Michael Parker - A Covert War

Marcus put his hand in his jacket pocket and pulled out a couple of photographs. He passed them over to Susan.

‘Recognise this man?’ he asked, pointing at the picture.

Susan looked through the photographs, then back up at Marcus. ‘This is Cavendish.’ There was surprise in her voice. ‘How did you?’ She stopped in mid sentence, then her shoulders drooped a little. ‘Of course, you went to the Foreign Office, right?’

Marcus shook his head and had a tight little smile on his face. ‘He doesn’t work at the Foreign Office. They’ve never heard of him.’

This brought Susan up straight. ‘Then how did you?’ She waved the photos at him. ‘How did you find him? Why did you find him?’

Marcus reached across the table and took the photographs from her.

‘Cavendish works in Intelligence. He is highly placed in MI6 and his name is Sir Giles Cavendish.’

Susan frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

Just then the waiter appeared with the first course of their order. Susan had chosen pate. Marcus had plumped for soup.

‘When you told me how Cavendish had contacted you, how he had met you and all that,’ Marcus said between mouthfuls, ‘it struck me as most odd. You couldn’t call him back because his number was withheld; he knew you as soon as you went into Starbucks, didn’t give you his phone number but gave you a long story about the diplomatic bag.’

Susan took a bite of toast. ‘You thought of all this while I was talking to you?’

‘I wrote it down.’

‘You were doodling.’

‘Sez you!’

‘Well,’ she said through a mouthful of crumbs, ‘you’re crafty.’

He finished his soup, pushed his plate away and dabbed his mouth with his napkin.

‘The question is, Susan; why did he do it?’

Susan just looked absently across the table and shook her head gently. ‘I don’t know,’ she said softly. ‘I really don’t know.’

‘He gave you nothing but a little hope, and then disappeared.’ He leaned into the table. ‘Susan, men like that do not do this kind of thing unless it’s for a reason.’

Susan shook her head. ‘Perhaps he wanted me to stir up something. Go to the Press or the television people.’

‘And did you?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘Didn’t do any good, though; I don’t think me and my brother are newsworthy enough. And I certainly couldn’t afford the agencies, not even you.’ She said pointedly. Marcus ignored the remark.

He watched her finish her pate and toast. ‘What are we going to do about it?’ he asked.

‘We?’ She nearly choked on a piece of toast and had to take a drink of water to clear it. ‘What do you mean, we? You know I can’t afford to hire you.’

Marcus could see she was getting a little upset. He reached across the table and put his hand over hers.

‘Let’s see how far we can go with this, Susan,’ he suggested. ‘And don’t worry about the fee; I’ll cover it.’

An expression of unbelief came over Susan’s face. ‘Really?’ she said softly.

He squeezed her hand. ‘It’s no big deal at the moment. Like I said, let’s see how far we can go with this. Perhaps we can ginger up the newspapers; get them interested.’

‘Do you think we can?’ she asked him hopefully.

Marcus shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but we can try. First things first though; let’s eat, get to know each other and tomorrow we’ll confront Cavendish. How does that sound?’

Susan’s eyes began to fill with tears. Marcus lifted her napkin off the table and handed it to her.

‘Don’t cry, Susan. Somehow, someway we will learn the truth about your brother, and something tells me that Cavendish will have the answers.’

It was shortly after eight o’clock in the evening when Marcus and Susan sat down to dine, and it was at precisely the same time that a signal arrived at the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square. It was for the Military Attache, Commodore John Deveraux. The signal was encrypted, which prompted a phone call to the Commodore’s residence should he wish to come to the Embassy and pick it up. This he chose to do and at nine o’clock that evening, Deveraux was sitting in his office with the signal in front of him on his desk. He had decoded it and was now shaking his head in frustration.

He picked it up and took a cigar lighter from his desk drawer. The flame blossomed, which he touched to the paper. As the charred remains dropped into his empty, metal waste bin, he picked up the decoded signal and torched that as well. He then picked up to the waste bin and took it through to the small washroom that was attached to his office. He emptied the contents of the bin into the lavatory and flushed them away.

The next thing Deveraux did was to go to his wall safe and open it, taking out a cell phone. The phone was not one that he used for anything other than a very, very private conversation with some extremely unsavoury people.

He dialled a number and waited for a reply. He heard the connection being changed to another exchange until he was eventually connected to a voice that answered without a name. Deveraux spoke briefly, his last words delivered with a slight tremor.

‘He’s compromised. I want you to deal with it’

He cancelled the call and put the phone back in his safe.

Marcus and Susan were now in a relaxed mood. Neither of them had drunk too much; a bottle of wine between them. They had let the evening roll by, enjoying each other’s company, being silly, being serious. Marcus enjoyed every minute of it, and hoped that Susan felt the same.

He was in such a good mood when the bill came, that Marcus gave the waiter a generous tip. Then he helped Susan on with her coat and took her arm as they walked out of the door.

It was fairly late, and there was a chill in the night air. Because there was no wind about, they decided to walk a while before going back to Susan’s. Marcus had no knowledge of the area and Susan, being a local girl, had very little reason to show caution at that time of night.

They strolled, arm in arm, talking of very little until they found themselves in a road where the streetlamps were not working. Suddenly Marcus felt Susan stiffen. He turned towards her and saw that she was looking directly ahead of them where two men had just walked from a doorway and were now standing motionless on the pavement just a few yards from them.

Marcus hadn’t noticed them, but he did now, and could see that they were not standing there for fun. The men took a couple of steps forward. Then one of them stepped into the road and came up beside Marcus, standing about six feet from him. He was holding a knife.

Susan instinctively put her hand up to her mouth to scream but nothing came out of her throat. Marcus felt her go absolutely rigid. As the man on the pavement advanced towards them, Marcus shoved Susan away and turned, bringing his leg up at the same time and lashed out at the attacker, catching him on the arm.

The force of Marcus’s heel catching the man on the tip of his elbow made the man shout and curse loudly, and he dropped the knife. Before the man could react, Marcus dropped to the ground and supported his body on the heel of his hand, spun and brought both legs slashing across the mugger’s knee caps. It dropped the man instantly.

Pushing the element of surprise and not giving either of the two men time to think, Marcus turned to face the second man who was advancing towards him. The attacker suddenly made a stabbing feint in Marcus’s direction but then moved towards Susan. Marcus leapt forward; fending off the slashing knife thrust and jammed the heel of his hand into the man’s face pushing his nose back up into his forehead.

The sound of the cracking bone and gristle made Susan scream out loudly. The man cried out in pain and immediately clutched his face. Marcus didn’t pause but clenched his fist and swung it sideways, chopping him across the windpipe. This made the man gag and he fell forward on to his knees, putting his hands out to stop himself from falling. Marcus then drove his shoe into the man’s face, knocking him back and then kicked him fiercely in the head.