Cut to the Chase (14 page)

‘Not quite,' Wallace uttered shortly, he was a little annoyed. Though he knew what Ravindran meant, this was the second time within twenty four hours that someone had suggested that he was liable to swill liquor down at a fast rate given half a chance.

They shook hands and he escorted Wallace down to the foyer, a cab was waiting.

‘Is that cab for me?'

‘With my compliments, Mr Wallace.'

Wallace waved to him through the window of the cab as it drove off. He had a last look through the rear window, and noticed that another vehicle had drawn up in front of the apartment block and three men were alighting. Then the cab went around a bend in the street and Wallace lost sight of the apartment building.

W
allace entered his room and switched on the light. He was jumpy enough as it was with all these searching questions and warnings he had been receiving from Ravindran. The sight of a figure in the armchair nearly caused him to fall flat on his back with fright.

‘Jesus Christ!'

‘Keep your voice down man,' snapped McKay irritably.

‘Keep my voice down!' The faculty in question rose up two octaves and finished on an indignant squeak. ‘What the hell…!'

‘I said I would be in touch.'

‘In my circles, keeping in touch doesn't entail creeping around people's bedrooms in the dark…couldn't you telephone me?'

‘You weren't in, so I decided to wait. I decided I would be less conspicuous waiting here than sitting down in the foyer.'

‘How did you get in?'

‘By unlocking the door.'

‘How did you get hold of the key?'

‘I didn't.'

‘Well how…?'

‘I just did…all right, there is a knack in my profession for opening doors?'

And whisky bottles, Wallace thought bitterly as he espied the half empty bottle standing on the table and a full glass beside it.

‘Well, what do you want?'

‘You are leaving London tomorrow?'

‘Yes.'

‘Where are you going?'

‘Birmingham and Manchester. What the hell is it to do with you?'

‘Good!' McKay nodded approvingly and ignored the question.

‘Why, do you want me to dig holes in the Edgbaston Test wicket?'

‘Now there's an idea…' McKay pursed his lips and then nodded ‘…that would be just about up your street, I'd say. I'll indent the High Commissioner for your trowel…!'

‘Oh shove it!' Wallace snapped irritably. He didn't like his sarcastic jibes being turned against himself. ‘What is it?'

‘Just a simple camera job.'

‘Camera job!' Wallace blinked and hastily bit back the sarcastic rejoinder about bedrooms and pornography that instantly came to mind.

‘Camera job,' repeated McKay as though talking to a child. ‘We'll even supply the camera and the films.'

‘What the hell am I supposed to photograph?' more sarcasm jostled to get out and finally succeeded. ‘Is it Kremlin documents or two lesbians cavorting in bed together?'

‘The Russian Embassy is too heavily guarded, and we already have a good collection of the others,' remarked McKay gravely and despite his anger Wallace found himself starting to smile as once again his sarcasm was turned back. McKay allowed himself a brief upward quirk of the corners of his mouth in return and for a moment there was a brief rapport. ‘What we want you to do is to take some shots of a man in or near Birmingham, it's fairly easy as he works in a shop, or manages it, and you can legitimately get within a few feet of him. We just want some shots to confirm that he is who we believe him to be, and if he is, to have up to date shots of him. Our present photo shots of him are about two years old. He…um…had a bad motor accident recently and had to have some plastic surgery. There's nothing difficult about that.'

‘And who is he?'

‘That is what we want to find out!'

‘You know damned well what I mean, who the hell do you think he is even if you say you don't know for certain who he is?'

McKay sighed heavily.

‘We believe he could be a man named Murray Craddock, who is, or was, probably still is, a member of the Communist Party who caused considerable problems in Canberra a few years ago. That is his real name but we believe he is living here under a false one. He used a false passport when he left Australia. We believe he was employed by the then KGB, the late unlamented KGB, to whom he passed classified information over a long period.'

Wallace was temporarily silent; the supply of sarcasm had run dry, but he still had a small supply of pointed comments to use as ammunition.

‘But the Soviets and East Germans are old hat now, Germany is re-unified, or didn't you know that?'

‘Yes I did fucking well know that, will you just shut bloody up and listen and keep your Smart Alec comments to yourself.'

Wallace subsided into a sulky silence, McKay poured himself another whisky.

‘Help yourself!' Wallace said bitterly and as a grand gesture McKay pushed the bottle over in his direction.

‘Do you know what linear induction is?'

‘Yes I do,' Wallace answered sulkily, this much he did know, having been deep in conversation very recently with Lindsay, the linear induction expert at Ravindran's latest function. ‘It is movement brought about by a force caused by the interaction of magnets, suitable for rapid transit rail systems and possibly as a means of shooting objects from one point to another.'

‘Very good!' McKay looked impressed. ‘Well the last thing this man did was to pass over to the Kremlin theories and plans for a rapid transit system to be built in Canada and another in Europe. This resulted in an Australian company losing a bid for the job because their best initiatives had been leaked elsewhere and pirated by Russian allies.'

‘Well if we lost it, why the hell do you want to find him now?'

‘We believe he is still active, not as a Soviet Communist because, as you say, that is old hat. But once a traitor, always a traitor. Despite his sojourn in England we believe he could still be operating his espionage ring in Canberra at arms length, probably doing it for money now and not ideals. We are not sure where he is, but we have three possibilities that have been flagged to us recently by another source.'

‘What other source?'

‘That is classified,' McKay replied crushingly. ‘Just take my word for it, the source is reliable. We have it on good authority that this man Craddock has gone to ground in a country town and that he is working in a Commie bookshop that is run by a branch of the British Communist Party. We isolated three possibilities, we have eliminated one and that leaves two.'

‘Thank you, I was capable of working that out!'

‘Really? You do surprise me!' McKay's sarcasm rose to the fore once more.

‘Why don't you just get stuffed?'

‘An interesting suggestion,' McKay replied mildly. ‘However, let us return to Craddock. We have isolated the last two Left Wing bookshops that we know are connected to the Communists, these days they probably call themselves the avant-garde or progressives or some such euphemism! We've had some assistance from MI 5 and the tax authorities and one of these shops has taken on a male employee within the last year or so, a man who gives his age as 45. The bookshop is run by a lady named Adele Briscoe, a leading light in the Communist hierarchy, and the male employee is named Adam Morris.'

‘So if you know all that already, what the hell do you want me to do?'

‘We need an up to date picture, or pictures of the man working at or operating this bookshop in Stourbridge, to establish that this particular individual is the man we're after and that's as far as it goes. If we find it is him, then we'll do the rest. Simple isn't it?'

‘Simple!' Wallace snorted sarcastically. ‘That's what that bastard Bramble said the last time and I was chased all over Jakarta by police gorillas and nearly got myself arrested. He mentioned this man to me before I left Australia, industrial disruption he said.'

‘It's not quite an accurate description of Craddock's activities though it is near the mark but that's Bramble for you.'

Wallace sat back and thought about it, despite his distaste for Bramble or McKay or ASIO or ASIS, or whichever of the two blasted organisations they were working for, he had no feeling whatsoever for a man who would deliberately sabotage Australia's exporting ability.

‘Where would any traitor send information now?'

McKay sat back and rubbed his nose thoughtfully. Wallace could see he was wrestling with how much to tell him, and he could sympathise with that. Maybe he was better off not knowing.

‘We believe he is still a Communist operative, but the people he is dealing with are not necessarily fanatical these days, more opportunistic perhaps. Possibly Craddock doesn't know that or else he doesn't care, that is what we believe. Whatever category they are we want to know who they are.'

‘Why can't you do it?'

‘Because he knows me. I had much contact with him in both our official capacities when we were both in Australia.'

‘Well, if that is all it is…!'

‘It is,' said McKay. ‘I can supply you with an excellent camera.'

‘Oh, and I suppose he'll obligingly stand still while I snap him, or do I ask him to pose?' Wallace asked pointedly.

‘Neither,' said McKay loftily. ‘The camera will be secreted behind your tie and the lens will be poking through. It looks like a tie pin.'

‘I'm not cutting bloody holes in any of my ties, they were expensive…!'

‘Jesus Christ, we'll supply you with a bloody tie! Now as to cameras, you will have another in a brief case with which we'll supply you, if you place that on the counter and press the button you should get some shots there. Have you any more questions?'

‘No,' Wallace muttered angrily.

‘Then I'll see you tomorrow – who knows, you may be able to make a career as a photographer.'

‘No thank you, I'll stick with my present profession if you don't mind.'

McKay shook his head sadly.

‘You could be wasting your talent.'

Wallace made a quick response which McKay effected not to hear. He gave a cheerful grin and let himself out.

Wallace called in to see Saul Prosser during the next day, Saul still had not finalised the USA arrangements and suggested that Wallace should come back later in the week. Wallace told him he was leaving London very shortly.

‘Where will you be?' Saul asked.

‘Not too sure yet, probably north of a line drawn from Wales to The Wash.'

‘OK, keep in touch anyway.'

Wallace took a trip on a river boat on the Thames, had lunch in a small restaurant and then went over the Tower of London. Like many Australians and New Zealanders, and probably Canadians and Americans too, as he toured around that ancient edifice he felt a stirring within, a feeling that this was the place where it had all started. The cell that had been Sir Walter Raleigh's, the place where the Princes in the Tower were reputed to have been incarcerated and later strangled, and the Crown jewels, which he gathered were skilfully made fakes to discourage the fortune or headline hunters. The troops of soldiers ignored the sightseers as they marched to and fro, he wasn't sure which made the most noise, the marching feet or the clicking of the cameras.

Wallace later had a tour around HMS Belfast, the World War II cruiser now permanently moored in the Thames as a naval museum. He knew beforehand that the ship had had a chequered war history; in fact it nearly had no war history at all, being almost torn in two by a mine in the early months of the war in 1939. Damage had been so severe that the Admiralty had considered scrapping the ship. He had heard that there had been extensive discussions in the War Cabinet and Admiralty before they eventually decided to repair, rebuild and refit, and when she eventually emerged from the shipbuilders hands she was a vastly more effective and updated fighting unit, considerably more advanced than HMS Edinburgh, her sister ship. Any comparison between the two ships was now purely academic, the Edinburgh being sunk on a Russian convoy in May 1942 and lying at the bottom of icy waters north of Norway.

Wallace returned to the hotel; he wasn't feeling the best and thought it possible he had eaten something that disagreed with him. He had partaken of a meat roll from a street vendor and though he had finished it he had not liked it, it had possessed a strange, flavour that left a bile like aftertaste that had increased around the back of the throat as time went on, which acted as a discouragement to cough or clear his throat. He was also experiencing a few stomach pains and queasiness which was accentuated as he could still taste that wretched meat roll around the back of the palate.

He found that there was a message for him from Julius Kalim. He tried the number a couple of times but it was engaged and in the meantime he received a call from McKay. He had by this time thought up a snag relating to McKay's scheme for him, he had been intending to make a meal of it and was slightly put out when McKay mentioned it first.