Алистер Маклин: Air Force One is Down

Stein pandered grossly to the commandant’s twisted mind (and improved his own knowledge of surgical techniques) by performing ghastly and obscene experimental operations on the inmates. His greatest medical triumph had been grafting organs from a large, fully-grown man on to the body of a seven-year-old girl. The child had lived for six weeks until the poisons trapped inside her literally erupted.

The Red Army surged swiftly through Poland on its way to Germany, and the commandant and his staff were unprepared for the sudden onslaught on the camp. The major in charge of the Soviet force lined up the Germans and shot them out of hand. He did the same with the weakest and most ailing of the Jews.

But Stein, neither sickly nor weak, was handed over to a young Ukrainian Intelligence captain who had just been posted to the advance armies, and so began the long friendship between Axel Karilian and the soon-to-be Richard Stein.

Stein was spirited away when the Ukrainian learned of his special abilities, and to protect him from Jewish revenge, Karilian took him to Odessa, where the Swiss Jew passed on enough of his hideously acquired skill in plastic surgery and skin-grafting to enable local doctors to change his face.

Stein did not stop at that, though; he wanted his shape changed as well. And he told the orthopaedic surgeons how to do it. It was an operation he had performed many times on unanaesthetised Jewish children, with more pliable bones than his, transforming them from human beings into grotesque monsters. Stein laid out every step of the operation for the Russians, endured the agony and, like Jagger, survived.

Richard Stein was no hapless victim of rheumatoid-arthritis. He was a self-made question mark.

After the war the KGB set him up in the Edelweiss Clinic, and Karilian joined him in Switzerland as the Geneva-based controller. It frequently amused Stein, as he amassed considerable wealth with the success of the clinic, that many of his best customers now were even wealthier Jews. On them, of course, he operated with the utmost care and skill. And never forgot the anaesthetic.

Cody Jagger’s path to the embrace of the KGB was equally painful, and was also to involve Axel Karilian.

After a boyhood of petty offences and a brace of unhelpful prison terms when he graduated from a more serious school of crime, Jagger made PFC in the Army and was captured early on in the Vietnam war, waging a bloody and highly personal counter-offensive north of Hué.

He was tough, truculent, a born bully, and no trouble at all to the Viet Cong torture squads, who broke him inside a month.

Jagger was selected for training by a travelling KGB recruiting officer, but far from easing his lot the new status turned Cody’s life into a living hell. Physical torment and mental assault alternated in a pattern of treatment which took him to the very borders of his sanity. Only afterwards did he dimly appreciate that turncoat material was of no use to the Soviet intelligence machine. He had given in too easily to the Viet Cong; therefore, the KGB reasoned, he could just as easily revert back to the Americans. They could not afford that kind of risk, so they handed Jagger over to Axel Karilian, who had picked up any number of useful tips in his fruitful association with Richard Stein.

Karilian’s programme for Jagger was typical in its uncomplicated logic: the American must be cowed and brutalised into abject, unquestioning submission until he became a safe prospect.

It took Jagger three years to realise what was happening. When he did, he submitted – and meant it. Moscow sent him back to Hanoi, where the torture was increased daily for two months, to the point where Jagger lived every waking moment in constant, gibbering terror.

Only then had Karilian been satisfied. Thereafter, the KGB ruled Jagger by fear and fear alone.

He performed well enough for them as an agent in the States, but at a purely basic level, so that when Smith instructed Stein to find ringer-material for him, and Stein had passed on the news to Karilian, even the Ukrainian had been reluctant to use Jagger. But when he reconsidered the proposition, Karilian knew that Jagger must be the perfect candidate, though Stein still had misgivings.

Stein and Karilian entered once more the bedroom of the now restlessly stirring man. Jagger’s eyes opened and regarded them through the slits in his bandages.

‘How is he?’ Stein inquired of the nurse sitting by the bed.

‘Much better,’ she replied. ‘Doctor Grühner had a look at him just now. He says all the tissue has taken well, and there’s no sign of infection. The scars are healing nicely.’

‘Have you seen his face?’ Karilian asked her brusquely.

The nurse shook her head. Karilian motioned towards the door with his hand.

‘Out,’ he ordered.

Stein lifted the bandages carefully away, and was arranging them on a metal trolley when the telephone rang. The call was for Karilian.

The Ukrainian spoke only his name, listened, grunted twice and slammed the receiver back in its cradle.

‘That was Paris,’ he said, ‘there’s been a fire at Fresnes Prison. One inmate made a daring escape. Guess who.’

Stein’s eyes lit up. ‘Then it’s about to start?’

Karilian nodded. ‘Your waxwork doll there will be needed sooner than we thought. Well – let’s take a look at him.’

Jagger murmured in distress as Karilian loomed menacingly over the bed. Cody was conditioned to tremble at Russians, and at Karilian in particular. The Ukrainian took photographs from Stein’s folder on the trolley and leaned in closer, holding a 12x10 enlargement next to Jagger’s new pink ear. He rose and turned to Stein.

‘Good enough,’ he conceded.

‘Good enough?’ Stein bridled. ‘He would fool Joe McCafferty’s own mother.’

The telephone rang again. Stein picked it up, announced himself, and listened, also in silence. Then he said, ‘Have no fear, he’ll be ready. Yes. Until next week then. Au revoir .’

‘Dunkels,’ Stein said when Karilian raised an inquiring eyebrow. Smith would be at the clinic in a week, he explained, and he wanted the ringer to be fit, unscarred and word-perfect within a further five weeks.

Karilian smiled, with no trace of mirth.

‘Then so do I, my dear Richard. You’d better see to it, hadn’t you?’

Stein promised it would be accomplished. They had tapes of McCafferty’s voice and an elocution expert as back-up, plus mute and sound film of his walk, gestures and mannerisms. Stein had a copy of Smith’s dossier on the UNACO man, which was formidably comprehensive. His background, education, love affairs, close friendships, likes and dislikes … all were documented in detail. Psychiatric assessments and physical reports were attached, together with medical histories and dental records. McCafferty’s relations with his brother officers were charted, and the file also included thumbnail pictures and mini-dossiers of the people closest to him at work, who would clearly expect instant recognition from McCafferty.

One factor was in Jagger’s favour: McCafferty commanded his own unit, so he didn’t have to be too unctuously friendly with anyone, superior or subordinate. Aloofness could be used to cover a temporary lapse. Nonetheless, the ringer would have to memorise not merely the faces, but the backgrounds as well, of all those men and women in McCafferty’s immediate family and circle, especially the officers he had served with on his way up through the ranks. Each of them would have similar combat stories to which the ringer must unhesitatingly respond – and get the details right.

The women in McCafferty’s life, Stein reasoned, could present the major problem. Affairs they knew about were fully outlined, with portraits, curricula vitae, favourite food, music, authors and suchlike, of the leading contenders. Sexual accomplishments and/or deviations were listed where possible, but it would be in bed that Jagger could betray himself. Several authorities rated McCafferty as a considerate and expert lover – whereas Jagger was, at best, an unfeeling rapist, with a conviction to prove it.