Writing - Gestation of a thriller

Some writers believe that all those piles of writing ideas that had not been translated into either short stories or books should be ditched. There’s sense in that – tidying up, clearing the wheat from the chaff.

However, some ideas require time to gestate and may be worth holding onto - for years. I have several examples of retaining ideas that have ultimately paid dividends; here’s one.

When I was training in the RN in 1971, our group spent an evening round the mess table and set up a Ouija session, using a tumbler and placed in a circle pieces of paper with the alphabet and numbers on them. Needless to say, despite our best efforts, nothing intelligible resulted. Then I proposed that the gobbledegook was in code. And an idea formed. The message would be transmitted by a psychic spy, Tana Standish.

But, in the final analysis, it didn’t seem to be gibberish.

By the time Keith Tyson deciphered the first paragraph, he felt sick inside.

Unsmiling narrow mouth beneath a salt-and-pepper moustache, Jock stubbed out half-smoked cigarettes repeatedly. He was a bag of nerves since his last mission. It was plain on his face that he knew this astral message was very bad.

At last Tyson put down the pencil and raised his grey eyes. His expression was solemn. “It’s from Tana,” he said. “They’ve got her.”

Alan Swann’s face lost most of its colour as he leaned forward. He queried softly, “Where?”

“Czechoslovakia.” (p174)

That was the set-up. So I wrote a 2,000-word short story entitled ‘The Ouija Message’. Even though by then I’d sold a number of action-adventure stories, this one didn’t find a home. In retrospect, I realised that the story needed more space. I embarked on writing a book – same title – and it stretched to a modest 50,000 words.

At that time (1974) publishers were not averse to commenting on submissions. Robert Hale was not keen on the psychic elements but said ‘the work is up to publication standard and indeed better than many that are published’. So that was encouraging. Alas, a good number of rejections of Ouija followed and time passed and life-work tended to get in the way. I continued to have reasonable successes with short story and article sales, and wrote other books, thrillers and fantasy, but didn’t sell any of those novels either.

Time passed. As it does. Then, in 2007 I dug out a one-line idea – ‘He was dressed entirely in black. Black because he was in mourning. Mourning the men he had killed.’ I decided to write a western! That same year I sold the resultant book to Hale, and five more followed before they went out of business. At the same time, I had success with the Harry Bowling Prize, winning an award with the first chapters of a crime novel. While, sadly, I didn’t get agent representation, the success spurred me on to finish that crime book and it was accepted by a new publisher, Libros, under the title Pain Wears No Mask; (Libros went out of business but now the book is available as The Bread of Tears). On the back of these two successes, I revisited The Ouija Message and, thanks to all those years of writing experience, vastly improved the book to the extent that it ran to 80,000 words and it was accepted by Libros in 2008. That book spawned two more adventures and I’m busy writing the fourth in the Tana Standish psychic spy series. Since my breakthrough in 2007 I’ve had 37 books published.

The moral of all this? Never give up on your writing ideas. Believe in yourself. And if you keep writing, you keep improving.

 

Note: The Tana Standish books are: Mission: Prague (Czechoslovakia, 1975); Mission: Tehran (Iran, 1978); Mission: Khyber (Afghanistan, 1979); Mission: Falklands (Argentina, 1982) – work in progress.

JET STREAM

I was drawn to the book Jet by Russell Blake because the cover shares the same model as my book Mission: Prague (see the two covers to compare below).

  

The similarities don’t end there, either. Maya, codename Jet is a twenty-eight-year-old Mossad assassin. The heroine in Mission: Prague is psychic spy Tana, a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto; she was thirty-eight at the time of her Prague mission.

Jet’s adventures are set in the present, while Tana’s are in the past (Czechoslovakia, 1975; Iran, 1978; Afghanistan, 1979).

Tana’s Prague novel first came out in 2008 as The Prague Manuscript. Jet was published in 2012, though the ‘shared’ model did not appear on the new Prague cover until 2017.

Both books are fast-paced.

Jet – the first book in the series

Maya thought she’d left behind her life of violence and had retired to Trinidad. Unfortunately, somebody from her past had talked and sent an assassination squad to eliminate her. From the explosive beginning to the traumatising end, it’s action all the way. I certainly want to read more in the series!

Russell Blake has produced a page-turning thrill-ride that has built up an enviable fan base. And to his fans’ delight he’s prolific. He’s just produced his SEVENTEENTH Jet novel (including two prequels) plus a host of other series; in all, in seven years he’s written about 60 books (and co-authored two with Clive Cussler).

If you like your adventures fast and furious, try the Jet series.  

***

Secret file – 00/13/417 – Tana Standish, psychic spy

Mission: Prague was released by a MOD accredited publisher, Manatee Books. It is based on a manuscript that came into the possession of the author Nik Morton (believed to be a pseudonym). Investigations are in hand to ascertain the source. It is believed that the work is a collaborative effort by a select group of agents, all intent on telling the story of Tana Standish, psychic spy.

Standish was recruited into International Enterprises (Interprises) in 1965 and her career continued until 1988.

Her story is ostensibly being told as fiction. Mission: Prague involves Standish in a mission in Czechoslovakia in 1975.

Other earlier Standish missions have still to be declassified. They take place in the following theatres: Singapore (1965), Naples (1966), Izmir (1967), Odessa (1968), Pilsen (1968), Karachi (1970), Elba (1971), Gibraltar (1972), Mombasa (1973), and Hong Kong (1974).

Standish – brief biography

Tana was born on May 12, 1937 in Warsaw. At the time of the uprising of the ghetto in 1942, she was five years old. She had two brothers, Mordechai and Ishmael, both now deceased. She was adopted by a British couple in 1942, but her adoptive father Lieutenant Hugh Standish was killed ironically in a car crash two years later. Her mother Vera never remarried.

Tana joined Edinburgh University in 1955 and read Psychology, gaining a BA (Hons) in 1958. Thereafter, she worked for the Parapsychological Research Unit, Northamptonshire – 1958 to early 1965; during this time, she travelled to the US and the USSR, among other countries, to give talks on memory, for, besides possessing psychic abilities, she has a photographic memory.

Two of her later missions have been documented in Mission: Tehran (1978) and Mission: Khyber (1979)

Writing - Catching up while standing still

Sometimes, it feels like that. At present, I’m coming to the end of a final edit for Maureen, my editor of Catalyst, which is due for publication by Crooked Cat in a few weeks. The book has been edited a number of times, but when Maureen asked me to check it over and sign it off, I couldn’t resist having another read-through. The temptation at this stage is to let it go, as it has been read more than once by several critical eyes. Always, always, there will be something that has been missed, even with the best will and experience and diligence in the world. Mostly, it will be style things – such as echo words appearing in the same page or even paragraph. I’ve caught four instances of that. One instance where it should have been ‘he’, not ‘she’; it happens. I’ve said it before and will doubtless repeat it again often, but you will never catch all the typos or errors, but you need to strive to do so.

Next is the edit of The Prague Papers, due for publication by Crooked Cat later this year. I’m giving it the final check as requested by my editor Jeff. Some radical surgery has been committed on this book, and it’s all to the good. Quite a few thousand words have been excised by me since really they don’t move the story forward. Those lost words are interesting back-story, but they slow down the tale. I will probably include some of the missing material in a forthcoming blog/website for the protagonist, Tana Standish, psychic spy.

 

Tana Standish, psychic spy

 

The moral here is that just because you’ve completed a novel and it has been accepted, that doesn’t mean it is really finished. Approach these final edits with the same diligence applied to the manuscript prior to being despatched to the publisher.

And I’m still in the throes – getting to the exciting end – of Catacomb, the sequel to Catalyst. That’s taking a backseat while I clear the above edits. Yet even so, the characters are busy in the back of my head, jostling for a place, attempting to overcome the obstacles I put in their way before shunting them into a temporary limbo.

Finally, when I’ve completed Catacomb I need to return to the fantasy world of Floreskand, to get on with the sequel to Wings of the Overlord, To Be King, which has now been plotted in depth after a visit from my co-author, Gordon Faulkner.

 

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Overlord-Chronicles-Floreskand-Morton-Faulkner/dp/1908483857/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1412864739&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=wings+of+the+overlord

Writing - The Prague Papers - Foreword

Prague - Wikipedia commons

THE PRAGUE PAPERS

 

(Tana Standish, psychic spy, in Czechoslovakia – 1975)

The first in a series

 

Nik Morton

 

To be published by Crooked Cat – currently in the publisher’s edit phase,
so it will be subject to change

  

FOREWORD: Manuscript

 

Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK

The agent who called himself Mr. Swann entered the Queen’s Hotel bar at 2PM, just as he had promised. In my business, I’d met a few spies and all of them were nondescript. After all, to be a good agent, you need to blend in, be unmemorable. Swann just didn’t fit that category, so I wondered if I was wasting my time on this mysterious appointment.

            He was tall, dark and sanguine. In his early fifties, maybe a little older. His black hair sported a white streak on the left; a livid jagged thin scar continued from there at the hairline all the way down that side of his face to his chin. The bottle-green worsted suit was bespoke, the shoes patent leather. He wore gloves and carried a large brown leather briefcase. Removing a dark gray trilby, he nodded at me. Spots of summer rain had peppered dark blobs on his shoulders and hat.

As I stood to greet him, he gestured for me to remain seated and strode over. He limped ever so slightly, as if one leg was shorter than the other; I’m only a reporter, not a detective, and I certainly wasn’t going to measure his inside leg.

            He’d implied he was still in the field but I was beginning to suspect that he’d been put out to grass. A bit harsh, I thought. Because of his physical appearance maybe nowadays he was a desk man at ‘Legoland’, the agents’ popular name for the headquarters building at Vauxhall Cross on the Thames.

Let’s be honest, he wasn’t going to melt into any background. Besides, these days he was the wrong ethnic type for infiltration. The Twin Towers atrocity changed several priorities and a few careers come to that. Why do we in the media insist on the shorthand ‘9/11’? Sounds more like a deodorant brand to me. What’s wrong with giving that terrible act of violence against the victims of over thirty different nations its proper name? Anyway, the world was not the same since then and now the clandestine services were mainly gunning for fanatical terrorists, not greedy traitors or misguided ideologists, though those sort probably still existed in the woodwork, waiting their chance to emerge.

            Sitting opposite me, Swann smiled as the middle-aged blonde barmaid placed a whisky and dry ginger in front of him. Clearly, he was known in this place. Not promising, I thought, though obviously being prominent could also imply that you couldn’t possibly be a spy because spies are shadow creatures. Double blind, or whatever they call it.

Maybe that’s how the character James Bond got away with it for so many years, traipsing round the world using his own name more than the odd pseudonym. Now Quiller, he was much more realistic. Never did get to know his real name. And of course Quiller’s author, Adam Hall, was a cover-name for the late lamented Elleston Trevor. Still, those spies were fiction; Mr Swann was fact and studying me.

            Swann’s eyes were a cold blue; one of them, I suddenly realised, was glass. You’d have to be quick to detect the movement but, in an instant, his single orb seemed to scan the entire room and its occupants. As it happened, I’d chosen a booth where we couldn’t be overheard.

Despite the very visible scar, it was obvious that he had undergone some plastic surgery: the aging skin round eyes and cheek contrasted starkly with the pristine sheen of his square jaw.

            He lifted the briefcase onto his lap and clicked open the metal clasp. He fished out a bundle of paper. ‘Perhaps this manuscript would prove of interest, Mr. Morton?’

            I liked the man at once. No skirting around the reason for our meeting, no small talk about the lousy British weather. Straight to the point.

            He handed over about a ream of Courier font typewritten paper, secured by a thick elastic band. The corners were turned and the sheets had lost their whiteness. A bit like me, I suppose. It also reminded me of my rejected manuscripts – except there were no coffee-mug stains.

            ‘Have you heard of the Dobranice Incident?’

            ‘No,’ I said.

            ‘It was a while ago, I must admit.’ He’d never make a politician, I thought; they never admitted anything.

            ‘So when was this incident?’

            ‘1975.’

            ‘Good God, the Dark Ages!’ If my shaky memory was to be believed, I was an idealistic nineteen-year-old, reporting the Melody Maker pop-scene at the time. I shook my head. ‘I wasn’t into world events then.’ I’m fifty-eight now and world-weary. Early retirement would be nice, but it wasn’t going to happen since the politicians had wrecked my personal pension. At least I genuinely liked writing – and getting paid for it. Though, on reflection, no matter how much I wrote, it didn’t get any easier.

            ‘The incident was trivialised,’ Swann said. ‘Made barely page three in the broadsheets at the time. A postscript, really.’

            ‘And this postscript – these papers concern that ‘incident’?’

            ‘Dobranice. Yes.’ He handed over a single sheet, a typed list.

            I glanced at it. Some place-names I recognized as trouble spots from recent history, others I hadn’t heard of and the rest might well be places from a Pirates and Travellers game:

Dobranice

Tehran

Kabul

Caldera

Izmir

Hong Kong

Elba

Naples

Peking

Bulawayo

Mogadishu

Cairo.

       ‘When you said agent, you didn’t mean travel agent, by any chance?’ I asked.

His mouth made a grimace but his good eye shone, betraying amusement. ‘Keith warned me about your – for want of a better description – sense of humour. No, that’s a list of places – where certain assignments were carried out.’

‘So this manuscript is about Dobranice, the top of the list?’

‘Yes. Top place on the list. Top story.’ He grinned lopsidedly. ‘Top secret.’

I took a good gulp of my cool San Miguel, just to remind me of sunnier climes. This hotel was one of the few places to stock imported Spanish beer. Most of the stuff was bottled in Britain and didn’t taste the same. I glanced at a window. Needless to say, it was raining again. A sultry summer, so the weathermen promised. Weathermen and politicians – don’t believe a word they say.

I nodded at the bundle of typescript, itching to get my hands on it, but I held back. ‘Why give this to me?’

            ‘Times have changed.’ He sipped his whisky. ‘The Old Order has gone now. Even if the thirty-year-rule allows them to release anything about the incident, I doubt if you’d ever see the full story.’

            ‘Well, thirty years have gone, haven’t they? I don’t recall anything being released about this Dobranice place, though.’

            ‘And I doubt if you will, ever. Anyway, whether it’s Prague, Dobranice or other assignments in Iran, Afghanistan, Argentina… Not everything is covered by the thirty year rule; some take longer to be released. The point is that they’re all about Tana. And we feel her story should be told now.’ The look in his eye seemed wistful, as if there was a history between him and this Tana person.

            ‘Tana?’

            ‘Tana Standish.’ He nodded at the pile of paper. ‘Read the manuscript – she’s in there.’ He looked sad, almost bereaved, the way he spoke about the mysterious Tana.

            Blood throbbed in my temple. Every instinct I’d developed in the news-hunting game told me this might be worth a look. ‘You said "we". Who wrote this?’

            ‘Me. And a few others. Keith and Mike. Others. A group effort. Let’s just say that we downed a few drinks and got together a number of times after the Berlin Wall came crumbling down. I know, that’s a long time ago as well.’ His mouth curved. ‘Anyway, it made a pleasant change from dry assignment reports.’

            ‘But –?’ I offered. There always has to be a but.

            He smiled again, thinly. ‘Well, it might be best to rewrite it as fiction, Mr. Morton. Just to avoid the stupidity of another Spycatcher circus.’

            ‘Or Stella Rimington’s Open Secret?’

            ‘Not so open, was it? In fact, not much action in her prose, I’m afraid. Now, Dobranice – it has more than enough action.’ His features turned rueful. ‘More than enough.’

            ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘those books were about the Security Service, MI5. This isn’t, is it?’

            ‘Indeed, you’re quite right. It’s a rather secret part of the Firm, actually.’

            ‘I’m not going to put any agents at risk by writing about this, am I?’

            ‘No, these adventures won’t figure in the revelations of Wikileaks, Assange or Snowden.”

            ‘I’m pleased to hear it.’

            ‘It might have fresh relevance, now that Mr Putin is keen to start a fresh Cold War.’

            ‘True. What do you want in return?’

            He studied the remains of his drink and because I wasn’t psychic I couldn’t fathom what he was thinking, but it was more than his words: ‘Just the story. The story is the thing.’

            Another question had been nagging throughout our clandestine meeting. ‘Why bring this to me? As much as I try spreading the word on Twitter and Facebook, I’m not exactly well-known, you know.’

            ‘Jack Higgins turned us down.’

            I glared and he grinned. ‘Just joking,’ he said. ‘You’ve been around the block, if you like, you’ve lived through these times, even if you didn’t know what was going on in secret circles. Not many do, if we’re honest. We’ve still got one of the most secret societies on earth, right here in good old Britain. Whatever happened to ‘Great’?’

            ‘Sold for a peerage, perhaps?’

            He shook his head and smiled. ‘I don’t do politics. Not a good idea in our profession. But as I was saying, actually, Keith liked your articles for the Portsmouth and District Post.’

            I didn’t for a minute believe a word of it. And yet... I fingered the manuscript in anticipation. It seemed too good to be true. I was being handed all this secret stuff on a plate.

‘All right, then,’ I said, ‘I’ll give it a go.’

‘Just do her justice,’ he said.

* * * *

Later, how I wished I’d met Tana Standish. People like me – and those accursed politicians – sit cozily at home with our petty complaints while men and women like her fight the good fight against evil. The Cold War may have gone away for a while, but we still need people like Tana Standish, Alan Swann and Keith Tyson. And they get no thanks. Mainly, their stories go unheard and unread. At the most, their achievements probably get a footnote in a newspaper.

            After several months shut away from the world of today I have finished this book, which I have called The Prague Papers – the first chronicle of Tana Standish’s missions which presages several calamitous adventures with significant revelations from recent history. It is dedicated to all the secret agents who fight behind the scenes and behind the news.

 

***

 

Note: This is just a teaser. All of the Tana Standish books begin in a similar manner, with the secret documents being handed over... The novel is in the third person, however.

 

 

Tana Standish, psychic spy - 01

I’m pleased to announce that Crooked Cat Publishing have accepted my first two Tana Standish chronicles.

 

Tana Standish, a child-survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, was adopted by a British naval Lieutenant and eventually joined the British Secret Intelligence Service. She is a psychic with a photographic memory. Each adventure begins with the passing of a collection of papers and manuscripts to the author (Nik Morton) by one of her secret service associates. He then writes down her experiences. The first is The Prague Papers (Czechoslovakia, 1975), followed by The Tehran Text (Iran, 1978), both of which have been previously published (2008 & 2009 respectively), though the latter received minimal exposure as the collapse of the publisher occurred almost at the same time as its release. The next two adventures are planned; these are: The Khyber Chronicle – (Afghanistan, 1979/80), half-completed, and The Caldera Cryptogram (Argentina, Falklands, 1982).

 

The timeline for Tana’s secret service career is shown below:

The Singapore Signal – 1965 – (Tana’s first mission)

The Naples Note - 1966

The Izmir Intelligence - 1967

The Odessa Objective – 1968

The Pilsen Portfolio– 1968

The Karachi Code - 1970

The Elba Errand – 1971

The Gibraltar Gathering - 1972

The Mombasa Message - 1973

The Hong Kong Cover – 1974

The Prague Papers – 1975

The Peking Profile – 1976

The Bulawayo Bulletin – Jan 1977

The Mogadishu Memorandum – Jul 1977

The Cairo Codicil – Dec 1977

The Tehran Text - 1978

The Khyber Chronicle – 1979-1980

The Caldera Cryptogram – 1980-1982

The Savannah Statement - 1983

The Dingli Disclosure – 1984 (Malta)

The Malaga Missive – 1985

The Oslo Observation - 1985

 

More disclosures from the secret annals soon!

That's torn it

Having just viewed again after many years Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain (1966), I found it was instructive to watch the ‘Making of’ feature.

The film stars Paul Newman and Julie Andrews. Briefly, Newman is Michael Armstrong, a world-famous scientist and Andrews is his fiancée and assistant, Sarah Sherman. They’re attending an international congress of physics in Copenhagen. Sarah discovers that Michael is defecting to East Germany and follows her heart and him.

Occasionally, I confuse this film with Newman’s other movie set in Scandinavia, The Prize (1963), based on Irving Wallace’s novel. (Wallace’s literary autopsy of writing this novel, over a period of sixteen years, makes fascinating reading: The Writing of One Novel.)

From the critics’ viewpoint, Torn Curtain wasn’t great Hitchcock; yet, at the box office, it did well. It was filmed at the height of the first Cold War (as opposed to the new one that seems to be just blossoming…)

The movie was broken into three acts; classic film narration. The first act was from the viewpoint of Sarah. The second act was Michael’s POV. And the third act covered both their viewpoints, as appropriate.

Switching the POV works here. We’re involved in Sarah’s puzzlement and heartache as Michael defects.

All of the trademark Hitchcock elements are present. Mystery and puzzlement revolving round the protagonist, Michael. Is Newman playing against the usual heroic type, actually being a traitor to his character’s country? Suspense mounts as revelations explain Michael’s purpose – combined with the oppressive regime of East Germany that meant that paranoia was a normal way of life at the time. We see Sarah and Michael arguing, but are not privy to their words – a standard technique Hitchcock employed in his films. The ‘ticking clock’ is used in the form of an underground group’s escape route being compromised. Seemingly irrelevant characters at the outset prove to be crucial at the denouement. The Hitchcock McGuffin is a formula that Michael needs to obtain…

There’s a prologue and epilogue – both have Sarah and Michael under a blanket – which neatly bookends the story. The fact that the pair were not married caused concern on moral grounds in certain religious and secular quarters. How times have changed…

The fight with and murder of an East German agent is a deliberately prolonged scene. Hitchcock intended making it grim and difficult, eschewing the usual spy characters who kill so easily, unlike in real life. To make such an observation, Hitchcock might not have seen From Russia With Love (1963); there’s nothing easy about the death of Red Grant on the Orient Express. The realism makes for uncomfortable viewing, certainly.

The studio insisted on using the stars Newman and Andrews. Julie Andrews was only available for the film for a few months, so the pace of the filming was rushed – moreso when Hitchcock decided that the original screenplay (by novelist Brian Moore) needed beefing up and hired Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall to inject more life into it (both uncredited).

 

Overall, the pace is slow in sections, but there are plenty of occasions where the suspense is cranked up by Hitchcock. And the supporting actors perform brilliantly. Worth viewing.

FFB - Restless

Restless is the William Boyd book (2006) that was made into a TV movie in 2012, starring Hayley Atwell, Rufus Sewell, Michelle Dockery, Michael Gambon, and Charlotte Rampling.  

It is an absorbing novel told from the first person point of view of Ruth Gilmartin in 1976. She discovers that her mother Sally was in fact really called Eve and before she married Sean Gilmartin, she was Eva Delectorskaya. Ruth learns all this from a manuscript her mother drip-feeds her. It’s quite disconcerting to find out that the firm foundation of your childhood is based on something as insubstantial as a myth.

Eva’s story is both interesting and intriguing. She is recruited by Lucas Romer, a mysterious Englishman working for British Intelligence. She undergoes special training in Scotland and then is deployed to Washington DC with a group whose purpose is to bring the Americans into the war and save Britain’s hide.

Then somebody betrays Eva and she goes into hiding. Now, all these years later, she’s sure who the culprit was and she needs her daughter’s help to expose him.

‘Always suspect. Always mistrust.’ Eva lived by these rules and Ruth begins to feel the same way in her workday encounters.

Boyd handles the female perspective well and neatly juxtaposes the past events in Eva’s life with Ruth’s current issues. There’s a brooding menace of betrayal throughout – emphasised by the father of Ruth’s child and Eva’s failure to mistrust.

The wartime period – and the hot summer of 1976 – are captured by Boyd; you’re there, in both worlds, because his writing style is deceptively easy to read yet honed to perfection. He's not too good with the action sequences, though, as the visuals are scant; but we're not reading this for the action but for the characterisation, which is good.

I’ve read earlier books by Boyd and none disappoint [though his later Bond outing (Solo) did, see my comments here].

From this book alone, it’s understandable why he has won a number of writing awards. A pity about the lousy title, though.

 

 

 

Saturday story - 'Hoverjack'

This was my first published story, written under the penname Platen Syder, which appeared in Parade on February 6, 1971. I was very pleased with the illustration that accompanied it, too. Naturally, in hindsight I would tighten up certain bits. Still, its 2,000 words possess a fast pace and reflect the Cold War period.
 

Hover-Jack

 

 

 

Keith Segal boarded the hovercraft at 8.15pm sharp. There were only six other passengers: the last trip to the Isle of Wight. As he edged up the aisle, his gun-harness felt tight across his broad shoulders.

Then he spotted his quarry. The little fat man sitting near the rear emergency exit window. Avery.

The hatch lowered. The revs mounted. Amidst the banshee wail of the props, the cushion lifted them and swung the craft round onto water.

As the first waves were buffeted by the air-cushion, Segal rose, withdrawing his automatic. Ignoring the gasps of dismay from his fellow-passengers, he pressed the gun to the pilot’s temple. “Out to sea – between those two Palmerston forts!”

In the rear-view mirror he espied Avery raise his fist to smash out the emergency window.

Pivoting round, Segal fired. The shot puffed deep into Avery’s seat. Cold-bloodedly eyeing him, Segal yelled above the din. “The next one’ll hit, Avery!”

By now the coastguard up ahead would be alerted. He glimpsed their wave-crests nearing. An MTB with them.

“Radio the coastguard!” he ordered the pilot. “Tell them it’s a hijack and these passengers are hostages. Any sign of pursuit and they die…”

Tremulously, the pilot obeyed. Cackling back, the radio acknowledged their message. Segal watched as the boats veered off, heading back inland. Being ex-Navy himself, he knew the Senior Service better than that. They’d now be a little orange blip on the radar screens.

Fifteen minutes later they sidled up to a dirty old tanker commandeered for this operation only, its fuel pipes dangling. Two swarthy sailors speedily refuelled the hovercraft.

As they headed out into the Channel, a slightly built passenger dived at Segal. Viciously chopping the bridge of the balding man’s hooked nose, he saw that two others had also found courage. He was thankful the narrow aisle prevented them both attacking at once. He ducked a ham-fisted blow and elbowed the stocky attacker’s stomach, following up with a knee to his groin.

He didn’t want to shoot if he could help it – the Bossman wouldn’t approve. As the first assailant slumped to the deck, the second, shorter one kicked out. The suede shoe winded him. Ruthlessly he clamped onto the short man’s leg and jerked it high up, unbalancing him.

In control now, he turned to notice the pilot serving the craft inland. The coastguard and MTB were visible ahead on the hazy horizon. They were following all right.

 
Clubbing the pilot’s chin with his automatic, he urged a course-correction. Then, steadying himself against an upright, Segal surveyed the passengers. Avery hadn’t moved – resigned to his fate, probably.
 
The meeting place had better be near, he thought, as I’m not likely to hold this lot at bay for long, unless I start shooting.
 
Heavy thunderclouds hovered, darkening the dusk. In the greyness he discerned a hulk rising. The submarine! Seconds later, the phosphorous wake – a gemini motoring across. The hovercraft. The hovercraft spluttered to a halt. The fuel had just lasted.
 
Warily studying the others, Segal pushed Avery up outside and down into the bobbing gemini. In a way, Segal felt sorry for Avery. He’d lost his wife in a confrontation with the Special Branch eight years ago. For three years they’d kept the grave under surveillance, but he never showed, so they gave it up as a bad job.
 
But Segal didn’t – and it paid off. He soon learned that Avery had moved his Southern Spynet to the Isle of Wight. And wisely, Segal kept the knowledge to himself.
 
Now, Avery’s reports were suspect; he was due for recall. The Kremlin reckoned his work was below acceptable efficiency. So they asked Segal – their Northern operator – to bring Avery out as they guessed he wouldn’t leave of his own accord.
 
As they approached the black fin, he wondered what they would do to Avery. Thank God they don’t know I’m doubling for MI6, he thought.
 
Avery’s enforced return would at least help him to dispel any doubts the Kremlin may have had about his loyalty to the cause.
 
The metal surface of the submarine’s casing clanged hollowly underfoot as they boarded. A pattern of barnacles twinkled wetly in the moonlight. The skipper called down to his two ratings dressed in black. They used English – unnecessarily for his sake – he observed, since he could speak fluent Russian.
 
Hastily, they were urged through a door in the front of the fin. Segal followed Avery into the dark confines of its skeletal framework. From above, an officer clambered down through the network of steel girders.
 
The short rotund Russian shook his hand heartily. Grinning a broad, golden-toothed  smile. “Welcome aboard my vessel, Mr Segal. I am Captain Karistavok.”
 
“Thanks, Captain, nice to be here.” He looked pointedly at Avery flanked by the Executive Officer and a rating. Both held machine carbines. “He’s in safe hands I see.”

Karistavok arched a picaresque eyebrow. He said, “Yes. But now we are about to dive, Mr Segal. Shall we go below?”

 
“I’d appreciate it. Wouldn’t like to get caught up top as she goes under,” he joked.
 
“Ah, yes, your sense of humour, no?”
 
Suddenly he heard the tannoy bawl: “Dive the submarine!” And, alarmingly, he was pushed in the dark, down into the black gap. His feet touched nothing the first six feet, then bruisingly hit into a metal ladder in the dark.

He felt the wind-blast hammering at his face. With the hatch open the turret was like a wind-tunnel. Grabbing hold, he cast a quick glance down at the red lights under him as a rubber-soled boot almost landed on his windswept head.
 
“Get down, man. Do y ou want yhoiur MTB to discover us?”
 
Obediently, Segal lowered himself, hand over hand, down the control tower. Again his hands slipped on the greasy rungs. The raucous wind forced him back, pummelling him. Slitting his eyes against the gale, he heard the hatch echo shut.
 
Above him, the Executive Officer cried, “One clip secured, two clip secured, three clip…” The dive-klaxon ground out its harsh music.
 
Clumsily, Segal landed at the foot of the ladder, in the centre of the control room. On either side of him rose the shafts of two periscopes, the for’ard one with a smaller snout, used for attack.
 
He heard the high-pressure air being released from the tanks as they sank under the waves. Now he whiffed the clinging odour of diesel oil and grease.
 
Instinctively, he surveyed his surroundings. Behind the attack ‘scope sat their Coxswain, gently raising and lowering the steering lever. Above him he saw the course indicator.
 
They were sinuating between 120 and 160 degrees – a wide zigzag. The magnetic compass showed them heading SSE. The telegraph dials read Full Ahead, both in Russian.
 
As the others joined him, he realised he was glad to see them. Somehow he believed the ratings already down here – especially those two bearded fellows on the hydroplanes – were hostile towards  him.
 
“I think you deserve a rest, Mr Segal,” suggested Karistavok.
 
He nodded wearily. “Yes, I am rather tired now. Thanks for taking Avery off my hands, anyway. I imagine you’ll be landing him off Algiers?”
 
“Perhaps…” Karistavok replied evasively.
 
The steward showed him to a spare bunk up for’ard in the fore-ends. “We don’t bother to undress,” he was told. All of the eight fold-up bunks ranged along the bulkheads. Alongside his own bunk two huge gunmetal-blue torpedoes were stacked on top of each other, resembling two young whales mating.
 
For the length and breadth of the boat’s bulkheads and deck-heads, bare wire circuits snaked and coursed, valve wheels protruded; dizzying, claustrophobic.

Fully clothed, Segal dozed fitfully for about three hours. An incessant p-e-e-e-nnng invaded his subconscious. He surmised they were being searched for on active sonar.

 
Eventually, unable even to doze, he rose cautiously from his bunk. Silently he passed tightly packed, musty smelling messes on the port side, and stowage lockers on the starboard. In the twilight of red-lighting, he likened the messes to a squashed London tube train.

Eyes unaccustomed to the red light, he accidentally kneed the pantry hatch-door, bruising himself from a row of extinguisher-refills let into the door-rack. A wheel-spanner clattered to the metal deck. Groping and finding it, he replaced it on the door’s ledge.

Karistavok was pacing the control room, hands clasped behind him. Avery lounged near the underwater telephone, unsupervised. “I don’t–” Karistavok began when he noticed Segal. “Hallo, Mr Segal! Sleep well?”

           
“Reasonably, Captain.”
 
Reaching for the microphone that hung above him, Karistavok said, “Excuse me – duty, you know…” He flicked the handset’s switch. “XO to control room, please.”

Studying the actin plot, Segal estimated they were well into the Bay of Biscay. A shadow crossed over the plot. He looked up.

Illuminated in the ruddy glow, he saw Avery flanked by Karistavok and his XO. The XO raised his machine carbine.

So they did know! All that about Avery was a ruse!

“I was bait, Segal,” Avery murmured, grinning.

They wanted him, not Avery.

Levelling his carbine on Segal, the XO twisted his moist lips, sneered, “Your gun – throw it over – slowly…”

He did as he was told, watching them through narrowed eyes. As the gun clanged on the deck, he edged backwards, into the gangway, near the pantry’s hatch.

 
Oblivious to what was happening, a young radio operator stepped from the state board. Unhesitatingly, Segal pushed him into the XO. The gun clattered to the deck, loosening a spurt of lead. Sparks splattered the ultra-violet gloom. The after-hydroplanes operator screamed, his thigh reddening.
 
Segal slammed the hatch door shut, shot the clips. The wheel-spanner fell again, but this time he kept it.
 
At that instant the steward emerged from the senior ratings’ mess. “Hey!” Without compunction, Segal rammed the sharp spanner in the steward’s ashen face. As the blood poured he dashed through the corridor leading for’ard. It was narrow and cramped. His shoulders buffeted against wheels, dials, pipes and cupboards.
 
A crew-cut mechanic wearing overalls moved out from his mess, barred Segal’s path. Without slowing, Segal thrust his knee into the Russian’s stomach and sprawled over as the man fell backwards. Landing catlike on all fours, Segal saw a red padlocked box labelled in Russian: Sten guns.
 
Loaded, he hoped, bashing his steel heel down on the lock. As the wood splintered open, he heard the others emerging from the pantry hatch. Wrenching the sten from its bracket, he trained it and fired. The nearest was a matter of five yards off; he jack-knifed head over heels with lead puncturing his chest.
 
Suddenly the noise was ear-shattering. Bullets ricocheted off pipes and metal boxes, severed cables and holed ducts. Water and high-pressure air gushed everywhere.
 
Taking advantage of the confusion, Segal backed through the hatchway leading into the fore-ends. As he slammed the hatch shut and wrenched the pins down, clamped tight, he turned to face three seamen rising sleepy-eyed from their bunks.
 
At that instant the tannoy addressed him: “You can’t escape, Segal…”
 
The three sailors must have realised what was happening. They rose and hit the deck and advanced on him. He had no choice. The sten barked its staccato message and they received the jerk from life to death. A few bullets rebounded and he felt a burning sensation in his left arm.
 
But his naval training had been thorough. He knew only too well Karistavok would seal off the fore-ends and increase the pressure, blacking him out within seconds. He had to work fast!
 
“Give yourself up, Segal, you can’t escape. You have one minute!”
 
Eyeing the depth-gauge nearby, he realised they were already down to four hundred feet: Karistavok was right.
 
Spotting the fore-ends fuel-dip to the right of the torpedo-stowage compartment, he used up the remainder of his ammunition blasting off the lock and unscrewed the short chain of the dip itself.
 
Fully aware of the precious seconds ticking by, he withdrew his false pen filled with high-explosive – standard equipment which he’d often shunned – and gently lowered it into the dip’s half-inch hole.

Then the pressure mounted in the compartment. He could feel his head reeling, everything going black…

 

***

“A Soviet submarine with fifty-eight men on board mysteriously exploded and sank in the Bay of Biscay during naval manoeuvres yesterday” – Reuter.

Copyright Nik Morton, 2014