The Partridge Kite (14 page)

Now as he sat watching the flames he mouthed it again.

‘I will, I swear it, give a reason for your dying.’

He leant back in the armchair feeling the heat on his face, the tingle of sweat on his forehead and the tiredness. He reached out with his right hand to a desk drawer by the chair and pulled from it a faded blue fabric covered logbook and held it up to the light of the fire. The Spread Eagle of the Royal Air Force was still clearly embossed on the cover and under it, neatly handwritten, was his service number and his name.

And underneath them, the initials V.C.

Three names now ringed in red and Christmas seven days away.

‘We only got the last three numbers, 843; the reception was dreadful.’ Fry spoke directly to Tom. Kellick stood in his usual place by the window.

‘I stuck the radio mike under my chair,’ Tom replied. ‘It was a loose weave wicker type. Thought it would be ideal.’ Tom was sitting on the edge of Kellick’s desk which was obviously annoying Kellick immensely.

‘Probably,’ Tom said, ‘his chicken of a secretary shoved the chair outside after I’d gone.’

‘Or the fat man might have sat on it himself,’ Fry said. ‘You’d have picked up one long fart if he’d done that.’ Fry laughed but there was no reaction from Kellick except for the slightest move of the head. He crossed his arms tightly over his chest and continued looking out of the window. The orange glare from the sodium gas lamps in Victoria Street underlit his face.

‘But for certain,’ said Fry, ‘he used his private line the moment we heard you leave his office. As I said, there was a dreadful noise so we only got the last three numbers, but we picked up his conversation clear enough.’

‘Can I hear it?’ asked Tom.

‘No need. . . it was very short. . . read my notes.’

He handed over a sheet of paper. Mostyn’s report to CORDON had been precise. Fry had written: ‘CORDON AREA FOUR ALERT. [Fry indicated a pause of seven seconds.] I HAVE JUST BEEN INTERVIEWED BY A TOM MCCULLIN WRITING HE SAYS FOR
STERN
MAGAZINE. I AM CHECKING WITH THEM NOW ON HIS CREDENTIALS AND PUBLICATION DATE AND WILL KEEP YOU INFORMED.’

‘You mean,’ asked Tom, looking up, ‘that Mostyn checked with Hamburg, found I was a phony, checked back with CORDON and then got a man to wipe the tape in my flat that quickly?’

‘No,’ said Fry. ‘No one followed you from Fleet Street, we’re sure of that. And as far as we can be certain from our recordings Mostyn didn’t call CORDON back until after the interview tape had been wiped.’

‘So CORDON did it?’

‘Yes,’ said Fry.

‘Without telling Mostyn?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’ Tom stood up from the desk, turned a chair around and sat down on it resting his elbows on the back.

‘Christ knows why,’ Fry said. ‘Part of the battle plan you were telling us about.’

‘Did you get a picture of the fellow?’

‘We got him going into your place and coming out. Your call was just in time, by the way. From Russell Street he walked straight to Trafalgar Square to a carol service. It was just as black there as it was outside. Our man took seventeen photos altogether, all long lens stuff, so he’s not too optimistic. He’s going to work on the negs; the best we can expect, he says, is a profile. He gave us a good description, though. The man’s tall, six one or two, smartly dressed, dark overcoat, dark trilby, military looking. He’s got a moustache. . . his own, our man’s convinced of that. And on the long lens viewfinder he thought he could just make out some kind of deformity on his left ear - said it looked like an old-fashioned boxer’s cauliflower!’

‘I think,’ Fry said to Tom, ‘I know who it is; I don’t know about the ear but the rest fits. He’s the one who followed you out of the hotel that night.’

‘Well,’ Tom said, ‘we’ve got something at last, even if it is only the hit man.’

The three men did nothing for at least a minute. Didn’t speak. Didn’t move. Kellick watched buses. Fry looked at Tom, who had slumped forward on the back-to-front chair, resting his chin on his clasped knuckles. He stared at the stains in the once cream Wilton rug that had been arranged squarely in front of the desk by the Head of SSO.

Tom looked up. ‘You asked me earlier today. Fry, why any one of our six hadn’t alerted the others once we’d begun checking them out. Why Curran-Price didn’t warn Haig, or Haig Mostyn.’

‘Well, McCullin. . . are you going to tell us why?’ Kellick spoke for the first time in fifteen minutes.

‘Because, they don’t know each other. Not as CORDON Directors, anyway. That’s why!’

‘But that’s absurd,’ said Kellick, still looking out through the slow fall of snow to the street below.

‘It is not absurd. It’s a fact. We’re bloody thick. . . thick and lazy. Sanderson told us they didn’t know each other. . . the clue was in the tape again . . . about halfway through when he was talking to you about the cell structure of CORDON.’

‘Page sixteen,’ Fry said simply.

Kellick glared across at him, then walked stiffly to his desk. He unlocked the bottom right-hand drawer, pulled out foolscap paper held together loosely by a ring binder and sat down. He thumbed through to page sixteen.

‘Sometimes,’ he said, looking directly at Fry again, I find your memory quite frightening.’

He sat bolt upright in his chair, page sixteen open on the desk in front of him, his hands out flat on the desk top, spread wide, palms down.

‘Page sixteen, paragraph five: The country is divided into fifty-two areas and each has its CORDON leader or Director. Their names are known only to six men, six anonymous men who make up the board of CORDON: five Directors and the Chairman.’

He looked puzzled. ‘I don’t understand the purpose of this anonymity. They sound like a load of infantile Masons. How on earth can they work without knowing the next man in the next area?’

That’s exactly their strength!’ Tom said it slowly, the words forming as he worked them out. ‘That’s why they’ve been so successful in keeping what they’ve been doing under the carpet for so long. That’s what I haven’t been able to work out. It’s been bothering me from the start. How come, if CORDON has, as Sanderson says they have, been actively recruiting and organising for at least three years and possibly for as long as eight, no one has leaked it before now? How come no one has defected before Sanderson. . . gone to their MP or the police or the Press? Because no one - except Headquarters Staff and a handful of top trusted Directors - really knows what it’s all about. No one except them knows how big it’s going to be when the day comes.

‘Don’t you see it’s exactly like the names we have? On their own they’re certainly very powerful, influential, but not a threat. Get them to use their power together, spark them off in one big explosion, and wallop! you’ve really got something.

‘CORDON has arranged it that each area is autonomous under one Area Director. Each Director receives instructions and guidance from Headquarters and feeds progress reports back. But Curran-Price doesn’t need to know Mostyn . . . not as a CORDON man anyway. And Haig wouldn’t need to know what’s happening in any other area. It’s like separate units in an Army co-ordinated by Staff HQ and you can bet your life CORDON’S HQ has a battery of computers to help them.’

‘But surely,’ Fry interrupted, ‘men like Mostyn would need to know what the big day is all about. Certainly Haig must know, if he is going to provide part of the armed force?’

‘Yes, of course they know. I’ve said that there has to be a trusted handful outside of the Headquarters Staff. But they don’t necessarily have to know each other. That’s CORDON’S guarantee of secrecy. . . that’s its strength.’

‘It’s a fascinating theory, McCullin.’ Kellick and his outstretched hands hadn’t moved all the time Tom had been speaking. ‘But Sanderson talked of “thousands” of members. How on earth could CORDON use thousands in the secrecy you’re suggesting? It just isn’t possible.’

‘Well, if it isn’t possible, then we haven’t any worries - because you’re saying that if we don’t know about them they don’t exist!’

‘I’m not saying they—’ Kellick began.

‘I’ll tell you how I think they’re doing it.’ Tom stopped him as if he hadn’t heard him speaking.

‘They’re doing it through a whole collection of pressure groups and front organisations. CORDON’S not one - it’s many. The British Heritage Trust is the biggest. But there must be dozens and dozens of smaller lesser-known groups - political, cultural, racial. God knows how many Nationalist Parties there are now. And how many funds have been set up in the past few years? Who keeps a check of them?’ ‘We do, for a start!’ said Fry. ‘You’d expect us to, wouldn’t you?’

‘Well, I’d expect you to. Fry; you’re efficient.’

Fry blushed slightly. Compliments . . . especially compliments from men. . . embarrassed him. He hoped nobody had noticed. Tom had. He turned his gaze to Kellick to help things.

‘Is it possible to do a quick check on them? Go back, say three years?’

Kellick nodded. He began writing on his desk pad with his right hand and pushed the intercom speaker button down with his left.

‘Mrs Hayes, would you come in?’

Within five minutes, two floors down, the computers began their scan.

‘Offhand,’ said Fry, ‘I can think of at least five of these so-called funds that have been extremely well subscribed to. The Fight for Freedom Fund, which seems the biggest; the Fund for Individual Liberty; the Nationalist Movement, and something more recent called the British Independence Committee. And, of course, the League of Loyalists, who’re incredibly wealthy. Remember, they took over two redundant Royal Navy frigates a year ago, with full Government approval, to use as cadet training ships.’

‘There are, of course,’ Kellick said, ‘quite a number of semi-respectable Right-Wing-cum-Anti-Union organisations that have been running for a great many years now with some very well-known and highly respected people at their centre. You’re not suggesting that they are part and parcel of all this, are you?’

‘Why not?’ asked Tom.

‘Yes, why not?’. . . Fry walked up to the desk. They all share exactly the same motives. Anti-Union Anti-Left. They promise civil assistance, strike breaking, the lot!’

He leant over Kellick’s desk and picked up a manilla folder and began thumbing through the pages inside. He picked out a single sheet. . . a photocopy of a press cutting.

‘Let me read you this,’ he said.
Daily Express
front page head - eight months ago.

An anti-chaos organisation, set up within the last four months, is on the alert to step in if there is a national emergency over the present economic crisis. The organisation, calling itself ACTION, is a private group of ex-servicemen, bankers, ex-senior Intelligence Officers and businessmen.

In a statement, leaked to the Press Association last night, an informant who was not named said that a three-point plan had now been prepared and could be set into motion within hours if a breakdown in Central Government was exploited by groups of workers encouraged by the extreme Left.

An emergency radio network had been formed to take over if the BBC and Post Office were shut down by political action.

A secret air organisation had already been established. A number of jet and piston-engined aircraft were available at three (unspecified) airfields.

Arrangements had been made to produce and distribute a broadsheet newspaper if national and provincial newspapers were forced to stop production by political/industrial action.

The ACTION document also claims to have the co-operation of some Chief Constables, but the most bizarre claim it makes is that its members have direct links with Buckingham Palace . . . giving them ‘access to the still extensive executive powers that derive directly from the Crown.’ A Palace spokesman, replying to ACTION’S claim, said last night that the notion was absurd. But he said there were a number of retired senior service officers on the Palace staff and it may be, he said, that one or more of them have friends in ACTION and may even sympathise with their aims. But there was no ‘hot line’. Mr Alan Sapper, left- wing leader of the Television Technicians’ Union, commented, ‘This smacks of the beginnings of Nazi Germany. It’s a very dangerous thought to breed into reality.’

Fry looked up and across to Kellick. ‘The report goes on to say that ACTION members also belong to some of the other semi-respectable organisations you were talking of.’

‘ “Were” members. Fry,’ said Kellick. ‘Use the past tense. I remember that report well enough even if I do lack your immediate reference brain! I remember it because of the mention of senior ex-intelligence men belonging to that collection of blimps. You will remember. Fry, that we made our own investigations as a matter of routine and found it to be absolute bloody nonsense! You will also remember, if you care to . . . that is, if it doesn’t get in the way of your theories . . . that shortly after that article was published, ACTION went into rapid decline following a lot of unpublished internal bickering.’

‘And the airfields, Mr Kellick?’ Tom stood up. ‘And the radio network? Have they all gone too? And the idea, has that evaporated? Can we safely rely on what we think may have happened? What if they haven’t broken up? What if the leak to the Press really embarrassed them? Wouldn’t the most sensible thing to do be to stage a closedown, check your security, make sure it didn’t happen again and then carry on out of the limelight? I’m not suggesting that ACTION is CORDON. But I bet a pound to a penny it’s a tiny part of it. And I’ll bet you something else. At least one of the founder members of every one of these separate organisations like ACTION is in direct daily contact with CORDON Headquarters, taking directions, receiving money. Essential parts of the expanding whole.’

There are also,’ Fry said, ‘a scattering of private armies . . . Haig’s is one but we know there are others around the country. Column 88 is one of them.’

‘Who are?’ asked Tom.

‘Well, they might be just a collection of psychopaths who like dressing up as Nazis. They may be something more serious. Whatever they are, if they’re not part of CORDON now you can be sure it’ll find a use for them on the day. They are just the kind of lunatic muscle fringe that would provide the New Order with its Waffen SS. We knew nothing about them until the Press published reports on their activities. They’re paramilitary but as far as we can tell they’ve never used arms in public. We don’t know if they have any stored in great numbers. There was something published recently.’