Phentos would carry to his grave—the shriek of wind round the gantries, a siren song. Phentos hugged the wall. Far away—among the cluster of huts that was the experimental section—a rocket motor started up. Probably an all-night test. The beast would roar until the early hours, spitting its great sheet of flame against the metal shield until it turned white hot.

  Phentos looked at his watch. Eleven fifty-five. Time to move into the bunker. Slowly he edged round the corner of the wall. A flurry of light snow struck his face, stinging like a handful of nettles. Down the steps and up to the steel door which, until a few moments before, had been guarded by the soldier. He moved carefully and with a precision born from hours of patient rehearsal with a stop watch. He had to be through the door at exactly eleven fifty-eight. The luminous hand on his wristwatch dial jerked up to the minute. Phentos pressed down on the handle and put his shoulder against the door. The big slab of metal did not move. Two seconds. Then, noiselessly it swung under his weight. The main Tracking Room door—at the far end of the bunker—had been opened to allow the tracking staff to change watch. All the doors in the bunker were operated by the same switch. Phentos had two minutes. The electronic locks were off for two minutes during the staff change.

  Down the passage and through the door on the right. Into the long cell which was the Programme Store. He crossed to the line of metal racks which covered the far wall. Twenty seconds. A gloved index finger slid along the numbered tags above the racks. It stopped at the required serial. Thirty seconds. He checked the number. Thirty-five seconds. The hand slipped into the rack and removed the metal spool. Forty seconds. Already the duplicate was out from the inside of his jacket. Phentos switched the spools. Fifty seconds.

  Now, over to the far end of the room. The same procedure with the second serial number they had given him. Eighty seconds. A last check to make sure the two programming spools were snug in the webbing container stitched into his jacket. Eighty-five seconds. Over to the door. Out. Door closed. Along the passage. Out. Close. Lean against the wall. Breathe deeply. Through the nose. Even in the cold he was sweating hard. Out. Out—with time to spare. One hundred and fifteen seconds. One hundred and twenty seconds. The whirr as the electronic locks came into play. Shut safe. No alarm bells. In the Tracking Room the new shift settled down in front of their radar screens and the computers—locked in for the night.

  At the main gate the guard nodded, took his ID pass with the punch marks and concealed wire pattern, and fed it into the checking machine. The green light came on. OK. The guard knew him well enough but there was a rigid adherence to the routine security system—it was foolproof.

  ‘Goodnight, Captain Phentos,’ said the guard.

  Phentos nodded. His usual surly way. The guard watched the stubby little figure waddling off up the road to the officers’ quarters and thought evil thoughts. The wind screamed through the rigging of the gantries. The rocket motor continued to roar, and two vital spools of tape were on their way out of the country.

  CHAPTER ONE

  RED TARGET: LONDON

  BOYSIE OAKES banged down on the clutch, flipped the gear stick into second, released the clutch and applied firm pressure on the brake pedal. The long sexy white nose of the 4.2 E-type slid dangerously close to the rear fender of a grey Ford van—the property of an exorbitantly expensive Bond Street couturier. Boysie voiced an unlikely deviationist act against the Minister of Transport. To the right, a taxi driver leered from his cab: the look spelled out b-l-o-o-d-y c-a-p-i-t-a-l-i-s-t. To the left, a young women, at the wheel of a blue NSU Prinz Sports, examined her eye shadow and found it wanting. Boysie glanced into his driving mirror. It was filled with a dirty radiator across which the word BEDFORD gleamed in chrome.

  Mostyn was right. Only a pig-headed fool would drive a Jaguar from Chesham Place to Whitehall and back again, morning and evening, in this sort of traffic. The tin phalanx of vehicles moved forward for two yards and stopped again.

  ‘Rot the Minister! He’ll have to go!’ said Boysie.

  ‘Hey, mate, you ought to trade that in for a motor scooter,’ shouted the taxi driver. Boysie pretended not to hear. It had been like this for six months. Hemmed in by traffic night and morning—feeling like a stuffed twit with the rolled umbrella and curly brimmed bowler on the passenger seat—then hemmed in by Mostyn all day. Six months. It had been a hard winter. In retrospect, Boysie could not make up his mind which was the lesser evil—facing the terrors, and personal deceit, of operational life, or the endless niggle of being Personal Assistant to the Second-in-Command.

  Since the American escapade, Mostyn had held Boysie to him as though by grappling irons.

  ‘Chief says it’ll do you good to have a spell actually working here in Department HQ, old Boysie,’ he said when Boysie reported back from leave.

  Disenchanted, Boysie had muttered, ‘What as? Your Chief Whip?’

  Mostyn managed a sly smile. ‘Mental flagellation’s more in my line. You ought to know that by now, laddie.’ The smile was tailored in Bri-Nylon. A set of immaculate fingernails rested on Boysie’s charcoal-grey flannel sleeve.

  ‘You’re coming to me. As my PA,’ said Mostyn. ‘Won’t that be super?’

  So the winter started, with Boysie doing his daily drive to the Whitehall building. It was a month before he was able to capture a regular parking space. Even that was a good five-minutes’ walk from the solid swing doors which led into the dull, uninviting foyer—tastefully decorat
ed in Ministry of Works green and lavatory-type tiles—which served as a front to the Headquarters of the British Department of Special Security.

  The morning routine rarely varied. Across the foyer, with a nod to the commissionaire. Into the lift permanently marked OUT OF ORDER. Key into the door at the back of the lift, and through on to the blue Wilton of Reception—chrome and glass, strip-lighting and a bold Paul Klee abstract. Nod to the receptionist. Into the lift and up—past the General Information Room on the first, and Operationst on the second—to the third floor: the Executive Area.

  For Boysie, being Mostyn’s PA was like living in an eternal death cell. Never knowing a moment’s peace of mind. Constantly anxious and listening for the step outside the door. Everyone affirmed that Mostyn was a splendid professional, but he was also a man motivated by the devil of sadism. For many years now, Boysie had been Mostyn’s pet obsession—mainly because Boysie Oakes was one of the few men who had unknowingly succeeded in really worrying Mostyn. It was understandable. At the time of his recruitment, Boysie was the hottest thing the 2 I/C had ever handled. When the Department had desperately needed someone to thin out the weeds of security risks, Mostyn, in his omnipotence, had picked Boysie, trained him, coated him with the plastic veneer of near-sophistication and sent him into the field as a bludgeon, a private headsman, who stalked death through the corridors of subversion. Boysie’s very existence within the Department had been a liability. In those early days, when Boysie was working as Chief Liquidating Agent, Mostyn knew full well that it would be his own head that would roll gently from the political guillotine if the true nature of Boysie’s occupation ever became public knowledge. The Chief would never admit responsibility. Owning a lethal weapon (like Boysie) with Government permission was one thing, Mostyn used to tell himself. Owning him without official sanction was quite another matter. As the years went by Mostyn had become more concerned. At times he even found it hard to believe that the brash and artless Boysie could dispense death with such ease. In the end it was a relief to find that circumstances dictated taking ‘L’ (Boysie’s Security Designation) off the liquidating assignments.

  If Mostyn had only known it, no one was happier at this turn of events than Boysie. To be removed from the shadowy status of murderer without portfolio had been his pipe dream since the whole nightmare began. Yet the change of work brought no relief to his personal fear, and deep-seated hatred of Mostyn—who still seemed to regard himself as Boysie’s puppeteer-god. As for Mostyn, Boysie still remained the major itch which played hide-and-seek with his conscience, jerking him from sleep and causing nervous disorders, the like of which Mostyn had never known. Boysie in the field—even on the most simple courier job—could inflct grave doubts and unaccountable headaches.

  By keeping Boysie close, and within eye and earshot, Mostyn hoped to lay the ghost of his deep feelings of responsibility towards the man. In fact the appointment as PA to the 2 I/C only made matters worse. In close contact with one another the odd love–hate relationship began to rise towards its fully combustible potential. Within a week the mere fact of Boysie’s presence began to exasperate Mostyn. Then he started to probe into ‘L’s’ executive inefficiency. Boysie reacted by turning awkward—becoming bovine in attitude and stabbing at Mostyn by perpetrating small acts of violence: like rearranging the papers and ornaments on the 2 I/C’s normally impeccable desk. Whereupon Mostyn put the boot in. He harried Boysie, chipped away at his nerve-ends using every trick he knew. And Mostyn’s knowledge of tricks was considerable. He was reputed to be one of the best interrogators in the business.

  Each night on his way home, frustrated by jammed traffic, Boysie would sit in the Jaguar and go over the events of the day. To unwind, he would use his old dodge—methodically cursing Mostyn with a string of obscene and pertinent invective. This seldom failed to clear his mind and brush away a little of the humiliation and one-downmanship which was his usual condition after a few hours spent with Colonel James George Mostyn. With the mind in a more lucid frame he could then go on to invent sharp rejoinders to comments which, during the hours of business, had been one-sided and cutting—in Mostyn’s favour. But tonight, flanked by the taxi driver and the lady with the mascara problem, Boysie suddenly realised that this day had been different. Yesterday, all hell was let loose. But today, life had been almost idyllic.

  Perhaps, thought Boysie, it was the spring. Certainly it was a warmer day. The girl from Records looked more full-busted. The sap was rising. In the lunch hour he noticed that buds were in evidence in St James’s Park. Perhaps Mostyn was in love. Mostyn’s complex, and rather helixical, associations with the opposite sex could rarely be docketed as ‘love affairs’. Really they were more in the nature of ‘love affrays’. Yet, to Boysie’s certain knowledge, he had of late been seeing a lot of Janet Scampini the model—and there was a lot of Janet Scampini to be seen.

  This line of reasoning took Boysie’s thoughts automatically to Elizabeth. Boysie smiled. Elizabeth had been the one worthwhile thing during the great hard winter battle with Mostyn. But then Elizabeth was special—which was saying something, as Boysie’s taste in women lay in the gourmet class. His particular mode of life lifted him into a very specialised sphere. Blondes, brunettes, red-heads, tall, sinuous, lithe, gorgeous, well-connected, well-furbished, custom-built, smart, intelligent and exclusively desirable. Boysie had them all. They came, and went, violently, quietly, singing, laughing and crying. But, over the last two years, Boysie had always returned to Elizabeth. Whatever else was going on (or coming off) Elizabeth was somewhere in the background—barely twenty-five, short, snub-nosed, tied to her job as a typist at the Board of Trade, and with no pretensions to sophistication. Elizabeth was alive, and with her Boysie never had to pretend, or hide his most excruciating fears. On summer weekends their haunts were in the Cotswolds among the dry stone walls and sweeping fields of barley. When they were together in London they did not meet in Boysie’s favourite polished bars or glittering synthetic hotel lounges. Instead, they discovered the lost places and silent things. Boysie never thought of their relationship as one of love—more as a series of peaceful interludes of discovery, spiced with great moments which were purely physical. As for Elizabeth, she adored Boysie and came like an arrow when called. This time she had been called just before Christmas.

  A vast hooting of horns woke Boysie from his daydream. The traffic was moving again and BEDFORD appeared to be trying to work its way up the twin exhaust pipes. The Jaguar purred forwards, thrusting towards Chesham Place and Elizabeth.

  Boysie was whistling the opening phrase from the Bartok Third, for Piano and Orchestra, as he pushed home his Yale key. Toki’s Theme from Brubeck’s Impressions of Japan slid from the record player, and Boysie’s interpretation caused Bartok to lose on points. Elizabeth was in the kitchen wrestling with Clement Freud.

  ‘How’s me old Mrs Beeton then?’ gushed Boysie.

  ‘“Do not stir the rice until it is cooked and the surface pitted with evenly spaced indentations!”‘ Elizabeth read carefully from the Sunday colour supplement propped by the gas stove. ‘It doesn’t matter if I stir or not. It goes soggy on me just the same.’

  ‘Not chopsticks night again is it?’ Boysie buried his lips in her short black hair and bit tenderly into the back of her neck. Elizabeth still concentrated.

  ‘Paella. “With fish or any crustacean you care to add” it says here. Which means that de luxe tin of crabmeat you’ve been hoarding.’

  ‘But that’s Bon Vivant Crab Newburg. You’ll ruin it. It was for rainy days.’

  ‘It poured this morning. Teemed.’ She turned and put her arms round his neck. ‘Didn’t it teem this morning, darling?’

  ‘My bloody tin of Crab Newburg. I was saving it,’ Boysie grinned and kissed. Big reaction. Then Elizabeth drew away.

  ‘You can’t,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I want to talk to you. It’s rather important.’

  ‘Oh?’ Boysie allowed himself to be led out of the kitchen and g
uided to the chaise-longue—’one of the most suggestive pieces of furniture ever invented’ someone had once written.

  ‘Actually, darling, it’s a bit serious.’ She was standing in front of him, legs apart. Eyes open to maximum, the little snub nose shining above almost negroid lips.

  ‘Shoot.’ Boysie put on his understanding smile.

  ‘It’s a bit difficult ...’

  ‘Who is the dog? I’ll horse-whip him.’

  ‘No, please, Boysie. I think I’m pregnant.’

  ‘You’re what!’ A kind of ruptured roar. ‘What? Again you think you’re pregnant? That’s three times in three months. Every month we have the same story, and every month it’s the same answer—two days later, “Darling, I was wrong I’m not pregnant after all.”‘

  ‘Well.’ A pout.

  ‘Yes. Well. Don’t be half-baked, Liz. You know that nobody in the Department has ever got a girl in the club. It’s unthinkable. Just doesn’t happen. Have you ever known it happen? Even with the really flash boys it doesn’t happen. Unwritten law. You’ve never heard of Dick or James or Harry putting a girl up the loop. Now get the paella.’ He stood up, turned her round by the shoulders, gently smacked her bottom, then sat down again to brood on the phenomenon of Mostyn’s good temper. Mostyn’s pleasantness during the day made him more uneasy than Mostyn at full verbal slash. It could be neither spring nor love, he decided. Knowing Mostyn it just had to be something more sinister.

  The telephone rang as they sat down to dinner. The bell seemed to have acquired an unusually harsh note. Boysie knew who was at the other end before he heard the smarmed-down accent, leaning slightly back on itself, through the earpiece.

  ‘L?’ asked Mostyn.

  ‘Yes.’ Gingerly.

  ‘You left the office a bit smartish tonight, old boy.’