Stan Mason - Stopping World War Three

She pretended not to hear me and took the papers I had taken from the dead man to read. ‘Nothing of much importance,’ she muttered. ‘A few odd notes and a memo from a Commander Spring.’

‘Commander?’ I echoed. ‘Here… let me see that!’ I took the memo from her and read it. The sheet of paper bore only two lines. ‘The Acropolis Restaurant, Heraklion,’ I read out slowly. ‘Urgent… repeat Urgent! Commander Spring!’ I stared at Penny blankly. ‘What do you make of it?’

‘I think we should go for it now that we’re here. Otherwise what was the point of it all?’

I pulled a wry face at the thought of pursuing the matter. uncertain whether or not I should allow Penny to influence me. It wasn’t my fault or my problem that two men had died. Less than twenty-four hours earlier I had been sitting in my office in the City of London with no serious concerns. Now there was conclusive proof of my adultery with my secretary, my wife had left me and two men were dead. In addition, I was shaken and physically injured, suffering a considerable amount of pain, lost in a foreign country with no money, and very displeased with my lot in life. But that wasn’t all. My secretary was now pressing me to become involved in someone else’s war. I was not amused!

We set off on towards the highway in the hope of hitching a lift and waited for a car to appear but the traffic was more than scant.

‘I reckon that Duran was waiting for us,’ said Penny pensively as we reached the main highway.

‘That’s impossible,’ I countered. ‘I he belonged to the saboteurs he would have expected us to be at the bottom of the Mediterranean. He wouldn’t need to be here,’

‘He may have been the long-stop… in case the plane did reach here,’ she said presumptuously. ‘Chedda must have know he was going to land in Crete but he didn’t know about the bomb. Someone had to be around in case it failed to explode. A person can position themselves here to be available at any part of the island. Someone monitoring the flight of the plane could have tipped off Duran as to its likely landing point… if indeed it did land. He could have driven close to the point of the crash. The main road runs straight across the north. It’s the only main road. I believe that his car can’t be far away,’

I wasn’t certain of the logic but there was nothing to lose and we wandered off in a northerly direction. Shortly, we came across an old Volkswagen parked in a lay-by. The driver was absent and there was no one else about. Penny searched the car in an attempt to connect with Duran so that she could be certain we weren’t stealing someone else’s vehicle. However it was a hired car devoid of any information that might help but the keys hung neatly in the ignition lock which was the most important fact of all. I drove directly to Heraklion, parking the car near to the Acropolis Restaurant. We entered the establishment naively knowing nothing except the name of Commander Spring. I had the awful feeling that we were putting our necks in a noose. We sat at a table and stared at the menu. Very shortly, a waiter arrived with a tea-towel draped around his arm and hurried across the room towards us.

‘Meester Scott!’ he whispered urgently. ‘You shouldn’t be out here with thee customers. Come queekly before you are recognised!’

I stared at him with incredulity. I had just entered a restaurant I never knew existed, in a town I had never visited before, on an island I had only seen in an atlas. Suddenly I was approached by a waiter I had never met who called me by my name. It was uncanny… almost mesmeric as though in a dream. He walked on and beckoned me with his hand and I followed him to the back of the room through an open doorway across which hung long strands of brown beads. He led the way down a series of steps into the basement leaving us there before returned upstairs to continue his duties. I adjusted my eyes to the gloom and noticed a television monitor fixed to the wall. I pressed a button to switch it on and, as it glowed into life, a man’s face appeared on the screen.

‘Commander Spring?’ I asked hesitantly, wondering how it was going to end.

‘Stop playing the fool, Scott!’ he admonished with irritation in his voice. ‘You’ve got to learn to temper the fun side of your personality! It’s just not on! Who’s there with you?’

‘Penny Smith… my secretary,’ I replied sternly.

He stared at us more deeply, scanning our faces as we stood in the dank area. ‘An excellent likeness!’ he commended brightening up considerably. ‘Yes… an excellent likeness. No one would know the difference. You’d better come down.’

The picture faded from the screen and a door opened automatically in the wall of the basement to exhibit a small elevator. We entered and the door closed sleekly before it went on its downward path. When the doors opened, we walked into a room filled with electronic equipment. The Commander, dressed smartly in a brown uniform, faced us with a broad smile on his face. My attention was taken up with the two other men seated at an array of monitors. They also wore brown uniforms and carried holsters containing revolvers. The Commander held up a photograph and compared it with Penny’s face.

‘An exceedingly good likeness,’ he went on. ‘It really looks like her. Does she speak English?’

‘Of course she speaks English!’ I snapped angrily.

‘Marvellous!’ He glanced at the photograph again. ‘I wonder if she has a mole on her right…

‘That’s enough, Spring! I interrupted. ‘You’d better tell me what you have in mind for us.’

He looked at me quite strangely. ‘Quite frankly, Scott, I wish they’d picked someone else for the task instead of you,’ he returned testily. ‘You’re too much to take sometimes! If your weren’t so good at bridge a dozen others could have taken your place. Just look at the state of your face and clothes! What have you been doing? You look as though you’ve been pulled through a hedge backwards! I really don’t know what to make of you!’

‘Bridge!’ I thought. He was not making any sense at all. ‘What has bridge got to do with it?’ I asked.

‘Oh do stop fooling around!’ he cautioned staring hard at Penny. ‘We’ll have to wait until Duran returns before we proceed to the next stage.

‘Duran’s dead,’ I told him bluntly, putting my head further into the noose. ‘The plane landed about a mile north of Heraklion. The pilot was killed and Duran was shot.’

‘Shot!’ echoed the Commander with surprised. ‘Who shot him?’

‘Never mind that now. I want to know what’s going on!’

‘Cut the crap, Scott!’ He was becoming angry with me. ‘All the information’s on a need to know basis and you don’t need to know. You’re here to do a job. All you need to do is to follow orders. Is that understood?’

He turned to one of the telephones on a desk and dialled a number. As soon as it was answered he spoke in relatively guarded tones. ‘Tell Commander Brooks in the European Area that Phase One Code B is completed. We’re still awaiting news on Code A.’ He paused to listen to the person at the other end of the line for a few moments. ‘My information tells me it exploded before landing. The timing device was set too late. Either that or the tail-winds were too strong. I had a man out there examining the wreckage but I’ve just learned he was shot and killed.’ He replaced the receiver into its cradle and turned to stare at us thoughtfully. ‘How do you know Duran was shot?’

‘When it comes to needing to know,’ I returned cheekily, ‘you don’t need to know.’

‘I warn you!’ warned the Commander sharply. ‘You’d better stop playing games for your own sake. Now listen carefully. You leave tomorrow morning. Be here at seven hundred hours. Do you think you can manage that, Mr. Scott or am I interfering with your personal arrangements!’