Amber Nine Read online

‘Lunchies?’ smiled Boysie.

  ‘Lovely.’ The lips looked comestible.

  ‘Then a funicular ride.’

  ‘Boysie!’

  ‘Up the mountain to the Madonna del Sasso.’

  ‘Oh. For a moment ...’

  ‘You thought that I was being vulgar. People always do.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  BLUE STEEL: LOCARNO

  BOYSIE’S telephone call, routed through the Bayswater house, disturbed Mostyn. The sub-text of the conversation was plain. Boysie’s great clod-hopping boots had stirred the opposition. Things were happening down in Ticino. He listened to the tape just once, to make sure, and checked through the card index in his ‘Most Personal’ drawer. Kadjawaji was on the loose. That was obvious. Nasty. Mostyn picked up the yellow internal telephone.

  ‘Number Two. Give me the DO.’

  ‘Duty Officer.’

  Mostyn had an accurate ear for voices. ‘Number Two. That Martin?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Hole in one. Long time no see.’

  ‘No, sir.’ Martin was an old friend who had served much of his time with the Department as a stake-out man at London Airport.

  ‘Old House-martin, eh?’

  Martin allowed himself a thin smile, winking on and off as though controlled by a time-switch.

  ‘Can I help you, sir. I’ve only got another five minutes on duty.’

  A blizzard of silence. Then. ‘How long have you been out of the field and on the DO’s roster, Martikins?’

  ‘A couple of months.’

  ‘And how long with the Department?’

  ‘Nearly five years.’

  ‘Then you should know by now, friend, that the Department owns you. It has bought you body and soul—wretched and unworthy though you may well be.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ a resigned note. Martin should have known better than to mention the imminent end of his tour of duty.

  ‘I seem to remember,’ Mostyn’s voice had a feigned lilt of nostalgia, ‘that you and I, old Martin, once had dealings with jolly old “L”.’

  Martin’s right kneecap disintegrated in a mushroom of pain. This was the man’s built-in warning system—a kneecap which hurt blindly at the approach of danger. Unerring as an aneroid barometer. He certainly remembered the dealings with “L”.

  ‘Yes,’ Martin, unimpressed.

  ‘Looks as though you’re going to be concerned with him again, brother Martin.’

  No reply.

  ‘Action then, Martin.’

  ‘Tape running, sir.’ Clear and professionally efficient now.

  ‘Right. Operational Area, Yodelcountry. Complete checkout of girl’s finishing school called II Portone near Locarno on Lake Maggiore. Secondary, check out Principal of school. Name, Klara Thirel, repeat K-L-A-R-A-T-H-I-R-E-L. No details. Third, check out with East Berlin Cell Four. Trace movements Indian midget known as Kadjawaji. Spell K-A-D-J-A-W-A-J-I. Active Berlin six to seven years ago and heavily involved Redland. Reported identified Yodelcountry yesterday. Four. Check out telephone number Wimbledon 32697 and occupant called Wheater. Final. Check all sections knowledge of code or operation or anything under Amber Nine. Repeat. Colour Amber. Figure niner.. Fullest security screen all. Report direct to Number Two.’

  ‘OK action, sir. Close?’

  ‘Yes. Close.’ Then the wolf in Mostyn’s voice. ‘Come up and see me, old Martin. That would be nice. For old times sake. Come up before you go off duty, eh?’

  ‘Very good, sir.’ Unhappy.

  Mostyn jabbed at the receiver rests, got through to the exchange switchboard and asked for the Chief Supervisor.

  ‘Bill?’ Silky. On the edge of a proposition. ‘Number Two. Wanted to talk about Martin, good type on your Duty Officer’s roster—used to be on stake-out at London Central. Couldn’t lend him to me could you? Just for a few days. Attached to me direct.’ The voice nattered quietly in the earpiece. Bill trying to ingratiate himself. Mostyn smiled. ‘Bless you, Billy boy. As from the end of his DO period tonight. That is as from now.’ Mostyn felt pleased. He had taken action, anticipating the further trouble which he instinctively knew was building up over the horizon and around Boysie.

  *

  ‘Kadjawaji left Berlin three days ago. Nothing yet on this Klara woman, II Portone, or the Wheater person.’ Mostyn shuffled the small sheaf of information flimsies. Martin sat glum on the opposite side of the desk. They had been together for an hour. Movements had sent up a passport, money and a ticket for the night flight to Zürich—Martin was suddenly transformed into a travelling man. Information came on the line for Mostyn. He wrote, unseen nails creating creases in his brow as the invisible operator talked into his ear.

  ‘Well, that’s it. There seems to be a blanket of stealth surrounding II Portone and this Klara Thirel. Military Intelligence got quite shirty. Something odd there. They say we have to get special clearance from Supreme Control. Amber Nine turned out to be one of the continental air roads and the cable address of some electrical engineers in Surbiton. They’re sending details. Nothing on Wheater.’ The telephone rang out again. Mostyn scribbled.

  ‘“L”‘s been busy bless him. Evening papers will have it I expect. Penton’s out of the running. High dive off a hotel balcony. Quirky way of completing the old life cycle. But “L” is following his nose—thinks he’s on to something and you know where that can land us.’ Worry scratched into Mostyn’s voice. Then authority again. ‘You will retrieve, old Martin. Like a good gun doggie. Bring ‘im back alive you can. Oaksie has his uses.’

  Martin sighed. Temperamentally he was a man good for sitting, watching and making accurate reports. Not a man of action. Briefly he contemplated telling Mostyn but the direct line intercom, which ran between the Chief’s office and Mostyn’s desk, gave its ridiculous little toot.

  ‘You alone, Number two?’ The Old Man sounded too sober for comfort.

  ‘No, Chief. Will be in a minute though.’

  ‘Who’s with you?’

  ‘Martin. Sending him out to retrieve and give support on the “L” assignment.’

  ‘Good. Just heard that Penton’s dead. Fall from an ‘otel window in Switzerland, poor chap. Just had one of me contacts in the Street on to me.’

  ‘Haven’t had time to report to you yet.’ Mostyn quickly countered the implied criticism.

  ‘No. Too busy askin’ questions about Wheater and a telephone number in Wimbledon.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘And a woman called Thirel.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And a high-bloody-class finishing school called Il Portone.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘That’s a blasted ‘nough. But throw in Amber Nine—whatever that is. Trouble with this bloody job is that all our fornicating departments, inter-bleedin’ service sections, the lot, are so blasted secret that they never let their own left hands know what the right hands are doin’. No bloody co-ordination or cooperation.’

  ‘What seems to be the matter, Chief?’

  ‘We mustn’t meddle with the missin’ au pair girl’s thing for a start.’

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘SB’ve just been on. Shouldn’t ‘ave given us the info in the first place. They’ve had a rocket from Supreme Control—you know what those fellas are like.’

  ‘Ancient Order of Buffaloes.’

  ‘Better get up here, Number Two. What with your Wheater and such you’ve stirred up something. Inadvertently you’ve been treadin’ on sacred ground. Very sacred. Top sacred as you might say.’

  ‘Oh. Yes, Chief. Right away. I’ll be up right away.’

  Mostyn was rattled. Martin looked at the Second-in-Command with a new sense of understanding.

  *

  The luncheon had been pleasant, under a cool blue restaurant awning which stretched the length of the Palmira’s façade. Chilled Melon and Caneton Braise—the white waiter, shoulders glistening with gold, carving the duck with the concentration of a surgeon performing a
partial gastrectomy. The simile was accurate. He was assisted by a couple of junior waiters and watched by three trainees. Somewhere in the background, the head waiter stood poised, breath held and eyes fixed on the sliding blade of the carving knife.

  ‘You could sell tickets,’ said Boysie. Petronella laughed. The head waiter looked scandalised.

  They finished with Himbeere Kaltschale—because Boysie liked the name (it turned out to be raspberry purée)—and lingered over the coffee. For the first time that day Boysie’s mind had a chance to reflect on the facts. He did not like what he found. The promise to help Petronella, and his readiness to meet Lynne were obviously dragging him deeper into something which he preferred to leave alone. Boysie began to sense the first returning quivers of anxiety. By the time they set out for the funicular ride to the Madonna del Sasso the quivers had turned into judders.

  The Drahtseilbahn—funicular—which runs between Locarno and the Madonna del Sasso climbs for nearly a thousand yards, at a terrifying angle up the mountainside. At the rear of the car, crushed against the window between Petronella and a voluble lady in black, Boysie became fascinated by the stranded steel cable paying out behind them. Not for him the grey rock fascia or the network of fern and fir. To Boysie, disaster was in the air. Already he could see the cable giving way—a vivid picture of the car splintering down the long single rail with sparks showering: then the hideous crunch as they smashed through the terminus below. The car, designed to hold around eighty people, seemed oversubscribed—mostly with large perspiring pilgrims of Italian origin chanting a hymn in raucous semi-unison. Boysie only hoped it was directed at some saint whose patronage covered funiculars and similar appliances. There was a lurch (a dramatic change in the level of Boysie’s stomach contents) and they arrived at the upper terminus.

  The great baroque sanctuary of the Madonna del Sasso is approached, from the funicular, through a broad cloister circling the building. The west end rises in pink rococo curves, surmounted by a garish mural depicting Brother Bartolomeo having his vision. When Boysie and Petronella arrived, only a handful of people wandered about the gravelled square in front of the main doors. In the luke-warm bath of spring sunshine, perched high above the toy houses—the lake like a painted glass ornament—they seemed to be suspended in a sort of fairy-tale atmosphere. Boysie took particular notice of the sign pointing back through the cloister to the mountain path—the Via Dolorosa which they planned to use for the descent once Boysie had talked to Lynne. But there was no sign of the nervous Miss Wheater outside the church.

  Inside, the cool ecclesiastical draught hit them—the familiar church chill mingled with a sweet smell of snuffed candle smoke and incense. Boysie looked round with wonder. This was his country. The heavy grey walls were covered with small bright paintings—some expertly executed, some crude, fascinating as wild brush strokes of children. All depicted the near-disaster, accident, or calamity from which their donor had been saved. A cart crashed over the edge of a precipice; a party of climbers swooped to their deaths leaving one lone figure clinging to a rock; a parachutist floated clear of a burning aircraft (undoubtedly aerodynamically unsound in the first place); a car hung half-way over a cliff. This Boysie could understand. People thanking an unknown deity for salvation from the kind of terrors which so often beset him. He could have searched the museums and art galleries of the world, but nowhere could he have found such a collection of paintings which summed up the night horrors and nervous fantasies which patinated his system.

  ‘It’s not exactly the Louvre, is it?’ said Petronella stuffily.

  ‘No, but there’s more anxiety to the square inch here than in the London Clinic.’

  Boysie was oblivious to everything but the pictures. He meandered around the building, pausing, immersed in each group of canvasses. Completing the circuit back to the west door he realised he had lost Petronella en route. He swung round, taking in the whole religious scene. Not a sign of the neat blue figure. Nor of Lynne. The hands of his watch showed 4.15. For a second time, Boysie’s eyes raked slowly around the church. Petronella must have gone outside.

  As he stepped into the square he had to blink, readjusting to the brightness. Little orange and mauve dots floated in the foreground of his vision. Still no Petronella. No Lynne. Walking over to the sign which indicated the path to the Via Dolorosa he aimlessly followed it in the hope that Petronella had wandered on ahead of him. At the end of the cloister a set of narrow stone stairs led to a cobbled pathway sloping to the first zig-zag foot-path which runs sheer down to the town. Boysie decided to go on to the next hairpin turn. If Petronella was not on the path he would go back. The cobbles were rough, hard under his sandals, with tricky smooth areas which made walking a full-time occupation. As he neared the turn, Boysie could make out the gable-shaped housing that enclosed the Fourteenth Station of the Cross. Thirteen angled bends, similar to this, lay below. As he drew abreast of the Station—stonework chipped and paint peeling—Boysie heard the rattle of a small dislodged pebble be-hind him. He turned. The man was coming down fast, eyes fixed on Boysie. Petronella was not round the corner. Only the other man. Boysie spun, his back against the Station. They were placed on either side of him, big blond boys dressed identically in suits of blue denim, their hair bleached golden by the sun. Each carried a smooth heavy walking stick. Boysie froze, like a child playing ‘statues’, taking in the denim suits, bronzed faces —one with a hawk nose, the other with a nasty white scar on his left cheek which must have made him brutally interesting to women. Someone laughed. Then the men—as if to order and in slow motion—brought their walking sticks across their bodies, grasping them with both hands high up. Hands twisting in unison. Two clicks and a shshshshnick. The sticks were drawn away, and Boysie was left looking into the glinting blue steel of a pair of rapiers.

  The hook-nosed man had been standing a shade closer to Boysie than Scarface. As he operated his swordstick the heavy wooden scabbard slid from his fingers and bounced between Boysie and his partner. Boysie reacted with that natural panic-speed of a man desperate to save his skin. He leaped forward, fingers grasping at the stick, and swung upwards in a mighty clout. There was a yell as the stick made contact with beak-nose’s wrist. The rapier dropped and the man twirled obscuring his partner’s vision for a vital second. Boysie, now engaged and having drawn blood, lashed out again, this time catching the whirling disarmed swordsman horribly behind the right ear. He fell, bumping against the one with the scar, and rolling dangerously near the edge of the path.

  Boysie dived again. This time for the rapier. His hands curled round the hilt, recovering just in time to face the first lunging attack from his right. He made a lucky, fumbling semi-circular parry. There was a tingling clash of steel. By the jolt on his wrist, Boysie knew he was up against a professional. Scarface tried to riposte, the point spearing through Boysie’s defence. But Boysie managed an envelopment, circling his opponent’s blade to the right, backing away on the defence. He was surprised how it all came back so quickly. He could have been in the gymnasium with the high windows at Special Security’s training centre fast among the sheep and skylarks of Hampshire.

  Scarface came in again, point circling then beating at Boysie’s blade. Attack! Parry! Riposte! Like a lesson. But Boysie was gradually being forced back to the bank. Vainly he tried to attack, lunging in high. Scarface carried out a neat croise and moved in close. The two blades slithered hard together and both men were locked tightly, wrist against wrist, corps-à-corps. Boysie again cursed the long winter. His muscular reserve was not what it should have been. Allowing his arm to give way slightly—putting Scarface off-balance—he pressed hard to the side and back. They disengaged. Scarface stumbled to the right. A moment of truth. Boysie did the one thing possible. He wheeled round and ran down the path. A shout from behind.

  He could hear Scarface thudding after him. Skidding and slipping, Boysie took the corner by the Thirteenth Station and careered on over the hazardous cobbles. Twelfth. Eleventh, Ten
th. Scarface was gaining. At the ninth corner the gradient flattened a little—a tall fir surrounded by a spur of earth. Scarface was nearly on him. Breathless, Boysie turned, his back against the tree. Scarface slowed, slipped into the en garde position and came on with a series of lunges to the throat. Once more, steel flickered against steel. Boysie beat the blade away. Then, suddenly the fang of blue metal was coming fast for his stomach. Boysie parried, but the blade, knocked downwards, came on. It was like a burn high on the inside of his right thigh and there was a small thump as the point slid into the tree trunk, accurate between his legs. Boysie lunged and saw his blade make contact with Scarface’s shoulder. The denim ripped and a blotch of blood spread like red ink on blue blotting paper. Scarface gave a small moan, let go of his rapier and staggered backwards, leaving the impaled weapon waving obscenely like a broken metronome. Boysie moved in to consolidate his victory with a variation of the Chavante arm lock—cupping the left hand under the opponent’s right elbow pushing upwards, while at the same time the right hand levers down on his right wrist. The result, in the case of Scarface, was a broken arm and unconsciousness.

  Boysie fell back against the tree. The aftermath of fear. His thigh stinging and a fair straggle of blood showing on his trousers. He limped on down the path to the Via Sasso. In the sunlight a Grecian white Victor Estate car stood proud and opulent. Slight blurring of Boysie’s sight. Beside the estate car were two visions—dream legs ending in leather short-shorts, grey shirts, heads crowned with golden haloes. They were moving towards him. The ground swayed. Behind them, a shorter neat figure. Boysie could not feel his legs. It was as though he was floating toward the car. Chrome-edged windows. The feel of metal on his shoulder.

  ‘Why, it’s Mr Oakes. Quick, girls. Help him. He’s ill. Or had an accident.’ As though through water, Boysie could see the face of Klara Thirel. ‘Into the car with him. Quickly, idiot child. Quickly.’ Soft hands and arms round his legs and shoulders. Then a dizzy half-knowing.