John Gardner - Brokenclaw

BROKENCLAW

John Gardner

For Ed & Mary Anna

With thanks

1

DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON

The elderly man wore jeans and a checked shirt. Comfortable Adidas trainers protected his feet and a battered Panama hat was tipped forward to shade his eyes from the afternoon sun. He stretched out in his deck chair, lowered the newspaper he had been reading and looked out at the view which he had come to love.

This, he considered, could well be an English country garden in mid-summer. The long, broad lawn was precisely cut, giving that pleasing trompe l’oeil effect of broad, perfect stripes in two shades of green. The borders were slashed with crimson salvias, overshadowed by deep purple lupins and nodding hollyhocks. Some sixty yards away from where the man sat, the lawn ended, merging into a rose garden built with a series of trellised archways, giving the effect of a great corridor of colour. In the far distance there were trees, and through a gap you could clearly view the sea stippled with points of sunlight.

The man was only vaguely aware of the sound of a car drawing up outside the house behind him. This was the complete illusion, he thought. Anybody could be forgiven for imagining they were in a summer garden in Surrey or Kent. Only the date on his copy of the Times Columnist assured him it was September 25th and he was sitting only a few miles from the city of Victoria on Vancouver Island in British Columbia where, because of its mild climate warmed by the Japanese current, vegetation blooms all the year round.

The main doorbell of the house pierced his pleasant reverie. The maid was away for the day, shopping in downtown Victoria, so he rose, dropping his newspaper, and ambled slowly into the house, grumbling to himself.

‘Professor Allardyce?’ There were two young men, dressed casually in slacks and linen jackets, standing at the front door, their car parked on the gravel sweep in front of the house.

The professor nodded, ‘What can I do for you?’

‘SIS.’ The taller of the duo spoke, and they both lifted their hands to show the laminated cards that identified them as members of the Canadian Security & Intelligence Service.

The professor nodded again; he had reason to know these people, though he had never set eyes on this pair of agents before. ‘Well, what can I do for you?’ he repeated.

‘There’re a couple of problems. The recent business about LORDS . . .’

Allardyce lifted his eyebrows and pursed his lips.

‘Oh, it is okay, sir. We’re both LORDS cleared,’ the other agent said quickly.

‘I sincerely hope so,’ the professor frowned. ‘So what’s happened now?’

‘The chief would like to see you,’ said the taller of the two.

‘At the local office,’ the other added. ‘He flew in this morning. Sends his compliments, and asks if you’d do him the honour.’

There was a pause during which Professor Allardyce continued to frown and the two agents shuffled their feet, the taller of the pair undoing the one button on his linen jacket.

‘You mind if I call your local office?’ Allardyce began to turn away as he said it, clearly indicating that he was going to make the call whether they liked it or not.

‘Not a good idea, Prof . . .’ The taller agent stepped forward, spinning the elderly man around while the other man secured his wrists. ‘You’d best just come along with us, right?’

The professor was a thin, somewhat gangling man but he lashed out with arms and legs so that it took both of the younger men considerable strength to subdue him. Allardyce tried to shout and the taller agent slammed his hand over their captive’s mouth, at which the professor promptly bit him.

‘Like trying to wrestle an anaconda,’ one grunted.

‘A sackful of anacondas,’ replied the other.

But, gradually, they had their victim under control, dragging him, still kicking, to the car where the bigger agent pushed Allardyce into the rear, chopping the back of his neck viciously with the edge of his hand. The professor folded, slumping into a corner, while his captor climbed in, positioning himself in readiness should the prisoner regain consciousness. With the second man at the wheel the car turned out of the driveway and within a few minutes was on the road leading away from Victoria into wooded countryside.

Professor Robert Allardyce was no fool. At the age of seventy-one he had experienced much, both in his special field of maritime electronics, and in life itself. During World War II he had distinguished himself in the United States Navy, had two ships sunk under him and had been awarded the Navy Cross. He had ended the war in the submarine service, and for a short time during training, before getting his coveted ‘Dolphins’, Commander Bob Allardyce had been a member of the Navy boxing team.

The chop to his neck had plunged the professor into semiconsciousness, but, by the time the car was out on the main road, he was aware of what was happening. His neck ached from the blow and he figured that it would be stiff and sore if, and when, he tried to move. He remained lying against the nearside door, inert, but with all his senses gradually coming into play again. Far better to feign unconsciousness now and take advantage of the situation later.

They drove for fifteen minutes or so and Allardyce had time to brace himself for a move as the vehicle slowed to a stop.

‘They’re not here yet,’ one of the agents said.

‘We’re ten minutes ahead of time. Don’t get out. Stay where you are.’

‘He okay?’

‘The prof? Out like a light. He’ll stay in dreamland for another half-hour or so.’

As he prepared to move, Allardyce noted that both men spoke more like native Californians than local Canadians. Then he sprang, arching his body, grabbing for the door handle, lashing out with his feet which connected with the body of the man who had hit him. Then he was out of the car and running, hardly realising that he was among trees and undergrowth.

Behind him, there was a shout which sounded like, ‘No! No! No!’ He did not hear the two shots; just a sudden blinding pain between his shoulder blades and a punch, like some huge fist, which seemed to go right through his body, then a great white light and oblivion.

2

THE MIND IS THE MAN

Eventually, the autopsy on Robert Allardyce would give cause of death as deep trauma resulting from the spinal chord and left lung being penetrated by two .45 bullets. At the moment those bullets hit the unfortunate professor, James Bond was sitting only some five miles away, in the opulent Palm Court lounge of the Empress Hotel on Victoria’s pleasant waterfront.

People who knew Bond well would have noticed that his manner, and expression, were ones of disapproval, his eyes hard and restless, his face frozen into the look of someone who has just been served spoiled fish. In fact Bond was irritated by the way this old and famous hotel served what it called an English Tea. During his four days in Victoria, Bond had avoided taking tea at the hotel, but today he had played two rounds of golf with indifferent partners at the Victoria Golf Club and returned earlier than usual. Tea seemed to be in order and he was shown to a small table right by a massive potted plant.

The first thing that annoyed him was a card on which was printed a highly inaccurate history of what it called The English Tea Ritual. This claimed that, at some time in the late nineteenth century, tea had become a ‘serious’ meal called High Tea. Happily, Bond reflected that while he could still recall the delights of Nursery Tea, he had never been in a position to eat High Tea, but here he was being asked to believe that the fare set before him was High Tea – an indifferent brew of tea itself, strawberries and cream, finger sandwiches, tasteless petits fours and some abomination called a ‘honey crumpet’. Crumpets, to Bond, were delicious items which should be served piping hot and dripping with butter, not jam, marmalade or this sweet confection of honey.