In the Company of Spies Read online

  In The Company Of Spies

  Stephen Barlay

  © Stephen Barlay 1981

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

  First published in 1981 by Summit.

  This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd

  Table of Contents

  July

  1962

  Autumn

  1962

  Thursday, August 30

  Saturday, September 1

  Tuesday, September 4

  Friday, September 7

  Saturday, September 8

  Sunday, September 9

  Monday, September 10

  Friday, September 14

  Monday, September 17

  Tuesday, September 18

  Wednesday, September 19

  Thursday, September 20

  Friday, September 21

  Sunday, September 23

  Monday, September 24

  Tuesday, September 25

  Wednesday, September 26

  Friday, September 28

  Saturday, September 29

  Sunday, September 30

  Monday, October 1

  Tuesday, October 2

  Wednesday, October 3

  Thursday, October 4

  Sunday, October 7

  Tuesday, October 9

  Wednesday, October 10

  Sunday, October 14

  Tuesday, October 16

  Thursday, October 18

  Sunday, October 21

  Monday, October 22

  Tuesday, October 23

  Wednesday, October 24

  Thursday, October 25

  Friday, October 26

  Saturday, October 27

  Sunday, October 28

  November 1962

  October 1964

  For Lucy and Albert Vajda

  July

  1962

  “If only some seemingly insignificant and unrelated pointers had been correlated and pictured in their true context in that hot July of 1962, we would have saved face as well as lives, history might have taken a different course leaving us with one fewer war flashpoint for the 1980s.”

  — CIA official, London, 1980

  *

  THE TRIDENT SOARED ABOVE PARIS AND PAUL FERNAUD watched as it gored summer clouds. He hated airports and he had only come to kiss goodbye not so much his girl as his last sou earmarked for a London abortionist’s pocket. A simple wedding would have cost less. But it had been her choice.

  A rush of VIP photographers disturbed him. Airport regulars. They were feeding off Fidel Castro’s brother Raul in transit to Moscow. Not Fernaud’s kind of magazine story. More by reflex than intention he raised his camera and took a shot. And another as the man and his fiercely bearded companion ducked to fill a small and most emphatically ordinary Peugeot.

  Not the car and not the faces but the beards attracted his attention when he saw them again a couple of hours later. It was near his home, probably the worst house in the worst street astride the Métro to the Porte des Lilas — such an unlikely port of call of VIPs in transit. So he took a third photograph. And idled, out of sight instinctively, behind the rickety fence on the far side.

  The fourth time his camera clicked was no reflex and no idle curiosity. The hurried arrival of a pair of twinned Chinamen presented him with his next meal ticket. The story was almost complete. Just one more shot. If he could catch them leaving the house together … a handshake … a furtive glance down the street …

  The following morning, Paul Fernaud, age twenty-seven, single, freelance photographer, made an inch of news in just two papers. He had been fished out of the Seine. No known reasons for suicide. His pockets contained a driving license, two Métro tickets, seventy-five centimes, and a Harley Street, London, address. A long narrow mark across his throat indicated that the leather strap of his camera case might have been caught on something, perhaps strangling him. There was no film in his camera.

  *

  The crowd roared in Moscow’s Lenin Stadium. Dynamo had scored yet again. They were in great form. Sandwiched between a middle-aged and an old man, the young woman in the tight-fitting flowered frock clapped enthusiastically. She loved soccer and the soccer crowd loved her. Between goals she would catch as many eyes as the center forward performing his antics of triumph on the field. But now her attention was focused on a slip of paper: “RUST, Helm, 34. The Upstairs, near Key Largo, Florida, U.S.A.”

  “He’s still there?” she asked.

  “I believe so.” The old man coughed. “Am I to go ahead then?”

  “We must wait. The decision is not mine.”

  The heavily built middle-aged man shook his head. “I’m not very happy with the choice.”

  “It’s not our choice,” she snapped. “Or it’s like buying nylons at Gum. You get a choice of one.”

  “But will he come?”

  The old man coughed again. “I believe so. It may take a month or so to organize, but he’ll come.”

  Dynamo mounted another attack, and her eyes followed the ball. “We’d better be right. It may be our last chance.”

  The big man tapped with his right foot impatiently. “But even if he comes, will he do it?”

  She didn’t even look at him. “He won’t have a choice, will he?”

  Shiverishly, the old man pulled his jacket tighter on his chest. The heat of the July sun failed to keep him warm.

  *

  The phone rang and young Ercihan in the Istanbul Lloyd’s agent’s office answered it. He nodded, and nodded respectfully, as he listened to his master’s voice. His empty gaze rested on the horizon, pinned to the twin minarets of the Selimiye Mosque. The sight of the famous flaming sunset left him cold. Something sailed into view from the left, and his eyes met it on the waters of the Bosphorus. He hung up. The freighter looked familiar even to the naked eye. He reached for his binoculars. Of course. The Omsk. Eleven thousand-odd tons; built and electrically welded in Osaka, Japan, only some seven months ago, in December 1961; port of registry Vladivostok; Mchy. aft, LF at btm & U dk — machinery aft, longitudinal framing at bottom and upper deck, in the language of the Lloyd’s Register of Ships.

  He knew the ship well because she had been a frequent passerby throughout the summer, going between Odessa and wherever. Her destination was no real concern of this office. But the sighting itself was, so he jotted down the time — one more detail for the next report to London. It never failed to warm him that he helped to provide an international intelligence service for the benefit of the insurance market as a whole and the commercial world at large. His personal notes were bound to impress Mr. Üzgünoğlu even if the ship’s passage would appear in the harbor master’s official movements list in any case.

  The binoculars revealed bulky cargo under canvas on the deck. Yet the ship rode high in the water. The Omsk must be carrying something too large to be accommodated in the hold, yet valuable enough to command almost by itself the use of a fine ship. A conjecture, no doubt, but valid it must be even if Mr. Üzgünoğlu would be quick to repeat that “we trade in facts, impartially, down the middle, no favor, no fervor.” Pity. The young Turk wondered if his observation and reasoning would qualify for a Confidential Report or even a telegram in the old Pentagram code. Not because the sighting was so important but because he had never had occasion to justify any such messages, which would make them sit up in the great city of London.

  *

  The open stairs, sweeping up in a curved line from the makeshift jetty to the front door, were too grand and completely out of proporti
on to the building they served. They were, nevertheless, an eye-catcher and deserving of having the modest guest house named after them. “The Upstairs” was painted in black letters leaning this way and that in varying states of jolly intoxication, on all four outside walls. “So I’m not a pro,” Rust would challenge any new critics of his art, and he was yet to find one to dispute it.

  He worked now in the merciful shadow of the stairs. The whitewash of the house was almost completed, and it made him feel exceptionally virtuous — well, virtuous enough to deserve a small reward. He entered the kitchen and soon returned with a tumbler full of cracked ice swimming in an amber sea of rum. He urged himself to drink up fast, because even the ice would turn into instant sweat in such weather. It was too hot even for the Florida Keys. And it would be such a waste to let the ice melt in vain. So he topped up his drink, just to give the ice something to work on.

  He picked up the brush. The freshness of the white dazzled him. Another couple of hours or so, and that would be the end of it. And high time, too. Friends who ventured to this lonely spot some seventy miles from Miami kept telling him he was a fool not to get a professional in for the job when he could well afford it, but he disliked strangers nosing about the house during his sometimes lengthy absences and disliked them even more for company when he was around.

  Paying guests were, of course, welcome. Silent, solemn fishermen who preferred solitude to the attractions of the floating beer joints would come in a trickle until the fall and call him Mr. Rust they had to talk. The winter crowd (maximum capacity: ten guests at a time) would address him simply as Rust. They would be mostly women of all shapes and sizes and ages, single and married, occasionally with a male in tow, attracted to the choppy waters, the mangrove, the coral reef, the cormorants, the isolation (“you don’t have to come by boat if you don’t mind a few hours of jungle hacking”), amused by the grandeur of the stairs and the simplicity of the meals (depending on the quality of the volunteer cooks), and entertained by the bad though enthusiastic piano playing of their host, whose drinking evoked the mother instinct in all those shapes and sizes of whatever ages.

  Two red dots inexplicably appeared on the white floor.

  “What the hell … “

  The sun blinded him as he looked up, then he began to see the dark skin on bare feet, knees, thighs in the floral shadow of a thin skirt, then another red dot that became a line running down a knee, and finally hands that hesitated between clutching the wounded thigh and throttling the immodesty of the skirt against his offending eyes.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “You okay?” He refused to withdraw his gaze from under the skirt.

  “Sure I’m okay.”

  “Okay, then.”

  He dipped the brush in the bucket, whited out the red dots, found his glass, walked slowly up the stairs and led her into the house.

  “Leave my thigh alone.”

  “Then stop bleeding on my rug.”

  He removed the amateurish dressing, dabbed at the seeping blood to see the torn edges of the flesh, and said without looking at her: “Might have been a machine gun.”

  “Just grazed.”

  “You ought to see a doctor.”

  “Why should I? I’m okay. It’s my business.” The singsong of her Spanish accent rose with her excitement.

  “True.”

  He asked no questions. He could guess what had happened. Many of Julia-Rosa’s family were in Castro’s jails. Others, mostly the younger ones, needed her support. She whored for them religiously and made her father confessor work overtime in the church, so conveniently located behind El Paraíso, her bar base in Miami’s Little Havana district, near Bay Front Park. From time to time she would disappear for a few days, even weeks. Rust knew she worked for Mongoose. She spied for them and learned to fight with arms for them. She was dedicated to the overthrow of Castro. So was Mongoose, manned by Cuban commandos, fed and trained and fanned by the CIA, and backed by Robert Kennedy, who never tired of denouncing the Bay of Pigs fiasco in public but had just endorsed the plotters’ new invasion plans by his secret visit to their Miami headquarters. So Rush had heard, and he had reason to believe it. Right after the visit, two parties of raiders had gone to Cuba in those high-speed V-20’s which were specially modified and armor-plated for $30,000 each. Yet neither of those two boats had returned. A party of the survivors and a few refugees had been shot up by the Cuban coast guard but made a run for it. They had been lucky. Julia-Rosa must have been among them.

  Rust bandaged the wound and pulled her skirt down to cover her knees.

  “Thanks.”

  He gave her a drink, and she noted the Cuban rum and Cuban cigars on the shelf. At last she seemed ready to tell why she had come here. She reached deep down into the cleavage of her dress and produced a sweaty sheet of paper. “Ten days ago, this was on Fidel’s desk.” She waited for some kind of reaction, but only the old jetty groaned as the waves hugged it.

  “You know I’m not interested in politics,” he said, his eyes avoiding her trophy.

  “Aren’t you?”

  “I’ve burned my fingers often enough, thank you.” So all right. He helped some people, mostly with advice, now and then. Politics or no politics, it would have been cruel to let simple, decent folk run into trouble blindly when he knew the possible approaches to that dangerous island so well.

  She pushed the paper in front of him. Doodles of patterns and matchstick men filled the open spaces surrounding two lists of words in Cyrillic handwriting. “What is it?”

  “Hard to tell.”

  “You can read it. You speak Russian like a native. You lived there. You told me.”

  “Sure. I can read the words. But it doesn’t make much sense. On the right it says ‘additional advisers’ in administration, land irrigation, medical training and other things.”

  “What other things?”

  “How to establish co-ops, kindergartens, maternity homes — things like that.”

  “And the other list?”

  Rust read it quickly and smiled. “Reads like some crazy shopping list.”

  “How crazy?”

  “Well, it starts with wheat, oil and antiaircraft batteries.”

  “That’s good, that’s good,” she enthused. “What else?”

  “Shirts, boots, beef, infantry weapons, paper clips.”

  “Paper clips? You think it’s some code?”

  Rust shook his head. “Wouldn’t know. Perhaps these are notes taken in the course of some long, rambling conversation.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Sure. Beef and pork, Komar class patrol boats, er … porokhovyye konfety … confetti? Some sort of powdered candy.”

  “You mean that sort you decorate cakes with in pretty colors?”

  “I’ve no idea. Perhaps Castro needs them to make the new paper clips more appetizing. Anyway, it goes on to fertilizer plants, distilleries, power plants, heavy road-building machinery.”

  “You left out one line.”

  “You speak Russian?”

  “No, but I saw your finger failed to stop there.”

  “Very observant. It was trucks and tractors, okay?”

  “And you say it reads like a crazy shopping list?”

  “Can’t think of anything else.”

  Her whole face widened in a big smile. “That’s just what I was told. This is Fidel’s shopping list. It was written down at his desk when the Russians were there.”

  “They’re never far away these days.”

  “Those were special. They talked to Fidel for two days, then the lists were typed out and the notes like this were thrown away.”

  “But luckily, somebody found this one?”

  “That’s it. It was a present for me. And now I want to sell it.”

  “Sell it? You, sweetheart? What about your great devotion to the cause?”

  “Don’t you dare.” Her claws seemed to grow.<
br />
  “Sorry. It’s only that I’m surprised.”

  The claws retracted into the elegantly shaped paws. She looked away. “I’ll die for the revolution if necessary. But I won’t starve for it.” He would have sworn there were tears in her eyes. “I gave Mongoose what they wanted. This is for my family.”

  “How much do you hope to get for it?”

  “I don’t know. A million?”

  “Dollars?”

  “Maybe a thousand?” she bargained hopefully. “Five hundred?”

  “You can try.”

  “You try. I know only Mongoose, and they would want it free. You help and I pay for it. It’s easier money than smuggling.” She nodded toward the shelf. “Some fine añejo you have there. Specially imported for you along with the cigars? You’re moonlighting as a smuggler, chico, and I know it. But I keep it to myself because you’re my friend.”

  “Don’t ever try to push me too hard, sweetheart.” His voice was unnaturally soft.

  “Sorry.”

  “I’ll try to get someone interested.”

  She stood up and kissed his face at the top tip of the scar that ran along his chin. He smiled, and the scar disappeared in the creases of his lined face. It was not a handsome face. And when he smiled, nobody would have guessed that he had been living in it for only thirty-four years.

  “You do that, chico, and I’ll love you forever. And something else. I’ll also try somebody I know. Bring your friend to El Paraíso tomorrow and I’ll bring mine. And the friend who pays the most gets the shopping list.”

  “Okay. Keep warm.”

  She left through the mangrove, following the overgrown coral path. (It was not really “hours of jungle-hacking.”) She must have left her car near Key Largo on U.S. Highway 1, which linked the Keys.

  He was still looking for the telephone number when she returned. “I thought I’d leave this with you. It’s safer.” She dropped the paper and was gone.

  Rust called Jake Schramm, a quite plausible earthmoving machinery salesman of jovial disposition, and arranged to meet him at El Paraíso the following day.