Program for a Puppet (14 page)

“I've already prepared for it. I have a passport-size photo of an old school friend in Australia, a Dr. Ross Boulter. He is an anthropologist. I have not seen him for more than ten years but we still correspond. He took his family to New Guinea to undergo a massive study there. He's compiling a volume called ‘Earliest Man Today.'”

“How much do you know about his work?”

“We still write. I have been interested in his progress. From
time to time he sends me voluminous notes on the study.”

“Could he be traced?”

“Not in the time frame I'm thinking of. He spends most of his time in primitive regions. It takes three months for a letter to reach him.”

“It sounds reasonable. All you would need for a passport would be immigration stamps into and out of New Guinea, and from there to London.…”

Graham nodded. Gould's interest sounded hopeful.

“Best if you leave us the photo and details, and all the documentation on Radford. Visa and so on. Could your contact get copies?”

“Possibly.”

“See what you can do. I can't make promises right now. But we'll see.” Gould moved to a filing cabinet, took a folder from it and handed it to Graham. “You might like to have a look through this to see what you may be up against.”

The Australian turned over the folder. It was headed
The KGB Today—Recent Operations and General Tactics
.

When their meeting was over Gould took the elevator to MI-6's operations communications center to send a coded telex to his superior, who was out of the country. It would ask if there was any chance of using Graham.

Since meeting the Australian the commander had a much rounder, deeper perspective of the man. He couldn't remember meeting anyone with more self-possession. There was a simmering self-confidence about him, as if he was always holding something back. Gould put this down to Graham's family background, high intelligence and wide experience. Yet all this had to be seen, perhaps, in another perspective. The Australian had had many years' experience as an actor. In front of a camera performances could be turned on. Graham may have done that for him just now. A performance to get help. Perhaps under the pressure the strain would crack the façade….

The commander thought of Graham's just detectable reaction to the true story of poor dead Steven. But it didn't necessarily put Gould off. On the contrary. It demonstrated that the Australian was no fool. He was aware of what he might be walking into. Only a fool would be oblivious of the dangers.

Yes, caution was one of the man's characteristics, especially apparent, Gould thought, in the methodical planning of his investigation. What was it Sir Alfred had said? He was a brilliant chessplayer with the ability to think many moves ahead.… He had a logical mind.

Gould pondered Sir Alfred's remarks about the Australian's lack of discipline. Yet that was under authority. What would count in the Soviet Union was the man's level of self-discipline. Graham gave the impression that this was definitely one of his strengths.

What worried the commander most was the publisher's comments on the man's aggressive tendencies. Tendencies that sometimes led him to rush things. Was it a counteraction to his methodical, meticulous planning? Or was it a complement to it—an innate ability to time his dynamism?

Gould put the question out of his mind for the moment. Using Graham now depended on the commander's superior, and whether the agent over there would be in place.

At a casino in the Honfleur seaside resort in Normandy, a dinner-suited, tall, middle-aged man with trim brown hair and short mustache let his chips ride on black 13 for the third successive spin of the roulette wheel. His regular features, marred by a faint but long scar running from below the left earlobe to his neck, remained impassive as he watched the whizzing ball with cold, gray eyes.

Just as the spin neared completion, the man was distracted by a tap on the elbow. It was a young German courier, who an hour earlier had arrived from Stuttgart. They moved away from the table. The middle-aged man had a slight limp, a legacy of a mild dose of polio as a small child.

The two men spoke rapidly in German for a few seconds as a noise went up from the table. The ball had jumped into black 13. The courier slipped the winner an envelope and left.

Collecting his mound of chips and changing them for cash, the middle-aged man moved into an adjoining bar. He sat down on a stool, ordered a beer and opened the envelope. There was a typewritten message in German, which read: “Herr Director, Research done. Script prepared. Interview set up. Ready for shooting. Await your direction. Crew.”

He left the casino and drove the hundred miles to a hotel in Le Havre.

The next day he took a train to Paris. He thought about his current year-long assignment which was to culminate soon, and resolved it would be his last. His would be fifty-four next birthday and the money from this contract would net him around two million dollars. His business was murder by contract, and for the Director, business had always been good.

Too frail by the end of the Second World War to fight for Hitler's Germany, he fled to Brazil with his parents. His father, a colonel in the Waffen SS, wanted to sever all evidence of his past. He bullied his son into finding a career. The young man chose photography, but soon found that an early passion for firearms, sparked during his years in the Hitler Youth, had reemerged when he left home and traveled around the turbulent American subcontinent.

Later he drifted into the life of a mercenary soldier and guerrilla, while never completely discarding photography and film. Occasionally it brought him income from capturing action on civil war fronts, and earned him the title Director.

During this time he met an Argentinian Marxist, José Boliva Rodriguez, who was helping to finance revolutionary wars. Rodriguez had not let his ideology stop him from becoming a multimillionaire through big property deals in Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela. Money was a useful weapon to fight capitalism. The Director carried out two lucrative contract hits for him, and made a lasting impression on his teenaged son, Alexandro Emanuel, who admired the German's fearless dedication to fighting, and his great knowledge of arms. The encounter between the Rodriguezes, with their ideological verve, and the Director, who was strictly a mercenary, was disrupted when the Director moved to greener pastures in Africa. There he gained an underworld reputation as an efficient contract killer.

Despite the split, the Director never lost contact with José Rodriguez, who continued to finance revolutions and educate his son. The Director urged the father to give the young Rodriguez a taste of Europe. His son spent the next decade there, a high-spirited and sophisticated period, especially in Paris.

Then the father thought it was time for the real thing. Young Rodriguez was packed off to Patrice Lumumba University
in Moscow for four years. Only once did he return to Paris: in 1968 during the weeks of the near-revolution.

The influence of the Director on the young Rodriguez eventually had its decisive impact. The German had worked on two occasions for the KGB in Eastern Europe and he urged his contacts in Moscow to recruit and train the Argentinian student. The Soviet secret police were grateful to the Director. They found Rodriguez excellent material, suitable for exporting Soviet-style revolution. Yet not even they could hold him completely. Soon he went out on his own as a terrorist assassin, heavily subsidized by his father—as long as it was for a Marxist-Leninist cause.

The young Rodriguez again met the Director in London, at a time when the former was losing his ideological zeal, and yearning for the easier life he had experienced in Paris. The Director urged him to take advantage of the several revolutionary causes wanting to use him, and to charge high fees for his services. And he did. The reasons behind his killing assignments soon became confused between ideology and money. He was pleased if they coincided, and this led him into a partnership with the Director. He had moved to France, returning to Africa and going twice to Eastern Europe for a “hit” to maintain a lavish life-style. The two men had a lot in common: the love of arms, the spilling of blood, photography, film, Paris and a life-style fit for a king.

Using the guise of a film crew, the two men began working together. They carried out two successful contracts in Europe and North Africa and decided to use the front once more for an elaborately planned major hit. A very wealthy client was prepared to pay them a small fortune for their efforts.

On arrival at his apartment at 4 rue Brunel in the sleazy Pigalle area of Paris, the Director began to make final preparations for this latest assignment. He hauled a heavy aluminum-padded case from a cupboard, unlocked it and removed an Ariflex 16-mm. B.L. camera. He detached the side to reveal the gate mechanism and unscrewed a metal plate backing the film path. This uncovered a secret chamber in which the barrel and frame of a highly modified Walther P.38, 9-mm. revolver had been cunningly concealed.

The Director, with loving care, removed each gun piece from a false bottom in the metal case, and cleaned them. This
included a tripod, scope mount, scope, silencer attachment and other equipment which allowed the gun to be used as a handgun or a high-powered close-range rifle. Once at his destination he would transfer this doubtful contribution to ballistic science in component form to a small Grundig tape recorder, a Pentax camera and the tripod's hollow legs, which all fitted neatly into the Director's metallic briefcase.

Satisfied that everything was in order, he packed the camera weapon away and them thumbed through two sets of forged documents. One, a
carnet
, would allow the Director to move his equipment in and out of any country. The other set confirmed that he was a representative of a small reputable documentary film group based in Munich. Finally he poured himself a strong Pernod and water.

After months of careful preparation, the Director was going to do some shooting. This time in North America.

“I think we could be of mutual benefit,” Gould told Graham. He had asked the Australian to meet him again in his office, the morning after their first meeting. “The situation is this. We have had enormous trouble getting data out over just what the Soviets are doing with computers in their military set-up. Steven was our number-one expert in this field in Moscow before the KGB tracked him down. All other relevant operatives who are specialists in this field at this time, even inside the Soviet Union, we suspect, are actually known to the KGB. I'm not being melodramatic when I say that any of our people would be dead at the first false move. We simple cannot risk them. You happen to have the expertise, especially in computerized military systems, that we want. If we assist you all we possibly can, would you agree to helping us get that intelligence out of the Soviet Union?”

Graham was a little stunned. It was more than he expected. He lit a cigarette. Gould took out his pipe.

“I'm willing to cooperate, if I agree to your plan,” the Australian said cautiously. “What I'd like to know now is how much of this ‘intelligence' I would be able to publish.”

“We could come to some arrangement when you returned. It may be useful for us to have some of it public.”

Graham nodded. “Okay. What have you in mind?”

“We want to put you through a crash program. It means you will have to be closeted away for about three or four days commencing next Sunday. We have an operations center near Oxford. I shall be in charge. You're going to hate the sight of me. We will have to go over your covers as Boulter and Radford until you know them in your sleep.”

“You said we …”

“There is a third person. He will be involved in your Radford impersonation in Moscow. Call him Radford three. Radford three will be on the flight the real Radford would have taken, because otherwise the KGB will become suspicious of the empty seat on the plane. You would be picked up immediately you tried the impersonation. Radford three will arrive in Moscow and check in at the Hotel Berlin. Then he'll disappear. At the same time you will pick up a taxi near the Berlin and carry out your impersonation.”

“How will Radford three disappear?”

“The alternatives are he can lie low and leave on the normal return flight the real Radford would have taken, or more likely, he will be smuggled out as a queen's messenger assistant.”

“How can you do that?”

“Quite simple really. Each week a QM and sometimes an assistant bring in and take out diplomatic mail. Our Radford three will go out as an assistant. All our Soviet Embassy has to do is inform the Soviet authorities who is flying out forty-eight hours in advance. Radford three will travel out under a different diplomatic passport.”

There was a reflective silence before Graham asked, “What sort of data and intelligence will be passed to me?”

“At Oxford you'll have to memorize blueprints on computer plans for missile systems, rocket reentry and so on, so that you will recognize certain network blueprints when you make contact with our operative.”

“How and where will contact be made?”

“We shall teach you simple codes.” The commander paused to suck on his pipe. He watched smoke spiral to an invisible grate in a corner of the ceiling. “As to where, leave that to us. You will not know until it actually happens. That way we minimize the chance of a mistake.…”

George Revel arrived in London on Thursday, September 11, for an important part of his PICS assignment. He spent the best part of the first two days with Intelligence contacts in the British Foreign Office and the U.S. armed forces and embassy.

By late Friday he received a telephone call at the Connaught Hotel from Graham, for whom he had left a message at Ryder Publications. They planned to meet for dinner at an out-of-the-way Italian restaurant in Kensington. Although both men started cautiously, an easy rapport developed between them.