GENTLEMAN TRAITOR
Charles Pol Espionage Thrillers
Book Three
Alan Williams
For Audrey, with Love
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
ALSO BY ALAN WILLIAMS
PROLOGUE
It was a quiet evening at Hillcrest. Mrs Ross-Needham finished spraying the roses and walked up the gravel path through the African dusk, past two boys who were folding up deckchairs on the front lawn. Ground mist was rising from the valley, curling like smoke round the stout tree trunks. In a few minutes it would be dark. On the edge of the swimming pool a third boy sat on his heels and skimmed insects off the surface of the water with a net.
Mrs Ross-Needham stepped through the porch into the hotel and smiled at one of the guests, a bald chubby man who was starting up the stairs to change for dinner. ‘Good evening, Mr Prentice. It has been a lovely day, hasn’t it?’
‘It certainly has, Mrs Ross-Needham.’
In the lounge half a dozen men sat reading back-numbers of the Illustrated London News or fidgeting with crosswords. They raised their heads to acknowledge Mrs Ross-Needham’s smile, as she passed through to the bar where her husband was unlocking the till and arranging the tape recorder — forty minutes of unbroken melodies from popular post-war musicals.
‘Everything all right, Jack?’
He nodded. ‘Campbell hooked a real whopper up at Leopard Ridge this afternoon. Wouldn’t mind betting it’s a four-pounder. I’ve given it to the cook, and we’re promised some for lunch tomorrow.’
‘That’s nice of him. Seen anything of Mr Fielding?’
‘Not a thing since lunch. Three double gins and a bottle of Mateus. Probably sleeping it off. Trouble with a chap like that, doesn’t take any exercise. Like a drink, dear?’
‘I think I’ll wait.’ She sat on a stool across the bar from him and watched while he poured himself a gin and tonic. ‘I feel rather sorry for him,’ she said. ‘He told Mr Prentice that he’s recently a widower. Though I notice he doesn’t wear a ring.’
‘All I can say,’ replied her husband, ‘is that for a drinking man he’s damned unsociable. Don’t think I’ve had more than a dozen words with him since he got here. Must be over a week now.’
‘Six days,’ she smiled. ‘He arrived on Tuesday the tenth and took the Hamiltons’ old room, remember?’
‘How long’s he plan staying?’
‘He wasn’t sure. He said it might be three weeks to a month.’ Mrs Ross-Needham gave a small frown. ‘You’ve nothing against him, have you, Jack?’
‘Only that I like to see people enjoying themselves. In Fielding’s case I wouldn’t be surprised if the chap was an alcoholic — and we’ve both seen a few of them around, haven’t we? His bar bill would do justice to old Nick Robson! Still, mustn’t complain — all in a day’s work.’ He grinned over his glass. ‘Sure you wouldn’t like that drink, dear?’
‘I think I’ll get changed,’ she said, slipping off the stool and smoothing her dress. ‘Dinner in half an hour. And I must have a word with cook about that dessert — last night’s was quite awful!’ As she turned, two men in crested blazers came in talking loudly. They paused to greet her, then called to her husband: ‘The usual, Jack. And don’t be too generous with the lime!’
‘You know me, Tommy,’ Ross-Needham growled, and they all laughed.
Jack and Ingrid Ross-Needham were a popular couple. They had married at the end of the war in Copenhagen — she was a local girl of nineteen, he a young subaltern with the liberating British Army. Jack Ross-Needham had had a good war, but the drab peace of Socialist Britain was not to his liking; he had emigrated to Rhodesia and sunk his entire capital into Hillcrest, which he and his wife had soon built up into a fashionable holiday retreat.
At fifty-six Jack Ross-Needham was still a strong healthy man, only slightly overweight, with a head of thick grey hair parted in the middle, and two prongs of moustache that looked from behind like a pair of buffalo horns; while his wife had conserved her trim figure and a neat, parched prettiness, animated by her smile. They were a happy pair, with a young married daughter and a son in the Security Forces, and with no apparent cares beyond the usual economic problems that had nagged everyone in the country for nearly ten years.
The bar over which Ross-Needham presided would have been the envy of any English country pub or club: cosy without being cramped, with dark-stained panelling, plenty of horse-brasses and hunting prints, and an impressive collection of beermats from all over the world, arranged in a mosaic behind the bar. Ross-Needham’s favourite was one he had taken himself from an SS officers’ mess near Bremen, with the inscription Blut mit Ehre. Like many of his guests, the proprietor of Hillcrest was proud of having helped defeat the Teutonic master race.
The two men who had come into the bar were both middle-aged and deeply sunburnt. They were regular visitors to the hotel who came up for three weeks every year for the golf and fishing. One of them was John Campbell who had caught the four-pound trout that morning. A former RAF fighter-pilot, and now an insurance broker, he was one of the few guests who brought his family to Hillcrest. He had married late in life, with a strikingly beautiful girl who was now upstairs putting their two equally lovely daughters, aged nine and seven,
