This one is for Terry Kitson and John Sexton, with love.
Copyright
Copyright © 1980 the Estate of Ted Allbeury
All rights reserved.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
The author has asserted his moral right in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act, 1988 [UK].
Bibliographical Note
This Dover edition, first published in 2017, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published by Granada Publishing, Great Britain, in 1980.
International Standard Book Number
ISBN-13: 978-0-486-81922-8
ISBN-10: 0-486-81922-1
Manufactured in the United States by LSC Communications
81922101 2017
www.doverpublications.com
THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION
ARTICLE XX
(Proposed March 1932; Adopted February 1933)
SECTION I
The terms of the President and Vice-President shall end at noon on the twentieth day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the third day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.
CONTENTS
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
About the Author
CHAPTER 1
James Bruce MacKay sat with his feet up on the low coffee table, an open copy of Time magazine spread across his lap as he lit a cigarette. He waved out the match, tossed it into the ashtray and picked up the magazine again. He turned through the pages to the double spread entitled “People.” There was the usual picture of Shirley MacLaine, a piece about a defector from the Bolshoi, and a long paragraph about the author of another biography of Hemingway. As he turned to the book reviews the duty signals officer slid a typed sheet over the magazine pages. He read it slowly and carefully. Kowalski had been pulled off the plane at Warsaw airport and taken back into town. The four men who had taken him had been in plain clothes and had spoken Russian not Polish. He looked up at the signals captain.
“Where’s Anders?”
“Off duty, sir.”
MacKay reached in his pocket for a Biro and initialled the report. As he handed it back he said, “Get him in.”
He looked back at the magazine but the print was just a blur as he thought about Kowalski. It had happened two hours and forty minutes ago and by now he’d be unconscious. The interrogation team would have a drink and then there’d be an injection to bring him round for the next session. But that was going to be Anders’s worry, not his. He shook his head like a dog coming out of water and focused his eyes on the magazine pages.
Ten minutes later he tossed the magazine on to the coffee table and stood up, glancing at his watch as he stretched his arms. It was 01.30 hours on the first of November.
He walked over to the duty director’s bunk and started to undress. He heard the noise of a car door closing from down in the street. It was probably Anders arriving to sort out his problems in Warsaw. From the nearby Thames came the impatient blast of a boat’s siren. As he pulled the khaki blanket over his shoulder he could smell the ozone from the radio room and hear the agitated chatter of a Telex down the corridor.
James MacKay was an Edinburgh Scot with one of those neat, small-featured faces that never seem to grow old. Medium height, and slimly built, with a liking for bits and pieces of clothes rather than suits. But there was a flair to the clothes that he wore. The kind of flair that Parisiennes are said to have. Not that he was in any way effeminate; but in a calling where diplomats and civil-servants abounded, a shirt or shoes worn a little ahead of the general fashion could make a man noticed. Not with disapproval by any means, and perhaps it was more that he was remembered than noticed.
He had joined SIS straight from university at a time when universities were providing more problems for Special Branch than recruits. Like a graduate police constable, an eye was kept on him. With a father who was a banker and a mother who was a professional musician, his masters were never quite sure which set of genes was going to prove prepotent. And there were not all that many members of SIS who could mingle with undergraduates without changing their appearance.
It had been remarked, not necessarily with disapproval, that MacKay seemed to be seen with a whole series of pretty girls and it was put down to his charm. Even his male contemporaries agreed that MacKay had charm. And what they liked even more was that he seemed totally unaware of this attribute. He was as charming to men as he was to women. In a trade where cynicism and ruthlessness predominated, MacKay had proved exceptionally successful. A critical senior had once commented that a MacKay interrogation was more like old friends comparing notes than Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service pursuing the Queen’s enemies. But MacKay got results, and that was what counted.
It was nearly an hour later when he woke, and as he stood up he slid his arms into his jacket and shuffled through to the next room. It was empty, reeking of cigarette smoke and with the bare bulb still alight as it hung from the ceiling. The copy of Time was still there and he leafed through the first few pages to find the photograph. It was on here, under the headline “Gallup and Harris say it’s Powell.”
He sat down in the chair, shivering slightly from the cold. There were eight people in the photograph, all smiling into the camera, and the caption read: “With a 19 per cent lead in the polls, candidate Logan Powell and campaign manager Andrew Dempsey return to Hartford for the final days of the campaign.”
He bent forward and switched on the electric fire. If you saw
