An Old Spy Story Read online

AN OLD SPY STORY

  Terry Morgan

  Copyright 2011 Terry Morgan

  Kobo Edition

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Kobo and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2011 by TJM Books www.tjmbooks.com

  The right of Terry Morgan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  REVIEWS & COMMENTS:

  ".....a masterful tale by someone who knows exactly what he is writing about...."

  "....I loved this plot.....international trade, bribery, corruption and the murky workings of British Intelligence. The depiction of the may fixers and middle men ring so true, as do the dubious business practices. Gritty descriptions of far flung cities and their low budget hotels....easy reading."

  "..A wonderful and moving love story from an elderly man's perspective is beautifully woven into it and the ending is masterful..."

  "...I enjoyed it, exciting, endlesly beguiling and fun...."

  "..thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish. A remarkable book from a new writer who has clearly been there and done it - easy reading."

  CONTENTS:

  PART ONE: The Detention

  PART TWO: The Statement

  The Beginning

  Cockroaches

  The Algerian Parrot

  Monkey Puzzle

  Hanky Panky

  Reynolds

  Jack Woodward

  The Voice Inside

  Assignments

  Operation Chrysalis

  Farid

  A Mugging

  Aftermath

  Guilt

  A Sub Contract

  Medical Report

  Frank and Olga

  The Red Lantern

  Gathering Evidence

  William

  Good Advice

  Back Scratching

  Set Up

  A Mistake

  Beaty

  Sarah

  Robert

  Jim

  PART THREE: The Interview

  Andy Wilson

  Little Ollie

  Betty

  Malaga

  Donaldson

  Fred Carrington

  PART ONE: The Detention

  Oliver Thomas had no wish to appear to be crying like a baby, but the strain of trying to make out the detail of a blurred silhouette standing over him was making tears run down his unshaven cheeks.

  For an otherwise healthy man of eighty-six whose spectacles had also started to slide sideways down his nose, maintaining some self-dignity was still paramount. But attempts to deal with both the tears and the glasses with both hands then caused the walking stick that he was gripping between his knees, to slide with a clatter to the floor.

  Both of them, the silhouette and he, listened but neither did anything to chase it as it disappeared from view beneath the table that separated them. Instead, Oliver Thomas took a deep, audible breath that whistled past the hairs of his nose. It was just another familiar problem that compounded what little dignity he still felt. The silhouette dragged up a chair and sat down. A pot of untouched tea and two mugs sat on the otherwise bare table between them.

  “Come on Mr Thomas! Why would someone of your age fly to Spain, smuggle a hand gun past all the airport checks and surveillance gear and threaten another old man in his nineties?”

  His interrogator was clearly getting impatient but Oliver Thomas was in no hurry.

  “Tea, Mr Thomas? Milk?”

  He breathed out again, noisily, and looked down to check if he could see his stick. Having failed, he coughed to clear the phlegm he could feel gathering at the back of his throat.

  “Thank you,” he said politely, watching tea and milk being poured into the two mugs. Then, noting that the tea looked pale and stone cold, added:

  “Sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.”

  “Andy Wilson, Inspector Andy Wilson,” was the reply, spoken as though it was the tenth time he had given his name and rank. “Ah, yes, of course,” he said. The Inspector saw a faint smile appear amongst the deep creases in the unshaven cheeks and his suspicions that he was actually being taken for a bit of a ride by the old man were reinforced. But he ignored it. The detainee looked tired and unsteady on his feet and a little like his own grandfather. “So,” Inspector Andy Wilson sighed now, “any chance of an explanation?”

  Oliver Thomas leaned forwards, took the mug nearest him and sucked on the contents. It was, as he had expected, tepid and tasteless but he swallowed the first mouthful and then drained the cup.

  It was Andy Wilson’s turn to smile faintly at the speed with which the old man drank it, replaced the mug on the table and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “As we used to say in the RAF, a shit, shower and shave would be my preferred priority,” he said, aware of combining politeness with perhaps some unnecessary frankness. “One of my colleagues used to add the word shag to that list but I don’t feel like one at present.”

  “Really,” Andy Wilson said. “We, in the police use similar catch phrases.”

  Oliver Thomas edged himself back into his chair and tried, once more, to find his stick with his foot. Then he put his hand down to check that the old black leather bag that had accompanied him for the last seven days was still sat by his side.

  “It’s a long story,” he said.

  “I’ve got time.”

  “It goes back sixty years so it’ll take sixty years to tell.”

  “Then give me a summary.”

  “Your friend whom I spoke to earlier said he wanted me to start from scratch.”

  “Clive’s got more patience. Just give me a summary.”

  Oliver Thomas spent a minute or so rubbing his sore eyes behind his glasses.

  “I still don’t know where to start,” he said.

  “The only thing I know so far is that your name is Oliver James Thomas and that you probably live somewhere in Gloucester. And we got that from your passport. Perhaps you can start with explaining why you had such a problem with a ninety-year old gentleman who was apparently living in quiet retirement in a nice villa in Malaga.”

  There was silence from Oliver Thomas.

  He just stared at the walls.

  “Is it any wonder that the Spanish police have asked us to detain you, Mr Thomas? When a British national goes to Spain, uses a smuggled hand gun on another British national and then runs away or, as in your case, walks away using a walking stick, it poses the question of why,” Andy Wilson continued.

  “And while we’re at it, what were you doing with six thousand Euros in a brown envelope? Was it unspent holiday money?”

  Oliver Thomas tried looking at his interrogator across the top of his glasses as the lenses were far too greasy for a clear view through them and his hand went down to check that the black bag was still there.

  Andy Wilson noticed. “Don’t worry,” he said. “The envelope is still in there. We’ve only held on to your passport.”

  “So did your Spanish friends confirm the name of this so-called gentleman, Inspector?” Oliver Thomas asked.

  “His name is Alexander Donaldson, which I imagine you know anyway. “

  Andy Wilson sighed.

  Oliver Thomas then copied him, noisily and deliberately, as if competing in a test of how much frustration a man could tolerate. He then scanned
the depressing magnolia walls of the interview room with tired, red-rimmed eyes before trying to focus once more on the silhouette of Inspector Andy Wilson.

  “My wife, Sarah, died, you see,” he said.

  “Excuse me?” Andy Wilson asked, unsure how this related to the case in hand.

  “And so did Beaty,” Oliver Thomas added.

  Andy Wilson stared back, now wondering if he was dealing with a case of geriatric infidelity and promiscuity having got out of hand.

  Meanwhile, Oliver Thomas made one last attempt to find his stick, this time with his other foot and then said, “So is the bastard dead, Inspector?”

  Andy Wilson said nothing but picked up his own cup and drained the contents.

  Oliver Thomas noticed the reluctance to confirm anything.

  “Oh well,” he said, “the bastard was far from well when I last saw him. Perhaps he’s already gone to his maker – the devil. Whatever I did, he seemed about to suffer a heart attack anyway. So perhaps I’ve done everyone a favor.”

  Andy Wilson watched him.

  Clearly the old man seemed none too concerned. He was now sitting back as though trying to relax after a job well done.

  “Damned hard chair,” said Oliver Thomas fidgeting.

  “So is mine,” Andy Wilson replied impatiently. “As for Mr Donaldson, I understand he is in intensive care. We are still waiting for news.”

  There was a short silence as Oliver Thomas fidgeted a bit more and looked around the room again. Then he turned to face his questioner.

  “I’d be happy to explain, Inspector, but I trust you were taught the art of patience during your police training. Because, if you really want to know, then it all started more than sixty years ago, and if I am to explain what happened, and why, then I need to start from the beginning and this could take a while.”

  “Go ahead,” Andy Wilson said, “try to make yourself comfortable.”

  “Home comforts are not something that ever really bothered me, Inspector, but a softer chair might be easier on my bloody arse and, if you could retrieve my stick from over there, I’d be very grateful.”

  Andy Wilson smiled now and, as he bent down to pick up the stick, Oliver Thomas seized his chance.

  “Could we not, perhaps, go and sit in your main office where I am sure I saw a sofa and coffee table as we passed by a while ago. I suspect that’s where your staff go and relax, so perhaps the tea can be guaranteed to be of a better quality there as well. If we don’t finish before midnight, I am sure I can find a room somewhere. I’d be happy to continue tomorrow as I don’t have any other pressing engagements.

  And a toilet where I could perhaps have a quick shit to avoid disgracing myself would be useful.

  “Apart from that, I’ve got plenty of time and, frankly, the thought of returning home to the cold and empty house in Gloucester and running the gauntlet of my nosey neighbour Fred Carrington is something that depresses me.”

  Andy Wilson got up and handed him his stick.

  “Here,” he said, “come with me,” and he came around to then other side of the table and put his hand on the old man’s elbow to steady him as he struggled up. “Thank you,” said Oliver Thomas, “I’m unlikely to run far away as you can see.”

  Andy Wilson bent down again, this time to pick up the black bag.

  “I’ll take that,” said Oliver Thomas as though it contained his life savings.

  He was led to another office with a desk, bookshelves, a few filing cabinets, a coffee table and an exotic potted plant.

  “That’s much nicer,” he said to Andy Wilson, “and I can actually see your face now.”

  Then he raised his glasses to rest on his forehead and peered at the potted plant.

  “A Malaysian miniature coconut – how interesting. It’ll fruit in about four years but it won’t be anything like warm or bright enough just sitting there. I feel sorry for it. Trees like that should be left where they were born. I hope it isn’t one you borrowed after confiscation at customs, because I thought that was illegal.”

  “Ah,” said Andy Wilson, unconvincingly. He beckoned him towards the sofa. “So you know something about customs regulations do you?”

  “Oh yes,” he said, “I ran an export and import company for most of my life so I know most of the dodges.”

  “You certainly know how to carry a gun onto a plane undetected, Mr Thomas. How many other little tricks are you up to?” Andy Wilson settled into the chair opposite and placed a notepad on the table. But, as he did so, a phone rang on a desk nearby and he leaned over to answer it. “That might be Spain, excuse me.”

  Oliver Thomas listened.

  “Yes, I see – thanks. Anything else from Malaga?” Andy Wilson replaced the phone and returned to face Oliver Thomas.

  “Well, you won’t be going far anyway, Mr Thomas. There is another little problem. The long-term car park office reports that your car, an old Jaguar I understand, that you parked there some days ago, has no tax and no insurance.”

  Oliver Thomas scratched his head.

  ”Oh! Yes, I’d forgotten about that with all the excitement. It’s in the post. But what about the medical reports from Malaga, Inspector? Is the bastard dead?”

  Andy Wilson picked up a pen and started to write something on the pad.

  “He is in intensive care. Though I understand the Spanish police are also now taking an interest in some other matters.” “Ah!” said Oliver Thomas again. “Good. Better late than never, I suppose.”

  Andy Wilson was now the one to scratch his head. He then stuck the pen between his teeth.

  “So, tell me about your business, Mr Thomas. Are you still running it? Are you not retired? Is this some sort of business feud or just an argument over girlfriends?”

  “I would say it’s far more complicated than that, Inspector. Do you want to start from the beginning or not?”

  Andy Wilson sighed once more.

  If this was a long feud then perhaps, the old man was right in that it would not be a quick explanation. He glanced at the walking stick now propped up opposite him and down at the black bag. Then he thought about the detainee’s transport problem and the information from Spain, which was still vague.

  Time was not something the old man appeared to be concerned with. But the long-awaited explanation suddenly seemed to start and he thought he had better listen. “I started the business after the war,” he heard Oliver Thomas begin.

  “Sarah and I had just got married and we moved to live in Croydon which was near enough to London, far enough into the country and yet near to the airport. Sarah called the house ‘Brick View’ and I knew she didn’t really like it but it was an era of austerity, ration books, waste not, want not and beggars can’t be choosers.

  “You wouldn’t understand, Inspector, as you’re far too young. But it was a good time for those with ambition and energy and I was one of those with ideas to start my own business. Exporting was my plan.”

  “Why exporting?” Andy Wilson asked, trying to focus on something specific.

  “I had always wanted to travel to more exotic places, you see,” said Oliver Thomas. “Ever since I was a boy and first read about Captain Cook and stared at the illustrations. Afterwards I took out books on Africa, Persia and India from the library. After the war, I decided I wanted to visit more countries than the few that His Majesty had already sent me to in the RAF. And so Thomas Import Export Limited was born several years before our two children.”

  He paused and seemed to glaze over. Andy Wilson thought that, perhaps, he was imagining a couple of babies bouncing on his knee – babies that would in fact be nigh on retirement age themselves.

  But this had been described to him earlier as a possible murder investigation and he really needed to get to the facts.

  He decided to jump in again.

  “Let’s cut out the family history shall we, Mr Thomas? Are you still in business or not?”

  Oliver Thomas’s mind was still sixty years behind a
nd the question caught him unaware.

  “I suppose so,” he said, “I admit I hadn’t thought of it like that. I’ve stopped doing tax returns but I suppose you could say my business plan has not yet been fulfilled.”

  Andy Wilson sighed and looked at his watch yet again, regretting his last question.

  The old man was already in full flow again.

  “Oh yes, in the beginning I had big plans for Thomas Import Export. If you had asked me sixty years ago, how it might have grown I would probably have described a multi-national trading company with plush offices in New York, Paris, Hong Kong and Buenos Aires.

  “But looking at me now, Inspector, in my Marks and Spencer’s jumper, jacket and stained trousers how do I look? Do I look like a successful businessman who worked his socks off and risked his neck for fifty years? Do I resemble some of your flash, modern jet setters with their credit cards, laptops and exaggerated stories about top level meetings with bankers in Sheraton Hotels in places like Singapore and Los Angeles? Or do I look like one of the few who ventured abroad even before the days of telexes and international telephones and were to be found waiting around at squalid airports carrying tattered cases of samples and staying at doss houses in places like downtown Lagos?

  “How, Inspector, do I compare with your vision of Mister, fucking, Alexander Donaldson, as you are apparently required to address him, who is living, as you so politely put it, in quiet retirement in a nice villa in Spain?

  “That bastard ruined my life, and that of many others. “Let me ask you. What was the final death toll in Northern Ireland?

  “I disliked him from the first time I met him but the feeling got worse the older I got and the more I realized what he was really up to. But since Sarah died and I found myself with the time and just about enough energy left I felt it was time to act.

  “But am I partly to blame? Yes, probably.

  “Do I have my weaknesses? Yes, as we all do.

  “Am I honest and reliable? Yes, generally.

  “Am I patriotic? Yes, definitely.

  “But just after the war was a time when old Army and RAF chums still kept in touch.

  “A group of us used to meet up in the Feathers in Mayfair.”

  Oliver Thomas stopped and Andy Wilson thought he might be recalling pleasant evenings of seventy years ago.

  “Ah yes, the Feathers,” he continued, “Do you know it, Inspector? Is it still there? Is it now covered in hanging baskets of geraniums and petunias and other tinsel? Does it now offer gastro food and serve organic quiche salads for lunch? If so it has changed a bit since I frequented the dive in the fifties.

  “But relationships between old chums often became soured as we recognized our differences outside our uniforms. And this particularly sour relationship has taken me far longer to deal with than it should.

  “Oh yes, the old man in his nineties, as you so decently refer to him, is a bastard of the first order.

  “Have you ever met an old-fashioned money launderer, Inspector?

  “Do you know any ninety-year-old gun running arms dealers or drug dealers?

  “How many of your friends are associates of Sicilian or Russian Mafia and hide out in places like Malta, Inspector?

  “Are you familiar with the big money that can be made by being the instigator of military coups and other subversive plots in places like Algeria, Sierra Leone or Chad and do you know any nice people who ran the Provisional IRA?

  “In your recent career, Inspector, have you ever found it necessary to arrest a really nasty but clever piece of shit that operates internationally and is still going strong and unidentified like some New York Godfather? Perhaps you have so perhaps you know the sort. Perhaps, with luck, your Spanish friends are going to find one who’s been hiding in their midst for too long. Yet it’s me who is under detention and I find that strange. But then, that’s the story of my life. So, shall I go on, Inspector?”

  Andy Wilson had sat listening patiently throughout this diatribe which seemed to get more and more passionate as it progressed. He had found himself staring at the old man toying with the desire to cut the old man short by telling him to get to the point. But he was also intrigued.

  Was he an ex gangster, arms dealer or drugs dealer? Was he a money launderer? But he hardly looked the part and, what was more, he lived in Gloucester. Andy Wilson’s only image of Gloucester was of a grimy place with docks and a rugby club. Malaga, on the other hand, was a far more likely headquarters for an expatriate criminal.

  And although it may just have been the influence of David Attenborough documentaries, but travel to places other than Tenerife, that his wife preferred, had always intrigued him. And as for meeting gangsters, this was usually the job of other police departments. And the only Mafia types he knew were the sort portrayed by Marlon Brando. This old man looked, as he himself had just admitted, like an ordinary pensioner. Just like his grandfather, he reminded himself again.

  But Andy Wilson had a job to do and he looked at his watch. “It’s getting late,” said Andy Wilson, tapping the watch. “We need to decide what to do here. But we’re still waiting on information from the Spanish police.”

  “So, I’m not being charged?”

  “You’re being detained pending further enquiries.” “So, where am I to be detained?”

  “Somewhere close by. A hotel. Your car has been impounded and your passport is with me here,” he said, and produced the passport from beneath the pad in front of him.

  Then he looked down at Oliver Thomas’s black bag again. “You’re not carrying very much, Mr Thomas. When we checked, it was just a bundle of old clothes, some keys and your brown envelope of euros. Is that it?”

  Oliver Thomas also looked down at his old black leather bag. He had owned it for more than forty years and he felt it was still in good shape.

  “Italian leather,” he said, “made to order by a craftsman in Naples. But you missed something Inspector. As did most customs and immigration officials for all the years I used it. It used to hold my other passports in a concealed compartment. I held several, at various times. But on this occasion, it contains something else.”

  He bent down and opened it up.

  Andy Wilson watched as the old man ran a veiny hand around the lining. There was a sound like a Velcro fastening being opened and the hand emerged with a thick pile of A4 size paper held together with a single, large bulldog clip.

  “I started it some months ago,” he said, “I partly updated it in red biro when I was in Frankfurt. But this is as good a police statement as you’ll find anywhere. I wrote it just in case I didn’t get back. But there is a carbon copy with my solicitor along with some other papers. I hope you enjoy it.”

  Andy Wilson took it from him and started to flip through the pages.

  It looked as if it had been prepared on an ancient typewriter.

  “By the way, Inspector,” Oliver Thomas interrupted, “Alex Donaldson is no ordinary mister. For one thing, his rank is Major and, for another, he had tenuous links with British Intelligence.”

  Andy Wilson looked at him.

  “Really? And you, Mr Thomas?”

  “Me?” he replied, pointing a finger at himself. “Oh, I just ran a small export business.”

  An hour later, Oliver Thomas found himself in a small hotel room overlooking the airport runway but with the black leather bag now containing little more than a week’s worth of dirty washing and a toothbrush. The curtains were not drawn and bright orange lights from the airport flickered and reflected off the ceiling and so he went to the window to look out. He spat on the lenses of his glasses and wiped them with the end of his woollen jumper and then put them on to watch as a plane taxied towards the terminal. Airports had been a way of life for him for many years and still held a fascination but he had never heard of the airline whose owner’s name was splashed on the tail alongside what looked like a sun and a palm tree.

  “Like a bloody coach trip to Blackpool,” he muttered to h
imself and pulled the curtain shut.

  Then he switched on the dim bedside light, went to the bathroom, filled a glass with water, drank it, filled it once again and brought it back to sit on the bed.

  It was a dismal room but luxurious compared to some he had stayed in, so he lay back and closed his eyes. For a while he lay in the dark on the single bed, fully clothed, thinking about Andy Wilson.

  He had warned him that his hand-written statement went back sixty years and could take a while to read but, for now, there was not much else he could do.

  “Oh yes, Inspector,” he mumbled to himself, “I forgot one thing. Please add blackmail to the list of accusations to throw at that bastard.”

  His tired, unfocused eyes tried looking around the orange lit room but he could feel himself drifting to sleep. It turned out to be the best sleep he had had for weeks.

  Back at the police offices, Andy Wilson removed the bulldog clip and settled himself for a long read.