Gibraltar Road (2 page)

Quite a lot. And his name was altogether different.

Shaw was, in fact, one of only three people in the Service who knew that Mr Latymer was a dead man. Or, more precisely, that he wasn’t ‘Mr Latymer’ at all, that his estate, when he had ‘died’ so tragically a few years after the second war, had in fact been credited with the balance of pay due to Vice-Admiral Sir Henry Charteris, K.C.B., D.S.O. and two bars, D.S.C., and a host of foreign decorations; and that it had been Sub-Lieutenant Charteris, and not Mr Latymer, who had pinched that Turkish admiral’s desk so long ago. During the Second World War Charteris had been Chief of the Special Services of the Naval Intelligence Division—the department within a department. He still was; only now he called himself Mr Latymer, and, comparatively, only a handful of people even knew that the Special Services lived on. Officially Mr Latymer’s job, though he was quite openly attached to Naval Intelligence—which, especially in peacetime, covered a multitude of jobs, not all of them connected with the man-in-the-street’s idea of Intelligence even remotely— was simply that of a civilian Permanent Assistant Undersecretary in charge of a department which, on the surface, dealt with all those non-intelligent unromantic things, such as arranging for frigate escorts to be provided for visiting Heads of State arriving by sea, certain aspects of dockyard security, loss of brief-cases by senior officers, and—occasionally and more excitingly—investigation into sand maliciously injected into the oil-fuel systems of H.M. Ships for the private purposes of disgruntled ratings, or into fires started aboard for the same reasons. And so on.

But in reality, of course, and very much under cover, Mr Latymer’s job went far deeper than that.

During the War Sir Henry Charteris had become a marked man, but he was far too useful to be discarded on that account, for no one else had his knowledge, his experience, his authority—or his manner. So when Charteris had been badly knocked about, particularly as to the face and hands, by a bomb which had been placed in the bedroom of his Eaton Square flat one fine spring evening an alert Admiralty, knowing he had no near relatives to question its decision, had at once declared him dead and had smuggled the living body away to the home of a certain senior naval officer where a plastic surgeon had been summoned as soon as Sir Henry was out of danger and had had the Official Secrets Act quoted at him . . . and a year or so later ‘Mr Latymer’ had joined the N.I.D. A year after that, when people had got accustomed to seeing Latymer around the place, the existing (and purely temporary) Chief of Special Services had been pensioned off, and officially the job had ceased to exist. Nevertheless, Mr Latymer was given a change of appointment and promotion, in actual fact taking over as Chief of Special Services though calling himself a plain Under-Secretary; it was the first time a ‘civilian’ had ever held the particular post which Mr Latymer was supposed to hold, and very often Sir Henry Charteris found it hard on the blood-pressure to have to pretend to a complete lack of knowledge of purely nautical subjects when, in his capacity as Under-Secretary Latymer, he had to deal with an argumentative naval officer years junior to him in the Flag List.

However, there it was, and he was damned lucky to be alive at all, let alone back in his old job . . . though it had all happened quite a few years back, he kept on reminding himself, whenever he looked appreciatively round that beautifully appointed office of his, to be thankful.

Now Mr Latymer smiled gently, and when he spoke he spoke as a seaman. That was just one of the reasons why he always looked forward to seeing Shaw—he could forget pretence for once in a while. He’d have liked a long chat, but because he was busy he decided to get the customary formalities over without delay. So he began, “Well, Shaw. Usual pain in the guts, I suppose?” The heavy pink face loomed over the desk.

Shaw’s eyebrows tilted and he grinned. “Yes, sir,” he admitted.

Latymer waved a hand. “Take a tablet if you want to, my boy. Don’t mind me.” He rapped the desk. “Come on now—out with it. Let’s get the next stage over. You want to resign.”

Shaw flushed a little, but his eyes remained steady, looking directly at Latymer. He said, “I didn’t realize it was quite so routine, sir.” He sounded diffident.

“But, God dammit,” snapped Latymer—though there was a flicker of amusement in his mask-like face—“you hand in your resignation before every blasted assignment! Have done for the last ten years.”

Shaw felt the gripping pain twisting his guts. Rubbing the side of his nose with his left forefinger, he said stubbornly, “This time I really do want to get out. I mean it. I’ve had enough, sir. More than enough.”

Shrewdly Latymer studied Shaw’s set face. “Reason?” he demanded.

Shaw hesitated.

Latymer said briefly, “It’s your damned stomach. I’m not unsympathetic—don’t think that. But dammit to hell, man, you can’t let your ruddy guts—in the purely stomachic sense, I mean—stand between you and your duty.” He added wearily, “How many times have we had this out?”

Shaw persisted. “This time it’s different. I’m fed up with this life, sir. I’m a sailor.” He leant forward, a deep frown of concentrated effort driving down between his eyes. “I know my health wasn’t too good during the War, but I want to go back to sea again.”

Quietly Latymer said, “So do I. A ruddy admiral, Shaw, a ruddy admiral, and only once worn my flag at sea. Only once—and that was cover. And never will again—now I’m pushing up the daisies!”

Shaw met his glance and smiled. “I know, sir. I’m sorry. But at least you have worn it that once, and between the wars you commanded ships—genuinely, and not just as cover. I’ve never had that chance.”

“And wouldn’t even if you went back to General Service, the way the Navy’s going now,” said Latymer bitterly. “Won’t be any ships left before long. . . . No, Shaw, you’ve got to stick it. You’re far too valuable to lose back to the Fleet now anyway. And you can do a lot—a hell of a lot—to help keep some kind of Fleet in being. Far more than you could ever hope to do as commander of a ship at sea.”

Latymer had been looking steadily into Shaw’s face all the time he’d been speaking. He knew all about Shaw, naturally. He knew, for instance, that though Shaw looked older he was only in his thirties, knew that worry and the almost overwhelming responsibility which the man had borne alone and for so long had put those deep lines where they had no right to be, stretching from nose to mouth, cutting ruts which showed up the determination in mouth and chin, driving the sharp cleft between the brows. It had made the eyes look tired and old, though Latymer knew that those eyes were capable of lighting up wonderfully, of taking away the years, when Shaw looked at something that pleased him—little things, such as a flower thrusting through earth bravely into the polluted air of a London square, or a child at play. Latymer knew, too, that Shaw’s stomach complaint was real enough—that it, like Shaw’s present employment, had been due originally to the War.

He knew that Shaw had been pitchforked out of Dartmouth to join the Fleet as midshipman in an old destroyer, lurching wildly around the North Atlantic on convoy escort duty, running out from the ice and bitter winds of Scapa Flow to Forty West in the most diabolic weather and under revoltingly primitive conditions, the seas often so high that to venture along the open decks was unsafe and the watch on deck had to remain at their stations for maybe forty-eight hours at a stretch, wet through and hungry and shivering in the icy gale until their messmates could venture from below and slither across the reeling iron deck to the guns and the bridge; each passage had been ten days of hell for Midshipman Shaw, who had been a victim, an agonized victim, of shocking sea-sickness. Shaw’s Commanding Officer had noticed his midshipman’s travail, though Shaw himself had never said a word about it to anyone. What that Commanding Officer had failed to notice was that Shaw never ate a thing at sea, except the occasional ship’s biscuit which was all he could keep down; and that when they returned to swing round a buoy in the blank grey dreariness of Scapa for a couple of days between trips Shaw had made up for lost time, and had grossly over-eaten. All that, for too long extended, plus a couple of sinkings and some days adrift on a Carley float on the Atlantic rollers, had resulted in an ulcer. That ulcer had in turn resulted in Shaw being consigned, at least temporarily, to shore service. It had eventually been cut out; but the indigestion and the discomfort had returned and had remained, his constant legacy—and so, to his intense disappointment, had the ‘shore service only’ note on his papers, for by that time the Admiralty had found excellent use for a loyal and intelligent officer whom they considered had been wasted for too long in a job for which he was not, because of his disability, wholly suited. Shaw had thenceforward ceased outwardly to be a naval officer, and for the rest of hostilities he exchanged the bitter North Atlantic for the heat of the Western Desert and for the fleshpots and intrigues and dangers of Egypt, North Africa, and Spain, and for many other places, and he wore his uniform only when on leave.

Except for one sea commission, peace and the cold war had perpetuated Shaw’s special duties, to his great dismay.

All this Latymer knew—and knew, too, what Shaw’s thoughts were as he sat before his desk; he knew, because those thoughts were in so many ways like his own. Thoughts that circled nostalgically round a British Battle Squadron at sea in line ahead, the strings of coloured bunting blowing out from the signal halyards, or the winking masthead lights at night; a great concourse of grey ships entering Malta’s Grand Harbour to anchor together on the signal from the flagship, the lower- and quarter-booms being extended, the boats and gangways lowered, and the anchors let go at split-second timing, all together, as the engines thrashed astern to bring the ships up; misty dawns in Scottish anchorages, with a red sun behind the haze rose-tinting the distant, towering hills as the White Ensign was broken at the jackstaff, the bugles echoing savage and triumphant as they blared out for Colours; a picket-boat coming alongside a cruiser’s quarterdeck ladder, her crew soaked in spray, caked with the salt of a brisk, windy morning; a vanished Light Cruiser Squadron steaming at speed into a West Indian sunset; the Northern Lights, viewed from a destroyer’s bridge off Lyness, or the Old Man of Hoy standing out to starboard, in broad daylight even at two bells in the middle watch, as a ship steamed north about through the Pentlands from the Firth of Forth to the Clyde; the wondrous, fairy-like beauty of the Kyle of Lochalsh and a night passage under moonlight of the Minches with the Isle of Skye to port and a wind blowing through the Sound of Harris; an old County-class cruiser, battling through boisterous seas in the Great Australian Bight with a roaring wind coming straight off the southern ice; China-side, and the mysteries and glamour of the East, and dances on the quarterdeck beneath the awnings in Trincomalee and Singapore, of laughing, sun-browned girls in summer frocks on golden sandy beaches fringed with the dark green of palms and the bright blue sea beyond . . . old days, and all gone now . . . memories or ambitions, perhaps, of a once seasick midshipman who’d never had the good fortune to know all the former glories—but memories, too, of a land-bound admiral and ones which would never, never fade . . . memories which were so much better than recalling the knife in the back, the hidden identity, the traitorous friend, and the ever-cautious speech.

Latymer began to speak, quietly but with the quality of steel which was always in his voice. He reminded Shaw that it was well known in the Admiralty that he wanted nothing more than to rejoin the Fleet and to serve as a sailor in accordance with his training; pointed out that Their Lordships, in deciding otherwise, had taken into account that very fact that he didn’t want to go on serving in the department. An agent who was in it for the romance or the money or the prestige among his comrades within the department would be of no use. Neither would be an agent who suffered from over-confidence; if his nerve had really cracked, of course, they wouldn’t have been able to get rid of him fast enough; but they knew, as Latymer knew, that Shaw’s nerve when on the job was of steel. It all came out of his system in the working-up period, as now. They had a saying in the outfit, and Latymer reminded Shaw of it now:

“When Shaw’s showing the strain—that means he’s going to do a first-rate job.”

Wearily Shaw shifted in his chair, felt the bitterness in his mouth. He’d never get free of this lot, it was no use trying. Besides, he had to admit to himself that what Latymer said was true.

Latymer was going on, “You know perfectly well we never force anyone to accept an active job if he doesn’t want it, but no one’s ever refused yet, and I don’t believe you’re going to be the first to do so. Anyway, I’m not allowing you to resign from the department, and that’s final.” He looked at Shaw with a sly grin. “If you want to arse about and kick your heels in glorious idleness on extended leave—say so!” He added quietly, “It happens I’ve got a very special job lined up for you. I sent for you because you’re the best-qualified man I’ve got for it. For one thing, you know Spain pretty well and you speak Spanish. And—there’s another reason.”

Latymer stopped there, got up, and went over to the window, letting Shaw think things over for a bit. He knew quite well that Shaw would never put up with sitting around on his backside so long as he was still in the Service and his friends were risking their necks—and he kept him sizzling for a while. Then he returned to his desk and sat down. He leaned forward, arms folded on the massive leather top, pink, scarred face lowered like a bull. He asked:

“Want to hear what that job is?”

Shaw sighed. “All right, sir. Go ahead.”

“That’s better!” Latymer grinned, and seemed to relax a little. He pushed a box of cigarettes across to Shaw, took one himself, and flicked a lighter. Two trails of smoke spiralled up, were lost in the ornate ceiling. Latymer asked:

“Remember Karina?”

The words, the tone, were almost casual; but they made Shaw sit up sharply, startled, wondering if that dream last night had been a premonition. . . . He said, “Karina Czercov?”